Reprisal (7 page)

Her mother said, “Well, you could stand to put a little weight on. Now, could you be here at six-thirty? We’ll have a cup of tea before …”

“Ah, Mom. I’m so busy … oh, all right” Zehra hardly waited for the response in order to get her mother off the phone. Zehra feared the true reason for the invitation.

“Okay, dear.” A pause. “Oh, one last thing I forgot. I’ve invited a nice, young friend to come too. I’m sure you’ll like him. Goodbye.”

Snapping the phone off, Zehra shook her head. Probably another loser!

“Something wrong?” Jackie looked at Zehra closely.

“My mother. Still trying to set me up. In her generation, arranged marriages sometimes happened amongst Muslim women. I guess it had some merit to it—my parents were arranged, and they’re still happily married. But, I don’t like the idea at all. I try to be nice to my mother, but I just get mad at myself for not saying, ‘no.’”

A penetrating voice carried into the office from the hallway.

“That’s BJ,” Zehra told Jackie.

The resonant sound of singing was followed by a large black man. He turned sharply into the office and pulled up straight until he finished a phrase. “Jazz,” he told them. “Beautiful, beautiful music. Too bad the kids don’t learn this stuff in school. A lot better than gangsta rap for them.” He nodded to each of them. “These black kids are losing their roots if they don’t understand jazz.”

Zehra looked up at him. He stood over six feet, had a shaved head, a gray goatee, and liquid brown eyes that never stopped moving. When speaking, Zehra noticed he over-enunciated his words, like Denzel Washington. Probably because BJ also had large, beautiful teeth like the actor, which seemed to get in the way when he talked. Sometimes, to kid him, she called him Denzel.

Jackie asked, “Do you play jazz?”

“Got my own group. ‘Gabriel’s Horns,’ we call it. I play the trumpet. We just put out a new CD.”

“BJ, I was just telling Jackie about the FACS training you had.”

“Yeah, cool stuff.”

Jackie offered him her chair. “How’s it work?” she asked.

“Well, it’s a system for breaking down human facial expressions into a series of muscle movements, called action units.”

“You mean like every time I wrinkle my face or smile, you’re checking me out?” Jackie said. “Wicked.”

“Exactly,” BJ said. “We memorize about seventy muscle and head movements, and the combination of those can tell us what a person is really thinking. It’s not perfect, but it helps me when interviewing people to have a sense if they’re lying or not.”

“Is it something new?”

“Researchers developed it in the seventies, and law enforcement is starting to use it. There was a famous case of a woman in South Carolina who went on TV to plead for the return of her kidnapped kids. I saw the video in training. The woman’s cheeks lifted in a smile while the corners of her mouth tried to suppress it. The disconnect between a smile and her pleading led investigators to question her further. Turns out, she killed her two kids and made up the kidnapping.”

“Awesome.”

He took the chair and scowled.

“Don’t tell me, BJ …” Zehra held her breath.

His eyes darted from one to the other. “I warned them sons of bitches,” he said. “This wasn’t gonna work. ‘Oh, no,’ they said. ‘You’re black. They’ll open doors for you.’” BJ waved his hands in the air. “May as well’ve sent Linda, the white chick that works next to me, for all the good black did me.”

“We all warned Mao,” Zehra said. “None of us want this case.”

BJ kept talking, “Besides, I was a cop for twenty years. Some of these cases are just too close to home. This is ugly—a young kid slashed to death. You know I’ll do my job, but how about a nice auto thief instead?”

“BJ,” Zehra said, “Did you interview the main witness, the one from the porch, to see what he says?”

He stopped abruptly and sat still. “Z, we didn’t score.”

“What happened?” The tension tightened the muscles low in her body. In her mind she saw a digital clock clicking over, crossing off the days until she had to start the trial.

“I ain’t got shit for you. He wouldn’t talk, and none of them other dudes would either. I can’t wait to tell Mao they wouldn’t even open the door for a black man.” His eyes drooped in defeat. “Sorry, I can’t help.”

