by John Whitman
“Willow, I struck out again.”
“That sucks,” he said casually. “Those guys are a bunch of tight asses, aren’t they?”
“You have no idea.” The truth was, Mercy was pretty tight-assed herself, but for some reason Willow had taken a liking to her, so she played to his expectations as much as possible. “I can’t get anyone to believe that an eco-terrorist would plan something big for the G8 summit.”
Silence. Willow apparently didn’t understand that this was his cue to contribute to the conversation.
“What do you think they might be planning, Will? I need something to go on.”
“Man, I don’t know,” said the informant. “I told you I never liked their vibe. I stopped hanging with them a long time ago. I just heard from a friend that they were getting all postal and working themselves up, and that they were talking like the G8 was going to be jacked up.”
This was about as far as Mercy had gotten last time with Willow. If he’d been her sole indicator, she wouldn’t have given him a second thought. But since Gordon Gleed had been murdered for hearing the same information (at least that was her theory), she had to assume there was some truth behind it, if she could ever find the specifics behind Willow’s vaguery.
Mercy decided it was time to stop playing softball with him. “Willow, I need to know who told you, and I need to know now.”
“I told you, that’s not cool with me. I’ve taken a vow against violence but I’ve also taken a vow against ratting out my friends.”
“Well, your two vows are officially in conflict. If you don’t put me in touch with someone who knows what’s going on, then you’ll as good as help cause whatever violence happens. So tell me—”
“Man, you are starting to sound like—”
Mercy pulled a piece of paper out of her files, checking his address. “Tell you what, you’ll tell me in person instead. I’m going to be at your house in ten minutes.” She cut the connection. Mercy grabbed her purse and stood up, then, at the last minute, picked up her desk phone and rang the dispatcher. “Roll a unit to 16150 West Washington,” she said. “Occupant is a male Caucasian, twenty-six years old, five feet six, brown hair, approximately one hundred sixty pounds. He’s not to go anywhere until I arrive.”
10:17 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack buttoned his shirt back on as the techs left with a vial full of his blood.
“If he’s trying to tail me, I’ll lose him,” he said to Chris. “Better yet, I’ll catch the tail and get information.”
Jamey Farrell appeared in the doorway, pushing her dark hair back from her face.
“That was fast,” Chris Henderson said, impressed.
“Oh, we’re not nearly done,” Jamey said in a voice mixed with pride and annoyance. “But I wanted to update you. We did a first run on anyone we considered primary, including all of our liaisons to other agencies, the FBI surveillance teams at the Federal Building, and all of us.”
“Us?” Nina barked, sounding offended. “You ran checks on us?”
Jamey shrugged. “SOP,” she said, which was shorthand for “standard operating procedure.” “You’re clear, by the way,” she said with a smile. “And so is everyone else. Not even a hint of anything that might suggest contact with al-Libbi. You’d expect clear records, of course, but there’s not even a remote possibility. No one worked on anything that would put them close. No overseas assignments, no connections with intra-departmental groups that worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel.”
“How far back?” Chris asked.
“Three years,” Jamey said. “No sense in going farther, since most agents on the list were on other assignments prior. The G8 is a big deal, but we’re talking about local surveillance here. Everyone being used on this is domestic, or at least pulled from areas that are not terrorist-related. We wouldn’t even be involved if it weren’t for—” She looked at Jack.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “If it weren’t for me. But so far it looks like I was right. How about vacations?”
Jamey raised her hands in an expression that said, Everyone takes a vacation except you. “Sure, vacations. The Bahamas, Costa Rica, the Amazon rain forest. But no one vacationed in Iran.”
“We need to check on everyone’s contacts for the last year. See if there’s a link to their vacations with any movements of al-Libbi.”
