False Flag

by John Altman

  Jana sat up, blinking. Mouth dry. The children across the aisle had fallen asleep. The young women beside her had lapsed into thoughtful silence. Either the diaper had been changed or Jana had gotten used to it. She slowly settled back again.

  Some minutes later, they pulled into Stamford. By now Jana had started feeling nervous again, the anxious feeling of the dream clinging stubbornly even as the details vanished.

  Her ruse had worked, yes. But they would not give up so easily. The damned fishwife: stubborn, you could bet on it. By now the woman would be combing back over satellite footage, searching, putting it together.

  But the Stamford platform was deserted. Saturday afternoon ripened toward evening, but no one was heading into New York City yet. Even from where she sat, Jana could see two separate cameras. Leave the train here, and she would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

  She hesitated. They moved again.

  “New Rochelle,” said the conductor, coming up the aisle. “Next stop New Rochelle.”

  North of Andover, VT

  The footage played again.

  Jana Dahan entered the bakery at 8:16 a.m. Ninety seconds later, she reappeared on the sidewalk, holding coffee and the black briefcase, and something unidentifiable. Dalia, having seen the receipt, knew now that it was a buttered roll.

  Next Jana stepped out of view of the traffic cam … but not out of the view of ARGUS. She strolled casually down the sidewalk, apparently in no rush, enjoying the sunshine. But in her carriage Dalia detected the same hint of audacity she had picked up from the security footage of the Portland drugstore. The girl could pretend casualness with dazzling ease, but she could never completely mask her insolence.

  The dog barked; Jana recoiled. Another crack in the facade. Then she vanished from the ARGUS feed, appearing inside the Greyhound station, betraying no awareness of the CCTV. But that was another ruse.

  She spoke with the cashier. Dalia had seen this receipt, too. For the price of forty-four dollars and fifty-two cents, Jana had bought passage on the 10:15 Greyhound to Portland, using a Florida driver’s license in the name of Erika Mallo. The casual stroll down the avenue had been the hook, the heedless presentation before the station’s security camera the line, the ticket the sinker.

  Jana disappeared. With the benefit of hindsight, they had reconstructed ensuing off-camera events. Inside the bathroom, she had turned her navy pea coat inside out, tied a colorless kerchief around her head, tucked the black valise beneath the coat. Two hundred and twelve seconds later, she reappeared: leaving the bus station the same way she had come in: right in front the camera, right under their noses. Hiding in plain sight. They would not have missed it the first time, thought Dalia, had Horowitz not been so eager to take her bait.

  Stepping onto the street again, Jana then did the opposite of courting surveillance. She found cover beneath awnings, in shadows, amid Main Street’s surprisingly robust crowd: tourists, locals, baby strollers, dog walkers, breakfasters, cyclists, weekend warriors on Harleys, all trying to make the most of a relatively mild Saturday. The traffic cam, facing endlessly south, offered limited help, and the top-down view from ARGUS was not much better. Clusters of pedestrians swirled, showing the camera baseball hats, hoods and hoodies, bald spots, man buns, and ponytails, but no clear views of faces for the computer to count nodal spots. Technology had hit its limit.

  “Back,” Horowitz ordered.

  A tech rewound. Jana emerged again from the Greyhound station, vanished again beneath an awning. Horowitz ran a finger up and down the cleft of his chin, whistling air in between his front teeth.

  A new group walked into the Greyhound station. A brunette in their midst drew Dalia’s eye. Jana might have quickly dyed her hair in the bathroom—in which case the kerchief had been yet another ruse—and then doubled back, buying a second ticket on a later bus. The Greyhound cashier, now in custody alongside the baker and the man calling himself Jack Klein, had offered no insight. Nor could he, Dalia thought. The girl had covered every track.

  They looked from one feed to another. In the train station, a broad-shouldered man in a corduroy jacket was pushing a broom across the floor. By the interstate, a trucker was climbing down from his cab after his E-Z Pass malfunctioned. On the town’s traffic cam, a clutch of pedestrians crossed the street. In the bus depot, the brunette reached the ticket counter. For an instant, she presented a three-quarters view to the camera. Impossible to be sure. Dalia opened her mouth, but Horowitz was faster, jabbing a finger at the image. “Scan it.”

