Darzi turned and gestured Preston forward encouragingly. The metal detector bleeped only half-heartedly since the staff was ready for the alarm, and another guard motioned Preston to the side out of the way of people coming through behind him. The guard passed his wand up and down the boy’s body. It squealed every time it passed over Preston’s torso.
“Look,” Preston said, pulling the control stick halfway out of its pocket, showing the guard the glowing LED and the wire attached to the other end. “You can feel it. It’s warm.”
Darzi cringed inwardly as the guard reached out and touched the vest. He laid two fingers on the boy’s shoulder, paused and removed them. Darzi silently exhaled.
“So it is,” the guard said. “Nice and toasty. Okay, then. Have a good time.”
“Thank you,” Preston said in a small voice.
Darzi felt relieved. One hurdle overcome. If Preston had been forced to take off the vest and run it through x-ray, or if the guard had done a more thorough examination of the vest, all would have been lost. They would have discovered the C4 that lined almost the entire vest. But Joe’s cop disguise had worked. Assume an air of authority, not to mention its trappings, and people will believe you are exactly what you say you are.
Darzi stuck his hand down to lead Preston away, but the boy refused to take it. He stepped over to the conveyor, retrieved his backpack and put it on. Darzi shook his head and walked up the slight incline further into the Orientation Plaza looking for a group he could put the boy with. The museum offered only one guided tour a day, but groups often reserved a time to visit.
Preston came up behind him and tugged on his belt. “I want to see the Constitution.”
“In a minute. I have to find a group you can join, first.”
“Why? Why do I have to be in a group?”
“Because you’re not old enough to wander around the museum by yourself.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Darzi got down on one knee so his face was just below the boy’s eye level. “I can’t go with you, Preston. You see my uniform. I have a job to do. If I find you a group, you’ll learn a lot more about the museum and what’s in it.”
The boy looked around as if only half paying attention. Suddenly his eyes lit up as he spotted something across the large room. “Can I go to the gift shop while you find a group?”
Darzi swiveled around and saw the gift shop entrance. “All right. But only if you promise to stay there. You can’t go anywhere until I come and get you, okay?”
Preston nodded earnestly and ran off.
Darzi sighed again and checked his watch. Time was running out. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get off schedule. He headed for an area in which docents gathered groups for tours. Halfway there, the phone in his pocket vibrated. Startled, he retrieved it and checked the screen. The incoming number was blocked. Only a handful of people had his personal number. He changed direction, heading for a quiet spot in the hall outside the gift shop where he could keep an eye on the boy.
“Yes?” he answered.
“Joe, it’s Abigail Cartwright.”
“Abigail, I’m sorry. I don’t have time to talk right now.”
“Is it true?”
He glanced around the hallway, a ball of ice in the pit of his stomach. “Is what true?”
“I have it on good authority that you’re the man we call al-Qadir.”
Darzi forced a laugh. “Preposterous. How long have you known me, Abby? Forty years?”
“And yet, after your parents died, I don’t feel as if I’ve known you at all. What happened, Joe? Why? All those lives lost. For what? My God, you were in divinity school!”
“Your God… That’s the trouble, Abigail. You’ve all co-opted God. ‘In God We Trust.’ ‘God Save The Queen.’ ‘…One nation under God.’ Hypocrisy, all of it.”
“You’re a Christian, Joe. Did you convert to Islam? Become radicalized somehow?”
“You really want to know, don’t you? We don’t have time for a late-night college bull session, Abby. I’m not about to stand here and debate with you.”
“Are you al-Qadir or aren’t you?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Not just yet. As to your other question, no, I didn’t convert to Islam. After my father was murdered, and my mother died, I was bereft. You remember that. I lost all faith in the kind, loving New Testament God. I wanted revenge on the man who killed my father and tore my family apart. I admit it. I wanted justice—an eye for an eye. I felt if the world was created by God, it must be the God of the Old Testament. A fire-and-brimstone God. A vengeful, wrath-filled God. So I studied the Quran. For a while I thought perhaps Islam was the way for me. Until I saw what the fundamentalist mindset did to that religion, too. Twisting it, perverting it.
