The Siege

by Stephen White

  “Why would I do that for you?”

  “Bros? I didn’t arrest you. That has to count for something. You owe me, right?”

  Poe strolled down Chapel Street until he got to the Copper Kitchen. From outside, he was pleased at Purdy’s selection. It was a place he would have chosen himself. But Poe postponed any gratification; he parked his ass at the bus stop across the street. Behind his back the ever-growing twenty-four-hour FBI tent city was humming to morning life on the New Haven Green. Poe used the time waiting for Purdy to catch up on overnight news on his BlackBerry.

  The websites loaded slowly. The local cell network was overloaded by the sudden invasion of law enforcement and media. The network was operating like it was 1999.

  Poe saw the out-of-town detective turn the corner and stroll down Chapel. He stopped to buy a newspaper from a machine before he disappeared inside the coffee shop. Poe eyed nothing suspicious in Purdy’s wake. No SSG watchers trailed after him from the Omni, no one closed in casually from the opposite direction of the restaurant. Poe continued observing everyone in the vicinity of the Copper Kitchen for five more minutes before he shot off a single text message and followed Purdy inside.

  Poe hesitated near the door while he absorbed the vibe. The diner wasn’t a chatty place. Some aging greasy spoons are. Some aren’t.

  He also noted that burly New Haven patrol cops occupied the two stools closest to the register. The waitress was treating them like she knew their orders by heart. To Poe, that was a good sign—it minimized the likelihood that their presence at the counter had anything to do with Purdy’s presence in the house. Poe spotted the Boulder cop smack in the middle of a bench in a booth in back of the room on the right side. He headed that way. “Nice place,” Poe said. “You are a man after my nitrate-loving heart. Switch seats with me. I need to keep an eye on any new arrivals.”

  “My cousins in blue up front don’t worry you?”

  “They’re regulars. Waitress is treating them like they’re her big brothers.”

  Purdy gave up his seat with some reluctance, and only after he considered the consequences of resisting the request. He slid the coffee cups and water glasses around. “Ordered you some coffee,” he said. “It’s hot, but it’s not Starbucks.”

  “Hallelujah for that. Thank you.”

  Purdy remained puzzled about Poe. He asked, “Tell me something. Are you attached to the Joint Terrorism Task Force? Is that what this is all about?”

  Poe found the question amusing. He kept his voice low. “You still playing Homeland Security twenty questions? You are persistent, aren’t you? Do I look like I’m on the Joint Terrorism Task Force? Hell—more to the point—do I act like I’m on the Joint Terrorism Task Force? Can you imagine me showing up at their next staff meeting?” He shook his head. “I’m suddenly a tad disappointed in you, Sam. I was beginning to think we were distant relatives or something.”

  Purdy had to admit that Poe didn’t look like any FBI agent he’d ever met. He sat back. He said, “You don’t have the slightest idea what your Bureau colleagues are up to here, do you?”

  Poe was in the midst of a silent inventory of the customers and staff. He hesitated before he said, “And . . . vice versa. That’s one of the distinctive parts of my portfolio. A certain ignorance is one of my calling cards. HRT? JTTF? SSG? Fine people, most of them. I mean that. Well schooled, well trained, fine character, by and large. But we rarely work the same side of the street. When we do, I give them wide berth. I try to make sure they don’t get distracted by me. Unless they’re determined to get in my way, I tend not to get distracted by them.

  “The simple reality is that if they succeed in doing their job, there’s absolutely no need for me to do mine. It’s better for all when they come up winners.

  “They’re in town in droves working this thing—you can be sure of that. And you can be sure they’re beating the bushes to make some sense of that bad boy in the tomb. Can I editorialize for a minute? Of course I can. Shit. What, you’re gonna tell me to shut up?” Poe smiled at Sam. “My experience is that sometimes the alphabet boys do great work, and sometimes . . . I don’t know . . . their focus gets a little narrow. Are they thorough? Yes, to a fault. Imaginative? Not so much. But then that’s just my opinion.”

  Sam said, “Your focus? Not narrow?”

