Shadow of the Burj

by J Jackson Bentley

  Jamie met his gaze. “Yes, Brett. Thanks.” He knew the truth, and he was making it clear that he knew the truth. In the days before Homeland Security became such a behemoth, Brett Clayton had worked in NYPD with Jamie’s dad, the legendary Chief Pete Johnson, affectionately known as “PJ” to the men who served under him. PJ’s death had hit Brett almost as hard as it had Jamie. Brett was far too savvy to believe that PJ’s alleged killers had coincidentally blown themselves up whilst Jamie was sitting just a block away.

  Jamie gave her boss a one armed hug before she took her hand luggage and headed for the door.

  The Deputy Director put his big meaty hand on her shoulder, like her father used to do, and gave it a squeeze. “This will all blow over before you get back, JJ. You’ll be back at your desk in no time.” The young woman nodded silently and headed onto the empty skywalk to board the plane.

  As a law enforcement officer JJ was allowed to pre board, and so the plane was still empty when she stepped through the Airbus 380’s business class hatch. An angelic looking Arab lady wearing an Emirates Airlines uniform guided her to her seat. As soon as she sat down, a jolly looking American man of indeterminate age, but probably in his middle years, sat down on the aisle seat beside her.

  “Trent Middleton, Air Marshal” he said, extending his hand. Jamie shook the warm, dry hand, feeling the strength in the grip.

  “Special Agent Jamie Johnson, Homeland Security,” she replied.

  “I’m travelling in coach today, and so if you can keep an eye on Business and First Class for me I’d be grateful.” JJ had been hoping to sleep the journey away, but she promised to keep an eye on things for the Air Marshal. It was the least she could do. After all, it was his business class seat that he had given up so that she could fly at the last minute.

  As she waited for the plane to take off, Jamie’s mind drifted to events two weeks earlier in Hoboken, New Jersey. With sadness hanging over her like a heavy raincloud, she had driven slowly down Jackson Street, named after the seventh President of the United States, in the direction of her old family home. She had been told that the home had been damaged and that graffiti had been sprayed across the frontage on the day of her father’s interment. She was devastated to think that stealing from the old man and murdering him was obviously not enough for the animals who prowled this once quiet sub division, nicknamed ‘the Presidents’. As she pulled into the driveway she noticed that the house was in pristine condition, the boards were freshly painted, the grass neatly trimmed and there was no sign of damage at all. Jamie parked her red Dodge Nitro and climbed out to look at the old family house that harboured so many memories.

  Some girls are Mom’s best friend, but that wasn’t Jamie. While she was growing up all that Jamie had ever wanted to do was hang out with her father. If he went fishing, she went fishing; if he went to a ball game, Jamie went along, too. PJ and JJ were inseparable from the time she could walk until the time she left home for college. To her, PJ was more than a father. He was just there; solid, reliable and always ready to listen. Of course Jamie loved her Mom, and when she died Jamie was inconsolable, but not as inconsolable as her Dad. It wasn’t long after her Mom’s death that her Dad retired from the force, only later telling her about the cancer.

  Her Dad fought the disease with a passion, and had created for himself a smaller life than he was used to but a valuable one. Jackson Street loved their celebrity resident, the former Chief of Police, and PJ loved Jackson Street. For two years he had fought the city council for better roads and better cleaning. He made sure police patrols were regular and effective. He persuaded some of the young families to adopt the lonely widows who shared the street, their husbands stolen to fight unpopular wars. With the other retirees he regenerated the community he had joined as a young married man when he’d bought his first family home. Then suddenly it was Christmas. The family came home for the holidays; he was weak, found it hard to breathe. Everyone hoped that they would see another Christmas with Grandpa, but no-one was optimistic.

  To make life more bearable for him as he became less mobile, the sons, daughters in law and Jamie unveiled a fifty inch HDTV with premium cable channels, PJ’s Christmas present. With all of his family around him, the tough old man cried openly. Jamie was so glad that they had spent that time together, because just two days later he was dead. Murdered.

