by J. B. Turner
Jimmy looked up from his computer screen. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days, dark circles around his eyes. He was one of Meyerstein’s trusted technology experts, and she knew he would push himself to the edge to get what the strategic analysts needed.
“I’m on it, ma’am.”
“I want computer analysis back to me ASAP.” She turned to Reznick. “Roy is also working this, from a different angle. We’ll have something to go on soon. I know it.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later, Roy Stamper was on the line. Meyerstein switched it to speaker mode.
“Chantelle’s place of birth is down as New York City on her student records. But we’ve checked. That’s not correct.”
“And?”
“Her brother spent ten years in Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois for armed robbery. That’s where he converted to Islam. Now goes by the name Jamal Ali.”
The news sent a buzz of excitement around the room. It was the first possible break.
Meyerstein looked across at Reznick, who was deep in thought, brow furrowed.
“She’s the cutout,” he said.
Meyerstein looked across at Malone. “What are you thinking, Dr. Malone?’
Malone was biting the end of his pen. “A picture could be emerging, Martha. We still have nothing on Ford. But the obscure connection to this woman—in two separate places—and now her brother . . . We might be on to something.”
“How long will we have to wait on computer analysis of McGovern’s laptop?” asked Reznick.
“That’ll take time,” Jimmy said. “Initial analysis shows it’s heavily encrypted. We believe there are hundreds—maybe thousand—of photos, documents, bits of correspondence, perhaps diaries. And we’ll have to check for embedded data. Steganography experts are looking through what we’ve got as we speak.”
“A Muslim connection, huh?” said Reznick.
Meyerstein closed her eyes for a moment. “It’s important we don’t get too carried away at this stage.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“We need to know more about Chantelle. Her time in jail is important. She’s vulnerable. Impressionable. Angry. A very potent combination. And with an Islamic convert brother, a picture is emerging.”
“You think she’s a convert?”
“Could be.”
“No sign of headscarves or anything like that.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Please.”
“We need to locate the brother. And fast.”
Meyerstein’s cell phone rang. She saw from the caller ID it was Lieutenant General Black, and she got up and went through to the small windowless room she had been using as an office. She shut the door and sat down, the air conditioning growling low in the background. She closed her eyes. She knew what was coming.
“I want to see you now,” he said. “Face to face. Right now.”
“Robert, I’ve got a hundred and one things to deal with.”
“Now.”
Meyerstein sighed.
“I think you know why I want to speak to you, Martha. This is getting out of hand. And you’re breaking the law.”
“Under the Patriot Act, sir . . .”
“I don’t want to hear about the Patriot Act. This is serious. I want answers.”
“Robert, I’m in New York. I need to be here. We have a developing situation—we could have a cutout. I need to chase this down.”
Black sighed, long and hard. “I don’t like the methods you’ve employed.”
“The judge refused to sign and I didn’t want to risk a warrantless search. This was a third way.”
“An illegal way, Martha.”
“Sir, that’s the call I made. And it’s the call I’ll stand by.”
Black hung up.
Meyerstein felt more isolated than she’d ever felt working for the FBI. She was starting to wonder when and if the investigation would ever end. But the more she thought about it, she more she knew that she had to do things on her terms.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, walking out of the office and back to the table where Reznick and Malone were hunched over a laptop, reading a file on Chantelle’s brother.
Reznick looked up at her and smiled. “Someone bustin’ your ass?”
“We live to fight another day.”
Norris, one of the Feds in the monitoring room adjacent, shouted through, “Ma’am, she’s back in the East Village.”
“Back home?”
“Nearby. Come and have a look.”
Meyerstein and Reznick crowded around Norris’s screen. They watched Chantelle enter a Laundromat and pick up a bag of laundry. She smiled and struck up a conversation with a middle-aged man wearing traditional Muslim dress.
“Coin-operated Laundromat,” Meyerstein said. “Where exactly is this?”
“At the corner of First Avenue and East 11th Street, ma’am.”
“Who runs it? Who owns it?”
“Pulled it up already. One-man operation. Owned by a Mohammed Akhtar. Came from Bangladesh in the early seventies.”
Meyerstein clicked her fingers excitedly. “Get the surveillance team to split up. Two on Chantelle, and two on Mr. Akhtar.”
Norris picked up a headset and cleared his throat before repeating the message. Then he turned to Meyerstein. “You’re gonna love this.”
“Love what?”
Norris spoke into the headset. “Team Two, give me a diagonal line of sight from the Laundromat.”
Meyerstein watched the camera pan around a busy intersection and then zoom in on a redbrick building on the corner diagonally opposite. She read the words on the sign.
“Islamic Council of America. You gotta be kidding me.”
“It’s one of the few mosques in Lower Manhattan. Akhtar attends this mosque. He lives above the Laundromat with his wife and five kids.”
“Is he clean?”
“As far as we can see.”
“This changes everything, people. I want Team Two on him around the clock. I want to know who he meets up with, where he goes, what he has for dinner.”
Reznick leaned in closer. “It’s perfect cover. She drops off laundry, she picks up laundry. How easy would that be for messages to be exchanged? No need to worry about electronic surveillance. It’s old-school tradecraft.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Jon.”
“This is a clear Islamic connection.”
“But there’s a difference between Islamic and Islamists.”
“Nuance was never my thing,” Reznick said.
