by John Whitman
“Michael, what is going on?” he asked.
Michael had been preparing for this conversation, but in no version had it seemed satisfactory. “Your Eminence, there is nothing for you to know. Or, rather, there are two things. First, that you must be out of the reception hall a few minutes after it begins. Second, that everything I do, I do to protect the true church.”
Mulrooney studied Michael, and felt in that moment that although the man had worked for him for several years, and that (though the Cardinal would barely admit it to himself) Michael had done many unscrupulous deeds at his request, he didn’t really know the man at all. “Have you . . . are you going to do something?”
“Not me, Your Eminence,” he said matter-offactly. “But a thing will be done. The less you know, the better.”
With that, Michael turned and walked out, leaving the Cardinal of Los Angeles to wrestle with a conscience he had ignored for many, many years.
9:33 A.M. PST Santa Monica
Nina Myers picked herself up off the floor. She could hear nothing but a loud ringing in her ears.
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The garage was on fire. She saw the smoke and the flames, but she couldn’t hear the noise. If fire trucks were on their way, she had no idea. The garage— what she could see of it through clouds of dust and smoke—had been blasted by the bomb. Chunks of wall had been blown away, and the big garage door was twisted on its hinges.
She knew she’d been unconscious, but she didn’t know for how long. Her mind had constructed a fantasy of sleep and vacation. Was she on vacation? Had she been sleeping? No, she didn’t sleep in a garage. A bomb. A bomb had exploded. She’d been concussed. She might be seriously injured. Nina’s eyes swam in and out of focus, so from a kneeling position she patted her hands up and down her body. She felt skin, and clothes, and wetness that was probably her blood. She was cut! No, not her blood. Diana Christie’s blood, splattered all over her. Diana had been blown up.
Weirdly, it occurred to Nina that Jack Bauer had first come to CTU the night before after being nearly blown up. Shit, she was coming in second to him already. She felt professional jealousy rear its ugly head.
You are delirious, lady. Unrattle your brain!
Nina grabbed hold of something sturdy—a tabletop?—and pulled herself to her feet. She shook her head but still couldn’t see, so she felt her way to a wall, and then to the interior door. She had to get out. She had to stop the ringing in her head. And she was sure there was something important about the bomb that had just gone off. Something she couldn’t quite draw into the clear part of her brain . . .
9:38 A.M. PST Malibu, California
Jon Boorstein liked his brand-new BMW 730i. He liked ordering Armani (in the same waist size for the last seven years, thanks to his trainer Gunnar). He liked Cannes and he liked the after-parties at the Oscars.
He did not, however, like his job. His job was the price he paid for the good things in life.
“But what a fuckin’ price,” he muttered as he glided his Beemer through the self-opening gate of Mark Gelson’s Malibu home.
He hopped out and walked through the door, which was opened by Lucia, without breaking stride. He didn’t look at the elaborately carved crucifix hanging on the wall—the thing always gave him the creeps. Walking by that thing was about the only time Boorstein ever appreciated his Judaism, which forbade graven images.
Mark was sitting on the deck overlooking the sand and the Pacific, reading the Times. Though he was good-looking by any other standard, in Hollywood he was over the hill. Some actors, especially men, aged into new roles and remained sex symbols—hell, Bruce Willis was heading toward fifty, wasn’t he? Others couldn’t let go of the man they’d been in their twenties, so they got grouchier as they aged, and the resentment showed.
Boorstein had tried, a year or two ago, to encourage Gelson to move past his Future Fighter persona. If he’d managed the aging process well, he’d have a whole new set of doors opening for him. But Gelson couldn’t, so he didn’t, and now he was slowly dropping down on Boorstein’s must-call-back list.
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“Hey, Jon,” Gelson said, as though surprised to see him. “What’s up?”
“Headlines,” Boorstein said, sitting down. “They’re up all over the place, and they’re talking about you. But not the way we want.”
“Don’t PR guys say there’s no such thing as bad publicity?”
“They do say that,” Boorstein agreed irritably. “But they don’t have clients who talk about blowing people up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gelson said. “It’ll all blow over soon enough.”
Boorstein heaved a dramatic sigh. “Maybe, maybe not. Here’s the problem, my friend. You are moving out of the where-are-they-now file and into the what-have-they-done-with-their-life file. That means that people aren’t doing bios on you, but when you fall on your face, they want to tell that story.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” Gelson said. “You pitch that to Entertainment Weekly?”
Boorstein snorted. “Them I tell about your next this, your upcoming that. But you I level with. The mug shot was already in the paper. But I know two reporters who are doing a follow-up, digging up dirt.” Boorstein’s voice grew suddenly grave, and his cavalier movements settled into focused attentiveness. “So tell me, is anyone going to find out about this whole Catholic Church thing?”
Gelson looked calm, almost serene. “I don’t think I care anymore, Jonny. I don’t scream and shout about it. Why should they care?”
“Because Catholics go see movies. And if they hear that you are a schizophrenic—” “Schismatic,” Gelson corrected.
“Yeah, that. Then they might stop going to see your movies, and then people would stop paying you, and I wouldn’t get paid, and that would be bad.”
