“Not a chance. You’ll be sick of me before you know it.”
“Not a chance,” she said, smiling to show she’d intentionally borrowed his words.
Harper walked in from the living room a few minutes later. He accepted a cup from his wife and glanced at his watch, taking in Naomi’s disheveled appearance. “Kharmai, you’d better get moving, or that plane will be leaving without you.”
She nodded and pushed back from her chair, shooting Kealey one last look before she left the room. Harper pushed a scrap of paper across the table.
“According to Special Forces Command, Colonel Owen is currently based at Camp Diamondback at Mosul Airport. He’s been running search-and-destroy missions out of the garrison with a select group of men from ‘B’ Squadron. They’ve been tracking a mortar team that’s attacked the airport on four separate occasions since June. They think it’s the same team that hit the Green Zone this morning. That number will put you in touch with him.”
“Good.”
“If you get hold of him before you hit the airport, give him my name and tell him to expect my call,” Harper continued. “If he can affirm that Rühmann got the BLU-82 from Al Qaqaa, it’ll go a long way in convincing the president to bulk up security around the UN. It’s already tight, of course, but I won’t be happy until all the surrounding roads are blocked off.”
“What time does the meeting begin?”
“The General Assembly convenes at five PM. They’re holding it off as some of the Iraqi delegates won’t arrive until later this afternoon.”
“So if Vanderveen wants to get them all in the same place, we have until five.”
“That seems to be a reasonable assumption.”
Julie Harper had gone upstairs while they were talking. Kealey stood and went to the counter, where he poured himself a second cup of coffee. As he returned to the table, he said, “I’ve been thinking about something you said last night, John. If Vanderveen already has the daisy cutter here in the States—and I think we have to assume he does—how did he get it over the border?”
“A truck.”
“Right, but that’s risky. What if he got stopped? He couldn’t risk a customs inspection.”
“If the weapon was disguised he could.”
“It’s kind of hard to disguise a fifteen-thousand-pound bomb.”
“But not impossible,” Harper pointed out. “Besides, there are other ways to circumvent customs. Like I said before, just having the right paperwork makes a huge difference.”
“Exactly,” Kealey agreed. “But how do you get the right paperwork?”
The older man frowned. “I don’t know as much about this as I probably should. I know there are systems in place to facilitate companies that do a lot of cross-border trade.”
“I think that’s where we need to look. A company based in the New York area that spends a lot of time going in and out of Canada.”
“That’s a lot of companies.”
“Yeah, but who files the paperwork with U.S. Customs? The owner, right?” Kealey fell silent for a moment, thinking it through. “The question is, who would risk everything to help Vanderveen with this, and why? What’s the motivation?”
“Money.”
“Money is one possibility,” Kealey said absently. “Let’s get this to the New York FO, John. Ask them to start looking at businesses in the five boroughs listed with the CBP. Have them focus on companies owned by people of Middle Eastern descent.”
“That’s the worst kind of racial profiling, Ryan.”
“I’m aware of that,” the younger man said, unable to hide his irritation, “but we’re not asking them to break down any doors, are we? If they check discreetly, no one will be the wiser. We have to look at all the angles, and I don’t care if we hurt a few feelings along the way. We don’t have time to fuck around anymore.”
By 6:45 they were ready to leave. They had opted to leave their luggage behind, so they were traveling light. Naomi had changed into a snug cashmere sweater, along with a pair of stretch chinos and suede flats. She was unarmed, owing to the fact that she would be spending most of the trip at the Bureau’s FO, but Kealey had his Beretta, which he’d left with Harper before departing for Berlin. He planned to check the weapon at the airport, knowing that whatever happened in New York, he would almost certainly need it. If, by some miracle, he did manage to get his hands on Hakim Rudaki, the man would not be quick to volunteer the truth.
Julie Harper walked them to the door. She hugged Ryan briefly and urged him to come back soon. As Jonathan pulled him aside to deliver some last-minute instructions, Kharmai found herself alone with the other woman. To her surprise, she found herself being drawn in for a warm embrace.
