The Intercept (23 page)

Chapter 52

B
ack at the Hyatt, Colin Frank sat in the common room, alone with his laptop. He was framing out the story in the form of a book and transmedia proposal. He knew some documentary filmmakers and was considering going that route first, a video document that would coincide with the book’s release in six to eight months, each one promoting the other.

He cracked open a second nip of Bacardi and dumped half of it into his Diet Coke, pushing back his ball cap and cycling through e-mails, leisurely reading the ones from prospective literary agents and managers, and a handful of personal introductions from various big-name movie producers.

When it all became too much, Frank at once leaped up out of his chair and gave a Tiger Woods–like fist pump, rejoicing silently in the empty hotel room.

J
oanne Sparks put the finishing touches on her face in front of the bright bathroom mirror, smoothing out the cracked lipstick in the corners of her mouth. That bitch Maggie Sullivan was going to the fireworks, and this was Sparks’s first—and maybe last—shot at the Swede without the others serving as an audience.

She checked the skirt again—clingy-tight but not desperate-looking—tugging down the fabric at her slender hips and then grabbing her handbag, heading out to Jenssen’s room.

She paused halfway out her door, spotting Jenssen in running shorts and a wicking T-shirt down at the far end of the hall, talking to someone. Sparks stared down the hallway, unseen as yet. That far down the hall, she realized, were the cops’ rooms.

Detective Gersten.

Sparks watched a few moments longer—long enough—and then stepped back inside her own room, her door closing with a click.

She turned and whipped her handbag at the wall over her bed. It bounced off the headboard and landed on the nightstand, knocking over her alarm clock and television remote.

She returned to the bathroom mirror, face-to-face with her furious self.

“Cocksucker,” she said, gripping the counter.

She was done with Jenssen. Or even if not, she sure was going to act that way from now on.

G
ersten stood in the doorway to her room, shoeless, feeling short. Jenssen stood almost a head taller than she. One of the sporting goods chains had sent over some swag, and he wore a blue-and-white Adidas shirt and shorts, and New Balance running shoes.

“You’re sure,” he said, “I can’t change your mind?”

Dangerous, dangerous man, thought Gersten. He knew just how to say it, delivering the line with just the right amount of play, in such a way that she felt somehow foolish declining.

At the same time, she didn’t appreciate the attempt at manipulation.

“Too much work, unfortunately,” she told him. “Appreciate the invitation, though. Nothing like a nighttime run.”

“Actually, more satisfying is the cool shower that follows.”

Gersten smiled, as much at the sentiment as the cheekiness.

“You’re certain I can’t change your mind?” he said. “What if I get lost?”

“Tell you what,” she said. She had her phone in hand. She quickly dialed DeRosier. “Detective DeRosier? Mr. Jenssen needs a buddy for a night run.”

“Aw, fuck,” said DeRosier. “I just ate.”

Gersten smiled at Jenssen. “He’d be thrilled to accompany you.”

Jenssen smiled wanly. “The feeling is mutual.”

Gersten smiled for real. She felt as though she’d gotten the upper hand in this exchange. “Be careful in the dark,” she told him, and closed her door.

She felt a little short of breath. She was flattered by Jenssen’s attention, and briefly wondered what sort of vibe she was putting out there.

“I hope I brought my sneakers.”

The voice surprised her. DeRosier was still on her phone.

“Good luck,” she told him, and hung up.

W
ith Nouvian in a self-imposed exile, practicing the cello in his hotel room, flight attendant Maggie Sullivan and retired auto parts dealer Doug Aldrich were the only ones interested in attending the fireworks.

They left the hotel in a lone Suburban, no motorcycle escort, only an off-duty cop driving them and the mayor’s office’s PR person. The driver used his grille lights only when they hit the barricade on Tenth Avenue.

“Gonna be tough going back to being a regular citizen,” said Maggie, looking out at the revelers walking toward the water.

“Wish I was able to bring my grandkids to this,” he said.

The Suburban pulled over at a mobile NYPD checkpoint. At the corner was a rectangular box with windows, not much bigger than an SUV. Security cameras and satellite dishes stood on top of it.

“Here we are,” said the PR woman.

She opened the door for them and walked them to the enclosure. People looked their way, but nobody was close enough to identify either Maggie or Aldrich.

“In here?” said Maggie.

“You first,” said the PR woman.

Maggie entered the hinged door. Aldrich followed, then the PR woman. She had her phone out, but for taking photographs, not calls.

The door closed and the box started to rise. Maggie realized now, she had seen these things before in Times Square. It was like a hydraulic riser, a promontory nest giving a good view of the street below . . . but an even better view of the night sky, from above street level.

“Best seats in the house,” said the PR woman.

Maggie laughed hard and hugged Aldrich. “The others are going to absolutely kick themselves!”

Chapter 53

J
enssen waited at the twenty-sixth-floor elevators. The police detail on their floor had been reduced from two to just one, he noticed.

It was after 8:00
P.M
. now. Jenssen was anxious to get moving.

