by J K Ellem
He continued walking then slowed his pace just enough to notice the flicker of a television screen through the thin curtains of each room.
Good. Any noise would help.
A few moments later he returned to the car, twirling a room key in his hand. The on-site manager was an old retired woman who lived in the self-contained room at the back of the front office. Ten keys with wooden tags hung from little hooks on the board behind the counter, with a space where two had been taken. It was $40 a night but Shaw gave her an extra twenty for the room at the end, farthest from the office and away from the other two guests. He said he was on his honeymoon and he and his bride didn’t want to be disturbed, and not to worry even if she heard the occasional cry coming from his room.
The old woman smiled knowingly as she slipped the cash into her pocket, away from the prying eyes of the IRS, then slid the key across the worn countertop to Shaw.
The room was small and musty but surprisingly clean. Shaw doubted it had been occupied for a while given it was at the end of the property. The motel was probably never full enough to warrant its use unless it was requested.
Fake dark wood veneer covered the walls surrounding two beds covered in orange and brown bedspreads. Between the beds was a set of drawers and a cheap lamp that cast a dull wedge of yellow against the dark wall when Shaw flicked on the light switch next to the door.
An old TV sat on a low chest of drawers against the opposite wall. Next to it was a telephone and in the corner a small refrigerator with a microwave on top, the white enamel chipped and rusted. In the bathroom was a small shower stall, a heavy ceramic sink, and a toilet. There was a small sliding window above the toilet, the glass filmed with grime and cobwebs on the outside.
“So what now?” Jessie stood in the middle of the room with her arms folded.
“I need you to take a shower, freshen up, and use the toilet if you have to,” Shaw replied as he continued to look around the room. He pulled out the phone cord, coiled it, and laid it on top of the dresser.
Jessie gave him a puzzling look. “Why? What the hell are we doing here? Why am I here?”
Shaw walked over to her. “We’re going to sit down and I’m going to explain to you what I know,” he replied. “And you’re going to tell me what you know.”
Jessie frowned.
Shaw continued, “And then I’m going to need to use the bathroom for about thirty minutes. It will be out of bounds for you for a while. So use it now if you need to.”
“Why?” Jessie felt hesitant. ‘What are you going to do in there?”
Shaw smiled. “I’m going to put our guest in there. Then I’m going to ask him a few questions that he may not want to answer. But I’m going to make him answer them.”
Jessie just nodded.
“Go back to the car, get your suitcase from the backseat. Bring it in and do what you need to do. I’m going to give you some privacy. Lock the door with the chain as well.”
Jessie returned with her roller case and gave Shaw her car keys. He drew the curtains, then went outside and closed the door behind him.
At the rear of the property he found a bare patch of dirt wide enough to take the car. He moved the car to the dirt so it was out of sight from the street but still close.
Past this, the ground gently sloped away to a low wire fence that seemed to run the entire length of the property. Beyond the fence a pale vista opened under the moonlight, a flat barren expanse scattered with rocks and the brooding shapes of Joshua trees. In the distance the outline of mountain ridges jutted skyward under a billion stars.
Shaw turned and looked back at the edge of the motel, a halo of light above the flat roof line glowed from a gas station and 24-hour diner across the highway. There was no alternate escape route. The terrain beyond the fence was strewn with rocks and sand. The Golf would easily get stuck within a few minutes, especially with its front wheel drive.
Shaw returned to the corner of the property wall. There was no movement in the parking lot; everything looked quiet. He popped the trunk of the Golf and hefted out an unconscious form, hoisting it over his shoulder.
Jessie opened the door and watched in silent astonishment as Shaw walked in with the man slumped over his shoulder. He went straight to the bathroom and dumped him on the ground next to the toilet. The man had thick cable ties around his ankles and wrists. His face was red-raw and blistered from where the scolding hot coffee had hit him. His nose was twisted and one eye was swollen almost fully shut. His lips and chin were caked with dried blood.
Shaw removed another thick cable tie from a plastic packet in his jacket, threaded it between the tie that bound the man’s wrists, and secured it around the steel water pipe at the base of the toilet.
Shaw closed the bathroom door.
Jessie was sitting on the bed when he returned. She had a towel wrapped around her hair and had changed into jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers. She was feeling almost human again and was now refreshed and wide awake.
Shaw sat on the opposite bed. He carefully laid out the knife, the gun, a spare magazine, and the cell phone. Then he looked up at Jessie.
“I want you to tell me exactly what happened. How you got to the gas station.” His words were slow and deliberate.
After Jessie told him everything, it became obvious that she either hadn’t clearly seen the man’s face on the TV before they fled the gas station or, if she had, she didn’t recognize him as the same person who had abducted her in the parking lot at the airport. He could hardly blame her. Things had unfolded so fast in the gas station that her mind was still processing the fact that a commercial jetliner had crashed somewhere in a field in Wyoming, killing everyone on board.
Shaw leaned forward. “The man who took you and forced you to drive your car here is probably being hunted by every law enforcement agency in the country right now.” He got off the bed and switched on the television. He flicked the remote until he got a 24-hour news channel. A man’s face was plastered all over the screen. The same man who was now unconscious on the bathroom floor a few feet from where Jessie sat.
