Deuce wandered off on his own, working two cell phones, which was something all the agents seemed to be doing as well. I watched the monitors and tried to imagine every step a traveler took from deplaning to exiting the airport. The territory was too unfamiliar, and I decided to walk the course. From the Jetway to customs was easy enough, and raised no red flags. Proximal to the Jetway was the tarmac and a no-go for the moment, but I wasn’t worried about the subject jumping from a moving aircraft or rappelling down beneath the Jetway. There were too many eyes for that. I kept reminding myself that my presence here hinged on the possibility that I might recognize one of the players. I was not a detective, DHS agent, FBI special agent, or CBP agent. I was a doctor, a police surgeon, essentially a guest.
But the mission culture was inclusive. Once you were part of the team you were part of the team, and I was thinking like one of them. You didn’t have to be a master sleuth to figure out traffic patterns. Open your eyes and observe. Observation is an experience-based science. Bombers are always nervous. They have no experience, since they only get to do that particular job once. But that doesn’t necessarily mean facial tics and pacing. Maybe a bobbing Adam’s apple indicating dry mouth, or nervous swallowing, darting eye movements, rapid breathing, or the telltale sign of all telltale signs, lips moving in silent prayer. The mules would be easier to identify. I tried to learn my lessons quickly and provide another useful pair of eyes. There was no quiz and no bell to end the session. Keep alert and keep watching.
Alison was very quiet and very intense during all of this. She was anxious to the very edge of jumpy. I wasn’t used to seeing her that way. Deuce was talkative and amusing, but his eyes were constantly working. It was 8:10, and VS009 had been cleared to the gate. The immigration hall was empty except for the uniformed line monitors loitering together in three groups. There were more men than women, mostly black and Hispanic, and all looked to be under thirty. Conversations were animated, and there was a good deal of friendly pushing and laughing. Most were congregated at the point where the spillway from the gates emptied into the hall, talking on cell phones and texting. It was an area of robust cellular reception and quickly identified by the workers. It was also the most effective location for listening devices. Every spoken word was monitored in real time and recorded. The group, as a whole, made less than a great first impression of the United States. Ill-fitting, dark uniforms did little to upgrade the sloppy look. The women were generally overweight and favored long, imaginatively painted fingernails. The men were more unremarkable in appearance and visibly enjoying the break. Least expressive among the group was a tall, very thin man with handsome African features and very dark skin. His buttoned shirt collar hung like a wreath around a very bony neck and his coat sleeves couldn’t contain his gangly wrists. He appeared uncomfortable and reticent, staying at the fringe of the core group while trying to belong. He was rarely noticed or included in the conversation; nor was he ostracized, which was good, because he was one of ours.
Embedding Manny—his name was Emanuel Brock—had been the initial move made by Panopolous after our first session. Young as he looked, Manny was an old-timer at DHS. Five years on the job after three as a street cop in Baltimore. He thought undercover was a stress-free way to spend the day. He was our eyes and ears among the workers on the floor. No one expected Manny to be privy to secrets after only two shifts, but he was closer to the action than plainclothes cops, uniformed CBP agents, or the rest of us hiding behind one-way mirrors and CCTV screens that everyone knew existed.
At 8:41 the first passenger entered the hall. A very tan man, fifty, maybe fifty-five years old, dressed in jeans and a form-fitting, glove-leather jacket. He was hurriedly pulling a brown wheeley dressed with tan leather piping, and taking quick, sure steps in hipster laceless red sneakers. He was easily fifty yards in front of the next arrival and showed no signs of slowing down. Entering the labyrinth, he began ducking under the plastic tapes, short-circuiting the switchbacks, and heading for the immigration alleys. Every eye in the room was on him. One of the guards entered the labyrinth from the opposite end to confront the man. The loud conversation echoed through the hall.
“Sir. You will have to stop right there. You can’t go under the tape.”
“Why not?” was the response, but the man never stopped making forward progress.
