Threat Level Black

by Jim DeFelice

  Mrs. DeGarmo remembered Fisher a little too well.

  “It’s about time you come back,” she said, laying on the bad grammar and Italian accent for effect when he and Macklin rang the bell. “The leak, she still leaks.”

  “I was afraid of that,” said Fisher. “This is my assistant,” he added, gesturing to Macklin. “He’s an expert in leaks.”

  “Where’s your tools?” asked Mrs. DeGarmo.

  “We investigate, then we get the proper tools,” said Fisher. “Is that coffee I smell?”

  She eyed Macklin suspiciously.

  “I brought more doughnuts,” said Fisher, holding up the bag.

  “All right, you come in,” she told Fisher. Then she turned back to Macklin. “You, I don’t know about.”

  “Mrs. DeGarmo, we’ve met before,” said Macklin. “I’m with Homeland Security. Remember?”

  She squinted at the ID card he produced.

  “Oh, okay, come in,” she said, waving her hand. “If Andy says.”

  “He’s good with a flashlight,” said Fisher, who was already in the hallway.

  Fisher went into the bathroom, taking off the top to the toilet tank.

  “It’s already been searched, Andy,” said Macklin, coming in. “I keep telling you. Faud Daraghmeh’s probably back in Egypt.”

  “He’s from Yemen.”

  “Whatever.”

  Fisher searched the bathroom carefully, discovering that Mrs. DeGarmo had changed her denture cream. He asked her for the key to Faud Daraghmeh’s apartment, which had not yet been rented out.

  “Why search again?” asked Macklin when he came back downstairs. By now Mrs. DeGarmo’s “stories” were on and she was in the front room, watching them.

  “Best place to hide something now,” explained Fisher, helping himself to some coffee. “Come back after it’s been searched.”

  “No way,” said Macklin.

  Fisher sipped the coffee, which was ever more bitter than he remembered. He wondered if maybe he should go into the plumbing business so he’d have a legitimate excuse to visit Mrs. DeGarmo when the case ended.

  “You’re grasping at straws, Andy,” added Macklin. “You know this case is closed.”

  Fisher said nothing, examining the list of items seized during the earlier search. Faud’s computer had checked out clean; besides his schoolbooks, the only papers he had in his apartment had been junk mail. He had two pairs of “battered dress shoes,” three red button-down shirts, assorted T-shirts, one pair of polyester pants, two pairs of dress pants, and one pair of jeans.

  No suitcase? No backpack?

  No underwear or socks.

  Fisher took a long sip of coffee. The grains from the bottom of the cup settled on his tongue.

  Heaven. But he had no time to linger.

  “All right,” he told Macklin. “Let’s get going.”

  “Where?”

  “Library.”

  According to the want ads, there had been more than a dozen vacant apartments in the immediate area the week before. Ruling out ones still advertised this week, Fisher found eight possibilities. He also got a list of apartment brokers.

  “You have your people go to each one with the description of Faud Daraghmeh,” Fisher told Macklin, giving him the list. “It’s probable that he’d take an apartment within ten or so blocks of the train, something easy to walk.”

  “Why don’t you think they already had a place set up somewhere else?” said Macklin.

  “I do. But we haven’t found it, and this is the grasping-at-straws phase of the case,” said Fisher. “So we have some serious grasping to do.”

  “Andy, the case is closed,” said Macklin. “It’s done. Don’t you think?”

  “No,” said Fisher. “And I’ll tell you something else: The fact that we can’t find this guy makes me worry. A lot.”

  “You’re worrying? Really?”

  “That’s my point,” said Fisher.

  Fisher made his way into Manhattan and up to Washington Heights, where he went not to the apartment that had been raided but to the shoe repair shop across the street. The proprietor stood at his workbench behind the front counter, looking exactly as he had when Fisher had last been there. The only sign that he had moved in the interim was the fact that there were no cobwebs or dust on him.

  “You’ve come for the other heel,” said the man when Fisher walked in.

  “I’m always looking for other heels,” said Fisher. “You remember me?”

  “I fixed your right heel the other day.” The man pointed to a book of tickets. “You’re number 657A92. You take a D width. Wide foot.”

  “Wide foot, big brain,” said Fisher. He slipped off his left shoe. “How much?”

  “Ehh. Ten dollars. Two minutes.”

  Fisher reached for his wallet.

  “No, you pay when it’s finished.” The cobbler reached over to the side of his bench and pulled over a thick book of customer tickets. “Here. Fill this out.”

  “What? Another one?”

  “Every job gets a new receipt,” said the man. “Everyone comes into the shop—new ticket.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Sí. I have this shop for fifty years. Every customer gets a receipt. You know how many shoes I lose? None. Because they have a receipt. That is the secret to a fine business. Receipts.”

  “Even for ten minutes?”

  “Every customer has to have a ticket,” the man assured Fisher. “Every one. Address and phone number. Those are the rules. You think I stay in business for fifty years without a system? You make one exception, you know what you get?”

  “Tennis shoes,” said Fisher.

  The proprietor nodded grimly.

