“Can’t you go see the bodies now?” Casey asked.
Giordano’s eyes narrowed. “Look, asshole, I was there, too, remember? That bastard killed my son and put my wife in the hospital, so don’t talk to me about speeding things up.”
Casey was never good with grieving. He only attended one funeral in his whole life. He was worse when it came to dealing with the grieving of others. What came off as insensitivity or downright callousness to some, was merely Casey’s way of suppressing his own feelings—acknowledge and move on.
“I didn’t mean anything by that. I’m sorry,” Casey said.
Giordano didn’t hear the apology. “You’re assuming there’s a body to ID in the first place. The guy ran before the bomb went off.”
Casey had forgotten that part. He didn’t count on there having to be a manhunt. “Well, when they start moving on the investigation, I’d be more than happy to come ID that guy—either at the morgue or in a lineup.” Casey handed Giordano his business card.
Giordano took Casey’s card without reading it and said, “It probably won’t be necessary at that point.”
Casey nodded. Giordano was right—one eyewitness to finger the man was more than enough. “Anyway, that ink he had will probably give him away.”
“You mean like a tattoo?” Giordano asked, his tone telling Casey that he hadn’t seen the mark.
“Yeah. On his neck.”
“What did it look like?”
Casey thought about the question. “I’m not sure, but it looked familiar. I just can’t figure out where I’d seen it before.”
A fire lit inside Paul Giordano with this new piece of evidence Casey presented. Despite his initial gut feeling, they might actually have a chance of getting the asshole responsible for his unborn son’s death.
“Well, tattoos are common enough these days, but you don’t always see them prominently displayed—especially on the neck or the face. That makes me think this guy may have seen the inside of a jail cell at some point, or he may belong to a gang.”
“Or both,” Casey said.
“Either way, you were right in your initial observation. Redneck or not, I don’t know any Muslim terrorists with gang tats.”
“You’re thinking domestic terrorist?”
“Domestic, yes, but who? That’s the real question.” Paul Giordano looked at Casey’s business card again and put it in his pocket. “The senator was right about one thing. The coordination of the bombings was pretty good.”
“One of them went off early,” Casey noted.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Giordano said. “But there’s another piece. These weren’t suicide bombers. These guys, assuming there was more than one, meant to walk away from this.”
“Or run.” Casey thought about the nervous retreat of the deli bomber.
“Right.”
“But that’s nothing new. We see a lot more IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan nowadays than dudes with suicide vests,” Casey said.
“I’m not talking about that. I’m just saying that these guys are still here. And given the planning required to pull off what they did, they’ve probably been here for at least a few months.”
“So you think you’ll get ‘em?”
“I don’t know,” Giordano said. “But if you could remember what was tattooed on that guy’s neck, that may narrow the search.”
“I’ll try,” Casey said. Now it was going to bug him. Not unlike when someone asks who starred in this or that movie—the face is there, but the name won’t come out. Only this was not that trivial.
Paul Giordano looked at his watch and stood up. “Well, Casey, it was good talking to you, but I need to go check on my wife.”
“Okay, sir. Good luck to you.”
Before he left, Giordano said, “If you come up with anything before the officer assigned to interview you comes in, make sure you let him know. Otherwise just call NYPD if you think of it later.”
“Sure thing.”
Giordano stopped at the door as two police officers in the hall passed the break room in a hurry. He turned back to Casey and said, “On second thought, why don’t you just give me a call.” He wrote a number in the margin of a newspaper left on the round table in the center of the room and tore it off, handing it to Casey. “I want to find out who did this before the trail goes cold, and my guess is the guys at the station will need all the help they can get.”
Casey took the scrap of paper, and Giordano closed the door behind him. “No problem,” he said to a now-empty room.
Alone again, he looked back at the television. A helicopter projected pictures of the scene outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Casey wondered if there were any leads from the other two bombings.
Chapter 11
Casey didn’t go to the office. By the time the police took his statement at the hospital, it was already seven o’clock, so he left Susan with Mari and went back to his apartment. He called Jim Shelton earlier to let his boss know that he and Susan were okay, and he considered his obligation to the Intelligence Watch Group that day complete. He still couldn’t get a clear picture of the tattoo on the man outside the deli, and he hoped that going home would distract him enough to put the thought out of his mind.
Unlike most evenings, Casey didn’t bother turning the TV on. He was tired of seeing the same pictures and listening to the same worthless speculation that infected every channel since the bombing. No one had reported any new information in at least six hours. He chose to turn on his computer and listen to music, instead. The Allman Brothers came through the speakers halfway through an iconic instrumental about a young woman named Jessica. Casey sat down at his makeshift desk and took the thumb drive from his back pocket, inserting it into an open USB port.
The memory stick Mari brought fell to the floor when Casey overturned the deli table what seemed like weeks ago. After checking to make sure Susan was okay and ensuring that Mari was breathing, he spotted the thumb drive and pocketed it before the place was overrun by first responders. He forgot he even had it until the subway ride home. Casey hoped concentrating on the source that brought Mari to New York in the first place would help re-boot his pre-frontal cortex—numbed since the morning’s adrenaline rush.