“I did convert, Abby, but not to Islam. I follow my own path now. I have for more than thirty years. You want to know why I do what I do? I do it to prove there is no God. That’s all I can say. Now, I have to go.”
“Wait! Joe, don’t do this. Whatever you have planned, call it off.”
“Too late for that. It’s all been set in motion. You were a good friend once. I won’t forget that.” He held the phone out and moved a finger to cut off the call.
“Joe! There’s no point! The FBI knows about your plot. Your son is dead!”
He clamped the phone to his ear. “Hassan?”
“No, Amir. He was killed last night.”
A red-hot torrent of rage coursed through him. “Goodbye, Abigail.”
Amir had always been reckless, but to get himself killed when they were so close to getting his brother out of jail. If it wasn’t for the grief flooding through him, coursing alongside his anger, he’d almost believe Amir deserved it. Both brothers were hotheads. He’d never been able to talk them out of adopting the most radical forms of Islam. They’d rejected their mother’s religion, rejected his Christian roots. Learning Darzi’s true identity had only cemented their adherence to radical fundamentalist tenets. And now, Amir dead, Hassan a prisoner. Perhaps not for long, if his plan succeeded. He’d already failed Amir. He would not fail Hassan. And he would avenge Amir’s death with the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands before the day ended.
Clenching his jaw, he stalked across the floor to the gift shop, his piercing gaze searching out the boy. When he spotted him, he marched over and gripped the boy’s shoulder tightly.
“Time to go,” he said.
Preston didn’t argue, just dropped his gaze to the floor and shuffled in the direction Darzi steered him. Darzi marched the boy out to the first group he found—a dozen teenagers headed by a short, rotund woman in red cat’s-eye glasses. The earpieces were attached to a beaded chain that looped around her neck.
“I’m putting this boy in your group,” Darzi told her.
“This group is reserved,” she said, turning up her nose. “You can’t just add anyone you want. Besides, he’s just a child. Who’s going to watch him? Certainly not me.”
“Look, ma’am, this boy won a special contest sponsored by the White House. I have other responsibilities. Now, either you take him in your group or I’ll find a reason to arrest you.”
“Don’t you—” she began.
“I’ll watch him,” a man’s voice said.
Darzi turned to look at the speaker, a somewhat shambolic, older man in a windbreaker a size too large and a Washington Redskins baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
“Good,” Darzi said, happy to wash his hands of the boy finally. In a matter of minutes the boy would be dead, vaporized. “You can have him.”
81
Roberts rushed into the conference room, a little breathless, hair still wet from a shower.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she slid into a chair and perched on the edge of the seat. She could barely contain herself. She’d had an epiphany in that shower that struck like a bolt of lightning, and she wanted to share it. Since she was late, though, she bit her tongue until she got caught up.
“That’s okay,” Hunt said from one end of the room. “I just finished bringing the others up to speed on what’s happened in the past forty-eight hours.”
The others were Duncan Halsey, Garrett Mills, and Tamika Jordan, three members of their fly team who had taken a short leave for R&R. She gave them a quick smile. Now that they were back, Roberts didn’t feel so isolated. She not only felt close to these people personally, each member of the team brought certain skills to bear—Jordan had a medical degree and spoke five languages, and Mills was an explosives expert. Halsey…well, Halsey looked like an accountant, but held black belts in more than half a dozen martial arts styles. Their skills complemented hers and those of Hunt and Machowski nicely. Other than Machowski’s tendency to mouth off, they worked well together.
“Anyone have any ideas about where to start today?”
“Yeah, I do,” Roberts said, almost blurting it out in her eagerness. “I’ve been going nuts trying to figure out where they would have taken AUSA Keator’s kid, and early this morning it popped into my head. I was thinking about it all wrong. Instead of figuring out where they took him, I remembered Keator saying something about where the kid wanted to go.”