Zehra took a deep breath. “We’ll keep working …”

BJ raised his eyes slowly to meet Zehra’s. She loved those warm looks. “I got more bad news,” he paused. “The DNA? I just heard the results from the testing of the saliva and blood on the mask. It matches our boy exactly.”

Seven

At the seven o’clock Monday morning meeting in the FBI office high in the Federal Building, Paul refused the pastries everyone else ate. The open boxes circled the conference table twice while people sheepishly took seconds. Paul watched them stretch their mouths open to cram in dripping purple Bismarcks. People ate in silence.

“Hey, Jimmy,” one of the agents called across the table. “Don’t forget that Wellness meeting this afternoon for weight control. If you go through it, you get a reduction in your co-pays in the health plan.”

Paul was anxious for his boss to speak.

After allowing for a round of tea-colored tepid government coffee, Paul’s boss, Bill Conway, cleared his throat. He had been the senior agent in charge of the Twin Cities for six years. “Folks, listen-up,” he started. “We’ve got a lot to cover. Sorry about the coffee. With the budget cuts, we had to stop the Starbucks.” He brushed crumbs off his yellow necktie and tried to smooth it over the protruding belly below.

Several of them pushed back from the table and crossed their legs to listen.

“I got off the phone with the director in Washington this morning.” Conway paused for the effect. “He called at five o’clock, his time. That’s damn early here. Now, I don’t like to get these calls ‘cause they usually mean the director’s unhappy.” His gaze bounced from one face to another. In spite of the sugar surge, most of them looked half awake.

“The director’s been getting calls from lots of big-shot politicos, including our own esteemed senators. They’re worried. And you all know how things work in government when the shit rolls downhill—in the end, we gotta shovel.”

Mavis Drews, the oldest female agent in Minneapolis, sat up. “I thought we got pleas out of three of these recruiters, Bill. What more do they want?”

Conway moved back to his edge of the table. He looked at his administrative assistant who scrambled through a pile of files. She pushed one toward him.

“Here … here we go. Yeah, we got convictions on these three.” He raised the files in the air to demonstrate. “What they’re saying, confirms our theory. These guys were recruiting for the freedom fighters in Somalia—the Shabaab, which we know has links to Al-Qaeda.” Conway had thick hair combed over his head, gray-green eyes, and a jowly face. It lent a level of seriousness to his statement.

“But they didn’t plead to that, did they, Bill?” Joe Fancher asked.

“We got one for lying to us during the investigation. But the other two pled to providing material support for terrorists. They admitted going to Yemen, then back to Somalia to handle the new recruits from the Twin Cities and then, turned them into terrorists there. They call ’em ‘born agains.’ Got eight years on this last defendant. Trouble is they’re not talking about anything else.” When he threw the files on the table, doughnut crumbs scattered. “That’s a problem. I admit we got a few loose ends.”

Drews said, “So, what does the Director want? We broke the case, arrested the suspects, and got convictions.” She looked around the long table and pumped her fist into the air tentatively. “What the hell else do those idiot politicians want?”

“No, no … he’s happy about that. Congratulated us. No, the calls are coming from Congress people and agencies about what happens now.”

Drews pressed on, “What happens?” she snorted. “What happens is we busted ’em!”

“I know, Mavis. But let’s go down the road a little ways. If these slugs were recruiting for terrorist fighters in Somalia, how much does it take for them to turn these kids loose in the U.S?” Conway had a hoarse, smoker’s voice that gave him a very Karl Malden tone. “And what about the Al-Qaeda ties. Is this a way for them to attack us?”

No one spoke for a long moment. Finally, Mavis said, “Yeah… guess you’re right. It’s the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.”

Conway was used to spending more time behind a desk and reading histories of the Second World War, than running the streets and chasing bad guys. He looked forward to his opportunity to retire at full pension in two years.

“One of these kids who disappeared blew himself up with a bomb in Somalia,” Conway let his words hang in the air above the table. “But I got more headaches than that,” he moaned. “None of you have to deal with all the agency calls I get.”

