24 Declassified: Trinity 2d-9

by John Whitman

It had seemed easy, all those months ago. And, in fact, it had all gone smoothly until just a few days ago. Yasin had warned them that the Federal government might track the crate of C–4, so they had created a red herring with three fundamentalist Islamists who, while totally innocent, fit the profile the Americans feared. Then, for good measure, Michael had used a very strong contact within the schismatic movement to create another false trail with the Hell’s Angels. And, finally, there was the real plot. These three channels had worked to confuse and befuddle the Federals. Yasin had called it, jokingly, his unholy Trinity. Michael had not appreciated the humor.

  There was a buzz throughout the room, and Michael heard a voice whisper into his earpiece: “His Holiness is arriving.”

  The crowd parted, as though unseen hands were separating them. Reluctantly, Michael felt that will and moved with Mulrooney to one side. A set of tall doors opened inward, and the Pope entered, followed by four or five cardinals who had traveled from Rome. There was no music, no pomp of any kind, in fact. John Paul eschewed it. But the wizened old man entered with such understated authority that one could not help but feel a sort of tremble in the air, as though music was playing somewhere. “The song of an invisible choir,” some writer had described it. Michael grimaced.

  The Pope stopped a few feet into the room, raised his hands, and spoke a short blessing. “May God in all his graciousness bless the attendees, and the purpose of this conference. Amen.” By long-standing agreement, he had kept his prayer neutral and, therefore, to Michael’s way of thinking, vacuous.

  As soon as the Pope had finished, a line formed to greet him. As Cardinal of the host city, Mulrooney was among the first, and soon he had knelt before John Paul and kissed his ring. As he stood, he canted forward and whispered, “Your Holiness, please forgive me. Something urgent is calling me back to St. Monica’s.”

  John Paul looked up at him with those piercing eyes. “Very well, Your Eminence.” As Mulrooney tried to disengage himself, the Pope held his hand in a viselike grip. “God alone decides our destinies, Your Eminence. May you see the true path he has set for you.”

  Then he let go.

  1:19 P.M. PST En Route to the Four Seasons Hotel

  “There’s got to be someone!’ Jack said, feeling frustrated.

  “You’ve got the whole list in front of you, Jack,” Jamey Farrell said through his cell phone. “I’m running everyone through every database I can find, but it’s not like the Vatican’s people haven’t done this. This list has been vetted by everyone all the way up to God!”

  Jack tried not to let his frustration spill over onto Jamey Farrell. She wasn’t the cause of it. He was pissed that he’d interviewed Gary Khalid — sat in the man’s house, in fact — and never realized he was a prime suspect. The other side was kicking his ass on his case, and he was tired of it.

  There has to be someone, he wanted to say again, but repeating himself would just cause tempers to flare. They were all working on no sleep. He had to gather himself before they got to the hotel. He needed to be sharp.

  “Keep checking,” he said. He gave her the contact information for Carlos at the National Security Agency. “Call him. He’ll give you a hard time, but ignore it. Ask him to run everyone through every source he’s got.”

  “You want me to ask a guy I’ve never met to run a hundred people through everything everywhere?”

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Jack said. “I’m getting desperate.” He thought of the fail-safe implanted into Collins, set for five-thirty. He was guessing he didn’t have that much time.

  1:21 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Pope John Paul spent a moment with each person who had come to the conference. The truth was, as far as he was concerned, this was the conference. There would be a roundtable discussion tomorrow, and several symposia on various topics, led by clergymen with impressive credentials from around the world. But this was the real victory — to get these people of various faiths, fundamental and progressive, into one room together, to discuss the need for religious tolerance… that was an act of God all by itself.

  John Paul glanced over the shoulder of the American televangelist who was speaking to him, and saw a bearded imam partway down the line. He thought he recognized the man and dragged his name out of memory: al-Hassan. He’d read the man’s book. It had been an unforgiving but insightful critique of the West’s view of Islam. Exactly the sort of man John Paul needed at his side. He was eager for al-Hassan to make his way forward.

