As she juggled between chicken breasts browning on the stove and arguing with Joanna about whether she and her friends should be allowed to walk around on 18th Street the next day with no adult supervision, (“Come on, Mom, Amy’s mom is letting her”), Nancy was thinking back on her frustrating week at work. She felt as if she were running in place, not really getting anywhere with the story-behind-the-story on the attacks. She’d been cooking and cleaning to try to drive all that from her mind, but the damn CNN broadcast reminded her. Why did I have that channel on in the first place, she wondered.
Not that her competitors on the White House beat were doing much better, she thought as she flipped over a chicken breast and turned down the heat to keep the oil from splattering further. The whole White House press corps was frustrated with the secrecy and lack of access they’d seen from the administration since Bush took office. She wondered again whether it was time to ask for a change in beats. With Joanna, it would be impossible to take an international beat, as she’d long wished to, but she could see them moving to New York if something good became available at the home office.
Joanna had said something and she hadn’t heard.
“What, honey?” Nancy replied, trying not to sound annoyed but not succeeding. Joanna was getting under her skin with her constant begging about tomorrow.
“I said if you let me go, I promise I won’t spend more than $20,” Joanna said. She was still quite small for her age, with red hair and freckles that reminded Nancy of her ex-husband. “Just my allowance, and the money grandpa gave me. We just want to have lunch and look at some stores, not buy stuff.”
“Joanna, for the last time, the answer is no!” Nancy said in a voice that was louder than she had meant. “Do you think if you keep asking I’ll change my mind? It’s not going to work!” She immediately felt dreadful, and Joanna started crying, ran to her room and slammed the door.
Nancy stood there in the kitchen, clothes spattered by oil, the comforting smell of garlic, olive oil and chicken hovering in the air, and not for the first time wondered if it was time to consider a career change. The damn job kept getting in the way of her relationship with her daughter, just as it had with her husband for so many years. She sighed, put down her oven gloves and walked slowly through the green-painted living room toward Joanna’s room to comfort her and apologize for yelling. But dammit, she wasn’t changing her mind about tomorrow, and that was final. Give an inch and they’ll take a mile, as one of her friends always said about children.
Later on, with the dishes cleared and Nancy and Joanna sitting under a poster of a cat on their old couch watching a movie on TV (it was Shawshank again – Joanna had probably seen it a dozen times but never tired of it, and Nancy had made sure it was the TV version without the graphic scenes), Nancy leafed through her notebook of sources. She wasn’t actively working; just trying to decide if there was someone she hadn’t tried yet. Her eyes fixed on the name and number of Virgil Walker again. She looked at it for a minute, and then shrugged her shoulders. “What do I have to lose?” she asked herself aloud.
“What, Mom?” Joanna asked. She’d turned away from the screen, where Tim Robbins was hunched in the prison yard with Morgan Freeman.
“Nothing, honey, just work stuff,” Nancy replied.
“You’re always thinking about work, Mom,” Joanna said, rolling her eyes. “Can’t you just watch a movie and not be distracted?”
“You’re right, sweetie. I’ll put this stuff away,” Nancy replied, putting down her notebook and relaxing her feet on the ottoman.
But later, after Joanna was in bed, Nancy sat at her Pottery Barn desk in the small combination living/dining room and dialed the number. It rang about seven times, and Nancy was about to give up (who would be at work at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, anyway, she thought), when a male voice answered.
“Virgil here,” the voice said, sounding exhausted. “Is that you, Linda? I promise I’ll come home in half an hour.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Walker, this is Nancy Hanson from the New York Times. I just meant to leave you a message. I never thought you’d be there at this hour,” Nancy exclaimed, feeling embarrassed. Her heart beat faster.
Virgil said nothing for a moment, mentally admonishing himself for not checking caller ID. The name of the woman on the phone was familiar, for some reason. He wondered if she had been the Times reporter who approached him after the president’s press conference on terror issues last month. She’d looked nice enough, but the press was the press, and talking to the press never ended up working out, as he knew from past missteps. He tried to remember if he’d seen her byline in the paper, but he hadn’t had much time to read lately.
