Power Down (51 page)

“All at once? One at a time?”

“All at once.”

“Detonator? Suicide?”

“Both. Remote detonator unless we are in danger, then we set them off. We all know how.”

“Where is the detonator?”

Karim’s eyes grew alert. His lips quivered again, but no sound.

“Where is it, Karim?”

“No. I cannot say.”

“Where is it?”

“You can’t stop it now. We’re not trying to kill people. Infrastructure.”

“Yes, we figured that out, Karim. I need to know where the detonator is.”

“Which one?”

“How many are there?”

Karim’s chest suddenly convulsed. He squinted his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered.

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Are you the leader?”

Again, no answer.

“What is the name of your leader?”

Karim remained silent. Bismarck held the new needle up in front of Karim’s eyes.

“Here comes that different drug now. You’ve left me no choice, Karim. It’s going to make the warm feeling from the first drug go away.”

“Please, no. I will tell you.”

“Who is your leader?”

Karim’s lips moved again, no words. He shut his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks.

Bismarck stuck the small needle in the IV at the forearm. Suddenly, Karim began to convulse wildly, foaming at the mouth. He pushed his head up, against his restraints, banging his skull back down on the steel of the table. He repeated this several times, screaming in agony. Veins bulged at his forehead. He continued screaming and thrashing about for more than a minute. Bismarck watched the monitors. After nearly two minutes, Karim tired but still convulsed. Bismarck moved back, took another needle, stuck it into the IV. Suddenly, Karim’s eyes returned to the back of his head, then closed. Bismarck gave him less than thirty seconds before he shook him by the ear.

“Most people are under the belief that a reliable truth serum exists,”
said Bismarck, looking down into Karim’s now-tranquil eyes. “In point of fact, it’s not true. What I’ve always found to be more, shall we say . . . reliable, is the effective interchange of pain and pleasure; in this case a synthetic mixture of oxytocin and heroin, which is what you seem to be enjoying at the moment, and xylene, something most commonly found in lawn fertilizer. Clearly you don’t enjoy that one very much, Karim.”

Karim stared up at Bismarck, completely helpless. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His eyelids drooped, then shut. Bismarck shook the Arab by the ear again.

“Tell me, Karim, how long have you lived in the United States?”

“Nearly twenty years.”

“And has anyone ever tried to kill you?”

“No.”

“Nobody?”

“No.”

“So do you think it’s very kind of you to hurt our country?”

“No.”

“Do you know how many people you killed yesterday at Long Beach.”

“Yes, I do. Two thousand, one hundred, and something.”

“Two thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-one people.”

“Yes.”

“How many detonators are there?”

“Two.”

“Where are they?”

“The apartment. The beach house.”

“Where in the apartment? Desk? Kitchen?”

“In an ivory box, above the fireplace.”

“Where’s the apartment?”

“In Manhattan.”

“SoHo? Upper East Side? Harlem?”

“Please kill me. I won’t harm anyone anymore.”

“What is the address?” Bismarck asked, anger in his voice. “
Where is the detonator?
”

“No,” Karim whispered.

“Who is your leader?”

Karim shut his eyes. He kept them closed, even as Bismarck shook his ear.

“You’ve left me without a choice,” said Bismarck calmly, nodding at one of the nurses, who handed him another syringe. “I’m going to make the warmth go away again, Karim. This will hurt. I don’t have to do it, though. It’s your choice. Will you tell me now? What is the address?”

Karim started sobbing uncontrollably, like a child, tears streaming down his cheeks. Bismarck thrust the needle into the IV at his forearm. Again the convulsions began. Karim’s head slammed into the steel, up and down, slamming hard. Soon, blood appeared under his head and started a slow drip from the stainless steel onto the terminal floor. His chest arched upward. And the screams came again, terrifying screams, hoarse and savage. Bismarck moved to the monitor while he let the terrorist convulse on the table in pain.

Dewey, from the side of the frame, stood watching, mesmerized, sickened. He felt like he was watching a young boy with a housefly, slowly ripping its wings off. But this was no housefly, he reminded himself. Inside this man’s head lay the key to stopping untold damage, the key to saving countless lives. If they had to rip his wings off to prevent the deaths of more Americans, so be it. He glanced at the other agents; they too looked stunned.

Bismarck allowed the terrorist to scream for another minute, then stuck another needle into his arm, which calmed him. His fast-paced breathing continued. Bismarck pushed the needle in. Karim’s head fell silently to the side. Blood continued to pour from the steel O.R. table. One of the nurses lifted the supine head, placed a towel beneath the skull to catch the blood. His skull moved now like the head of a doll, seemingly almost detached from the body. Bismarck checked the monitor. Then he returned to Karim’s side. He tugged at his ear. There was no response. He tugged again.

“You’re losing him!” shouted Dewey. “He’s all we have. Don’t kill him.”

“I told you to keep quiet,” said Bismarck between clenched teeth, not even looking up.

Bismarck turned, pulled Karim’s ear again. Slowly, his eyelids opened.

“There we are,” said Bismarck. “Are you ready to answer some questions now?”

Karim’s skin appeared almost blue under the light. His eyes were opened less than a quarter way. His face was covered in sweat and tears.

“Just one question, that’s all. Who’s the leader? What’s his name?”

Karim’s eyes fluttered.

“Goodbye,” he whispered.

The monitor sounded a high-pitched monotone; flatline, as Karim’s heart ceased functioning.

Dewey moved forward. When the agent to his right attempted to stop him, placing his leg out in front of him, then reaching for him with his hands, Dewey pushed him out of the way.

“You killed him,” growled Dewey as he reached the steel table and began pounding Karim’s chest, desperately trying to revive the terrorist. Two agents quickly grabbed him from either side, pulled him back.