  ***

  It was dark and cold on the night he died. It was that odd interregnum between Christmas and New Year when not much happened and The Crew, a four strong gang of social misfits, spent the entire day drinking and taking drugs. By nightfall they were high and very agitated.

  Myron Patterson lived on the street parallel to Jackson Street, Monroe Street, in the ‘Presidents’ District of Hoboken. He lived in a poorly maintained house willed to him when his poor long suffering mother died. Like his three friends, Myron was now in his twenties and had a long juvenile record that, thankfully as far as he was concerned, was now sealed. The police were always at his door, but The Crew had no recorded adult felonies to their names. It was only a matter of time, of course. Between them they accounted for most of the crime for a four block radius. When the police came to call The Crew would simply terrorise the elderly witnesses, and once again they would get off.

  Myron and his gang were walking past PJ’s house when they spotted the new TV through the window. It still wasn’t clear whether they knew who lived there or whether they were just too stoned to remember anything. Before they had thought things through properly, Jordan, the youngest member of the gang, was banging on PJ’s door. PJ rose slowly and walked towards the door, breathing heavily with every step.

  The old man opened the door and looked puzzled. There were four strangers on his doorstep, and they looked a little the worse for wear. At first he wondered whether they had the right house, but before he could speak they pushed their way inside. Bodily lifting the frail old man from his feet, they carried him into the TV room and dropped him heavily into his seat. Whilst he was getting his breath, the tall skinny one spoke.

  “We’re taking your TV, old man.” Two of the gang then proceeded to unplug the plasma screen.

  PJ had been in the force too long to be intimidated by young thugs and so he reached forward and grabbed Myron by the leg. The old policeman put his hand around the gang leader’s left leg and forced his thumb into the soft tissue behind the knee. Myron screamed with the pain.

  “Now, leave my TV alone and get out, closing the door behind you, and your friend might just walk again.”

  Everyone froze except for Myron, who reached into his pocket and extracted a flick knife. He pressed a button on the handle and a vicious looking blade shot out. Swinging wildly, Myron aimed the blade at the old man. To his surprise, and everyone else’s, the blade connected with the Police Chief’s neck and blood fountained out. The old man pushed the flat of his palm to his neck to stem the bleeding and whispered, “Call 911”. Unfortunately for the old man, a red mist had descended on Myron, and instead of helping he took the knife and plunged it deep into the old man’s chest. PJ’s hand dropped to his side, and the fountain of blood soon became a trickle as the old man died.

  Mrs Jacobs was looking out of her window when she saw four men carrying a large TV down the road. The tallest one looked like Mari Patterson’s boy, but she couldn’t be sure in this light and at this distance. The old lady reached over for her glasses, but by the time she had put them on the men had gone.

  ***

  Standing outside the old house, Jamie was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear Tom Salter address her. Tom gently touched her arm and said without being asked, “Nelson down the street is a retired carpenter; he did the repairs. The rest of us - well, the rest of us did what we could.” He paused. “It wasn’t right to leave that filth on the walls like that.”

  Jamie smiled warmly at the neighbour who had known her since infancy, and who had been involved in every important event in her life. He had even travelled to her gradu
ation with her parents.

  “Thank you, Tom, it means a lot to me.” She found his hand and squeezed it tightly.

  ***

  The following two days had passed quickly as Jamie kept watch on her father’s killers. Local law officers were disgusted that the Judge had allowed the gang out on bail, but the Judge pointed out that whilst the gang had admitted finding the TV abandoned outside the house, they strenuously denied ever being inside. Until the full DNA testing had been completed, the DA had no firm evidence placing the gang at the scene of the murder, and unlike the instant results achieved by the actors in the forensic TV dramas, DNA tests could take up to six weeks to complete in the real world.