  “Your helpers do that too? Fill out receipts.”

  “My helpers? Of course.” The cobbler frowned. “Someone comes in, they make out a ticket.”

  “Just to talk?”

  “No talking. Work only.” The man’s frown deepened. “Maybe that’s why they quit, eh? They don’t even have the respect to tell me to my face. I have to guess when I don’t see them. These people.”

  “They spend a lot of time talking to people when they worked here? Friends or anything?”

  “No talk. I pay good money to work. Work only. No friends. None.”

  “No one?”

  “Everyone who comes in: shoes and a ticket. You want to talk, you go to Joe’s down the street.” He gestured in the direction of a barber. “He talks. Aiyeee, he talks. Numbers too.”

  “Did they know any customers?”

  The cobbler rubbed his chin with his little tack hammer. “Well, customers. They bring a few. That’s good for business.”

  “They filled out a ticket?”

  “All the time. Those are the rules.”

  The tickets were discarded once the book was filled, but by then the important customer information had been added to the owner’s permanent records. Each night after closing, the cobbler copied the day’s ticket stub information into a black-and-white marble notebook of the sort schoolchildren once used before the days of PDAs.

  “See, is guaranteed,” explained the cobbler. “A sole, guaranteed for the life of the shoe. What if you come in next year, you say I have given you a sole, when all I did was the heel? Ehhh.” He waved his hand as if he were smacking an imaginary cheater.

  “You don’t remember your work?” said Fisher.

  “Oh, I remember, but this way, I put it on paper, the customer just nods. I learn in the early days. Believe me, people cheat you.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Fisher.

  After Fisher’s heel was fixed and paid for, they sat together going over the notebooks from the past six months. Fisher jotted down addresses of people the cobbler didn’t recognize as being longtime residents of the area.

  It amounted to only three entries. Each name was Arabic, though that was hardly telling in New York.

  Fisher found a cab that had somehow strayed uptown in error and went t
o check out the addresses. One was over on Amsterdam Avenue, a few blocks away in a large apartment complex; the second was up in Inwood, the very northern tip of the island. And the third one didn’t exist.

  Which naturally made it the most interesting of all.

  Chapter

  2

  The bomb had already been made for him. All Faud had to do was put the wiring in and set it in the hallway. He had been warned to follow the directions very carefully or face catastrophe. He worried now as he stood with the wire over the connector: Had he followed the steps precisely right?

  Surely he had, he told himself. It was a devil again distracting him. The imam had warned him of this.

  Seeing the imam had been a surprise and a great consolation. He was prepared now. He had told himself before that he was prepared, but now he truly felt it.

  The truck would be waiting. He would take the canister he had prepared and then drive to the station. So long as he went in at precisely two A.M., no one would see him. Once past the gate—he had practiced jimmying the lock already—no one would stop him or even ask about the bags he carried.

  He could open them if asked. The gear inside looked as if it came from the fire department.

  If all went well, he would be in his spot by four o’clock. And then he would simply have to wait.

  Pray and wait. Things he was used to doing.

  Faud’s fingers shook as he brought the wire near the connector on the bomb he was setting. Worry seized him.

  What if the imam had lied? What if this bomb was not a diversion in case he was found, but a way of killing him?

  The top was covered with a mesh bag of nails. His body would be torn to shreds.

  He was unprepared and would not enter paradise if he died today. His hand jittered again.

  No, he told the empty apartment. I trust the imam and I trust God. He closed his eyes and pushed the wire around the post, screwing it down as he caught his breath.

  Chapter

  3

  Dr. Blitz frowned in the direction of the tuna fish sandwich Mozelle had brought, then turned his attention back to the draft report on the Korean government situation, studying the language the State Department had recommended the President use in his speech to the UN next Monday. The speech would call for a plebiscite on reunification, though the wording being recommended was so guarded even Blitz wasn’t sure that’s what it said.

  Certainly there was a need to be diplomatic: Anything the President said might be interpreted as pressure and be used by Korean critics to stir up resentment not just in the North but in the South as well. Still, it had to be clear that the U.S. was not only in favor of the vote but would help Korea—all of Korea—work toward overcoming its divided and tumultuous past.

  It would be an expensive commitment. Treasury had sent over a memo claiming that simply keeping the North from starvation would cost twice what the U.S. had spent on Iraq, and there were no oil reserves to defray the costs. Peace was an expensive proposition.

  Blitz wasn’t generally one to worry about the costs of things; the bean counters would always complain, in his opinion. But Congress would undoubtedly use the money issue to throw up roadblocks.

  An issue for tomorrow. Right now he had to get the speech right. Blitz brought up his word processor and began preparing a few changes. He was just getting into the flow when Mozelle buzzed in

  “You wanted to talk to Major Tyler in Korea?” she asked. “He’s on line three. It’s pretty late over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  Blitz turned around to the phone.

  “Tyler?” he asked after punching in the line.

  “Dr. Blitz?”

  “I heard you had a bit of trouble out there,” said Blitz.

  “Yes, sir. No serious casualties. Pilot broke his leg, some concussions. That was the worst of it.”

