The Hand of War

by Blake Banner

  Not only that, but the discovery of the bomb would in all probability trigger an immediate shutdown of the conference. Especially after the protest that broke out at the Hennessy debate. And that would rob them of their target.

  All I could think of was that parts of the bomb had somehow been smuggled in already and were being assembled. With about seven thousand people working at the complex, it would not be so hard to find a handful of sympathizers to do that job. Perhaps the misdirection planned for today was to smuggle in the detonator, or some other essential part.

  Or perhaps I was thinking about it all wrong. Perhaps whatever they had planned had been scrapped because I’d killed the team. Either way, I had to get in there and try to find the device if there was one. Or, if that failed, alert security to the possibility of a bomb.

  And that raised another question. How the hell was I going to get in? I fished out Mclean’s badge. At a pinch, if you didn’t look too close, I could pass for him. I smiled. He lacked my rugged good looks, but what the hell!

  If I failed, I wouldn’t have any looks at all.

  Sixteen

  My plan was: make it up as you go along.

  I walked down First Avenue as dawn turned the air a grainy shade of gray, as the lights that had burned through the night died, one by one, and the seagulls cried out in despair over the mournful bray of barges and boats that plowed through the fragile light of the new day. It was thirty minutes after five AM, seven and a half hours to go, and I was making it up as I went along.

  That was my plan.

  I figured that from five or six in the morning, people involved one way or another in technical support would be turning up. Janitors, electricians, gas maintenance, plumbers, cleaners, you name it. They’d be turning up before the daily rush, and a lot of them would be using vans, and they’d be leaving those vans in the parking garage.

  At five forty-five, as the sun warped molten over Brooklyn, I was at the top of the ramp that led to the basements beneath the UN building. Out of 42nd Street, I saw a van pull onto the avenue. It had a logo on the side that read, ‘The Tech Guys’, and it moved into the near lane and slowed with its indicator on as it approached the ramp. I pulled out Mclean’s badge, held it up for the driver to see, and signaled him to stop. He did and I stepped around to the passenger side and opened the door. I climbed in, waved the badge at him again, and said, “Special Agent Harrison Mclean. I’m not here. Carry on.”

  He stared at me and his expression was skeptical. “Uh, can I see your badge again?”

  I looked at him with dead eyes and pulled the revolver. “Sure. Here it is. This is a Smith & Wesson 500, loaded with seven hundred grain flat-nose hard cast. It will punch right through four layers of concrete. Will that do?”

  “OK, pal. Take it easy. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “You won’t get any. Just do what you normally do every morning when you get here, and nobody will get hurt.”

  “OK, mister.”

  I jerked my head toward the garage. “They going to check your papers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will he want my papers, too?”

  He shook his head. “No, sometimes I bring an assistant.”

  “If this goes bad, I’ll shoot you, you realize that?”

  “Look, man. I don’t know if he will or not. He never has before.”

  “OK, get going.”

  We moved down the ramp and into the dark maw of the first basement. We stopped at a barrier and a guard in uniform came out of his office. My driver showed him his papers and the guard waved him on. We wound down through two basements into the dark bowels of the building and finally came to a halt in a bay near the elevators. There he stopped and stared at me. I could see he was scared. The smart thing would have been to throw him in the back and tie him up.

  But what if I failed?

  “What’s your name?”

  “Danny.”

  “You married, Danny?”

  He thought about it, weighing up the consequences of a guy like me having that kind of knowledge. I saw his left hand drop out of view and he shook his head.

  “Nah. Not my scene.”

  I smiled. “How come you’re wearing a wedding ring?”

  He shook his head. “Ah, we broke up. I wear it out of habit.”

  I sighed. “Kids?”

  He went pale and swallowed hard. “No!”

  “OK, Danny, here’s my problem. I’m the good guy. I’m going to tell you something, and you are going to think I’m crazy, but I’m not. Somewhere in this building there is a bomb. It’s a dirty bomb. You know what that is?”

  He nodded. “It has some kind of biochemical agent…”

  I nodded. “Yeah, something like that. It will go off at shortly after noon. I have told the Feds but, like you, they think I’m crazy. So I have to find that bomb. Now, here is my problem. What do I do with you? If I tie you up and put you in the back of the van, and fail to find the bomb...”

  I let the words hang. He stared at me with dawning horror on his face. “You want me to help you find the bomb?”

  I laughed. “No, what I want you to do is go back to your wife, collect your kids, and make sure you are in Pennsylvania by twelve o’clock.”

  He gaped at me. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, seriously. But how do I know you will not go straight to security and tell them there is some nut job in the basement who is probably going to place a bomb?”

  He thought about it. “Well, I guess, if you were a real nut job and your story wasn’t true, you probably…” He faltered and trailed off. “You’d probably kill me.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, Danny. I probably would.” I opened the door and climbed out. “Get out of here. Get your loved ones and go. If twelve o’clock comes and there is nothing on the news, you’ll know I found it.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then seemed to snap out of it, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a technician’s badge and an electronic key. He handed them to me. “These will get you in most places. Obviously there are some highly restricted areas, but the chances of a bomb being in there…” He shrugged. “The PIN that goes with the key is 1776, year of independence. You better take my toolbox, too.”