  The four gang members left the house together and if they followed their routine they would go to a local bar and eat. The last two nights they had been away from the neighbourhood for over three hours. Jamie followed the men to the bar, and when they were inside she backtracked to their house. With relative ease Jamie unlocked the door with a master key taken from a large bunch attached to her belt. No alarm; that was good. Silently she moved quickly through the single storey house, mentally recording the floor plan. When she had completed her circumnavigation of the ground floor, she looked for the door to the basement.

  At some time in the distant past the basement had been made into a den for Myron and his buddies, and given their lack of imagination it still had a teenage clubhouse feel to it. There were magazines piled up and scattered around, Jamie made a note. They were a mix of violent graphic novels, pornography and gun magazines. Jamie reached into her satchel and removed two well read magazines that she had found in the dead evidence locker at the station house. She placed the two magazines near the top of the pile. The first was American Ammo & Explosives and the second was Real American Gun Owner, more particularly the annual Protect the USA edition. “American Ammo” now had big black letters written on the front cover in black marker pen which read “see page 37”.

  Whilst she knew exactly what was on page 37, Jamie checked one more time. There was a detailed article explaining how to make an improvised explosive device, an IED. Before she left the basement she made sure that the magazines looked to be in the same order that they had been when she arrived.

  Back on the main floor Jamie sat at the dining table, which doubled as a desk and which housed a wireless PC and printer. She switched on the computer, and at the command prompt she commanded it to boot using the “D” drive. The DVD she had placed in the drive started Windows and allowed her to access the hard drive without having to guess any passwords. Opening the internet browser, she used the drop down menu to import data and in a second the hard drive was greedily guzzling the contents of the requisite files on the DVD. When that was done she did the same with the email software. Within minutes Myron’s laptop had inherited a history of visiting right wing websites and downloading violent crime reports, along with instructions on how to make a fertiliser bomb. Myron also had lots of new extremist friends in his contact list, along with a new email address, Crewman1982, his year of birth.

  Confident that a cursory examination of Myron’s hard drive would turn up hugely incriminating connections with domestic terror groups, as well as the floor plans for the local courthouse, Jamie left the house, ensuring that she removed her latex gloves only when she got back to her car.

  ***

  Back in her own house she sat and admired her bomb. It looked truly amateur and rudimentary. Nonetheless, it would pack a punch. Using her gloves again she placed the device in the cardboard box she had removed from Myron’s basement, and she stencilled on the side “Clerk to Judge Gilford” along with the courthouse address.

  ***

  The next night The Crew arrived back at Myron’s house almost on schedule. They were a little the worse for wear and didn’t notice Jamie watching them from her car across the street. As usual, the four friends went into the kitchen, grabbed a beer each and retired to the basement.

  Myron noticed the box first. It was sitting on the bench at the far end of the room. As he started to walk towards it he heard a mobile phone ringing close by. It was so muffled that he could hardly make out the ring tone.

  Jamie heard the explosion a block away as she parked her car. As soon as the bomb exploded she pressed disconnect on her mobile phone and slipped it into her pocket. The phone, like its twin concealed in a brown cardboard box in Myron’s basement, was a no-contract phone that had never been registered.

  Four hours later Jamie was awoken by a rapping at her door. She looked at the clock; it was three o’ clock in the morning. Pulling on a towelling bathrobe, she walked to the front door and looked through the spy hole. The Sherriff stood on the other side of the door.

  Jamie opened the door. “Greg,” she muttered, puzzled, “it’s three in the morning.” “I know,” he replied, a little red faced, “but I thought you would want to know.”

  Greg took off his hat and followed Jamie into the lounge, where they both took a seat. Jamie tucked her legs under her and smiled at the Sherriff. “OK, Greg, what’s so important that you need to see me so urgently?”

  Greg explained that he had just come from Myron’s house. He told Jamie that her father’s killers had been planning to blow up the courthouse. He ran through the evidence linking The Crew with the planned terrorist act. Jamie listened with rapt attention, occasionally looking surprised as a new fact emerged. Greg and his team had found receipts for fertiliser, wire and other components in Myron’s desk. There were instructions on how to make a bomb in a magazine. There was a box of latex gloves in the basement and the remnants of the bomb box contained the courthouse address. As Greg said, it was a slam dunk. It was just a pity that they wouldn’t be able to stand trial anytime soon, if at all.

