“How long ago?” Kosnar asked.
“Probably within the last twelve hours. Not much more than that based on the intercepts.”
“Which hotel?” Kosnar responded.
“A place called the Dorchester somewhere near Hyde Park. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” Kosnar replied.
“Good,” said the General. I am making arrangements for you right now. When you get to the airport, there will be a seat reserved for you on the next flight to London.
CHAPTER 12
CASEY STRODE BRISKLY up the gangway into Heathrow airport. She could feel the effects of the flight and lack of sleep, but the bright morning sunlight streaming through the large windows tricked her body into feeling awake. As she exited, she saw a uniformed officer and another man wearing a navy blue sports coat and gray slacks just to the right of the exit way. Typically, passengers could only be met after passport control and customs, but Inspector Campbell had told her he would meet her as she got off the plane.
“Ms. Jennings,” Inspector Campbell said as he approached her, easily recognizing her from the pictures published around the world after her escape from the Taliban.
“Hi,” she replied as she dropped her shoulder bag and shook his hand. “Please call me Casey.”
“Very well. But only if you call me Ian.” She smiled in agreement.
“This is Officer Ronald Cole,” he said as he turned to the uniformed policeman next to him.
“Good to meet you, Madam,” said Cole.
“Good to meet you too, Officer,” said Casey, amused by the officer’s formality.
“Please let me take your bag, Ma’am,” he said and swept it up. Casey hated the word ‘Ma’am’, but she just replied, “Thank you,” as Ian Campbell began to guide her to the exit. “Do you have any other luggage?” he asked.
“No,” said Casey, “that’s it.”
“Traveling light, are you?”
“I don’t really expect to be here long,” she replied with a quick smile. “If we get through it all today, I might go back as soon as tomorrow.”
“Ok. Well, we’ll try to fit it all in, then.”
Once Inspector Campbell had expedited her passage through immigration and passport control, they were quickly on their way towards London.
“How long is the drive?” Casey asked.
“Oh, about an hour, Ma’am,” said Officer Cole.
“Casey, why don’t we take you to your hotel to freshen up. Then Officer Cole and I can take you over to the Dorchester Hotel to show you the room and the damage.”
“Great,” said Casey. “Actually, I would like to see the bodies before I see the room. Would that be possible?”
“Absolutely,” said Ian. “In fact, I planned to visit the coroner’s office again today myself. They assured me they will have completed both autopsies. You’re welcome to join me, but I must warn you it’s not a pleasant sight. Bloody awful, really.”
“I’m sure,” said Casey. “I’ve seen the pictures of the other bombing. They were gruesome.”
“What are you looking for exactly, Casey?” Ian asked.
“Well, for one, we need to know how the bombs are being delivered. Also, how are they activated? It’s unlikely the women are activating the bombs themselves. If they are, why go to all that trouble just to kill their targets during intercourse? If they were alone with these men, then they would have plenty of opportunity to kill them without actually initiating coitus. The other issue is that even if we can determine how the bombs are being delivered, we still cannot quantify the problem. For all we know, there could be five or fifty or, God forbid, five hundred of these women out there.” Casey sighed, brushing her hair away from her face. She was starting to feel the effects of the flight.
They rode in silence for a while and then Ian pointed out a few of the famous sites as they approached London. Casey had not been to England before; she would have liked to have visited, but under different circumstances.
They arrived at Casey’s hotel, The Holiday Inn, close to the American Embassy and the standard location for visiting FBI agents. Ian went off to find out if the autopsies were complete, while Casey checked in and took a quick shower. She was back downstairs in the hotel lobby within half an hour.
“Righto, then,” said Ian as Casey walked up to him. “The coroner, Doctor Bellamy, will be there to meet with us. I also contacted your associate, David Green. He said he would meet us over there as well.”
“OK, very good,” said Casey.
