Thirst for Justice

by David R. Boyd

  “Any other questions for Agent Kharlamov?” Tierney asked.

  There was silence. “Good work,” the president said. “Next?” Tierney pressed a button to end the videoconference.

  Cassie jumped in before the men could control the discussion once more. “I’ve also got new information, regarding two potential suspects, although to be honest they’re long shots. I went through the EPA database last night, looking for similar crimes or threats, parallels, any connection between past attacks and the attack in Seattle. Most of the cases are clearly irrelevant. However, I identified two previous events that involved perchloroethylene.”

  Everyone’s eyes were on Cassie now.

  “Both events were carried out by disgruntled former water utility employees. Both men served time for their offenses but are free. These two perps—Scott Fuller and Clinton Ray Franklin—have never given any indication of having the sophistication or political interest necessary to carry out an attack like the one in Seattle.”

  “Do these lowlifes have any London connections?” Stryder asked.

  “Not that we’re aware of,” Cassie replied. “We’re also exploring a number of events in large cities—places like Chicago and Detroit—where there were watershed break-ins but no contamination occurred. In retrospect, given what happened in Seattle, these could have been training runs. And finally, we’re reviewing a case in Greenville, South Carolina, where a vial of deadly ricin was mailed to the local water utility. I want to stress that these leads, however promising they may seem in light of the lack of progress in other areas of the investigation, are extremely preliminary at this point.”

  “I don’t give a shit if they’re long shots. I’m putting out a national APB on Fuller and Franklin right now,” said Tierney.

  “And you should circulate information on all of those cases to the whole task force,” Stryder added.

  Cassie smiled. “Check your email, Billy Joe. I already sent it.”

  Chapter 22

  Michael was relieved to be back in Goma. The last few weeks in the U.S. had been self-inflicted torture, as he agonized over whether to proceed with his plan and watched the light fade in his marriage. At times, his plan seemed eminently reasonable and rational. At other times, it seemed completely crazy.

  Back at the staff villa, almost all of the faces were new.

  “Hello, good people!” Michael called out as he walked through the front door and into the living room where staffers often hung out.

  “Bienvenue! Bonjour! Comment ça va?” Mbake was the first to greet him, still handing out effusive, heartwarming hugs along with her food.

  “I missed those hugs,” Michael said.

  “Welcome back, Michael.” Jean-Claude was still there, making sure they had the requisite medicine, food, and other supplies to do their jobs. He was really the glue that held the mission together, and he jumped up from a chair to shake Michael’s hand.

  “Thanks JC. Good to see you again.”

  “You look—” Jean-Claude paused, searching for the right word “—tired.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but held back.

  “That’s what thirty hours of traveling halfway across the world will do to a guy. Enough about me! How are things here? When can I get started?”

  “Hang on, let me introduce you to your new colleague.” A woman who’d been seated next to Jean-Claude stood up as well. “Dr. Michael MacDougall, meet Dr. Chantal Parizeau from Canada. Chantal is an infectious disease specialist and is on her third mission, after serving in Iraq and Syria.” Chantal was a few years older than Michael, hair halfway to gray, with a no-nonsense demeanor offset by a warm smile.

  “Nice to meet you,” Michael said as he and Chantal exchanged traditional European pecks on each cheek.

  “I’ve heard great things about your surgical skills, and I look forward to working together,” Chantal replied.

  Michael repeated his earlier question, aimed at Jean-Claude: “Okay, so how are things going in Goma?”

  “You’ll see tomorrow. We’re busier than when you were here before. As you know, Ebola has arrived in the region. And politically, things are worse. Several of our colleagues in North Kivu were abducted three months ago and are believed to be dead.” JC wasn’t one for sugarcoating the truth.

  “It’s not all bad,” Chantal objected. “At least we have an experimental vaccine for Ebola that seems to be working.”

  “That’s encouraging, but how could the political situation possibly be worse than when I left?” Michael asked.

