Wendell Black, MD

by Gerald Imber, M. D.

  I left home at six p.m. I figured it wouldn’t take more than twenty-five minutes to cross the park, run down West Street, swing around the Battery, and get into place near the hotel. By six thirty I was on Little West Street, parked south of the hotel entrance by the row of young trees that would someday soften the feel of the area. The hotel entrance was up a short, wide, stone staircase leading to dark glass doors. Uniformed hotel employees were wheeling luggage to two SUVs with Pennsylvania plates, filled with exhausted-looking families heading home after a sightseeing weekend. An occasional businessman pulled a small wheeled case up the stairs, but generally it was quiet. I had a good view of the hotel entrance, and I settled in to wait. Anyone who was interested could make me immediately. I wasn’t hiding. I wanted distance between myself and whoever was approaching. Time to think and react, and maybe take off. I wasn’t a cop on a stakeout. No coffee, no cigarettes, not even a bottle to pee in. I was just a nervous guy taking precautions. I chose a playlist of old rock music and had the steady company of Rod Stewart and Bob Seeger. I kept the volume low, but the driving beat helped keep me alert. Maybe not so alert during the periods when I was singing along, but not dozing.

  The only women I had seen so far were holding children by the hand or in their arms. By ten of seven there was no sign of Alice; nor was there anyone loitering outside or sitting in any of the parked cars. The only repeat faces were the bellhops and parking valet, and they never even noticed me. I tried to scan the hotel windows. It wasn’t fully dark yet, and the east side of the building was in the shade of the quickly setting sun. Lights were on in a few of the windows, but the angle made it difficult to make out what was going on behind the tinted glass. There were curtains moving in one of the lit rooms, and I rolled down my window to get a better look. Someone was looking out, then backing away from the window. Repeating the process every minute or so. I could have kicked myself for not bringing binoculars, as I strained to catch sight of the observer. Just then there was a loud rap on the passenger window. I swung quickly toward the sound, slamming my head on the top of the door as I pulled in, just as I saw Alice smiling at me through the glass.

  “Shit,” I shouted, and grabbed my head with my left hand. “Shit.” I watched Alice pulling on the door handle and making an impatient, funny face at me. I tried to unlock the doors, but in the over-engineered BMW the lock release is lost in the maze on the dash, and it took a few seconds to get it done.

  “Lucky it wasn’t an emergency.”

  “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, but she clearly wasn’t sorry. In fact, she was laughing. I looked at her angrily, and then gradually started to laugh as well.

  “Not funny. My head is killing me.” With that, I started massaging the lump that was growing by the second.

  “Want me to kiss it?”

  “I want you to talk to me.” I had managed to regain my dignity and tried to be serious, but Alice had won round one. I ran the window up and turned to her. She looked great. The fading light danced off her eyes, her blond hair was pulled back and tied. She was wearing jeans and a fine, thin sweater of wool or cashmere. She could have been any good-looking, upscale New York woman. She was composed and businesslike. I wasn’t.

  “Do you want to talk in the room? It would be more comfortable,” she said. When I didn’t jump at the offer, she added, “Are you afraid I’ll seduce you, or do you think my associates are waiting to take you prisoner?”

  “No, I . . . I don’t know what I think. I’m in a bad position even talking to you. I can’t do anything but hear you out. We can take it from there. Your turn.” I stared into her remarkable blue eyes. Her gaze was intense, even if there were lines at the outside of her eyes and her smile said otherwise. I felt I could look through her eyes, into her head, and see nothing.

  “Okay, then. Shall we sit right here? It’s a nice, quiet place and no one will bother us.” She smiled more broadly.

  “Fine by me. Talk.”

  “Where would you like me to start?”

  “Start with who the hell you are.” Despite my best efforts, I had raised my voice. It got her attention, but she made no comment. She was thinking. I’m sure she rehearsed her piece, but she wasn’t about to blurt it out. This was her show and she was going to direct the flow. There were a million questions I wanted to ask, and I almost jumped into the silence several times. The tension in the air was jogged up a notch by the time Alice got around to starting her story.

  “My name is Alison Withers . . .”

  “Is that your real name?” I interrupted.

  “If you will be gentleman enough! Yes, my given name, my Christian name, is truly Alison.” Now I was confused, too. I always forgot which was which. Did they give you the surname, or did they give you the Christian name, and why didn’t they just call it like it was and avoid the confusion. I held my tongue, and actually lost my concentration for a fleeting moment and almost smiled. “My surname is Withers. Alison Withers. I am a plastic surgeon, and I work for the Secret Intelligence Service, the Firm, MI6, the equivalent of your CIA. Don’t interrupt.” She must have seen the incredulous look on my face as I was about to spit out the first of many questions. “You know what they are, but you need to believe that’s what I do, how I got back into the country. How I got out of the UK and through your customs. We, like your people, are practiced in these things. It’s what we do.”

  I noticed she didn’t say anything about working with the CIA or being invited back into the country.

  “We have been close to this cell for almost a year, but something went off and they started killing people. We believe it was to silence those individuals. And we believe they now have to push up their schedule before either they or we are ready.”

