“Your American FBI showed me a picture of this man. They have a different photograph, but it is, naturally, the same face. The agent told me this Roger Fratello is or was a notorious criminal in the States. Is it true?”
“I have no idea.” I pretended to dig through my bag, as though I might find the answer in there. I should have figured the FBI would be doing exactly as I was trying to do. I looked around at the growing crowd. “Is the FBI here?”
“No. I was interviewed in Lisbon.”
“This is embarrassing,” I said. “I thought his name was Gilbert Bernays.”
“Yes, so did we all.” He handed the picture back.
“Whatever his name was, he was on this plane, right?”
“I’m told he was.”
“You don’t remember him?”
“The takeover happened within one hour of our departure. We were immediately separated on the aircraft into small groups. Much of the time, we were bent over in the crash position or blindfolded. Beyond my own group, the first time I met most of these people was at our first reunion.”
“I see. I’m going out on a limb and assuming Gilbert Bernays has never been to any of your reunions.”
He laughed. “That’s correct. I don’t believe anyone—at least, none of us—has seen him since the ordeal ended.”
We were being increasingly interrupted as more guests arrived and made a point of saying hello to Dr. Wilson. As he was greeting someone, I pulled out the manifest Dan had given me.
“The other American men who survived”—I checked my notes again—“Voytag, Plume, and McGarry. Are any of these gentlemen here?”
“I’m afraid Peter Voytag died last year.”
“That’s too bad. How did he die?”
“Very sad. He survived the inferno, only to be felled by prostate cancer. He was young, too. But Frank and Tim are scheduled to be here. Perhaps we can find them.” He stretched his body up like a Slinky dog and checked around the room. “I don’t see them yet.” He was about to comment further when a young woman rushed up to him with the distressing news that a reporter was at the door, agitating to come in. A voice of authority was needed.
“Is it Mr. Kraft again?”
“No,” she said. “It’s someone different.”
Dr. Wilson turned to me. “I do apologize, but I must take care of this matter.”
“Who is Mr. Kraft?”
“He’s a reporter. Actually, he insists on being called a journalist. An investigative journalist.”
“Really?” That was very interesting. My cyber pen pal had made the same self-reverential distinction in our chat. “What’s his first name?”
“Max.” I wrote the name in my notebook, on the off chance that I had just stumbled over the Mr. No Comment in possession of Roger’s computer. We were still on for our meeting in Paris, but I had no idea when or where. He had all my contact information. I had none for him.
“What does he want?”
“He’s been agitating for a list of names and numbers of the survivors, and I won’t give it to him.”
“There’s no reason you should.”
“I agree. I feel an obligation to protect these people.” He looked around the room. “We didn’t ask to be hijacked. None of us did. We shouldn’t have to talk to reporters if we choose not to.”
“Is he doing a story?”
“So he says. You must excuse me, but I’ve told people you would be here, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“No problem. I can find my own way around.”
He apologized again and rushed off.
I surveyed the crowd. A group of seven or eight was gathered around a nearby table. Some were sitting. Some were leaning in with hands on the backs of chairs. With a range of skin color and dress, they looked to be from an array of different countries and cultures. Checking name tags, I saw that many were marked as survivors. I introduced myself as the researcher from Boston. There were several nods of recognition, which made everything easier.
“I’m looking for this man for a project I’m doing for Majestic Airlines. Have any of you seen or heard from him? I believe his name is Gilbert Bernays?”
I handed the picture of Roger to a woman in a sari. She shook her head and passed it on. The group validated a few things Dr. Wilson had told me. First, that no one had seen or heard from Fratello-Bernays since the hijacking. Second, that the group, on the whole, made for very unreliable witnesses. At the time of the hijacking, they had been scared and in shock. Now, four years removed from an event they wanted to forget anyway, they mostly recognized each other from the reunions and not the hijacking.
The same was not true, however, of Frank Plume and Tim McGarry, the two American survivors I stumbled upon in a corner. They were chatting with another survivor named Helene. I introduced myself and listened in as they talked about their meetings with the State Department.
“I got back three pages of an old expense report and my wallet.” Tim was crisp and angular, with wire-rim glasses, an efficient haircut, and a pale pallor. “I had a flashback moment when I saw it. It was like this list of things I did on the last day of my old life. I don’t even have that job anymore. Hell, I’m not even in that business. After I got back, I quit and started my own—”
“Pictures of my husband were still in mine.” Helene didn’t bother waiting for Tim to finish. “He’s my ex-husband now, but anyway, my license and credit cards were gone. I asked them if they thought my ID had been used to make a fake one. Can you imagine if one of these people got into the country using my name? More and more of those suicide bombers are women now, you know.”
“Did you get any electronic equipment back?” That was Frank. Thicker and healthier-looking than Tim, he had coarse, curly sideburns and a comfortable grip on his highball glass. He also talked really fast. “You didn’t, didja? Me, neither. That’s because they took all that stuff, all the cameras and recorders and laptops, they took it back to that place in Afghanistan, and they reused it.”
“Who?” Helene sounded intrigued.
“The terrorists.”
“Reused it for what?”
