Pictures of human bodies charred to the bone. Blood splattered in diabolical patterns. Body parts still intact but nowhere near the bodies they were severed from. Fragments of human belongings that hadn’t burned in the explosion. Objects separated from their deceased owners and now telling stories of their own. Colorful beach buckets with collected shells. A designer wedding dress still unworn. An iPod stuck on the last track its owner was listening to. Souvenirs collected from previous stops along the holiday journey. Once happy mementos now transformed to relics of death and destruction.
Slant motioned to Nishimura to stop the images as he pushed his white-framed glasses on top of his head.
“From what I recall, the attacks were claimed by a group previously unheard of—”
“The Amir Morsi Brigades,” Nishimura followed up for him.
“Yes, that’s them I think. Their first and last attack, a one-hit wonder.” Slant looked down at the table and rubbed his hair as if it would massage out the finer details of the attacks. He paused for a beat and then continued.
“The precise details of the investigation escape me now, but one thing I remember well is the massive volume of incriminating evidence against these two.”
Slant recalled how back then it had seemed whoever had masterminded the attack had been keen for Nabulsi and Madi to take the fall for it. Given their backgrounds, there was no way these two had thought of this entirely on their own, let alone have the resources to bankroll it. Nabulsi had been a math teacher in Amman, and Madi an unemployed graphic designer from Irbid.
“Were they related, or did they know each other before the attack?”
“Not as far as I recall.
“They claimed they met for the first time on a ferry from Jordan to Sharm El Sheikh,” Nishimura said, taking over from Slant as he read straight from the case files.
According to the CIA, both were interviewing for jobs as bellboys at the Spring Roy resort. Neither of them got the job so they stuck around for a few weeks in Sharm El Sheikh looking for other opportunities. When nothing came up, they shared a taxi back to the port of Newabaa from where they would hop on a ferry back to Jordan.
Their lawyers asserted when Nabulsi and Madi were intercepted by the police that there had been an Egyptian taxi driver with them, who was arrested, never again to be seen. Their entire defense was built on this phantom driver who they claimed was responsible for the taxi’s contents, not their clients.
Monica didn’t seem too convinced. “How did they explain the fake passports, the foreign currency and the trace explosives on their bodies?”
Nishimura skimmed some more until he got to the part that answered her question. Madi was a graphic designer. His lawyers told the courts he and Nabulsi had hatched a plan to smuggle themselves on a European cruise ship from Jordan heading to Athens. While they were hanging out in Sharm El Sheikh looking for other jobs, Madi said he’d designed fake Turkish passports for the two of them to enter Greece illegally, from where they would make their way to Italy on a quest for employment.
“How about the explosives?” Monica pushed on.
“They claimed the taxi driver had asked them to help him load some luggage in the car, and that’s when the trace elements could have transferred to them.”
“The cash?”
Nishimura skimmed a little bit more. “Their lawyers said it was Nabulsi and Madi’s combined life savings, and money they had both borrowed to finance their move to Sharm El Sheikh.”
Blackwell thought hard before speaking. What he was about to say could be controversial.
“Robert, you said the evidence against these guys was too good to be true, and someone more powerful and with more resources must have paid for this. Could they have been framed? I don’t see any major holes in their stories. Why are we so sure they’re guilty?”
“These guys were guilty, Blackwell. Forget the cock-and-bull story spawned by their lawyers.”
Slant asked Nishimura to skip ahead to the evidence provided by Jordanian intelligence. According to the report, the Jordanians had been tracking a Bosnian criminal operative in the months prior to the Sharm El Sheikh attacks. The man in question, Demir Salimovic, had suspected ties to terrorist cells. A former Bosnian army officer in his fifties, Salimovic had become inexplicably wealthy since the end of the war in his country in ’ninety-five. He also happened to be a kiddy porn impresario who’d been on the FBI’s most wanted list for crimes against children. The Europeans also wanted his head for human trafficking.
Jordanian intelligence said Salimovic was flying in and out of Amman up to four times a month. They were preparing a sting operation to nab him red-handed, but he disappeared and never resurfaced since.
Nishimura accessed the FBI photo bank and displayed a series of images on the main screen.
“Nabulsi and Madi were photographed with Salimovic as far back as April 2005. Not only were they lying about not knowing each other before Sharm El Sheikh, but they were meeting with a known criminal and a terror operative. Slam dunk.”
“You’re right, Bob. They did it.”
Blackwell stared at Salimovic’s face in the last picture Nishimura had displayed. He had a large moustache and the merciless eyes of a butcher. This wasn’t the first time he had come across this monster. Blackwell had worked on a joint child pornography operation with the Australians in ’ninety-nine. They had come close to getting him in Indonesia, but just like his performance in Amman, he had disappeared right before they were able to gather enough evidence warranting an arrest.
Monica’s phone started to ding.
“This is Vlasic.” She put a finger to her lips to signal to Slant and Blackwell to keep it down while she took the call. She didn’t say much, just nodded her head and bit her lips while the person on the other line did all the talking.
