by Dick Wolf
Chapter 53
Jenssen waited at the twenty-sixth-floor elevators. The police detail on their floor had been reduced from two to just one, he noticed.
It was after 8:00 P.M. now. Jenssen was anxious to get moving.
He heard cello music from Nouvian’s room. Jenssen recognized the tune: “America the Beautiful.” Interesting, in that it was a patriotic song not about battle or victory or God. It was a song about beauty. Jenssen thought to himself that in today’s America, that sentiment could only be taken ironically.
The elevator doors opened, but he was still obliged to wait for the detective. He noticed the camera panel in the interior corner of the car. It was a fact that, while hotel cameras constantly recorded, the images themselves were rarely monitored.
Jenssen was still unsure about the female detective. She watched him at times, but it was difficult to gauge her intent. Had she accepted his invitation, he would have completed an easy two- or three-mile loop and been done with it. Her years as a law officer had given her confidence, but he believed her still insecure about her tomboyish look. She was not a lesbian; of that much he was certain. He clearly recalled how she had interacted with the detective she was paired with in Bangor, Maine. Jenssen remembered thinking at the time that they could be lovers.
So perhaps it was simple desire on her part. Another loose American woman. He needed to know for sure, of course. He had witnessed their alarm at the brief disappearance of the cellist, Nouvian, and noted that Gersten was absent for some time after that, which Jenssen suspected was an assignment resulting from Nouvian’s actions.
This was a time to be most careful.
DeRosier, the bald-headed male detective, finally exited his room, walking down the hallway in light nylon pants and an NYPD Softball T-shirt. “You’re gonna go easy on me, right?” he said, with a big New York smile.
“I am,” said Jenssen. “At first.”
They rode together down to the busy lobby of the Hyatt, DeRosier checking his phone, then zipping it into his pants pocket. They exited in the lobby, walking past the reception area and the concierge desk, looking up at the lounge.
“We could just get a drink,” said DeRosier, only half kidding.
Jenssen smiled. Just as in Sweden, the slam-and-go drinkers crowded against the long bar, downing cocktails before dinner.
Reflected in the facing windows were the lounge television screens, some showing a baseball game, the others showing helicopter footage from the police investigation of the shooting of the terrorist, Baada Bin-Hezam.
“We nailed that fucker,” said DeRosier. “Good weekend for the good guys, huh?”
“Very good,” said Jenssen, stepping onto the short escalator down to the front entrance.
“Oof,” said DeRosier, as they exited the revolving doors to the sidewalk and the heat. “This is going to be fun.”
“I am fine if you want to stay behind. This city is on a numbered grid, no?”
“No, no.” DeRosier was swinging his arms, improving his circulation. “I probably need this.”
“Tell you what,” said Jenssen. “Let’s take the subway part of the way, and just run back. I want to see the park.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Nighttime Manhattan had its own distinct rhythm. This was Jenssen’s first visit to the United States. He followed the detective, moving with the flow of pedestrians heading east on Forty-second Street. Half a block later, they descended into a white-tiled cavern known as the Lexington Avenue subway station. DeRosier sought out a Port Authority officer and badged them through the turnstile.
Jenssen trotted down another flight of stairs to the uptown platform, the smell gagging him, a hideous mélange of piss and dead animals. People crowded near the yellow line, all so nonchalant about the nauseating circumstances in which they found themselves.
Discipline taught Jenssen not to react to every little dissonant note in his surroundings. As always, visualization soothed him. He summoned images of the magnificent Rådhuset subway station on Stockholm’s Blue Line, its escalators running from the wide, clean track platforms through dramatically lit solid rock. He imagined himself traveling out of Stockholm on a trip to visit his widowed mother, Hadzeera, in Malmö.