  “Ahh. There is a new gold rush,” Mbake said.

  “A gold rush? Where? At Shabunda?”

  “Not for gold, Michael,” JC said. “For coltan.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Colombite-tantalite is apparently indispensable for cellphones, laptops, pagers, and other high-tech equipment,” JC explained. “About eighty percent of the world’s known supply of coltan is in the eastern Congo, not far from here. So the Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundian armies are all trampling around. They buy coltan or steal it from small-scale miners, then sell it to buy guns and other weapons. I read that the Rwandan army made over $250 million last year from coltan, even though it’s not mined in Rwanda.”

  “Incredible!” Michael shook his head. The Congo somehow never managed to benefit from its own wealth of natural resources.

  “The Congolese army is trying to push them out but they’re outnumbered and outgunned. And of course, there are rebel factions trying to claim a piece of the pie. To make things interesting, there are now private militia on the scene too. Well-trained, well-armed mercenaries working for international mining companies. They’ve greased palms in Kinshasa and have papers suggesting that they were granted mineral rights and concessions over vast areas of the eastern Congo.”

  Michael sighed in resignation. “If I’m counting right, that’s at least four different armies in our region. Who’s winning?”

  “The winners are the officers whose regiments can get coltan out of the Congo and onto the marketplace. They rapidly become rich beyond their wildest dreams. The losers are the people who live here. They’re seen as pawns—men to enlist, women to rape, children to enslave, villages to burn. And the icing on the cake is that the Congo is also absorbing hundreds of thousands of Ugandan refugees fleeing from the Lord’s Resistance Army. All in all, the country’s infrastructure, which wasn’t in great shape to begin with, is just getting shredded.”

  “Okay, now I understand why we might be busier than ever.”

  “Can you work tomorrow morning?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “Of course,” Michael replied.

  “Excellent. I’m really glad you’ve returned but apologize because I need to leave—I have something planned this evening.”

  “Jean-Claude has a girlfriend. A beautiful, charming girl.” Mbake was beaming.

  “Really? JC, is this true?” Michael wondered how his colleague found the time for romance.

  Jean-Claude merely shrugged, in typical Gallic fashion. “L’amour est fou. Love is crazy.”

  He left and Mbake went back to the kitchen, leaving Michael and Chantal alone.

  Chantal looked Michael in the eye. “I heard about the terrible events that happened here last year.” Michael looked at the floor. “How are you doing, really? We’ve got to have each other’s backs, so I need to know that when the crunch comes you’ll be right there beside me.”

  Michael met Chantal’s eyes. “I’ve been working at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for months. It has been going really well.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, but as you know, this is not an American hospital. To the contrary, and I’m sorry for being blunt, but this is where you lost one friend forever and where another friend was badly traumatized. My question is how traumatized were you, are you?”

  Michael looked down at
his hands, his feet, the grimy floor. “I’ll be honest. I went through a rough stretch. But I’m much better now.” Michael was attempting to convince himself, as well as Chantal. “So when IMAF called and said there was a crisis here, I couldn’t turn my back.”

  “But it’s always a crisis here, no? For almost fifty years, since the start of independence. For hundreds of years, beyond the era of Belgian exploitation to the slave trade. If you stay here until the crisis is over, you’ll be here for the rest of your life!”

  “Well, it’s just a short contract. Two months.”

  Chantal shook her head.

  “Look, Chantal, I’m here, I’m fine, I want to get back to work. To helping, healing, and saving people’s lives. But I’ve got to get some sleep if I’m going to work tomorrow.”

  Chantal shrugged and sighed at the same time, like a lawyer who had failed to get the answers she wanted from an evasive witness. “Please tell me if you’re having a hard time. You’ve got the same room as before, apparently. They’ve replaced your cot with a new bed.” She paused, smiled, and said, “Good night, sleep well. I’m off to see our patients.”

  Chapter 23

  Dom drove to Maria and Michael’s house in his battered, mud-spattered Subaru Outback. The roof rack was rigged to hold a bike, a kayak, skis, even a sailboard. Life in the Pacific Northwest was complicated for outdoor enthusiasts like Dom: there were so many choice activities, all requiring expensive equipment. Because he’d always worked for non-profits, Dom had to scratch around for gear, haunting the used sporting goods stores, borrowing from friends, and shelling out his hard-earned cash for new equipment only when all other avenues were exhausted.

  He parked on the street right in front of the house. As promised, the key was taped to the bottom of a red hummingbird feeder hanging from the eaves of the garage. The door unlocked grudgingly, unleashing a smell of mildew and dust. The garage was cluttered with outdoor equipment, gardening tools, dilapidated furniture, and garbage bags overflowing with old clothes.

  The only bike that Dom saw was Maria’s gleaming, nearly new Giant. Michael had bought her the bike years ago, but she’d never taken to cycling and rarely rode it, preferring public transit. He wandered once around the garage looking for Michael’s bike before noticing some plywood that, judging by the disruption of accumulated dust, had been moved recently. Michael’s mud-spattered mountain bike was leaning against the wall behind the plywood and an electric lawnmower. Dom moved the plywood and pushed the lawnmower to the opposite side of the garage.

  The rear panniers were still on the bike. Bonus, thought Dom. Another piece of gear he didn’t own and didn’t want to buy for this trip. Michael kept all of his sports equipment gear in tip-top shape. It made him a reluctant but excellent source of borrowed gear.

  The Gary Fisher bike sported skinny hybrid tires, so Dom would have to poke around looking for the fat knobby ones that would get traction on the slick rock canyons of Moab and Arches National Park. One of the panniers looked like there might still be gear in it. Maybe something edible, given his friend’s appetite when he was cycling. Dom leaned the bike against his leg and bent over to open the pannier. The first thing he saw was a see-through waterproof pouch containing a map. Curious to see where Michael had been riding, he opened the pouch to reveal a high-resolution U.S. Geological Survey topographic map of the area surrounding the Chester Morse Reservoir. That’s weird, thought Dom. Then he remembered his unusual conversation with Michael about terrorism. “No,” he said. No, it couldn’t be. He tried to conjure up competing explanations, to fight against the obvious conclusion: his best friend was involved somehow in the contamination of Seattle’s water supply. Feeling instantly queasy, Dom put the map back in the pannier, left the bike, locked the garage, returned the key to its hiding place, and got the hell out of there. He needed to think this through and figure out what to do.

  * * *

  Cassie walked a block to the headquarters of the Seattle Police Department. She passed two coffee shops but resisted the temptation, not wanting to be late after already changing the time of her meeting with Chief Gilhooley. She showed her ID to the desk sergeant and was escorted straight to Gilhooley’s office. He was a bear of a man, matching the voice she’d heard on the phone. Late fifties or early sixties, broad shoulders, large head, brush cut, huge hands but a friendly smile. One huge hand gestured to the seat across from him, and Cassie sat down.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  Cassie hesitated.

  He sensed her concern. “You’re in Seattle. Even cops drink good coffee.”

  “Sure, then. Black, thank you.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Gilhooley returned almost immediately with two steaming mugs.

  “Any breaks in the investigation?” Cassie asked. She sipped the coffee and was pleasantly surprised.

  “Lots of leads but no suspects so far. We have the eyewitnesses and the mystery cyclist, the emails—”

  “And the two Arab-looking individuals seen in the vicinity,” Cassie added.

  “Nope. The report of Arabs in a Toyota Tercel turned out to be Hispanic-American janitors doing a weekly cleaning of the water treatment facilities at the Chester Morse Reservoir. We checked them out. Rock-solid alibis. I’m confident that they’re innocent.”

  “I’d like to see the reservoir, get a feel for the scene.”

