by John Whitman
Jack nodded. “I heard.” “I want to know about it. After she’s gone.” Teri vanished behind the door.
Jack went into the kitchen and sat down at the small table there. The scrambled eggs were a little cold, but he didn’t care. He felt as though he hadn’t been home in weeks. While he ate, he listened to the news, simply because it sounded so wonderfully mundane: traffic on the I–10, a fight between the mayor and the city council. These were the crises most people faced. And they seemed to Jack as trivial as a pimple on the chin. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He finished the eggs and decided that he would take a nap for a few minutes.
15. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 9 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
8:00. A.M. PST Bauer Residence
Jack stretched out on the couch in his living room and pushed the cushion under his head. And then his cell phone rang.
“Bauer,” he said unhappily.
“This is Jamey Farrell over at CTU.”
“If this is about paperwork or reports, I’ll come in and answer questions in a couple of hours,” he grumbled, his eyes still closed.
“Nothing like that,” she replied. “It’s about the plastic explosive you brought in.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do we care if some is still missing?”
Jack opened his eyes. “What makes you think it’s missing?”
“I just analyzed the crate, and the volume of each brick of C–4. Even accounting for the bricks you dealt with, I think there still could have been several bricks left, maybe up to ten pounds of it.”
Now Jack sat up, rubbing his eyes and trying to shake the sleep off his brain. “But you don’t know that, right? That crate must have been a lot more full with the stuff I brought in.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jamey said. “But you know how a room looks bigger sometimes after you put furniture in it? Same with this box. I put the C–4 back in it, and no matter how I stuffed it, there are obvious spaces left. I did the math, too. Maybe ten pounds.”
Jack didn’t want to hear it. “The stuff Smithies had? The stuff that blew up Ramin?”
“Factored in.”
“That is not what I want to hear,” Jack admitted.
“Don’t shoot the messenger. What do you want to do about it?”
Jack laughed. “Who says it’s my decision?”
“I didn’t ask anyone,” Jamey said. “You just seemed like the guy who wants to know.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “All right. I’m coming in.”
8:05 A.M. PST Crescent Heights Avenue, Los Angeles
Rabbi Dan Bender rarely used e-mail. He didn’t trust it. Words sent electronically were as permanent as if they’d been etched in stone. He would certainly send nothing confidential over the Internet, and Rabbi Bender was in possession of many, many secrets.
He had written the first draft of the letter to his brother on stationery, but in the end he decided against it. He needed to be sure his brother received this message, and the post between Los Angeles and Jerusalem had never been one hundred percent reliable. But, as he had already told himself, e-mail was like graven stone. His brother would see it eventually.
This is what he typed into his computer:
Dear Sam, I hope Miriam is feeling better. You’re both in my thoughts and I pray for her remission.
In the meantime, I want to send you a note of apology, and possibly a goodbye. I can’t tell you why I am apologizing. You may or may not hear about it. But there is a distinct possibility that you won’t hear from me after today, so I wanted to express my feelings.
You were always a better Jew than I. Even Dad thought so, although of course he was too much of a mensch to say it. You were a better rabbi, too. But there are reasons for that, some of which may become apparent to you. But among the unsaid reasons is this: you are a righteous man. In the end, I find that I am not. If I were righteous, I would not be doing what I’m going to do today.
I hope you’ll forgive me. With all my love, from your brother, Dan
He reread the short message several times, wishing he could write more. His finger hovered over the send button for a moment. Then he clicked it, and the deed was done.
8:10 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
“I hope you’ll forgive the cautions,” said the Pope to Amy Weiss. “There was a disturbance here last night.”
“No problem,” Amy said, although in fact the whole affair had disturbed her. Her interview had been scheduled for two weeks; she’d passed through the background check the Vatican had required. One would have thought the metal detector and the bag search would have been enough. But the thin, soft-spoken man had come along with a nun in tow and had insisted on a complete search of her clothing and person. If all Amy had been after was the puff piece, she would have walked out. But she was now on the trail of a legitimate page one story. “In fact, I’d like to ask about that.”
The Pope’s eyes twinkled charmingly as he replied in his softly accented English, “I find the Unity Conference to be a much more pleasant topic, don’t you?”
Amy felt the force of his charm and his authority, and tried to resist it. “Well, the two are related, aren’t they? Do you consider the attacks here last night to be a threat? Are they related?”
“That is a question for a policeman, not a priest,” John Paul said dismissively. “In any case, the conference will not be stopped. It is, I believe, the most important thing in the world.”
“This conference?” she asked.
“Its purpose,” John Paul said, putting a hand on her arm gently, almost pleadingly. “East and West; Christian, Muslim, and Jew. They are at war, or they soon will be. It is a war that may cover the world in flame. It must be averted.”
Amy wanted to talk about the murders; she had been told to talk about the murders. But this old man, so small and yet so infused with power, charmed her with his sincere and plaintive voice. “But the Catholic Church has been the cause of strife, hasn’t it? Are you the appropriate party to end it?”
John Paul smiled. “Who better?”
