by Mark Terry
I am so fucking stupid, he thought.
Dizzy, sore, and more than a little angry at himself, Derek lay there for a moment, then sat up and looked back up the bluff. At the top, Connelly and his two cop buddies stood looking down at him.
Connelly shouted, “Climb back up here so I can kick your ass back down!”
Well, Derek thought, I guess that answers my next question. He stood up, brushed dirt off his clothes, flipped Connelly and company the bird, and set off down the beach. He guessed he was on his own for a while.
CHAPTER 35
Agent Shelly Pimpuntikar sat in Aleem Tafir’s desk chair, gazing out the window at the Century City skyline. Beyond the bedroom she could hear the sounds of grief, of anger, of mourning. Rana Tafir was in tears and had gone into her bedroom and shut the door. Ali Tafir had stalked around the penthouse as if looking for something to kill, before getting on the phone and making arrangements for a relative to pick up the daughter, Bibi, at school. Then he had gone into his office to call the office manager at his company.
She wondered if their marriage would survive this. Families were sometimes fragile things, destroyed by divorce, death, illness, or just the pressure cooker of modern life exaggerating everybody’s flaws and weaknesses. She wondered if Ali would blame his wife for being too soft on their son. She wondered if Rana would blame Ali for not being understanding and supportive.
Overall, Shelly thought she liked spreadsheets better than all this raw emotion.
Both Ali and Rana Tafir had accepted her presence there, but she had been more than a little surprised that O’Reilly and Stillwater were leaving her there alone. Well, not Stillwater. He was so clearly not a team player, she couldn’t imagine why anybody had envisioned he would work well on a START team. O’Reilly, who was a certifiable control freak, allowing her to work alone—that surprised her. And made her suspect that O’Reilly was just getting rid of her and didn’t think she could make any real contribution to the START team.
She crossed the hallway and knocked softly on Ali Tafir’s office door.
“Yeah?”
She pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. Ali Tafir looked up, his expression clouded, eyes haunted.
“I have some questions I need to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you follow Shariah in terms of money?” She referred to Islamic economic guidelines.
He made a face. “You mean do I take out loans and pay interest?”
She nodded. In Islamic law, paying interest, or riba, was prohibited, condemned as usury. There were other similar prohibitions—investment in businesses that were unlawful, such as those that sold pork or alcohol or that produced pornography or gossip. Shelly wondered if a Muslim had ever owned a southern barbeque joint. The thought made her smile, but not in a very happy sort of way.
“Yeah, I’ve got loans. Look at this place. You think I paid cash for it?”
“Did you go through an Islamic bank?”
Islamic banks, at least in theory, did not charge interest. What they typically did was buy the property, then sell it back to the customer at an inflated rate. The customer could buy it in installments. It was part of Fiqh al-Muamalat. From Shelly’s point of view, it seemed an awful lot like paying interest, but calling it something else. She also understood that many religious beliefs that had survived for hundreds or thousands of years did so for different reasons than what they were originally created for. Often they remained because by following them, you were reminded of your religious affiliation. Not: I am Muslim, therefore I don’t take out loans, but: I don’t take out loans, it reminds me I am Muslim.
Tafir shook his head. “None of that crap. Sorry, if that offends you.”
She wasn’t offended. She was relieved.
“Did your son have a credit card?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Who received his bills?”
“He did. He was a grown-up, at least I thought he was.” Tears welled in his eyes. His voice cracked. “He got an allowance from me, he worked for me from time to time, and I made it clear he needed to handle his own expenses, including the gas in his car and the insurance for it. He had a Visa card and he paid his own bills. Gave him some freedom. Seems like a stupid idea now. Look what he went and did.”
She nodded. “I’m going to need your credit card account numbers, as well as various banking and checking accounts.”
“What? Why?”
Keeping her expression neutral, she said, “Mr. Tafir, I want you to understand that we are not treating you as a suspect. But your son was apparently a major player in a terrorist attack. The FBI will be looking into all aspects of your son’s life, which will include you and your wife’s personal and financial history. It will be much quicker and easier if you just provide me with the information I need, rather than require me to obtain subpoenas and get it anyway.”
He stared at her, then reached over to a filing cabinet, rifled through the files, and pulled out five files. “It’s all in here. Just copy what you need. You’ll have to get Aleem’s somewhere else. I assume they’re in his bedroom somewhere.”
Shelly hesitated. Softly, “Mr. Tafir, I think your wife needs you right now. I think she needs to know you don’t blame her for this.”
He looked shocked, but didn’t respond.