“Sir. Stop now.” There wasn’t time enough to register whether the order would be heeded before three armed DHS agents converged on the man. In seconds, he was restrained by two of the big men and quickly but thoroughly frisked by the third. When it was determined that he was not armed, the third agent spoke.
“You need to come with us, sir.”
“Come with you—who are you? I have to get home.” There were words passed and the flashing of badges and identification cards.
Aware of the serious motives of the armed men confronting him, he tried to excuse his behavior. “Why should I have to snake around the tape when the whole damned place is empty?”
The agents tightened their hold on his arms, and the decibel level rose. He was visibly upset but gave no evidence of being dangerously out of control. In civil society, the reaction is to soothe or defuse the situation. “Why are you so excited? We have these rules for good reason.” But the response of authority is invariably confrontational, invariably a show of force to control the situation. In this case, overwhelming force, which was met with outrage and arm-waving as the man was hustled back to the Homeland station. The third agent pulled the wheeled suitcase in through the unmarked door to the interrogation room and closed the door behind them.
A minute or so after the door had closed, things settled down. For a second time, someone shouted, “Action. Immigration hall.” I stood quickly, knocking my chair on its back. There was more scraping of chairs across the room. All seven people in the room moved directly to the battery of CCTV monitors and scanned the images. One of the views included an en-face picture of Brock. His eyes were fixed on arriving passengers streaming into the hall and only glanced over at the new disturbance infrequently, while he was doing his job. All other eyes in the room had been diverted to an escalating argument. Progress through the labyrinth had halted. The hall was in stop-action mode. Brock turned his head, following a small, dark Asian man, maybe Indonesian, who had been stopped at the head of the queue by a female TSA employee. She was signaling for assistance. Brock wheeled and raced toward the man as two uniformed CBP agents in the line of sight of the call for assistance scrambled out of their booths, freeing the restraining flaps on their holsters as they ran. Two others closed off access to the baggage claim, and four DHS agents materialized, pistols drawn, onto the working floor. Brock and the Customs and Border Protection agents arrived simultaneously, prepared to pounce, but the man had obviously experienced takedown before and had already dropped to the floor with his hands clasped behind his head.
The arrest and removal of the suspect to the interrogation area happened quickly enough to seem planned. In seconds, normal activity resumed. Brock returned to his post, but whether his cover had been broken during his quick response would remain to be seen. I was not invited to participate in the interrogation, but the sound feed and the scene through the one-way glass did not raise hopes of having found the mule.
The man appeared nervous and was nearly emaciated, but he did not behave with any sense of surprise. He carried a Malaysian passport in a full document case, a wad of Malaysian ringgit, five $100 bills, and a few twenties, and he refused to speak English. While the agents waited for a translator, they performed a thorough search of his clothing and hand luggage, finding another large stash of ringgit banded together in his duffel.
The Homeland agent standing beside me whispered, “Another fucking drug tourist.”
“Drug tourist?” I repeated.
The agent looked at me like I was retarded. “Yeah, you know, people who come here on a drug holiday. Buy in and stay stoned.”
“Why come here?” It se
emed like a reasonable question.
“Malaysia is a Muslim country. Drug penalties are severe. This guy is an addict. He’s been around the block. And he’s carrying a lot of money. Real tourists use credit cards these days.”
“Point taken.”
In the adjoining interrogation room, the tan man was getting himself together, preparing to resume the process of reentering the country. Deuce turned to me. “Just a jerk in a hurry. Got my hopes up for a minute. You know, a disturbance to divert us from the main event. But no go. The junkie has nothing for us, either. Let’s go back into the hall.”
That was the extent of the action. Day one was a washout for everyone but me. I learned the basics of airport surveillance and made a new friend in a lovely drug-sniffing beagle.
48
Deuce dropped us at Alison’s apartment. We went upstairs together, but she was uncomfortable with staying there. The place was still a mess. I flopped onto the bed and worked the remote, looking for the eleven-o’clock news while Alison packed a few things to take over to my place. I’m not sure what she needed so badly that wasn’t already there, but it wasn’t worth questioning. She opened, closed, reopened, hung up, put down, washed her face, and was ready to head out in almost half an hour. There was nothing on the local news about the terror alert, and my eyes were dropping shut.