  I took them. “Thanks.”

  I watched his tail lights disappear up the ramp and wondered if I had done the right thing, or if I was growing soft in my thirties.

  Now that I was in, I wasn’t sure what to do next. Like I said, I was making it up as I went along. I had no idea how many levels the parking garage had. With almost seven thousand employees, it could be any number. But my gut told me, if they were going for something spectacular, the bomb was more likely to be somewhere between the first basement, where conference rooms four through thirteen were, and the fourth floor. Conference room four was large and had a gallery on the first floor. The General Assembly Hall was on the second floor, but it had galleries on the third and fourth. And it made sense, if they wanted to kill Marni and Gibbons in some spectacular way, then the bomb had to be in that area.

  I figured there would be metal detectors at the access points to the main building, so I put the revolver into the toolbox and left it beside a trash can, then made my way to the elevators and rode up to the first basement. I came out opposite the bookstore. It was closed. At that time of the morning, everything was closed, the coffee shop, the gift shop, the kiosk, and the bank. I turned right and walked to the johns. I inspected the ladies’ first and then the men’s. Every cubicle. But there was nothing.

  After that, I checked the briefing room and started to work my way methodically through each of the conference rooms. Danny’s key gave me access to all of them. I checked under every seat, on every stage, every dais, I scoured every inch of them, but there was nothing. A device capable of doing the kind of damage that Awad and Abbassi seemed intent on doing is not small. It is not easy to conceal. But I could not find anything at all that was even suggestive of that kind of device.


  The next four floors gave me the same result, and by nine o’clock I was exhausted and out of ideas. I made my way to the vast main lobby and stared at the great, plate-glass doors, watching security open up and start to admit the steady flow of visitors from across the globe. They straggled in, passing through the big airport-style security scanners. It was nine-thirty, two and a half hours to go, and I was out of ideas, numb, and my brain was too tired to think.

  I had two and a half hours, and I had nothing.

  I watched a group admitted with their tour guide or, as they liked to be called, ambassador to the people. Most of the group were young, in their late teens and early twenties. Some of them looked Latin or Mediterranean, others looked Scandinavian or German. They all had the young person’s uniform of jeans, anorak, and stupid, half-sized rucksack, with a bottle of water in their hands. They were all smiling, some where laughing. They were the confident heirs to the new, global world, designed by Gene Roddenberry, where everything conformed to the three ‘Hs’: it was wholesome, hygienic, and humanitarian.

  I rubbed my face. My brain ached. I searched it for a solution. There wasn’t one. A second tour was coming in, led by an attractive, well-dressed woman. There was a family, a father, a mother and three kids. Behind them was an old woman, maybe in her eighties—maybe old enough to remember the end of the war and the building of the UN HQ. She was in a wheelchair being pushed by a young man. In less than three hours, all of these people would die if I didn’t do something.

  I had one last card to play. It was desperate, but it was all I had left. I wanted to discuss it with Marni, so I made my way to the public telephones and called my apartment. It rang for a long while, then went to my answering service. She might have gone out for breakfast, or she might be sleeping late. I called her cell. It was switched off or unavailable. I thought for a long moment, then tried again, both numbers, with the same result.

  I had to make a decision, but I was out of options, so that meant there was only one decision to make. I had to go and see David Staines. I had to convince him that I was not crazy, and that there was a plot to plant a bomb at the UN. You’d think that such an allegation, coming from somebody like me, might make them shift their asses enough to look into it, but I guess like everybody else in the great machine that is western society, they were engaged in risk assessment and risk management. What was the biggest risk? Canceling the Conference of the Century because some kook said there was a bomb, and then winding up with egg on your face and a PR disaster, or going ahead with the Conference of the Century and having it bombed?

  From my perspective and the average guy on the street’s, the answer might seem simple and obvious. But the higher up the ladder you climb in the termite hill that is western society, the more your perspective tends to warp. As Ben had said to me, from Omega’s perspective, sooner or later, all those termites are going to die, and most of their lives will have been insignificant. So when the vast majority of people’s lives become insignificant to you, what is important? Some abstract idea like obedience, or belonging? I didn’t know the answer to that. All I knew was that I had one last shot left, and I had to take it.

  I walked to the elevators and rode up to David Staines’ floor. I walked down the long passage with a sense of unreality haunting me. I barely believed myself what I was going to tell him. How the hell could I expect him to believe it?

  I knocked on his door and almost immediately it was yanked open. He had his coat in his hand, like he was about to hang it up. He frowned at me from his deceptively flabby face and said, “You?” Then his eyes went to my clip-on name tag, and then back to my face. “You’re not Danny Heinz.”

  “No, I’m Lacklan Walker, and I need to talk to you. More than that, I need you to listen to me.”

  “Is it about Dr. Marni Gilbert?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not. I’ve spoken to her and to Professor Gibbons. This is much more serious, Mr. Staines. I really need you to listen to me.”

  He examined my face a moment, then heaved a big sigh and stepped back. “Fine, come in. Take a seat.”

