by Kirk Russell
“That’s another lie.”
Smith grew agitated and when his lawyer reached and touched him again, he turned on the man and said, “Leave the room. Go. I don’t want you here anymore.”
He folded his arms over his chest and scowled until his lawyer was out of the room.
“My brother-in-law has no credibility. Whenever he talks he is lying. Anytime he speaks it’s that way. The two things cannot be separated.”
I leaned back in my chair and flipped through my notes.
“Let’s talk about your businesses, the juggling of cash flow, the pressure you’ve been under. Were you offered money for access to the Alagara?”
“You accuse me of such a thing?”
“I’m asking a very direct question. Were you offered money to allow access to the Alagara?”
There was no return from this path, but I was okay with that.
“Ozan said this?” he asked, and in his eyes this time I saw him mocking me. So he knew about Ozan. He saw a texted photo or some other proof. He was letting me know.
“Ozan believed his daughters would be released after the attack,” I said. “But you saw something else. What is the phrase they use in chess? ‘Think deep’? I believe that’s it, think deep. You think about the other side’s move, then your move, and the next and the next and beyond. You knew the girls were dead. You’d figured it out.”
“I found out today.”
“It was confirmed today. That’s different. You were aware the kidnapping-ransom negotiation wasn’t proceeding in a normal way.”
“I know nothing about kidnappings.”
“Ozan had met with people who agreed to pay, but of course he couldn’t make the deal himself. It wasn’t his building. Perhaps you only encouraged Ozan to find out what was possible. You couldn’t know that Ozan would actually come up with people who were funded and interested. Is that how it started?”
“You are a fool to try to trick me.”
“Here’s what I’m guessing. Tell me if I’m wrong. You were told there would be no bomb inside the building. Maybe no bombs at all, maybe just some drone pilots shot in the lot outside the building.”
He shook his head at the absurdity of that, yet his face changed. When I saw that, I knew the lawyer was right not to want this interview. Smith had real regrets. He was struggling with himself. I couldn’t tell what I had gotten right, but something. I felt a rush of energy.
“Your brother-in-law is under arrest on terrorism charges. He’s confessed to providing Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with the information on the party, and he has testified about conversations he had with you.”
He allowed a small smile and the quiet pleasure of saying, “I am very surprised he is talking. The whole world should be shown, though children should not see.”
I heard his sarcasm but didn’t respond though it confirmed again he knew what we knew. His brother-in-law was dead. The badly decomposed body of Ozan Yildiz was found two days ago. Wild dogs had fed on the body.
“Ozan told you he had a very good offer and that it was time for you to get involved. Maybe with his history of lying, you didn’t believe that. You dismissed it as more talk.”
“You are circling the same over and over. That you keep saying it does not make it true.”
A long silence followed with Smith staring at me. Outside, watching the video feed, they must see it too. He was debating, weighing options, gauging what we had learned, what we would learn, and then made some internal decision. He wore his face like a mask when he spoke again.
“Ozan talked always in ways to provoke me. For years and years he is like this, so I do not take him seriously. I didn’t believe he would know how to find the people and sell the information. He always talked about jihad, but all fools talk in a loose way about life and death. It is a characteristic of fools, and what they say doesn’t mean anything. All people know this.”
“We want to know what you did when Ozan brought the offer to negotiate back to you.”
“You’re not getting this from him. I want you to say this.”
“We’re not getting it from Ozan,” I said, then paused before trying a different lie. One I thought was plausible.
“Ozan didn’t like you any more than you liked him. He didn’t trust you. He was afraid of you and what you might do, so who do you think he told? He told someone he knew you wouldn’t kill. Your sister is who he told. She went to the Turkish police.”
“That is another lie. She despised her husband.”
“Yes, she has said so, but he did tell her because he didn’t trust you. There’s no way out of this, Omar. The cards are falling. It’s all coming down around you. This Mansur coming to the Alagara is you wanting to be paid in person. You made it a condition. You wanted to be paid in person if a deal was made. You were surprised they agreed. You gave them access during the day when the building repairs were under way. You were told they wanted to learn the layout. You didn’t know they were planting a bomb. You were right to be worried when Mansur moved the meeting time from 10:00 p.m. to just before the party. And you couldn’t know he’d leave behind the pickup he’d arrived in.”
He didn’t acknowledge or answer any of that. He said, “I was trying to save the girls.”
“What do you mean?”
“The deal was made and the girls would be released, but not until July 5. I was warned they would be killed if I said anything about the kidnapping to the police. Today, I find out they’re dead, so I came here.”
“Okay,” I said, as if that made sense, but was asking myself again, What is the real reason he came in today? A New York Times reporter covering the bombings had followed our tracks and gone business-to-business along Lake Mead and wrote that sources said the FBI knew when the pickup carrying the secondary bomb arrived at the Alagara lot. That article ran this morning. It was true. Was he reacting to that? I nodded, then went there.