Hunt rolled his hand in the air. “And? Come on, come on.”
“The boy supposedly won an essay contest. The prize was a trip to the National Archives.”
Hunt’s eyes widened in surprise. “No shit? He’s a block away?”
“Think about it,” Roberts said. “What better way to demoralize a country than destroy its founding symbols?”
“Oh, my God. Al-Qadir is going to send the kid in as a suicide bomber and blow up the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.”
“Don’t forget the Bill of Rights,” Machowski said.
“We need to get over there!” Hunt said, throwing Machowski a withering look.
“No way we can go in with guns blazing,” Jordan said. “How’re we going to play this?”
“I agree,” Hunt said. “We go in quietly and see what the situation is first. But let’s make sure we have plenty of back-up. We don’t know what kind of numbers they might throw at this. Could be just al-Qadir and the kid, or he could have brought reinforcements. Duncan, get SWAT mobilized, but let them know absolutely no lights or sirens, and have them set up a perimeter at least a block away, out of sight of the building. Roberts, you and I will take the ground level entrance on Constitution Ave. Tamika, you and Garrett take the back entrance on Pennsylvania. Duncan and Chris, check the doors at the top of the steps on Constitution, then run the perimeter for signs of unusual activity. Full gear, everyone. I don’t want anyone hurt if we can help it. Let’s move!”
“What about on-site security?” Roberts said. “Shouldn’t we let USPP know we’re coming?”
Hunt shook his head.
“If al-Qadir is already there, could mean that security has been compromised somehow. We need to find that out before we announce our presence. Okay, let’s go. And be careful out there.”
82
By the time I walked from Foggy Bottom to the museum and stood in line to get in, my resolve faded as quickly as my strength. All I wanted to do was sleep. The weapons hidden on me didn’t set off any alarms at the security checkpoint—I should have known that Dickie wouldn’t send me something completely untested. Sweating and shaking, I found a bench in the center of the hall under a small rotunda, and collapsed gratefully. I figured sitting there until they scraped me off was as good a pastime as any. The world walked by in a kaleidoscope of color and clamor of multiple languages. No one paid attention to an older man on a bench, used up, wrung out and spread out to dry, someone who’d eventually shrivel into nothing, melting like the Wicked Witch of the West. If they did look, their eyes quickly slid off me like radar off a stealth bomber.
A torrent of high school students flowed through the security checkpoint and up the ramp into the space. They swirled in eddies of boisterous chatter, reforming in small groups of ten or so. I scanned the room for signs of Preston as well as I could, but the tossing sea of milling bodies made it hard to keep track. Afraid that I might have missed him somehow, that he might already have gone up to the exhibits, I rose to get a better vantage point.
Suddenly, not ten feet in front of me, a cop marched Preston into view. The sight of him woke me up with a shot of adrenaline and a dopamine chaser. My heart swelled to see him alive, and it took everything I had not to run over and grab him up in my arms. Instead, I sank back down onto the bench and watched them from under the brim of my hat.
The cop scanned the room as if looking for something. The pair didn’t act like kidnapper and victim, but the cop didn’t feel right to me. Preston seemed to be familiar with him, at least unafraid, but he looked uncomfortable. Maybe it was the cop’s grip on Preston’s shoulder. Preston reminded me of a cat; he liked to initiate contact on rare occasions—like the day he’d hugged me after I’d taken him to the park. Had that been only two days ago? But he didn’t like it when others touched him. The consternation on his face was easy to read, but he bore up well.
I flashed back to Vietnam, where every Asian face could be a friend or potential foe. Viet Cong, at least guerilla units in the South, rarely wore uniforms. Only the PAVN regulars in North Vietnam showed up in their team’s colors. Sometimes we’d see a group of VC all dressed in black, but they followed no rules. Most in both North and South Vietnam wore áo bà ba, the traditional silk peasant shirt and pants we called “pajamas.” But the objective of guerilla warfare was making it difficult to tell enemy soldiers from civilians, a concept the Pentagon failed to grasp until far too late. Though the brass had found it hard to believe, it was nearly impossible to carpet bomb a resistance movement out of existence. The French knew that—they’d had their own during WWII—and they’d gotten the hell out of Vietnam.