Jessie watched the TV, a horrified look on her face. Tears formed in her eyes, then streaked down her face. Tears of sadness for the people who had died mixed with tears of anger for what had happened.
“Turn it off,” she said brusquely as she wiped her face, trying to regain her composure. “I’ve seen enough.”
She turned back to Shaw. “How did you know? I mean how did you recognize him?”
Admittedly the photo that was now on every news network across the country looked a little different than the man who had held a knife at Jessie’s throat.
“I just did,” Shaw replied. It was what Shaw was good at, recognizing faces, being able to commit them to memory and then retrieve them months, maybe years, later in exquisite detail from just a glimpse. He could then allow for aging, a few more wrinkles, or changes in a person’s weight. He was trained to scan a line of faces in a crowd, in a restaurant, or on the street, committing them all to memory then assess if they were threats or not.
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“Then what are you?”
Shaw paused before answering. He needed her, he needed her trust, because right now for all he knew the police were hunting them as well. And in a situation like this, where so many people had died and the national opinion wanted justice, they would shoot first and ask questions later.
“I used to do government work.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, but not exactly the full truth.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” Jessie asked. It was a valid question. She had seen firsthand what he had done in the store, and now she knew he had worked for the government.
“Not by accident.”
Jessie swallowed hard.
Shaw thought he needed to qualify his answer. “I used to be in the Secret Service, protection detail.”
“Used to be?” Jessie asked.
“I quit; it became too
political. Saw some things I didn’t agree with.”
“Like what?” Jessie pressed him further. “For all I know you’re lying.”
“I can’t say, and I don’t like talking about it.”
“I need proof.”
“That I’m one of the good guys?”
Jessie nodded.
“I saved your life,” Shaw replied.
For a moment Jessie said nothing. It was true. Her abductor would have killed her if it hadn’t been for Shaw. But she still wasn’t convinced.
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” she said sarcastically. “Look, we need to tell the police, turn him in, and let them deal with it.”
Shaw gave a thin smile. “That would be the common sense thing to do. But—”
‘“But what?” Jessie stood up and pointed at the bathroom. “We need to call the police. He’s a terrorist.”
“I know, but I prefer another approach.”
“Like what? Are you crazy? I don’t do things like this.” Jessie raised her voice.
“I want you to help me. If we go to the police, they may arrest us, throw us in jail, too. Don’t forget they probably got a good look at you on the video cameras at the gas station. They probably think you’re part of this, too—like a partner, his accomplice.”
Jessie sat back down, thinking about how it would look. “But I’ll tell them he kidnapped me and made me drive him.”
Shaw shook his head. “Two airline employees in the same car? Both leaving the same airport? The same airport where a plane departed then exploded after takeoff?”
Shaw let his words sink in, watching the slow realization spread across Jessie’s face that maybe things weren’t as straightforward as just going to the police and turning the guy in.
“So what do we do?” Jessie’s face was pale like she was going to be sick.
“This guy is just a foot soldier, a grunt. Someone else much bigger is behind this. If we go to the police, they will make a mess of it. Then we’ll never be able to find the real people behind this act.” Shaw picked up the phone, stood, and held it out to Jessie. “I want you to help me.”
“How? How can I? I’m not a cop or anything.”
“No you aren’t. But you know something about planes and airports.”
Jessie looked at the phone Shaw held in his hand.
“I want you to help me find the people who did this terrible act, killing hundreds of innocent people. We’re going to use his phone and find the people he was communicating with.”
Jessie took the phone and stared at it like it was some sort of alien device.
Finally she said, “And then?”
He could tell she was agitated. Good. He needed to unsettle her, make her angry, make her think about the dead, the women and children in particular. Not that a dead man was worth less than a dead woman or a dead child. But visually, he was going to use the same tools of manipulation the media did.
11
“His name is Abasi Rasul.” Shaw was leaning against the chest of drawers, his feet and arms crossed. Jessie sat on the bed with the remnants of dinner. Shaw had gone across the road to the truck stop and ordered take-out food. He had put on a sweatshirt and pulled the hood up to hide his features as much as possible. He’d stayed away from the gas station part of the plaza and walked into the large diner that was adjacent. As far as Shaw could tell there was only one CCTV camera and that was behind the cash register. He’d paid in cash and kept his face tilted down.
“Sounds Arabic.”
“Egyptian.”
“And he’s a terrorist?” Jessie asked.
“He wasn’t when I first met him. Maybe he’s graduated into one.”
“What do you mean?”
The best thing about the room was the almost new Keurig single cup coffeemaker that sat on a plastic tray next to the TV. Shaw took the plastic wrap off a paper cup, inserted a pod, and pressed the brew button. While the machine gurgled away, he told Jessie where he had crossed paths with Abasi Rasul before.
Shaw explained that Rasul first came across his radar a few years back. “Nothing significant, at first.”
