Passenger List

by John Scott Dryden

‘Are we all set?’ she asked Richards.

  ‘This is Kaitlin Le.’

  ‘Good.’ The woman pulled up a chair opposite. ‘I’m Sarah Murphy. I head the task team here.’

  Kaitlin nodded. Her heart thumped harder.

  ‘Let’s get down to it,’ Murphy said. ‘How long have you known a James Dennison?’

  ‘Agent Dennison?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘I don’t know him, really. I mean, he contacted me after he heard about my investigation into 702. And he said he wanted to help.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Murphy placed her palms flat on the table and fixed her gaze on Kaitlin. ‘Did he give you anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Did he hand you any files?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We searched the apartment,’ Richards said.

  Kaitlin jerked round. ‘You searched my apartment?’

  ‘Where are the files, Kaitlin?’ Murphy pressed.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing—’

  ‘Where are the files?’

  ‘What files?’ Kaitlin felt genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Where are the files?’ When Murphy saw she wasn’t going to get an answer, she leaned back. ‘You could go to jail, you know.’

  Kaitlin showed a blank face. She’d been threatened too many times now to let this get to her. ‘For what?’

  ‘Handling and distributing official documents. Chelsea Manning got thirty-five years for less.’

  ‘Then I want a lawyer. I’m not saying any more without a lawyer.’ She folded her arms and leaned back.

  ‘We’re just asking questions, trying to clear things up,’ Agent Richards said. He prowled around the edge of the room, no doubt a tactical attempt to unnerve her.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ Kaitlin demanded.

  Agent Fellowes crossed the room to stand behind Murphy. ‘You broke the law. Aiding and abetting a known felon.’

  ‘I didn’t know Dennison was wanted.’

  ‘What about impersonation?’ Fellowes insisted. ‘How many bereaved relatives have you contacted and lied about who you are? That’s actually illegal.’

  Kaitlin’s mind raced ahead of the questions. She was turning over the chaotic jumble in the FBI agent’s storage unit. All those piles of paper. Did he actually have something there that was vital to understanding what happened with Flight 702?

  ‘You think Agent Dennison gave me some kind of top-secret files?’ she asked.

  Murphy leaned forwards again. ‘Did he?’

  ‘No! Did he say he gave me some files?’

  Richards shook a creamer into his coffee. He was still playing it cool, unlike the other two.

  ‘Dennison had privileged access. Before he went rogue, he did a clean sweep of sensitive information. Files that could compromise national security. We need to get them back.’

  Kaitlin inwardly kicked herself. Maybe she’d been too harsh on Dennison, leaping to judgement based on how destabilised he’d seemed through grief and worry. But hadn’t other people done the same to her?

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s been committed to a psychiatric facility,’ Murphy said in a bloodless voice. ‘For observation.’

  Kaitlin stared. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, what levels these people were prepared to go to. ‘You mean you just put him there to stop him from asking questions?’

  No one answered.

  ‘What are you guys trying to hide?’ she blazed. All the repressed emotion she’d been trying to control since being chased in the park came flooding out.

  ‘Come on,’ Richards said, trying to placate. ‘You met him. You know he was in a fragile mental state. He lost his daughter, just like you lost your brother. Not only was he prejudicing the investigation, but he was also in danger of getting himself killed.’

  ‘There are dangerous people out there, Kaitlin,’ Murphy said.

  Fellowes leaned forwards. ‘You’ve found that out by yourself. The Dragov mob don’t play nice with anyone.’

  ‘That’s why we’re talking to you.’ Richards sipped his coffee, winced. ‘We don’t want you to get hurt.’

  Kaitlin laughed without humour. ‘You lied. About the plane. You lied to the families who lost loved ones. And now you’re saying you don’t want me to—’

  ‘We didn’t lie about anything,’ Murphy said. ‘The Federal Aviation Administration came to its own conclusions about why the plane came down. In fairness, without the plane, they had nothing else to go on.’