The silence grew uncomfortable.
“Mr. Walker,” Nancy said. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here. But it’s very late, Ms… Hanson, was it?”
“Yes. Nancy Hanson, from the New York Times. You can call me Nancy.”
“And what did you plan to leave me a message about, Ms. Hanson?” Virgil asked. He crumpled up a piece of scrap paper and tossed it in the wastebasket under his desk.
“Well,” Nancy spluttered. “I’m working on a story about the plane collision, and I’m trying to get some insight on what these terrorists may have had in mind. No one’s really answering my questions – like at the press conference the other day – so I’ve been trying some people I know, and I happened to have your number.”
“How did you get the direct line to my office?” Virgil asked. “You must be a hell of a reporter.”
“Oh, we have our little secrets,” Nancy said, feeling a bit less nervous.
“Look, Ms. Hanson, you sound really nice, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. I have no clearance to talk to the media. And even if I wanted to talk to you, there’s nothing I could really tell you to answer your questions.”
“Do you ever do off-the-record interviews?” Nancy asked. “I’d promise never to identify you as a source if you talked to me on background. I’m just trying to get an angle on this thing. I feel like there’s a lot that we aren’t being told.”
Virgil smiled.
“I’ve had some media training in a past life, Ms. Hanson, and I learned never, ever to go on background with a reporter. Frankly, I’m uncomfortable just having this little conversation. If my bosses found out I talked to you, I could lose my job.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “I’ll leave you alone. Can I just leave you my number in case you change your mind?”
“I won’t, but you can,” he replied.
After she gave him her cell number and he got off the phone, Virgil stood up and limped over to the cabinet, where he poured himself another drink. The bourbon bottle was pretty light. He’d given it a workout this week, but, as usual, the alcohol didn’t do much to relax him. He took a few sips, set the glass down on his desk, and sat back down. He wheeled his chair back and forth, looking again at his memo to Cheney and Bush, still on his screen and in about its 10th revision. Damn, he thought. What the hell am I doing here at 11 p.m. on Saturday? He was starting to get grief from Linda about his hours, which was rich, considering her 70-hour weeks in corporate law.
He looked at the number that he’d hastily scrawled on a napkin as he’d spoken to Nancy. And he thought about Harry’s words. “Which team am I on?” he asked himself. Without giving it further thought, he picked up the phone and dialed the number on the napkin.
“Nancy Hanson, this is Virgil Walker,” he said when she answered.
“Did you change your mind?” Nancy asked, sounding pleasantly surprised.
“I guess you could say that,” Virgil said, leaning back in his chair. “Where do you live?”
“I’m on Ontario Road in Adams Morgan,” she replied.
“Meet me on the corner of 18th and Kalorama tomorrow at 11,” Virgil said. “You know the post office there? I’ll be right in front. I’m about 5 feet 7 with grayish-black hair, and I’ll be carrying an old brown brief
case that looks pretty beat up. That time OK?”
“Sounds good,” Nancy replied, trying not to sound too excited. “I’m about 5 feet 3 and I have kind of curly brown hair. I’ll be wearing a tan jacket.”
“Good. At least I’m taller than someone around here,” he said with a laugh. “See you then.”
“Thanks,” Nancy said, and put down the phone. She sat on the couch in her dark living room, wondering what he would tell her. Her face broke into a grin as she felt the old excitement, and realized this is exactly why she’d gone into journalism in the first place.
CHAPTER 6
Jarrah Takes Care of Business
Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested Aug. 16 on immigration charges after arousing suspicion when he attended a flight school to learn how to fly a 747, had been a pain in the ass ever since arriving in jail, his guards agreed. Moussaoui, a bald man with a distinct goatee, had a bunch of habits that didn’t endear him to the corrections workers. He threw his food out into the hallway, banged on his metal bed with a spoon and yelled vulgar language when told to shut up. The other day, two FBI agents came to the jail to question him, but the agents hadn’t really gotten anywhere in their interrogation. The agents left after a couple hours, telling the corrections staff that eventually he would be removed from this facility to one in which more sophisticated methods could be used.