Paul had mixed feelings toward the agent in charge. Although Conway had reluctantly taken Paul into the Minneapolis office after the mess Paul made in Milwaukee, Conway had come to like him. The phone call from the teacher a few years ago worked as well as Paul hoped it would. It had opened the case of the Somali recruiters and given Paul a chance to be assigned to the investigation, which he helped solve.

But Paul knew Conway, near the end of his career, lacked the energy to fight anymore. He seemed out of touch, telling stories of his past that weren’t exactly true. He spoke “fight,” but he really meant “don’t rock the boat.” Paul suspected they had only uncovered the tip of an iceberg. From the outside, the FBI looked in control of everything. From the inside, Paul knew they scrambled, dependent on the Somali informants to help them and telephone intercepts.

He warned Conway of his concerns, but the old guy didn’t have the energy to probe deeper.

“So, I’m getting calls from everyone even remotely tied to Homeland Security. You wouldn’t believe it. I’ve never heard of half these agencies! No wonder the government’s running in the red. Who’s paying for all these people?” He leaned back with a deep laugh.

“What’s going on?” Paul asked.

Conway looked down at his assistant again. She paged through more papers, giving him one with a long hand-written list on it. He shifted his bulk from one leg to the other. “Okay, here goes.” He glanced up over the tops of his glasses. “You ain’t gonna believe this.” Looked down again and read. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, Federal Protection Services, the Army Medical Research Institute, TRIPwire, Customs and Border Protection, Cyber Protection … and the frickin’ list goes on. I got a congresswoman in Mississippi asking me if we got a fence on the northern border with Canada!”

Laughter lapped around the table like waves on a lake shore.

“She probably doesn’t even know where Canada is,” Fancher said.

“And you all know how the agents at Immigration Customs and Enforcement have screwed us in the past,” Conway shouted. “Early on in the case, we both had informants covering the same suspect. I argued with them to butt out, that their interference could blow the suspect. They made a premature takedown that almost blew this whole case.” He looked up at the ceiling.

“Turf wars,” said Fancher. “They want the brass ring as much as we do.”

“ICE thinks they’ve got the resources, but they don’t,” Conway said. He glared at the group. “I’m sure as hell not gonna be the one to tell the Director he’s lost the case to some dumb-ass border agents. You know what he’ll do to me? So, no leaks to them, period.” He thumped the table with a thick fist.

Mavis said, “What do you want to do, Bill?”

He screwed-up his face. Sighed. “Dammit, I wish I could smoke in here. Well, for now, the plan is to hold steady. We’re making progress, and the calls from Washington are finally slowing down.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right,” said Fancher. He reached a hand out for another pastry, lifted it, and at the last moment, tore it in half.

“We’ve got the ringleaders in jail. The billions of dollars spent on computers at Homeland Security are monitoring cell calls and emails, looking for keywords. Any alerts come to me directly.”

“Keep the telephone intercepts in place,” Mavis said. “Keep our informants fresh. Good idea.” Mavis puffed her breath out. “It’s getting better. Especially, the suburban Somalis. They’re a little more integrated into the community … but that’s not saying much. The clans don’t agree on many things, they look down on each other, won’t cooperate much, fight amongst themselves and distrust almost everyone except their own people.”

“Local police helpful?”

“Yeah, but they get the same response we do.”

Conway’s eyes surveyed the agents around the table. “There’s a Somali elder; can’t remember his name or even pronounce it for that matter. He says that a combination of our investigation, national attention, and more vigilant parents has caused the recruiting to drop. ‘It’s over,’ he says.” Conway paused to wait for comments or support. “Well, I guess we agree to keep on truckin’.”

Paul spoke, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Bill.”

“What else do you think we can do?”

“As you know, I’ve got myself ‘embedded’ in the murder case going on now. The defense lawyer’s a friend of mine. Although she can never reveal confidential things, of course I’ll get information from their investigation. It’ll be like working with an informant.”