“Take care of him, Naomi,” Julie murmured. “He deserves to be happy again.”
Naomi nodded when the other woman released her, touched by the gesture. She was also a little embarrassed; she wasn’t aware they had made it so obvious. “I’ll do my best. It was great meeting you.”
“You too, dear. Take care.”
The Suburban was already waiting at the curb. Naomi walked down the stairs, followed by Kealey and Harper. She got in first. Kealey moved to follow, but Harper pulled him back for a second. There were equal amounts of hesitation and steadfast determination on the older man’s face.
“Ryan, I asked my driver to bring along a couple of cell phones. I have the numbers, and you have mine. If there’s anything I can do from here, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
Kealey nodded. “Thanks, John. I’ll remember that.”
“And good luck,” the older man said. He looked up at the overcast sky and frowned, as if the weather could foretell the day’s events. “I think you’re going to need it.”
CHAPTER 47
NEW YORK CITY
In the parking area outside the warehouse on West Thirty-seventh Street in Midtown Manhattan, Will Vanderveen lifted the rolling door of an Isuzu truck, placed his hands on the cold metal floor at the back, and stared in at the contents. Thomas Rühmann’s men had done their work well; to look inside, one would never guess that, concealed beneath the thin metal walls of a Parker commercial boiler, was an elaborate, delicate wooden framework, and beneath that, a device capable of unleashing incredible destruction, a device capable of destroying the heart of the Iraqi Parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance. As he gazed upon the sight, he was aware of Raseen at his side. He looked at her and saw she was equally rapt, her dark eyes shining. Behind her, standing off to the side, was Amir Nazeri. He looked calm and assured, his glasses reflecting the pale morning sun, but there was an undercurrent of tension there that had not escaped the other two. Vanderveen, in particular, was still trying to figure out how steadfast Nazeri was. It was the last—but most important—thing he had to consider. Nearly everything else was done.
The previous day, they had used a forklift from the Montreal terminal to load the device at the Lake Forest storage facility, after which they returned the forklift and started west to the border crossing at Buffalo. After passing through customs on the Peace Bridge, Vanderveen had followed I-95 to Syracuse. From there, it was a short drive to Ithaca. The Bridgeline warehouse was located just north of the city, in a commercial sector that had seen better days. Yasmin Raseen and Amir Nazeri had entered the United States hours earlier in a passenger vehicle owned by Nazeri’s company. Vanderveen met them in Ithaca just after 5:00 a.m., where they transferred the bomb to an Isuzu H-Series box truck with a GVWR of 33,000 pounds. The rear axle was capable of withstanding loads up to 19,000 pounds, which was more than adequate for their purposes.
According to Nazeri, the vehicle was completely untraceable, meaning that no link would ever be found between the shattered remains of the Isuzu and Bridgeline Transport, Inc. Vanderveen didn’t know if this was true or if it was just wishful thinking on Nazeri’s part, but it didn’t really matter. Nazeri had no idea what was about to happen. He didn’t know that he was about to embark on a suicide mission, an
d when it was over, Bridgeline would be implicated almost immediately. An anonymous call to the FBI would point the investigators in the right direction. The death of thousands of American citizens would, in due course, be attributed to the Iranian who had come to America in search of a better life, only to find that the U.S. government had stripped him of the only thing he had ever cared about.
The death of Dr. Nasir Tabrizi in Paris at the hands of Iranian fundamentalists—combined with the revelation of Iranian funding for the purchase of Rashid al-Umari’s refinery in Iraq—had already generated enormous suspicion in the Western media. Many people already believed that the regime in Tehran was behind the escalating situation in Iraq, and Nazeri’s actions would only clinch their suspicions. The American public would never believe that the Iranians did not have a hand in it, and with thousands dead in the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, President David Brenneman would be under immense pressure to exact swift, harsh revenge on the Iranian capital.