He heard cello music from Nouvian’s room. Jenssen recognized the tune: “America the Beautiful.” Interesting, in that it was a patriotic song not about battle or victory or God. It was a song about beauty. Jenssen thought to himself that in today’s America, that sentiment could only be taken ironically.

The elevator doors opened, but he was still obliged to wait for the detective. He noticed the camera panel in the interior corner of the car. It was a fact that, while hotel cameras constantly recorded, the images themselves were rarely monitored.

Jenssen was still unsure about the female detective. She watched him at times, but it was difficult to gauge her intent. Had she accepted his invitation, he would have completed an easy two- or three-mile loop and been done with it. Her years as a law officer had given her confidence, but he believed her still insecure about her tomboyish look. She was not a lesbian; of that much he was certain. He clearly recalled how she had interacted with the detective she was paired with in Bangor, Maine. Jenssen remembered thinking at the time that they could be lovers.

So perhaps it was simple desire on her part. Another loose American woman. He needed to know for sure, of course. He had witnessed their alarm at the brief disappearance of the cellist, Nouvian, and noted that Gersten was absent for some time after that, which Jenssen suspected was an assignment resulting from Nouvian’s actions.

This was a time to be most careful.

DeRosier, the bald-headed male detective, finally exited his room, walking down the hallway in light nylon pants and an NYPD Softball T-shirt. “You’re gonna go easy on me, right?” he said, with a big New York smile.

“I am,” said Jenssen. “At first.”

They rode together down to the busy lobby of the Hyatt, DeRosier checking his phone, then zipping it into his pants pocket. They exited in the lobby, walking past the reception area and the concierge desk, looking up at the lounge.

“We could just get a drink,” said DeRosier, only half kidding.

Jenssen smiled. Just as in Sweden, the slam-and-go drinkers crowded against the long bar, downing cocktails before dinner.

Reflected in the facing windows were the lounge television screens, some showing a baseball game, the others showing helicopter footage from the police investigation of the shooting of the terrorist, Baada Bin-Hezam.

“We nailed that fucker,” said DeRosier. “Good weekend for the good guys, huh?”

“Very good,” said Jenssen, stepping onto the short escalator down to the front entrance.

“Oof,” said DeRosier, as they exited the revolving doors to the sidewalk and the heat. “This is going to be fun.”

“I am fine if you want to stay behind. This city is on a numbered grid, no?”

“No, no.” DeRosier was swinging his arms, improving his circulation. “I probably need this.”

“Tell you what,” said Jenssen. “Let’s take the subway part of the way, and just run back. I want to see the park.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Nighttime Manhattan had its own distinct rhythm. This was Jenssen’s first visit to the United States. He followed the detective, moving with the flow of pedestrians heading east on Forty-second Street. Half a block later, they descended into a white-tiled cavern known as the Lexington Avenue subway station. DeRosier sought out a Port Authority officer and badged them through the turnstile.

Jenssen trotted down another flight of stairs to the uptown platform, the smell gagging him, a hideous mélange of piss and dead animals. People crowded near the yellow line, all so nonchalant about the nauseating circumstances in which they found themselves.

Discipline taught Jenssen not to react to every little dissonant note in his surroundings. As always, visualization soothed him. He summoned images of the magnificent Rådhuset subway station on Stockholm’s Blue Line, its escalators running from the wide, clean track platforms through dramatically lit solid rock. He imagined himself traveling out of Stockholm on a trip to visit his widowed mother, Hadzeera, in Malmö.

Jenssen had never known his biological father. His mother had met his stepfather, Jonas, when he was a member of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Srebrenica. Jonas had discovered Hadzeera hours after she had been raped and left for dead by Serbian soldiers, after instructing her eight-year-old son to bury himself under clothes and blankets in the back of a bedroom closet. Against his own better judgment, as well as the advice of his commanders, Jonas Jenssen fell in love with the brutalized single mother. She and Magnus triggered a caretaking instinct in him that was simply irresistible. His father converted to Islam out of sympathy and love. But the marriage was fated to last less than two years; Jonas was killed in a car accident on his way home from the Malmö mosque after Friday prayers. That was the day Jenssen resolved to be the man in his mother’s life.

“First time in New York, right?” said DeRosier. It was an attempt at conversation. Jenssen nodded, but did not take it any further, feigning interest in the arrival of the 5 train, shrieking out of the tunnel beneath Lexington Avenue, stopping at the platform.

Together they boarded the crowded train, standing two seats apart. The riders rocked in silence. DeRosier nodded to him, and the two men exited the subway at East Eighty-sixth Street, reemerging into the heat.

Jenssen checked the street signs in order to orient himself. West was to the left. DeRosier wanted to stretch, so Jenssen went through the motions, keeping an eye out for a tail car. Sure enough, he spotted the other detective, Patton, in an unmarked car double-parked across the street. DeRosier straightened then, announcing that he was ready.

They set off together at a slow lope, like any of the other weekend evening joggers heading for Central Park. Two minutes in, Jenssen felt his arm beginning to throb against his cast.

