"Put him on."
Koenig came on the line and started getting pissy with me.
I cut him off and said, "Jack, the reason the MO and the description fit is because they are trying to trick us. Asad Khalil just pulled off the crime of the century, and he did not fly to Germany to whack a banker, for Christ's sake. And if he was going to Newark Airport, why did he whack his cab AmeiYieioieYie got 't'ttaeiel does not compute, Jack.^cw, you go to Frankfurt if you want, but I'll stay here. Send me a postcard, and bring me back a dozen real frankfurters and some of that hot German mustard. Thanks." I hung up before he could fire me.
I bagged the Incident Report, since I was probably fired, and I went back to my desk work, again wading through stacks of background stuff, reports from various agencies, all of whom had nothing to report. Finally I got to the half ton of paperwork that related to Saturday's incident—forensic, Port Authority police, an FAA complaint with my name prominently featured, photos of dead people in their seats, the toxicology report—it was indeed a cyanide compound—and so forth.
Somewhere in these piles of papers might be a clue to something, but so far all I saw was the work product of people with tunnel vision and access to a word processor with spell check.
Which reminded me that they'd hold my paycheck until I turned in a report, so I swiveled in my chair and again addressed my keyboard and monitor screen. I began my report with a joke about a French Foreign Legionnaire and a camel, then deleted it and tried again.
At about a quarter to nine, Kate walked in and sat at her desk facing me. She watched me as I typed, but said nothing. After a few minutes of being watched, I was starting to make spelling errors, so I looked up at her and said, "How was Frankfurt?"
She didn't reply, and I could see she was a little pissed. I know that look.
I asked, "Where's Jack?"
"He went to Frankfurt."
"Good. Am I fired?"
"No, but you're going to wish you were."
"I don't respond well to threats."
"What do you respond to?"
"Not much. Maybe a cocked pistol pointed at my head. Yeah, that usually gets my attention."
"Tell me again about the interrogation."
So, I went through it again, in more detail, and Kate asked lots of questions. She's very bright, which was why she was sitting in the ICC rather than on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.
She said, "So, you think Khalil left the Park and Ride in a car?"
"I think so."
"Why not a commuter bus to Manhattan?"
"I thought about that. That's why people go to the Park and Ride—to catch a commuter bus to Manhattan. But it seems a little excessive to murder your taxi driver while you're waiting for the bus. In fact, I'll bet if Khalil had asked Jabbar to drive him to Manhattan, Jabbar would have."
"Don't get sarcastic with me, John. You're on thin ice."
"Yes, ma'am."
She ruminated a moment, then said, "Okay, so there was a getaway car parked in the Park and Ride. It wouldn't attract any attention, and would be relatively safe there. Jabbar drives Khalil to the lot, Khalil fires a single bullet—forty caliber—through Jabbar's spine, killing him, then gets in this other car. Is there a driver? An accomplice?"
"I don't think so. Why does he need a driver? He's a loner. He's probably driven in Europe. He just needs the keys and papers to the car, which he may have gotten from Jabbar. Jabbar, of course, has now seen too much, and he gets whacked. In the getaway car, or maybe in Jabbar's taxi, would be an overnight bag with some necessities, money, false identity, and maybe a disguise. That's why Khalil took nothing from Phil or Peter. Asad Khalil is now somebody else, and he's on the great American highway system."
"Where is he headed?"
"I don't know. But by now, if he drove with minimum sleep, he could be across the Mexican border. Or he could even be on the West Coast. Fifty hours' driving time at sixty-five miles an hour is a radius of over three thousand miles, and the square miles are—let's see, is that pi r squared?"
"I get the point."
"Good. So, assuming we have a killer loose on the highways, and assuming he wants to do something other than see Disney World, then we have to just wait to see what he does next. There's not much else we can do at this point, except to hope that somebody recognizes this guy."
She nodded, then stood. She said, "I have a taxi waiting outside with my luggage. I'm going home to unpack."
"Can I help?"
"I'll hold the cab." She left.
I sat there a few minutes, during which time my phone rang and someone plopped more papers on my desk.
