The Hand of War

by Blake Banner

  He narrowed his eyes at me again, drew breath, shook his head, and sighed. Finally, he said, “Why?”

  I echoed his sigh. “I can’t tell you everything, Mr. Staines, not now. It is a very long, complicated story and we just haven’t got the time. But just pause for a moment and think about the interests that are in play here. Think of the stakes. You know yourself that the bulk of the entire planet’s wealth is shared between a tiny number of men and women, and you know very well that they have the power to shape international politics.”

  “You are talking about the Bilderberg conspiracy theory.”

  “Maybe.”

  I reached over and pressed play again. We sat in silence and listened to the rest of the recording. At the end, when Mclean and Jones burst in, he looked up at me and studied my face while he listened. The last words audible were mine, speaking to the 911 operator:

  “Shut up! Two FBI Agents down, critical, Bryant Avenue, the Bronx!” Then there was silence, followed by my voice again, harsh and brief, “I warned you. I sent you the damned files.” Another pause, and then, “…I’m going to borrow this. I may need it.” Then the recording abruptly finished.

  “What was that?”

  “Special Agents Harrison Mclean and Daren Jones. I had tried to warn them, as I have tried to warn you. Just like you, they thought I was crazy. I had Abbassi handcuffed to a chair. Jones made the mistake of un-cuffing him. Abbassi took his weapon and shot them both. I called 911, but Jones was already dead.” I reached in my pocket, pulled out Mclean’s badge and threw it on the desk. “I borrowed this to help me get in here.”

  He stared at it a moment, then picked it up and examined it. I said, “If I were you, I would call the Bureau, you must have a contact there, and ask them about Jones and Mclean.” We stared at each other a moment. I pressed him, “This is not a hoax, Mr. Staines, whether the bomb is inside the building or not, whether it is possible or not to get it in, there is a plot to bomb the conference.”

  “How do I know you did not shoot these agents yourself?”

  My exasperation was dampened by my exhaustion. “For crying out loud, Staines! Listen to the damned thing again! I clearly warned them not to release him!”

  I reached over, took the phone from his fingers, found the spot and switched it on again. “Listen to it!”

  It started with Mclean’s voice shouting.

  “Freeze, Walker! Get on your face!”

  “Jesus, Mclean! Where were you when they were handing out brains? Did you get the files I sent you?”

  “Get on your face!”

  “No. Just listen to me, will you? This man is involved in a plot to bomb the UN conference in about nine hours…”

  “I don’t want to hear it! For the last time! Get on your face!”

  “I am unarmed, Mclean. Even you can’t be stupid enough to shoot an unarmed man. Do you know who this guy is?”

  “I am Abdul Abbassi! I am attached to the Embassy! I have diplomatic immunity! I am an aide to Prince Mohamed bin Awad! You are required by law to release me!”

  “Do not release him, Mclean! This man is a dangerous terrorist! Do not release him!”

  Some rusting, and then Jones’ voice: “They’re standard cuffs…”

  “Jones! For crying out loud! This man is a killer!”

  “Shut up, Walker! I’ve about had it with you!”

  “Mclean, for crying out loud…”

  Some muttering. Then me again, shouting, “Jones!”

  A shot followed by a grunt. Then two shots in rapid succession. Then two more shots and the sound of shattering glass. The sound of scrambling, then my voice, urgent:

  “Shut up! Two FBI Agents down! Critical! Bryant Avenue, the Bronx!” A brief silence, then, “I warned you. I sent you the damned files… I’m going to borrow this. I may need it.”

  Then silence. I watched him while he stared at my cell. Finally, I said to him, “Does that sound like I shot them…? Does it?”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ…”

  “We haven’t got time, Staines. We have…” I checked my watch. “…Barely one and three-quarter hours. You have got to take this on board and respond! If I am right and you are wrong, the consequences…”

  “I know! I know! You don’t need to tell me.” He stood. “Very well, Walker. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll talk to the head of security and get him to talk to the FBI. After that, it’s their show.”

  I studied his face a moment. “Tell me at least that you’ll order a search of the building.”