* * *
The coroner’s building had an old grimy facade with a surprisingly modern interior. David Green was waiting in the lobby when they arrived. Officer Cole remained with the car while the Inspector led the two American agents into the building, down a long corridor to a room marked in large red letters: ‘Entrance Restricted. Authorized Personnel Only.’ The English detective pushed the door open and ushered Casey and David before him.
The smell hit them immediately. As law enforcement professionals, they were all familiar with the inside of coroner’s laboratory, but the odor and bodies on open display was still disconcerting. The room was a very large rectangle. Every ten feet or so was a large flat metal frame. The frames were slightly elevated at one end with a large drain at the lower end to catch the bodily fluids. Some were bare, others occupied by bodies in various stages of dissection. Above each metal frame a microphone hung down so the coroners could dictate their findings as they worked. The walls of the room were lined with desks and various medical and analytical tools such as microscopes and blood centrifuges. Technicians in laboratory coats wandered about, assisting the different coroners as they worked.
Ian spotted Dr. Bellamy and pointed her out. She was easy to spot, a very tall woman, large all around, although not heavy or fat. The threesome moved down the row of beds until they stopped where Dr. Bellamy was working. She looked up at them and recognized Ian.
“Campbell,” she said in a loud, self-confident voice. “Welcome to the dungeon.” She grinned, revealing a not-so-straight set of teeth. On the drive over Ian had warned Casey that Dr. Bellamy had a slightly odd personality and an even stranger sense of humor. But she was one of the best forensic coroners in England.
“Hello,” said Ian. “This is Casey Jennings and David Green. As I mentioned on the phone, they are with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation, investigating the death of Gerald Rifkin.”
“Hello,” said the doctor. “G’men hey,” she said using the old nickname for FBI agents. “Although I guess in your case, we would have to say G’woman.” She laughed heartily as she looked over at Casey. Then she said, “Welcome to England. Sorry I won’t shake your hand,” she said waving a bloody glove in the air.
“It is very nice to meet you,” said Casey. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.”
“Short notice, hmm…” said Dr. Bellamy. “Speaking of short things, why don’t we wander over to your severely shortened Mr. Rifkin. Follow me, please.” She pulled off her rubber gloves, tossed them into a nearby trashcan, and quickly washed her hands. Then she turned and walked out of the dissection room through a door stamped ‘Refrigeration and Storage’. The two FBI agents and Inspector Campbell followed closely behind.
Dr. Bellamy stopped in front of a large bank of what appeared to be oversized file cabinet drawers. “Ah, lets see…Oh yes, here it is,” she said as she moved towards one of the drawers and with an exaggerated motion, pulled one open. “May I present the abbreviated Mr. Rifkin.”
Casey looked over at Dr. Bellamy and quickly realized she was staring, her mouth ajar. She had heard that people in forensics often developed a strange sense of humor, usually just to counteract the morbidity of their profession, but Dr. Bellamy seemed to relish her gruesome environment. Closing her mouth, Casey moved to stand opposite the doctor, across the open drawer. Through the opaque sheet, the remains of a man’s body were quite obvious. Before Casey had a moment to adjust to the covered corpse in
front of her, Dr. Bellamy pulled back the sheet revealing the shattered upper torso of a man’s body. There was no blood and the torso was milky white, ending in a mass of broken bones and shattered flesh at the shoulders. The right arm was disconnected from the body and placed incongruously between his legs, hand resting between the feet. Casey starred at the hand, using the curious relationship between it and the feet to help her fight the bile rising in her chest.
“…as you can see…” Dr. Bellamy was saying, catching Casey unaware. “Mr. Rifkin suffered massive trauma to the upper extremities. As the pictures from the crime scene show, his head was directly below and between her thighs. The blast came from the right side of her body, and her left leg acted as a sort of funnel, directing and driving the force directly at Mr. Rifkin’s neck. Death for him was absolutely instantaneous, although I’m not sure we can say the same for the poor woman.”
“What do you mean?” said Casey
“Well, my best guess, and I think it’s quite a good guess, is the woman actually moved a few seconds after the blast.”