  ‘But now,’ Fellowes began, ‘we’ve been working behind the scenes because we believe there could have been other causes.’

  Kaitlin felt a chill. There it was. The official confirmation she’d always wanted.

  Other causes.

  The rest of the conversation blurred into the background. As she rode the elevator down, Kaitlin felt a rush of exhilaration. All those long months of banging her head against every wall she came up against, all those lonely sleepless hours when she’d questioned everything she was doing. Mostly, she’d secretly been worried that the pitying faces had been right, that she was deluding herself in displacement activity to prevent her from dealing with her grief.

  As she walked out into the street, she felt renewed. She was ready for whatever lay ahead.

  16

  Light flooded out of the open storage unit door, casting a square across the night-dark walkway. Men and women in suits traipsed back and forth, heaving boxes of files into the back of an MPV.

  Kaitlin peered through the windshield of the car, which was parked far enough away to be cloaked in shadow. ‘There goes all of Dennison’s work.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. If he was as erratic as you said, there was no reason to think any of his information was valid.’ Rory sucked on the straw of his Big Gulp as he watched the back and forth.

  ‘Yeah. Now we know better. Dennison might have been our best shot.’

  Kaitlin felt comforted that the lawyer was there. Dylan had seemingly disappeared as abruptly as he’d come into her life. Never before had she experienced feeling as isolated as she had during the last few days in the city. Rory had finally returned her calls as she’d walked out of the Homeland Security office. He’d been caught up in a long meeting with his investigator, which she’d started to realise had something to do with monies owed.

  Homeland Security had reluctantly let her go. They knew they had nothing on her. Just an attempt to monster her to see if Dennison really had handed anything over. But they’d keep watching. As would the FBI. It was weird. All the agencies seemed to be acting independently. What was going on?

  One thing was sure: everybody was watching her.

  ‘So, now we know the authorities suspect it wasn’t a bird-strike and they’re still investigating,’ Rory mused. ‘Does that mean it’s not a top-level cover-up, or does the left hand not know what the right is doing? These agencies keep as many secrets from each other as they do from the rest of us.’

  ‘I wish I could remember what Dennison said. Something about a shadow on a satellite image or something.’ She hammered the flat of her hand on the dash. ‘Goddammit. Every time you get close to something, it throws up three more questions that need answering.’

  ‘Don’t blow a blood vessel. Eat your fries,’ Rory prompted.

  ‘I’m convinced this has something to do with Aziz,’ she continued. ‘His fiancée flying under an assumed name. That’s got to mean something, right?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘If a bioweapon had been released on board, that would explain everything.’

  ‘So would a bomb.’

  ‘That’s your theory?’

  ‘Seems more likely. Occam’s Razor and all that. The simplest explanation is the most likely one.’

  ‘But there’s no wreckage.’

  ‘That’s the one gaping h
ole in my theory.’ Rory drained the last of his drink with one long, noisy slurp and tossed the cup into the back seat. ‘OK. Your virologist bought his ticket at the last minute. He needed to be on board that flight. He was travelling with a woman with a stolen passport. That does indeed suggest something shady. How about you travel down to Miami and talk to Aziz’s relatives?’

  ‘I don’t have an address.’

  ‘I do. Or rather, my investigator does, which he held over my head, rather irritatingly.’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t have any—’

  ‘I’ll pay for your ticket.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘It’ll come out of expenses. Do you want to solve this or not?’

  Kaitlin grinned. ‘OK. Thank you. What about you?’

  ‘I’m going to talk to my deep throat informant. If anyone knows what Homeland Security is investigating, it’s her.’

  ‘When I described you as my deep throat informant, I didn’t expect us to actually be skulking around in an underground parking lot.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Rory,’ Renee said.

  She stood behind a pillar so she could see the door to the stairwell but was hidden from any car driving down the ramp. She was dressed in a smart business suit and had her briefcase tight beside her.