Moussaoui, already an irritant to other prisoners, didn’t make himself any more popular on Sept. 11. When the plane collision occurred, televisions throughout the facility were tuned to CNN and other news networks. Non-stop coverage ensued, and all the prisoners watched intently.
“Allahu akbar!” Moussaoui yelled over and over as the news of the hijacking unfolded. “Allah is the greatest! Hurray for the mujahideen! Allahu akbar!”
“Shut the hell up, you son of a bitch!” an African-American prisoner in a nearby cell yelled back. “I’ll allahu akbar your fuckin’ head!”
“Yeah, shut up, you fuckin’ Arab bastard!” another inmate yelled. “Just go fuck yourself!”
Moussaoui just yelled louder, and started banging a spoon against his metal bunk. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
The rest of the prisoners in the cell block tried to drown him out, yelling, “Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!” every time he called out “Allahu akbar!”
Between the yelling of the prisoners and the clanking of the spoon, the guard on duty in the cell block, Christopher Rivera, ran out of patience.
“That’s enough out of all of you, goddamnit!” he barked, marching down the cell block, trying hard to project his voice loud enough to cover up the noise from the prisoners. “Shut the fuck up! We’re turning off the fuckin’ TVs. Every damn one of them!”
“Aw, come on, Rivera,” a middle-aged, overweight white prisoner with a huge, jagged scar over his right eye called from one of the cells. “Don’t let that raghead ruin things for everyone else.”
“Too fuckin’ bad,” Rivera said. He went back toward his desk to get the remote control that turned off the TVs.
Moussaoui gave Rivera a dirty look as the guard walked by the French Muslim’s cell. “You’re next,” Moussaoui said in his French-accented English. “We will win. America will be the loser.”
“You’re the only loser around this shitty place,” Rivera replied in a gruff voice. “Shut the fuck up with that fuckin’ ‘Alluha Akbar’ crap. You’re driving everyone nuts, including me. You think I won’t come in there and work you over? Just watch. You’ll find out if you keep up that raghead shit.” He knew his words were empty; “working over” prisoners didn’t happen in Minnesota in 2001.
“America is the loser,” Moussaoui repeated. “The loser.” Rivera looked at him disparagingly and moved on.
On the morning of September 16, Moussaoui received his first visitor since arriving. The visitor, an intense-looking Middle Eastern man with a heavy beard wearing thick-framed glasses who had identified himself as Moussaoui’s brother when applying the previous week to visit him, met Moussaoui in the visiting room and they shook hands and hugged as guards watched them closely. The conversation was in Arabic, and Moussaoui stayed uncharacteristically quiet, nodding a lot but letting the other man do the talking. None of the nearby guards spoke Arabic, so none of them understood what was said. But they did notice that Moussaoui was pale and silent when they escorted him back to his cell and his visitor walked casually out of the room and back into the free world. Rivera was the guard on duty. He carefully shut Moussaoui’s door and moved along to the next cell. More prisoners needed escorting to the visitor’s room, and there was no time to worry about Moussaoui’s strangely quiet behavior. Rivera was just grateful for the peace.
That evening, the doors in Moussaoui’s cell block opened automatically at the sound of a buzzer, and the prisoners filed out as usual to walk to the dining hall. All but one of them. Rivera noticed a gap in the line of men where Moussaoui normally would be. Rivera walked into Moussaoui’s cell, the overhead light beaming down on the guard’s shaven head.
“Wake up, Zachy,” he called out in his rough voice, using the nickname for Moussaoui that usually so annoyed the prisoner. “Come on!”
He nudged the prone form of Moussaoui, who was sprawled on his bed. “Come on!” Rivera repeated, now speaking more loudly. “You’re holding everyone up!”