  The computer scanned and found only six nodal points in common with Jana’s dossier—fourteen below the minimum considered to be a hit.

  Behind the American Legion Post, two kids on bicycles pored over a glossy magazine. Near the town square, joggers pedaled in place while waiting for the light to change. A woman pushing a stroller collided with a man leashing a dog to a lamppost. 8:24 a.m. A man tossed breadcrumbs to pigeons. Thickening traffic circulated through the bus depot, the train station, the toll plaza. 8:25. Dalia covered her eyes, lost herself for a moment in comforting blackness. She lowered her hand. 8:26. Children burst laughing from the bakery. A woman cleaned up after her dog. A man turned away from his family to take a clandestine nip from a pocket flask.

  8:27. A van dropped off a group of backpackers, who headed for the train station. A woman inspected a hairline crack on the windshield of a parked car. An immensely obese young woman struggled to get through the door of the stationery store. 8:28. Two dogs by the traffic light barked at each other. A woman carried garbage out the back of the American Legion Post and ran off the boys with their magazine. A youngster chased a windblown hat down the sidewalk.

  8:29. A pair of tourists took selfies before the clock tower. In the train station, the backpackers were queuing up. A couple directly in front of the traffic cam kissed, then hugged. Inside the bus station, a woman lit a cigarette. The cashier came around the counter, gesturing angrily, and the woman retreated to the sidewalk. Back in the train station, the backpackers …

  Dalia moved closer. One wore a dun-colored kerchief around her head, a lock of blond hair peeking out from beneath it. Face averted from the camera. And now that Dalia looked carefully, this one had no backpack.

  8:30. After buying her ticket, the woman in question sat with the other hikers, but not quite with them. Close, but apart. Still averting her face from the camera.

  Holding the empty coffee cup in her lap.

  Chapter Ten

  New Rochelle, NY

  The platform was clogged with police. Some wore local uniforms: a gentle shade of blue that looked all the gentler in contrast to their glistening black boots and belts. Some were NYPD, familiar in dark navy. Some wore plain clothes, and expressions of jaded watchfulness. And some, Jana thought, were feds: DHS, FBI, in sports coats or off-the-rack pantsuits, with the telltale bulges of guns and radios and plasticuffs.

  As the train pulled into the station, the uniforms dispersed along the length of the platform, leaving the suits behind to block turnstiles and staircases. Cops came onto cars in pairs, from both ends, weapons holstered, checking faces against their digital tablets. The man who looked at Jana was middle-aged, well fed, pouchy. As his eyes grazed her, she felt a trapdoor open in her stomach. But she rinsed her face of fear and looked back at him warily, a touch resentfully: What’s going on, sir, and will it prevent me from getting home in time for dinner?

  His eyes moved on without slowing, to a blonde two rows back.

  He rendezvoused with his partner in the middle of the car. Words were exchanged. Still the train remained in the station. Passengers began muttering, grumbling.

  Conductors, feds, and plainclothesmen held ad hoc palavers on the platform. The Czech pair sharing Jana’s seat angled their phones to catch their own faces backgrounded by the activity through windows—Jana wriggling to get out of the shots as much as p
ossible—and then posted selfies.

  Four minutes passed. Another pair of cops came through the car, wearing civilian clothes, concentrating on young women. Again Jana, with her blunt dark haircut, didn’t merit a second glance.

  As the passengers grew peevish, the conferences between authorities took on a more harried air. At last, a signal was passed down the length of the platform. Two NYPD officers, a man and a woman, positioned themselves at the front of Jana’s car. A whistle blew. Air vented, doors closed, and the train jagged again in the direction of New York City.

  This time, no conductor came through to announce the next stop. But Jana knew that about sixteen miles remained between her and Grand Central. Between her and freedom.

