The Intercept (25 page)

Chapter 58

A
pplying a cast to the arm of another person was a relatively straightforward procedure. Applying a cast to one’s own arm was as difficult as one-handed surgery. But Jenssen had trained for this repeatedly. Though only once with real explosive. And never with a broken wrist.

He sat near the table. His swollen arm looked pinkish gray, like dead skin abraded with a square of fine sandpaper. He rubbed it gently, indulging himself in a moment of itch relief, tempered by the tenderness of his wrist and the clotting cuts where he had punctured his skin with the tip of the steak knife.

The new cast would take three hours to fully harden. The first time he attempted this, he had applied the plaster gauze too snugly and could not tolerate the pain for even one hour before ripping it off. Now with his wrist and forearm swollen and already tender, he knew he had to be careful.

On the other hand, he would only have to stand the throbbing ache for a few short hours.

Jenssen addressed the moment of greatest peril first. He unwrapped the roll of TATP and held it in his good hand. In practice, he had used ordinary putty of a similar consistency, and once a professionally firm slab of the real thing. This substance was gummier and stickier. It clung to his fingers.

He cleared his mind and went to work. A mistake could ruin months of preparation and devotion by many people in a fiery instant.

Using both hands, though generously favoring his left, he began to work the half-pound roll of whitish-gray explosive. He stretched the substance to roughly the distance from his thumb joint halfway to his elbow. Too much squeezing with his left hand produced a stabbing pain, and he stopped, calmed himself, focused, and continued.

With the heel of his good hand, Jenssen gently and patiently flattened the explosive to a thickness of about a quarter inch. He had seen what the TATP could do, detonated by a gunshot in an abandoned barn in a field in Sweden. The image of the structure splintering in a dynamic blast of flame still made him flinch, his body remembering the shock wave from 250 meters away.

Halfway done.

The explosive clay sweated moisture as Jenssen manipulated it. He had not anticipated this. The mixture was damper than expected, weeping a substance that smelled like chemical sweat.

Did this mean that the mixture was no good? More unstable? Less effective? He wondered: Was the woman in Central Park the chemist? Had she prepared this like shortbread in her kitchen, and mismeasured an ingredient?

He couldn’t concern himself with that. He continued to mold the TATP, using bathroom tissues to soak away the moisture. What had been a loaf no larger than the cardboard tube of a roll of toilet paper was now a trim sheet that would cover the heel of his hand, his wrist, and his lower forearm.

Jenssen took a break to clean up the tabletop. In the bathroom he splashed cold water on his face.

Next, he removed the cotton batting and wound a thin layer over his tingling arm, securing it with a small steel clip at the end. He had almost forgotten the fabric softener sheets, and rose to remove them from his luggage. They were to aid in masking the scent of the explosive, in case of dogs. He then laid his cotton-clad arm on the table, palm down, and with his good hand slowly peeled the sheet of explosive dough from the tabletop. It did not come off as smoothly as expected. He molded the TATP onto his left forearm, feeling it compress the cotton. Then he patched and repaired with bits left on the table.

He was sweating but had nothing handy to wipe his brow. At one point he shook his head violently, spraying sweat around him. Jenssen took the two igniter pellets from the messenger bag. He made sure that their antenna wires were laid cleanly on the edge of the explosive, then embedded one near the heel of his hand, the other at the opposite edge. He pressed them gently but firmly, ensuring they wouldn’t chafe, but also flattening them against his arm as much as possible.

It looked good. Now the plastic. The sheet of thin acetate fit his forearm well. It had to, in order to insulate the explosive from the wet gauze impregnated with plaster of paris. He pulled it from the ice bucket, shaking off excess water.

This part was most essential if his work was to stand up to scrutiny. He began at his hand, following the same pattern of winding as he had with the cotton batting. He formed a grip across his palm like the old cast, and as he wound, he transferred the layers of remaining gauze from one side of his arm to the other, passing it underneath and above.