Jenssen had never known his biological father. His mother had met his stepfather, Jonas, when he was a member of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Srebrenica. Jonas had discovered Hadzeera hours after she had been raped and left for dead by Serbian soldiers, after instructing her eight-year-old son to bury himself under clothes and blankets in the back of a bedroom closet. Against his own better judgment, as well as the advice of his commanders, Jonas Jenssen fell in love with the brutalized single mother. She and Magnus triggered a caretaking instinct in him that was simply irresistible. His father converted to Islam out of sympathy and love. But the marriage was fated to last less than two years; Jonas was killed in a car accident on his way home from the Malmö mosque after Friday prayers. That was the day Jenssen resolved to be the man in his mother’s life.
“First time in New York, right?” said DeRosier. It was an attempt at conversation. Jenssen nodded, but did not take it any further, feigning interest in the arrival of the 5 train, shrieking out of the tunnel beneath Lexington Avenue, stopping at the platform.
Together they boarded the crowded train, standing two seats apart. The riders rocked in silence. DeRosier nodded to him, and the two men exited the subway at East Eighty-sixth Street, reemerging into the heat.
Jenssen checked the street signs in order to orient himself. West was to the left. DeRosier wanted to stretch, so Jenssen went through the motions, keeping an eye out for a tail car. Sure enough, he spotted the other detective, Patton, in an unmarked car double-parked across the street. DeRosier straightened then, announcing that he was ready.
They set off together at a slow lope, like any of the other weekend evening joggers heading for Central Park. Two minutes in, Jenssen felt his arm beginning to throb against his cast.
When Jenssen tore the bomb trigger from Awaan Abdulraheem’s hand in the galley of Flight 903, his forward motion coupled with the impact against the floor caused a fracture of his left distal radius. The minor break had required only immobilization. Jenssen had insisted that the doctor sent by the mayor’s office cover only his forearm and the back of his hand, over a soft palm grip stabilizing his palm. He had been taking ibuprofen for the swelling, but disposed of the prescribed pain medication. The pain was bearable.
He picked up his pace, DeRosier breathing heavily behind him. Jenssen reached Fifth Avenue in five minutes. He jogged in place waiting for the light to change and the detective to catch up. He noticed the unmarked car waiting a few vehicles back at the light. DeRosier came up panting.
“Good?” said Jenssen.
DeRosier waved at him to continue on as though it was no problem.
They jogged up Fifth Avenue to Ninetieth Street and crossed the four-lane boulevard with the light, between stone pillars flanking the park entrance. Inside, sloping paths led up to the reservoir two ways—left and right. Jenssen picked up his speed, consulting the map he had committed to memory. He needed to veer to the left. He turned back twice and saw DeRosier fading into the dimness of the evening.
“Wait up!” said DeRosier, waving to him.
“All right, then!” Jenssen yelled back to him, pretending to misunderstand.
He continued to cut left along the path. After the first turn he went into a sprint, the motion and the breeze feeling excellent after the past few days of stasis.
He left the path when it was safe to do so, racing between trees until he rejoined another path at the top of a rise. Confident he had left both DeRosier and Patton well behind, he downshifted so as not to attract attention, jogging steadily past dozens of New Yorkers and energetic tourists out walking.
The loop around the reservoir provided not only
exercise but some of the most magnificent views in the city, especially at night. The bursts of colored light above the trees to the southwest told him the fireworks display had begun. Pedestrians stopped to watch, lovers holding hands.
Jenssen kept on. Ahead of him, the lawns of the park gave way to the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan. The illuminated monolith of the Empire State Building rose from their midst. Since the fall of the Twin Towers, it had resumed the role of the tallest building in New York City. Come tomorrow morning, when One World Trade Center was officially opened for business, the Empire State Building would slip back to second place.
For Jenssen, these spectacular views served only as geographic landmarks as he circled the body of water. This reservoir no longer fed drinking water to the inhabitants of Manhattan Island. It had been decommissioned in 1997 because of its vulnerability to terrorist attack. Now its one billion gallons fed other ponds in the park through a glittering schist and granite pump house located at its south end.