  Whilst the bomb had not fully detonated, due to apparent poor assembly, it had devastated the bodies of the four men in the room. Three had lost one limb each and the fourth lost two limbs. Myron was blinded, and all four were so close to the explosion that the percussion from the explosion had caused significant damage to their eardrums and their internal organs.

  The hospital was operating on the injured criminals now, but it appeared that all four would survive. Exactly what their quality of life would be like was anyone’s guess, especially as they were likely to be living those lives in jail.

  Chapter 5

  Media City, Dubai:

  12th February; 12 noon.

  As she left the government allocated apartment, Jamie closed the door securely behind her, although there was little chance that anyone would try to burgle it. As far as she could see, the secure apartment block was largely uninhabited.

  According to the plaque at the entrance, the apartment building was classified with five stars and Jamie had to concede that her assigned unit was a smart as any she had seen in the US. The view from the top floor took in what appeared to be a man-made river, hundreds of skyscrapers and a sparkling sliver of the Persian Gulf that was visible between two matching towers.

  As she moved toward the lift another door opened and a tall, well built man stepped into the corridor. He looked at her approvingly and smiled. Jamie summoned the lift. When it arrived, Jamie and her new companion stepped inside. Glancing at her watch, she saw that she would be a minute or two late for her meeting with her new temporary boss on the sixth floor.

  “Which floor would you like?” she asked, as pilot of the elevator.

  “Sixth floor is fine for me, too,” the stranger replied, with an accent that sounded vaguely British but wasn’t quite.

  The next few seconds passed in silence as the express lift descended forty floors effortlessly and smoothly. The man stepped aside as the doors opened and ushered Jamie out. She was tempted to turn around to see if he was checking out her butt, she didn’t.

  The sixth floor was deserted. It was obviously destined to become some kind of communal area, perhaps a club lounge, because it was lavishly appointed and beautifully carpeted, but at the moment it wa
s almost empty. The only furnishings in sight were a conference table and ten chairs. The views across the city were magnificent, and the Burj Khalifa rose majestically in the distance like a needle, as if proudly proclaiming itself the tallest building in the world.

  Jamie moved towards the conference table, where a slim Caucasian male in his early thirties lounged on one of the chairs, admiring the view. His linen suit looked new. As she approached, the man stood to greet her.

  “Hello. I’m Max Richmond.” He extended his hand. She shook it, replying to the obviously British accent with “Jamie Johnson, good to meet you.” Max looked enquiringly over her shoulder.

  “Hi. Todd Michaelson.” The accent was recognisable now as Australian. The two men shook hands, and Todd looked directly into Jamie’s eyes. “Hi, Jamie. I’m pleased to meet you.” Jamie smiled in reply.

  The Australian, American and Englishman each took a chair, with Max waiting until Jamie was seated before taking his own seat.

  “Do I take it we all have a noon meeting with Sheikh Mahmoud?” Todd asked. Before anyone could answer, the lift bell chimed and the doors opened to reveal the Sheikh striding towards them.

  “Miss Johnson, Mr Michaelson, Mr Richmond.” The Sheikh bowed slightly. “I am honoured that you could meet with me. He reached out for a chair. “May I sit here?”

  “Of course,” Max replied, standing to welcome their guest.

  “The short version of my name is Sheikh Mahmoud bin Omar Al Ahmed, but Sheikh Mahmoud will suffice. Welcome to Fasil Tower. You will see that it is unfinished. The building was completed last year, but the Italian-Arab joint venture became bankrupt. A holding company based in the Cayman Islands now owns the building. The four show apartments on the eleventh floor were furnished for sales purposes. You are occupying three of those apartments. The fourth apartment has been converted into three open plan offices with a kitchen and bathroom. Those offices are for your joint use.