Wendell Black, MD

by Gerald Imber, M. D.

  By six, there wasn’t a lot for me to do. The half dozen seats in the situation room were taken by the professionals, and I was an observer with nothing to contribute. But my sense was we were still not going at it correctly. That is, all the moves were correct and appropriate, but we were missing something. Something key. I didn’t share my reservations with Panopolous.

  As soon as I left the building, I called Alison. She answered promptly from my living room.

  “Amazing,” I said. “You’re where you were meant to be.”

  “Hello, Wendell. I am meant to be in your home, is that it?”

  “Not such a bad thing.”

  “Why, doctor, how romantic.” There was that smile in her voice.

  “Hmmm. Not a good segue, but how about meeting me in Chinatown for dinner?”

  “Incurable romantic.”

  “But I am downtown, and I am hungry, and you are always hungry, and let’s do it.”

  “We did earlier, you insatiable brute.”

  “A-li-son,” I growled.

  “What time and where?”

  Then I called Deuce. There was no reason to check in other than wanting a sounding board for my thoughts.

  “Hey, doc,” Deuce said, reading my name on his phone.

  “Don’t call me doc. You know I hate that.”

  “All the more reason.” The formalities completed, we got down to business.

  “Deuce, I need to pick your brain on this terrorist thing, or at least share my thoughts with you. The whole thing seems to be playing out wrong.”

  “What happened?” Deuce asked quickly.

  “Well, nothing happened. I just think it isn’t going to go down the way the brass think it will. And we may miss the boat completely.”

  “Nah. Those guys are real pros. They have good intel, and they know how the creeps think. It’s not our thing. We think street. That’s our job. These guys are different. I don’t mean the bureau hotshots. You know how I feel about them. But the CIA and Homeland people, they have their own rules, and they get shit done. Have faith.” He seemed convinced, but I wasn’t buying.

  “I agree. They are impressive, but intuition counts, and these guys have not been on the ground. They’re big brass, suits, whatever. The intel comes from blind sources. Something isn’t right. Correction. Something tells me we are missing a catalyst.”

  “What does that mean?” Deuce interrupted.

  “You know, something that accelerates a chemical reaction.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Bombs?” He was serious. Sometimes what seems like the most basic reference is actually professional jargon outside the frame of reference of others.

  “No, no. Sorry. It’s not about bombs. I mean we are missing some ingredient, and it’s making us spin our wheels unnecessarily.”

  “Right. Why didn’t you say that?”

  “Deuce, I did.” Before things degenerated further, I had the bright idea to invite him to join us for dinner.

  “Yeah, sure. I would love that. Let me call home and tell Amy. Want me to pick you up?”

  “No thanks. I’m still over at Federal Plaza. A stroll over to Chinatown will do me good.”

  44

  Doyers Street is a nasty little one-block arc joining the Bowery with Pell Street. At the turn of the last century it was known as the Bloody Angle, after the murderous ambushes tong members met in the blind alley. The immediate area is home to some of the very special joints in Chinatown. Joe’s Shanghai, a communal-table mecca of steamer baskets of hot, squirty soup dumplings, holds down the Bowery end of Pell Street before the alley. At the shoulders of the angle on Doyers is a little place dear to my heart. A savory childhood memory called Nom Wah Tea Parlor. It was down at the heels then, and it hasn’t aged gracefully, which is part of its charm. It has a tall young owner now, capping fifty years of family management. He is as American as an iPad, and he gets it. The food is great, the place still looks like 1950, and the little plates of dumplings washed down with icy Tsingtao beer are still a bargain. I’m not sure everyone enjoys it as much as I do, but I don’t really care. Alison loves it.

  “Take my word for it, this is a good place” was my only explanation. Deuce gave me the raised eyebrow and was about to begin another round of bitching when Alison arrived. He stood to greet her. They had met once before, and I was glad to see he was comfortable enough to accept a couple of European-style kisses on the cheek without getting red in the face and flustered the way big guys do.

  “Nice to see you, doctor.”

  “And you, lieutenant.”

  “Deuce,” he answered.

  “Alison,” she countered. “I hope you like this place as much as we do.”

  “The lieutenant was perusing the plastic menu and saying something which I will paraphrase as ‘who can eat this stuff?’ ”

  “Try it. If you don’t like it, we can take you for a steak after dinner.” We all smiled. I managed to convey our desire for water, tea, and three beers to a mystified waitress, and we got down to studying the menu.

  “Anything you don’t eat?”

  Deuce shook his head. “I don’t know what any of this stuff is.”

  I waved the waitress over and handed her the billet with a whole lot of choices checked off. Then we got down to business.

  Alison was quiet during my summation. Deuce asked a few questions and finally said, “Why don’t they put you in the field? You know Tahani and the guy who was killed, Farzan. You saw the mule, and you have more of a sense of them than a bunch of soldiers and feds.”

  “Sure, but where should I go?”

  “Terminal 4 at Kennedy,” Alison answered before Deuce could speak.

  “I wasn’t even thinking that,” Deuce said, “but it is a damned good idea. Get you out there, maybe both of you, with a feel for the opposition. We can do the rest.”