The idea that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was ultimately responsible would also be reinforced by Hakim Rudaki, the FBI’s coveted informant. Vanderveen had already called Rudaki directly to provide additional instructions; at the moment, Rudaki was busy establishing ties between Thomas Rühmann and the Iranian president, some of which were imagined, others real. Vanderveen had called his source in the Bureau hours earlier to confirm that everything was on schedule. He had not been surprised to learn that Kealey had survived the trap in Berlin, along with the woman, Kharmai, but he had been disturbed to learn that Kharmai had been granted an audience with Rudaki shortly before noon. Somehow, the CIA was aware of what had been stored at Lake Forest. But that couldn’t be helped now, and it didn’t really matter. They didn’t know about Nazeri, and they didn’t know about the warehouse on West Thirty-seventh. The intense security surrounding the UN would prove to be worthless. Kealey may have cheated death yet again, but he would never be able to stop what was about to happen.
Vanderveen stood up and stretched, gazing around at the open cement. Using Nazeri made things more complicated than they should have been, but the same was true of the men they had used in Paris. Implicating the Iranians wasn’t strictly necessary, but it did have the effect of diverting attention from the Iraqi insurgency. Vanderveen had listened to the news on the drive east from Ithaca. Iraq was already on the brink of civil war, and in a matter of hours, the Shiite alliance would be wiped from the face of the earth, along with several thousand U.S. citizens. The U.S. military would no longer be able to control the mass chaos that would ensue in Iraq. In other words, Izzat al-Douri was about to reclaim the country he had lost just a few years earlier.
Vanderveen turned to Nazeri. “Where’s the box?”
“In my office.”
“Show me.”
They followed the Iranian through a set of double-glass doors and into the warehouse. The smooth cement floor was littered with wooden pallets, all of which were weighed down with thousands of bottles of water and soda. Behind the pallets were redbrick walls leading up to a low ceiling. Vanderveen recalled that the warehouse was used to distribute soft drinks to area businesses. Fortunately, Nazeri had had the foresight to dismiss his employees for the day, a point that Vanderveen had overlooked.
They came to the glass-enclosed office. There was another door on the far side of the room. Nazeri pulled a key from his pocket with trembling hands, unlocked the door, and pulled out a large box sealed with masking tape. He used the key to slice the tape along the fold, then pulled open the cardboard flaps.
Vanderveen looked inside. The package had come courtesy of Anthony Mason several months earlier. It contained five half-pound blocks of Semtex, two 50-foot coils of what appeared to be time fuse, a pair of wire crimpers, and a cloth-wrapped package. Vanderveen pulled out the package, placed it on the nearby desk, and unfurled the cloth. Inside were several nonelectric blasting caps and three nylon tubes with pull rings on one end. Nazeri walked over, and Vanderveen lifted one of the tubes.
“I’m going to show you how this works,” he said, adopting the instructive tone he’d used as an E-7 in the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Nazeri’s distracted mien was instantly replaced by an expression of sober, undivided attention.
“This is an M60 fuse igniter,” Vanderveen began. He pointed to the bottom part of the tube, opposite the metal pull ring. “This is the fuse holder cap. You unscrew it”—he demonstrated—“and remove the shipping plug, like this. Now you’re ready to install the time fuse, but first we’ll prepare the blasting cap. Do you have a knife?”
The other man nodded. Raseen was standing off to the side, watching with interest. Vanderveen went to the box and pulled out one of the coils of the time fuse. Nothing changed in his face, and the hesitation was barely noticeable, but he checked both coils quickly, then selected the one on the bottom. He brought it back over and accepted the Iranian’s pocketknife.
Vanderveen cut off the first 6 inches of the time fuse and tossed it aside. The box was dry, but he knew it was still possible for moisture to contaminate either end of the fuse. Then he cut off approximately 3 feet from the remaining length. Selecting one of the blasting caps, he checked the open end for debris and, finding none, gently pushed it onto one end of the fuse. Then, with exquisite care, he used the crimpers to secure the cap to the time fuse.
