The Intercept (24 page)

Chapter 54

J
enssen pulled a plastic Duane Reade bag from a trash can before hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue. He wanted to run the full forty blocks back, but he needed to preserve his energy. He dismissed the cab before Rockefeller Center, jogging the last ten blocks back to the Hyatt.

He went around to the service entrance, the one The Six’s motorcade had been using. A pair of young garage workers looked up casually, one of them recognizing Jenssen as one of the group of heroes, admitting him with a wave. Jenssen shook their hands, apologizing for the sweat. His entry was not questioned. He went up the stairs they had taken before, stepping into a service elevator that rode up the same shaft as the guest cars but opened on the side of the elevator bank.

Jenssen strode out onto the twenty-sixth floor, drugstore bag in hand, and nodded to the officer sitting on a chair before the hallway.

The corridor was empty. He had succeeded in beating the two detectives back to the hotel. Jenssen moved swiftly past the hospitality suite so he would not be drawn inside. Only the journalist, Frank, was inside, clicking away at his laptop.

The hallway was empty. Jenssen plucked the room key from his sweaty sock and fed it into his door. He was waiting for the green light and the click.

A door at the far end of the hall opened. Jenssen froze a moment, then had to turn.

It was Detective Gersten, rolling out a room service tray.

She was three pairs of doors away. Jenssen had no alternative but to acknowledge her. He waved his key card.

“How was your run?” she asked.

“Good, good.”

“How did DeRosier do?”

“I will ask him when he comes back.”

She laughed, and Jenssen pushed inside on the joking remark—but not before the female detective’s eyes fell upon the white plastic bag hanging from his wrist cast.

Jenssen pushed inside his room, closing the door behind him. His face showed fury, but he allowed no further demonstration of that emotion. He quickly stowed the bag in his hotel safe, then eased back out into the hallway—quiet, empty again—eager to resume his cooperative presence.

He was drinking his second bottle of water and stretching a bit at the waist when Detectives DeRosier and Patton entered the hospitality suite. DeRosier was still sweating, and Patton looked angry. Jenssen wondered if Gersten had phoned them after her exchange with Jenssen in the hallway.

“What happened?” asked DeRosier.

“Nothing,” said Jenssen, feigning confusion.

“Why didn’t you wait?”

“I was supposed to wait? Why didn’t you keep up?”

DeRosier reached for a bottle of water. “Because I couldn’t.”

“Beautiful night, no?” said Jenssen.

“No,” said DeRosier, between gulps.

Perhaps Gersten had not called them after all. Perhaps she had thought nothing of the bag, or its contents. Jenssen would remain attentive to her in order to make sure.

Chapter 55

F
isk awoke suddenly, hearing his alarm clock.

Only, he wasn’t in bed. He had drifted off at his desk.

Shit.

And—this wasn’t his alarm clock ringing. It was his phone.

He stood and shook out of his befuddlement. Felt like he had been asleep for hours, but without the refreshment benefit.

He checked the time. Maybe twenty minutes had passed since he’d put his head down.

He answered his phone just before it went to voice mail.

“Hey, it’s Reg. Great get today.”

Reg was an NYPD detective assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force.

Fisk said, “We got lucky. Thanks to the NSA.”

“Nah, I heard you were on this guy from the jump. Which is why I’m calling. We got a look at this bomber’s phone. It’s a domestic carrier, which is weird for a Saudi art dealer. No international plan.”

Fisk said, “He had a cell phone and plan under his name. But the GPS didn’t ping. Must have had the phone powered down. In any event, it wasn’t the one he brought to the U.S.”

Reg said, “He placed a call earlier today, before the inquiry to Saudi Air. Cell to cell. The number is registered to a Kathleen Burnett. We have a Bay Ridge billing address. Giving you a heads-up in case you wanted to hitch a ride over there.”

Fisk absorbed this. “Bay Ridge? Who is she?”

“Don’t know yet. Common name, but nobody under it is listed in Bay Ridge. But we just got this read, it’s that fresh. Had to scan the phone for booby traps first. All developing.”

Fisk said, “E-mail me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

Chapter 56

B
ack behind the double-locked door of his hotel room, Jenssen drew the heavy shades. He made yet another full sweep of his room, examining lamps, the telephone, the ceiling smoke detectors—anything and anywhere a camera or other recording device might have been installed while he was away. Nothing appeared to have been tampered with.

