The Intercept (20 page)

Chapter 39

B
in-Hezam stood for many moments after she left, listening for the elevator ding and the doors to open and close, then sat deeply in one of the purple chairs. He remained still for several minutes, praying silently now. He was grateful for having reached this point in the mission.

The woman Aminah bint Mohammed appeared capable. He reviewed his steps many times, making certain that he had fulfilled each one and in doing so had left nothing lacking, or to chance.

Bin-Hezam stood and walked to the closet. He entered the month and year of the prophet Mohammed’s birth into the keypad of the room safe. He removed the nickel-plated pistol and the shoulder holster, and unloaded and reloaded the handgun.

In the bedroom of the suite, Bin-Hezam laid the holster and pistol upon the bed. He stripped to his white briefs and T-shirt, unfolding the freshly laundered white shirt and slipping into it, enjoying the sensation of clean, crisp cotton against his skin.

Next the trousers. He recalled packing them in Stockholm, and the anticipation of boarding the plane three days ago. He clasped the belt at his waist and smiled to himself. Everything becoming totems now.

He began to recite the prayer aloud, his own voice a soothing accompaniment to the
schripp
of Velcro as he arranged the straps of the holster to fit his back and shoulder.

“Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead.”

The holster fit perfectly with the butt of the gun on his left flank just below his rib cage. To draw it, he had only to reach across his body, slide his hand under the suit coat, and tug it free.

Free
.

“I would love to be martyred in Allah’s cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred . . .”

Bin-Hezam lifted the dark brown suit coat from its place on the bedcover, feeling the back straps of the holster tight against him as he slipped it on. He turned to face the mirror over the vanity across from the bed.

Perfect, he thought.

He retrieved his cell phone. He was dismayed at first when he opened the desk drawers and found them all empty—but then discovered the New York phone directories stacked on the top shelf of the closet.

He opened to the middle of the book and flipped pages until he found a listing for Saudi Arabian Airlines. He placed a call to their office on Kew Gardens Road in Kew Gardens, Queens, and inquired about the next available flight departing for Saudi Arabia.

He conversed with them in Arabic. He mentioned that he would be paying cash.

The man on the other end of the line read him the flight number and details, but Bin-Hezam did not bother to write them down. He hung up once the call was completed, and then set his cell phone down on the ledge by the high window.

Chapter 40

F
isk shot back over to Intel, lighting up his grille flashers and siren at red lights to get there faster. At his desk, he was looking over an array of Bin-Hezam photos showing his face from various angles when his computer chimed with a programmed alarm for the Joint Terrorism Task Force e-mail network.

It was an encrypted message, an incident number and instructions to call the JTTF liaison at NSA. Fisk dialed on a secure Intel landline.

The voice on the other end asked for his name, then his incident number.

“We just got a good hit on cell line Arabic per your request, Detective Fisk.”

“I’m listening.”

“So are we,” said the NSA agent. “Call went out of mid-Manhattan to Saudi Arabian Airlines in Queens. We’re tracing the originating end now.”

“The airline? What flagged it?”

“The voice asked for flight information and wants to pay cash.”

Fisk nodded. “A flight tonight?”

“From JFK. In five hours.”

“How long ago?”

“About four minutes ago. That’s why we haven’t traced the source yet.”

“Male voice, I’m assuming?”

“That is correct.”

“Can I hear it?”

“Not over the phone. I can e-mail you the voice file, but it is in Arabic.”

“Yes. Not a problem. Send it immediately, please.”

Fisk hung up and waited. An e-mail from an unknown source landed in his spam file. He opened it. The audio file was attached.

Fisk clicked play and the telephone conversation played out of his speakers. He slapped in his headphone jack in order to concentrate.

They had no comparison voice impression from Bin-Hezam. It could have been him. If so, why was he planning to fly out as soon as possible? Because his work here was finished? Or because he had gotten spooked and needed to flee?

Fisk’s secure line rang. He pulled down his headphones to answer it.

“Detective Fisk?”

It was the same NSA agent. “How’d you get this numb . . . never mind.”

“If you could give me that incident number again.”

Fisk found it in his e-mail and repeated it.

“I have a twenty on the other end of that call. The location it was placed from is the middle of the block on the north side of West Twenty-eighth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. GPS zeroes it at the Hotel Indigo.”

Fisk did not know the hotel, but he knew the block. Flower shops.

“Don’t suppose you have a room number for me?” said Fisk.

“Ha,” said the NSA agent. Not a laugh, but the actual word. “Good luck, Detective.”