“You see what I did?” he asked Nazeri. The other man gave a jerky nod. “Now, do you have a blanket around here? Some kind of soft material?”
“I have a sweater. Will that work?” Vanderveen nodded, and Nazeri retrieved the sweater from a cabinet near the office door. Vanderveen wrapped it around the blasting cap and placed the sweater on the far side of the office, well away from the cardboard box. Then he took the free end of the fuse and slipped it into the well of the M60 igniter. Finally, he tightened the fuse holder cap and held up the tube.
“Watch what I’m doing.” He waited until he was sure he had Nazeri’s attention. Then he pulled out the safety clip, pushed the pull ring into the M60, turned it to the right, and pulled it all the way out.
Nazeri looked confused. “Why is nothing happening?”
“That’s three feet of fuse,” Vanderveen explained. “It burns at roughly forty seconds a foot, so it’ll take about two minutes. Then the cap will detonate. You’ll hear a little pop…Just wait.”
They waited, and in due course, the cap went off. Nazeri jumped at the noise, even though he’d been told to expect it. Vanderveen walked over and unfolded the sweater, showing Nazeri the scorched, torn material. “If the cap had been surrounded by explosives, it would have set them off. But do you understand what I’m talking about? You’ll have plenty of time once you pull the ring to get out of the truck and into the subway. We’ll be using about twelve feet of the time fuse, so you’ll have nearly five minutes to get clear.”
“But won’t the police be able to get inside the truck by then?”
“No,” Raseen put in. “But even if they do, they won’t know how to stop it in time. Policemen in America are not trained in such matters.”
Nazeri seemed to take this at face value, though he didn’t look in Raseen’s direction as she spoke. Vanderveen had already noticed that the Iranian businessman was uneasy in her presence. He didn’t know if this was due to a cultural phenomenon or the fact that Yasmin Raseen had a way of making people uncomfortable. He assumed it was a little of both.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re going to do it again, only this time, you are going to set it up, and I’ll watch. It’s vital that you know how to use the igniter. It’s not a difficult procedure, but it has to be done correctly.”
Nazeri nodded. He appeared calm, but when he reached out to accept the next green nylon tube, his hand was shaking ever so slightly. Vanderveen studied him for a few seconds, face impassive, then gestured with his head for Raseen to join him outside. They left the office, Raseen closing the door behind them. A moment later they stepped outside. Their breath steamed in
the cool morning air. The Isuzu shined white in the pale sun, which had just topped the surrounding buildings.
Vanderveen turned toward her. “What do you think?”
“He’s nervous.”
“I agree. Is the cousin enough to push him forward?”
Raseen had ridden with Nazeri from Montreal to Manhattan, and she’d used the time to peel back the layers with infinite care. She started with questions about him, probing his fears, dreams, and desires. Then she ventured into the life of Fatima Darabi. Finally, she incorporated the two, asking about their childhood together, the pivotal moments they had shared in their youth. Nazeri had been reluctant to talk at first, Raseen explained, but that was only because she was a woman, and it hadn’t stopped him for long. Amir Nazeri had been in the States for many years, and the cultural strictures imposed on him as a child had faded with time. As the miles and hours passed, she had managed to break through his defenses.
“I think he loved her a great deal,” Raseen concluded. Her voice was neutral; in Iran, romantic love between cousins was viewed differently than it was in the United States, as marriage within the family helped ensure the preservation of land and other material assets. “He believes she felt the same way. Her death changed everything for him.”
“Has it changed him enough, though?” Vanderveen mused. “That’s the question.”
Raseen shrugged. “Have you shown him the document?”
“Not yet.”
“When you do, his doubts will disappear, along with his fears. I would wait until the last possible minute; that way, it will have more of an effect. You shouldn’t worry, though. He’s prepared to see this through.”
Vanderveen nodded. “You have your phone?”
Nazeri had purchased several pay-and-go phones before driving up to Montreal. They each had one. “Yes, I have it.”
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