  1:23 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Jack pulled up to the valet stand at the Four Seasons. He and Driscoll flashed their badges and hurried into the elegant lobby. There was a trim, well-dressed man standing by the elevators, and Jack approached him. “Federal agent Jack Bauer,” he said in a low voice. “I need to get up to the conference.”

  The man studied Jack’s credentials carefully, and did the same with Driscoll’s. He also looked into Jack’s eyes, as though trying to read something else there. Then he muttered into the mic in his sleeve. Finally, he stepped aside, and Jack entered the private elevator that rose to the hotel’s penthouse.

  When the elevator door opened, he was greeted by a thin, unimposing man, but Jack’s instincts told him this was a man to be reckoned with.

  “Your credentials, please,” he said. Jack and Harry both complied. When Giancarlo had examined them to his satisfaction, he escorted them down the hallway — not the reception room, but the adjacent security office.

  “Giancarlo,” Jack said as soon as they were inside, “I don’t know how to impress on you the urgency—”

  “You have already impressed this on me,” the other man said in finely accented English. “My job is the security of His Holiness, and I have told him already my opinion.”

  “Then let’s get him out of here,” Jack said. “Drag him kicking and screaming if you have to—”

  Giancarlo’s look was reproachful. “Clearly, that cannot be done. The Holy Father has committed his life to this peace effort.”

  “And we’re all in the business of making sure his life is long enough to see it through. Look, let’s make it simple. Just pull the fire alarm or something. Have someone get sick. It doesn’t matter how, just get the Pope out of that room.”

  Giancarlo looked at Jack with sympathetic eyes. “I admire your desire, but I cannot do it. His Holiness has expressly forbidden anything that will damage the peace effort.”

  “Goddamned martyrs.” That was Harry Driscoll, muttering under his breath. He realized he’d spoken aloud only when everyone looked at him. He shrank back as much as a two-hundred-pound man could. “Just thinking out loud,” he apologized, but Jack knew he was right.

  The serenity of Giancarlo was starting to annoy Jack. The Vatican man said, “It is odd, isn’t it, that in our line of work we give our lives freely, but we call the sacrifices of others selfish.”

  Jack replied, “Because when we die, it doesn’t turn the politics of the world upside down.”

  1:30 P.M. PST West Los Angeles Police Station

  Detective Mercy Bennett looked at the note attached to the file on her desk. She buzzed her captain. “Hey, Cap, what is CTU? I have a note here to call them.”

  The captain made a low, quizzical noise, trying to remember it himself. “Oh, yeah. Counter Terrorism Unit, or something like that. New protocol. Anything we get that might involve religious fundamentalists, we send them a Post-it note.”

  “Religious fundamentalists?” she asked.

  “Really, we’re talking about Islamic nutcases who want to blow themselves up,” the captain said in his own inimitable style. “But we can’t say that on the record. Anyway, just buzz them with the info.”

  Mercy shrugged and redialed. It took several rings for someone to answer. “Jamey Farrell.”

  “Mercy Bennett, LAPD,” she said. “Listen, I got word to call you guys. We picked up a body earlier. We haven’t done forensics on it, but we ran prin
ts. The deceased is Abdul al-Hassan.”

  There was a pause. “Um, okay. Anything else?”

  “That’s it. I was just told to call.”

  1:32 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jamey Farrell put down the phone and went back to her database. She was so focused on her searches that she nearly forgot the message as soon as she’d hung up. Just in time, she grabbed a pen and scribbled the name on the back of some other notes. Someday they’d need receptionists and lower-level staff for that sort of thing.

  1:33 P.M. PST Sweetzer Avenue, Los Angeles

  Khalid decided he’d waited long enough. There had been no activity on the street. For all he knew, the police might be combing the city for him, but they weren’t looking here. This was Khalid’s old mail route, and he knew every car that parked here regularly. Nothing was out of order.