  “Deuce, with all due respect, you are not part of this. They would kill me if I brought you in.” I shook my head as if to emphasize what a bad idea that would be.

  Two baskets of steamed shrimp dumplings arrived, and I served them out. I felt like the parent of a three-year-old. When Deuce struggled long enough with the chopsticks to be humiliated, I flagged down the waitress and got him a fork. Conversation was suspended as he followed instructions and added some soy sauce and hot mustard to the brew. He chewed, made some sort of noise, and smiled. “Wow.”

  “Wow, indeed. Glad you like it. Much more to come.”

  The food came fast and furiously, and talk was held to the essentials of eating until we had, all three, overeaten and were sipping hot tea.

  “What would we do at the terminal—just hang out and look at people?”

  “Pretty much,” Alison said.

  I considered it again. “Better than twiddling our thumbs,” I agreed.

  “I think she’s right,” Deuce said. “It might amount to something. A sighting, a face, something.”

  Alison spoke again. “It has to be tomorrow. It just makes sense.”

  “I’m glad you are so sure of yourself. I’m so frustrated, I could be convinced to go along with anything. Panopolous might have an issue with me going out there. I should check with him. The place is probably a military zone by now. We might not be able to get through the barriers.”

  “Your fancy new ID should open all doors,” Deuce said, “assuming the guys down the chain of command have heard about the brain trust. I’ll go out there with you. They can’t stop an NYPD Homicide detective from doing his job.”

  That’s how it all began. Simply and well intentioned. We agreed that we were too tired tonight, and anyway, by the time we got to Kennedy there would only be two or three more arrivals from LHR. Better to have a good night’s sleep and go at it fresh in the morning.

  I paid the dinner check; Deuce left a twenty-dollar tip on the table, and he gave us a lift to my place. We agreed to head out to the airport at ten in the morning, which would get us there in time to welcome the first flig
ht.

  “You still don’t have wheels, right?”

  “Right. We can go out with you, or I can rent a car.”

  “Are you on leave? If not, you can get a car and driver from the motor pool. This is business.”

  “Nah. Can’t do that. I would feel funny. Anyway, the driver would waste the day sleeping in the car in front of Terminal 4, when he could be doing his job.”

  “Man, what a straight arrow. I’ll pick you up at ten. If I get bored or called out, you can get a cab home.”

  Alison kept me company on the nightly walk. Tonto seemed to find it natural enough. So did I.

  After strolling for a bit with Tonto’s lead in my right hand, Alison slipped her arm around my left elbow and said, “We never talked to Deuce about Rodriguez and company.”

  “Funny. You’re right. I wasn’t avoiding the topic. You know that I spoke to him after it went down. I guess there was too much happening, and I simply forgot. Plenty of time to fill him in tomorrow.”

  We chatted as we walked the big nightly circle in the park, ending back at the door to my building. It was almost ten, and I had correctly assumed Alison planned to stay. Six weeks ago, she had claimed a foot of bedroom closet space, which seemed a small price to pay for her company. On top of that, she had been thoughtful enough to deposit her lotions and potions in the guest bath. The system worked for both of us, and I didn’t feel hemmed in.

  While Alison was in the powder room, I checked my e-mail and messages. There was a text from a number I didn’t recognize. I scrolled through it quickly for the sign-off name. Tahani! Tahani. Apparently, he wasn’t dead, if the message was genuinely from him. It had been received fifteen minutes earlier, three a.m. London time, if he was in London. Or did that mean it was sent at five past ten, which would indicate he was in the country, or at least in the time zone. I stopped diddling with the time issue and read the message.

  “Thank you for your concern. My patient is now doing well. She can travel in the morning. Tahani.”

  I felt my body shiver from my head and neck down to my shoulders, chest, and knees, like a wet dog shaking off. Man. I was certain he was dead. And now he was back from the dead and sending me very important information. I sat on the edge of the bed to think it through. The message was real enough, based on the last question I had asked him, and the information was important. Very important. It meant everything, if it was true. Alison was right. Tomorrow was the day.

  I scrolled through my BlackBerry for the encoded sequence to text Panopolous. Intelligence people were devoted to BlackBerry technology. It was the only self-contained system. It had its own servers and couldn’t be hacked. Or at least was far more difficult to hack than iPhones. On top of that, all phone messages, e-mails, and texts went to the servers in the situation room, were encoded there, and forwarded in some manner that was far above my capabilities. All I knew was that direct communication between us was restricted to emergent situations. Messages of all lower priority were sent by secure electronic mail and distributed instantly.

  “Following message received at 10:15 p.m. Please advise. Black.”

  The message was forwarded as received, including the time and routing information.

  Alison was standing in the archway to the bedroom, wearing only a blue shirt of mine. Her arms were crossed under her breasts and she was watching me stare at the BlackBerry in my hand. “What?” she asked.

  “You were right. Tomorrow is the day. Tahani just texted me.” I scrolled back to the message and handed the device to her. She read it and continued to stare at the screen for a while, as I had.

  “Super. God, I wonder where Tahani is, where he was all this time. Good for him. I had written him off. Hadn’t you?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait. I just forwarded the message to Panopolous. Let’s see what he has to say.”