  “God was with you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What can you tell me about the UAVs?”

  “Nothing beyond what was in the interim report,” said Tyler. “They look like mini-airplanes to me, or even something closer to spaceships. The radio control gear and the engines were missing. The design itself I guess was interesting, but I’m not an expert.”

  “So you’re sure there were no engines?”

  “Yes, sir. No engines there. Or the control apparatus they would need to fly.”

  “Good,” said Blitz. He’d thought of having the President mention the weapons in his speech as an example of the North Korean threat—evidence that they were much more advanced than the intelligence community gave them credit for being—but now it seemed unwise. The project was obviously just another boondoggle. It would be interesting to see where the design had come from: Russia was the leading candidate, but it would be months if not years before it was tracked down.

  “Tell me about North Korea. What’s the situation on the ground there?” asked Blitz. He listened as the Army major told him more or less what he had expected: The people for the most part were anxious and hungry. There were still bands of resisters, as his experience at the airfield attested. And there was a great deal of animosity between North and South, making for friction.

  “Putting the two halves together won’t be easy,” Blitz said when Tyler finished.

  “No, sir.”

  “Has to be done, though.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you mind if I mention what you’ve told me to the President?”

  “No, sir. I, uh, I’d be flattered.”

  “He was asking about you,” said Blitz. “He knows you did a hell of a job.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You sound tired, Major. I’m sorry for interrupting your sleep.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I hope to see you soon,” added Blitz as he hung up.

  Chapter

  4

  Howe spent all of the morning and a good deal of the afternoon recounting the kidnapping for investigators. They were spare with their own details, but it was clear from their questions that they connected it with the Korean operation, an attempt by the Korean he had rescued to tie up loose ends.

  Howe asked one of the investigators—a DIA officer named Kowalski—point-blank why they’d bother. Kowalski blinked a few times and then shrugged.

  A long queue of messages awaited him both at the motel and on his cell phone’s voice mail when he was finally done with the interviews. He sat in the motel lobby systematically listening and recording the numbers and callers on a pad. Before he decided who to call back, however, he phoned his mother for the second time that day, just to reassure her that he was all right.

  “Jimmy called you,” she said, mentioning his friend. “He’s hoping you’re all right.”

  “Yeah, he called my cell phone too,” he told her.

  “Well, people worry.”

  “I’m okay, Ma.” It occurred to Howe that he had been having some variation of this conversation for forty years.

  “He has tickets for a football game.”

  “NCAAs, Mom. It’s basketball. In New York. I already left a message telling him I can’t go.”

  “He’s very excited.”

  Howe laughed. “He’s always excited about something.”

  “Just so you know.” His mother paused, changing the subject. “I’m going to bingo tonight with Gabby Thomas. I suppose my ears will be red for days.”

  “I guess,” said Howe. He listened to his mother tell him something about the neighbors, then told her he had to get going.

  “Well, of course you do. I will talk to you when I talk to you,” she said.

  “Love you.”

  He didn’t usually say that, and it took his mother a half-second to respond.

  “I love you, too, Billy.”

  Among the callers on his voice mail were three members of the NADT board, along with Delano, who was belatedly expressing surprise at the security snafu and sympathy about the “incident.” Howe decided that
firing the vice president would be the first thing he did; one thing he didn’t need was a phony.

  Howard McIntyre was the one person he wanted to talk to who hadn’t called. As Howe went through the cell menu to find his number, the cell phone rang; it was Alice.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d get you,” she said. “I thought I’d just leave a message.”

  “It’s me in the flesh,” he said. He winced, overly self-conscious but unable to do anything about it.

  “Well…” she started.

  “Well, what?”

  “I, um…I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  Howe felt a pain in his ribs, a physical pain: She was dumping him.

  Not dumping him exactly, since they weren’t a couple or anything like that, but she was going to tell him they couldn’t be.

  The pain was like a hard cramp, the sort that might come from sudden depressurization.

  He loved her, and he wasn’t going to let her walk away.

  “I was rude yesterday,” she said.

  “Rude?” The word croaked from his mouth. “You weren’t rude.”

  “I should have thanked you for saving my life. But I didn’t.”

  “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been there. So I apologize. I’m the one who should apologize.”

  What else is it? he thought to himself. Go ahead and tell me.

  Go ahead.

  “Why don’t we argue about it over dinner?” he told her.

  “Argue?”

  “I’m joking. Want to have dinner with me?”

  She hesitated. If she said no, he would ask, straight out, if she was seeing someone else.

  Then he’d pull out all the stops. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what that would mean.

  “Where do you want to eat?” Alice said finally.

  Chapter

  5

  Macklin put a surveillance team on the real addresses but couldn’t come up with enough people to canvas the area of the phony address, which would have been across from Madison Square Garden if it had existed. Fisher decided to walk it himself, checking variations of the address on the theory that the real address would turn out to be some variation of the false one. He found a pizza parlor, an Israeli restaurant, and a junk shop proclaiming that it sold Manhattan’s finest selection of antiques, but no safe house or reasonable facsimile.