“For whatever terrorists do with those things. They’re not living in tents, you know. They’re digital, just like we are. They send e-mails and get e-mails. They have Web sites, which they use to send coded messages. They talk on cell phones. They use video cameras for scouting targets. Just the other day in my neck of the woods, they caught a husband-and-wife team with a videocam on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. They were taking shots from every angle. Bad things are going to happen.” He raised his glass to drink but ended up using it as a pointer. “You watch. It’s only a matter of when.”
His tone was ominous, but I couldn’t blame him. Something bad had already happened to him.
“Are you saying some of our belongings could have been used to set up an attack?” Helene seemed very interested in the idea that her possessions had gone on to participate in some meaningful event.
“That’s what repurposing means—using it for their purposes. That could have been your camcorder they were using.”
“Oh, I didn’t have one—”
“Or my laptop. Did you ever think about that? My laptop sending e-mails to sleeper cells in Detroit.” He raised his eyebrows and gulped half of his drink.
Here was an interesting concept, this idea that the passengers’ computers had been part of the Zormat stash. I had only been thinking about things like wallets and family photos coming out of the Hefty bag.
“Did everyone onboard have their laptops confiscated?”
Frank looked at me. “Who are you again?” I reminded him. Researcher from Boston, Majestic Airlines…“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“They took everything,” Tim said. “Every damn thing we had, they took. Socks. Pencils. Key chains. CDs. They got a big kick out of playing our music. That’s something I wish I could have back, my traveling music. A lot of those CDs were hard to find. A bunch of them wer
e signed by the artists.”
“Have any of you heard about reporters ending up with these computers?”
Frank shook his head at me. “The government is keeping all that stuff.”
“Whose government?”
“Ours. No one would ever know, right? They would just say it all got lost.”
“Do you know that’s true?”
“Do you know it’s not?”
Tim chuckled. “Typical conspiracy theorist. All leading questions and vague accusations and an entire case built on proving a negative.” He looked at me. “Here’s the thing with the computers. They were in the house in Zormat. The military found them and called in the CIA. In the meantime, the villagers picked the house clean, which is what happens when you leave valuable electronic equipment lying around poverty-stricken, war-torn countries. All the laptops were gone when the spies got there, but there’s a reporter named Kraft who got in and got them. Supposedly, he bought them off a kid with a goat. He says he’s got a big story from one of them.”
Before I could jump on that one, Frank was into it. “Timmy, you talked to him, didn’t you? You told me you weren’t going to.”
“I changed my mind.”
I had to work hard to make my tone casual like theirs, because I wasn’t supposed to be asking these questions. It wasn’t easy, because it was pretty obvious Max Kraft was my guy. “What’s the deal with this Kraft? Everyone around here talks about him as if he’s not welcome.”
“He’s public enemy number one around here,” Tim said. “He tried to hack into Raul’s computer and steal the contact information for all of us.”
“Dr. Wilson’s?”
“Raul was not happy about that.” He looked pointedly at Frank. “That is the full and true story with the computers.”
“Okay, okay.” Frank was sounding a little desperate. “Forget about the computers. What about what happened that night, Timmy? You saw it, too. You can’t tell me there wasn’t something going on there.”
“All hell was breaking loose, Frank.” Tim glanced quickly at me. “I’d been thrown out of a burning airplane, bullets were flying, it was dark, and there was smoke everywhere. We were covered in blood. We all had heavy beards. My own mother wouldn’t have known me. I have no idea what I saw, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t go around telling people what you think I should have seen. Now, if you’ll excuse us…”
Helene didn’t seem ready to move on, but I was glad Tim took her with him. That left me alone with Frank. I moved a step closer. “He seems a little touchy on the subject.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t like to talk about it.” Frank was looking past me. He turned slightly and dipped his shoulder toward me. “Do you know that woman over there to my right? She’s wearing that raincoat kind of jacket thing. Be cool when you look.”
I glanced over. The woman he described turned away when I glanced her way.
“I don’t know her. Why?”
“She’s been staring at us.”
He could have been right. It could also have been the paranoia talking. Whatever it was, he was agitated. “Maybe we could go outside and talk,” I offered.
“Good. I could use a smoke. Who are you again?”
Since he couldn’t remember anyway, I dropped the pretense and just showed him the picture of Roger. “I’m trying to find this man. It’s important. If you have information that can help me, I hope you’ll share it.”
He already had a cigarette in one hand. He took the picture in the other and held it at arm’s length the way people do who are missing their glasses. “Gil Bernays? That’s who you’re looking for?”
Apparently. “Have you seen him or heard from him?”
“Nope.” He chuckled. “Not likely to, either. Gil’s dead.”
“What?” I stopped, but he had gone on. I caught him as he was leaving the ballroom. “Are you sure?”
“Hell, yeah, I’m sure. I watched him die.”
Chapter Twenty
I followed Frank out to the sidewalk in front of the hotel. He lit his cigarette. “I like it over here,” he said, taking a long drag. “You can smoke.” Having cheated death once, he must have felt invincible, because he smoked unfiltereds.
