Night Fall

by Nelson DeMille

  We got to 26 Fed, and I paid Abdul and gave him a five-dollar tip for causing him some anxiety.

  We entered the big lobby of the forty-one-story building from the Broadway entrance and walked toward the security elevators.

  Federal Plaza is home to an alphabet soup of government agencies, half of which collect taxes for the other half to spend. Floors twenty-two through twenty-eight are the offices of various law enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies and are accessible only by special elevators, which are separated from the lobby by thick Plexiglas, behind which are guards. I flashed my creds too quickly for the guards to see, which I always do, then I punched a code into a keypad and the Plexiglas door opened.

  Kate and I entered, and went to the seven elevators that service floors twenty-two through twenty-eight. None of the guards asked to see our credentials more closely.

  We got into an empty elevator and rode up to the twenty-sixth floor. I said to Kate, “Be prepared to be called separately into someone’s office.”

  “Why? Do you think we were followed last night?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  The elevator doors opened on the twenty-sixth floor into a small lobby. There were no security guards here, and maybe there didn’t have to be if you’d already gotten that far.

  There were, however, security cameras mounted overhead, but whoever was watching the monitors was probably paid six bucks an hour and had no clue what or who they were looking for or at. Assuming they were awake.

  On a more positive side, Kate and I had to again punch a code into a keypad to enter our corridor.

  So, to be fair, security at 26 Federal Plaza for floors twenty-two through twenty-eight was good, but not excellent. I mean, I could have been a terrorist with a gun shoved in Kate’s back, and I’d be in this corridor without too much trouble.

  In fact, security hadn’t improved much here or probably anywhere in the last two decades despite clear evidence that there was a war going on.

  The public was only vaguely aware that we were at war, and the government agencies that were conducting that war had never been told, officially or otherwise, by anyone in Washington that what was happening around the world was, in fact, a war directed against the United States of America and its allies.

  Washington and the news media chose to see each and every terrorist attack as a single event with little or no connection, whereas even an imbecile or a politician, if he thought about it long enough, could see a pattern. Someone needed to rally the troops, or some event needed to be loud enough to wake up everyone.

  At least that was my opinion, formed in the short year I’d been here, with the advantage of being an outsider. Cops look for patterns that suggest serial killers or organized crime. The Feds apparently looked at terrorist attacks as the work of disorganized groups of malcontents or psychopathic individuals.

  But that’s not what it was; it was something far more sinister and very well planned and organized by people who stayed up late at night writing things on their “To Do” list about ways to fuck us up.

  My opinion, however, was not popular and not shared by many of the people working on floors twenty-two through twenty-eight, or if it was, no one was putting this viewpoint in a memo or bringing it up at meetings.

  I stopped at a water cooler and said to Kate between slurps, “If you’re questioned by a boss, or the OPR, the best thing to do is tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “If you lie, your lie will not match my lie. Only the unrehearsed truth will keep us from having to get a lawyer.”

  “I know that. I’m a lawyer. But—”

  “Water?” I offered. “I’ll hold the handle.”

  “No, thanks. Look—”

  “I won’t push your face in the water. Promise.”

  “John, fuck off and grow up. Listen, we haven’t really done anything wrong.”

  “That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. What we did last night was because we’re dedicated and enthusiastic agents. If you’re questioned, do not look, act, or feel guilty. Act proud of your devotion to duty. That confuses them.”

  “Spoken like a true sociopath.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “This is not funny.” She added, “I was specifically told five years ago not to involve myself in this case.”

  “You should have listened.”

  We continued our walk down the corridor, and I said to her, “My guess is that if they’re on to us, they won’t let on right now. They’ll keep an eye on us to see what we do and who we talk to.”

  “You’re making me feel like a criminal.”

  “I’m just telling you how to deal with what you started.”

  “I didn’t start anything.” She looked at me and said, “John, I’m sorry if I got you—”

  “Don’t worry about it. A day without trouble for John Corey is like a day without oxygen.”

  She smiled and kissed me on the cheek, then walked to her workstation in the big cube farm, greeting her colleagues along the way.

  My workstation was on the other side of the room—away from the FBI-types—among my fellow NYPD detectives, both active-duty and retired contract agents like me.

  While I enjoyed the company of my own people, this physical separation between FBI and NYPD bespoke a separation of cultures wider than ten feet of carpeting.

  It was bad enough working here when I didn’t have a wife on the high-rent side of the room, and I needed an exit strategy from this place, but I didn’t want to just resign. Poking around the TWA 800 case might get me kicked out, which was fine with me and wouldn’t look to Kate like I was bailing out of our nice working arrangement, which she liked for some odd reason. I mean, I embarrass everyone I know, even other cops sometimes, but Kate, in some perverse way, seemed proud to be married to one of the problem cops on the twenty-sixth floor.

  Maybe it was an act of rebellion on her part, a way of saying to Jack Koenig, the FBI SAC—special agent in charge (sometimes called affectionately by the police detectives the MFIC—the motherfucker in charge)—as well as to the other bosses, that Special Agent Mayfield was not totally housebroken yet.