I was trying to figure out why I said, "Can I help?" I have to learn to keep my mouth shut.
There are times when I'd rather face an armed homicidal maniac than face another night in a lady's apartment. At least with the homicidal maniac, you know where you stand, and the conversation is understandably brief and to the point.
My phone was ringing again, and in fact phones were ringing all over the big room, and it was getting on my nerves.
Anyway, as good as I am about getting into the heads of killers and predicting their moves, I am absolutely clueless about sexual involvements—I don't know how I get into them, what I'm supposed to do when I'm in them, why I'm in them, and how to get out of them. Usually, though, I know who the other person is. I'm good at remembering names, even at 6:00 A.M.
I'm also good at smelling trouble, and this was trouble. Also, I'd been straight as an arrow since my involvement with Beth Penrose, and I didn't want to complicate that relationship or complicate my life.
So, I made the decision to go downstairs and tell Kate I decided to go home. I got up, took my jacket and briefcase, and went downstairs and got into the cab with her.
CHAPTER 39
Asad Khalil continued north on 1-95, retracing his route from Jacksonville, across the Georgia border, then into South Carolina. Along his route, he disposed of the computer disks from Paul Grey's office.
As he drove, he thought about his morning activities. Certainly by this evening, someone would be looking for the cleaning woman, or for Paul Grey. At some point, someone would discover the bodies. The assumed motive for Grey's murder would be the theft of the sensitive software. This was all as planned. What wasn't well thought out, he realized, was the problem of his pilot. Quite possibly, by this evening or tomorrow morning, the murders in Spruce Creek would come to the attention of someone at Alpha Aviation Services, and, of course, his female pilot, who would certainly recall the name Paul Grey. Khalil had not realized that the man's name would be on the hangar.
This woman would call the police and suggest that she may have some knowledge of this crime. In Libya, no one would call the police with any information that would bring them into contact with the authorities. But Boris had been fairly certain that this could happen in America.
Khalil nodded to himself as he drove. Boris had told him to use his judgment regarding the pilot, pointing out, "If you kill the pilot, then you must also kill everyone else who knew of your flight and who saw your face. Dead men cannot go to the police. But the more corpses you leave around, the more determined the police will become to find the murderer. A single murder of a man in his house for the purpose of theft does not cause too much interest. You may be fortunate enough to have it go unnoticed in Jacksonville."
Again, Khalil nodded. But he'd had to kill the cleaning woman, just as he'd done in Washington, in order to give him more time to distance himself from the killing. Someone should tell Boris that Americans did not like to clean their own homes.
In any case, the police were looking for a thief, not Asad Khalil. Also, they were not looking for his automobile, and if the pilot called the police, they would be looking for a Greek on his way to Athens via Washington, D.C. All of this depended on how stupid the police were.
There was the other possibility, of course—the female pilot, seeing the front page of the newspapers, might actu
ally realize who her passenger had been . . . Undoubtedly, he should have killed her, but he had not. He had spared her life, he told himself, not out of pity, but because of what Boris and even Malik had said about too many killings. Boris was not only cautious, but also too concerned about the lives of the enemies of Islam. Boris had not wanted to gas the aircraft full of people, for instance, and had called this "an insane act of mass murder."
Malik had reminded him, "Your former government killed over twenty million of your own people since your revolution. All of Islam has not killed that many people since the time of Muhammad. Please do not preach to us. We have a long way to go to equal your accomplishments."
Boris had not replied to this.
As he drove along 1-95, Khalil put these recollections out of his mind, and thought once again of Paul Grey. He had not died as well as the brave General Waycliff and his brave wife. Yet, he had not died begging for his life. Khalil thought perhaps he should try a different method with William Satherwaite. They told him in Libya that the former Lieutenant Satherwaite had experienced some misfortunes in life, and Boris had said, "Killing him might be doing him a favor." To which Khalil had replied, "No man wants to die. Killing him will be as pleasurable for me as killing the rest of them."
