Dead on Arrival (6 page)

He had been in Philadelphia for more than two months, and then two days ago, when he was finally on his way to Cleveland, on to the next target, that man tried to crash his plane into the White House. He’d been walking toward the bus depot when it happened, and he’d just passed a crowd gathered around the window of an electronics store when he heard a woman say, ‘Oh, my God! Not again.’

He should not have stopped, it was foolish to have done so, but he did. He looked at the enormous television in the window of the store and saw a small plane flying; then, an instant later, he saw the plane explode and a military jet fly through the ball of flame and smoke where the plane had been. The caption at the bottom of the television screen read, ‘Katie, we don’t know who was flying the plane at this time. One high-ranking official at the Pentagon, who we can’t name, said the pilot was a well-known Muslim attorney, but we have not been able to confirm that. What we do know is that the man appeared to be trying to crash his plane, a Cessna, into the White House. The Cessna was shot down by Air National Guard pilots flying F-Sixteen Falcons, and the president was evacuated from the White House only minutes before the plane was destroyed.’

As he had stood there looking at the huge television set, he became aware that people were turning and beginning to stare at him, so he had lowered his head and continued on his way, trying to remain calm. Someone in the crowd had called out to him, but he’d kept walking.

He had decided immediately that it would be too risky to go to the bus depot that day. People would be too vigilant. So he had returned to the safe house where he’d been staying since the debacle of the Baltimore tunnel. Once inside, he had turned on the television and listened to the news reports, realizing as he listened that he was going to have to postpone going to Cleveland for a few days, maybe longer, because of what had just happened.

He had only God to thank that he was not at that moment in a jail cell being tortured. He had left the garage in Baltimore that night to make a phone call, a call from a public phone booth, and had difficulty finding a working phone in a country inhabited by animals. And then he had gotten lost because he didn’t know the city very well. Had it not been for making a wrong turn, he too would have been in the garage when the FBI blasted their way in. But God saved him. Praise be to God.

He knew from subsequent news reports how the two fools had been caught. He’d told them to buy the ammonium nitrate in small batches, very small batches, but for whatever reason – laziness, recklessness, stupidity – they had purchased enough fertilizer in one place to draw suspicion upon themselves. Worse yet,
he
had been identified.

When he had fled Baltimore he had gone to the home of a devout couple in Philadelphia. His intent had been to stay there only a week, two at the most, by which time he thought it would be safe to travel. But then the fools told the FBI about his artificial leg, and the next thing he knew there was a grainy, barely recognizable photograph of him in the newspapers. So he had cut his hair and shaved his beard and stayed in the basement for two months. But it hadn’t been a total waste of time; while he was in hiding he learned more about the boy in Cleveland and about another boy, this one in Sante Fe. And he learned
much
more about the next objective.

The Internet truly would set the world free.

The amazing thing about the incident in Baltimore had been the reaction of this senator, this William Broderick. It was exactly the sort of reaction they had wanted, but he had never expected it when the attack on the tunnel had failed. But now, because of what this lawyer had done, there was talk of some law being passed that would cause even more discontent among the faithful in this country.

They were truly blessed.

What he didn’t know was if any of his brethren had helped the lawyer. He knew he was not the only one of his kind in this country, so it was possible that the leader of another cell had recruited the man. But the lawyer was not the type he himself would have selected; he was too old, too well educated, and, most important, he seemed too entrenched in American society, not a devout Muslim at all. So maybe it was as their FBI had said – the man had just gone insane because of all that had happened to him – but that didn’t strike him as sounding right either.

Whatever the case, the lawyer had helped them, and this senator – he was helping them even more.

DeMarco had learned long ago that working for John Mahoney was never simple.

The simple thing would have been for Mahoney to call the FBI, ask his questions about Reza Zarif, and then swear the Bureau to secrecy if he was worried about the press. But no, that would have been simple. And straightforward.

Mahoney had never done anything straightforward in his life.

But if Mahoney’s character had been different he wouldn’t have employed DeMarco, a man with an office in the subbasement of the Capitol, a space a long way from the speaker’s realm in terms of both distance and stature. DeMarco’s family history – the fact that his father had worked for the mob – was not something a politician preferred on an employee’s résumé. DeMarco’s lineage, however, was not the only reason he worked where he did. The other reason was that Mahoney liked having a man on his staff who wasn’t really on his staff.

No organizational chart showed that the speaker employed DeMarco, because this provided Mahoney that ever-important political advantage known as
deniability
. For example, because it was DeMarco who brought Mahoney envelopes stuffed with cash, Mahoney could honestly deny ever having met with the envelope stuffer, should the need arise. DeMarco was the guy, in other words, that Mahoney used when he wanted something done but didn’t want his fat fingerprints, literally or otherwise, found at the scene. And if DeMarco was ever caught doing something illegal, John Mahoney could, and would, deny that DeMarco worked for him.

