Black Friday (22 page)

N
ick almost didn’t recognize David Ceimo. He came into the hotel conference room wearing a leather bomber jacket and aviator sunglasses pushed up on top of his thick mass of hair. And he was smiling.

Patrick had just finished with the police sketch artist, who didn’t really sketch but manipulated the bomber’s face on a computer screen, using a special computer program. Wurth had been on the phone nonstop, using one of the hotel’s landlines instead of his cell phone. Kunze and Maggie pored over more files. Everyone, however, stopped what they were doing when Ceimo walked into the room.

“Just got the call. We have him,” he said directly to Maggie. “He’s alive and safe.”

“Thank God.”

Nick glanced around. Seemed Maggie was the only one who knew what Ceimo was talking about.

“Some of the bomber’s cohorts kidnapped Henry Lee’s grandson earlier today,” Ceimo explained.

“Dixon?” Patrick shot up. “Becca was with Dixon.”

“She’s still with him. She’s safe,” Ceimo told him.

“They had them locked up in the basement of a vacant office building. They must have been using it as a makeshift command center. Had computers, cables, wireless equipment—the works.”

“Was there anything left behind that might tell us where the next attack is planned?” Wurth asked.

“Everything was smashed. The kid—Dixon, said they had portable drives on the computers that they bagged up and took with them. The basement reeked with gasoline. They started a small fire in one of the hallways. Probably expected the whole place to blow up. And it would have had the SWAT team gotten there a few minutes later.”

Nick watched Maggie. She wasn’t surprised by any of what Ceimo was telling them. This must have been the favor she’d asked of him.

“How did you know where they were?” Nick asked. He noticed the look Ceimo and Maggie exchanged before Ceimo answered, as if he were getting permission. “Dixon had his grandfather’s cell phone. The kidnappers left it on for Mr. Lee to call. We were able to track their location by using the cell phone’s internal GPS signal.”

“Son of a bitch,” Kunze muttered.

“Outsmarted the assholes,” Ceimo said with that same smile that he had on his face when he came into the room. “They thought they had Mr. Lee under their thumb, so they got a bit cocky leaving the cell phone on. The boy said they taunted him with its ringing. They had no intention of returning him to his grandfather. Or the girl. Unfortunately, the kidnappers were gone before we got there.” He pointed to the police sketch artist. “The kids are giving us descriptions.”

“And Mr. Lee?” Maggie wanted to know.

“I’ve sent someone over to the hospital to let him know. He won’t be able to see Dixon until after this is over. They’re probably still having him watched.”

“Wait a minute. Henry Lee? Is that who we’re talking about?” Nick asked Maggie. “The head of HL Enterprises, the owner of United Allied Security, he was your informant?”

She glanced around the room, then nodded.

M
aggie gave one of her hotel room key cards to Patrick.

“Go get some sleep,” she told him. Actually it didn’t take much convincing once Ceimo promised to let him talk to Rebecca.

Charlie Wurth recommended they all go get a few hours of sleep. There was nothing more they could do here. As soon as Wurth informed Senator Foster about a second plot, he offered the use of his jet, but it wouldn’t be ready to take off for Phoenix until late afternoon. Wurth, himself, didn’t leave, continuing to work the phones, a landline and his cell phone, all the while punching keys on his laptop computer.

Before Maggie could pack up her own laptop, Nick was at her side.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me your informant was Henry Lee.”

He sounded upset. She checked his eyes. He was hurt.

“I told you I couldn’t. At least not until we knew his grandson was safe.”

“But Ceimo knew.”

She took a deep breath. Is that what this was about? A spark of jealousy between two old football rivals. Just when she thought Nick Morrelli could actually be a grown-up. Back in her hotel room, for a minute or two, she thought perhaps he had changed.

“He was able to help,” she explained, “using the governor’s influence.”

“If you honestly trusted me, you would have told me it was Henry Lee. But because I work for one of his companies…what’d you think, I would run off and tell my boss, Al Banoff?”

“Wait a minute,” Maggie said, putting up her hands in surrender. “I didn’t even know Mr. Lee was the majority owner of UAS.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said.” He didn’t believe her.

“Why would I lie? Is that what you’re insinuating? That I lied?”

“I don’t know, did you? You could trust Ceimo, but not me. Maybe you thought I was somehow involved in all of this…this ridiculous plot to strong-arm malls and airports to upgrade their security?”

“Of course not.” She was getting impatient. “If anything, they sent you to make sure their plot wasn’t revealed.”

That stopped him. As soon as she saw his jaw clench tight and twitch with tension, she knew she had said the wrong thing.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she started to apologize.

“I only meant that they may have taken advantage of sending someone new.”

“Someone green. Someone who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.”

“Nick.”