He opened the room safe and pulled out the bag. They would come for him in less than two hours. Skipping the get-together at the hotel lounge would raise suspicion, inadvisable at this late stage. He could stall them awhile, and he would need to. Time was of the essence.

After months of planning and training, and secrecy that had cost lives and won glory, the hour of action was upon him. Jenssen was the apex of a holy pyramid that had begun when Osama bin Laden initiated a call for victory in the name of Islam and the Wahhabi caliphate. His sacrifice only furthered the mission and the dedication of those called to fulfill it.

Jenssen’s primary concern was to protect the explosives. He first removed the small loaf-shaped parcel, unwrapping the foil and wax. Inside, the TATP explosive was pliable and appeared to be well-prepared. He had trained with the substance and felt familiar with it. With care, it could be molded into any desired shape.

He quickly inventoried the rest of the contents of the Duane Reade shopping bag delivered to him by the woman. He examined a Ziploc bag of gauze impregnated with plaster of paris. When wet, it would be formed into a new replacement cast for his arm.

Next, a box of rolled cotton batting.

Then a sheet of fine plastic a foot square. It could be cut and shaped, forming a partition between the explosive and the gauze. The new cast would be damp for a few hours before drying. But if the TATP became wet, the explosive would have only half its potential force as when dry.

Then the pellets wrapped in tissue paper, from which protruded the vinyl-covered antenna wires. The twin igniters.

And a wireless trigger the size of a can of sardines.

Everything he needed.

He stood and disrobed, throwing the exercise clothes into the corner of the room. He went into the bathroom and turned on the ceiling fan and the shower. He then pulled the sharp steak knife he had purloined from their lunchtime interview from its hiding place beneath the bathroom sink, and went to work cutting his cast. He worked from his arm out. The hardened batting sliced cleanly, but the blue exterior proved a much more difficult task. His wrist ached as he went at it savagely.

One thing they had not accounted for was the color of the cast. Jenssen had requested plain white, but the orthopedist only brought blue. It was an anomaly that would have to be accounted for.

The hard blue casing flaked shavings onto the vanity as Jenssen sawed away, nicking his forearm six or seven times but drawing little blood. When he got half of it cut, he placed the cracked cast against the edge of the vanity and pushed down on it.

The only result was pain.

Jenssen felt the husk give a little, and so grabbed a fresh cotton hand towel and stuffed it into his mouth. He positioned the open seam of the cast against the counter’s sharp edge, and on the count of three thrust down against it with all his weight.

The cast cracked open with a shocking crunch. Jenssen’s scream vanished into the baffling of the towel, which, after a few moments of lingering agony, he then spit onto the floor.

His wrist throbbed. He thought he might have refractured the bone and feared it would swell anew. He held still, holding it, hoping the noise of the cast breaking did not raise any alarms.

Jenssen remembered meeting the doctor in the hours before the departure of Flight 903. A tourniquet was applied to his arm just below his shoulder, rendering it numb in minutes. He remembered the doctor—assuming he was in fact a licensed physician—lifting his dead arm and laying it atop the heavy workbench with his hand dangling over the edge. “Avert your eyes,” said the doctor, with more than a hint of a smile in his bespectacled eyes. Perhaps the man was in fact an experienced torturer. Jenssen had turned away and closed his eyes. He heard the crunch and felt the workbench shudder, but he felt nothing. A local anesthetic was applied by syringe. Again, he felt nothing, and in a few more minutes, with his fingers swollen and red, the tourniquet was released. The dark anticipation of the pain had left him drenched in sweat, but once the pins and needles faded the anesthetic worked effectively. He was given anti-inflammatory medication for the swelling, and had his sleeve rolled back down and buttoned for him. Then he walked out to the car that would transport him to the airport.

When the renewed pain receded, Jenssen grabbed the trash can and dumped the broken cast inside, sweeping the blue shavings off the counter. He stepped into the shower and washed himself gingerly but quickly, the jets painful against his swelling left wrist.

He focused his mind away from the pain by mentally rehearsing the next few hours. He ticked off various potential disasters that might bring down the plan, anticipating them and preparing himself to avoid them.

I am safely concealed, he reminded himself. I will not fail.