DeMarco could understand, of course, why Mahoney had no desire for the press to know of his relationship to the Zarif family – that he was, as Mahoney had phrased it, a lifelong friend of a man whose son ‘tried to park a plane on the president’s desk.’ DeMarco figured, however, that the news guys would have to dig pretty hard to connect Mahoney to Ali Zarif.

Ali was an Iranian immigrant who had come to this country when he was ten and had known Mahoney from the time they were teenagers. Mahoney had been the catcher on his high school baseball team, and Ali Zarif had pitched. How the young Iranian had learned to throw a curve ball was but another legend of the American melting pot.

In his twenties, Ali leased a space near Boston’s Quincy Market and began to sell rugs. Persian rugs, Chinese rugs, Indian rugs. He sold beautiful, expensive rugs. Forty years later, he owned two other stores in the Boston area. When his friend John Mahoney made his first run for Congress those many years ago, Ali helped with the young politician’s campaign, registered his fellow Muslims to vote – and they
all
voted for John Mahoney. But Ali was just a successful businessman and not a big-name donor or a guy who craved the spotlight. Unless the press discovered that Hassan Zarif had visited Mahoney – or became aware that the floors of Mahoney’s Boston home were covered with Ali’s rugs – Mahoney’s friendship with Ali would most likely remain hidden from the media.

Regarding Reza Zarif, DeMarco decided that before he talked to the Bureau or anyone else, he needed to do a little preliminary research. And this meant bending over and picking from the stack of newspapers on the floor next to his desk the last two days’ editions of
The New York Times
and
The Washington
Post
. He’d read the articles about Reza before, but when he’d read them the first time he’d just been another shocked citizen and not a man assigned to uncover the reasons behind a terrorist act.

As he hated to work in his windowless office, DeMarco decided to accomplish his research on Reza in more pleasant surroundings: the Hawk and Dove, a Capitol Hill bar that had been in business almost as long as politicians had been taking bribes. He plopped down onto a bar stool, greeted the barman, and ordered a martini. He had discovered that the first martini of the day sharpened his mental powers; the martinis that followed tended to have the opposite effect. Drink in hand, he then spread open the papers to read for a second time what all the Pulitzer Prize winners had to say about Reza.

There was no question that he was flying the plane that the Air National Guard had blown out of the sky two days ago. The plane had been co-owned by Reza and three other lawyers, the other men all white Christians. The morning he attacked the White House, Reza had been seen by two people at the Stafford airfield who had known him for five and seven years respectively, and one of those men had seen Reza climb into the cockpit of the Cessna.

Ten minutes after the F-16 pilot had identified the tail numbers on the Cessna, FBI agents had been dispatched to Reza’s home in Arlington. Inside the house they found Reza’s wife and two children – a boy of eight and a girl of eleven – all dead. They’d each been shot once in the head with a .9mm automatic that had been found sitting in the middle of the Zarifs’ dining room table like some sort of ugly lethal centerpiece. Reza’s fingerprints were on the gun.

One sentence in the article said that the FBI had found a document in Reza’s house that indicated he had ties to al-Qaeda, but that’s all the FBI would tell the press. The Bureau claimed that the specifics of the document were classified because disclosing them could affect other ongoing operations, which was a fairly standard explanation used by the feds when they wanted to keep something from the media. Whether the explanation was true or not was a different issue.

Had Reza Zarif been an Iranian national who had slipped into the country using a false passport, his actions might have made some sense: just another radical Muslim who had decided to strike a blow for his brethren in the jihad and sacrificed himself and his family in the process. But that’s not who Reza Zarif had been.

Reza and his brother, Hassan, were Americans, born and raised in Boston. They attended public schools, and then Reza went to Boston College where he obtained a law degree. After law school, he moved to Washington, worked briefly for the Department of Justice, then established a small private practice near his home in Arlington, Virginia. A large number of his clients had been of Middle Eastern descent and he dealt mostly with mundane matters related to wills, taxes, and property. And he prospered.

But all this changed with 9/11. Reza became a fervent advocate for American Muslims. He was concerned that, in the backlash following the attacks, Muslims would suffer the same fate as Japanese Americans had following Pearl Harbor. He objected loudly and publicly to the Patriot Act and defended several Muslims, all American citizens, who had been detained or incarcerated for allegedly having terrorist connections.

Reza was handsome and articulate and passionate. He became an occasional guest on
NOW
and
The News
Hour with Jim
Lehrer
, and when Senator William Broderick made his famous speech, Reza became one of his most vocal opponents. Two weeks before his death, Reza appeared with Broderick on
Meet the Press
– and he lost it. He absolutely lost it.