He was most careful not to be too fastidious, and in doing so wind the gauze too tightly. The process took him a half hour. His initial disappointment—the white cast appeared bumpy—gave way to encouragement once he regarded his work in the mirror. The makeshift cast was evenly layered around his arm. It would further set over the next few hours. Right now, it felt neither too tight nor too loose.

Then he heard a knock at his door. He swallowed to make certain his voice was clear of any audible distress. “Yes?”

“We’re heading down to the lounge.” It was the journalist’s voice, already wobbly with drink. “Party time! Let’s go, Magnus!”

The usual overfamiliarity of the liquor-addled personality. “Getting dressed. I will be along in a bit.”

“If you don’t, we’re gonna have to bring the party to you!”

Exactly what Jenssen did not want. He listened to Frank thumping away down the hall. The original plan had anticipated and accounted for one or two fellow heroes to join him, most likely after the fact. No one expected that four other passengers would leap into the fight. Jenssen had told himself that there was increased safety in numbers, and he had faded into the group well enough, but the price paid was having to put up with their self-inflated egos.

The truth was, it was difficult to converse with pawns and treat them as equals.

In the silence that ensued, Jenssen heard the street noise rising to his window. Car horns and bus hydraulics and a faraway siren. The hotel ventilation system clicked on automatically, sending a rush of cool air at him from a vent over the door. The sounds of life.

He fingered the wireless trigger. The bomb he had just built into his cast would explode a microsecond after ignition, vaporizing every shred of his body and destroying every living thing within fifty yards of detonation. He would feel and hear nothing other than God’s grace. There were many worse deaths than that.

Chapter 59

A
t 11:00
P.M.
, the Lounge at New York Central—the Hyatt’s second-floor bar, extending from the hotel façade over Forty-second Street, adjacent to the entrance to Grand Central Terminal—was full of post-theater nightcappers.

The hotel had cleared the far right corner for the heroes, and the mayor’s office was picking up the tab. Antipasti, shrimp, and plates of french fries sat on the corner table. The mayor’s PR person lingered just long enough for one glass of Chablis. She and Maggie and Aldrich crowed about the fireworks, then she received a text and abruptly said her good-byes.

Gersten arrived, feeling fried from a few hours of recapping the past forty-eight in cop language. DeRosier was drinking Diet Coke, still sore from his run. Patton chose to live dangerously with an on-duty O’Doul’s.

Gersten’s attention first went to Colin Frank, the journalist sipping a vodka-and-something while engrossed in knee-to-knee discussion with a very attentive—and aggressively attired—Joanne Sparks. Gersten wondered how that had happened, then decided it was probably Sparks’s way of showing up Jenssen.

If so, the effect was not as intended. Jenssen sat at the far corner of the bar, nursing a club soda and lime. Maggie Sullivan, his other entanglement, was laughing with a male stranger while alternately watching the Yankees game on the overhead televisions.

Aldrich sipped bourbon on the rocks, chatting with Gersten and Patton. He was an amiable enough guy, more so after two drinks, and he loved to talk about auto parts. Nouvian sat next to Jenssen, drinking one of the lounge’s cocktail creations, though it seemed like neither had much to say to the other.

Maggie politely excused herself from the stranger and came over to Gersten. “I’m finally one of the popular girls at the school dance!” she whispered, laughing.

“Slow down, girl!” said Gersten.

Maggie fanned herself with her hand. “It’s a roller coaster, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what to make of myself.” She sipped her Seven and Seven. “I met the president today!” she exulted. “This hand.” She looked at her hand. “Who am I again?”

She was the one Gersten would miss most of all. Maybe the only one. She was the most real, somehow, and the most joyful. Gersten thought to tell her that, but now wasn’t the time, and here wasn’t the place.

Maggie picked up on Gersten’s appreciation somehow, throwing her arm around her. “Nice to see you detectives as people, for a change.”