  “Yes. I’ll do that, and I’ll have them tighten security at the entrances and the area around the building. Just stay here, will you? I’ll be back.”

  I nodded and he left the office. I picked up the phone and called Marni again. Again there was no response from the apartment, and her phone was either off or had no signal. I swore under my breath. Maybe she had decided to go to Boston after all. Maybe the battery in her phone had died and she hadn’t had the chance to charge it.

  Maybe.

  I stood and went to the window. I looked out at the vast, sparkling sheet of the East River, and Brooklyn across its shimmering surface. I looked at the sun rising through the blue sky toward noon. A feeling of impotence and exhaustion drained through me. I felt I would rather face an army of trained killers than the invincible stupidity of a handful of bureaucrats. I glanced at the clock. It was eleven. I tried to decide whether I had got through to Staines. It was hard to tell. He was taking his time in coming back. Maybe he was organizing a search. A chopper flew over the river, banked and headed north.

  I sat and closed my eyes. I needed to sleep. I needed rest, but my brain wouldn’t stop racing. I tried Marni again with the same result. When I checked the clock again, it was eleven fifteen.

  The door opened behind me and a guy in a suit came in followed by two cops, a man and a woman. They had that blank look that cops reserve for people they think are going to be a problem.

  I said, “What’s this?”

  The suit said, “I am Hans Gunther, head of security. Are you Lacklan Walker?”

  “Yes. Where is Staines?”

  “This is the man. Arrest him and take him in.”

  I stared at him. “Now wait a minute! Are you insane?”

  They drew their weapons and covered me. The woman said, “Now you had better come quietly, sir! We are putting you under arrest on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used against you. Cuff him, Bill.”

  Bill pulled his cuffs with his left hand but kept his .38 in his right, trained on me. He said, “Turn around please, sir.”

  I shook my head at Gunther. “Was that Staines in the chopper? What will you do when the blast goes off, Hans? It will kill you too, you know.”

  He didn’t answer, but Bill said, “Don’t make me use force, sir.”

  I turned around and put my hands behind my back. I felt the cuffs bite and they pushed me into the corridor. I heard Gunther’s voice saying, “Officers, please keep this as discreet as possible. This conference is important and it has to go off without a hitch.”

  Bill answered, “Don’t worry, Mr. Gunther. We’ll be discreet.”

  They took me to the elevators. There was little or no point in breaking free from these cops. In fact, maybe being taken into custody was the best thing I could do. Maybe an interrogation by an NYPD detective was exactly what was required. It might be my last best hope. But there was no time. I kept telling myself, there was no time.

  We reached the first floor and stepped into the lobby. It wasn’t crowded, but it was getting busy. Directly ahead of us was the information center. Beyond it, on the right, were the main entrance and the stairs to the upper floor. On the left was the meditation room, and just before it the entrance to the gallery overlooking conference room four. I stopped dead in my tracks. There, outside the door to the gallery, was Marni. She was talking urgently to Gibbons, w
ho looked flushed and angry. She glanced at me, frowned for a second, then gave her head a single shake and turned back to Gibbons. I remembered her words: “…I’ll make my own choices. We are what we are, remember?”

  I felt a terrible twist in my gut. This was why I loved her and admired her. But now, if I failed, as it seemed I would, I knew that she would die.

  Bill gave me a shove and said, “Come on, pal, don’t make this hard,” and maneuvered me toward the main doors, where the security checks were being carried out on the people entering. I seemed to see it in slow motion. They had two channels set up, like the security channels you go through at an airport, only now they also had sniffer dogs. There were two long lines stretching out into the plaza. Two women wearing bhurkas, and three guys in jeans, with long, straggly beards, were arguing loudly with one of the security guards. In the other channel, people were staring and looking nervous. I saw an elderly man in a wheelchair being pushed by a young couple. They were giving disapproving looks at the group which was making the ruckus.