  “Ready for what? They’ve been successfully smuggling heroin across our borders for quite a while, it seems.”

  “It may seem that way, Wendell, but this is a terrorist operation—it’s not about drug traffic.”

  “Nonsense.” I shook my head. “There seems to be no evidence for that.”

  “Sadly, you are very wrong. First, let me tell you why this isn’t about drugs. The heroin that came through Kennedy was the good stuff. China White. What’s the value of one mule clearing customs? What do you think?” For the first time I realized I had no idea of the magnitude of what we had seen of the smuggling operation. Nobody mentioned it. Not Rodriguez or Griffin, or even Deuce. I never even thought to ask. I shrugged.

  “A lot, I would guess.”

  “Well, let me save you the trouble of guessing. A unit of China White is seven hundred grams, a bit under two pounds in weight. Trading is done in half-unit bricks. The bricks are five by four by two inches. A brick is worth about $2,000 in Afghanistan, about $3,000 on the Pakistani side of the border, $8,000 by the time it gets to Turkey, and $40–50,000 by the time it gets here. One breast implant filled with China White is worth $25,000 to the distributor. Two implants, $50,000 before it’s cut and hits the street. A lot of money, but small-time, considering the logistics, the risk, and the fact that the trunk of a car can be lined with a hundred bricks, worth $5,000,000. It can be covered and concealed, and easily driven across the border from Canada or Mexico.”

  “Jesus. So why take a chance with compromised plastic surgeons who might get a touch of conscience, and multiple mules?”

  “Exactly. That’s why we are convinced that it is not a drug-running operation.”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  “I just told you, MI6.”

  “Right. James Bond.” I wasn’t buying the MI6 stuff.

  “You have to take this seriously. A lot of people are in danger.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Wendell, don’t be angry because I disappeared. I was doing my job. We are on the same side. I promise.”

  “I am angry, and I feel used. Whatever your part in this scheme, at least one person was murdered—maybe two, if you count the missing surgeon. Three, if
you count the overdose on the plane. So far you’re playing James Bond and explaining nothing.”

  “Except why this is not a drug operation, which is at the heart of the matter.” Alice, or Alison, reached across the center console, grasped my hand, and locked her translucent agate eyes on mine. That might have worked at another time. I stared back and said, “I need more information. Now.”

  Alice withdrew her hand and sat back in the seat. She looked vacantly over my head and I snapped around, expecting to find someone behind me, and reached for the Beretta at my hip. Alice grabbed my wrist with her right hand before I could bring it up. She was stronger than I expected. “No, no, no. No need for that. There’s no one behind you. Relax. Look around. It’s just us. I promise.”

  I did have a good look around. The night was fully dark now, but the street was well lit and there was not a soul around us. I relaxed a bit. “Sorry. Now, get to it, please.”

  “I think the purpose of the heroin-filled implants was to test our recognition systems at airport security scanning stations. They are pretty much up to speed on installations in the UK, as in most other European countries. We have had a reasonable experience reviewing stored images. The images give a clear view of layers and objects beneath clothing, and clearly recognize breast implants. Better than body searches on the same individual. Implants read as dense foreign bodies on the chest wall. Implants filled with heroin read a little denser than silicone gel, but a lot more radiation is necessary to differentiate between the two substances. One of the issues of the scanning program is to limit radiation exposure. There’s been a good deal of fuss about that already, and the level of emission is not going to be increased. So, mostly, they look almost the same. Knowing that a powder-filled implant looks like a gel-filled one offers the traffickers a lot of latitude.” She stopped for a breath and I jumped in.

  “But you already said it was a dangerous and inefficient method for drug trade.”

  “Yes, definitely a bad choice for smuggling heroin into the country. Not so dumb for smuggling anthrax.”

  20

  I wasn’t ready for that. “Anthrax?” My voice must have sounded high-pitched, at least it did to me, and I’m sure my face registered the confusion I felt.

  “Correct. Anthrax or something with similar properties, whatever that might be. Same consistency, a fine white powder, and safely stored unless the implant bursts or is opened. There are enough anthrax spores in two implants to kill hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe millions.”

  “Is that what they are trying to do? Shit. How do you know that?”

  “Well, I don’t really know it, but I think it’s so. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Her moment of doubt seemed real, and I began to listen with a bit less hostility. “Our people have had a local cell with bioterror capabilities on our radar since shortly after the London Underground bombings in 2005. We got really serious then. We began to coordinate with the EU and the U.S., and names came up that cross-linked with money sources in the Middle East. Not at all like our homegrown radical Islam suicide bombers. For God’s sake, one of ours lived in Leeds and worked in a fish-and-chip shop. This is different. These people have money and move freely across continents. They contribute to radical groups and, in at least one case, have a proven al-Qaeda connection.

  “We got sucked into this drug business after two drug dog hits at Gatwick and Heathrow. Both of these guys were British Muslims with loose ties to some of the same crews. But one of them had grown up with one of the Underground bombers, the one loosely associated with al-Zawahiri. That was a red flag, a big one. Exporting heroin to finance terrorism isn’t exactly new. It has kept the Taliban going for years. But the scale is grander, and that money usually stays in Afghanistan or gets shipped out to buy arms, but it’s pretty much local stuff. Al-Qaeda is different. They have strong financial support from the oil countries and radical Islam supporters everywhere, even lots who don’t follow the word but sympathize with the tune. That’s pretty much common knowledge. This was a new twist—heroin traffic to the West with an al-Qaeda connection, that’s how I got involved.”