He ran for another quarter mile before again veering off the gravel path, this time onto an unlit trail to his left. The trail took him down a grassy slope to a bridle path covered with pine needles under overhanging trees. Jenssen followed it for two hundred yards, turning right at the southern end of the reservoir, near the rear loading docks of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
To his left were the former stables now used as sheds for gardeners’ equipment. Jenssen tucked himself into the shadows between two adjoining sheds. His vantage point gave him a full view of the front of the pump house, topped by a large clock face.
Jenssen saw her right away, in silhouette. He made out the messenger bag on her shoulder, tucked close to her body beneath her elbow. He saw the outline of her skirt. Even from that distance, he could see that she was anxious. As she should have been—she had waited for some time. She looked from the clock to the bright explosions in the western sky.
Jenssen walked to the bottom of the broad cement stairs leading up from the bridle path. She was overweight, but otherwise extraordinarily plain. He waited until her scanning eyes passed over him.
Her head panned right, past him, then back again. She had seen him. Jenssen nodded. She looked around, for the moment a caricature of furtiveness. Jenssen winced and motioned to her with his hand.
She made her way down the stairs self-consciously, like a woman gripping her handbag in a bad neighborhood. He waited until he was certain she was coming his way, and then drifted back toward the gardeners’ sheds, waiting for her to follow.
He was waiting for her when she rounded the corner into the dim light behind the shed. Here, they were completely hidden from the reservoir path and the bridle trail.
She came to him like a sinner, hesitant, seeking release.
“Assalamu alaikum,” she said, in a meek voice.
“Walaikum assalam,” he said in reply.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I was so nervous, waiting this long. And the fireworks . . .”
“You are indeed blessed,” Jenssen said, then quickly spun her around and clamped his wrist cast against her throat.
Jenssen was a big man, his grip seeming to envelop her completely. Her body shook, her hands coming to his cast. She pulled at his fractured wrist, his pain hot, severe. When he did not relent, her grip came away from his arm, her hands reaching out in front of her. In that way, she gave herself to him. He imagined she was looking to the colored bursts in the otherwise dark night sky.
She understood what had to happen, and released herself to God.
Gurgling sounds came involuntarily. Her hands fell to her sides. Her legs sagged, her body listing beneath his grip.
He held on until he was sure of her death, then set her down on the ground. He pulled the bag from her shoulder and dragged her into the shadowed recess between the two sheds, all the way to the rear.
He gripped his cast, having rotated his wrist in the strangling. With great effort and pain, he twisted it back into place. The pain flared and then—slowly—passed. He felt a bit of the woman’s saliva on his cast, but nothing more.
He picked up her bag by its handle and started away into the trees.
Chapter 54
Jenssen pulled a plastic Duane Reade bag from a trash can before hailing a cab on Fifth Avenue. He wanted to run the full forty blocks back, but he needed to preserve his energy. He dismissed the cab before Rockefeller Center, jogging the last ten blocks back to the Hyatt.
He went around to the service entrance, the one The Six’s motorcade had been using. A pair of young garage workers looked up casually, one of them recognizing Jenssen as one of the group of heroes, admitting him with a wave. Jenssen shook their hands, apologizing for the sweat. His entry was not questioned. He went up the stairs they had taken before, stepping into a service elevator that rode up the same shaft as the guest cars but opened on the side of the elevator bank.
Jenssen strode out onto the twenty-sixth floor, drugstore bag in hand, and nodded to the officer sitting on a chair before the hallway.
The corridor was empty. He had succeeded in beating the two detectives back to the hotel. Jenssen moved swiftly past the hospitality suite so he would not be drawn inside. Only the journalist, Frank, was inside, clicking away at his laptop.
The hallway was empty. Jenssen plucked the room key from his sweaty sock and fed it into his door. He was waiting for the green light and the click.
A door at the far end of the hall opened. Jenssen froze a moment, then had to turn.
It was Detective Gersten, rolling out a room service tray.
