Foreign Influence (27 page)

Davidson smiled. “Give it another hour. You’ll want to beat the guy to death with the heel of your shoe.”

He doubted it and they walked in silence the rest of the way to the Bronco and climbed in.

While Davidson did a radio check, Vaughan received an e-mail from one of the forensics specialists going over Nasiri’s taxi. The piece of plastic that had been recovered at the scene of the hit-and-run was indeed from a radiator header, and the radiator header in Nasiri’s cab was new. Everything they were telling him jibed with what the Pakistani mechanic from the Crescent Garage had told them.

The bad news was that there was no blood, hair, or tissue anywhere on the outside of the vehicle. Worse still was what the tech told him next.

Skirting the poisonous tree issue had not been easy. The only thing Vaughan could do was to ask his forensic pal to search the interior of the cab, as well as the trunk, for traces of any chemicals. He said he was looking for any sign that Nasiri had washed down his cab with solvents in an attempt to hide evidence of the hit-and-run. His real hope was that they would come back with hits for TATP or the precursors for the compound. The bad news from forensics was that the cab contained no traces of chemicals whatsoever.

Vaughan shared the bad news with Davidson as they pulled away from the curb and headed toward the alley.

“I’m not surprised,” replied Davidson. “If that stuff is as volatile as you say it is, they’re not going to want to move it until they absolutely have to. If Nasiri was transporting anything, it was bottles of peroxide and cans of drain cleaner; all nice and sealed.”

Vaughan didn’t like it, but he had to agree. “So we’ve still got nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing? You’ve got Josh Levy’s balls in the palm of your hand.”

He held up one of the cameras and looked at it.

“Now, Josh may think his balls are made of brass,” said Davidson,
“but I still think you should drop them out the window delicately. Nobody likes to have their balls busted.”

“Are you done?” asked Vaughan as he rolled down his window.

“Since you asked, you have to admit that even though he wanted to stay in the van, Josh really does have big balls.”

“Is that all of them?”

“All of my ball jokes?”

“Yeah.”

“For the moment.”

“Good,” said Vaughan. “I’d like to concentrate on what’s happening at the mosque.”

“Like Captain Hook.”

Vaughan nodded.

As they rolled up to the stop sign half a block from the alley, Davidson snapped the clip on the metal clipboard wedged between his seat and armrest. “You know what that is?”

“No. What is it?”

“The sound of
no
hands clapping.”

Vaughan shook his head. “Can we please concentrate on what we’re about to do?”

“So you’re asking me to give you a
hand
with this part?”

“You know, Levy probably isn’t the one I’m going to beat to death with my shoe tonight.”

“All right. I get it,” said Davidson. “You lawyers have no sense of humor. How fast do you want me to drive down the alley?”

“Fast enough to look like you know what you’re doing and are just cutting through.”

Davidson put his left hand over his eyes and waved his right index finger over the speedometer before landing on a speed. “Okay, got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah. You’d better put your thinking cap on. If this surveillance doesn’t pan out, we’re going to need a really good plan B.”

CHAPTER 37
 

Vaughan lowered the radio and looked at Davidson. They had just driven out of the alley after dropping all three covert surveillance balls. “Is the placement of the second camera ‘not right’ because it’s not right, or because Levy’s
not right
?”

“Despite what I told you, he knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t ask you to tweak it if he didn’t have a good reason.”

Levy’s voice came over the radio again. “Did you guys copy that?”

“Ten-four,” said Vaughan. “We heard you loud and clear.”

“You didn’t pitch it under a Dumpster, but you did manage to get it wedged behind a garbage can,” added Levy. “I wouldn’t be expecting a call from the White Sox this year.”

Davidson looked at him. “Is he pissing you off yet?”

“He’s getting there.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Vaughan really wanted a view of the back door of that building. “I’ll fix it.”

He climbed out of the Bronco and made his way into the alley. It was cluttered with empty boxes, splintered pallets, Dumpsters, and garbage cans. Though he didn’t have a terrific view, he did have lots of good concealment and he carefully picked his way forward.

Just before the building that held the mosque, he stopped and took a slow look around. If he was going to move the camera, he might as well put it in the best spot possible. Now that he was here, he wished he’d brought along a couple of the fiber-optic cameras as well. Having come this far, it would have made sense to go the rest of the way and get the best look at what was going on inside as they could.

The back of the building was covered in gray brick. The basement windows had been painted black and were covered with iron bars. The first-floor windows were covered with newspaper and also covered with bars. A broken lightbulb hung over the back door. The ground was littered with cigarette butts, despite a coffee can filled with sand, which the building’s smokers must have figured was a doorstop.

Vaughan identified a spot for his camera and stacked a few empty boxes around it so it would run less of a chance of being noticed. With a new hiding place ready, he went looking for the hard, black sphere.

There was a row of about five trashcans. The ball was fairly heavy for its size, and when he dropped it out the window he hadn’t expected it to roll very far. They must have been driving down the alley at a higher rate of speed than he had thought.

Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, he leaned over, tilted back the first can, and looked. There was nothing there. He slid out the second can and came up empty as well. It was the same story with the remaining three cans.
Where the hell had that thing gone to?

Vaughan studied the alley. There were buildings, cans, Dumpsters, and trash on both sides. The camera could have rolled to the other side, but he doubted it. He had dropped it on the east side of the alley. That was where it had to be.

He came back down the row of cans, tilting each one out, and this time he saw it. Even if his life had depended on it, he couldn’t have made such a one-in-a-million shot. Sitting wedged inside a laundry vent or a drain opening of some sort was his missing surveillance camera. He pulled back the can and bent over near the wall to free the ball.

He was just beginning to stand when he heard something behind him. Vaughan had no idea who it was and had learned a long time ago that discretion wasn’t always the better part of valor. He was in a dark alley in
a bad neighborhood on the trail of even worse people. He went for his Glock.

The move was met with a searing pain in his right hand as he was struck with a piece of rebar and his wrist was broken.

Vaughan spun and came up with his left hand in a fist. He connected with his attacker’s jaw and sent him stumbling backward. At that moment, the barrel of a gun was shoved into his face and a flashlight was shined in his eyes.

Though it hurt like hell on his right side, Vaughan raised his hands. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m a police officer.”

The light was taken out of his eyes and, for a moment, he thought he was going to be let go, until he felt his Glock being removed from his holster and saw the man he had punched out gather himself off the pavement and come forward. The man was Middle Eastern. This wasn’t good.

Walking over to him, the man drew his fist back and struck him right in the gut. Vaughan doubled over.

The man grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. Vaughan had been in plenty of fistfights in his time and he readied himself either for a knee to the face or for the man to punch down at his head. Either way, he knew it was going to hurt.

Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind his attackers. “This isn’t even a fair fight. You assholes didn’t bring enough guys.”

Vaughan looked past the man with the gun to see Davidson right behind him with his own gun pressed up against the back of the man’s head.

The man holding him by his hair let go and Vaughan straightened himself up. His relief at seeing Davidson was short-lived. Four other men were now standing behind him with weapons pointed right at him.

“Well, it looks like maybe you did bring enough guys,” said Davidson. “Why don’t we put our guns down and settle this like men?”

One of the men stepped forward and struck him in the kidneys with the butt of a rifle. Davidson’s knees buckled from the pain and he collapsed to the ground.

As his gun was taken away from him, Davidson looked up and said, “That’s it. You’re all under arrest.”

The man who had broken Vaughan’s wrist smiled and punched Davidson in the mouth.

Someone gave a series of orders in rapid Arabic and the two police officers were dragged from the alley and into the building.

As the heavy metal door clanged shut, Vaughan wondered what was going to happen, but part of him already knew. All of the bad feelings he’d had since going after Nasiri came flooding back. This was no longer Chicago, and he was no longer a cop or a lawyer working for the family of a young woman who’d been struck by a fleeing taxi. He was a Marine and he was being dragged into a terrorist hellhole worse than anything he had ever seen.

CHAPTER 38
 

G
ENEVA

The speed with which Reed Carlton worked was a testament to the efficiency of the private sector. Within hours, he had not only helped plug the holes in Harvath’s plan, he had gotten the train on the tracks and out of the station.

It was agreed that Michael Lee had seen and heard too much to be let go. For the time being, he was going to have to be held on to. And while Peio was a decent field medic, he wasn’t a trauma doc. Lee was stable, but he needed a professional to look at his wounds. There was an American surgeon based in Paris who was being flown in. She had some sort of relationship with the Department of Defense, but other than that, Carlton didn’t elaborate. All he added was that she was equipped to keep an eye on Lee until they decided what to do with him. Harvath had trouble imagining what a surgeon could do, short of keeping Lee drugged up, but he figured Carlton knew best and let it go. There were several more pressing items that needed to be worked out anyway.

As the attempted murder of the Troll had been orchestrated from within Switzerland, the United States didn’t have any jurisdiction. They also didn’t have any jurisdiction over the alleged murder of Lars Jagland. Not that anyone in the United States cared very much about either. All
they cared about were the Rome and Paris attacks. That and Sterk’s material support of terrorism and how it had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of American citizens.

Harvath was a big believer in the merits of enhanced interrogation. He also had no problem with torture when the situation called for it, which this one definitely did. There were very likely more attacks on the horizon, and Sterk possessed information that could help stop them. The key lay in applying as much pressure as was necessary to get her to play ball. Once she began cooperating, the pressure could be dialed back, but the threat of it ramping back up needed to hover over everything they did in order to ensure her continued collaboration.

If they’d had more time to interrogate her, Carlton and the higher-ups at the DOD might not have been so willing to cut a deal. But as it was, everyone, including Harvath, agreed that preventing further attacks was more important than prosecuting her.

Painting Sterk as a covert intelligence source for another agency, an immunity agreement was drafted. So long as she cooperated, Sterk would not be prosecuted.

With that demand met, they set to work on “closing out” Tony Tsui.