On the thumb drive, Casey found several documents and a few folders, organized in no discernible fashion. He scanned the document names looking for anything that might be the reports Mari had mentioned. He found them halfway down the list and opened the one with the oldest modification date.
“You’re shittin’ me,” Casey said when he saw the front page. The report identified Mariam Fahda as the author and an “Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs.” The title was “Al Houthi: Impact of Rebellion on Yemen-U.S. Relations.” Casey thought about Senator Cogburn’s statement earlier that day when the man lumped al Houthi in with Hizbullah and al Qa’ida as prime suspects in the Manhattan bombings. Now, looking at the words on his computer screen, he wondered what, if anything, the politician’s accusations had to do with the danger Mari found herself in. He hoped the reports might give him a clue.
It took Casey almost forty-five minutes to make it through the first one. He was impressed by both Mari’s writing style and her apparently diligent research. When he was done, he felt like he had just received a Master’s course in Yemeni history and politics. What’s more, he decided that the Houthi tribe in Yemen posed no greater danger to the United States than the Labour Party in Great Britain—assuming Mari’s conclusions were correct.
The Houthi had been fighting an open revolt against the Yemeni government since 2004. The Shiite separatist group accused the Sunni-led government of oppression and corruption in addition to collusion with the United States and Saudi Arabia. The Houthi, like other Shi’i, were believed to be getting support from the Islamic Republic of Iran in the form of weapons and training. They had also conducted cross-border raids into the Saudi Kingdom in retaliation, they claimed, for Saudi assistance in the active bombing and slaughter of thousands of int
ernally displaced Houthi.
Casey understood how this situation could affect U.S. diplomatic efforts in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but whatever choices the United States made regarding al Houthi actions on the Arabian Peninsula didn’t necessarily translate to Houthi tribesmen carrying out coordinated bombings in New York. Casey was unwilling to go that far, and he thought it was reckless for Senator Cogburn to make such a bold conclusion when the connection was damn-near non-existent. Even if al Houthi rebels were given direct support from Iran, the Persians could find much more willing and committed soldiers to attack America in Lebanon or Syria than in the deserts of North Yemen.
Casey went to the second report, which, as expected, contained an identical cover page. It only took him twenty minutes to read this version from beginning to end, and when he was done, he realized why Mari had complained to her supervisor. He also realized why Senator Cogburn might think al Houthi rebels were responsible for the bombings that morning—he had obviously read, or been briefed on, this version of the story.
According to the re-write, the Houthi were giving both sanctuary and supplies to the al Qa’ida franchise, AQAP. Casey studied the map inset graphically showing the footprints of various groups throughout Yemen—ethnic, political, or otherwise. While portions of the area occupied by al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula abutted the Houthi region, being neighbors did not mean the two were neighborly.
The “revised” report also claimed that the Houthi rebels were a highly organized and well-equipped group bent on the establishment of a global caliphate—the same ideological goals as al Qa’ida. While Casey did not discount the idea of the two groups working together despite the Shi’a-Sunni division between them, he thought the reasoning was too convenient. Where the first report laid out the history of Houthi oppression from the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990 as an explanation of the group’s separatist agenda, the second report claimed the Houthi had converted en masse to al Qa’ida’s way of thinking after the attacks of 9/11. Casey understood the former, but he didn’t buy the latter.
The differences between the two reports would certainly explain Mari’s frustration, but calling her employers on the mutilation of her conclusions didn’t seem, to Casey, enough to justify trying to kill her. He knew there had to be more. He went through the remaining documents that weren’t contained in a specified folder. All but one of these appeared to Casey to be research-related items—histories, interviews, surveys of humanitarian abuses.
The odd document was just that, odd. A simple list of names, typewritten and scanned, there was no obvious connection to either of the al Houthi/Yemen reports. The names were all Arabic, as far as Casey could tell, but he had no idea who they were. Eleven in all. He looked at the names one more time and printed the list out. Maybe Susan or someone else at IWG would be able to tell him who these people were.
Casey opened the first folder and found a series of pictures and graphics. He recognized most of them from the report Mari wrote. The second folder was empty. The name of the folder was “Back-up,” and Casey assumed that Mari had created it as a bin for miscellaneous pieces of research while she was writing. She may have meant to move some of the other files that weren’t in folders into this file but never got around to it.
Casey moved to the third folder. His double-click was answered by an audible warning and a large exclamation point in a red hexagon. “Damn it,” he said. A message accompanying the stop sign informed him that he did not have permission to view the folder’s contents. Despite the amount of time Casey spent on the computer, both at work and at home, he was far from Geek Squad certified. He removed the thumb drive and put it to the side rather than wasting hours trying unsuccessfully to break through the security settings. He would have to ask for help with that, too.