  Khalid got out of his car and walked down the street toward the house where Mousa and the others had lived. The three men were more complicit than they let on, of course, but much less than the authorities had suspected. In the end, they were dupes, enjoying the thrill of living on the edge of danger but really knowing nothing of what went on. If they’d known the crate had contained explosives, they probably would have run screaming like girls.

  Gerry walked up to the Sweetzer house and opened it with a key hidden under a rock in the garden. He ducked under the police tape still strung across the porch and opened the door. He was sure the authorities would not have taken his bag. It was well-hidden, and the documents and cash inside were in a secret compartment.

  Khalid walked through the living room and toward the bedroom when he heard the female voice behind him. “Hello, Gary.”

  1:40 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Jack moved through the reception hall, every sense heightened, as though he might be able to hear or smell a bomb. There was still a substantial reception line waiting to greet the Pope, and he walked along it casually. It was a surreal moment, imagining that one of them was a human bomb.

  “Jack Bauer,” said someone in line. Bauer, who had been looking at hands and bodies, focused on a face and recognized Amy Weiss, the

  L.A. Times reporter. He remembered her as fairly new back when he was on SWAT, the kind of journeyman who did all the legwork but got only a “contributed” line at the bottom of the articles.

  She was canny enough not to mention his profession when he was in plainclothes. “Amy,” he said. “You’ve become enlightened, I guess.” He pointed to the religious leaders all around her.

  She laughed. “Well, I do write the truth for a living,” she said. “But I still do it for the papers. I just got to interview the Pope, so I was given an invitation to the reception.”

  Amy’s voice was light, but her eyes were staring into Jack, and he was instantly on his guard. He could practically read her thoughts: murder at St. Monica’s, Pope’s reception, LAPD undercover. She’d have flipped if she’d known he was now with the CIA.

  “Are you enjoying it so far?” he asked.

  “I love standing in line!” she joked. “But yeah, I have to tell you, I talked to him this morning, and he’s committed to this. He believes it will save the world.”

  “He’s definitely committed,” Jack agreed, still glancing around.

  “Is there something I should know about?” she asked casually.

  “No,” he said. “But if you wanted to go powder your nose for a couple of hours, that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  Amy’s face went pale.

  1:43 P.M. PST Sweetzer Avenue, Los Angeles

  Nina had proned Khalid out, putting his face in the carpet, and did a cursory search. As she reached to cuff one of his wrists, he spun quickly. He was much stronger than his lanky frame indicated. She tried to jam her knee into his neck, but she lost her balance and fell back. He tried to jump her, but she kicked his shin and he staggered back. She leveled her weapon, but didn’t try to shoot him.

  He ran.

  1:45 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jamey was coming up with nothing. It was a stupid assignment anyway. There was no way the Vatican’s security people had missed anything in the backgrounds of these guests.

  She sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. As she brought her knuckles away from her face, her eyes focused on the note on the back of the papers. Abdul al-Hassan.

  “Oh shit,” she said.

  1:46 P.M. PST Sweetzer Avenue, Los Angeles

  Nina vaulted over a backyard fence three houses down. Khalid was taller and maybe faster, but he wasn’t nearly as stubborn as she was, so she caught up to him by the fourth backyard and dragged him off the fence. Before he could use his size and strength against her, she kicked him in the groin while he was down. He curled up into a ball and she stomped on his ankle. He screamed, and she stomped on his elbow, too.

  1:48 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Only two people left, Marwan thought. It would have been unbearable, to stand in this line to greet the spiritual leader of the Crusaders; unbearable, if not for the fact that the Pope would soon be dead, and he himself would be in Paradise.

  The room’s length away, Michael reached into his pocket for the keyless entry remote control that he had not surrendered to the valet.

  1:49 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Jack’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “Bauer,” he said formally, although he knew it was Jamey Farrell.

  “Abdul al-Hassan!” she blurted out. “He’s an impostor.”