  One of the women suddenly shouted, “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” Then the others took up the shout. Security guards started closing on them. Others came running from other parts of the lobby. We kept moving toward the exit. The couple turned away from the ugly scene and pushed the wheelchair forward a few feet as another three or four people passed through the scanners and the metal detectors. Behind them, a group of tourists in the eternal anorak and stupid rucksack uniform, with their little bottles of water, closed in.

  As we reached the exit, the five Arabs had taken hold of each other and started chanting, “U.S. murderers! Allahu Abar! Israel murderers! Allahu Akbar! U.S. murderers! Allahu Abar! Israel murderers! Allahu Akbar!” And other Arabs in their line had started joining in. For a moment it looked like the security guards had more on their hands than they could cope with. The guards in the near line paused and looked over. I saw a guy on a radio talking to somebody. More guards appeared across the lobby, trying not to run. The wheelchair went through and so did the couple pushing it. It set off the metal detectors and the guards closed in. Bill opened the door and we stepped outside into the late morning sunshine.

  I said to Bill, “What time is it?”

  He smiled with more irony than malice. “Why? You got a date?”

  “No, Bill, there is going to be a bomb detonated at the conference at twelve o’clock. I want to know how long we have left.”

  He grinned at his partner. “You hear that, Maria? We have a bomb.”

  Maria glanced at her watch. “It’s eleven thirty. We have half an hour to get away. So who’s going to bomb the conference? It ain’t easy to do, you know.” She smiled at me. “How they gonna get a bomb through that security?”

  I looked back over my shoulder, at the long lines feeding in through the vast plate-glass entrance. As we moved toward their patrol car, I muttered, “I think it just got through.”

  “No way, pal.” They opened the back door of the car and I climbed in, still staring back, playing over in my mind what I had just seen. Maria got in the driver’s seat and Bill climbed in beside her. As he slammed the door, he said, “They got scanners, metal detectors, and dogs trained to sniff out all types of plastic explosive. There ain’t no way anybody’s gonna get a bomb in there!”

  As he said it, I went cold all over and my scalp prickled. Because suddenly I understood what I had seen. Suddenly, I knew. Maria reversed, turned, and headed for the gate. I caught Bill’s eye in the mirror. He frowned. “You OK, pal?”

  I shook my head. “There’s no time! There is no time!”

  I have devoted my life, since I was a kid, to practicing martial arts and exercises designed to gain control over my mind and body, so that I could master every type of combat technique—and also escape techniques. I always assumed I would have to use them in the Middle East, or the Third World. I never expected I’d have to use them on First Avenue in New York in the back of a cop car. But that’s the way life is. You just never know what’s going to happen next.

  I breathed out hard three times, emptied my lungs, rolled back on the seat and, sucking my stomach up into my hollowed chest cavity, pulled my knees up to my chin and curled in on myself. I heard Bill say, “What the hell…!”

  It was hard, and I thought I was going to dislocate my shoulders, but I managed to drag my wrists past my ass and then over my ankles. Bill shouted, “Holy shit!”

  But it was too late. I sucked air back into my lungs, said, “Sorry, pal!” and slammed my two fists into his temple. He slumped, unconscious, and I reached down by his side and grabbed his .38 service revolver. I pointed it at the back of Maria’s head and spoke calmly and deliberately.

  “I do not want to hurt anybody, Maria, but there is a bomb in that conference hall. It went in as we were coming out. It is going to detonate in half an hour and I have got to get back in there, because if I don’t, hundreds of thousands of people will die. Now don’t make me choose between you and them.”

  Eighteen

  “OK, Mister, take it easy. We’re going back. Just stay cool, OK?”

  “No. Don’t bank on it. Put your fucking sirens on and get me back in there!”

  She put her sirens on, did a U-turn, and floored the pedal back toward the UN complex while I rummaged in Bill’s pockets and found the key to my cuffs. While she drove, she was saying, “I’m telling you it is impossible to get a bomb through…”

  I cut across her, speaking savagely. “Conventional explosives, Maria! But did you ever hear of a tactical demolition nuclear device?”

  She stared at me in the mirror as we screamed through the gates toward the crowds outside the main entrance. “What?”