“From various external video cameras at businesses along Lake Mead Boulevard and from interviews of neighbors, including a neighbor with a third-floor condo on the other side of Mead, we know when the pickup with the bomb arrived. We know the driver pulled into the lot, parked in a slot left for him, and then came inside and met with you. We believe that man, Mansur, is part of a sleeper cell here.”
We had a screen in the room and I pointed at it.
“Let me show you some video.”
I played the video. There were two short segments of footage of the pickup with the bomb driving along Lake Mead. The first was at 5:40, the next, 101 seconds later. Both caught the driver’s head, but all efforts to enhance the face and make the driver identifiable had failed. Working with facial recognition software, we’d tried to match the driver to the man Smith had met with. The probability was 83 percent, but who knows with these software programs. And 83 percent wasn’t going to get us anywhere in court. Yet Smith must have met with the man who had delivered the pickup bomb. He would likely claim not to have known what the man calling himself Mansur was driving, but that didn’t really matter.
If this Mansur delivered the pickup and then met with Smith, we had a link from him to terrorists. If I were given that foothold, I could get there.
With some drama, I opened a manila folder and removed one of the copies I got from the facial-recognition guys. It was one where they had just overlaid the profile of the man Smith met with on the profile of the driver of the truck. The truck and the profile of the man were easy to read.
“I’m going to let you see what we have. I’m not supposed to, so it’s going to be a quick look.”
I showed him the images the facial-recognition team overlaid, but I didn’t hand it to him. I held it in my left hand out toward the middle of the table. He got a clean five-second view. Long enough to recognize Mansur. Not long enough to see this was facial-recognition techs’ experimenting. I slid it back into the file folder and looked at him.
“That’s where we’re at. Mansur, who you met with, delivered the pickup bomb. He parke
d on your lot, went inside, and met with you.”
“I’m an American the same as you, Agent Grale. I wasn’t part of any plot to kill the pilots.”
“How did a negotiation for your sister’s daughters come to this? How did they get to you?”
“They didn’t get to me.”
“You needed money to pay the ransom and money to keep your businesses going. Bankruptcy was starting to look very real. Did you go along because you were desperate for money?”
When he didn’t answer, I felt I had to acknowledge a different truth.
“You didn’t know about the bombs.”
I said that and he looked at me and nodded.
“I didn’t know.”
“But you knew something would happen at the party.”
He couldn’t bring himself to go there yet, and I didn’t make him. I knew he’d broken and it would all come out. It might come in pieces, but he would tell us. He made an odd request.
“Please bring me paper and a pencil.”
We got him that and he drew a face in profile. He wasn’t an artist and drew and erased the nose several times before he was satisfied. The nose was average in size and with a slight hook, forehead tall, lips full, and chin ordinary. The skin was smooth, so a young man. He slid the sketch over to me. Not a great drawing, but it was a face and he had a point to make.
“This is Mansur,” he said. “He looks very different than the one in the photo you showed me.”
“How long have you known him?”
“I don’t know him.”
“Do you know where we should look for him?”
He shook his head then said, “I don’t know anything more about him.”
I touched the sketch he made and asked, “Did this man introduce himself as Mansur?”
“Yes.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
“No.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No.”
“Did he make a payment to you that night?”
“Yes, in my office.”
“The money in the safe?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything about where he lives or where he was going?”
“No, it was only business.”
“I believed you when you said a few days ago that you would never leave hundreds of thousands of dollars in a safe if you knew a bombing was about to occur. Maybe you thought some pilots would get shot and that would be it.”
He shook his head and tears came. He shut down and wouldn’t say any more. He bowed his head. I tried for another ten minutes, then left the room.
51
Two Nye County deputies went out to the airfield the day before to look for the bodies Beatty had reported. In truth, they were looking for Beatty. They didn’t find him and left me three messages last night. It was pretty clear they thought I knew where he was. I went looking for Venuti. I found him in a conference room with his laptop and morning coffee.
“You did a good job in there with Smith,” Venuti said. “You didn’t quite bring it home, but he’ll give up the rest. He’s done. The question is, will he help us anymore?”
“I’d guess no.”
“I agree. Why did he come in today?”
“I’ve been wondering.”
“And what do you think, Grale?”
“Not sure yet. For him it’s been about money and keeping his enterprise going. He didn’t know his building would get blown apart the way it was. He bargained for something else.”
I saw Venuti was waiting for more, but I switched subjects on him.
“I’ve got three messages from the Nye County deputies. They didn’t find anything and it sounded like they were out there looking for Beatty, not bodies. I thought we were getting agents out.”
“We don’t have anyone available and you’re right, the Nye deputies didn’t find anything. Strata told us the security pair was fired after what may have been an attempted rape of the French drone pilot. The French pilot doesn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t know where it’s going. The Nye deputies want directions to wherever Beatty is camping. They want a statement on these alleged bodies.”
“Beatty told me he’s in the mountains behind the airfield.”
“They say there are a lot of mountains.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Why don’t you try to reach him and get him to come in?”