  ‘OK. Now you’re worrying me.’ Rory shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘You should be worried. There are a lot of very top-level people interested in 702. The kind of people you don’t want paying attention to you.’

  Rory edged another step into the shadows. He’d never seen Renee like this. Nothing ever fazed her.

  ‘What are you hearing, Renee?’

  ‘It wasn’t a bird-strike.’

  ‘Well, put me in a dress and call me Nancy.’

  ‘Current thinking is that it was a bomb.’

  ‘I knew it!’

  Renee lowered her voice until it was little more than a rasp. ‘The woman you mentioned who was travelling on the passport of Laura Jones – there’s intel to suggest she’s someone known as the White Matchmaker.’

  ‘The White what?’

  ‘Also known as Uzma Griegen. She was a known terrorist and top recruiter for the Somali-based radical militant group Al-Shabaab. Recruited young girls from the West. Persuaded them to leave their homes to become brides of jihadi fighters.’

  ‘Laura Jones?’

  ‘The White Matchmaker was called that because she was a white British woman. Her real name was Samantha Griegen, who disappeared in 2015.’

  A car rumbled down the ramp. Renee watched until it had parked and the driver had made his way into the stairwell. Rory felt his unease climb as he saw the worry etched in her face. There was even more here than she was saying, he was sure of it.

  ‘The intelligence services believe she was radicalised and made her way back to the UK, where she took on a new identity. Disappeared back into some community.’

  Rory edged closer. ‘Do they think she planted the bomb? That it was a suicide attack?’

  ‘She wasn’t working alone, that’s what I’m hearing. There was another terrorist on the plane.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That, I don’t know.’

  Rory chewed this over for a moment. ‘OK. But I’ve got to say, you’ve always been straight with me, Renee. I’m sensing there’s something you’re not saying.’

  ‘As you know me so well, you should realise that if I’m not telling you something, there’s good reason,’ she replied, her voice hardening. ‘There are things floating around – whispers, rumours. I don’t know what’s true or not. But I do know that if some are true, simply knowing about them puts your life in danger. I’m protecting you, Rory.’

  Renee turned and strode away without looking back. Rory watched her go, hearing what she’d said, knowing it was too late to back out now.

  Kaitlin adjusted the cheap sunglasses she’d picked up at the airport. They were good as a disguise, but they also protected her from the glare of the Miami sun. Still blasting out Afro-Cuban beats, the cab pulled away and she looked up at the neat suburban house. Rory had left her a message about all that he’d learned from his informant. Now, it was down to her.

  Hassan Aziz answered the door. He was a short man, a little overweight, with a polite smile never far away.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me,’ she said.

  ‘Come in, please.’

  Hassan led her into the lounge. The air was filled with the music of pet birds chirping in another room.

  ‘You want to talk about my late brother.’

  ‘I do. But I’m actually more interested in the woman he was travelling with.’

  Hassan motioned for Kaitlin sit. ‘Ah, yes, Chrissy. They were going to get married.’

  ‘What did you know about her?’

  ‘Not much. They hadn’t been together very long. She was a teacher, I think.’

  ‘She was travelling on a false passport. Did you know that?’

  ‘No. I did not.’

  Kaitlin weighed her words, trying to find an easy way to say it. There wasn’t one. ‘She was a suspected terrorist. The White Matchmaker.’

  Hassan laughed. ‘Oh, my goodness. That’s quite a thing to say. Can I get you something to drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. Did you know all this?’

  Hassan looked to the ceiling fan, choosing his own words. ‘There were rumours about such things, after the plane crashed. The press, the police, the FBI. There’s nothing new here, Kaitlin. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. My brother would never be a terrorist.’

  ‘The authorities are looking for her accomplice. Someone she was travelling with.’

  ‘Did Homeland Security send you? To make me panic and call my network of terrorist contacts?’

  ‘No.’