  I took the cuffs from my wrists. “It’s the smallest warhead ever built by the U.S. It’s designed to be carried in a rucksack. It weighs one hundred and ten pounds and has a yield of one point five to two kilotons. It will flatten everything in a radius of two miles. That’s from the docks in Brooklyn to Central Park South, and it will kill hundreds of thousands of people.”

  “Holy shit!”

  She skidded to a halt outside the main doors and turned in her seat, frowning at me. Her brain told her I was crazy, but her gut was telling her I wasn’t. “But how? I never saw no hundred and ten pound rucksack! That is one big, heavy sack!”

  I snarled at her, “The damned wheelchair! It was motorized, but they were pushing it!”

  “Oh, dear Lord…”

  I pulled Mclean’s badge from my pocket and stared fiercely into Maria’s face. “You have to help me!” I looked at my watch. “We have twenty minutes. You can’t take the risk! Think about it. What if I am right?”

  She nodded. “OK. Let’s do it.”

  I pushed open the door and we ran toward the entrance, waving our badges and bellowing, “Everybody out of here! Go! Go! Go! There is a bomb in the conference hall! Go! Get out of here!”

  They didn’t run. They gaped and stared at us and at each other, as the information slowly filtered into their brains. This was natural selection in action. But either way, it made no difference. They could not possibly get far enough away in the time they had. I waded through them, shoving and pushing them aside, and burst through the doors with Maria beside me, bellowing at the security guards, “Evacuate the area! Evacuate the area! There is a bomb in the General Assembly Hall!”

  The reaction was the same as it had been outside, with everybody gaping and staring at us and each other. Outside, people were beginning to turn and run, and the panic I had seeded was beginning to spread. I pointed at the security guard in charge of the door and roared at Maria, “Him! Talk to him! Make him evacuate the area!”

  And while she tackled him, I vaulted the barrier and ran for the stairs up to the second floor, where the General Assembly Hall was. I took them four at a time. Behind me, I heard shouts, but I ignored them and kept going.

  The lobby was practically empty, with just a few last stragglers making their way into the conference
room. I sprinted through them, past the elevators. I crashed through the crowd around the door, spilling from the Indonesian Lounge, shoving people away and bellowing at them like a sergeant on parade, “Out of my way! Evacuate the hall! Evacuate the hall! FBI! There is a bomb in the hall! Get the hell out of here! FBI! FBI! There is a bomb! There is a bomb in this hall! Get out! Get out!”

  People started to back away. I strode toward them, pointing at the stairs. “Go! Go! Go!”

  They started to scatter and run, making for the stairs, the escalators, and the elevators. I turned and scanned the vast, seated audience. Some people in the chamber were beginning to stand, craning, looking, trying to see what was going on. I searched among them, seeking the wheelchair. I couldn’t see it. I ran down the aisle to the dais, jumped up and walked to the lectern, still searching the crowd with my eyes. I switched on the microphone and spoke clearly and deliberately, holding up Mclean’s badge.

  “I am Special Agent Harrison Mclean of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I need everybody to leave in an orderly fashion now! There is a bomb in this chamber!”

  The effect was electric. Like a great tide, they all rose. People started scrambling like crazy, climbing over seats and swarming down the aisles. Meanwhile, I had spotted the wheelchair while I was talking. It was halfway up the central block of seats, on the left. The couple who’d been pushing it were struggling to maneuver it in the huge swarm of humanity streaming past them. The old guy looked scared.

  I jumped from the stage and ran, shouldering my way through the crowd, shoving people out of the way, bellowing at them to move. Finally, I made it to where the couple were trying to make headway toward the exits. I grabbed the man’s shoulder and he turned to stare at me in alarm.

  “Where did you get this chair?”

  He looked at me like I was out of my mind. It was a look I was getting used to seeing. “What?”

  “There is no time. Tell me now! Where did you get it?” He stared at the woman who was with him. The old guy in the chair was craning around to see what was going on. People streamed past us, jostling and panicking. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him toward me. “Listen to me! You do not look like suicide bombers to me! This chair is a bomb! So who gave it to you?”