“Forget about it.” He waved her off. “There’re more important things to worry about right now.”

But she could tell he was still upset as he turned to leave, jaw still tight, shoulders squared. He didn’t just walk away from her, he left the room.

When she turned back, A.D. Kunze was there.

He pointed with his chin at the exit. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll get over it.” He lifted a file folder he had in his hand. “I have something I want you to see.”

“What is it?”

He looked around the room. Ceimo had left. Patrick and Nick were gone. Wurth was the only one and he was busy multitasking in the corner. Still, Kunze motioned for her to sit down at one of the tables in the opposite corner.

“It’s a debriefing file.” He handed it to her. “From Oklahoma City.”

“An agent who worked the scene?” He nodded.

“How did you get it?” Usually debriefing files weren’t easily accessed. Sometimes debriefings, especially in cases with gruesome casualties, were done more for the mental health of the agent than as a source of information.

“Never mind that. I downloaded a copy. Take it back with you. Sift through it.”

She opened the file folder. At first glance, the blacked out names, an assortment of inked-in rectangles, were what caught her attention.

“We had 43,000 lead sheets,” Kunze told her. “Interviewed 35,000 witnesses. It was overwhelming. You can’t even imagine. Some of the witnesses…” He shook his head, remembering. “I did some of the early interviews. I can tell you about them as if the interview was last week. Rodney Johnson. The guy was in a parking lot across from Fifth Street. He saw two men running from the federal building, in step, one behind the other. Couldn’t figure out why they were running. A minute later the blast blew out the windows in his pickup.

“He gave a description of both men. One fit Tim McVeigh. The other had an olive complexion, dark hair, muscular build, Carolina Panthers’ ball cap. Not even close to being Terry Nichols.

“Same thing in Junction City, Kansas, where McVeigh got the Ryder truck. Joanna Van Buren at the Subway shop said there were three men who came in for lunch. She remembered because she had to break a fifty-dollar bill for McVeigh. She called us almost immediately when the story broke. Another agent and I went to Junction City. Interviewed her and two other clerks. They ID’d McVeigh, gave vague descriptions of the other two. Again, one of them had an olive complexion, dark hair, muscular build. The sandwich shop had a security camera. I thought we lucked out. I confiscated the video.”

He must have seen the anticipation in Maggie’s eyes as she sat up, because he was shaking his head.

“The video disappeared before I had a chance to even look at it. Don’t even ask,” he told her. “Over twenty witnesses saw McVeigh with someone other than Terry Nichols. The descriptions were amazingly similar.”

“But there was a sketch that was released early on.”

“Here’s the thing.” Kunze hesitated. “Most of the interviews were done before that sketch was even made. Eyewitnesses are often unreliable. That’s what we’re told, right? But over a dozen people describing what sounds like the exact same guy?”

“So what are you telling me? That John Doe #2 was real? That he may be the Project Manager?”

“I can’t tell you whether or not he was real. We were never given the opportunity to find out. Are you familiar with Occam’s razor?”

“A little.” The exhaustion made it difficult to concentrate. She rubbed at her eyes as she said, “It has something to do with the simplest explanation being the correct one.”

He nodded, looking at his hands before folding them together on top of the table. He intertwined the fingers.

“That’s what we were told to follow,” he finally said.

“Occam’s razor is the principle that if you have two or more theories and the conclusion is the same, the simplest of the theories is usually the correct one. All of our theories, no matter how many men McVeigh was seen with or whether he was seen over and over again with this same olive complexion man, the conclusion always included McVeigh. So you razor out all the things you can’t explain, all the stuff that requires speculation, any hypothetical conclusions.”

“In other words, you were held back from finding out who John Doe #2 really was.”

“Certain people weren’t interested in a complex plot. As soon as they had McVeigh there was an urgency to tailor our investigation to ensure his prosecution. We had to at least nail him, right? Anything beyond that…razor it down.” He paused, watching her eyes as if he needed to know how all this information was registering.

Maggie simply waited.

“Look, I have no idea if this Project Manager could even be the same man,” Kunze said. “That doesn’t really matter. But the reference to Oklahoma City is unsettling. I think it means that this is something more than a greedy security corporation. It’s something more than causing a commotion, a wake-up call by switching jamming devices with bombs.”

“You don’t think this Project Manager is a rogue terrorist taking advantage of the opportunity?”

He shrugged.

“After Oklahoma City there was a journalist—” Kunze’s voice got quieter and he leaned closer “—who suggested McVeigh and Nichols were actually duped by a federal informant acting as a provocateur.”

“Are you suggesting the government provoked the Oklahoma City bombing?”

“Not the government as in the administration. God no. But maybe someone within the government. Someone with enough power and political ties. Someone upset that we virtually ignored the warning of the first World Trade Center bombing in ’93. Someone who thought there should be a wake-up call. Sound familiar?”