She was three pairs of doors away. Jenssen had no alternative but to acknowledge her. He waved his key card.
“How was your run?” she asked.
“Good, good.”
“How did DeRosier do?”
“I will ask him when he comes back.”
She laughed, and Jenssen pushed inside on the joking remark—but not before the female detective’s eyes fell upon the white plastic bag hanging from his wrist cast.
Jenssen pushed inside his room, closing the door behind him. His face showed fury, but he allowed no further demonstration of that emotion. He quickly stowed the bag in his hotel safe, then eased back out into the hallway—quiet, empty again—eager to resume his cooperative presence.
He was drinking his second bottle of water and stretching a bit at the waist when Detectives DeRosier and Patton entered the hospitality suite. DeRosier was still sweating, and Patton looked angry. Jenssen wondered if Gersten had phoned them after her exchange with Jenssen in the hallway.
“What happened?” asked DeRosier.
“Nothing,” said Jenssen, feigning confusion.
“Why didn’t you wait?”
“I was supposed to wait? Why didn’t you keep up?”
DeRosier reached for a bottle of water. “Because I couldn’t.”
“Beautiful night, no?” said Jenssen.
“No,” said DeRosier, between gulps.
Perhaps Gersten had not called them after all. Perhaps she had thought nothing of the bag, or its contents. Jenssen would remain attentive to her in order to make sure.
Chapter 55
Fisk awoke suddenly, hearing his alarm clock.
Only, he wasn’t in bed. He had drifted off at his desk.
Shit.
And—this wasn’t his alarm clock ringing. It was his phone.
He stood and shook out of his befuddlement. Felt like he had been asleep for hours, but without the refreshment benefit.
He checked the time. Maybe twenty minutes had passed since he’d put his head down.
He answered his phone just before it went to voice mail.
“Hey, it’s Reg. Great get today.”
Reg was an NYPD detective assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force.
Fisk said, “We got lucky. Thanks t
o the NSA.”
“Nah, I heard you were on this guy from the jump. Which is why I’m calling. We got a look at this bomber’s phone. It’s a domestic carrier, which is weird for a Saudi art dealer. No international plan.”
Fisk said, “He had a cell phone and plan under his name. But the GPS didn’t ping. Must have had the phone powered down. In any event, it wasn’t the one he brought to the U.S.”
Reg said, “He placed a call earlier today, before the inquiry to Saudi Air. Cell to cell. The number is registered to a Kathleen Burnett. We have a Bay Ridge billing address. Giving you a heads-up in case you wanted to hitch a ride over there.”
Fisk absorbed this. “Bay Ridge? Who is she?”
“Don’t know yet. Common name, but nobody under it is listed in Bay Ridge. But we just got this read, it’s that fresh. Had to scan the phone for booby traps first. All developing.”
Fisk said, “E-mail me the address. I’ll meet you there.”
Chapter 56
Back behind the double-locked door of his hotel room, Jenssen drew the heavy shades. He made yet another full sweep of his room, examining lamps, the telephone, the ceiling smoke detectors—anything and anywhere a camera or other recording device might have been installed while he was away. Nothing appeared to have been tampered with.
He opened the room safe and pulled out the bag. They would come for him in less than two hours. Skipping the get-together at the hotel lounge would raise suspicion, inadvisable at this late stage. He could stall them awhile, and he would need to. Time was of the essence.
After months of planning and training, and secrecy that had cost lives and won glory, the hour of action was upon him. Jenssen was the apex of a holy pyramid that had begun when Osama bin Laden initiated a call for victory in the name of Islam and the Wahhabi caliphate. His sacrifice only furthered the mission and the dedication of those called to fulfill it.
Jenssen’s primary concern was to protect the explosives. He first removed the small loaf-shaped parcel, unwrapping the foil and wax. Inside, the TATP explosive was pliable and appeared to be well-prepared. He had trained with the substance and felt familiar with it. With care, it could be molded into any desired shape.