Jamey Farrell rolled her eyes. “Jack, you’re asking for—”
“This asshole threatened my daughter!” Jack yelled. He felt pressure swell up inside him, like an angry sea rolling up under an unsteady boat. He realized that he’d been bottling up his anger at being assaulted and violated; he had focused on solving the problem. But now, at a pause in the crisis, he found his anger overwhelming him. “I don’t care what I’m asking for. Just do it!”
“Jack.” Chris Henderson’s voice was calm. He had the sort of presence that calmed passionate men like Jack, because they knew Henderson had faced the same darkness they had faced. “We haven’t been able to track al-Libbi’s movements that accurately, or we’d have picked him up.”
“Is there any chance there is no informant?” Nina asked. “This guy was bluffing about tracking you, maybe he was bluffing about everything.”
Jack waved the suggestion off. “He knew who I was. He knew I was tracking him. He didn’t read that in the L.A. Times.”
Chris Henderson appeared lost in thought for a moment. Then he said, “Jack, go get your daughter. Get her away from the demonstrations, make sure she’s okay. We’ve got eyes and ears all over the Federal Building. If they try anything, we’re as ready as we can be with or without you there. You’ll feel better once you know your daughter’s okay.”
Jack nodded reluctantly. Henderson was speaking reasonably, but Jack was in no mood to be reasonable. The violence inside him had not dissipated. He bit his lip, letting the pain focus his attention. He could hold his violence in check. He’d done it before. He would let it loose at the right time. When he found al-Libbi.
10:22 A.M. PST Culver City
Mercy slid up to the red curb in front of 16150, ignoring the fire hydrant. Two uniformed police officers were on the front lawn of a yellow three-story apartment building, wrestling with a twenty-something man in jeans and an orange T-shirt.
By the time Mercy had exited the car and crossed the lawn, the
uniforms had him on his stomach and were hooking him up.
“Hey, Willow,” she said with a smile.
The young man craned his neck to look up at her, his indignant look clearly proving that he laid the blame for his predicament squarely on her.
“Stand him up, please,” Mercy said.
The uniforms took hold of one shoulder each and pulled Willow to his feet. His hair was close-cropped and his chin was covered in a permanent fuzz.
“Man, Detective, you are turning into the man—”
She smiled. “Truth is, I was the man before we met.” They were roughly the same height, and she forced him to meet her eyes. “I need to know who your friend is. You’re going to tell me right now.”
“No, I’m not!” he protested childishly.
“Yep,” she said as though he’d agreed with her. “Because you’re a pacifist and you hate to see people get hurt, and if you don’t tell me, it’s very possible people will die. Is that what you want?”
“Well, I don’t friggin’ want this,” Willow said. “I don’t want to turn my friends over to fascists, either.”
Mercy realized she’d brandished the stick but had never offered the carrot. “Willow, you have my word. I have no interest in arresting your friends. I don’t care right now if they’ve done something illegal. I just want to know what they know so that innocent people aren’t killed.”
Now it was Willow’s turn to stare at Mercy. She allowed him to study her eyes. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but she let him look. She liked Willow. He had all the makings of a flake, but in truth he had found his set of beliefs an
d preserved them against all comers, whether assaulted by the LAPD or by friends who pursued a more violent agenda than his own.
Either Willow found what he was looking for, or he gave in to his fear of law enforcement. Mercy found herself hoping it was the former. “Her name is Frankie Michaelmas. She’s with the Earth Liberation Front. She said she heard some dudes talking about doing some serious damage at the G8.”
“Great. Where can I find Frankie?”
“She’s at the protest. Hundred percent, she’s there.”
“You have her number?”
Willow nodded.
“Great. Let’s give Frankie a call.”
10:28 A.M. PST Four Seasons Hotel, Beverly Hills
Nurmamet and Kasim had departed. Muhammad Abbas sipped a small coffee and read the New York Times as Ay-man al-Libbi walked into the deserted bar. Al-Libbi was clean-shaven, with short black hair. He wore a dark blue three-button suit over a light blue dress shirt with no tie, looking like no more than a second- or third-generation son of Middle Eastern or Latino immigrants. He spoke English with a California accent and walked with the casual confidence of a man who belonged wherever he was. These traits, along with scrupulously forged documents, had allowed him to cross the borders of dozens of countries over the years.