“Are you sure this man is dead?” I held up the picture again. “The records say he’s alive.”
He tapped the picture. “Nuh-uh. The official record is wrong. Hoffmeyer survived, and your guy died.”
“Stephen Hoffmeyer?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be obtuse.” I held up the photo of Roger Fratello one more time. “This man, Gilbert Bernays, and the other one you called Hoffmeyer were both on the plane at the end?”
“Right there with the rest of us.” He picked a bit of tobacco from his tongue. The records all show that Gil survived and Hoff died. It’s the other way around. It’s part of the cover-up. They want everyone to think Hoffmeyer is dead.”
“They being the government?”
“Yeah. Hoffmeyer was CIA.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m not just saying it. I know it.” He shifted his weight to his back foot and started ticking off points on his fingers. “He spoke Arabic or Farsi or whatever they talked. He said he’d done work as a contractor in Saudi. He wasn’t afraid of the boys with the guns. At all. He spent all kinds of time with them. He always said he was trying to get stuff for us, more food or water or whatnot. He kept them from killing a hostage. He wasn’t just a normal schlub like the rest of us.”
“How did he save a hostage?”
“They were threatening to kill one of us. It turned out it was going to be Peter. Pete Voytag, God rest his soul. It was all so random. It could have just as easily been me.” He sucked a little more life out of his cigarette. “They came and got Peter and took him up there screaming and crying. Next thing, Hoffmeyer just pushes the kid watching us out of the way and goes up there. This kid had a Kalashnikov.” He shook his head, still impressed. “Anyways, there’s a lot of shouting and yelling, not in English. Then the two of them, Peter and Hoff, they both came back. That was it. I don’t know what he said to them, but they never tried that again.”
I made a note to check out Hoffmeyer’s background. It would be easy enough to see if he’d really worked in Saudi. “What else?”
“He knew his way around a situation, I’ll tell you that.”
“How do you mean?”
“Tim and me, we’re not standing here today if it wasn’t for him. He saved us. I don’t know why Timmy doesn’t see that. I think he sees it. He just won’t say it, you know?”
“How did he save you?”
“The night that it happened, the kid they had watching went up to the front of the plane and left us alone. He’d never done that before, so I had to think”—he touched his temple with his middle finger—“what is so important? It can’t be too many choices, right? Either they’re letting us go, or they’re not, and I just had the feeling it wasn’t that they were about to let us walk. I wasn’t the only one, because even though the cabin smelled like piss the whole time we were in there, it started to smell like fresh piss. Everyone was thinking the same thing, that we were all gonna die. After ten days of the worst hell you can imagine, they were about to kill us. It sucked.”
He was a little hard to follow, because he was shoving so many words into such a small space. But I had practice. I knew Dan.
“Then the kid came back through the curtain, and I swear to you, the look on his face, he looked exactly like one of those Columbine boys. Slow, mechanical, completely blank. He came down the aisle and started shooting people, but his face, you know, he looked like he was taking out the garbage. I got up and ran, but there were some that fell, and this kid, I don’t know, maybe he was seventeen, he walked up and just…” Frank put his index and middle fingers together and aimed them carefully at the sidewalk. “He put the barrel up against a man’s head, this human being he’d been talking and j
oking with, and pulled the trigger.”
He paused for another long drag, sucking until the insides of his cheeks must have touched. I got the feeling looking at his face that it was easy to launch into this story but not so easy to finish it.
“Anyways,” he said, “that was Gil. He was the first one to go.”
My mind went blank for a few seconds, the way a computer screen does when things go haywire. News of Roger’s death had crashed the system for me. All my assumptions were wrong.
He loosened his tie and shoved one hand into his pocket. Again, he turned his shoulder in toward me, and it was almost as if the two of us were watching the incident unfold on a screen in front of us as he narrated. “Then what happened was a bomb went off. The shooting started outside. All of us stampeded for the door. Everyone was yelling and pushing. There was another explosion. This one knocked me down, and I didn’t want to get up. All I wanted to do was hug the floor. There was so much smoke. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and stood me up and shoved me down the aisle. Me and the rest.”
“‘Stay low.’ He kept telling us that, to stay under the smoke, but then another bomb went off just as we got to this crack, this opening. Everything went sideways. He told me to jump. I looked down, and it was too far down, but it was too damn hot to go back, and he said, ‘Drop and roll. You’ll be fine. Go.’ He pushed me, and I was all of a sudden on the ground, and I did roll, because that was the last thing he said to me, and it was what was in my mind. Then he was there again picking me up and pushing me away from the fire. I turned around to look and see who it was. It was Hoffmeyer. He looked me right in the eye and said to me, ‘Good luck, man,’ and that was it. He ran off.”
“Ran where?”
“Into the smoke. I wanted to go with him, because he was the only one who knew what he was doing. But somebody else grabbed me and pulled me behind something.” He shook his head. Now he was looking at his own movie that only he could see. “I could hear the damn thing burning. Do you know what that sounds like? An airplane burning? It was like a roar, but I could still hear the screaming. I knew they were burning to death. I could hear them, and all I could think was it could have been me.”
The Alex Shanahan Series Page 122