Fisk rushed into Dubin’s office to brief him. Dubin scrambled an interdiction team in full extraction armor. There was no discussion about getting a warrant first.

“I’m going with,” said Fisk. “That way if something breaks on the photo front, we’re already on the island.”

Chapter 41

T
he heat wave was doing a real number on Frankie D’Aquila’s business. July was usually a slow month—Independence Day was not known as a “flower” holiday—but he had multiple large orders due to be delivered to One World Trade Center that evening, and the heat was just one of many obstacles in his way. They were shutting down the security ring at midnight, but he did not want to risk getting tangled up in fireworks traffic, so he had to find a way to get his blooms down to Battery Park, and another way to keep them from wilting overnight.

He was renting coolers all over town. He even got his hands on two misters like the type they use out in the Midwest. He’d brought on extra staff to help him load and transport.

Frankie had earned his smoke. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and snapped his Zippo, firing up an American Spirit Light. This was only number five of the day—no, he realized, counting the cigarettes left in his pack, six—since he came to work at five thirty that morning. Not bad. His wife would be pleased, if she believed him. Saturday night was normally their date night. Best night of the week. He hoped to be home in time to catch the fireworks show on TV.

Almost quitting time for everyone else on Twenty-eighth. Except the Spanish guys who stayed open until eight. Frankie exhaled the first luscious drag over the sidewalk rows of cat palms and dwarf bamboo partially obscuring his view of the street. He noticed most of the other vendors had been backing away from trees. Too much dead loss, too much work to display. They were using their sidewalk real estate for tourist color, the big bunches of
Alstroemeria
lilies, roses, and mums that gave the district what was left of its visual charm. Frankie was always ahead of the season. A July Fourth heat wave, and he was thinking about fall houseplants and ornamentals.

Frankie reached out and plucked a dry brown frond from one of the palms, tossing it into the gutter. Across the street, the guys at the silk flower shop were already outside furling their awning. Frankie envied them on days like these because they weren’t slaves to living plants. And he would never admit it to a customer, but he couldn’t believe how beautiful some of the false flowers and fruits were these days. Some even with the fake fragrance. Just like the real thing, until you got close enough to feel them. The human touch always knows a dead thing from a living thing.

Frankie finished his smoke with one last deep drag. He was field stripping the cigarette butt when he saw a blue-and-white squad car pull across the intersection of West Twenty-eighth and Sixth Avenue and stop there, sealing off one end of the block.

Frankie’s eyebrows went up. He looked the other way, to Seventh Avenue, just in time to see another NYPD squad car pull across.

No flashing lights. No sirens.

Aw, shit, thought Frankie. There goes date night.

The uniforms were out of their cars in seconds, trunks popping open, cops assembling sawhorse barriers and using them to further block off the street and the sidewalks. A New Yorker’s sense of self-preservation prompted Frankie to back into the big, tiled double doorway of International Garden, though he kept watching.

From both ends of the block, men and women in khaki trousers and black Windbreakers fanned out along the sidewalks outside the shops. Definitely cops. And maybe FBI.

Frankie quickly ducked inside his shop. “Pack it up!” he called. “Lock the tills. Some kind of roust going down.” He went and used his belt key to lock the cash registers himself, pulling out the big bills first, stuffing them deep into his pockets. “Cops all over the street.”

Half the men and women working in the flower district, aside from the owners, were illegals of one sort or another. Clerks, cutters, gofers. Their biggest fear was an ICE raid. Immigration cops.

Ernie went out first, pulling his cap from his back pocket and popping it onto his head, low over his eyes. Then Flacco, Marie and her daughter Jean, then the Asians from the tables in the back where they put together the bouquets and wreaths.

Frankie hustled everybody out, including the store’s only customer, then tugged down on the rolling iron gates, snapping the locks into place. He pulled down the rear door of the loading truck, working the lock.

Maybe she’d stay up late for him tonight, Frankie thought. In the meantime, he was worried about the flowers, hoping they stayed cool enough in the truck. This was his livelihood on the line.

Frankie joined the exodus toward Seventh. There, the late afternoon traffic was further tied up by curiosity seekers.

Something big was going on. He rounded the corner by the old fur factory building and spotted a blue-and-white police helicopter hovering high above the intersection. Not good, Frankie thought, weaving between the stuck taxicabs. Not good.