“How did it go?” Ayman asked as he sat down.
Muhammad folded the Times. “The money is in a briefcase beneath the table. I assume your project went well?”
“We’ll see,” Ayman said lazily. Muhammad had noticed this tone in his leader’s voice in recent months. Ayman began projects with the same ruthless efficiency of years past, but once the gears were set, he seemed to lose his personal drive. In Bali, Muhammad had feared for Ayman’s life, but these days he feared for himself. The Americans could be fooled, but once on the trail they were relentless. Muhammad had no desire to end up in Guantanamo Bay.
“Will your man do what he is told?” he asked with real concern.
“I have him under control. You counted the money?”
“They would not cheat us, Ayman. Yes!” he added hastily, fidgeting under the other’s sour glare. “Yes, I’ll count it.” A question floated through his thoughts, a question he had considered voicing before. He stared down at the folded newspaper on the table as if the answers might be there. Finally he said, “Is it only the money now, Ayman?”
Ayman al-Libbi threw his arm over the back of the chair. “Muhammad,” he said with a smile, “it was always the money.”
Ayman’s phone rang and he plucked it out of his breast pocket. “Hey... al salaam a’alaykum.” He listened for a moment. “Okay. I’ll take care of it.” He snapped his phone shut. “Apparently my new friend is becoming a bit of a problem.”
10:39 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack hadn’t driven more than five blocks when his phone
rang. “Bauer.”
“Agent Bauer, you are not obeying the rules.”
The connection was crystal clear and the voice perfectly recognizable. “Go to hell,” Jack said to the man who had threatened his daughter.
“It isn’t my afterlife you should worry about. I told you not to continue your investigation. Yet you seem to be going somewhere.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack growled.
“I am talking about the fact that you are heading west on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
Jack jerked the wheel and pulled to a stop slantwise, the tail end of his SUV half blocking the right lane.
“Ah,” the caller said. “That’s better.”
Jack slammed his fist down onto the dashboard. Was it a tail? He hadn’t picked up any cars, and unless someone had CTU under surveillance, there was no way this mystery man—Jack could only assume it was al-Libbi—could know what he was doing. There had to be a bug of some kind. Jack instinctively ran his hands over his arms and touched the bruise at his elbow. He looked around his car for a moment, then opened the door and jumped out. He started walking west.
“Uh-oh, you’re moving again, “the caller said. “I want to make this clear to you, Agent Bauer. Your daughter has been infected with a virus. There is a cure, but I guarantee you that the only person who has it is me. If I see you leave your office, you will never hear from me again and your daughter will die.”
Jack stopped walking. The techs had screwed up somehow. There was a bug on him or in him somewhere. The caller was tracking him as he walked down the street. On a whim, he raised his hand and flipped a bird to the buildings around him. No reaction.
He returned to his car, ignoring the drivers honking at him, and climbed back in. Angry, he backed into traffic and whipped around in the middle of the street, heading back to the office.
10:45 A.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Twenty minutes after putting the screws to Willow, Mercy was back at the Federal Building where she’d met Jack Bauer. The crowds had swelled in the last two hours. She’d heard on the police band that there were in excess of ten thousand people. Protestors were now pressed right up to the edge of the permit zone like kids with their toes just outside the door of their big brother’s room. The outer edge of the crowd had pushed back nearly three full blocks in all directions, a swelling sea that undulated and splashed up against the island that was the Federal Building.
Mercy inched her car up Federal Avenue, which had shrunk down to a narrow aisle in the center of the street with police cars, paramedic trucks, and ambulances parked and double-parked all the way up to Wilshire Boulevard. She spotted an open space and double-parked next to another slick-topped car with the government “E” on the license plate. She got out and wove her way through small crowds of police officers taking breaks from their time on the line.
