by Thomas Hopp
“When I get back to my office,” said Nagumo, “I’d like to pass all this along to the D.C. bureau.”
“I’ll email you everything,” McKean promised.
When Nagumo had gone, McKean clicked off bin Laden’s rant and restarted the molecular model animation. “Notice the intricacy of the details,” he mused, running his thumb and fingers along his angular jaw. “Thousands of component parts, all animated independently, but the whole scene moves in an organized and believable way; a computer graphics problem of a hundred thousand variables, all of which conspire to make you feel you are there, witnessing the real thing.”
Momentarily confused, I asked, “Which, the molecule or the bin Laden recording?”
“My point, precisely,” McKean replied, intellectual light glowing in his eyes. “Both films may have been made the same way: tens of thousands of spots of light orchestrated by computer programs. To a computer, there is no difference between a molecule and a terrorist’s face. But Kyle Smith had the most practiced of eyes for spotting traces of computer fakery. No wonder he couldn’t let the matter drop.”
The phone intercom buzzed and he punched a button. “McKean here.”
The receptionist said, “You’ve got a visitor. She says her name is Fatima Yamani.”
We exchanged surprised glances and then McKean said, “Send her up.”
Minutes later, Fatima Yamani sat in one of McKean’s guest chairs while I sat in the other, which left little spare room in McKean’s small, cluttered office. With McKean seated at his manuscript-strewn desk, we were all knee-to-knee. Mrs. Yamani had arrived dressed in a black robe with a brown scarf wrapped around her head and drawn across her face below her eyes. Now, she removed the scarf to reveal a pretty Arabian face.
“I don’t wear veil, normally,” she said in labored, heavily accented English. “I am Americanized woman. I have no love for extremist or terrorist. But I think I might be watched, so I wore veil to hide my face.”
Looking at McKean imploringly she pleaded, “You are a great helper of people who are in trouble, is that not true?”
“I try to do what I can,” McKean replied with uncharacteristic modesty.
She continued in a rush. “Are you not the scientist who cured the Jihad Virus?”
“Well, yes.”
“And solved the mystery of the Tide of Blood?”
“That, too.”
“So I come to you, Dr. McKean. Not to police. I feel I can trust you, because you work with my husband’s teacher, Smith.” She drew a deep breath and then said, apologetically, “It is true my husband made certain recordings. But he did not kill Smith.”
“I had already come to that conclusion,” McKean reassured her. “His part in this is that of the student prankster.”
“This is true,” she replied. “That is why I want you to talk with him but don’t involve police. My husband trusts nobody now but I convince him he must tell you what he knows. His life is in danger. Please help him, Dr. McKean.”
“I’ll do everything I can,” McKean assured her. “Just tell us where he is.”
“Meet us tonight at Ivar’s Restaurant on Pier Fifty-six, just before closing time, when not too many people are there.”
“I have more questions,” McKean began, but she shook her head.
“No more for now. Come tonight. Now, I must go.” She wrapped her scarf around her head and got up to leave.
When she had gone I asked McKean, “You don’t suspect a trick or a trap? Maybe Yamani wants to eliminate us, too.”
“I doubt she’d set us up,” McKean replied. “Her concern for her husband seems too genuine.”
* * * * *
We showed up at Ivar’s about fifteen minutes before closing and joined Fatima Yamani at a table in the back of the nearly empty restaurant. A man in a gray business suit was with her. He stood and introduced himself quickly and quietly as Ali Yamani. We sat and ordered coffees and then turned to the business at hand. Yamani, a small, mustachioed man with a British tinged Arabian accent, explained in urgent tones, “In 2002, I took a computer graphics course from Professor Smith. In class, I met a fellow named Omar Azziz, who said he trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan. In those days I was younger, angrier. I had some sympathies for bin Laden’s cause then, but no more. Omar said he had heard from a cousin in Afghanistan that Osama was dead, killed by an airstrike on his tent when he was fleeing the U.S. invasion and buried in a shallow grave in the desert. Omar also said he did not want the teachings of Osama to die with him and so we should make a false bin Laden video to keep his words alive. He had some old footage of bin Laden. Late at night in the UW’s computer labs, we would play the footage silently and say our own words over it, declaring holy war on U.S. imperialists and other things like that. Both of us agreed I did the best Osama bin Laden impression, like a comedian mimicking someone, only scary. So I was the one who made the voice recording.”
“Omar and I tried to make the film of bin Laden move its lips with my voice, but we could not get it right. We also made his finger-waving hand move to make each point but that looked fake too, like a cut-out animation on YouTube. Then Professor Smith called me to his office one day and confronted me with the video. He had come across it while looking for one of my class homework files. He threatened to have me expelled unless I stopped working on it.”
“This confirms what we have already heard,” McKean responded. “The infamous bin Laden election video originated as a college prank.”
“True,” Yamani admitted. “But I quit working on it before it was finished. So, when it surfaced two years later just before the election, I was horrified. Here is a fake bin Laden lecture about holy war against America, and it’s my voice making the threats. But now, bin Laden’s lips matched everything I said exactly, and his finger wagged like he was really moving it.”
“It was foolish of me to make the original video, not so much motivated by ideology as by the sheer fun of creating something outrageous. I didn’t believe what I said. It was just for shock value, and it made Omar and me laugh to think we could do it. But I now regret my part in this.”
McKean asked, “Why didn’t you come forward at the time and explain the whole thing?”
“I would not let him,” Fatima interjected. “I knew there would be trouble for us. Arrest, deportation, or worse.”
“I was surprised the experts believed the video,” said Yamani. “I kept expecting them to declare it a fake.”
“Can you elaborate on Smith’s part in this?” McKean asked.
“As I said, Professor Smith found my file, but did nothing about it at that time. However, when it appeared in the 2004 election, he called me at Microsoft and told me he had passed the video along to Congressman Feebus and I should expect a call from him. I was frightened but the congressman never contacted me or sent anyone after me.”
“That’s surprising,” I said. “Given an election in the balance.”
“Not necessarily surprising,” McKean asserted. “We can’t know Congressman Feebus’s agenda. He might have been more interested in finding out who finished the video or who gave it to the media, rather than who started it.”
Ali went on. “Now we are afraid for our lives because the police, and you, Phineus Morton, have exposed me with your news articles and TV interviews about Professor Smith’s death. So we come to seek the help of Dr. McKean who, being a fair and just man, will perhaps find a way to save us.”
“I have a trustworthy connection at the FBI who might be helpful,” McKean replied. “But, what makes you fear for your safety?”
The Yamanis carried on a brief conversation in Arabic and then he confided, “Omar Azziz has been killed. He dropped out of the UW and was living in the big Muslim community in New Jersey, where there are many radicals. Two weeks ago, I learned through friends that Omar was shot dead in the street in Jersey City.”
“By whom?” McKean asked.
“No suspect was identified. It’s still an un
solved murder. Then last week a man, someone I never met before, came around the Microsoft offices asking to see me. He questioned me about the video. I was scared and I tried to deny any knowledge but he knew too much, so I admitted it. He asked quite a few questions about Professor Smith’s part in stopping me. And he wanted to know if anyone else at the university knew of this, other than the professor. I told him no, I did not think so. Professor Smith told me he would take it no further if I never worked on it again.”
“I see,” said McKean. “So this stranger now knew that only you and Professor Smith were aware of the fake.”
“This is true. After he left I realized if he meant to harm me, he would harm Smith too, so I wrote the email to Smith. But it was too late.” His voice broke and he closed his eyes and wiped away tears. “Smith was killed later that day.”
“What does this stranger look like?” I asked.
Yamani was about to answer when he looked up - and froze. His face went pale and he began to tremble. “L-Like him,” he quavered, pointing over my shoulder. We all turned to find that a short, heavyset man in a navy blue pea coat and stocking cap had approached while we were talking. He sat down at the empty table next to ours.
“Good evening gentlemen, and lady,” he said in a Jersey inflected accent, opening the lapel of his coat to let us see the butt of a pistol hung in a shoulder strap. He closed the lapel and put a hand on the butt of the gun, unseen.
“I want yuz all to keep calm and quiet. All I got is a few questions to ask. Now, we’re gonna get up and go out the back door.”
Fatima entreated, “If you don’t leave us, I’ll scream!”
“No you won’t, lady,” the man hissed. “You see, I’m quite prepared to put a bullet into each of yuz and run out the back door. So chill out, you hear me?”
She nodded, cowed by a fierce look in his beady blue eyes.
“Who are you?” Ali asked tremulously.
“Nobody,” the man retorted. Then he cracked a grin and looked at Yamani wickedly. “I know who you are, though. Heard your voice on a certain video tape.” He laughed a rough, smoker’s laugh that ended in a thick cough. Then he glanced from one to another of us with a calculating gaze. “This is great,” he chuckled. “I’m tracking one guy and I get three. I gotta thank you, ma’am, for getting ‘em all together.’
Fatima’s dark eyes widened with renewed horror.
Half drawing the gun from under his lapel he muttered, “Now, I got some questions, but not here.” Tossing a nod toward the emergency exit behind us, he commanded, “Out there.”
We rose and filed out the door followed by our abductor. “Turn here,” he ordered. “Go down to the end of the pier.”
Pier 56 has a wide plank roadway around the perimeter of the building on which stevedores with jitneys once unloaded cargo. Now it serves pedestrians by day and trucks collecting the restaurant’s garbage by night. We walked toward the end of the pier until, just beyond two large green dumpsters, he commanded, “Stop here.”
We instinctually backed against the wall of the pier building when he drew out his pistol. It had a silencer on it. “First question!” he snapped. “Where do yuz want it? The head or the heart?”
The Yamanis clung to one another and cowered against the wall but McKean took another tack: he stalled for time with a question. “If I may,” he said, “I’d like to clarify one thing. On whose behalf are you doing this?”
“You mean, who’s my boss?”
“Exactly,” McKean replied. “You don’t strike me as the Arab terrorist type.”
“Damn right,” the man growled. “I hate terrorists as bad as the next guy.”
“Then, why do this?”
“Ya don’t see, do ya, mister smart guy? I ain’t workin’ for no terrorists. I’m workin’ for some guys that threw the last election. They’re the ones what had enough money to finish that tape and release it when they did. It was all about getting certain incumbent friends of certain rich people re-elected. Get it now? And me, I’m just the guy who’s gotta go around and clean up the evidence.”
“You shot Omar Azziz,” Yamani exclaimed.
“That’s right,” the man crowed. “That punk showed up in my neck of the woods with the video. Nobody knew exactly where he came from until just lately.”
“Y-you beat it out of him?” Yamani stammered.
“Hell no. Some congressman sent the FBI after him.”
“That must be Congressman Feebus,” McKean suggested.
“That’s right,” the man acknowledged. “Anyway, my boss don’t like a congressman and the FBI getting involved, so he said I should take Omar out. That way nobody’s the wiser about where the tape came from.”
“Who is this boss?” I asked.
“Enough talkin’,” the man snapped. “I got work to finish.”
There was a cold moment of silence, broken only by the deep honk of a ship’s horn as a Bainbridge Island Ferry neared Coleman Terminal two piers south of us.
“Second question,” the man grinned as the horn echoed among the skyscrapers above us. “Where would yuz like to be found? In this here dumpster or floatin’ in the water? I can fix it either way.”
We looked at each other in dumb silence as he raised the pistol.
Suddenly, McKean challenged, “I believe there is enough evidence for the authorities to find you, if you do this.”
The man hesitated, scowling. “Nobody’s got nuttin’ on me.”
McKean retorted with assurance, “There’s a security camera on the fireboat station next door. I’m sure it recorded you coming into Ivar’s.”
“You’re bluffin’,” the man growled, but his dark eyebrows tented up with a hint of doubt. “I didn’t see no camera.”
“I assure you,” McKean asserted, “the camera is there.”
“You’re startin’ to piss me off,” the man muttered, holding the gun up under McKean’s chin. “You die first.”
The realization struck me that this would be my last chance to act. I lunged at the man’s gun arm and caught his wrist in both hands, sweeping the gun away from McKean’s Adam’s apple as it discharged with a loud puff, sending a bullet high over the peaked roof of the pier.
Snarling like an animal, the man clamped his other hand on mine and grappled for control of the gun’s aim point. Another stray shot splintered the decking of the pier and sent the others diving for cover while I fought on alone. The man must have had hand-to-hand combat training as good as mine because he kept me off balance and struggling to hang onto his gun hand. The others shouted encouragement but my grip began to loosen, so I made a quick decision. Noticing a roped-off gate where gangways once joined ships to the pier, I drove against the man’s body with all my weight and pushed him to the brink of the opening in the handrail. We hit the rope cordon and toppled over it together, plummeting thirty feet to the waters of Puget Sound.
The surface felt like brick pavement when we hit. It knocked the wind out of me and loosened my grip on the gun. We plunged down into the dark green depths and I came up gasping for air and flailing at the icy water, heavy with wet clothes and sinking more than swimming. I managed to thrash my way to one of the log pilings under the pier and I clung to it, trying to shinny up its slimy, barnacle-coated surface and gagging on the stink of creosote and the kelpy taste of Puget Sound water in my mouth. Big rollers from the ferry’s bow rose and fell around me, nearly tearing me loose from the piling.
McKean called from above, “Watch out Fin, he’s behind you!” The silencer puffed again and a slug splintered the piling over my head. I craned my neck around and saw the man clinging to the next piling about fifteen feet away. He glared at me through waterlogged eyes, gasping and trying to level the gun at me as another cold wave washed around him.
Eventually, a roller big enough to completely submerge us came in and its cold water frothed over my face and up my nose, but I somehow managed to hang on. When the wave subsided I coughed and sputtered and looked around fo
r my adversary but he was gone.
After a few minutes the water calmed and I caught my breath enough to risk swimming toward shore. I struggled and thrashed to the Alaskan Way bulkhead and climbed out onto the green slippery basalt blocks stacked against the base of the seawall. There I sat with my teeth chattering in the night chill while McKean shouted encouragement. Eventually an orange Coast Guard Rescue zodiac came along and fetched me off the rocks. By then I was delirious with hypothermia and gibbering like a roadside bomb survivor. I raved at my rescuers about guns and incoming fire and every dead body I’d ever seen until the chill sank into me so deeply that I passed out.
* * * * *
I woke up in an emergency-ward room at Seattle Public Health Hospital with McKean at my bedside.
“What happened to the man with the gun?” I asked.
“They’re dragging the bottom for his body.”
“How do you stay so cool under pressure, Peyton? I mean, that guy had a gun pointed right at you and you talked him into a tizzy.”
“Simple logic, Fin. Stay cool or die.”
“That’s more than I could’ve done. Where are the Yamanis?”
McKean shrugged. “I was so busy following your predicament and phoning for help that I neglected to watch them. When I did look around, they were gone.”
“So, where’s this story going from here?”
McKean opened his field coat and pulled his cell phone from a breast pocket. “I turned on the recorder for the Yamani meeting. Everything’s in an audio file, including that goon’s self-incrimination. I wonder if Vince Nagumo can make sense of it?”
* * * * *
I was released from the hospital the next morning and went to McKean’s office. Vince Nagumo was there, proudly explaining, “Our acoustics people ran a comparative voiceprint analysis of your audio recording of Yamani speaking Arabic at Ivar’s versus the voice on the bin Laden election video. It’s a convincing match, so his story about creating it checks out.”
“Hence,” McKean concluded, “the election video was indeed a fake issued just at the right time to influence the voters.”
