Fear City (45 page)

Burkes leaned forward and lowered his voice. “A cover-up is what gives. NYPD cleared the area and sent the bomb squad into the van. They found nitroglycerin inside, which they took away in their special truck. Found compressed hydrogen too. That was one
hell
of a bomb those Arabs built. The devastation would have been incredible had it gone off. After removing the nitro, they towed that van away without a by-your-leave. I don't think anyone outside NYPD will ever see it again.”

“What?” Then he got it. “Oh. Big black eye if it ever came out how they blew you off.”

“Exactly. All sorts of heads would roll and you can be damn well sure you'd be looking at a new police commissioner come the morning.”

“They're damn lucky it didn't go off.”

Burkes took a big gulp. “
Thousands
are lucky it didn't go off. Thanks to you. Too bad you won't get any recognition for defusing that monstrosity.”

“Hell, don't want any. Saved my own skin as well.”

“Still, you deserve a medal.”

Jack waved his hands. “No, thanks. Noooooo, thanks. You didn't say anything about me, did you? Please tell me you didn't say anything.”

“Not a word.” Burkes stared at him. “You're a strange sort, you are.”

“Just a very private person. A recluse. A hermit even.”

“A hermit without a damn nerve in his body. I almost shat myself when you yanked on those wires. Bravest thing I've ever seen. Or the stupidest.”

“Wasn't brave at all, so that leaves stupid, I guess. I saw one option and took it. Nothing brave about that.”

Burkes tapped his temple. “You kept your wits. I'm impressed.”

Jack didn't like him making a big deal like this. He tried to change the subject.

“How about the bombers themselves? What about that Kadir character? Killed his own sister.”

“Not a clue about them. Nobody knows a damn thing. NYPD, FBI—they've got nothing—
nothing
. A bunch of dobbers, the lot of them.”

“And Manson Eyes, the guy who lit the UN bomb?”

“Vanished.”

“And what was all that smoke down the street?”

“A minivan with smoke bombs. A diversion, just like we thought. The cops used that as an excuse to clear the plaza so they could cart off the van with the bomb.” He shook his head. “I'm still impressed as all hell how you disarmed it.”

“Look, I didn't know how much time we had. I mean, it came down to three outcomes: Don't pull the fuses and die. Pull the fuses and die. Or pull the fuses and live until you die from something else.”

“Die-die-die!” he said, laughing. “You must have been a Scot in another life.”

“I had an uncle in the Black Watch.”

His eyes lit. “The Ladies from Hell! Then you
are
a Scot—at least partly. Tell me about this uncle.”

“Some other time.”

He was already kicking himself for saying that much. It had slipped out.

“Right, then. And there
will
be other times.”

“What do you mean?”

“I like the way you handled yourself through this whole shambles. The way you tracked al-Thani. How you took care of business in your friend's garage. You found out about the bombs—and that there were two of them. If you hadn't been on board, who knows how many would have died? We'd be sifting through a pile of rubble on the East River for days looking for bodies.”

“That's kind of an exaggeration—”

“Not at all. You even figured where the second bomber might be headed.”

“But I didn't stop him.”

“With the proper resources you could have. Anyway, I could use someone like you now and again.”

Jack didn't know what to think of that.

“What's someone like me? And ‘use' how?”

“An American who's off the radar and thinks on his feet and isn't too worried about legal niceties. Can I call on you if I find myself in need of someone like that? You'd get paid, of course.”

Jack thought about that. Flirting with officialdom. Probably not wise. They'd want tax forms filled out and all that crap.

“I don't know. It would have to be unofficial—I mean strictly under the table.”

“Of course. Anything above the table I can get the local coppers to handle. No, this would be strictly sub rosa.”

Well, then …

“Okay. Yeah. Sure. Why not?”

He could use the money. He hadn't earned a cent this week.

“Excellent!” Burkes finished his pint and slammed it down. “Barkeep! Another round. On me!”

 

2

What a long strange trip, Jack thought as he sat in his front room and stared at the TV.

Well, not so long. Not yet three years in the city, but it seemed like a dozen or so. He'd gained friends and allies in Abe and Julio and the Mikulskis. Even Burkes … Burkes who kept telling him that he'd helped save thousands of lives today. Yeah, well, maybe. But he wished he could have saved four more: Rico, Bonita, Bertel, and dear, dear Cristin. His throat tightened at the memory of Bonita's innocent smile, Cristin's throaty laugh … both taken from the world by the same hand.

Their deaths hadn't gone unanswered—the blood on his hands attested to that—but they were gone just the same. Evening the scales hadn't brought them back.

He'd learned lessons in these years, some the hard way. If he had taken the Mikulskis' advice back in that marsh on Staten Island, Cristin and Bonita and Rico would still be alive. He would never make that mistake again.

But what about the next three years? And the three after that? He'd learned that he could look at a situation from a perspective other people didn't have. He could put that ability to use if given the chance. But there lay the crux of the matter: How to get that chance? If he could build up a backlog of successes as a problem solver, word of mouth would keep things going. That was the catch-22: How to build a rep for solving problems if no one was looking to you for solutions?

His gaze strayed back to the TV with its ongoing wall-to-wall coverage of the Trade Tower bombing. For days now the New York stations had wanted to talk of nothing else. Which was fine, because Jack wasn't interested in much else going on in the world right now. He continued to be amazed at how clueless the police were about the identity of the bombers.

The phone rang. Who…?

He turned down the TV volume and let the answering machine pick up.

“Hello?”
said a tentative voice he didn't recognize.
“This is Evan calling Repairman Jack.”

Repairman Jack? What the—?

“I saw your ad in the
Village Voice
and—I hope I'm reading you right … if I am, I think I have a problem that could use your attention. Please call me back at…”

Jack rose and stumbled over to the machine.

Repairman Jack … the
Village Voice
 …

“Oh, no. Abe, you didn't. You
didn't
.”

The message counter read
5
. That meant four other calls. He ran through them. Two were about appliances but the other two might involve the kind of work he was interested in. Two mentioned
Newsday
, all the rest mentioned the
Village Voice
.

Jack had developed a nodding relationship with his neighbor Neil. He'd noticed copies of the
Voice
in the foyer by the mailboxes with his apartment number on them. He took the stairs down to the floor below and knocked on his door.

“Hey, Neil? It's Jack from upstairs.”

Light was coming through the peephole. It went dark, then a voice filtered through the door. “What do you want?”

“Can I borrow the latest
Village Voice
?”

“Why?”

“Need to check something.”

Two deadbolts turned, then the door opened—but only as far as the chain would allow. A folded newspaper poked through.

“Here y'go. Bring it back tomorrow. As in ‘not tonight.'”

“Gotcha. Thanks.”

Jack hurried back to his own place and paged through to the personals. And there, in the
Personal Services
column, four lines …

When all else fails …
When nothing else works …
REPAIRMAN JACK

The fourth line was his phone number.

This was crazy. He couldn't advertise …

Then again, why not? As Abe had said, how was anyone going to know he even existed, let alone the service he was offering? And three out of the first five calls were not about appliances.

Maybe … just maybe he could make a living as … what? A fixer?

The only downside would be the name. Kind of hokey. He wasn't crazy about the idea of being known on the grapevine as Repairman Jack.

Behind him, the phone began to ring again …

www.repairmanjack.com

 

AFTERWORD

The Facts:

On February 26, 1993, a Ryder van crammed with nitroglycerin, three cylinders of compressed hydrogen, and three quarters of a ton of urea nitrate exploded at 12:17
P.M.
in the parking basement of Tower One of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. It killed six people, injured a thousand more, and ripped through six floors of reinforced concrete.

That is the real-life event that anchors the fiction of
Fear City
.

Mahmoud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Ramzi Yousef, and Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman were all real-life participants. Aimal Kasi killed CIA employees waiting to turn into the Langley HQ.

*   *   *

The Fiction:

Kadir Allawi is a composite of the fanatical followers of Sheikh Omar. Dane Bertel is a composite of all the knowledgeable people shouting warnings that Islamic terror was on its way to the U.S. but who were ignored at every level.

The events transpiring over eleven days in the novel took eight weeks to unfold in real life. Time compression was necessary to maintain a tight narrative.

There was no second bomb in our world (at least as far as we know). But there was in Jack's, because the Septimus Order runs much of Jack's world and had a reason for not wanting the towers brought down. If you've read
Ground Zero
, you know the reason.

*   *   *

Mark Twain said, “It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

I've had to leave out a lot of real-life details about the bomb builders because
fiction has to make sense.
If I included them you'd think I was writing a screwball comedy with the FBI playing the Keystone Kops. Or you'd think I was trying to fob off a Swiss-cheese plot on you.

As a for-instance, let's look at the real-life Mohammed Salameh. He manages to get a five-year visa to the U.S. so he can avoid the draft in Jordan. He has terrible vision and flunks his driver test four times in Jersey. Abouhalima finally wrangles him one from Brooklyn. Over the course of the bomb-making weeks he wrecks two cars, the latter accident putting chief bomb maker Ramzi Yousef in the hospital for four days. So, when nearly a ton of explosive is finally ready and packed in the van, who gets tapped to pilot it from Jersey City to the World Trade Center? Right—Salameh.

Miraculously, he completes the drive to Tower One, where the bomb is detonated. But after that, instead of disappearing, he returns to the rental place saying the van was stolen and he wants his four-hundred-dollar deposit back. This leads to his arrest and the unraveling of the conspiracy.

It's not that you can't make this stuff up—you don't dare. Carl Hiaasen can get away with it in his surreal crime novels, but admit it: If I put that in
Fear City
, you'd be saying,
You can't be serious, Wilson. No one would let him drive the bomb van.

I won't even start on how many opportunities the FBI had to prevent this but dropped the ball every time. You can find all the head-scratching details in my main source on the bombers and the bomb,
Two Seconds Under the World
by Jim Dwyer, David Kocieniewski, Deidre Murphy, and Peg Tyre.

In case you're wondering: Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Nidal Ayyad, and Mohammed Salameh were arrested in the weeks after the bombing. Mahmoud Abouhalima and Ramzi Yousef fled the country but were arrested overseas and brought back for trial. All are serving life sentences in maximum security prisons. Aimal Kasi was executed for the murders outside CIA HQ in Langley.

 

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WORLD

The preponderance of my work deals with a history of the world that remains undiscovered, unexplored, and unknown to most of humanity. Some of this secret history has been revealed in the Adversary Cycle, some in the Repairman Jack novels, and bits and pieces in other, seemingly unconnected works. Taken together, even these millions of words barely scratch the surface of what has been going on behind the scenes, hidden from the workaday world. I've listed them below in chronological order.

Note: “Year Zero” is the end of civilization as we know it; “Year Zero Minus One” is the year preceding it, etc.

THE PAST

“Demonsong” (prehistory)

“The Compendium of Srem” (1498)

“Aryans and Absinthe”
**
(1923–1924)

Black Wind
(1926–1945)

The Keep
(1941)

Reborn
(February–March 1968)

“Dat Tay Vao”
***
(March 1968)

Jack: Secret Histories
(1983)

Jack: Secret Circles
(1983)

Jack: Secret Vengeance
(1983)

“Faces”
*
(1988)

Cold City
(1990)

Dark City
(1991)