“She survived the blast?” asked Casey, incredulously.
“Very briefly, but I think she was probably alive a few moments, perhaps as long as a minute.”
Though David Green had been quiet up to now he looked over at the doctor and said, “Wouldn’t the force of the blast have destroyed her lower extremities as well?”
Without answering, Dr. Bellamy walked around the open drawer to directly behind Casey and pulled open another drawer. “Voila,” she said. “Ms. Jane Doe,” and quickly pulled the sheet off the woman’s body. Casey’s eyes first settled on the dead woman’s face. At first glance, she looked pretty, peaceful and undisturbed, almost as if she was sleeping, but the dead woman’s body had the same alabaster color as Gerald Rifkin’s. She was obviously dead, a point made even more evident as Casey’s eyes dropped to the bottom half of her body. The hip joints and pelvic bones were completely severed, lower portions of the shattered legs unattached on the slab below her torso. The right leg and hip were noticeably more damaged than the left, but the entire lower half of her body had been mostly destroyed.
“Are you saying she survived this level of damage?” said Casey, almost grateful for the opportunity to speak about something, anything to distract her from the carnage. David Green was next to her, peering at the body, apparently not suffering the queasiness gripping Casey, or more able to conceal it if he was.
Dr. Bellamy’s voice lost its jovial tone. “As you can see, the head, heart and even lungs were not severely damaged by the explosion. To be sure, blood loss and shock were massive, but her death was only indirectly related to the blast. She basically bled to death.”
“Do you think she was aware of what happened?” Casey asked.
The coroner shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t know. How does the brain respond when a trauma like this occurs to the body? I’d like to believe shock prevented her from comprehending her situation, but who knows,” she said as she shrugged.
“Dr. Bellamy, do you have any idea where the bomb was located. Was it attached to her body somehow…?” Casey’s voice trailed off.
“Well, there I do have some good news for you,” the coroner replied, her voice regaining its jovial tone. “I know where the bomb was located and no, it was not attached to her body. It was inside her body.”
“What?” Casey and Ian replied, almost in unison. “Did you say the bomb was inside the woman’s body?” Casey asked, voice and face conveying disbelief.
Dr. Bellamy did not answer directly. She walked over to a cabinet marked with the sign ‘Evidence’ and opened it with a key she withdrew from her pocket. She removed a container about the size of a shoebox, and then closed the cabinet, carefully locking it. As she walked back towards the waiting threesome, she opened the box, removed the lid, and placed it in her hand directly underneath the box. Then they all huddled together, peering down. Inside were about fifteen small plastic bags, each numbered and labeled.
“This is what we pulled out of both bodies. Small titanium fragments, most no larger than the nail on your pinkie finger, some a little larger. Any guess as to the source?” she asked, looking at each of them, a grin forming on her lips.
For a moment nobody answered. Then Casey said, “From an artificial hip joint? Isn’t that what they’re made of?”
“Bingo! Yes, quite right. Jane Doe back there had an artificial hip joint in her right leg. That’s where the explosion came from.” She paused and then handed the box over to Ian. “You will need to sign for the evidence on your way out.”
“Dr. Bellamy, are you quite sure this woman had an artificial titanium hip joint?” Casey asked.
“Oh absolutely. American made actually. It was an older model, discontinued a few years ago. Good product, very durable, but there are better versions on the market today.”
“And you can tell this just by these fragments?” David Green asked.
Dr. Bellamy grinned. “If you look carefully at one of those fragments you will find a manufacturer’s product code. The number survived the blast. It made identification quite easy.”
“How much explosive material could you place in an artificial hip joint,” Casey asked.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Dr. Bellamy said shrugging her shoulders. “Obviously enough to do this,” she said as she nodded her head towards the two corpses.
“And you’re sure that’s the source of the explosion?”
“Yes, quite sure, Ms. Jennings.” She paused for a moment, then said, “There is one other item that will interest you,” as she rifled through the small evidence bags. “Ah, yes, here it is.” She withdrew one bag and held it up.