Gelson looked out at the ocean. “You know, the Catholic Church is the oldest continuously existing entity in the Western world. That’s a powerful thing all by itself. Then of course you add the grace of God and—well, never mind. But it’s been around. And it’s worked. It brought education and enlightenment. It was Catholic priests in Ireland that preserved Western civilization during the Dark Ages. One church, unbroken, unchanged. That’s why it lasted. It remained true. Until the sixties.”
Boorstein wished he didn’t need the history lesson, but he did. If anyone had ever told him about Vatican II, and the massive changes the Pope had ordered, he didn’t remember. But Gelson told him in detail about the changes in the catechisms, in the Mass, and so many other vital parts of the service.
“Hundreds of years, Jonny. Hundreds. And then, wham! It all gets changed by one man.”
“By . . . the Pope,” Boorstein reminded him.
“Not my Pope,” Gelson said.
Boorstein shrugged. “Look, none of your fans are going to care about a theological debate. Just don’t say or do anything crazy. Okay?”
Gelson shrugged. “No promises.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 A.M. AND 11 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
10:00 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire Area, Los Angeles
“You know, I came across an honest-to-god coincidence once,” Harry Driscoll said as he and Jack Bauer drove back to Jack’s car. “When I got out of the academy, I moved into apartment 432 at 1812 Delaware Avenue, and I got a new phone number. Swear to god the phone number was 432–1812.”
“No kidding,” Jack said.
“No kidding,” Harry repeated. “But in twenty years of detective work, that’s the only goddamned coincidence I ever came across. There are no coincidences. Ever.”
“St. Monica’s,” Jack said, cutting to the chase.
“Saint friggin’ Monica’s,” the fireplug of a detective replied. “Why is it you go there twice in one night. The priest that I arrest, who works there, gets shot. And now the guy who rented the car that shot me up, who seems to have disappeared, run
s a business that takes care of the place.” Harry shook his head in disbelief. “You keep chasing this C–4 all over the city, and we keep ending up back at St. Monica’s every time.”
“I’m with you,” Jack said, “but where’s the next step? At least, where is it as far as the terrorists are concerned? You’ve absolutely got a criminal investigation to chase down, with child molestation and priests who should probably be castrated. But what about the plastic explosives? There’s no connection for me, as far as I can tell.”
Driscoll said, “You know the connection. Biehn said that whoever kidnapped him also knew about the terrorist, Yasin’s his name, right?” Jack nodded. “So the kidnapper takes Biehn, who was shadowing Collins. Same kidnapper has knowledge of some terrorist thing connected with Yasin. You got to figure that the same terrorist tried to kill me when I went after Collins.”
“We need that autopsy,” Jack said.
10:05 A.M. PST Santa Monica
We need our own forensics team, Nina thought. Add it to the list.
Not that Santa Monica PD’s team was bad. But even if they did everything by the book, there would be bureaucracy. Information would have to flow up the chain at the local PD, then back down through
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the Federal agencies. And by that time it might be too late.
These guys hadn’t even treated her like a colleague. The fire truck and black-and-white that arrived together on the scene had first treated her like an accident victim, then the cops had briefly put handcuffs on her when they realized a bomb had gone off, and then they had ignored her when someone checked her credentials through the State Department.
Now one of the forensics techs, a tall, ugly man with lanky black hair and pockmarks, approached her with a quizzical look on his face. “Ma’am, a question?”
“Fire away,” she said. “What have you guys got?”
“Well,” he said, then stopped. He furrowed his brow, creating deep lines above his pockmarked cheeks. Finally, he asked, “Was the victim . . . was she holding anything when the bomb went off?”
Nina tried to think back. At first her memory was fuzzy, but then she recalled Christie dropping her handgun. Her right hand had been empty. Her left arm had been in a sling. “No. Not unless she was hiding something in the sling on her arm. Why?”
The tech’s quizzical look deepened. “Well, only because the explosion . . . well, the explosion looks like it happened right where she was standing. Was she wearing a bomb?”
Nina shook her head. “I guess she might have been. I didn’t see anything big on her. But my brain is pretty banged up.”
“Okay, thanks,” the tech said, but he left looking even more perplexed.
Nina took out her cell phone, thankful that it still worked, and dialed the number for Jack Bauer. He answered quickly. “It’s Nina Myers,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m headed back to CTU. Are you there?”
“Santa Monica. I’ve got news for you. I went to see Diana Christie to talk to her about her and Farrigian.”
“What did she say.”
“She blew up.” Nina described her brief, explosive encounter with the NTSB investigator. She was gratified when Bauer said, “It sounds like Ramin. You may have been right. Are we running a background check on her?”
“I’ll do it. But you know this thing is getting crazier, right? Yesterday she was the one pushing for an investigation. Then last night she sends us on a wild-goose chase. Today she blows up.”
Jack agreed. “This whole thing is convoluted. Someone set it up that way.”
“Yasin?”
“Has to be. But there’s someone else. Someone on the front line who can move around without arousing suspicion. And they planned so that we’ve spent the last twelve hours running after everything but their target.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’m done playing. I’m going to go ask some people some hard questions. Starting with that weasel of an arms dealer.”