  “Of course. I can have an officer take you out there. About a half-hour drive, depending on traffic. How about you folks? Anything you’re not sharing with the local yokels?” Gilhooley smiled but his eyes told Cassie he was concerned.

  Cassie trusted Gilhooley, but she couldn’t tell him about the threat of a second attack and the $100-billion demand. To avoid lying, she answered a slightly different question. “The intelligence guys are pretty keen on the Islamic terrorist angle. How do you see it?”

  “Just between you and me? Doesn’t seem to fit. But I’ve been wrong so many times over the years that I don’t make predictions anymore. I stick to what I know.”

  “Just like my dad,” Cassie replied. “He was a cop in Tampa Bay for twenty-five years. Taught me to focus on the evidence.” She was interrupted by her cellphone. It was Abby.

  “I’m sorry. I need to take this call.”

  Gilhooley held up his huge hands. “I understand. The office next door should be empty.”

  “Thank you. I’ll try to be quick.” Cassie stepped into the hallway, was momentarily confused, looked back at Gilhooley and saw him point to the left. She nodded, turned, and walked into the vacant office.

  “Abby?”

  “Big break, Cassie. The DNI got a hit on the NCTC’s TSC.”

  “Too many acronyms,” Cassie pleaded. “A hit from what?”

  “The National Counterterrorism Center’s Terrorist Screening Center has identified two prime suspects.”

  “Who?” she asked. The hair on her neck tingled.

  “Two brothers. James and Mustafa Ujaama. Converts to Islam. Formerly known as James Ernest Thompson and Jon Thompson. Seattle connections. Al-Qaeda connections. Previous plots involving water supplies. They’ve issued a nationwide all-points bulletin for these guys. Mustafa Ujaama founded the Dar es Salaam mosque in Seattle in 2001 and served as its imam. Mustafa was heavily influenced by an imam in Atlanta named Jamil Al-Amin, a former Black Panther who called himself Rap Brown back in the 1960s.”

  At the mention of a Black Panther named Rap Brown from the sixties, Cassie began to doubt this so-called break in the case. It sounded wildly implausible.

  “Any more on the Ujaamas?”

  “Mustafa Ujaama spent several months in London, England, studying with the radical cleric Al-Masri before becoming an imam. The mosque in Seattle is closed now, but there are unconfirmed reports suggesting that it was recruiting and fundraising for Al-Qaeda a few years back. Mustafa Ujaama has been under surveillance off and on for many
years and is still living in Seattle. Agents are executing a search warrant on his home as we speak.”

  “Doesn’t seem to fit,” Cassie said, lifting a paperweight from the otherwise empty desk, noticing the hole in the dust she’d made, and quickly replacing it.

  “Several former members of the mosque are in custody at federal institutions. They are being questioned right now. And APBs have been issued for six other individuals of interest known to be associated with that particular mosque.”

  “And the other brother?”

  “James Ujaama worked as a courier for Al-Qaeda, delivering laptops full of technical information to them in Afghanistan. As far as we know, he first trained at an Al-Qaeda terrorist camp in 2007. Like his brother, he spent time living in London, where he also knew Al-Masri. British Intelligence believes he helped design a website that Al-Masri uses to preach jihad against the U.S. government. And here’s the kicker. James Ujaama was arrested in Denver in 2012 carrying a computer that contained extensive files related to poisoning water supplies.”

  Now Cassie gasped. Maybe these brothers were a good fit. For the first time, she wondered if the leaders of the American intelligence community, whom she’d dismissed as fools, were actually smarter than they looked. If the Ujaama brothers had done this, she would never live down her skepticism about the Islamic angle.

  “Is he still in jail?”

  “No. He entered a guilty plea on charges of conspiring to provide goods and services to the Taliban, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”

  “That’s an odd indictment.”

  “Apparently it was the only thing that the government was sure it could nail him on. As a result of a plea bargain, James Ujaama was sentenced in 2010 to five years in federal prison plus three years of supervised parole.”