  “Hardly. I’m the FBI’s bastard kid Mikey.” Poe slurped some coffee. It was hot enough to burn his tongue. “I’ll investigate anything.”

  “The guy taking photographs of a building in an industrial park from his pickup truck?” Sam said.

  “You’re getting it, Sam. I watched you leave the hotel, walk in here. Two things. First? You didn’t choose that granola palace on the corner. Wouldn’t have expected that from a Boulder boy. Thanks. I’m not a fruit salad and muesli kind of guy. Second? No one followed you. As far as I can tell, you are truly off SSG radar for the moment.”

  Purdy recognized that Poe was letting him know that he’d done his homework overnight. He’d learned Purdy’s hometown was in Colorado. Purdy wondered what else Poe knew.

  Purdy wasn’t sure how to process Poe’s self-deprecating side. He was also suspicious about the change in Poe’s disposition overnight. Sam wasn’t ready to believe that all Poe had needed to improve his mood was a night’s sleep.

  Purdy asked, “Was I ever really on the radar of the surveillance team?”

  Poe made a disappointed face. He said, “Trust is so important in a relationship like ours, don’t you think?” He gave Purdy a chance to disagree, for amusement’s sake as much as anything. Then he said, “Actually you were. That’s the only way I knew SSG was in town in the first place. When I was tailing you, I spotted them doing the same thing. They don’t exactly send out memos—they’re notorious about the whole secrecy thing. Anyway, you must have done something to dissuade them of your strategic importance. Kudos on that. But if they spot you hanging around that tomb again, they’ll be back on you like paparazzi on Brad and Angelina, only they’ll be the invisible kind of paparazzi. Tell me, anything new overnight from back home?”

  “You’ll be making a mistake by assuming any of this has anything to do with my home.” Purdy stared at Poe.

  “Okay,” Poe said, feigning capitulation.

  Purdy said, “The kid is still inside the tomb. That’s all I care about right now.”

  Poe lifted his mug and puffed away some steam. “Do the parents have a reason to believe their kid should have come out already? Alive?”

  Purdy weighed his response. Poe wanted to know if the parents had given up the information the man in the tomb wanted. Purdy wasn’t ready to divulge that—he still didn’t see an advantage for Jane Calderón. “They’re optimistic people,” he said to Poe.

  Poe toasted Purdy with his coffee mug. “Well played.” He lifted his BlackBerry with his other hand. “The Times is reporting there’re only two girls left inside the tomb. Most of the remaining hostages are male.” Poe knew the Times report was inaccurate. His assistant had confirmed overnight that HRT was estimating that seven girls remained inside—two juniors and five seniors.

  “Saw that on Fox this morning while I was getting dressed,” Purdy said. “Mainstream media, what do they know?”

  Poe said, “You’re right, the Times makes mistakes. That’s not news. But you’re saying Fox screws up, too? Really?” He paused, hoping for a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he added, “I have the two girls’ names.” Poe actually didn’t.

  Purdy shrugged. “What do you want from me, Poe? Like you said last night, I’m sure the FBI has already heard a version or two of everything I know from the parents of the kids who were killed. So let me do what I came here to do. If I learn something, I’ll share what I can with you. What do you say?”

  Poe squinted. He asked, “You like Fox, Sam? I mean, CNN’s no prize. Some nights, if I thought I could get away with it, I would superglue Wolf Blitzer’s beard to Anderson Cooper’s ass. And don’t even get me started on Lou Do
bbs. But you . . . you actually like Fox, don’t you?”

  Before Sam could defend his cable news preference, Poe stood. Purdy feared his personal cable bias might have been enough of an irritant to cause Poe to start walking that weird little box of his again. But Poe stayed anchored in place once he was on his feet. No marching formation. His eyes brightened. A soft smile began to grace his face. He said, “Good morning, sunshine. This is Sam. Sam, this is my friend.”

  Deirdre slid into Poe’s side of the booth before Sam had a chance to jump to his chivalrous feet. She kept her modest bag on her lap. It wasn’t zipped.

  “Nice hoodie,” she said to Poe. “Brings out your eyes. You almost look like you belong.”