Patton killed his nonalcoholic beer. “We got peace in the valley tonight.”

Gersten smiled and nodded, because it was expected of her. But Fisk’s suspicions weighed on her mind. She sipped her water, desperate for a real drink, hoping Fisk would arrive soon.

“Everybody!” Maggie called people to attention with the ease of a woman who, as a flight attendant, had been politely but firmly instructing strangers for her entire adult life. “A toast to the nice people who have been putting up with our shit over these insane last two days. To your health.”

“Here, here!” said Frank from the corner, his free hand rubbing Sparks’s bare knee.

“And,” said Aldrich, standing unsteadily, “to their comrades-in-arms for blasting the sand out of that terrorist today.”

“To heroes everywhere!” exulted Maggie.

“Heroes,” intoned all, glasses raised.

Jenssen caught Gersten’s eye as the others’ glasses came back down. He tipped his drink to her individually.

Gersten nodded back, then turned toward the lobby, making another quick scan for Fisk.

Chapter 60

A
minah bint Mohammed’s neighbors described her in glowing terms. Conscientious and quiet. She told people she was a nurse, and indeed had been called upon to stanch a neighbor’s kitchen knife cut a few months ago, yet hadn’t seemed to work or at least keep regular hours for perhaps a year or more.

No, they had never seen suspicious-looking men visiting her. They had never seen any men, or women, as guests.

Fisk took the inconvenienced neighbors’ negative views of law enforcement into consideration, yet he still believed they were telling him the truth. None of them had ever heard of a woman named Kathleen Burnett.

The photograph on her expired Massachusetts-issued driver’s license showed an unveiled American woman with brown, maybe reddish-brown, hair and a smiling, plain face. Her New York license under her Muslim name showed a flatly smiling, somewhat heavier woman with shorter hair. For obvious reasons, New York driver’s licenses forbade veils in photographs.

He had the more recent photo sent back electronically to Intel, and was preparing an alert. He wavered on whether to call Dubin directly, and decided he probably would.

Forensic chemists were taking the mason jars to be tested. Fisk was back inside her apartment, exhaustion and bewilderment setting in, combining to make him feel as though he were in a dream. Part of him believed she might show up at any moment and walk in the door. Another part of him wondered if there was an unassuming-appearing Caucasian woman out there acting on behalf of Al-Qaeda.

Chapter 61

A
ldrich wisely made his way out of the lounge a little while later, smiling, patting shoulders, shaking hands, and making very little sense. DeRosier walked with him down the stairs, holding him by the arm, ready to catch the unstable senior citizen as he wove his way toward the elevators.

Gersten noticed Jenssen stealing looks at her, using the bar mirror. She suspected he was lingering at the bar because of her. Flattering, but also a little weird. She still hadn’t heard from Fisk. When Nouvian got up to answer a phone call—“Hello, honey,” he said, passing Gersten on his way out of the lounge—Gersten made her way down toward Jenssen’s end of the bar.

She cruised the food table, picking through the crispy french fry butts remaining on the crumb-strewn platter like cigarettes in a dirty ashtray.

She felt Jenssen’s eyes on her. So why not play the game.

She eased in next to him. The seat afforded her a better view of the street below, a good vantage point from which to watch for Fisk’s approach.

“No drink?” she asked, holding up her water for the bartender to refill.

Jenssen smiled, tinkling the ice in his glass. “Pure poison. What’s your excuse?”

“Still technically on duty.”

“Oh? Still keeping an eye on us?”

“Still your camp counselor. Do they have camps in Sweden? Summer camps?”

“Oh, yes.”

Her fresh water arrived. “So you never drink? All organic?”

“Never say never.” He smiled. “But in general, I find alcohol to be a useless complication.”

Gersten glanced over at the corner where Frank and Sparks were now openly making out.

“Exactly,” she said, with a smile. “The world is complicated enough.”