  Well, that was my deep thought for the day, and it wasn’t even 10 A.M. yet.

  I adjusted my tie and thought about a facial expression. Let’s see . . . I was quite possibly up to my ears in deep shit, so I decided to look upbeat and happy to be here.

  I got the face right and strode toward my desk.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I greeted my colleagues by name, hung my suit jacket on a cube hook, and took my seat at my workstation.

  I turned on my computer, entered my password, and read my e-mail, which was mostly interoffice memos. Sometimes there was an Orwellian message on the screen warning you about a new government Thought Crime.

  I played my phone messages, and there was one from a Palestinian-American informant, code-named Gerbil, who said he had important information for me that he couldn’t talk about over the phone.

  Mr. Emad Salameh was, in fact, a nearly useless source of information, and I never could figure out if he just wanted to feel important, or if he was a double agent, or if he only needed an extra twenty bucks now and then. Maybe he just liked me. I know he liked Italian food because he always picked an Italian restaurant for me to buy him lunch or dinner.

  The last two messages were hang-ups, which didn’t come up on my Caller ID, and which always intrigue me.

  I shuffled through some papers on my desk.

  My biggest challenge on this job was trying to figure out what to do. As a wise man (me) once said, “The problem with doing nothing is not knowing when you’re finished.”

  With homicide work, there’s always an active caseload of past and present murders, whereas with terrorist acts, you try to anticipate the crime.

  After the Asad Khalil case a year ago, I was assigned to a special team, which included Kate, and whose sole mis
sion was to pursue that case.

  But after a year, the clues and leads had run out, and the trail was cold. Not wanting to waste government money, our boss, Jack Koenig, had begun assigning Kate and me and the other agents on the team to different duties.

  I had been specifically hired by the Anti-Terrorist Task Force as a homicide specialist, just in case a terrorist-related homicide occurred, but that hadn’t happened since the Asad Khalil case, so now my duties consisted mostly of surveillance, which was what most of the NYPD-types did for the FBI. Kate was into threat analysis, whatever that meant.

  The special team once had its own little space near the Command and Control Center on this floor, and we worked in close proximity, with Kate at the desk directly across from mine, so I could look into her beautiful blue eyes every day. But now we were separated, and I had to look at Harry Muller, a former NYPD Intelligence Unit guy. I said to him, “Harry, what’s the definition of a moderate Arab?”

  He looked up at me. “What?”

  “A guy who ran out of ammunition.”

  He chuckled and said, “You told me that one.” He advised me, “You got to watch what you say. What’s the difference between an Arab terrorist and a woman with PMS?”

  “What?”

  “You can reason with an Arab terrorist.”

  I chuckled and said, “I told you that one, too. Two demerits. Racial and gender slur.”

  The Arab and Muslim community in New York, I should point out, is probably ninety-eight percent upstanding and loyal citizens, and one percent are useful idiots for the other one percent who are bad guys.

  I mostly watch and interrogate the useful idiots, and when I get a lead on the real bad guys, I have to turn it over to the FBI, who sometimes notifies the CIA, who similarly is supposed to notify the FBI of interesting leads. But in reality, they don’t keep each other informed, and they certainly don’t keep me informed. This is very frustrating, and was one of the reasons why I didn’t like this job since Koenig had basically dissolved the special team. Maybe it was also one of the reasons that Kate had dangled the TWA 800 crash in front of me and why I bit.

  Regarding the CIA, they have agents assigned to the ATTF, such as the late Ted Nash, but you don’t see many of them; they have offices on another floor and also across the street at 290 Broadway, and they drift in and out of the task force on a situational basis. I’m happiest when they drift out, and at the moment they seemed to be scarce.

  Harry asked me, “What did you do yesterday?”

  “I went to the TWA 800 memorial service out on Long Island.”

  “Why?”

  “Kate worked the case. She goes every year. Did you work that case?”

  “No.”

  “But it goes to show you. Five hundred people busted their tails on that case, and it turns out to be a mechanical malfunction.”

  Harry didn’t reply.

  I added, “Sometimes we get too paranoid on this job.”

  “We’re not paranoid enough.”

  “Right.” I asked, “What are you working on?”

  He replied, “Some stupid Islamic charity out in Astoria—it looks like they’re funneling money to some terrorist outfit overseas.”

  “Is that illegal?”

  He laughed. “How the hell do I know? I guess the illegal part is collecting money for one thing and doing something else with it. It violates some federal law. Problem is the money goes to a supposedly legitimate charity overseas, and then goes to where it doesn’t belong. It’s like trying to make sense out of my wife’s checkbook. But the FBI forensic accounting people find this fascinating. What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking a sensitivity course in Islamic culture.”

  He laughed again.

  I turned my attention back to the stuff on my desk. There were a lot of memos to read through, initial, and forward on, which I did.

  The interesting folders—what the Feds call dossiers—were locked in the records room, and if I needed one, I had to fill out a form, which was processed by persons unknown and either rejected or returned with the dossier.