  North of Andover, VT

  Security feeds from railroad platforms in Springfield, Woonsocket, New Haven, and Stamford had been divided among analysts, broken into sections, and scanned in fast-forward.

  But the computers, thought Dalia, would find nothing. Not pessimism, but realism. The girl was a step ahead of them and had been the entire time. She had not come this far by exposing herself carelessly to security cameras.

  Horowitz appeared by Dalia’s elbow. “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s still on the train,” Dalia said. “But I’m not sure.”

  “Me neither.”

  “How long till they reach Grand Central?”

  “Twelve minutes,” he said. “Twelve minutes.”

  Grand Central Station, Manhattan

  As the train entered the tunnel, passengers began collecting their belongings and standing, eager to be first to the doors when they reached the platform.

  “Please stay in your seats,” ordered the policewoman at the front of the car. A few years older than Jana, she wore her auburn hair neatly pinned beneath her peaked cap. She started down the aisle, leaving her partner to cover the door at the carriage’s end. “Stay in your seats.”

  As soon as she had passed, Jana stood, taking the case, swiftly crossing the territory the woman had just covered. The partner, a hefty man with a close-trimmed goatee, thumbs hooked through belt loops as if to frame his genitals, gave her a look of frank disbelief. “You don’t hear so good?”

  “I need to use the bathroom.” She did a Betty Boop little-girl dip, crossing her legs. “Real bad.”

  “Back to your seat.”

  “Officer, I swear, it’s an emergency.” The policewoman looked around, gave her partner an eye roll, and continued her sweep down the aisle. “If I could—”

  “Back to your goddamn seat.” He raised his right hand threateningly.

  Jana covered his fingers with her left hand, gently. Passengers on every side watched as she bent back his wrist, leaning forward and down. Krav Maga, the hand-to-hand fighting style taught to Israeli special forces, emphasized that leverage trumped size—and that once battle had been joined, it should be ended with all possible dispatch.

  As the man’s jaw opened in surprise she brought her right elbow around hard into his left temple, and he went down without so much as a grunt.

  In an eyeblink she was past him and through the door, before witnesses could even process what they had seen. The space between cars was dim and dank. The train was moving slowly through the tunnel, at about five mph. Turning the lever, she ratcheted open the heavy door, spent a fraction of an instant examining the passing gravel below, and leaped down, running alongside the coach to spin off momentum. As she kept running, she spied a glow ahead—a fluorescent-lit subterranean platform.

  She was moving faster than the train. She caught a glimpse inside, of gawking faces still reacting to the violent assault they had just witnessed. But they could not see out into the darkness. They could not see her, and she had the sense that she was passing a diorama, a schoolchild’s project, meticulously constructed inside a moving shoe box.

  Other trains, in the process of loading or disgorging passengers, waited by platforms. Seeing the brigades of police in riot gear and gas masks awaiting her train’s approach, she veered away. The next platform was too tall to climb. She jumped up anyway, boosted by the adrenaline. Doors chuffed open and passengers spilled out, and suddenly she was surrounded by a crowd.

  The human tide carried her along. A loudspeaker barked orders. A child was crying. Dogs barked in the distance before being overwhelmed by the thunder of footsteps.

  A staircase led up. The tide rising, floating her along. Sharp elbows on every side. People laughed, cursed, talked on phones. Excited, a little bit crazy. Saturday night. But something was wrong: a logjam at the top of the stairs. More police, barricading the exit. The tide stopped, shifting restlessly. Panic tried to take Jana in its teeth, and she forbade it.

  Orders rapped again through the loudspeaker, echoing. Getting people’s attention now. A blanket of apprehension abruptly smothered the festive Saturday night vibe. People noticing all the barking. Thinking of bombs and gunmen and terrorist attacks. More and more, Jana thought with dark satisfaction, they were starting to understand what it meant to be Israeli.

  She elbowed her way up the stairs. Three police blocked the top: rank-and-file NYPD, holding batons and pepper spray, pistols holstered. No riot shields, no gas masks. Just three people with uniforms and billy clubs and spray cans, surrounded by confusion.