  “What do you—?”

  “They found his dead body dumped off the freeway this morning. You’re looking for Abdul al-Hassan.”

  Jack snapped the phone shut. He scanned the crowded room for Giancarlo and hurried over to the Swiss Guard. “The bomber is Abdul al-Hassan. Which one is he? We need to know now!”

  To his credit, Giancarlo did not waste words or motions. He spoke quickly in Italian to his security office. Unseen cameras whirred around the crowded room. Giancarlo touched a hand to his ear as he listened. His eyes went wide. “The bearded man. With the Pope!”

  They bolted forward together.

  1:51 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Michael watched Marwan al-Hassan, smiling pleasantly, take the hand of the Pope. Gingerly, according to plan, al-Hassan put his left hand atop their clasped grip. It was only in that moment that anyone might have noticed his shriveled left arm.

  Michael pointed the keyless remote toward them and…

  …a body came flying across his field of vision, tackling Marwan away from the heretical Pope. People screamed and scattered away from the sudden violence. Black-suited Swiss Guards materialized out of nowhere to surround John Paul.

  Michael hesitated to trigger the bomb. If Marwan could get close enough…

  1:52 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Jack tried to take al-Hassan all the way to the floor, but the man was as hard to hold as a cat. He shook free of Jack and tried to claw at him, screaming something in Arabic and surging toward the wall of black suits surrounding the Pope.

  Jack grabbed him from behind. He’s a bomb, Jack thought. He’s a grenade. Get him out of here.

  Jack lunged toward a set of French doors to his left and crashed through them, al-Hassan in tow. The human bomb spun toward him and scratched at his face. He was not a human being, he was an animal. But Jack was not so different from him. He dug a thumb into al-Hassan’s eye and raked his fingernails across the terrorist’s face, scooping out flesh. Al-Hassan screamed.

  Jack didn’t know how powerful the bomb would be, so he had to get rid of al-Hassan now. He pushed the man up against the balcony wall and hefted him over. Al-Hassan, suddenly terrified, grabbed hold of Jack’s arm and pulled him off balance.

  1:55 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  It’s lost, Michael thought. Time to get rid of the evidence. He pressed the button, but nothing happened. Marwan had fallen
out of range. Michael ran forward with the rest of the astonished crowd.

  In that same moment, Jack had the briefest sensation of falling, then he hit water. Striking the swimming pool after a two-hundred-foot fall at thirty-two feet per second was better than hitting a concrete floor, but not by all that much. The breath went out of him. He and al-Hassan were both under water. The terrorist kicked at Jack, getting a foot in his face and using it to push off.

  Jack was about to swim after him when al-Hassan disappeared behind light and turbulence. Jack felt himself lifted up and out of the water as the sound of the explosion enveloped him like a bubble.

  1:59 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  There was chaos in the hall. A wedge of Swiss Guards had surrounded the Pope and were driving their way through the crowd, out into the hallway, toward the safe room.

  Less professional people might have called it a panic room but Giancarlo did not prefer that term. It was a room with reinforced doors and windows, stocked with supplies, where they could hold out for hours if necessary. They moved toward the room in a herd, radios blaring in their ears, Giancarlo shouting instructions. It was all well-planned and well-executed, but even for men of their expertise, this sort of thing did not happen every day.

  None of them, not even Giancarlo, noticed in that moment the inclusion of an additional member. Rabbi Dan Bender had slipped into the panic room with them.

  21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 P.M. AND 3 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  2:00 P.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Los Angeles

  Somewhere in the last few seconds Jack’s world had turned from water to concrete. He was lying on his side on a hard surface, but he was soaking wet, and he felt like someone had jammed their thumbs into his ears.

  He sat up. Al-Hassan had exploded. That much made sense. He’d killed himself and no one else. That much was right with the world.

  But Jack felt no sense of relief. Three bombers. He was right about that. Collins had been one. Al-Hassan had been number two. Where was the third?