Like a rack focus shot in film noir, the cop slowly filled my vision again. A cop with authority—like a police sergeant—would have an easy time getting through security. I eased off the bench and followed them through the crowd, keeping enough bodies between me and them that I wouldn’t attract their attention, but staying close enough that I could hear a short Dame Edna look-alike whine about watching a kid. The cop threatened the woman with arrest, so I stepped up.
“I’ll watch him,” I said.
Head bowed, Preston stared at the floor. I prayed he didn’t look up. The cop turned to me and said something, but I didn’t hear the words. Instead, from under the bill of my cap I took in the face that confronted me, the long, sharp nose, the angled planes of his cheekbones, the close-set eyes that lent his face a piercing cruelty. He was an older version of the kid I’d killed the night before. I was glad I hadn’t alerted Dickie. Though I hadn’t seen anyone else with Joe, I had no doubt he’d kill Preston or anyone else who got in his way without the least compunction.
The woman with the shrill voice spoke up. “You could be a pedophile for all I know.”
A couple of the teenage boys laughed, and one said, “We’ll watch gramps and make sure he doesn’t try any funny stuff.”
The cop stayed, watching us as the group leader shepherded us around the corner toward the stairs, until we were out of sight. I let the others go through the glass doors first, hanging back so we were the last of the group in the marble staircase. If Preston was armed with a bomb, the cop would give us enough time to get well into the rotunda upstairs where the Charters of Freedom were displayed, and himself enough time to get clear of the building. I figured we had about five minutes at most.
“Preston,” I said softly. He continued to march up the stairs like a prisoner walking the last mile. “Preston, look at me.”
He stopped a step above me, and still had to crane his neck to look at me. His face scrunched up with suspicion. “How do you know my name?”
I tipped the brim of my cap up to give him a better look, hoping the mess that used to be my face didn’t scare him too much. His eyes widened.
“
Grandpa?” He threw his arms around my waist and buried his face in my windbreaker.
I leaned over and gave him a hug, immediately feeling the bulk and weight of the vest he wore, the substance layered under the fleece solid, but pliable. As tired as I was, sudden urgency banished any thought I had of succumbing. I gently pried him loose, and put a finger to my lips when he looked at me.
“Our secret, okay? We need to hurry, Preston.” I turned his shoulders and gently pushed to get him started up the stairs again.
“Why, Grandpa?”
“The policeman you were with is a bad man,” I said as I climbed up after him.
“How do you know? What did he do?”
“He stole something from me.”
“What?”
“It’s hard to explain, but he stole my name. He stole my identity.”
“He said his name was Joe. You’re Grandpa Zane.”
I nodded. “Joe is his real name. He used my name to do bad things.”
“He was nice to me. Well, he wasn’t mean, at least. And he gave me this vest. It’s heated.”
“He did? I’d like to see how it works, but not with everyone looking. Would it be okay, Preston, if we took a look at it in the bathroom?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
I took the steps two at a time past him to the top and caught up with the kid who’d mouthed off about watching me, and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Kid has to go to the bathroom. You can come watch me if you want, or stand guard outside in case the kid screams, but I’m taking him to the bathroom.”
“Yeah, fine, whatever,” he muttered. He turned to his buddy and told him he’d catch up.
I rushed Preston inside the restroom. He’d already pulled out the little control stick that adjusted the heat. I smiled and nodded, admiring it.
“Do you know why the vest is so heavy, Preston? It’s because Joe sewed something inside it that could make it explode. Can I see it?”
He crossed his arms. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see if I’m right, but I promise that I’ll try not to hurt the vest.”
Stolen Identity Page 33