When Jenssen tore the bomb trigger from Awaan Abdulraheem’s hand in the galley of Flight 903, his forward motion coupled with the impact against the floor caused a fracture of his left distal radius. The minor break had required only immobilization. Jenssen had insisted that the doctor sent by the mayor’s office cover only his forearm and the back of his hand, over a soft palm grip stabilizing his palm. He had been taking ibuprofen for the swelling, but disposed of the prescribed pain medication. The pain was bearable.

He picked up his pace, DeRosier breathing heavily behind him. Jenssen reached Fifth Avenue in five minutes. He jogged in place waiting for the light to change and the detective to catch up. He noticed the unmarked car waiting a few vehicles back at the light. DeRosier came up panting.

“Good?” said Jenssen.

DeRosier waved at him to continue on as though it was no problem.

They jogged up Fifth Avenue to Ninetieth Street and crossed the four-lane boulevard with the light, between stone pillars flanking the park entrance. Inside, sloping paths led up to the reservoir two ways—left and right. Jenssen picked up his speed, consulting the map he had committed to memory. He needed to veer to the left. He turned back twice and saw DeRosier fading into the dimness of the evening.

“Wait up!” said DeRosier, waving to him.

“All right, then!” Jenssen yelled back to him, pretending to misunderstand.

He continued to cut left along the path. After the first turn he went into a sprint, the motion and the breeze feeling excellent after the past few days of stasis.

He left the path when it was safe to do so, racing between trees until he rejoined another path at the top of a rise. Confident he had left both DeRosier and Patton well behind, he downshifted so as not to attract attention, jogging steadily past dozens of New Yorkers and energetic tourists out walking.

The loop around the reservoir provided not only exercise but some of the most magnificent views in the city, especially at night. The bursts of colored light above the trees to the southwest told him the fireworks display had begun. Pedestrians stopped to watch, lovers holding hands.

Jenssen kept on. Ahead of him, the lawns of the park gave way to the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. The illuminated monolith of the Empire State Building rose from their midst. Since the fall of the Twin Towers, it had resumed the role of the tallest building in New York City. Come tomorrow morning, when One World Trade Center was officially opened for business, the Empire State Building would slip back to second place.

For Jenssen, these spectacular views served only as geographic landmarks as he circled the body of water. This reservoir no longer fed drinking water to the inhabitants of Manhattan Island. It had been decommissioned in 1997 because of its vulnerability to terrorist attack. Now its one billion gallons fed other ponds in the park through a glittering schist and granite pump house located at its south end.

He ran for another quarter mile before again veering off the gravel path, this time onto an unlit trail to his left. The trail took him down a grassy slope to a bridle path covered with pine needles under overhanging trees. Jenssen followed it for two hundred yards, turning right at the southern end of the reservoir, near the rear loading docks of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

To his left were the former stables now used as sheds for gardeners’ equipment. Jenssen tucked himself into the shadows between two adjoining sheds. His vantage point gave him a full view of the front of the pump house, topped by a large clock face.

Jenssen saw her right away, in silhouette. He made out the messenger bag on her shoulder, tucked close to her body beneath her elbow. He saw the outline of her skirt. Even from that distance, he could see that she was anxious. As she should have been—she had waited for some time. She looked from the clock to the bright explosions in the western sky.

Jenssen walked to the bottom of the broad cement stairs leading up from the bridle path. She was overweight, but otherwise extraordinarily plain. He waited until her scanning eyes passed over him.

Her head panned right, past him, then back again. She had seen him. Jenssen nodded. She looked around, for the moment a caricature of furtiveness. Jenssen winced and motioned to her with his hand.

She made her way down the stairs self-consciously, like a woman gripping her handbag in a bad neighborhood. He waited until he was certain she was coming his way, and then drifted back toward the gardeners’ sheds, waiting for her to follow.

He was waiting for her when she rounded the corner into the dim light behind the shed. Here, they were completely hidden from the reservoir path and the bridle trail.

She came to him like a sinner, hesitant, seeking release.

“
Assalamu alaikum,
” she said, in a meek voice.

“
Walaikum assalam,
” he said in reply.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I was so nervous, waiting this long. And the fireworks . . .”

“You are indeed blessed,” Jenssen said, then quickly spun her around and clamped his wrist cast against her throat.

Jenssen was a big man, his grip seeming to envelop her completely. Her body shook, her hands coming to his cast. She pulled at his fractured wrist, his pain hot, severe. When he did not relent, her grip came away from his arm, her hands reaching out in front of her. In that way, she gave herself to him. He imagined she was looking to the colored bursts in the otherwise dark night sky.

She understood what had to happen, and released herself to God.

Gurgling sounds came involuntarily. Her hands fell to her sides. Her legs sagged, her body listing beneath his grip.

He held on until he was sure of her death, then set her down on the ground. He pulled the bag from her shoulder and dragged her into the shadowed recess between the two sheds, all the way to the rear.

He gripped his cast, having rotated his wrist in the strangling. With great effort and pain, he twisted it back into place. The pain flared and then—slowly—passed. He felt a bit of the woman’s saliva on his cast, but nothing more.

He picked up her bag by its handle and started away into the trees.