“May I?” asked Casey. The coroner passed the bag to her.
Casey peered through the plastic at the small item located inside; a one-inch long opaque tube. One end was broken, but the other appeared intact. Casey passed the bag to Ian Campbell.
“What do you think?” Casey asked, looking first at Dr. Bellamy and then at the Inspector.
“Well, I don’t know for sure, but one of the fellows in our lab thinks it is part of a receiver of some kind. I pulled it out of Mr. Rifkin’s right shoulder. I suggest you have it looked at by a communications engineer, someone who understands miniature receivers can probably help you.” Dr. Bellamy stood quietly for a moment as the threesome stared at the small item in the bag, then turned away.
There was a loud bang as she slammed Gerald Rifkin’s drawer closed. “We can’t have Mr. Rifkin melting all over the place, can we now,” she said, laughing. “Do you need to look at Jane Doe’s body any more or can we put her away as well?”
“No, thank you, Doctor,” said Casey. “I have seen all I wanted to see. A lot more actually. You have been extremely helpful. Thank you very much.”
“Yes, thank you very much, Doctor, we appreciate your time,” said David Green.
“Not at all. Nice to meet you both. Ian, you can find your way out, can’t you. Don’t forget to sign for the evidence. I’m just going to putter around here for a few more minutes.”
As Casey said good-bye, Dr. Bellamy had already turned away and was pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. The two FBI agents followed the English police officer out of the building.
CHAPTER 13
SITTING IN THE car riding from the coroner’s office to the hotel, Casey sat quietly, lost in her thoughts. She stared out the window, not seeing anything, a hard frown creasing her brow. She was furious and getting angrier by the moment. What had happened to these women was rape and murder, nothing less. Actually it was worse than that. They had been raped and predestined for murder. They were not suicide bombers or Japanese Kamikaze pilots, but more like battlefield victims, a modern version of cannon fodder chosen to die for some ill-conceived goal by unscrupulous commanders. These women had been used, used to death. They reminded Casey of a story she once read about Soviet officers clearing minefields during the Second World War by having soldiers wal
k through them. The Soviets regarded this as a more cost-effective solution than the American method of shelling minefields with artillery. She was just wondering how the women had been selected when she heard her name.
“Casey, are you all right?” asked the Inspector. He was touching her shoulder.
“What? Oh yes, I’m fine thank you.” Casey looked over at her English escort and noticed that he had a concerned look.
“Are you sure you’re all right? The visit to the coroners’ office was not too upsetting I hope.”
Casey dismissed his concerns with a flick of her hand. “No, I’m fine thank you. Just thinking about what I saw, trying to understand it,” she said with a reassuring smile.
During the remainder of the drive, she chatted with Ian and David about investigative techniques used by Scotland Yard. She was making small talk, not really worried about the material collected by the English detectives. Reading the analysis done by the British police after the bombing of PAN AM 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Casey knew they had techniques as good as the FBI. In that case, detectives assisted by hundreds of police officers and police cadets found a remnant of the bomb no larger than a fingernail. With just that evidence, they had traced the bomb particle back to its manufacturer, and then used that information to determine that two Libyan Intelligence officers had built and deployed the bomb. It was an extraordinary effort, which culminated in the conviction of at least one of the two Libyans.
When Officer Cole pulled the car directly in front of the Dorchester Hotel, the Inspector quickly escorted the two Americans inside. As the group stepped into the elevator, Ian Campbell withdrew a key from his pocket and inserted it into a slot in the elevator’s control panel. “At our insistence and until the investigation is complete, the floor on which the attack took place is closed,” said Ian. “All the guests were moved out and relocated to different rooms or even different hotels,” he continued. “The guests at this hotel pay a small fortune to stay here and are used to being treated extra special if you know what I mean, and I understand some of them were quite upset,” he said looking at Casey and David and smiling.
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