Instead, I called the Nye County sheriff’s deputy who’d left the message. He described the search they’d made for the black Land Cruiser with bodies in it and made clear he didn’t think it was out there.
“We need to interview Beatty. Where do we find him?”
“Check the mountains behind the airfield.”
“There’s a whole range. What about a phone number?”
“I’ll give you the last number that worked. Are you ready?”
“Go ahead, and can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Everyone knows this guy should be in custody, so why isn’t he?”
“I can’t speak for the Bureau, but I think the main reason he’s not under arrest is that nothing connects him to the terrorist bombings. That makes it hard to hold him. We’re pretty good at working around that, but in this case there doesn’t seem to be a good reason yet. If Beatty calls me, I’ll tell him he needs to give you a call.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
Less than an hour later, Beatty called. “Eddie’s pickup is still hanging at the flight trailer. It’s the only vehicle left there. Everybody else moved out in the night. I saw the lights. I’m going to put you on speakerphone so I can use the binos and scope while we’re talking. Can you hear me okay?”
“I hear you fine.”
“I could sure use some coffee. Have you got coffee, G-man?”
“I’ll bring you some.”
“You wouldn’t be able to get up this mountain in that car. A sheriff’s car was out here yesterday, but they’d already moved the Land Cruiser.”
“Two Nye County officers want to get a statement from you about what you saw. Is there a phone number they can call?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll give you their number. Are you ready?”
I read it off and Beatty recited it back to me, but I was sure he hadn’t written it down and would never call them.
“Want to read the number back to me?” I asked.
“No, I’m good.”
I sat on that a moment. “Did you see the Land Cruiser get moved?”
“Didn’t see it, and I’m moving on. I’m out of here today.”
“And going where?”
“A long way from here. Hang for a minute, okay? I’m lining up the scope.”
Beatty went quiet and I thought about Smith making the decision to take the money and let it happen.
“Okay, I’m looking at the runway and looking into the hangar. The drones are gone.”
“Maybe they took them off-site to work on them and they’ll bring them back later today.”
“They’re not bringing them back. It’s empty down there.”
“If they’re working on them, maybe everybody took a break and went into Vegas.”
“Eddie’s truck is there. He wouldn’t leave it there. He loves that truck. He’d sleep with it if he could.”
“Nye County sheriff deputies were told Bahn left his truck there and went with a colleague to look at a project up north. He’s coming back tomorrow or the next day.”
“He’d never leave it. Do you know what he paid for that tricked-out rig?”
I said no and something in my voice must have communicated I wasn’t at all interested this morning. But I was very interested in what else he saw.
“Just to confirm,” I said. “You don’t see any vehicles other than Eddie’s truck.”
“Roger that, and hold on, I just about have the spotting scope lined up. Almost there.”
I closed my eyes and saw Mel
issa the night of her high school graduation. I heard her say, “I’m out of here, bro, but I’ll always be there for you. Always.”
“The deputies were right, Grale. The Land Cruiser is gone. Something is going on.”
“Tell me more about the drones. You said they move them in semitrucks.”
“That’s right, 18-wheelers.”
“Okay, I’m looking at a tip right now that came in late last night. We’re getting tips about one every twenty seconds. This one is from Pahrump. Three semis driving into a warehouse late at night.”
“Could fit.”
I typed in my name and took ownership of running down the tip, then read it off to Beatty. The Bureau had gone out to the public with Hurin’s photo and a general request to report any unusual activity. This tip was from a sixteen-year-old kid in Pahrump who left his cell as the contact number at 2:47 a.m., last night. Danny Cole. In his message he said his father was a trucker, so he knew trucks. Three 18-wheelers had rolled up to a warehouse on the outskirts of Pahrump and, instead of backing up to loading bays, had driven inside. It wasn’t three trucks in the middle of the night that he was calling about. It was that they drove inside the warehouse. He’d never seen that before. Danny Cole is together, I thought. Whoever he was. He gave an address and a cross street in Pahrump.
“Could they use a warehouse to do the modifications on the drones?” I asked Jeremy.
“It’s about equipment more than workspace. The aircraft skin is thin but strong. You need a way to hold it fixed and steady to cut it cleanly.”
“I’ve got a tip to check out. I’ll head north now. If I don’t catch you on the way out, I’ll catch you on the way back. I’ll call you either way. When are you coming down from the mountain?”
“Soon, and I’ll go by the airfield on my way out.”
“How about you hold off on that until we have agents out with you? Strata doesn’t want you near their airfield.”
“The deputies punted and the pilots are gone. There’s no Strata. There’s no one left out here but me.”
“Don’t go there. Wait until you hear from me.”
A meeting that included Venuti, Thorpe, and the district attorney and assistants was under way in a conference room. I caught Venuti’s eye as I grabbed gear and walked out. On the highway halfway to Indian Wells, I texted him, Gone to check a tip in Pahrump. Beatty says Strata drones and pilots no longer at the airfield. All vehicles except Bahn’s truck are gone. Airfield appears deserted.