“You fucking butcher,” said Dewey, struggling to free himself from the agents, who held him at the biceps. “He was all we had.”

“He was trained,” said Bismarck. “There is no drug that will work if someone wants to die.”

Dewey turned. The agents’ grips loosened. He looked around the room, at the nurses and other agents. No one said anything.

What would’ve happened had Dewey done the interrogation himself,
his
way? He would never know. He walked toward the terminal door and out into the blinding snow.

J. EDGAR HOOVER FBI BUILDING

Hector Calibrisi sat staring at the computer screen, mesmerized. On the screen, the picture showed a sidewalk running in front of a simple but pretty white Colonial. Calibrisi was watching the video for the ninth time in a row. Suddenly, on the screen, a man emerged from the front door of the house. He walked down the steps of the house, then toward the camera. The camera was out of view, the size of a gumdrop, attached to the telephone pole. The man walked down the brick walkway, then took a left and went out of camera range.

After the man disappeared, Calibrisi turned to the woman whose computer it was. “Play it again, will you?”

“Sure,” said Ashley Bean, rolling her eyes.

She clicked the icon on the screen, rewinding the short clip. When the video was at the point just before the man left the house, she played it again.

“Is that Buck?” Bean asked.

“Yes,” said Calibrisi. “Our mole.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, of course I’m not sure,” said Calibrisi. “But he’s all we’ve got at the moment.”

“Why do you keep watching the same clip over and over?”

“I don’t know. There’s something about it. It’s just bothering me. Play yesterday’s clip again.”

Bean clicked an icon in the corner of the screen, displaying precisely the same scene, of Buck walking down the brick walk in front of his house. Other than the color of his suit, which today was gray, and the day before dark blue, it was hard to see a difference between the two sequences.

“Play today’s one more time,” said Calibrisi. “Humor me.”

Bean again clicked the video from that morning. Calibrisi watched it for the eleventh time.

“I don’t know why, but there’s something wrong today,” said Calibrisi. “One more time, Ash.”

Jessica handed the cabbie a twenty-dollar bill, then climbed out of the cab. She had completely lost track of time, so consumed by the crisis, stuck at FBI headquarters for so many days on end. The cold air felt good against her legs. She walked up Wisconsin Avenue for two blocks, then took a right. She had not been home for two days. She did not own any pets, so she didn’t actually need to go home. Still, she wanted to take a shower in her own shower, water her own plants, and get her own mail. She also wanted to grab a few changes of clothing; who knows when she would be back.

The sky in Georgetown was overcast. Big brass streetlights lit up the brick sidewalks, storefronts, and town houses. A rare Washington snowstorm was on its way. The winds had begun to pick up. She turned onto Twenty-fourth Street, passing Standard Bakery. The smell of fresh-baked bread wafted out. In the morning, when she was home, Jessica would roll out of bed and walk down and buy a coffee and raspberry muffin. She didn’t have time right now.

Jessica lived in a brick, three-story town house in a quiet neighborhood of Georgetown, just off Wisconsin Avenue. The house was built in 1864, and still had its original floorboards, windows, and overall
character. As she walked down Twenty-fourth Street, she smiled. She loved Georgetown, loved her neighborhood and street. Its familiarity—brass lanterns, brick fronts, black doors—let her escape the events of the past few days: Long Beach, Capitana, Savage Island. They dominated her thoughts almost constantly. For a few brief seconds, she thought about her neighborhood, the ordered line of town houses, the simple beauty of the thin, cobblestone street. She let herself drift away, if only for a few stolen moments.

She came to the front of her house, #88. She inserted the big silver key into the front door, turned the lock, then pushed the big, black-painted wooden door in. There, on the ground, was a pile of catalogues, envelopes, and mail. She stepped inside, shut the door behind her. She didn’t have much time, one hour, before she had to catch the helicopter to New York City.

Vic Buck stared at the photograph on the wall, transfixed. The black-and-white photo showed a sailboat tipped nearly perpendicular. A fierce wind filled the large sail and pushed the sloop nearly horizontal. Perched out over the water, strapped into harnesses, two teenage girls leaned back. Behind the boat, the ocean was a choppy black, interrupted by whitecaps. The girls smiled as they tore through the water.

Buck did not show any emotion as he stared at the photograph. In fact, Buck no longer saw the photograph. After a full minute of staring at it, he had stopped seeing sailboat, ocean, and teenage girls. What he saw, instead, was a beach, and an image of himself on that beach. It was the image that had been etched into his mind for ten long years now. It was the picture of himself in the future, after this whole ugly business was done and over. It was getting closer now, he felt it. He could almost taste it. But he also felt it slipping away.

Suddenly, he was awakened from his silent contemplation by the sound of a key in a lock. It came from downstairs. He continued to stare at the photograph for another few seconds. His focus returned to the image in front of his eyes. The girl on the left, he had no idea who she was, long blond hair, heavyset. But the girl on the right, the one with the
smile, that one was obvious; short, auburn hair, tanned, face covered in freckles, adorable. He stared at the girl for another second or two.

He reached down, pulled the leather glove on his left hand tighter, then did the same with his right. He reached up, pulled the ski mask down from his forehead so that it now covered his face, except for the two eye-holes.

Finally, he reached to his left armpit, pulled the Glock 36 from the nylon shoulder holster. Calmly, he reached for the black steel silencer in the right pocket of his down coat. Without looking, as he continued to stare at the black-and-white photograph of Jessica Tanzer, sailing one summer day long ago, he screwed the silencer onto the muzzle of his semiautomatic weapon.

When he heard the door shut, he turned. He moved past the railing at the top of the stairs into her bedroom. He settled back, behind the door. It was nearly pitch-black, but she would be coming up the stairs, and when she did she would flip the light switch on. He didn’t want to be seen when that happened.