Khalil looked at his dashboard clock—it was 3:05 P.M. He looked at his Satellite Navigator. Soon he would be leaving 1-95 for a road called ALT 17 that would take him directly to the place called Moncks Corner.
Once again his thoughts returned to the morning. These dealings with the female pilot had a disturbing effect on him, but he couldn't completely comprehend what had caused him such indecision and confusion. There were good reasons to kill her, and good reasons not to kill her. He recalled that she had said to the woman behind the counter, "I'll be back to take care of the Piper."
Thus, if she hadn't returned, they would be looking for her, and for him. Unless, of course, the woman behind the counter had the thought that her pilot and her customer decided to . . . be together. Yes, he could see that thought in the woman's face and the way she acted. However, the woman eventually might become concerned and call the police. So perhaps it had been better not to kill the female pilot.
As he drove, a vision of the pilot filled his mind, and he saw her smiling, talking to him, helping him into the aircraft—touching him. Those thoughts continued running through his mind, even as he tried to rid himself of her image. He found her business card in his pocket and looked at it. It had her home phone number written in pen above the business number of Alpha Aviation. He put the card back in his pocket.
He saw his exit at the last moment and swerved into the right lane, then onto the exit ramp for ALT 17.
He found himself on a two-lane road, much different from the Interstate. There were houses and farms on both sides of the road, small villages, gasoline stations, and pine forests. A compatriot had traveled this route on Khalil's behalf some months ago and reported, "This is the most dangerous of roads because of the drivers who are insane, and because of the police who have motorcycles and who watch everyone pass by."
Khalil heeded this warning and tried to drive so as not to attract attention. He passed through a number of villages and saw a police car and a motorcycle in two of them.
But it was a short distance to his destination—60 kilometers, or 40 miles, and within the hour, he was approaching the town of Moncks Corner.
Bill Satherwaite sat with his feet on his cluttered desk in a small concrete block building at Berkeley County Airport, Moncks Corner, South Carolina. He had the grimy handset of a cheap telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder, and he listened to Jim McCoy's voice at the other end. Satherwaite glanced at the anemic air-conditioner stuck through the wall. The fan was clattering, and a trickle of cold air was coming out the vent. It was only April, and it was already close to 90 degrees outside. Damned hellhole.
Jim McCoy said, "Have you heard from Paul? He was going to call you."
Satherwaite replied, "Nah. Sorry I couldn't get on the conference call Saturday. Had a busy day."
"That's okay," said McCoy. "I just thought I'd call you and see how you were doing."
"Doing fine." Satherwaite glanced at the desk drawer beneath where his feet were propped up. In the drawer, he knew, was a mostly full bottle of Jack Daniel's. He glanced at the wall clock: 4:10 P.M. Somewhere in the world it was past 5:00 P.M.; time for one small drink—except that the charter customer was supposed to be here by 4:00 P.M. Satherwaite said, "Did I tell you I flew down to see Paul a few months ago?"
"Yes, you did—"
"Yeah. You ought to see his setup. Big house, pool, hangar, twin Beech, hot and cold running babes." He laughed and added "Shit, when they saw my old Apache coming in, they tried to wave me off." He laughed.
McCoy took the opportunity to say, "Paul was a little concerned about the Apache."
"Yeah? Paul's an old lady, if you want my opinion. How many times did he piss us off wasting time checking everything a hundred times? Guys who are too damned careful get into accidents." He added, "The Apache passes FAA inspection."
"Just passing it on, Bill."
"Yeah." He kept staring at the drawer, then swung his legs off the desk, sat upright in his swivel chair, leaned forward, and opened the desk drawer. He said to Jim McCoy, "Hey, you really got to get down there and see Paul's setup."
In fact, Jim McCoy had been down to Spruce Creek a number of times, but he didn't want to mention that to Bill Satherwaite, who'd been invited just once, though Satherwaite was only about an hour-and-a-half flight time away. "Yes, I'd like to—"
"Incredible house and stuff. But you should see what he's working on. Virtual fucking reality. Jesus, we sat there all night drinking, bombing the shit out of everything." He laughed. "We did the Al Azziziyah run five times. Fucking incredible. By the fifth run, we were so shit-faced we couldn't even hit the fucking ground." He broke into peals of laughter.