She took the paperwork and returned to Aleem’s room. A few moments later she heard Ali walk into his bedroom, followed by the murmur of voices. With a pleased nod, Shelly did a quick search of Aleem’s desk and found several credit card and checking account statements. Scanning through Aleem’s most recent credit card statements, she felt her heart beating hard against her ribcage. There was some very interesting information here.
She slipped Aleem’s statements into her briefcase, writing out a receipt. Sifting through Ali and Rana’s files, she wrote down the relevant numbers, but didn’t intend to take them with her.
A knock at the penthouse’s door brought a wave of relief. She followed Ali to the door, where a pair of L.A. field office FBI agents awaited. She introduced herself and turned over the files and the Tafirs for their safekeeping.
She said, “Did you come in two cars?”
Jon David Burkheither, one of the agents, nodded. “You needed one of them, right?”
She nodded. He handed her keys and told her where it was. Grabbing them, she bid farewell to the Tafirs and headed down to the street.
CHAPTER 36
Derek trudged along the beach. He’d moved beyond the bluffs and now most of the multimillion-dollar beach shacks—he just knew the owners thought of them that way—were right on the beach. From time to time they were fenced off and he was forced to take off his shoes and socks and roll up his jeans and wade through the surf until he could get back to quasi-public beach. He was expecting the local cops or LAPD to come corner him at any time, but so far he hadn’t seen any signs of law enforcement.
“Hey there, stranger.”
Lost in thought, Derek looked over. A woman was sunbathing in a tiny orange bikini on a lounge chair, a paperback in one hand, a martini glass in the other. An Igloo cooler rested in the sand between her chair and an empty lounge chair. She was blonde and tanned and smiling, all of which Derek found tremendously appealing.
“Hi,” he said. She was maybe in her twenties, maybe in her thirties, or maybe even a very well-maintained forties.
“You look like you could use a drink. Have a seat.”
He raised an eyebrow. He had heard rumors that parts of Malibu were friendly like this, but he’d never really believed it. He wandered over and sat in the lounge chair next to her. She opened the cooler and pulled out an iced bottle of gin and an iced bottle of vermouth. “Martini?” she asked.
“I appear to have died and gone to heaven.”
She had a lovely smile. And a lovely everything else. He concentrated on her smile. For a moment Derek wondered if he should throw in the towel and just spend the rest of the day right here.
<
br /> “And you appear to have been out in the sun too long.” She stared at him. “Or are those burns?”
“Burns. It’s been a bad day.”
“I’ve never seen you before. I know most of the beachcombers around here.” She smiled and held out a hand. “I’m Marion Gilette.”
He took her hand. “Derek Stillwater.”
Pouring him a martini, she dropped an olive in the glass. She studied him. “There’s a story here, I’m sure. Want to tell?”
He sipped the martini, which tasted like liquid steel, and felt like a sledgehammer to the back of his skull.
“I’m with Homeland Security.”
“For real?”
He nodded and sampled more martini. “For real.” He contemplated the olive in the martini, then drank some more. “What do you do, Marion?”
“Real estate.”
“Ah. Would you be interested in driving me to the nearest car rental place? I’d be glad to pay you.”
She sat up. “You don’t have a car?”
“Like I said, it’s a long story.”
She studied him. “Do you have any identification, proving you’re who you say you are?”
He smiled slightly and retrieved his wallet and showed her his HS badge. She read aloud. “Dr. Derek Stillwater. Medical doctor?”
“Ph.D.”
“In what?”
Derek drank some more. Almost done with it, he thought. Wonder if I should drink another before I go on my way. Probably wouldn’t be a good idea to get hammered right at this particular moment. He wondered, also, if Marion Gillette would give him her phone number, so that when he was done with all this nonsense he could take her out for dinner, or something like that.
“Biochemistry and microbiology,” he said finally.
“You must be smart.”
He sighed. “If I was smart I’d be selling real estate so I could own a place on the beach in Malibu instead of falling off cliffs and getting shot at.”
Her laugh was warm and genuine. “Good point. What do you do for Homeland Security?”
“Hunt bad guys.”
“It looks like you found some today.”
“Yeah, but they were the wrong ones. Some days are like that.”
“I bet. When do you want to go?”
“As soon as I finish this martini.” He drank it down.
“You wouldn’t have a business card, would you?”
She gestured to her bikini. “Not on me.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly. “I can see that.”
“Why, you interested in buying a house?”
He grinned. “Something like that.”
It took Derek two hours to rent a car and then visit a store that sold computers and cell phones. He walked out of the store with a laptop and cellular phone. He’d already downloaded all the software he needed in order to access the Internet using a cellular card. He sat in the rental car, a black Nissan Pathfinder, and checked his e-mail account. Secretary Johnston had sent him the itineraries for Vice President Newman and Governor Stark.
There was also a note for him to call ASAP.
Using the new phone, he obliged.
“What the fuck have you been doing, Derek? The LAPD contacted me personally to demand I turn you over to them for questioning.”
“It’s a, uh, small misunderstanding.”
“With you it’s never a small misunderstanding. It usually borders on an international incident.”
Derek bristled. “You’ll be glad to know I’m alive, Jim. Burned, bruised, but alive. Greg Popovitch, however, is dead. Shot by one of his own people, then set on fire. I was handcuffed to a chair at the time, so really, Jim, why don’t you tell the LAPD to kiss your ass. And while you’re at it, you can kiss mine.”
To Derek’s surprise, Jim Johnston’s laugh bellowed over the phone. “I was beginning to worry about you, Derek. Ever since you got back from your leave of absence you’ve been acting like a company man, towing the line, being cooperative. Glad to hear you’re returning to your old self.”
“Fuck you, Jim. I’m having a shitty day.”
Johnston still sounded amused. “I’ve got the phone number of two of the FBI agents involved in the raid in Pakistan. Sam Sherwood’s the head of the CT unit, and he’s probably worth talking to, but Sherwood says the point man on the follow-up is an agent named Dale Hutchins. Apparently he got in the way of one of the booby-trapped laptops, but he’s back on the job as of today, and he’s up-to-date on the investigation.” Johnston rattled off a pair of international numbers.
Derek jotted them down.
“Before you go, Derek, I want to warn you. Apparently, Cassandra O’Reilly went to the FBI after dropping you off. They complained to her about you and to the LAPD. She pretty much fed you to them. The SAC gave me a call as well. Also, my guy in L.A.—”
“Taylor Zerbe?”
“Yeah, he’s been informed that cooperating with you would hurt his relationship with the bureau.”
“Haven’t even met the man. Is there a bottom line here?”
“Yes, Derek, there is. You’re on your own. O’Reilly has essentially kicked you off the START team and the FBI agrees with her. It’s probably her way of distancing herself from you. Don’t bother going back to the Federal Building.”
“Are you calling me in?”
Johnston snorted. “Would you come in?”
“No.”
“So we understand each other.”
Back working alone, Derek thought. What I do best. “I think we do, Jim.”
“Good. Keep me posted.”
“No plausible deniability?”
“I’m out of work no matter who wins the election. So I’m not worried about keeping my job. I’d just rather not spend my retirement in congressional hearings, understand? On the other hand, you’ve got my full backing. Always do.”
“Thanks, Jim.”
“I’m counting on you, Derek. Figure out what the hell’s going on and stop them.”
“And I’ll try not to get killed in the process.”
“That, too. Good luck.”
CHAPTER 37
Kalakar idled his truck outside the Oak Street Elementary School in Inglewood. He did not approve of the Seddiqis’ decision to send their daughter to a public school. Particularly this one, which appeared to be made up of Africans and Hispanics. Why didn’t they send their daughter to a Muslim school? He thought it was a sign of betrayal on their part, an indication that they had become more Western than Muslim, more American than Pakistani.
He searched the crowd of children for Malika Seddiqi. She should have stood out among all the other children. She would be one of very few—if any—children wearing a hijab, a headscarf.
But he wasn’t spotting her.
His sense of frustration grew. He was well trained enough to know that few operations went exactly according to plan, and the more complex they were, the more likely they were to change. Still, this plan had started disintegrating before it even got started and had been gaining speed as the pieces flew off ever since.
What if John or Ghazala had taken their daughter out of school? What if after he left them, John packed his family into a car and headed out of town?
Scowling, he glared at the children climbing into school buses and those who were streaming from the school, being met by parents, or heading home on their own. There were shouts and screams and excited chatter. It reminded him of his own childhood at school, always in a rush to get out of the classroom and play football—Americans called it soccer—with his friends. So long ago. Children, he thought, were the same everywhere.
He knew that Malika walked the four blocks home. Sometimes Ghazala walked her to school, but mostly she met one of her friends, a Hispanic girl named Dominica, and they walked together.
There!
He spotted Malika. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and a headscarf. He frowned at the jeans and T-shirt.
Climbing out of the truck, he trotted
over to where Malika and her friend Dominica were heading down Oak Street together. “Malika,” he called.
She turned to look at him. “Hello, Mr. Kalakar.”
“Your mom and dad asked me to pick you up at school today, honey,” he said.