Insha’Alla.

Chapter 57

F
isk had spent a fair amount of time as an Intel cop in Bay Ridge. The streets there were as bucolic as any in the five boroughs. A light night breeze off the Verrazano Narrows was the only relief from the lingering heat of the day. This corner of Brooklyn had absorbed waves of Irish, Italians, and Norwegians—and, more recently, Arabs.

The address was only fifteen minutes away with lights and sirens, in a neighborhood that had recently been christened “Little Palestine.” The JTTF called ahead to the Sixty-eighth Precinct station house, which had two units idling at Seventy-ninth and Shore Road, just a block away. No lights, no show. Not sealing off the area, but present and available if needed. Reg arrived with an interdiction team of his own, four SWAT-trained tactical officers in full extraction armor, two FBI agents, and a linguist.

The location was a converted brownstone, lights in the windows on the first and second floors. The front door was unlocked. The listing on the lobby plate for the third-floor apartment in question read “bint Mohammed,” not Burnett.

Fisk waited while Reg and the FBI agents went around with the linguist, rapping on the doors of the three ground-floor apartments, then the two on the second floor. The only person who gave them trouble was an elderly woman who refused to be forced outside unveiled. She took her place sullenly on the sidewalk in front of the stoop with the other families, pointedly turning her back on the FBI agents and police detectives.

Reg said to Fisk, “What do you think? Pick it or kick it?”

Fisk said, “If she’s home, there’s a good chance she knows we’re here already. Bin-Hezam wanted suicide-by-cop and got his wish. So kick it. Hard.”

Reg gave the signal, and the four-man interdiction team then went up the stairs in close-quarters combat formation, advancing and covering two-by-two. Boots soft on the wooden floor, commands mimed in silence. Fisk and Reg and one of the FBI agents went up one floor behind them, the linguist remaining on the stoop with the other FBI agent.

At the third-floor apartment door, one of the tactical officers unslung the heavy-weighted steel tube from his back, gripping its handles. Another man aimed a 12-gauge shotgun at the door hinges as backup, counting him down in silence.

The officer swung the breach tube hard, striking the dead bolt above the door handle. The lock plate and the door frame splintered and the door whipped open.

The other three men flooded inside. In a matter of seconds, they cleared the tiny apartment. The fourth officer signaled Reg. There was no one home.

The team flipped on light switches. The main concern now was booby traps. They cleared the place for trip wires, and only then were Fisk and Reg allowed inside.

Reg went immediately to a stack of mail upon a small corner desk. Fisk went straight to the bedroom.

There, draped over a straight-backed chair next to a single bed covered with a paisley spread, he found a deep blue burka. The room was monastically tidy. At the foot of the bed, a worn red prayer rug was neatly folded.

Fisk brought out his phone, dialing Intel. He realized he needed the spelling of her name, and walked out to join Reg.

“I need you to access the city records database,” he told the agent who answered. He spelled the names “Kathleen Burnett,” confirming it from her cell phone bill, and, reading from a catalog label, “Aminah bint Mohammed.” “Assuming it’s a name change, but need to confirm they are the same person. I need a photograph ASAP.”

He hung up and went looking for photographs. The single bed and Spartan appearance said single occupant, and those people rarely put out pictures of themselves.

In the front room, between a pair of overstuffed chairs facing a small flat-screen television on a rolling table, he scanned a single bookshelf. Korans in English and Arabic, and a single photograph of a man and woman dressed for something formal standing next to a 1980s Buick sedan. Parents. Probably deceased.

Two windows, one left open approximately eight inches. A stack of newsletters in Arabic, and some newspapers. Reg booted up a small netbook plugged into the wall.

Reg said, “What do you think? Girlfriend? Handler?”

Fisk turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. He moved to the kitchen. No dishwasher, a drying rack in the sink. A short refrigerator.

The interdiction team rigged up a bungee cord, opening the fridge from around the wall. No bang. Fisk went in, wishing he had gloves on. He tugged his sleeve down over his fist and moved containers of low-fat yogurt and a deli tub of dates.

Two empty glass mason jars. He got down low, trying to see up through the wire shelf rack. He saw what looked like white crust residue in the lid threads.

He moved everybody back. To Reg he said, “Get a dog over here stat.”