  The crowd surged, pushing against the cops and then falling back. Someone on the stairs almost lost her footing. Someone else cried out. In the next few seconds, Jana realized, the police would either lose control or establish it incontrovertibly.

  A woman was being jammed face-first into the cops. Jana slipped behind her. One of the cops raised his pepper spray. The crowd magically thinned. The woman’s breath had been squeezed out of her, and she started to collapse. The cop stepped forward, taking her arm, opening a gap in their ranks. Jana slipped through.

  “Hey!”

  But she was off already, low against the wall, not looking back; and the speaker turned away, returning his attention to the throng.

  A short hallway led into a seething concourse. New York City. Hitler’s worst nightmare: legions of untermenschen walking and talking and trading and fucking and thriving. She vanished into a sea of businesspeople, artists, clergy, dancers, lawyers, pipefitters, sex workers, scientists, adults, children, elderly, alcoholics, fashion models, fugitives.

  The tide kept rising, carrying her up another level, onto the main concourse. A dog on a chain leash growled. She turned the other way. Past the four-faced brass clock. The elaborate astronomical ceiling spread out overhead. The exit to the north was blocked by more cops.

  To the south were ticket windows and vending machines. She might buy another ticket and board another train. Or maybe the subway … no. Up onto the street. Freedom or bust.

  She consulted a mental map. She and Cousin Miriam had come through here often, on day trips to visit Miriam’s friend Mark up in Mount Kisco. Jana had never liked Mark, who was older, who had ogled the teenage girls and plied them with Miller Genuine Draft. (“Beers and leers,” Miriam had called it. Yet she had thrived on the attention.)

  She moved again, toward Vanderbilt. Past a busking guitarist, a breastfeeding mother, an androgynous young panhandler with open sores, a rawboned kid selling bootleg movies on a ragged blanket. Two cops stood outside the Chase Bank. One faced her while speaking on a radio. The other faced away, studying a picture on a tablet. Fear gnawed again.

  Past Zaro’s Family Bakery. From the left, beyond a Rite Aid—her former employer—came a mass of cops and dogs. She hastened the other way. Crowds thinning here, which left her exposed. But exits ahead. Although, between her and them, more blue. Coming up on her right and closing ranks, soldiers: camo fatigues, automatic weapons. Fuck.

  A nun was walking past, turning into the ladies’ room.

  Jana followed.

  A stall door just closing. She pushed in. The w
oman, facing away, tried to turn, but before she could, Jana threw on a sleeper hold. Crook of the right arm compressing jugular veins and carotid arteries; right hand tucked into left elbow, locking it snug. She squeezed. The nun squeaked. Three seconds without blood, and consciousness shut off as neatly as a light switch. The woman sagged, turning surprisingly heavy.

  Jana lowered her, propping the dead weight inelegantly against the toilet. A flush came from the neighboring stall. God willing, people in New York still minded their own business.

  She stripped off the habit: white cotton cap and bandeau, white linen wimple, black serge tunic, rosary. The woman was larger than Jana, and older. The habit would hang loose, no helping it. Under the uniform, she found a pink V-neck rayon blouse and, beneath complex underskirts, Liz Claiborne pants.

  She put on the starched wimple, the tunic, the belt, and rosary, hands fumbling with the small hooks. Then the cotton cap. She tried the underskirts, quickly gave up, and adjusted the tunic so that it mostly covered her jeans. Kicking off her running shoes, she stepped into plain black shoes two sizes too large.

  The woman was aspirating rustily. One pale white hand had fallen beneath the door to the neighboring stall, which was now, happily, unoccupied.

  Jana propped her back onto the toilet. She was about to leave when she saw the woman’s small black handheld bag. She dumped onto the floor toiletries, phone, notepad, book, eyeglasses case, and a sandwich and celery sticks in a Ziploc baggie. From the glasses case she took a pair of rimless reading glasses, setting them across the bridge of her nose.

  Her black case fit inside the nun’s bag. She zipped it, then spent the barest instant checking her reflection in the mirror.