She shifted in her seat, bumping his knee accidentally. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. She moved her chair back a few inches in order to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again. In doing so, she felt a spot of wetness on her thigh, and at first thought she had spilled some of her water. But no—her leg had been beneath the bar ledge.

“Do you feel something under there?” she asked, bending back to see beneath the bar. She saw Jenssen’s arm resting on top of his leg, the sleeve of his shirt buttoned over his fractured wrist. “Something leaking?”

“I think it’s my cast,” he said, pulling it halfway out for a look. “They told me to shower with it wrapped in plastic so it doesn’t get wet. I had a drugstore shopping bag I thought would do the trick, but apparently I wound up soaking it.”

“Oh,” she said. “That doesn’t sound good.” She tried to get a better look, but he returned his arm beneath the table, rather protectively. “Do you want me to call around, see if we can get someone here tonight, or tomorrow morning most likely, to look at it?”

“No, it’s fine. It will hold until after the ceremony.”

Gersten’s phone vibrated on her hip. “You’re sure?” she said. “It looks sore.” He was holding it oddly, almost hiding it beneath the bar, perhaps out of embarrassment.

“It is tender, but once the cast dries again it will be fine. I am certain.”

Gersten checked her display. Fisk, finally. “Excuse me,” she said, standing quickly. “I have to take this.”

She made her way down the short flight of steps, turning left into a short corridor leading to the restrooms, seeking a quiet spot.

“Hey,” she answered. “Where in tarnation are you?”

“Are you sitting down?” he said.

“No. What is it?”

She listened while he told her about the Bay Ridge apartment raid.

“She mixed the Bin-Hezam boom?” said Gersten.

“Looks that way. So where is she now? And how much more does she have?”

Gersten’s head was spinning. “Maybe his call to Saudi Air . . . was for her?”

Fisk said, “If so, nobody came in late and paid cash for a ticket. Already checked. That flight’s already departed. She wasn’t on it.”

Gersten blocked her open ear with her free hand in order to hear better. “You have her picture, though. We have a face.”

“We have a face, we have two names, we have a Social Security number, an apartment full of fingerprints . . . but we don’t have a location.”

Gersten shook her head. She turned to scan the lobby. “So now I have to watch for a Caucasian woman . . .” She thought about the exposure of the lounge, with its glass walls and floor hanging over Forty-second Street. And a woman with a backpack full of TATP standing on the sidewalk below . . .

“I’ll try to wind up The Six, or those who are left.”

“You’re still at the lounge?” said Fisk.

“Yeah,” she said. “Waiting for you.”

“Ah,” he said. “No chance now.”

“It’s cool. You’ve got a job to do.” As she was looking back toward the lounge, Frank and Sparks walked down the short stairway together on their way to the elevators. Sparks glimpsed Gersten on the phone and shot her what could only be termed a nasty look, leaving Gersten wondering, What the hell was that all about? “I need her photograph.”

“Alert sheet should be in your inbox now.”

“So she’s a fundamentalist convert. Maybe a radicalized sleeper agent? An assassin?”

“If so, then her cover here is airtight. I mean, she looks for all the world like a cat lady, only substitute jihad for cats. She’s involved, that’s all we can know for sure. How involved? That information died with Bin-Hezam.”

“So what if . . .” She let her thoughts trail away for a moment. “What if Bin-Hezam, not the hijacker, was the real distraction? What if . . . this whole weekend . . . when we thought we were tracking the real bad guy, we were chasing his decoy?”

“A double deception? It’s . . . possible, I guess. At this point, anything’s possible.”

“You took it to Dubin?” asked Gersten.

“Had to. Waiting to hear back now.”

“He’s going to go public with this one. No more secret hunt.”

Fisk said, “He should. This has gone too far. It’s gotten out of hand. We need to find this woman.”

She lost part of the word “woman” because he was getting another call.

“That’s Dubin,” said Fisk. “Gotta go.”

“Good luck. Talk tomorrow morning if you can.”

“If I can.”

And he was gone.