The small bag was a pain to drag through the halls and streets. It kept flipping around on one wheel or the other, and I ended up carrying it like a suitcase, just like everyone did ten years ago. The doorman took the bag from the cab trunk, extended the handle, dragged it to the elevator, and turned it over to me. I lifted it again. Before I could set the bag down in front of my apartment door, the welcoming committee was working. Alison and I smiled at each other, and I unlocked the door extra slowly to make Tonto crazy. When the door was cracked open enough for him to insert his snout, he did the flying wedge and was in full jumping mode.
“Sit, sit. No jumping. Tonto, SIT.” That, of course, did no good. I had incited a riot, and now we had to endure the jumping, bumping, and licking. When a semblance of quiet was reestablished, I carried the suitcase inside the door and sent Tonto for his leash. He and I both knew that he had been walked, but we both faked it and headed out. Alison begged off.
“I’m too tired to take another step. Please excuse me, boys.” She managed to yawn and tap her mouth a few times with her opened right hand. “Excuse me.” She yawned again. This time it seemed genuine.
When we returned, I thought I heard voices from the apartment and entered quietly. Alison was just walking into the bedroom. She was still dressed.
“I thought I heard voices,” I said.
“It was probably just me. I was answering some of my messages. Now for a quick shower.” She headed for the luxurious limestone enclosure in the master bedroom, instead of the more spartan setup in the guest bath.
“I’m next.” I was too tired to try working my way into a co-ed scrub. While Alison was in the shower, I undressed and waited. I checked my own phone. No messages or calls. We had both been on and off the phone and the Internet all day. How did these messages suddenly materialize? I thought about checking Alison’s phone log. While I was pondering the ethics of snooping, the bathroom door opened. Alison emerged in a cloud of steam, wearing one of my shirts and a white towel wrapped around her hair. She looked great, and she was carrying her soiled clothes and her handbag. We passed at the door, looking like customers in a Turkish bath.
It couldn’t have taken ten minutes for Alison to fall asleep. I listened to her rhythmic breathing and thought about the past twenty-four hours. If we were right about all this, tomorrow had to be the day. The information from Tahani was the cornerstone of all our theories. If he was misleading us, all bets were off and I would look like an ass. But that didn’t mean an attack wasn’t going down. There was no reason I could conjure up for Tahani to be double-dealing, or was it triple-dealing. Flighty and fucked up as he was, I had a sense of his inherent decency and I believed him.
I thought about Panopolous and what was or wasn’t happening in the effort to protect the water supply. If we were right about the airport, the mule, and the weapon, the threat was still two steps removed from the attempt. If we were wrong, it could be going on now. Why couldn’t the anthrax have arrived in Montreal and be safely hidden in a car tooling down I-87 to the New York Thruway, arriving at the watershed from the north. That’s what I would have done.
“Terrorists follow orders. Normal people adapt” was how Panopolous dismissed my concern. “They will do it the way it was planned. That gives us a leg up. Don’t overestimate them. There will never again be an attack on our soil as dramatic and devastating as 9/11.”
He was confident. I was not.
“We are alert and prepared. Not perfect, but prepared. We will get them.” Which one of us was he trying to convince?
Once again I wondered what Alison was hiding. Who could she be talking to minutes before midnight—five a.m. in London?
My thoughts were interrupted by whimpering near the apartment door. The bedroom was flooded with daylight. It was ten minutes past eight in the morning, nearly two hours beyond Tonto’s usual walk time, and the walker wasn’t scheduled for today. I was it. I did my best imitation of jumping out of bed, pulled jeans and a thin sweater over my sleepy body, and headed out. The sky was bright, but there were high, thin mares’ tails to the west. The weather was going to change for the worse, which would make protecting the lakes and reservoirs that much more difficult. Twenty minutes later, back in the apartment, I had a pot of coffee working, fed Tonto, and called the office.