  Hassan stood and paced around the room, his face tightening. ‘They’ve been watching me since the day the plane crashed. The whole apartment is bugged. Everything we say is being recorded. They know all there is to know about my brother, me, our family. And they have found nothing. They’re using you.’

  ‘No, they told me to stop.’

  ‘Ah, reverse psychology. They knew you wouldn’t. Kaitlin, my brother was a respected scientist. His life was dedicated to saving lives.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe we never truly know other people. Even the people we’re close to.’

  Hassan looked out of the window on to the sun-bleached front lawn. ‘You must be an unhappy young woman if you can never trust anyone. You said when you rang me up, you lost a brother. Could you think your brother was responsible? Who could do that?’

  He glanced at her and Kaitlin squirmed uncomfortably, feeling her cheeks flush.

  ‘And this White Matchmaker, is this really to be believed?’ he continued. ‘Maybe she was just a teacher from Wales who fell in love with a doctor from Syria. Last year, they said they had killed the White Matchmaker in a bombing raid in Aleppo. And she’s magically alive again?’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t the White Matchmaker. But an innocent person doesn’t fly on a fake passport.’

  ‘A woman may have many reasons to run away, Kaitlin.’

  Hassan sat down, holding his head in his hands for a moment. Now, she could see the grief and the worry breaking through his polite exterior.

  ‘Homeland Security have created a myth – a convenient myth – with which to scare people. A bogeyman. Maybe all this is to help ease the passing into law of even more repressive measures against people they don’t like. You know what happened to the Japanese here during the war? They were interned in concentration camps.’

  ‘Of course I know that.’

  ‘You think that couldn’t happen again? To Muslims? Surely you know what it’s like, Kaitlin. To have people assume something about you because of who you are. Because of where you’re from. I’m surprised you’d so easily do the same.’

  Kaitlin flashed back to high school, the bully with the neck t
attoo who’d reduced her to tears with slurs about her ethnicity. Conor had never been a fighter, but he’d waited for the bully after class and given him a pasting. He’d got beaten himself in retaliation, but he always said it was worth it.

  ‘I’m just trying to find the truth,’ she said.

  ‘My dear girl, you have now moved into an area where there are no criteria, no measures, which you can apply that will tell you if you are in a world of truth or lies, the world where two plus two is four. You’re no longer living in that world. You’re living in one where two plus two is nine, or nothing at all. The only currency in this world is lies. It is a place where lies become truth. Lies are no longer lies. There are no truths any more.’

  ‘There has to be a truth here.’

  Hassan sighed. ‘You need to go back to your family. You need to mourn your brother. And then live your life.’

  Kaitlin munched on a slice of Joe’s Pizza. Rory plucked his portion from the box and leaned back on his sofa, eyeing her. She felt drained after her travels and she was sure he could see her exhaustion.

  ‘We tried, right?’ he said. ‘That’s all we can do. So, Dr Aziz’s brother didn’t add much materially to what we already know, but we still had to follow the lead.’

  ‘Do you think “Chrissy” is the White Matchmaker?’

  ‘I don’t know. I went to Homeland Security, tried to pass on what we had. They gave me the brush-off. Couldn’t tell if it was because they didn’t want this information made public, or because they’ve already discounted it.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel like we’re going round in circles.’

  ‘You’re tired, I get that. But don’t lose hope.’ Rory took a big bite, the mozzarella snaking down his chin.

  ‘I’m not. Although sometimes I have my moments.’

  ‘Understandable,’ he said through a mouthful.

  ‘There were so many people with secrets on this flight,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, it’s crazy, right? Is it a coincidence? Or … I don’t know what.’

  Rory swallowed. ‘Or maybe it’s just normal. Everybody has secrets. Every flight is packed with people hiding something. Sometimes little things. Sometimes big things. We never know who’s sitting beside us or across the aisle. The difference here is, you’ve shone a bright light on it and now we’re starting to see the truth.’