The morning of the show he’d flown in from New York, where he had been defending a client, and had received disproportionate attention from airport security personnel. So when he arrived on Russert’s set he was already angry. For a while he maintained his composure with Broderick, but then Broderick made a remark about how performing background checks on American Muslims seemed like a pretty sensible thing to do, them being the people most likely to be terrorists. It wasn’t so much what Broderick said as the way he said it, as if it was no big deal – and Reza just went nuts. He rose up from his chair, pointed his finger at Broderick’s pale face, and screamed at him for several minutes, spittle flying from his mouth. Russert cut to a commercial when the fireworks died down, and when the show resumed Reza had left the set – which was too bad, as Broderick was then able to use the remaining air time to give his standard pitch.

Unfortunately, one of the things Reza said to Broderick was that 9/11 had occurred in part because of people like Broderick, people who made absolutely no attempt to understand the struggles of Muslims throughout the world. And maybe, Reza had said, it would take another 9/11 before Broderick and his kind would wake up.

Using less technical jargon than they normally did, the FBI concluded that Reza Zarif had just plain
snapped
. In the last seven years, he had dug himself into a deep financial pit because he had neglected his law practice, and he was perpetually resentful because the government’s lawyers usually kicked his ass in court. He’d lost weight, his hair had turned prematurely gray, and, always an emotional man, he’d become downright volatile, flying into rages on the slightest provocation. To help make the FBI’s point,
The New York Times
showed a still picture of Reza berating Broderick on
Meet the Press
, his eyes bugging out, his face twisted with fury, looking in general like an escapee from a mental institution. He just snapped, the FBI spokesman said.

So who should DeMarco believe: Hassan Zarif, a man who claimed his brother was not only sane but patriotic, or a legion of qualified FBI agents who had gathered a mountain of evidence and had guys with doctorates in psychology backing up their claims?

DeMarco decided that the answer to that question would have to wait until tomorrow.

He ordered a second martini.

As the cab cruised down Main Street at precisely thirty miles per hour, Jeremy Potter took in the neat shops, the old-fashioned lampposts, the courthouse that had been the background for a Rockwell cover on
The Saturday Evening Post
– and he immediately begin to relax. The last two months had been very hectic. He was so glad to be home.

For two months, he’d worked like an absolute slave. He’d spent hours on the Internet and had taken trips to Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and Trenton to observe people who often lived in minority neighborhoods and where, being a small white man of fifty-three, he’d felt quite vulnerable. And then there’d been the meetings with the two government people. Those meetings hadn’t taken long, but they’d been extremely stressful, by far the riskiest part of his assignment. But now it was finally over and he’d been successful, and Mr Lincoln had been very pleased.

He didn’t know why Mr Lincoln had asked him to do what he did, but that wasn’t at all unusual. He would be given a task – typically research, sometimes surveillance, frequently duties as a courier – but he would rarely know how his role fit into Mr Lincoln’s grand design. Come to think of it, it seemed as if this time he knew much more than he normally did. He was certainly able to see a pattern in his research, and the government men – well, in order to bribe them, although
bribe
may not be the correct term, he had to be very specific regarding Mr Lincoln’s expectations.

Yes, he could definitely see the outline of Mr Lincoln’s plan. He couldn’t see every detail – not how it would be executed, or why or when or by whom – but he could see enough that it made him feel uncomfortable.

In most respects, Mr Lincoln was an ideal employer. He paid well, he was invariably pleasant in conversation, and his directions were always perfectly clear. But he had always suspected that knowing too much of Mr Lincoln’s plans could be dangerous – terminally dangerous – and right now he had this little mental itch, this tickling sensation at the back of his brain, that said maybe, just maybe … ?

Oh, quit being such a nervous Nelly, he told himself. He’d worked for Mr Lincoln for years. He was a trusted employee. A
valued
employee. And he’d been paid. He patted his chest and felt the reassuring lump of cash in the envelope in the inside pocket of his blazer. Mr Lincoln certainly wouldn’t have paid him if his plan was to harm him. That would be illogical, and Mr Lincoln was never illogical.

The cab stopped at his address. He tipped the driver exactly fifteen percent and stood for a moment on the sidewalk admiring his home. He privately thought of it as a
cottage
– loved his small patch of lawn, the ivy crawling up the chimney, the daisies that grew near the door – and he didn’t care one whit that his white picket fence was considered by some a cliché.

He unlocked his front door, dropped his suitcase in the foyer, and silenced the alarm. It was so, so good to be home. His only disappointment was that Mabel wasn’t there. But he’d pick her up from the kennel later, and then he and his cat would spend the next week reading, relaxing, and cooking – and thinking about how they’d spend the money in the envelope. Maybe they’d take a trip to Martha’s Vineyard; they hadn’t been there in years.

He walked into the living room. The first thing he thought when he saw the woman sitting on the loveseat holding a silenced automatic in her hand was not
How did she get in without setting off the alarm?
No, his mind leaped right past that question.

His first thought – and his last thought – was that the person Mr Lincoln had sent to kill him was very beautiful.