“At first?” Jessie sat up on the bed and wiped her hands, her eyes focused intently on Shaw.
“Just idle threats against the vice-president, the usual rant. But every incident gets logged, and I followed it up.”
“So what happened?”
The coffee machine had done its stuff and shut down. Shaw picked up his coffee and sat down opposite Jessie in a faded chair. He had a direct line of sight to the bathroom door to his left and a view outside through a slit in the front window curtains.
“We paid Mr. Rasul a visit, standard procedure.”
“Like a warning?”
“More like a Cease and Desist. He was already on our low-level watch list for comments and rants he had previously posted on social media, but nothing threatening until then. So we told him any threat was an offense. Stop doing it or else.”
Shaw went on to explain they’d found a huge amount of Islamic propaganda and an unlicensed firearm. Rasul’s computer was impounded and they found a web history of searches on radical websites and chatrooms, instructions on bomb-making, and terrorist training classes overseas. “He had done a good job trying to erase files and browsing history, but our tech guys are the best. Found all sorts of sites on the dark web he was accessing. He was trying to get to Syria to train with ISIS, talking online to people in Turkey and Greece who could help him. At that point we handed him over to the FBI.”
“And what happened?”
“Regret.”
“Regret?” Jessie asked.
Shaw tilted his head side to side, his neck creaking. “The FBI did nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Jessie stared at Shaw incredulously.
Shaw nodded. “Yep. Hard to believe. We gave the Feds everything. Turns out they released him back into the general population.”
“How? Why?”
“Someone called someone, who called someone else, who then called the Saudi Embassy in Washington, and they released him with nothing but a slap on the wrist. They said he was too small, not a high-value target, and they would keep an eye on him. But they didn’t.”
“Obviously,” Jessie added.
Shaw looked at the ceiling, deep in thought. When he spoke again he sounded like he was far away, back in time, when he first met Rasul. “You know when you first meet someone and you get a bad feeling, a bad vibe about them?”
Jessie nodded but said nothing.
Shaw looked back at Jessie and tilted his head. “Well that’s how I felt in the gut when I first met him. Just a feeling that he was no good. You see it in their eyes, you can feel it in their voice.”
“Trust your gut, I always say.”
Shaw smiled and nodded. “But the FBI didn’t see it that way. Sure he was just on the net looking at the typical stuff that’s on there. But he had plans, he was aspirational. I could tell when we hauled him in for questioning. He wanted his day in the sun, wanted to be a big player.”
“So you don’t trust the FBI.”
“I trust no one, none of the other agencies, especially the FBI.”
“They didn’t think he was a threat? How bad do they look now?” Jessie asked. “They let him go then he’s involved in bringing down a commercial jetliner.” For a moment Jessie didn’t realize what she had just said, then her expression changed.
Shaw watched her face, smiled, then slowly nodded as the real reason Shaw wasn’t going to notify the authorities came to her. “Yes, you get it. Governments have fallen for less.”
Jessie looked shocked. “It would be a huge embarrassment for them. The entire FBI would be shunned.”
“We did our job, but they failed at theirs. Heads will roll, huge careers, huge pay checks and huge egos—done.” After the dust settled on ground zero after 9/11 the recriminations began as to which agency was to blame. All the billions spent on keeping America safe, and yet the bigges
t act of terrorism in history had occurred.
“Did you know three days after 9/11 the FBI personally chaperoned members of the Bin Laden family out of the country?”
“I read something about it back then, but I was just a kid. I thought it was a story drummed up by the conspiracy theorists, you know the same ones who said the holocaust never happened and 9/11 was a government plot.”
“It’s true. I know guys, older than me, who were on the FBI detail.”
“I thought you didn’t trust anyone?” Jessie smiled.
“Well, almost no one, but I know these guys. One guy was a personal escort, had to collect some of the Bin Laden children from university. Drove them directly to the airport, put them on a private jet at a time when no other flights were allowed to take off. About 140 Saudis were secretly flown out of the States that day. Ironic don’t you think when fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were Saudis?”
Shaw’s face was like stone, his voice cold and unforgiving. “That’s why I don’t trust them or anyone else. I’m not letting Abasi Rasul go a second time, and I’m sure not going to hand him over to the FBI or to anyone else.”
“They won’t let him go a second time surely,” Jessie said. “His face is all over the news.”
“He’ll just disappear, vanish,” Shaw replied. “And the same could happen to us if we walk into the nearest police station or F.B.I. field office and hand him over.”
“Because the whole story will come out about how they let him go years back and now he has done this.”
Shaw nodded.
“Now you sound like one of those conspiracy theorists.”
“Jessie don’t underestimate the lengths politicians will go in order to cover their asses and hide the truth. I know things they wouldn’t want to come out. You’re part of it.”
“What do you mean I’m part of it?” Jessie stood, her eyes flashed with anger. “I had nothing to do with this.” She pointed at the bathroom. “He kidnapped me,” she protested.
Shaw held up his hands, trying to calm her down. “I know, but others will not see it like that. They will want to erase all traces of Abasi Rasul especially anyone who has come into contact with him.”