8:14 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey Farrell spent several minutes updating Christopher Henderson on her recent findings. Henderson looked terrible, but then she probably didn’t look fresh as a daisy herself. She’d seen Henderson dozing on the couch in his office, but she knew from experience that that sort of sleep had little lasting effect.
“This is the case that won’t die,” Henderson grumbled as she finished. “Why couldn’t it have just ended when we arrested the Sweetzer Three?”
Jamey shrugged. “I’m not a field operator, but if you ask me, I think someone’s been expecting us to come along. I think we’re chasing lots of decoys.”
Henderson shook his head. “Those bikers weren’t a red herring. They were really going to blow up the city’s water reserves.”
“I didn’t say red herrings. I said decoys. We chased that threat because it was real, but it’s got nothing to do with some other plot. Something we haven’t found yet.”
“Your missing C–4.”
“Jesus, I hope you’re wrong,” said Jack Bauer, walking into the room. “I’ve been shot at enough for one day.”
“You got here fast,” Henderson noted.
Jack shrugged. “It’s easy if you ignore all the traffic laws.” He sat down on the couch where Henderson had earlier slept. “Look, how sure are we about this? Aren’t you guys the ones who said the Ramin and Muslim connection was a different plot that had already been stopped?”
“Director Chappelle, not me,” Jamey said. “And all I’m really saying is that there is still C–4 missing. And that there was a Muslim connection at the start.”
“But no suspects left,” Jack said. “And no target.”
Nina Myers walked into the middle of the conversation. “I have a new suspect for you.” She described her surveillance of Diana Christie.
&n
bsp; When she was done, Jack tried to rub away his headache. “None of it makes sense. What the hell would an NTSB investigator be doing with a small-time arms dealer? And what does it mean for us? The lead she gave us from that conversation was real! It put us in Dean’s way.”
“Jamey thinks decoys,” Henderson said.
Jack considered this. “Yasin. He knows we know he’s in the country. That’s why Ramin’s dead. Maybe he expected it, and planned this. But it’s pretty elaborate.”
“Not so much,” Nina said. “All it really took was giving away some of the C–4 to someone who wanted to do something with it. And maybe asking them to plan their event for today. Yasin’s attack may be on a different day entirely.”
Jack shook his head. “Ramin thought today, and he was on that side of the equation. Okay.” He gathered himself with a breath. “Are we back at square one again?”
His answer came in the form of his ringing cell phone. He gestured an apology when he saw the number, then answered. “Hey, Harry.”
“Jack, you heard what happened to me?” Driscoll said quickly. When Jack replied in the negative, Harry filled him in, and Jack felt the aching pulse in his forehead increase. Biehn. Jack hadn’t thought of Biehn in a couple of hours. There was a connection between Biehn and Yasin that he hadn’t resolved yet. Biehn claimed he’d been kidnapped when he got close to Collins. Now Driscoll had been ambushed when he arrested Collins, and the priest had been killed. “You searched the body, right?”
“Of course. Nothing there. I did get one thing, though. I have a partial plate on the Chrysler that attacked me. I want to run it down, and I want your help.”
“Okay, but why do you want help from me? You can do that on your own.”
“Hmm-mmm,” Driscoll refused. “I gotta tell you, Jack. The minute that guy yelled, ‘Get the body,’ I freaked. There’s something going on here that’s a lot bigger than some guy in Robbery-Homicide. There’s
spook stuff happening, and you’re a spook.”
“Okay, give me the partial.”
Jack wrote it down, and handed it to Jamey. “Can you run this right away?”
Jamey blinked. “This Chrysler. You know how popular it is? There are going to be a lot of them.”
“So far, you’ve been brilliant. You’ll do it.”
Jamey Farrell’s glare indicated that the flattery hadn’t worked. But she took the scrap of paper and left the office.
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Henderson said.
“But think of all the nice people you get to spend time with.” Jack laughed. He left Henderson moping at his desk and followed behind Jamey. She’d gone to one of CTU’s working computers. He stood behind her as her fingers flew over the keyboard.
She knew he was there without looking. “We’re authorized to tap into all kinds of databases. If it’s a California plate — oh, damn.”
She’d just finished, and a long list of license plates appeared. There were more than two hundred black Chrysler 30 °Cs. “Maybe we could get LAPD to help us track them down.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But let’s play a hunch. How many of those are rental cars?”
Jamey’s finger clicked again. “Five.”
“Okay, let’s get on the phone and find out if any of them are leased in Los Angeles right now.”
They worked together, and it was done in a few minutes. There were two. One had been rented to a Sharon Mishler. They ran her information and found her to be a resident of New York, having recently arrived on a flight from JFK to LAX. They recorded her information and funneled it to LAPD to investigate. The other had been rented by a Bas Holcomb, resident of Los Angeles. Before Jack could say a word, Jamey was running down his information.
“No nothing, really,” she said as she assembled information from the DMV, IRS, and several credit bureaus. “No criminal record. Certainly no connection to anything like a terrorist organization.”
“He’s still our best lead,” Jack said. “I’ll run this down with my LAPD contact.”