  I brushed my teeth, washed my face, used the toilet, tossed my shirt and shorts into the hamper, and slipped under the covers next to Alison. Before I could get close to her, my cell phone began to vibrate on the night table. It was Panopolous. No surprise. “Black?”

  “Yes. Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “Have you thought about why he contacted you?”

  “Why he contacted me.” That was an uncharacteristically dumb question, I thought. “Sure. I was nice to him in London, and I think he realizes what a horror show this can become. I think, basically, he’s a good guy trying to do the right thing.”

  “And how do you account for his sudden reemergence?”

  “I can’t.” I was hesitant to say “we can’t.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why, how would you look at it?”

  “Well, you could postulate he was being held by the forces of evil, maybe even tortured or dead, and his phone was used to disseminate disinformation. Did you speak to him?” Panopolous asked.

  “No, I didn’t try. I sent the message directly to you.”

  “Yeah, that was proper procedure. Well, we tried to reach him. The phone was shut down. No signal picked up by us or the Brits. Whoever sent the text probably pulled the battery so we can’t locate the phone. Not usually the thought process of a helpful citizen.”

  I was silent. I looked over at Alison, who was sitting up in bed listening to my side of the conversation. She shrugged her shoulders, held up her palms, and made it clear she couldn’t follow.

  “That is possible, but what do we lose by treating it as the real thing?”

  “We deploy our forces, cripple the airport, inconvenience several thousand people, and look like fools. Then they can play the game again, knowing what our response will be. Makes evasion a lot easier.”

  “All of that makes sense, but I don’t think we can discount this as a real threat. Can’t we keep our vigil? We expected tomorrow might be the day anyway. Do whatever you planned, don’t call off any other exercises, and assume the information confirmed our guess. That way we won’t take it as disinformation and lower our guard and risk having them slip past us tomorrow.”

  “You should have been a spook. For your information, General Pearson agrees with your assessment. That’s the plan.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Take the message as another piece falling into place confirming tomorrow as the day. No extra activity beyond what is already in place. Everything according to plan. Good work.” Panopolous was finished with the conversation, but I wanted another word.

  “I would like to be on site tomorrow,” I said, intentionally avoiding asking if he had any objections. Panopolous answered quickly.

  “Sure thing. You’re in the middle of this. We have an expanded field office at Terminal 4. Ask the TSA people for the Homeland officer. They won’t know what the hell your ID means, so badge them and wait for Ted Philos. He’s my guy. He’ll be expecting you. And, Dr. Black, you can bring the girl.”

  That caught me by surprise. Why was Alison suddenly welcome? He knew more than I thought. It made me wonder how secure my phones and my home were. And this is how they treat the good guys.

  45

  There was one report of a passenger who was refused flying status from LHR. Four women on the first Virgin flight screened positive for breast implants. All four were detained at the Homeland office and re-scanned. Three agreed to physical examination by a nurse employed by MI5, as a condition for boarding. One declined and was turned away, despite a zero level of suspicion. The three cleared to fly had mature inframammary surgical scars. There were no periareolar or axillary scars. Breast implants can be inserted from around the areola or under the arm, but those routes were far less common. None had evidence of recent abdominal incisions or other possible routes of insertion. Two were returning American women, and the third was French. All were in their late thirties and had verified identities and reasons for travel. All three were in the air when we arrived outside customs in Terminal 4.

  Panopolous was correct about my
ACG ID being useless, and the TSA employee stonewalled me. Deuce wasn’t having any of it. In less than thirty seconds, he had badged him and insisted on seeing a supervisor. A quick call and a very brief waiting period, and we had an intelligent, cooperative thirtysomething woman guiding us to the Homeland office. She was informed of the mission, held the door open for us, and asked if there was anything else she could do to help. It felt like we were on the same side.

  The office was decidedly unimpressive. It could have been any government office, police station, or airport lounge in the country. Lifeless lime-green walls, plastic chairs, and veteran desks in their second or third incarnation were the only furniture. The requisite flags stood guard around photos of the president and the secretary of Homeland Security. Otherwise, the three rooms that I could see from the entry were unadorned. The far wall of the main room was hung with CCTV screens, which I assumed were trained on sensitive areas of the terminal. All the desks held large, last-generation computers, which the agents seemed to be ignoring in favor of tablets and other handheld devices. The place was buzzing with activity. Five of the six agents in the large room gave us the once-over. The sixth was giggling on his cell phone, probably planning a life after his shift. Two of the five were women, and there were three female secretaries scurrying around. All the secretaries appeared to be Latina. The agents were all over the place. A handsome young Latino man in a white Homeland golf shirt; a tall guy with deep-set, sad eyes and a light-blond crew cut, in the same kind of shirt, who appeared to be Eastern European; and the third man, clearly Middle Eastern, dressed in fancy blue jeans and a Versace T-shirt. The women were good-looking and in their twenties. Both wore jeans and sweaters and could have been valley girls. I looked at Deuce and we smiled. It looked like the locker room at a SoHo gym. I guess that was the general idea. Fit in.