Chapter 42

F
isk saw the helicopter he had not requested. He punched in a phone number that patched him into the tactical radio channel. Strict communications discipline was in force. Nobody said anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. He was waiting for a go from the police sniper team trying to get roof-ready across the street from the glass-front Hotel Indigo.

The tactical arrest team consisted of three officers in full armor, armed with M16s and a bullhorn. The uniformed policemen on the bottlenecks listened in but did not speak. Their job was simple: shepherd as many civilians off the street as possible in case this thing went live.

Fisk said, “Sky, this is Detective Jeremy Fisk with Intel. I need you back. Way back.” He squinted up at the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter as he spoke.

“Uh, roger that,” came back the air cowboy’s voice. “Snipe team is installed and prepping.”

“All units,” said Fisk. “Hold fast. We don’t know if we have an official snatch op or not. You are not hot. I repeat,” he said, raising his voice for emphasis, “you are not hot. If we are go, we want this guy in a chair, talking to us.”

“Roger,” said the sniper pair and the arrest team. They repeated their orders. “We are not hot.”

F
isk entered the lobby alone through the front glass door. A young hipster in a plaid shirt and Converse sneakers sat on a bench to the right, facing the small reception desk, thumbing the touch screen of his smartphone. There was no bellman. A runway led to a neighboring restaurant, which was empty.

Fisk had not called ahead first to check on Bin-Hezam’s reservation. He could not take a chance at warning anybody at the hotel, on the off chance they might be sympathetic to Bin-Hezam. That was the problem with the helicopter: it ruined any potential element of surprise.

He crossed to the clerk, who was taking a phone reservation. Fisk waved to get his attention. The clerk failed to pick up on Fisk’s insistence, showing him one finger before returning to his keyboard.

Fisk pulled out his shield and held it out for the clerk to see. The man looked at the badge with acute interest, not alarm, as though this were the first police badge he had ever seen close up. Only then did he look up at Fisk’s face.

He said into the phone, “May I put you on hold for a moment?”

He pressed the hold button on the phone and turned his full attention to Fisk.

Fisk said, “I need to check your reservations.”

“Okay. Yes, sir. What is the name?”

Instead of giving him a name, Fisk pulled a scan of Baada Bin-Hezam’s passport photograph and ID page from his pocket and unfolded it in front of the clerk. “Recognize this face?” asked Fisk.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “But I came on at two o’clock.”

“Okay, check the register for his name. Bin-Hezam could be under
B
or
H
. If the name isn’t there, then I want you to check cash customers. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to close up your hotel and go room by room. There’s a chance he could be staying with another guest.”

The clerk looked pained, as though he were the one in trouble. “Let me check here.”

While he was doing so, his head lowered to within inches of his beneath-the-counter display screen, the lobby elevator
dinged
.

Chapter 43

B
aada Bin-Hezam watched the numbers descend on the elevator digital display like a countdown while he prayed.

Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .

“. . . and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again . . .”

Seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . .

“. . . and then get martyred and then get resurrected again . . .”

He prayed to shut out all the other thoughts in his head.

Into the jaws of the lion. Head high.

He adjusted the strap of the messenger bag across his chest, jostling the butt of the pistol in his holster. This reminded him of the fat man, the Senegalese who tried to cheat him and whom he had had to release into eternity.

Would he meet that man in the afterlife? Bin-Hezam did not think so.

Three . . . two . . .

Upstairs, in his penthouse suite, the helicopter had drawn his attention sooner than he was ready. He had hoped for a little more time to sort his thoughts. To prepare.

But when he looked out and glimpsed men on the roof across the street, one of them carrying a long suitcase, he knew the time had come.

They were there for him. It had all been foretold.

His service was nearly complete. This was the last of his directives. The exit. The way out.

The elevator stopped.

One.

The doors slid open. He immediately saw a young man sitting with a handheld device, scrolling through its contents. This man was no threat.

Then he saw the man at the counter, who turned his head and looked at Bin-Hezam . . . and knew him. He knew him. The man’s eyes reacted though his face did not.

This was Bin-Hezam’s confirmation that a policeman was already in the lobby.

The policeman turned back to the desk clerk. Bin-Hezam started walking. His legs carried him out of the elevator toward the door, constant prayers running through his head. He passed within ten feet of the policeman, who faced away from him but, Bin-Hezam could tell, was hyperaware of his presence.

The street appeared quiet and peaceful through the glass doors ahead. No traffic. No bellman. No taxis awaiting fares or cars idling at the curb.

An innocent summer afternoon. Bin-Hezam laid his hand upon the cool glass door, pushing it open.