Casey took the list of names from the printer and read it one more time. Nothing. Not a single name rang a bell. Before the blast, Mari had told him and Susan about the changed report and the attempt on her life. She never got the chance to talk about the list. Maybe she wasn’t going to. Maybe it was just more research. Casey put the paper next to the thumb drive and shook his head. There had to be a connection. He just didn’t know what it was.
Casey checked his watch. It was just after twelve-thirty, and he wasn’t even tired. Given everything that had happened that day, there was no reason he shouldn’t have passed out three hours earlier. He resisted the temptation to turn on the television, deciding, instead, to open his computer weblog which he had neglected to update for almost a week.
The Middle-Truths blog was Casey’s only real hobby. At least, it was the only real hobby that made the move with him from Savannah, Georgia, to New York City a year ago. His extensive collection of fishing gear occupied a closet in his apartment where the average person would store a vacuum cleaner. He didn’t try to sell or give away any of the rods, reels, or tackle as he fully intended to start fishing on a regular basis again—someday. For now, he had his blog.
Middle-Truths was an avenue for Casey to comment on anything he heard in and out of the news that he felt was either not getting the airplay it deserved, was being misrepresented, or was being ignored by the general public and media completely. While he started the blog, as the majority of people in the blogoshphere did, to vent his own personal frustrations, Middle-Truths slowly morphed into the current political commentary spot that let Casey test his own ideas and analyses on people outside of the Intelligence Watch Group. Casey used Middle-Truths to tackle the topics found in more serious forums but with a lighter approach. With only forty-three regular followers, Casey felt safe enough talking about anything on his blog without causing a lot of trouble—despite the Baltic Venture affair.
Blog posts forced Casey to work through an issue by putting it down on paper, or computer in this case. And while he knew he was stuck as far as Mari’s problems were concerned, he hadn’t been able to really think about the bombings since his conversation with Paul Giordano. Now, staring at his computer screen, he tried to gather his thoughts.
Bombs and Bagels
22 July
A friend of mine asked me to meet her for breakfast this morning. I was supposed to be there for moral support when she met an old college buddy, but really all I was thinking about was onion bagels. Not just any onion bagels, mind you, I’m talking about the best damn onion bagels on the East Coast. Slather those bad boys with a half-pound of cream cheese with chives, and there is nothing better. And this is coming from a Georgia native who grew up on cheese grits and biscuits. If you’ve ever had these bagels before, then you know why I was more than willing to go support my friend. Why else would I want to go sit at a table with two women as they reminisced about the old days—old days I wasn’t even a part of? I had my bagels, and all was right with the world.
That all changed a few minutes later.
See, the place where I went this morning—the place with the best bagels ever—was Soren’s Deli, and unless your power’s been out all day or you live under a rock, you know that Soren’s was bombed today.
People died. Others were injured. It was not good.
And it wasn’t just Soren’s that got hit. St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Manhattan Synagogue were also bombed.
More people died. Even more people were injured. It was not good.
The question that most people are asking is, “How could this have happened?”
That’s understandable. After 9/11, America has stepped up its game, and it’s getting harder for the bad guys to pull off a terrorist attack than it was a decade ago. Is America’s security infrastructure air tight? I think today’s events answered that one.
But is “how” really the right question? Will knowing what gaps exist that allowed the bombers to plan and execute this act of terrorism help to catch them?
I don’t think so.
Just because you figured out the burglars got in through the unlocked basement door doesn’t tell you whether the people who stole y
our TV were professional thieves or just the neighbors’ kids. That information just tells you that you need to lock the doors when you leave the house.
A better question to ask is, “Why did this happen?”
At least if you have that information, you can start narrowing down the list of potential suspects to something less than the entire population of Planet Earth. The Honorable Senator Cogburn tried to help us by implicating some of the more nefarious terrorist groups. And while the president wasn’t as specific as the senator during his address a few hours later, he pretty much indicated the search area was going to start with the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
They both may be right, but how did they come to those conclusions? I understand those guys have access to better intel than you or I do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use the information we do have to answer the question ourselves.
So what information do we have?
Not much, to tell the truth. But the first thing I would start with, and the only thing I want y’all to consider tonight, is the choice of targets.
A Christian church and a Jewish synagogue. That may back up the president’s and the senator’s early conclusions of “who” did this (think: Muslim extremists). And a deli.
What?
A deli.
So how does that fit? I’ll tell you...it doesn’t. Besides possibly being jealous of Soren’s outstanding menu, I don’t see any reason bin Laden’s disciples would want to destroy this fine eating establishment. What would they gain from it? Nothing.
Maybe the bomb was supposed to be detonated at a different location.
That’s possible. But with a job as sophisticated as this one, by Senator Cogburn’s assessment, that seems a little unlikely. Unless the senator’s wrong, and it didn’t take the expertise of a group like Hizbullah.
So, assuming that the targets hit were the ones that were intended to be hit, what’s the connection?
The Complicity Doctrine Page 6