“You believe Henry Lee’s secret group exists?” Another big-shouldered shrug.

“You thought it was CAP,” she reminded him.

“He told you it was a smokescreen, a distraction. He didn’t deny a connection. Could be how they recruited those college kids. They may have used CAP just like they used those kids.”

“And they being…?”

“Is it so far-fetched to believe there might be other businessmen like Henry Lee who started with honorable intentions then got sidetracked? He mentioned business contracts. There were a helluva lot of contracts that came after Oklahoma City to reconstruct federal buildings, add security equipment, personnel.”

“I have to tell you,” she told Kunze. “I’m not much for conspiracy theories.” Perhaps she was simply exhausted but she couldn’t connect the dots Kunze was laying out in front of her.

“Just keep in mind, there’s some major legislation coming down concerning Homeland Security. Not just the dollars for Phoenix. There’re a couple of huge bills coming up for a vote, maybe before the holidays. I don’t know all the details but it reinstates some stiff regulations for security, regulations that need to be in place before the beneficiaries receive any of the federal dollars attached to the bill.”

“Let me get this straight.” She braced her elbows on the table and laid her chin in her hands. “You think this Project Manager, by making a reference to Oklahoma City, was tipping his hat, so to speak? Perhaps revealing that, just like Oklahoma City, these bombings are being orchestrated as a government conspiracy?”

Kunze started to interrupt but she put up her hand. “Correction, not the government but a group of businessmen with political ties, have hired a professional terrorist to carry out two fatal attacks just to move a bill through Congress?”

A.D. Kunze sat back and released a sigh. “You’re right. It does sound far-fetched.” He stood and stretched his arms above his head, rotating his thick neck back and forth and definitely putting an end to their conversation whether or not he was finished. Then as if it was an afterthought, he pointed to the file folder. “Do me a favor. Just skim through that.”

In flight
Leaving Minneapolis

P
atrick had never been on a private jet before. The huge leather captain chairs swiveled and reclined. The walls were paneled, the floor carpeted. They were being served beverages in crystal glassware. The pewter coasters were indented into the wooden side table and had the Senator’s initials, A.F., engraved. It was pretty amazing and yet all he could think about was his phone conversation with Rebecca.

It was short, way too short.

“I’m so sorry,” was one of the first things she said. After all she had been through and she was apologizing to him.

“Dixon made me think you might be involved somehow,” she explained. “He was scared. He made a mistake. I was scared. Can you ever forgive me?”

He was simply relieved to hear her voice, to know she was finally safe. He couldn’t, however, tell her about Phoenix. Couldn’t explain what was going on, except that he would see her in a couple of days.

He looked around the inside of the plane, wondering what exactly he had gotten himself into. A couple of days ago he would have steered clear, content to be on the sidelines. He still wasn’t sure why he wanted to do this, needed to do this.

Deputy Director Wurth and Mr. Morrelli were at the back of the plane. They had a map of Sky Harbor spread out on a table and were going over details. Assistant Director Kunze had taken one of the chairs on the other side of the aisle and was stretched out, fast asleep, or at least it sounded like it from his heavy breathing.

Maggie sat directly across from Patrick, staring out the window into the night. She had been reading what looked like poor photocopies of documents that had black rectangles stamped throughout the pages. Classified stuff, no doubt. He didn’t think the documents held all her attention. She looked preoccupied, thinking about something else. But then how would he know? He kept telling himself that Maggie didn’t know him at all. Yet how hard had he tried to get to know her?

One thing he did know—she wasn’t happy that he was coming along.

“I guess I really just want to help,” he said, out of the blue, almost as if he had only now found the answer for himself.

She looked over at him as if she had forgotten he was there.

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He smiled at that. Couldn’t help it. He caught himself trying to hide it with a swipe of his fingers to his mouth. If she’d only seen what he had already gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

“What?” she asked, her voice sounding defensive.

“I’ve never had anyone worry about me.”

“Your mom worries about you.”

This time he laughed. She obviously didn’t know his mom either. “I’ve worried about my mom for a lot more years than she’s worried about me.”

Her eyes met his and there was something he recognized before she looked away.

She glanced out the window again.

“We have more in common than either of us realize,” she told him.

“Probably why I need to go along.” This time she smiled.

“I really can take care of myself,” he told her and only hoped she never found out about the dryer incident.

They sat in silence, a bit awkward, but Patrick knew she was letting him control the silence. Leaving the decision to him and what, if anything, he wanted to share. Maybe it was time he told her some things about himself if he ever wanted her to get to know him.

“I changed my major,” he said.

Before he could continue, she surprised him by saying, “I know. Fire Science. How do you like it?”