10:12 A.M. PST Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles
Gary Khalid lifted his demitasse with a trembling hand. He couldn’t get it to stop shaking. Anyone
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watching would have laid the blame on the four triple espressos he had drunk. But it wasn’t so. Khalid was excited and terrified and ready to get out of the country. He dared not return home. Considering the fact that the priest’s body was in the hands of the authorities, it was only a matter of time before the police uncovered their carefully laid plan. And eventually, Yasin had assured him, they would reexamine the history of Ghulam Meraj Khalid.
10:13 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“I already gave you the best example I can, sir,” Chappelle said. He was disciplined enough to keep the fatigue and annoyance out of his voice. If they thought redundancy and tedium could wear him down, they had seriously underestimated Ryan Chappelle. “But let me do so again. Right now I have agents spread thin all over Los Angeles, running from place to place because I don’t have manpower to chase down several leads at once . . .”
10:14 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire Area, Los Angeles
Jack sped back to Farrigian’s warehouse with a grim look on his face. He was sick of being bounced around. He was going to ask questions and keep asking until he got answers.
10:15 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“. . . drafted other agencies into our pursuit of terrorists,” Chappelle said into the video monitors.
“Isn’t that positive?” a Congresswoman asked. “Multiagency involvement means greater pooling of knowledge, doesn’t it?”
“And a greater chance of leaks, or worse, ma’am,” Chappelle said. “And different agencies have different agendas, and different command structures. Even if the people themselves are good, we won’t know what kinds of bureaucracies they’ll have to deal with.”
10:16 A.M. PST Los Angeles Department of Coroner Forensic Sciences Lab
Harry Driscoll felt his bones start to ache. He was getting too old for this sort of work. Pulling allnighters and getting shot at, that was a young man’s work. But this next job, at least, was specially designed for an old veteran like him.
He walked into the coroner’s office to find Patricia Siegman waiting for him. “I know I promised you noon, Detective, but we’re doing the best we—”
“Step into my office, please,” he said, and half dragged her into the men’s room before she could resist.
“Look and listen,” he said. He was short enough for them to see eye to eye, but he was twice as broad. “I’m with LAPD but I’m doing work with a govern
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ment unit. They believe terrorists are going to make some kind of attack today. Now. But they don’t know what. I think this guy was involved somehow, I don’t know exactly. I think this autopsy could give us an answer, so I need you to move some other stiff off the table and put my guy on it or people may die and it’ll be your fault.”
10:18 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“. . . terrorists are out there,” Chappelle concluded with just the right hint of righteous indignation. “You all believe that, or this meeting would never have been called. We don’t know where they are exactly, but I do know we have the resources to root them out, if we commit those resources to action. If not, they will hide in convenient places, waiting for convenient moments, and then they will strike.”
10:19 A.M. PST Playa del Rey
Yasin had moved, as was his habit these days. He’d spent a short time in the San Fernando Valley, and now he was headed toward the suburbs near the airport. He doubted the authorities had any idea of his location, but even with the simple changes he’d made to his appearance, someone might recognize him. It was better to be unpredictable.
He was impressed with how well this more elaborate plan was working. ’93 had been simple, but ineffective. Yes, there had been headlines, but they had succeeded only in angering the Americans, not terrorizing them. This plan had requ
ired much more subtlety, much more planning, but so far it had worked. Yasin was not blind to the fact that Federal agents were scouring the city, but he had foreseen that possibility, and, through Michael, he had set up intricate avenues and mazes to lead them here and there. So far, so good. Allah was willing.
10:20 A.M. PST Farrigian’s Warehouse, West Los Angeles
Jack drove into the parking lot of Farrigian’s Warehouse and walked in the front door, SigSauer in hand. He’d been here only ten hours earlier, but it seemed like a lifetime. He walked over to the little office and opened the door without knocking.
Farrigian was inside. He squealed when he saw Jack Bauer, but there was nowhere to run. Jack grabbed the front of his shirt, gathering up cloth and chest hairs into a tight fist, and dragged the petty criminal across the desk, scattering papers. He slammed Farrigian down onto the floor as invoices fluttered around them. Jack put his knee into Farrigian’s chest and his gun against his cheek.
“What the f—?” Farrigian gagged.
A guy dressed in jeans, work boots, and a T-shirt came around the corner, attracted by the noise. “Hey Andre, everything okay?” He pulled up short when Jack, kneeling, brought the Sig around to the height of his groin.
“Everything is okay,” Jack stated. “Got that?”
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“Sure thing, boss. Holy shit!” the worker said, melting away.
“All right,” Jack said, pressing his knee harder into Farrigian’s sternum. “I’m sick of all this crap. You sold a package of C–4 to a bunch of Arab terrorists, right?”
Farrigian shook his head no as vigorously as he could with the gun jammed back into his cheek.
Jack had had enough. He had never been a huge advocate of torture, mostly because he himself had been an operator with Delta, and the possibility of capture and torture were very real and very unclean to him. But he’d been run around like a dog in heat all night, and he was done.
He used the Sig’s sights to cut a red streak along Farrigian’s forehead.
10:26 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles