“The AirEast bust?” Daggett inquired.
“That was mine,” he admitted reluctantly. He blushed. Daggett was glad for the humility. It was less and less common around WMFO.
“Now Counterterrorism here with you guys. I gotta tell you: driving up here, what a neighborhood! I can see why they treat the garage like a jail for cars.”
“Wait till you work the night shift. You end up carrying your piece with one in the chamber.”
“I believe it.”
“We’re in some deep shit here. I need an independent thinker, Brad, not a yes-man. I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Work with. I need someone to do a lot of the shit work and smile through it. Your experience with the commercial airlines will come in handy. But, honestly, this is probably the worst time to come aboard here. We’re frantic. We’ve got a live one on the run. Dangerous, as in bombs. You have less than no time to catch up on all this. You have your reading cut out for you. Tempers are on hair triggers around here, so beware. I’m working on a deadline: I’ve been given one more week to prove that a murder in Seattle and the crash of flight sixty-four are both connected to Bernard. So beware … office hours are anytime you’re not sitting on the can.”
“Like Miami.”
“Good,” Daggett said, relieved. “Then you’re used to it.”
“Very.”
“If we’re lucky, we slam-dunk this guy. If we’re not so lucky … well, there’s nothing worse than wandering a burning field littered with body parts, especially knowing it was your job to prevent it from happening. There’s pressure, and then there’s this kind of pressure.” He paused and lost his concentration. “Anyway, welcome aboard.”
“Thanks.”
“They call me Michigan around here—you don’t have to, but everyone else does.” He took hold of the letter jacket.
“I get the idea,” Levin said.
“I did some reading of my own before you got here. Your SAC in Miami wrote good things about you. Says you think first and talk later. You’re single. I won’t ask.”
“Good, ’cause it’s none of your business.”
Daggett paused while the two challenged each other with stares. “It is my business. We’re open books around here. All of us. Just so you know. Counterterrorism … it has to be that way. We’ve never been penetrated from the outside. Not that we know of anyway. You understand?”
“It’s worse when you’re in Drugs in Miami.”
“I can believe it.”
“You should. I’m not in the habit of lying.”
“Well, that answers the point about your being insolent.”
“As Popeye said to the potato farmer: ‘I yam what I yam.’”
“That’s good. I’ll try to remember that.” It won a smile. Daggett said, “Pity about your schooling. But if I’m Michigan, then you’re Ohio. Is that okay with you?”
“Fine, as long as we both know which is the superior school,” Levin said.
Daggett wasn’t going to allow himself to be led into that. It was an argument that could last days. Lifetimes, maybe. Not now anyway. “An A student right through college. That’s impressive.”
“My parents pushed.”
“What do they think of the Bureau?”
“Next question.”
“They don’t approve,” Daggett said.
“They had me picked for an attorney, like my father. From the age of about six months.”
“So now you’re an overachiever. Is that supposed to explain your record? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’m not telling you anything. You’re asking. If you ask, I answer, okay?”
“You’ll like it here; you’ll fit in. One thing nice about Counterterrorism is you’re left alone a lot. It makes for more freedom, but comes at the cost of more reports.”
“What’s the squad chief like?”
“Pullman? He’s new to it.”
“So I hear.”
“He’s okay. The last guy was a bounty hunter. Wanted credit for anything that happened to go right. Can’t tell yet what Pullman will be like. Guys change when they get the corner office.”
“I heard you turned down a promotion. Any truth to that?”
Daggett wondered if this was Gloria’s doing, or just an office rumor. “I’ve got my reasons.”
“I thought we were open books around here.”
They locked eyes and Daggett sensed he had made a friend. He asked, “Any friends in the area?”
“You’re my first,” Levin said, testing the waters. Daggett nodded. Levin added, “Couple of people I know from Quantico should be around here someplace.”
“You want to discuss assignments?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know whether you’ve had a chance yet to review the Der Grund file—”
“I have.”
“Good. Then you know that in Europe they’re considered a radical Green group, that they target the petrochemical/pharmaceutical industries.”
“What about ten twenty-three?”
“Including ten twenty-three. It was carrying commercial chemicals in the cargo hold. They made a threat and it was ignored. One thing we know about them: They seem to have some sort of collective conscience, as perverse as that may sound. In every case they have issued a threat prior to committing their act of terrorism. They do this to a flaw. And their signature is that they kill using a product, or byproduct, of the company they’ve targeted. The Semtex derivative that was used to blow up ten twenty-three was manufactured by the same company whose chemicals were in the cargo hold. A German company called EisherWorks Chemicals. Now, come to find out, the stuff on flight sixty-four was manufactured by an EisherWorks subsidiary. That’s not good enough evidence for the desk jocks like Pullman, but it is for me.
“I’m convinced the murder at Duhning and flight sixty-four are connected, although I have yet to prove it. I can’t even prove sixty-four was sabotaged. We have our work cut out for us. Pullman—and Mumford above him—requires more than coincidence. To make matters worse, he’s under some intense pressure to sideline me long enough to write a comprehensive report on Backman’s killing. All I’ve given him so far is a one-pager. That kind of report would take me a couple weeks—some in-house review, maybe even testimony on the Hill. You get started on something like that and suddenly it’s a couple months later.”
“Tell me about it. Same thing in Miami.”
“I’ve been on the Bernard case a long time. The only way I’m going to stay on it is to deliver something of substance. I figure I’ve got two chances: one, I come up with hard evidence that puts Bernard’s device on board flight sixty-four; two, I link a threat to a major chemical company with my suspicion that whoever’s behind this is now in Washington.”
“And which do I get?”
“Number two.” Daggett turned in his chair to face his good ear toward Levin. With them both talking softly, he was having trouble hearing.
“Your assignment is to find their next target.”
“Oh, is that all?” The oily skin between his dark eyebrows knitted with intensity. He squinted across the desk at Daggett like a nearsighted man without glasses. “Who says there is a next target?”
“The lab believes Bernard built two detonators. I think the first was on flight sixty-four, though I’m not sure we’ll ever prove it. They’re both barometric, so it’s got to involve an aircraft. Commercial? Cargo? Who knows? You’ve read the file: the only real lead we have is that a woman who rented the van that was parked out front of the AmAirXpress mechanic’s house in L.A. boarded a plane bound for here. That much we can prove. Bernard built the detonators in L.A.—sixty-four goes down in L.A. Next time we caught up with him, he was here in Washington. This woman flies to Washington. Coincidence?”
“So we play the odds,” Levin said.
“I don’t know what else to do. We could, and should, try asking the various chemical giants about recent threats to their operations, but the sad
truth is, they get way too many of those, and they handle them themselves. They don’t like the publicity that often comes with our involvement.” Daggett leaned back, “You look a little overwhelmed. Too much?”
“Not at all. Just trying to see the various angles. In Miami you have the drugs and you have the money. This has a lot more angles to it, that’s all. I don’t want to miss any.”
“Mind you, it’s all hypothetical. Maybe it’s not Der Grund, maybe there isn’t a second target.”
“Okay, I’m buying. So what’s next?”
“Der Grund targets chemical companies. Often, the executives. Flight sixty-four fits with that—there were chemicals on board. It seems to me the first place we start.
“I think we explore every avenue we can think of,” Daggett continued. “They’ve targeted chemical company executives in the past. So the first thing we do is get the travel itineraries for the executives—say from VP up—in every major chemical company. We see who, if anyone, is coming to town in the near future. Just to cover our bases, we should request notification of any recent threats received. If we turn up any, these should be compared by Linguistics to earlier Der Grund threats for overlaps.”
“Will they give out itineraries that easily?”
“One thing you’ll find in this squad that may be different than Drugs. All you do is mention the word terrorism, and people will give you damn near anything you want.”
Thirty minutes later, Gloria entered the bullpen carefully balancing a plastic bowl of lentil soup along with a tuna sandwich and a large OJ. She treated him better than she treated Pullman. “You don’t look so good,” she told him. She placed the food squarely before him. “You should marry that girl of yours. You need someone to look after you.” She attempted to straighten the papers on his desk.
Daggett playfully tapped her on the hand. “I’m not through with those.”
“Even you can’t read six files at once, dearie.” She continued her cleanup, undaunted, creating space for his food. “Be nice to me, Cam Daggett, or I won’t tell you that Duhning called while you were downstairs.”
Daggett reached for his pink message slips.
“Fifth one down,” she said, isolating it, extracting it from the others and dangling it out of his reach. “If you would remember to put your extension on voice-mail, then little old ladies wouldn’t have to answer the phone for you.” Then she handed it to him.
Reading the slip, he reached for the phone and she said, “No, sir. You eat this food first. Doctor’s orders. And I’m standing right here until you do.”
“Glo.”
“Eat.”
She continued fussing with his desktop while he ate, making order out of the chaos. She rambled, as Gloria tended to do, lecturing him on a variety of personal subjects ranging from an observation that Carrie wouldn’t “hang around forever,” to the fact that “all work and no play makes Jake a dull boy.” She never quoted perfectly.
Daggett was reaching for the phone when Levin strode into the bullpen with an ebullient expression on his face. Daggett replaced the receiver, not wanting to quash the younger man’s enthusiasm.
Levin pulled over a chair and, at Daggett’s invitation, accepted half the sandwich.
With a mouthful of food, Levin said, “This may be the only time you’ll be happy to know that one of your co-workers—namely, me—is the proud son of a dental hygienist.”
Daggett looked at him peculiarly.
“I came across the lab report on that tooth we turned up in the hotel trash.”
He handed Daggett a photograph Daggett would have preferred not to see a second time. Especially not while eating. Daggett pushed it back at him.
“It’s the way the tooth fragmented,” Levin explained, interpreting the gesture as an invitation to illustrate his point. “Right here,” he said, pointing. “See? Just one root showing. Our man may have the other left in his jaw. If he does, the thing will probably go south on him and he’ll need some serious attention in a hurry.”
Daggett felt a wave of excitement shoot through him. “How certain is this?”
“If that root is in there, he’s in trouble. He can’t fix that himself. So I thought we should alert all the dentists both in L.A., to see if it was done there, and here in Washington too. We’ll put the word out to watch for an out-of-towner who needs work on that particular tooth. Number seventeen.”
“We can’t bust Kort for having a tooth repaired,” Daggett pointed out, “but we can put him under surveillance. The dentist could keep a blood sample; we might even get a DNA match.”
“Two major metropolitan areas. It’s going to mean a hell of a lot of phone calls,” Levin said.
“It can be done by computer. We have a phone system all set up for this kind of thing—like the phone solicitations you get. You record the verbal message, scan the numbers you want called right out of the phone book, and the computer does the rest. It dials the various numbers until a line is answered and the query responded to. The query can be as complicated or as simple as you like. Talk to Tech Services; they’ll set it up.”
Levin left in a hurry, taking the photograph of the tooth with him.
Daggett returned the call to Duhning and spoke to a woman named Fedorko. She had a slight midwestern accent and chose her words carefully. “We have had our work cut out for ourselves, Mr. Daggett, but we are a diligent bunch here at Duhning, as I am sure you will appreciate when you speak to Dr. Barnes tomorrow. He’s an engineer on our investigation team.”
“Tomorrow?” Daggett asked.
“He’s on his way to Washington as we speak. I’m to set up a meeting with you or one of your associates at your earliest convenience. My understanding is that it’s a matter of the utmost urgency. The message is that the simulator session with Dr. Ward was backed up to disk. Dr. Barnes will explain it further when he arrives.”
For Daggett, his imagination running away with him, the next twelve hours passed slowly.
His meeting with Barnes began precisely at three o’clock, Wednesday afternoon, with Brad Levin in attendance. With the permission of Barnes, it was tape-recorded. Barnes, a narrow-faced man with a brush moustache and long, wispy hair, reminded Daggett of a college professor from the sixties. He knew his stuff when it came to simulators and computers, but had trouble communicating. His accent was either German or Swedish. Each time he explained a point, Daggett felt compelled to repeat his impression of what had been said to make sure he had it all straight. This consumed a lot of extra time and created extra strain. By the two-hour break, the back of his shirt was soaking wet. He kept the letter jacket on to hide it.
“I think I’m confused by all of this,” he admitted when Barnes seemed to be running down.
“Go ahead,” Barnes suggested.
As Levin sat quietly, Daggett said, “You said that the one thing all the simulations had in common was that they involved lack of pilot control?”
“Yes. Dr. Ward simulated release of pilot control of the aircraft at a number of different altitudes, all quite low, and immediately after takeoff.”
“And you also said that this agrees with what we know about the AmAirXpress crash?”
“Precisely so. Yes. Loss of pilot control would help explain the behavior of flight sixty-four. We need the voice information from the Cockpit Voice Recorder to know for sure.”
“We still don’t have that?” Daggett turned to ask Levin.
Levin answered, “They don’t want to ship it back here for examination until all the repairs are complete.”
“I thought those things were indestructible,” Daggett said.
Barnes corrected, “Nothing is indestructible. But it may not matter. The audiotape recorded by flight control supports a cockpit fire, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
Daggett felt frustrated. He hadn’t heard anything about flight control tapes. He didn’t want Barnes to know that. “What would that prove?”
“It might explain the loss of pilot con
trol. Toxic fumes perhaps.”
Daggett made a note of it. Toxic fumes would show up in the autopsy report. He asked, “Why wouldn’t the autopilot be on?”
“A general misconception, I am afraid. Autopilot—auto-thrust, it’s called at takeoff—is available but rarely used because it takes the plane entirely out of the pilot’s control. Disengagement, if needed, requires several seconds, and even a single second during takeoff is an eternity. Autopilot is used, but would not typically be engaged until, say, eighteen thousand feet or so—quite a few minutes into flight.”
“It’s available, but they don’t use it?”
“Most accidents occur during, or just after, takeoff. You’ll find ninety-nine percent of pilots prefer to have manual control over the bird during this period.”
“So you’re saying—your theory is—that there was no one at the controls? Essentially there was no pilot flying the plane?”
“Theory?” Barnes responded. “It is physics, sir. Plain and simple physics.” He referred Daggett to his notebook and pointed to a diagram of 64’s projected flight route in the few short minutes it was airborne. “Flight sixty-four left the runway at this point. It crashed … here,” he said, pointing to Hollywood Park. “Well, you see—as I’ve already shown you—it’s the same with the simulation.” He unrolled a map obviously drawn by a computer. “If you remove all control of the aircraft here,” he said, pointing to his map, “forty-seven seconds into flight, then given the appropriate data, the simulated 959 impacts here,” he said, punching his computerized map. “If you scaled it correctly and overlaid this map onto a map of the L.A. area, you would see that the area of impact is also Hollywood Park.”
Breaking a long silence that followed, Daggett, still very much confused, asked, “What about wind speed, ground temperature, that sort of thing? It can’t be an exact science, can it?”
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