  I have a secret clearance, but my need-to-know was limited, so I had to confine myself to the Khalil case, or cases I’d been assigned. This makes it difficult to discover if one case has anything to do with another. Everything was compartmentalized for security reasons, or reasons of turf protection, which, in my humble opinion, was a major weakness in the intelligence game. In police work, virtually every file is available to any detective with a hunch and a long memory about some case or some perp.

  But I shouldn’t make negative comparisons. Nothing succeeds like success, and so far, knock wood, the Feds had been very successful in keeping America off the front lines of global terrorism.

  Except once. Maybe twice. Maybe three times.

  The first time, the World Trade Center bombing, was a big surprise, but almost every perpetrator had been arrested, tried, and sent to jail for life.

  There was a nice granite monument for the six victims of the blast, erected between the Twin Towers directly above the site of the underground garage explosion.

  Then there was the TWA 800 explosion, which may or may not have been a score for the visitors.

  And then there was the Asad Khalil case, which from my point of view was a terrorist attack, but which the government had passed off as a series of murders committed by a man of Libyan descent who had a personal grudge against a number of American citizens.

  This was not quite the truth, as I can attest to, but if I said that, I’d be breaking the law, according to some oaths I’d taken and pledges I’d signed, all having to do with national security and so forth.

  This world of national security and counter-terrorism was truly a far different world than I was accustomed to, and I had to convince myself, every day, that these people knew what they were doing. Somewhere, however, deep in the back of my uncomplicated mind, I had some doubts.

  I stood, put on my jacket, and said to Harry, “Beep me if someone calls a meeting.”

  “Where you going?”

  “On a dangerous mission. I may not return.”

  “If you do, can you get me a Polish sausage on a roll? No mustard.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I left quickly, glancing at Kate, who was fixated on her computer screen. I got on the elevator to the lobby and went out to the street.

  There are still a few pay phones left in the era of cell phones, and I went to one out on Broadway. It was getting warm, and the sky was clouding up.

  I used my cell phone to look up Dick Kearns’s cell phone number, and I used the pay phone to call him.

  Dick, an old NYPD homicide colleague, had left the ATTF a few months earlier and was now a civilian doing security clearance background checks on a contract basis for the Feds.

  He answered, “Hello.”

  “Is this Kearns Investigative Services?”

  “It is.”

  “I think my wife is having an affair. Can you follow her?”

  “Who is this? Corey? You asshole.”

  “I thought you were doing matrimonial.”

  “I’m not, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”

  “Hey, what are you doing for lunch?” I asked.

  “Busy. What’s up?”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Talking to you. Where are you?”

  “Outside 26 Fed.”

  “You need me now?”

  “I do.”

  There was a pause, then he said, “I’m home. In Queens.” He added, “I work from home. Great job. You should consider it.”

  “Dick, I can’t bullshit all morning. Meet me soonest in that place in Chinatown. You know the one?”

  “One Hung Low?”

  “Right. Next to the Vietnamese place called Phuc Yu.” I hung up, found a pushcart, and got two Polish sausages on a roll, one without mustard.

  I went back into 26 Fed and up to my office.

 
; I gave Harry his Polish sausage, went to the coffee bar, and got a cup of black coffee. On the wall were FBI Wanted Posters in English and Arabic, including two for Mr. Osama bin Laden—one for the USS Cole attack, and one for the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. There was a $5 million reward on his head, but so far, no takers, which I thought was odd. For five million bucks, most people would turn in their best friend and their mother.

  The other odd thing was that bin Laden had never actually taken credit for any of the attacks that he’d supposedly masterminded. It was the CIA who had fingered him, but I wondered how they knew for sure. The point was, as I’d discussed with Kate yesterday, terrorist groups and individuals had apparently stopped bragging about their work, and this could be the case in the TWA 800 explosion.

  I looked at the face of Osama bin Laden on the Wanted Poster. Weird-looking guy. In fact, all these Mideast gentlemen on the dozen or so Wanted Posters looked scary, but maybe anyone on a Wanted Poster looks like a perp in that context.

  I stared at the poster of my old nemesis, Asad Khalil, a.k.a. The Lion. This was the one guy who looked fairly normal—well groomed and good-looking—but if you looked hard into those eyes, you saw the scary stuff.

  The text under Mr. Khalil’s picture was vague, speaking only of multiple murders of American and European nationals in various countries. The Justice Department reward was a measly one million bucks, which I personally found insulting, considering this scumbag tried to kill me and was still out there.

  Actually, if Ted Nash were still alive, he’d be even more insulted since it was Asad Khalil who had put a bullet from a sniper rifle through Ted’s head.

  I went back to my desk, sat down, and turned on my computer. I got on the Internet and typed in “TWA 800.”

  The internal security people sometimes checked what you were accessing, of course, but if they were checking up on me, then they already knew what I was up to.

  I saw that the entries for TWA 800 could take a week to go through, so I got on to the FIRO Web site first, and spent half an hour reading about conspiracy and cover-up.