Willow’s laid-back style of speech had been to Mercy’s advantage. When he had called his friend Frankie Michael-mas, there had been no hint of nervousness in his voice, and in a few moments Mercy knew what Frankie looked like and where she was. She and a few of her friends had gathered in Sepulveda Park on the south side of Federal Plaza and across the street. Sepulveda Park was so crowded that the grass had disappeared. Finding a single person would be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles, but Willow had kindly arranged to meet Frankie at the drinking fountain next to the soccer field.
Across the street and half a block up, right in front of the Federal Building, protestors were chanting protest slogans.
Mercy couldn’t make out the words but the sound suggested that it was something like “One-two-three-four, there’s no G8 anymore!” She wondered why protesters always resorted to childlike rhythms. Were they as naïve as children? Or were they smart enough to know that the best messages were simple messages?
Over here in the park no one was chanting. This felt more like a sit-in, or even a picnic, than a protest. Twenty- and thirty-something Caucasians mingled with short, dark-haired men and women with Latin and Incan looks. Mercy thought wryly that the whole scene appeared as if someone had laid a J. Crew ad over the top of a Benetton ad. She passed through clouds of clove and marijuana and smiled at the image of a couple of uniforms barging through ten thousand people to arrest someone for possession of a baggy with two grams of pot. No one person, she thought, made the laws, but the people definitely did, and these ten or twenty thousand people had decided that a little ganja was okay.
Mercy reached the drinking fountain. There was a young woman standing there, her eyes scanning left and right, looking right past Mercy. She was short and broad but fit, like a gymnast, and wore her curly hair long and (Mercy suspected) artificially blond. She wore a ruby-red stud in her left nostril. These details matched Willow’s description, so Mercy said, “Frankie Michaelmas?” and held out her badge.
Frankie’s searching eyes focused in sharply. Mercy exercised Gladwell’s Blink theory on Frankie as the other woman reacted to her: thinks on her feet, dislikes authority, violent. These were the instant impressions she felt when she saw Frankie’s reaction, the
last especially noticeable because of the flash in her eyes that Frankie hid so quickly Mercy nearly thought she’d imagined it. But if Mercy was going to stick to her theory, then she had to admit it was there—a moment of spite begging for a physical outlet.
Frankie didn’t say anything.
“Detective Mercy Bennet, Los Angeles Police Department. You and I need to have a word.” Mercy had learned long ago not to ask permission. Asking permission gave the subject the feeling she could object, and Mercy was beginning to suspect that she had very little time left for objections.
“I’ll give you a few words. How about fu—”
“That’s cute,” Mercy interrupted, her voice intentionally thick with sarcasm. “I’ve never heard that before. I want to talk to you about the Earth Liberation Front.”
A few of the people standing around them were now staring at Mercy, but none of them looked hostile. Mercy guessed that none of them were Frankie’s friends. In fact, based on her tough grrrl appearance, Mercy suspected that she didn’t want any of her friends to meet Willow, and therefore had brought no one to this meeting spot.
“Willow sold me out,” she said with a shrug. “I should have figured. But you’re barking up the wrong tree, you know?”
Mercy took a step closer. She wasn’t used to being taller than her subjects. It was a good feeling. “I know that you told Willow something big and violent was going to happen here. I want to know what it is.”
Frankie pushed her bleached blond hair back on her head. “Well, if you find out, will you tell me?”
“I figure your friends in the Earth Liberation Front already did.”
Frankie smiled. “I’m not a member of the Earth Libera—”
“—not a member of the Earth Liberation Front,” Mercy mocked. Supporting information was filling out her first impression of Frankie Michaelmas. The “fuck you” attitude wasn’t exactly a false facade, but it wasn’t the foundation of her personality, either. Mercy decided that Frankie floated on a wide but shallow sense of self-esteem.