  “Here? Yale?” Poe turned to Purdy. “Some reality? I could never have gotten into this school. The sweatshirt is as close as I get.”

  “That’s God’s truth,” the woman said.

  Purdy thought she looked more like a federal agent than Poe did. But then Purdy thought his pubescent kid looked more like a fed than Poe did. At least on Sunday morning when he was dressed up for church.

  The woman greeted Purdy with a tight smile and a fixed gaze. She said, “Good morning. I’ve heard a little about you. I’d like to know about the messages the family received from the subject. Right from the beginning. The tone. The language. Everything you know. Everything you think. All details are helpful. Don’t edit, please.”

  Although Purdy was resigned to cooperating in a way that reflected his true disadvantage, he said, “You are . . . ?”

  Without any attitude discernible Dee said, “Think of me as an interested party.”

  Purdy said, “Federal-payroll interested party?”

  Poe chimed in, “Don’t bother asking. She won’t tell you. And she’s smarter than both of us put together.” He sipped from his mug. “For the record? She could’ve gotten into school here.”

  Purdy waited to see the woman’s reaction to Poe. She didn’t reveal a thing.

  Purdy was close to concluding that the woman had at least one foot in the formal counterterrorism world that Poe seemed so determined to keep at arm’s length. He looked her in the eye and said, “I saw the initial note, the one that was on paper. It was a simple Word document. Helvetica. Half-page, double-spaced. Well written. Ominous, but not threatening. Not overtly. It’s the one where he intimated what was coming, told the families how to recognize his displeasure. Excuse me, he used the word ‘disappointment.’ A web address was written on a yellow stickie that was attached to the note. Site was under construction then. It was an African domain. Third world country. At the very end of the note he professed to being a reasonable man.”

  “Those words?”

  “Yes.” Sam silently reviewed what else he might share. He said, “I got most of the rest of my information secondhand, from the parents. I only heard one of the phone messages that followed.”

  “You heard one of the messages?” Dee rested her upper teeth on her bottom lip as she stole a fast glance at Poe. Poe hadn’t told her that his cop had heard a phone message. The sheepish look on Poe’s face revealed to Dee that he hadn’t known that, either.

  Sam watched their interaction—he concluded that they knew each other well, and not only professionally. He was seeing the residue of history between them, but he didn’t know what kind. Ex-partners? Ex-lovers? Same class at some academy?

  It was clear to Purdy that she illuminated a life force in Poe that had been dark before she slid into the booth. Purdy also concluded that it was her presence that was responsible for the general improvement in his mood.

  “Go on,” the woman said.

  “The message I heard was prerecorded. He placed the phone call to the parents, then he played the recording without saying anything else. I suspect all the families heard the same one. It was first person—‘I want this’ kind of thing. His voice? That’s beyond my ability, I’m afraid. My first thought was that the guy had an accent. He started off by giving the person who was listening ten seconds to get somewhere they could listen undisturbed. I thought that was interesting. At the end of the message—it was no more than a minute in total—I wasn’t so sure about the accent. Was it real? Was he pretending? I don’t know.

  “The content was generic, something that applied to all the families. It came after the parents might’ve guessed something was wrong, after they had a chance to suspect that something might have happened to their kid. Part of the tone was the same cooperate-or-you-won’t-like-the-consequences thing he spelled out in the note. He specifically stressed that he did not want money. He urged the parents to consider how else they could be useful to him. Reminded them they already knew what the price would be if they failed to cooperate.”

  “Their kids?” Dee asked.

  “Yeah. Didn’t come out and say it, but yeah.”

  “Go on,” she said. “You mentioned an accent.”

  The waitress came by. They ordered breakfast. Purdy, who had a prodigious appetite, marveled at the size of Poe’s order. Neither Poe’s friend nor the waitress was similarly awed.

  Purdy was guessing that Poe and his friend had breakfasted together before.

  He noted her modest wedding band. Poe wasn’t wearing a match.

  Sam picked up the earlier question. “Mediterranean, maybe. Accents aren’t my thing, unless you’re talking the upper Midwest. Remember, at the end of the taped spiel I wasn’t even sure he was foreign. Guy is educated. That was clear. Nuanced with language. Comfortable with English. Big vocabulary. He’s not new to Western culture. Not disdainful, you know. I would guess he’s lived here.”