  That was when she lost me. “Why you? What al-Qaeda connection?”

  “Al-Zawahiri. I was recruited by the Firm right out of college. I had been toying with the idea of medicine, but just toying with it. I wanted to travel and give it a good think. My uncle, my father’s eldest brother, who had been with the Firm for decades, suggested it might help me do both. I traveled for that year . . . mostly to the Middle East and Africa but also the States. I went home for medical school, did surgery here and there, wherever there was a good fellowship. The usual stuff. And I did the occasional odd job for the Firm on the side. Nothing dangerous, not even very interesting, but it kept me in touch. I finished my plastic surgery training in Canada, then hit some of the hot spots, keeping my eyes open and reporting more regularly. It was a good cover. I learned tradecraft and became pretty good at my side job. When this thing started two years ago, the first thought was that I was the right fit, being a plastic surgeon. The traffic pattern was Middle East to the UK to the U.S., and it seemed easy for me to cover this side of the pond. Then things got hot.” She was very casual about her provenance, which surprised me. But I was getting accustomed to being surprised.

  “Do they want you telling me this stuff? I thought it was top secret. CIA field people never admit what everybody suspects.”

  She smiled. “Good point. It is the Secret Intelligence Service, after all, and this is where it gets a little sticky. As I told you on the telephone, I need your help, so I’m giving it to you straight.”

  Alice went on and mostly I listened. I asked questions when I had to but tried not to interrupt. She told a good story. Her people, MI6—the Firm, she called it—had been exchanging information with the CIA and Homeland Security since the first shipment was followed through Kennedy. It became a jurisdiction issue when the FBI got involved. Homeland passed the drug stuff off to the FBI and the DEA, the CIA was pushed out of the loop, and in the end only the DEA was interested. The NYPD wasn’t in the game until I took the wrong airplane and had the bad judgment to try to help a passenger in distress. Rodriguez and company got all hot and bothered, and then Farzan’s murder put it in our laps. The international agencies hadn’t considered that it might be a terrorism case, and now the turf war had greater implications. If something really bad happened while they jockeyed for position, it would really hit the fan.

  “So call a meeting,” I said. “Get the director of the New York office of the FBI to lay the problem on the commissioner. If New York is the target, he has to know immediately.” She made a face and wiggled her nose like that smelled bad.

  “Can’t do it. I haven’t been quite able to sell the anthrax angle. My boss thinks this remains a simple drug case until proven otherwise, which I haven’t done.”

  “What do the feds think?”

  “I . . . I haven’t discussed it with them.”

  “So let me be sure I understand this,” I said. “You are in this alone? That’s crazy.”

  “No. Not alone. We are all involved in the case, but apparently I’m the only person who has reached what I believe is the proper conclusion. I believe the drug runs were testing airport capabilities before shipping anthrax.”

  “And what happened to the drugs?” I asked.

  Alison hesitated before answering. “I guess they go to the street to finance part of the operation. I don’t really know.”

  “But that doesn’t just happen. It’s like any other business; there are layers of intermediaries before it gets to the user. A bunch of Islamic fundamentalists won’t go unnoticed.”

  “I don’t know what they do with the heroin. That’s the past. Clear your mind. Think anthrax. I am serious.” And she looked quite stern making that little speech. I backed off for the moment.

  “Okay, forget the heroin. Say you’re right. Why go to all the trouble shipping anthrax through airports where there actually i
s some security? The borders can be breached easily by car or truck or shipping container—you just made that point—so why airports?”

  “I’m not sure, but it’s not for lack of knowing a better way, and it’s not random.” Alice exhaled noisily and shook her head. Suddenly she looked tired. “I’m just so sure of this. It galls me that those idiots don’t get it. We should come down on every name we know, redact the leaders if necessary, and find out where the anthrax is coming from, and more to the point, find out where it’s meant to go before it arrives.”

  I was tired of sitting in the car. It was going on two hours for me, and I wasn’t convinced that we were looking at the apocalypse, so I gingerly changed the subject.

  “Can we have a bite to eat while we continue our discussion?” I asked. Not only was I fidgety, but I felt like a target sitting in a parked car in that weird, deserted part of town. I still had lots of questions. At the top of my list was the role Farzan and Tahm Tahani played in this scheme. And what changed to make them enough of a liability to require eliminating them. What happened to the heroin that made it through U.S. Customs? Was it sold? And to whom? Who was watching the chain, and why weren’t they watching Farzan and Tahm? Who were THEY, and what did THEY have over Tahm to make him cooperate and apparently stop cooperating? Who killed them and what did it accomplish? I was unable to get past the drug smuggling to concentrate on the bigger picture. It still didn’t make sense to me, but it hadn’t taken much to make me believe that Alice was one of the good guys. I wondered if that was a mistake. I kept calculating the options but kept my doubts to myself.