“Okay, I’ll pass that on,” she said and hung up. “The president has approved the exchange of Julia Price for the two Jordanians. The White House is contacting our embassy in Cairo as we speak to put the request to the Egyptians.”
Slant shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“It’s not a given the Egyptians will agree to this. The army generals running the show there have been royal pricks since the fall of Mubarak.”
Nishimura jumped from his seat abruptly. “Something’s just come in.” He took center stage and clicked his remote control. Footage of the wreckage of an airplane being salvaged in the middle of the ocean played on one of the screens.
“We’re looking at Air France Flight 447 from Rio to Paris. It plunged into the southern Atlantic in 2009. All two-hundred-and-twenty-eight people on board perished.”
Monica’s eyes darted from the screen to Nishimura. “Relevance?”
“MI5 just informed us the French believe Mehmet Ozal was one of the people who died in that crash. He was traveling under an alias, Hector Cesar. That’s why it wasn’t registering. Wanted in Turkey for domestic violence and unpaid child support, but he’s definitely not our guy.”
“One down, two to go from the MI5 list, right?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Blackwell. The second guy, Hasib Khan, has also shown up. He changed his name to Harry Perez seven years ago and lives in San Francisco. He runs a health food store and a yoga center with his wife, Ava Perez. Our field office guys in San Francisco will speak to him shortly, but he’s unlikely to be our guy.”
“We’re left with the Iraqi.”
“We are indeed. Iyad Malki. Who knows, maybe he’s the guy you’ve been talking to all night?”
Slant slipped his glasses back on and began typing an email. “I’ll ask Amman to send us whatever they have on Nabulsi and Madi, especially of any links either of them may have had with any Iraqis.”
A catering operator walked in with a big tray of succulent fruit and placed it on the conference table. Nishimura grabbed a skewer of plump man
gos and started devouring them.
Blackwell turned to Eddie Grove who was busy typing on his iPad.
“Eddie, you know how these guys operate. Here’s what I don’t understand. If Seth knew we’d eventually find out the Jordanians are guilty, why didn’t he just say it flat out? Why the pretense when he could’ve told me, ‘These are my guys, they’re as guilty as the devil and I want them freed.’”
Grove blushed a little, betraying a chronic shyness. Perhaps he was the sort of guy who became self-conscious when someone singled him out in a group for an opinion based on his line of expertise.
“Things like culpability and justice work different in the terrorist mind. Even if he knows they committed the crimes, it doesn’t mean he holds them morally responsible. There are many shades of justification and the most common is, ‘They were working for a greater cause, or The victims of the bombings were collateral damage in the greater jihad.’”
Slant joined in. “Another common excuse is social pressure. Seth could be telling himself Nabulsi and Madi were coerced into the crime because they were desperate, or because they were easy targets. They were manipulated by a more powerful, more sinister force. He may not be disputing their actions, he just doesn’t hold them accountable for them.”
Eddie Grove flashed Slant a grin of approval, satisfied with the finishing touch he had placed on his line of thought.
“From his point of view, securing their release could be the fulfillment of the justice he keeps blabbering about. Not justice as we know it, but a bastardized form that’s sprouted in his head.”
Blackwell could see the merit of this analysis.
“Of course, the problem with an altered state of morality like this is that there’s little we can do to influence his actions. We’re essentially speaking two different languages.”
“How do we trip him?” Nishimura asked.
“There is one thing that can set him off-course, but it’s the one thing we don’t have, not even close,” Blackwell said, his long years of experience kicking in.
“What is it, Alex?”
“Knowledge of his true identity.”
TWELVE
Saturday, November 5, 2011—10:03 p.m.
Manhattan, NY
Blackwell must have dozed off in his chair for a few minutes when his eyes were pried open by Monica’s tense voice as she stormed into the room.
“We lost contact with Voss and his men on the roof. They haven’t checked in for fifteen minutes and their radios are silent.”
Slant and Grove were a few steps behind her, each holding an oversized coffee mug.
“Maybe they’re getting some shut-eye?” Blackwell’s mind hadn’t yet fully booted and the subject of sleep was all he could think of. He followed up his absurd suggestion with a more lucid question. “How about their tracking units?”
Nishimura shook his head. “Out of range or disabled.”
It looked like he was scanning the tracking server on his laptop, mirroring what the communication geeks in another room were seeing. “They were last on line about twenty minutes ago.”
“Get me Seth on the line.” Blackwell got up and punched another coffee pod and gulped the brown nectar quicker than it had oozed out of the machine.
Monica ran her hands through her hair and stopped in front of Blackwell’s chair. “Let’s think about this, Alex. What if Voss and the men are fine and there is a perfectly good reason why they’re off the grid? We could end up blowing their cover.”
“I was an HRT operator once. There’s never a perfectly good reason to go silent without giving advance warning to forward command. Even if there was, it’s not like I am gonna ask him if he’s seen a couple of hostage rescue operators loitering around the building. I want to feel him out, Monica, that’s all.”
Nishimura sprang to his feet. “I’ll second that. Voss is a veteran, he would have given us some sort of signal. Something’s outta whack here.”