8:39 A.M. PST Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Encino, California
Yasin sat in the coffeehouse and read the news on a laptop computer while he sipped tea. He would have preferred the food and drink at Aroma Café, which was a few miles down the road, but he could not risk it. That café was frequented by dozens of Israeli immigrants, and unlike the ignorant Americans, the Israelis were perceptive enough to recognize him as an Arab, and a suspicious one at that.
Yasin himself was an American, having been born in Bloomington, Indiana — a fact that he believed he could correct only by striking a blow against his despised homeland. 1993 had been a start, but it had not satisfied him. He wasn’t sure that today would scratch his itch, either, but it would do for the moment. Those he worked with in al-Qaeda desired this blow, and that was enough for him.
The method, though, had been entirely his idea. Not just the method for delivering the explosives— although he admitted smugly that the method was brilliant — but also for the associates he had shanghaied into helping him. That had been a unique twist.
Yasin thought back to the day he had first met Abdul Mohammed, who’d been born Casey Stanwell, a Catholic until he’d been driven away from the infidel faith. It was his story that had given Yasin the idea.
Yasin sipped his tea again. He might have felt less satisfaction if he’d known that Father Collins had been killed. And that his body lay in the coroner’s office ready to be autopsied. And that a Federal agent named Jack Bauer was tracking down the associates Yasin had so carefully coerced.
8:44 A.M. PST Los Angeles
Jack pulled into a mini-mall parking lot, and the fireplug of a detective got into the car.
“You have any idea what kind of night I’ve had?” Driscoll said by way of hello.
“A pretty good idea, yeah,” Jack replied.
“What is this we’re doing now?”
Jack explained. “We traced the partial plate you gave us. There were a lot of possibilities, but we narrowed it down to a couple possibles. You and I are going after the most likely one. Rented to a Bas Holcomb, business address a mile from here.”
Driscoll nodded. “If Mr. Holcomb shot up my car, I would definitely like to have a word with him.”
Holcomb’s address was a landscaping business on Crescent Heights a few miles away, much more difficult to travel now that the morning traffic was in full swing. It was an old adobe-style garage converted to office space and equipment storage. There were three narrow parking spaces, one of which was occupied by a newish-looking half-ton pickup. Jack pulled into one of the others, and the two men got out. Driscoll unbuttoned the safety strap on his gun holster as they passed under a sign that read st. francis landscaping.
The front door led to a tiny office with a desk covered in stacks of manila folders and invoices like ramparts of a castle. An old lady sat behind the desk, punching numbers into an old beige calculator that rattled off sums and spewed out tape. She looked startled to see someone walk through the door.
“Hi,” Jack said in his friendliest manner. “Is Bas around?”
She didn’t stand up, but she stopped banging on the calculator. “The owner hasn’t been around much, lately. Not since we got that big client.”
“You know where we can find him?”
The lady shrugged and started losing interest. “Probably there. Mr. Holcomb takes the work seriously.”
“Where would that be?”
“The mosque down in Inglewood.”
8:52 A.M. PST Los Angeles
As the two men walked out of the office, the old woman reached for the telephone and dialed.
“Clarissa?” Mr. Pembrook said by way of answer.
She replied in a whisper, even though she knew the visitors were gone. She wasn’t used to espionage. “Yes, sir. You asked me to tell you if anyone came around the office looking for Mr. Holcomb. Two men just did.”
Pause. “Did they say who they were?”
&nb
sp; “No. No, and I didn’t think to ask. Is everything all right? Do we owe money?”
“No trouble, darling. Probably old friends. What did they look like?”
Clarissa described them. “A blond man, nice-looking I guess, about as tall as you. The other man was short, a black man. Looked like a weight lifter. I told them Mr. Holcomb was over at the Inglewood mosque. Do you know if he’s there?”
“I can’t say I know for sure,” Pembrook replied.
“I hope I didn’t lead them astray. Are they old friends of your partner’s?”
“Oh, yeah,” Pembrook said. “They’re old friends, all right. Thanks, Clarissa.”
8:53 A.M. PST Renaissance Hotel, West Hollywood
Pembrook hung up his cell phone and leaned back in his chair, trying to breathe away the tightness in his chest. He wasn’t as good at this as Michael. And, somehow, he hadn’t expected it to go this far. The master plan had been beyond him: all Michael had ever asked of him was to act as backup muscle, which he’d been doing since their days in Special Forces.
They’d bonded back then, not just over a shared love of violence, but over religion. They were both Catholics, and both shared similar views of certain church activities. They’d been friends ever since, and although he had a small landscaping business he shared with Bas Holcomb, his real job flowed from Michael’s security work for the church.
Now Pembrook called Michael with a trembling hand. “You know what’s going on?” He detailed his conversation with the assistant at his company. “We’ve got to disappear.”
“That was true no matter what happened today,” Michael said. His voice was steady. “Have we sent them on their way?”
“Yes, they’re on their way to the mosque. They have Holcomb’s name, too. I have to say, I’m scared shitless, but that was a good idea. It’s a deflection and an early warning system all built into one.”
“You can thank my Arab friend for that. He seems very good at twists and turns.” “As long as none of the twists turn back on us,” Pembrook prayed. “Amen,” Michael said. “Anyway, pack. Tonight we’re both getting out of here.”