“Dr. Black, ah do declare,” Mrs. Black greeted me.
“I can do without the sarcasm,” I said, a bit more sharply than I had intended. “Anything I need to know about?”
“No, just the usual. The chief of Ds came by, but I think it was about the flu. He didn’t know you were on leave, and he was sniffling to beat the band.”
“I’m not on leave. Why would you think that?”
“You aren’t working, and you aren’t on sick, you aren’t on admin, and you haven’t told me where you are. I assume something is wrong.” Things had happened so quickly that I hadn’t considered that my NYPD colleagues were in the dark.
“I am truly touched. You have my word that nothing is wrong. No personal problems. Nothing. I’m working up to my ears on that special project. Sorry if I worried you.”
“Oh you secretive boys. Anything I can do?”
“Just don’t worry. You’ll know the whole story soon enough. Anything in the mail? Calls?”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” she answered, back in her matter-of-fact voice. “Hurry back to us. People on the job keep lining up waiting to see Mr. Soft Touch. Your pals Ginsburg and Walsh keep sending the poor babies back to duty.”
“Tell them to keep up the good work. I should be back before the end of the week. I’ll give you twenty-four hours’ notice so you can fill the benches with smiling faces.”
After a quick cup of very strong coffee laced with just enough milk to make it palatable, I brushed my teeth, shaved, and showered. Back in the bedroom, Alison was sitting up in bed sipping black coffee.
“Yuck. This coffee is awful.” She was right. We were on a lousy coffee roll.
“And good morning to you.” I looked at my watch. “It’s eight-forty. We have to get going. You in?” I took the coffee cup from Alison and started for the kitchen.
“Yes. Give me twenty minutes.” No chance. I called a car service and headed off to the second bathroom to shower. I have rarely used the guest bath. The soap and shampoo were foreign to me, and it felt like a shower in a mediocre hotel. I made a mental note to spruce things up a bit. No wonder Alison opted for the master bath. By the time I returned, Alison had her left foot propped on the toilet seat and was drying off her very attractive leg. Before I could comment, she squeezed past me and slipped into the flesh-colored bra and panties laid out on the
bed. I watched as she pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, and a blue sweater.
“Better get moving. I’m ready,” she said.
It took me half a minute to free a fresh blue shirt from the plastic laundry wrapper, shake it open, button down, button up, and jump into gray wool pants. I skipped the necktie, opting for comfort. The old cashmere tweed sport jacket was hanging on the doorknob. I grabbed it and we were out the door at nine, on the dot. Gus, the morning man on the door, led us out to the black Lincoln Town Car waiting at the curb. The driver was part of the Subcontinent mafia that dominated the legions of car-service drivers favored by New Yorkers, the alternative to the knee-knocking rattletraps masquerading as taxicabs throughout the city.
“Kennedy airport, please.”
“Do you have a voucher?” he asked. The usual routine.
“No. I will use one of yours.” The car had already started rolling as he handed back the receipt pad with a ball pen stuck in the binding. “No luggage?” he asked.
“No. No luggage. Terminal 4 please.”
If the driver was curious, he didn’t show it. Alison and I held hands and said nothing until she said, “Did you remember your passport?”
“Yup. Right here.” I patted my breast pocket with my right hand. “Always a good question.” For the rest of the trip we behaved the way we thought travelers would behave. I was very self-conscious. Alison was into it.
“I can’t wait to get away”—that sort of small talk, until the driver asked, “What airline?” I was caught short.
“Delta,” Alison replied. Smooth. And good thinking, since Delta dominated Terminal 4, and it rang true. In New York City, taxi and limo work has long been the entry-level job of choice, and the ethnic groups dominating the trade mirror population shifts as a whole. In the last few days I had become acutely aware of the new demographics. There was no reason to believe that the driver was anything more than a hardworking recent immigrant doing his job, but we were sensitized. Made you think how difficult it must be to be Muslim in America these days.
Wendell Black, MD Page 24