Before Nishimura could explore these suspicions further, the voice of a communication agent rattled through the loudspeaker.
“Mr. Blackwell, I have the suspect on the line for you.”
“Hang on a second.”
The coffee had gotten him to first gear, but Blackwell knew it wouldn’t cut it for the long haul. He’d been awake for more than seventeen hours and needed something stiffer to stay alert. He grabbed a cold Red Bull, popped it open and downed it, then slipped on his Clupster headset just in time to hear Seth speak.
“Why’d you quit the FBI? Couldn’t handle blood on your hands, or did you look deep into the soul of a man like me you had labeled a terrorist, only to find your own reflection?”
The Red Bull had kicked in like a wild fire. Blackwell raised his voice. “What do you want from me, Seth? Sympathy? Respect? Or honesty?
“Honesty, but you aren’t capable of it.”
“Then lead by example. Why tell me Nabulsi and Madi were innocent when they’re obviously guilty?”
“Ever wonder who decided they’re guilty? The whores who run the Egyptian courts or their CIA masters? My men are innocent and I have no reason to lie.”
Blackwell struggled to conceal the anger seething inside. Seth had gotten under his skin with his self-righteousness and arrogance. From the negotiating room he was allowed to draw on complex negotiating tactics gleaned from years of experience, but the one thing he couldn’t submit to was his natural instinct to hate the guy at the other end of the line and show it.
Seth cut into his thoughts. “Tell me, Alexander Blackwell, what do you think is the first thing that goes through a father’s mind when he holds his dead infant’s body in his hands?”
Where did that come from?
“A small boy riddled with bullets or dismembered by shrapnel. From that point forward only talking about them in the past tense, deprived forever of feeling their small hands or smelling the innocence of childhood when they snuggle up for kiss. Their angelic voices silenced forever.”
Blackwell’s head tingled. He and Melanie had lost their first child. Shane, they’d called him. Stillborn, strangled by the umbilical cord. He’d been working a case in Colorado when Melanie was rushed to the hospital. Shane was in distress one week before his due date. Born without a pulse and pronounced dead on the spot.
He knew the answer to that question. When you lose a child, something inside you is extinguished permanently.
“You feel dead inside,” Blackwell said.
Seth didn’t respond, as if he wasn’t expecting Blackwell’s answer to ring so true. For a few short seconds they shared a silence of equals before Seth rammed through.
“Mothers and fathers across the Middle East lose their children every hour to conflicts they never bargained for, usually to make someone else fatter and richer.”
As Seth spoke, any lingering suspicion in Blackwell’s mind Seth could have been a lowly foot soldier in a terrorist cell sent to do the dirty work was extinguished. Blackwell was speaking to a leader, but why would he spearhead an operation and risk dying and exposing his group? It didn’t make sense they’d send in a CEO to free two tiny clogs in the organization like Nabulsi and Madi, who they’d left to rot in the first place.
This entire affair must have been deeply personal for Seth.
Did he lose a child in a US attack in one of its many wars in the region, and how was that connected to Nabulsi and Madi?
“Your country disregards the sanctity of human life like it was a national sport. A few hundred American lives, children or not, is trivial considering how our women and children are massacred every day in cold blood. If people have to die today, let’s call it what it is—collateral damage. Let’s call it even.”
Blackwell had accepted early in his career the world was neither a fair nor perfect place, but he would nevertheless adhere to his own moral compass while he did his job.
His role had been to apprehend criminals, protect the national interest, and as a negotiator, minimize the loss of life. He was neither in a position to justify the abhorrent actions of the criminals he was fighting, nor did he have the luxury to judge the covert activities of his own government.
Seth broke the silence with more cryptic words
“Do you know what a division bell is?”
Blackwell had no idea but Seth wasn’t expecting an answer.
“A bell rung near the British Parliament to indicate a division is occurring. When the MPs hear it, they know they only have eight minutes to get to their lobbies to vote for or against a resolution. Only those who make it inside before the entrances are bolted can vote.”
“How does that relate to you and I, Seth?”
He ignored Blackwell and soldiered on.
“One simple bell forcing grown men to behave like well-trained dogs. Rushing to their quarters to toe the party line without questioning their decision on its merits or consulting their conscience. Doing what’s expected of them, even if it means starting unjust wars and spilling innocent blood.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you have the moral strength to ignore the division bells that separate us and for the first time in your life think for yourself, Blackwell?” Seth boomed with a flickering anger. “Judge me truly on my actions rather than who you think I am? Or are you just another well-trained federal dog?”
“I only judge you on your actions, Seth.”
“Then would it be fair if I too judge you back only on your actions?”
Voss and the missing hostage rescue operators came back to haunt Blackwell. His lungs hungered for air.
“Yes.”
“I am curious, what exactly did I do to suggest I came here half-prepared for this mission? Just some dumb rag-head who would stumble halfway.”
“We’re not underestimating your resolve, Seth, and we’re taking your threats seriously.” His insides were quivering now at the worst possible scenario ready to reveal its ugly heat at any second now.
Terminal Rage Page 10