  I went in. He closed the door and hung up his coat. Then he sat behind his desk and I sat opposite him in a strange reenactment of our first meeting.

  “I haven’t got a lot of time, Mr. Walker, I have to catch a flight in about an hour. So I’d appreciate it if you made this brief.”

  I smiled, thinking about the irony of his words. He had no idea how little time he had.

  “Mr. Staines, somebody has planted a bomb, or is going to plant a bomb, to detonate during Marni Gilbert and Professor Philip Gibbons’ talk. The bomb was planted by agents working for ISIS under instructions from Abdul Abbassi, formerly a member of the Taliban, now probably freelancing for ISIS.” He was staring at me like I was crazy. He went to speak and I raised my hand. “Please wait. I haven’t finished. I know this because I bugged the house they had in the Bronx. I can get the audio files to you. I have already forwarded them to Special Agent Harrison Mclean of the FBI. He is currently either dead or in surgery for a bullet wound to the chest inflicted by Abdul Abbassi. I have on my phone a recording of my interrogation of that man, during which he admits that there is a bomb. Now that is not everything, Mr. Staines. There is one more very important point. The bomb is a dirty bomb, and when it detonates, it will not only kill a lot of people in this building. It will probably kill tens of thousands of people in New York. Maybe more even than that. I realize that this sounds crazy. But let me ask you something. If you had been the Commander at the First Precinct on the morning of the eleventh of September, 2001, and I had come in to you and said Islamic terrorists were going to fly two airliners into the World Trade Center, would you have thought I was crazy? Well, Mr. Staines, this is considerably less crazy than that.”

  He stared at me for a slow count of three, then screwed up his eyes and shook his head.

  “…What?”

  I looked at my watch.

  “We have just two hours. What are you going to do?”

  Seventeen

  “First you come in here demanding to see Dr. Marni Gilbert based on some story about your childhood relationship. Now you barge in, wearing an ID badge that does not belong to you, spouting some cock and bull story about Islamic terrorists and dirty bombs! And you expect me to cancel what is arguably the most important conference in recent history, on the basis of this…” He was momentarily lost for words and waved his hand at me. “Crap! Well the answer is no! Mr. Walker, absolutely not! And furthermore, get out! Or I will have security throw you out!”

  I raised a hand. A wave of exhaustion washed over me. “I know it sounds crazy, Mr. Staines…”

  “Sounds crazy? No, Mr. Walker, it is crazy! Have you any conception of how difficult it would be to get a weapon into this building?” He shook his head. “It isn’t difficult. It’s not. It’s impossible! And as for the kind of device you are talking about, it would weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds. And you expect me to believe that a handful of terrorists are going to slip this thing past security without being noticed? You are out of your mind!”

  It was what I had expected him to say. It was what I would have said if anybody had told me this story. I sighed. “Will you at least…?”

  “No! I am not going to do anything!” He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, staring at me like he couldn’t decide if I was stupid or crazy or both. “The research Dr. Gilbert and Professor Gibbons are going to present this afternoon is so shattering it will change the course of history. I have a responsibility to ensure that this conference goes ahead and it will take a lot more than the insane babblings of a maniac to make me do anything, Mr. Walker!”

  I repeated, “Will you at least listen to my interrogation of Abdul Abbassi?”

  He sighed noisily, puffing out his cheeks, like I was really boring him. He glanced at his watch. “How long is it?”

  “Not very long, Mr. Staines.” I reached in my pocket, pulled out the phone, and
found the recording. Before clicking play, I looked him in the eye. “I understand everything you say, but you also need to be asking yourself, if Marni and Professor Gibbons’ talk is so important to the future of our world, do you really want to be the man who allowed them to get killed?”

  I pressed ‘play’, there was a moment’s silence, and then my voice spoke, threatening to torture Abbassi the same way I had tortured Aatifa. It wasn’t a great start. When Abbassi made his references to Former President Dick Hennessy and Prince Awad in connection with the sale of SF2, Staines narrowed his eyes at me and sighed, shaking his head. But as the recording progressed, he became more serious and listened more attentively.

  At one point he reached over and paused it. “Who is to say that this is authentic, Mr. Walker? Why should I believe that this is not just something that you have staged?”

  I thought about it for a moment. Then I shrugged. “Because if I had staged it, I would have put myself in a much better light. I would not have presented myself as a desperate man prepared to resort to torture. And I would have made Abbassi more convincing.” He stared at me, uncertain what to believe. I hesitated. “You remember the massacre at Sayad, in northern Afghanistan?”

  He nodded. “Yes, of course. It was one of the rare occasions when the Taliban and ISIS cooperated.”

  “That was Abbassi. He was with the Taliban. And the later massacre at Baykhan, that earned him the title The Butcher of Helmand. He was hunting for me. We had been ambushed and I was separated from my unit. He suspected the villagers of helping me. They hadn’t, but he wiped out the village. This man is now a guest living at Prince Mohamed bin Awad’s house on East 79th Street. And I know that Hennessy and this Benjamin Wilde—I know him as Benjamin Brown—I know that they went to Prince Awad’s house after the fracas at the debate. I know because I followed them.”