  “Here, New Haven?”

  “Here, the West. Maybe the U.S. Maybe Europe.” Purdy considered the issue for another moment. “Here, the U.S.”

  “Age?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Guess,” Dee said. She wanted his impression.

  “Near thirty. No more than forty.”

  “Affect? Was he angry?”

  “I’d say determined. Calculating. Businesslike. Not urgent. More like he knew he had a winning hand. Was happy to let the game play out. Remember, he had the kids by then. His plan was working.”

  She asked, “You saw the YouTube video? Same voice? Different?”

  “Different,” Sam said. “Similar, but different.”

  Dee said, “Sam? May I call you Sam?”

  Purdy nodded.

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “All I’m doing is listening to your impressions of what happened, using them to create a portrait. Like a sketch artist. That’s all. Okay? Tell me if you disagree with what I’m hearing. What do I get from you so far? Poe’s unsub is a thirty-ish man who speaks English well, but probably as a second language. He was born abroad. Educated in the West, perhaps from an early age, maybe only secondary school and college. Most probably in the United States. Comes from significant family wealth. He’s comfortable in our culture, not dismissive or repulsed by it. He is likely not a radical Islamist. This isn’t holy war. Quite the opposite—for him, what he’s doing in that tomb has a strong personal component.”

  Purdy took a big gulp of coffee. “That’s even clearer than what I had in my head. But what about the Mediterranean part?”

  “Some people who have mastered a second language are better at disguising a residual accent after they get a rhythm developed in their speech. That might explain why you thought you heard an accent at the beginning of the recording, and why it might have disappeared by the time he was done talking. Mediterranean? It’s probably just what you think it is. He could be from coastal Southern Europe or even Turkey or Northern Africa—Tunisia, Libya. Or maybe Egypt. If I put some headphones on you and played tapes of a variety of non-native speakers of English, you could probably narrow it down for me even further. To some ears, well-educated English-as-foreign-language speakers from certain Middle Eastern and Northern African countries, even some people that are native to the parts of Asia nearest the Indian Ocean—Iran, Afgh
anistan, sections of Pakistan—can translate as generic ‘Mediterranean.’ ”

  “You’re including Israel and Palestine?”

  “Yes. And their neighbors.”

  “How does any of that help? Doesn’t narrow down the list of possible suspects much.”

  “I’m a data slut,” Dee said. “Every bit, literally, helps. Let’s say that based on your impressions of the accent we decide we can rule out native-born suspects. I’m talking our own native-born citizens. That’s huge. And based on your description, we can tentatively eliminate the Latin-speaking population of North and South America, right? And non-Mediterranean Africa. Not to mention a chunk of the immense population of the Indian subcontinent, and the largely Muslim populations of island Asia. China, too. That’s billions, literally. We’ve eliminated a lot of people.”

  “And the Canadians,” Poe said. “Don’t forget them. Seems they’re always a problem in my line of work.”

  Poe’s humor was so dry that for a moment Purdy thought he was serious with his comment about the northern neighbors.

  Deirdre suddenly stood. “Excuse me,” she said. “Ladies’ room.”

  As Sam watched her head toward the back of the restaurant, he finally got Poe’s joke and smiled.

  “You know your friend is pregnant?” Sam said a moment later.

  “What?” Poe said.

  “My girlfriend—back . . . where I’ve been living—she’s pregnant right now. Third trimester. She’s on doctor-ordered bed rest. Her best girlfriend is pregnant, too. She’s a few months behind. See, I’m surrounded by all things prenatal. It’s been like a cloud around me. It’s gotten so I can smell it. Pregnancy. The hormones, whatever it is. We go to a movie or walk into Wal-Mart or Trader Joe’s or In-N-Out, I can point out the pregnant women with my eyes closed. Seriously. I just feel it. It’s like I got baby-dar. You know, like gay-dar.”

  Poe said, “Interesting skill. But you’re wrong. Maybe your skill doesn’t travel.”