“Everything OK in there?” asked the guard standing in the hallway watching the other prisoners.
“He ain’t moving,” Rivera yelled. “Call the medic!”
Rivera turned Moussaoui over and saw the man’s face for the first time. The mouth was open, the tongue white and the eyes sunken in their sockets. Rivera held his hand in front of the mouth and nose and felt no sign of breath. “Oh, shit,” Rivera said.
Later that day, Ziad Jarrah, the man who was to have been lead hijacker of Flight 93, sped down an empty Minnesota highway, his mission of the day complete. He’d followed the Director’s orders and taken care of Moussaoui, the inconvenient bastard who’d gotten himself arrested through his idiocy. Oh, Moussaoui hadn’t been all that happy to hear what Jarrah had to say, but to his credit, he understood why the action was necessary, and was ready to take his life for the cause. Jarrah had held the small packet of cyanide in his hand and slipped it into Moussaoui’s as they shook hands upon greeting. He’d explained how just a few grains on the tongue would serve their needs, and a pale and unnaturally quiet Moussaoui grasped the packet in his trembling hand as they spoke together. He hadn’t protested much. Jarrah had no doubt Moussaoui would go through with the deed, but he’d check later with contacts to make absolutely certain the operation was a success.
Upon leaving jail, Jarrah discreetly removed the fake beard and glasses and tossed both into a dumpster about 10 miles away. Then he pulled his rental car into the parking lot of an office complex a few miles further along and abandoned it. He’d walked from there to a local Hertz office, and was now driving a different rental car. His papers, including a driver’s license with a false name and address and a State Farm insurance card, all checked out just fine with the car rental place, as he knew they would. After all, he’d created the documents.
Creating false papers was no big deal for Jarrah, who also could fly airplanes, doctor passports, pass lie detector tests, procure cyanide and conduct minor surgery in a pinch. He also was fluent in English, Arabic, French and German, and was a trained engineer. Additionally, he always seemed to know where to find the best beer and beaches in any locale, which made him a hit with those friends of his who weren’t Islamic extremists. His many talents, he knew, made him an invaluable asset to Al-Qaeda, and that’s why the Director put so much trust in him, even though his religious bona fides (and, to be perfectly honest, his religious convictions) weren’t in the same league as many of the other terrorists in the group.
Moussaoui had high aspirations, Jarrah reflected as he drove south through the thinning urban sprawl and then the endless green corn and soybean fields south of Minneapol
is, but his maturity was suspect, and he’d never been seriously considered for the Sept. 11 mission. Moussaoui’s decision to train in a 747 simulator was his own, and by the time he was arrested, the Director had already decided to get him out of the way. The arrest had been very unfortunate, but luckily the American authorities were too stupid to put two and two together and connect Moussaoui with the other brothers who’d taken flight training in the United States. But they’d eventually make the connection, and now, even though the Sept. 11 mission had been only a partial success, Moussaoui was a loose lip that had to be zipped. Besides, he was a Frenchman with Moroccan ancestry, and didn’t really fit in well with the other brothers, who were all born and raised in Arab lands.
The Director and the Sheik had their concerns about Jarrah, as well, he knew. Just weeks before Sept. 11, there’d been some question as to whether Jarrah would be part of the mission. The Director didn’t think Jarrah’s heart was truly in it, and there had been times when the Director had been correct about that. There was a last-minute scramble over the summer to find a replacement for Jarrah if he bowed out. Jarrah’s family and Turkish born German girlfriend, with whom he remained close, passionately urged him to return to his homeland and get back on a more secular path. He had told them he needed to see this job through, but would consider their pleas afterwards. They hadn’t known his job was being part of a suicide mission and there would be no afterwards for him.
Finally, in late July, Jarrah flew to Germany and met with an important associate of the Director’s, who had convinced him to stay in on the plot by repeatedly showing him the news video of the little Palestinian boy crouching helplessly on the ground with his father before perishing in a hail of bullets.
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