Jim McCoy laughed, too, but his laughter was forced. McCoy really didn't want to hear the same story again that he'd heard a half dozen times since Paul had invited Satherwaite down to Spruce Creek for a long weekend. It had been, Paul told him afterward, a particularly long weekend. Up until that time, none of the guys had quite understood how much Bill Satherwaite had deteriorated in the past seven years since they'd last gotten together in an informal reunion of the flight crews from the squadron. Now, everyone knew.
Bill Satherwaite caught his breath and said, "Hey, wizo, remember when I waited too long to kick in my afterburners, and Terry almost climbed up my ass?" He laughed again and put the bottle on his desk.
Jim McCoy, sitting in his office at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, didn't reply. He had trouble connecting the Bill Satherwaite he had known with the Bill Satherwaite at the other end of the line. The old Bill Satherwaite was as good a pilot and officer as there was in the Air Force. But ever since his too-early retirement, Bill Satherwaite had been on a steep glide slope toward the ground. Being a Gadhafi-killer had become increasingly more important to him as the years went by. He told his war stories incessantly to anyone who would listen, and now he was even telling them to the guys who flew the mission with him. And every year these stories got a little more dramatic, and every year his role in their little twelve-minute war got a little grander.
Jim McCoy was concerned about Bill Satherwaite's bragging about the raid. No one was supposed to mention that they'd been part of that mission, and certainly no one was supposed to mention other pilots' names. McCoy had told Satherwaite numerous times to watch what he said, and Satherwaite had assured him that he'd only used their radio code names or first names when he discussed the raid. McCoy had warned him, "Don't even say you were on that raid, Bill. Stop talking about it."
To which Bill Satherwaite had always replied, "Hey, I'm proud of what I did. And don't worry about it. Those stupid ragheads aren't coming to Moncks Corner, South Carolina, to even the score. Chill out."
Jim McCoy
thought he should mention this again, but what good would it do?
McCoy often wished that his old squadron mate had stayed in the Air Force at least until the Gulf War. Maybe if Bill had participated in the Gulf War, life would somehow have been better for him.
As he spoke into the phone, Bill Satherwaite kept an eye on the clock and an eye on the door. Finally, he spun the top off the bourbon bottle and took a quick slug without missing a beat in his war story. He said, "And fucking Chip—slept all the way there, I wake him up, he tosses four, and goes back to sleep." He howled with laughter.
McCoy's patience was wearing thin, and he reminded Satherwaite, "You said he never shut up all the way to Libya."
"Yeah, never shut his mouth."
McCoy realized that Satherwaite didn't see any inconsistencies in his stories, so he said, "Okay, buddy, let's stay in touch."
"Don't go yet. I'm waiting for a charter. Guy needs to go to Philly, then overnight and back here. Hey, how's the job going?"
"Not bad. This is a world-class facility. Not finished yet, but we've got a great sampling of aircraft. We've got an F-lll, and we've even got a model of the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field just a few miles from here. You have to come up and see it. I'll put you in the F-lll."
"Yeah? Why's it a cradle?"
"Cradle of Aviation. Long Island is called the Cradle of Aviation."
"How about Kitty Hawk?"
"I don't ask—I'm not rocking the cradle." He laughed and said, "Fly up one of these days. Go into Long Island MacArthur, and I'll pick you up."
"Yeah. One of these days. Hey, how's Terry doing?"
Jim McCoy wanted to get off the phone, but old comrades-in-arms had to be indulged, though not for too much longer. He replied, "He sends his regards."
"Bullshit."
"He did," McCoy replied, trying to sound sincere. Bill Satherwaite was nobody's favorite anymore—probably never was—but they had shared the Holy Sacrament of Baptism by Fire, and the Warrior Ethos—or what was left of it in America—demanded that those bonds remain intact until the last man took his last breath.
Nelson Demille - [John Corey 2] Page 39