Meyerstein turned to Norris. “We need to feed this into counterterrorism and carry out an urgent review of what we have.”
Norris nodded. “You got it.”
Meyerstein pointed at the real-time footage of the Laundromat. “Is she still in there?”
Just as Norris was about to answer, on screen the door opened and Chantelle McGovern emerged, wearing sunglasses and carrying a bag of laundry. The surveillance switched to footage from Team 1, who tailed her back to her apartment.
Meyerstein turned and looked at Reznick. “What do you think?”
“I think we need to wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.”
An hour later, as Meyerstein was reviewing new intelligence analysis from her team, Assistant Director Sam Chisholm—the FBI’s most senior counterterrorism official assigned to the special access program besides Meyerstein—was on speakerphone. “Martha, we’re getting up to speed with what you’ve got, and we’ve done some preliminary analysis.”
“Where are we at, Sam?”
“I think the watch-and-wait was the right call. But there are enough elements to seriously concern us. I think there’s something here.”
“What?”
“It could be a clandestine cell structure. The problem is how Ford fits into this. We just don’t get him. He’s not on our radar.”
“What about Chantelle McGovern, or her brother Jamal?”
“Sam, what have you got on this mosque?”
“Well, this Akhtar guy we know about. He’s a long-standing, senior member of this mosque. We have a source in there. Today’s Friday, so after evening prayers they’ll head to an apartment down in one of the projects along the East River, for Koran discussions and study.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Yeah, I bet. OK, we need more from your source, Sam. I need to know about everything and everyone linked to Akhtar and Chantelle. We need to integrate our two efforts. Let’s hook up our teams for this and I’ll oversee operations. I’ll send Reznick to meet up with you.”
Nineteen
The sky was darkening as the SUV headed down East 10th Street and turned right onto the FDR. Reznick sat in the back and stared out at the redbrick housing projects that towered over the area. FBI Counterterrorism Division Chief Sam Chisholm sat next to him, radio crackling in the background. It had been less than forty-eight hours since Reznick had followed the DC surgeon down to this nearly forgotten part of the East Village. The projects on Avenue D were ugly, no getting away from it. And they seemed like a stark reminder of the crime-ridden 1970s and 1980s, when this part of Manhattan was not synonymous with cool bars and bistros.
Three separate surveillance crews were working the area that night, all concentrating on Akhtar. Reznick’s job was just as an extra pair of eyes and ears.
Chisholm pressed his earpiece in tight. “Our guy is heading toward one of the houses on East 6th Street. Mobile surveillance is on him. He’s on foot, with two other guys from the mosque.”
They turned onto East 6th Street and pulled up outside a side entrance to one of the Riis houses. Chisholm pointed to the green door of another Riis house, across the street.
“That’s the one. Third floor.”
Reznick focused. “So what do we know?”
“Well, it seems like every Friday night, after sunset prayers, a handful of the regulars at the mosque, including Akhtar, pop in here. Our guy inside is wired up. Let’s see if it’s just a Koran class or something we need to worry about.”
“How long till they turn up?”
“Matter of minutes.”
Reznick listened to the surveillance team setting up in an empty apartment directly opposite the address being used by those under investigation.
A man’s voice said, “They’re all heading up the street now—Akhtar and his usual bearded friends from the mosque. Our man is already there. Sit back and enjoy the show, guys.”
They watched the shaky surveillance footage as the trio pressed the apartment buzzer beside the green door and went inside. A few moments later, footage appeared on Chisholm’s iPad showing the group hugging each other.
The sound of as-salaam alaikums filled the vehicle.
Reznick sat and listened. For a few moments, the voices took him back to Afghanistan. To talking to village elders in the mountainous tribal areas. The taste of the tea that was passed around. The smells.
The sound of uproarious laughing on the iPad snapped Reznick back to the present. The men under surveillance were now sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle as tea was served.
Eventually the meeting came to an end, and Chisholm instructed the driver to pull away and park on First Avenue, with a clear line of sight to the Laundromat.
Chisholm said, “The guys in the apartment are the same crowd every week. Same talk. But it never goes any further.”
Reznick nodded.
A short while later, a car dropped Akhtar off outside his shop. He waved goodbye to his friends and headed to his apartment upstairs.
Chisholm sighed. “Got a feeling that’s it for another night.”
He was right. A couple more lights went on upstairs, but less than an hour later the apartment was in darkness.
Just before 2 a.m., a backup night shift surveillance vehicle pulled in one hundred yards up the street. “Time to refuel,” Chisholm said, and he ordered their driver over to Sunny & Annie’s, a 24/7 deli on the corner of Avenue B and East 6th Street, one block from Tompkins Square Park. There they bought sandwiches, Vietnamese soup, and huge Styrofoam cups of coffee.
As they sat in the back of the SUV having wolfed the food, drinking the dregs of the strong coffee, they saw a crowd of around a dozen teenagers, nearly a block away on the opposite side of the street, attacking a young guy. They rained down punches and kicks as he lay helpless on the ground, and ran off with his cell phone and wallet. It was over in seconds. No one stopped to help.
Chisholm shook his head. “What a fucking sewer.”
Reznick sat and stared at the poor kid writhing on the sidewalk, only yards from a neon-lit bar. He’d just been a guy heading home after a night out. Now he was another casualty of the street.
The team drove back to First Avenue and resumed their position near the Laundromat.
Shortly after 5 a.m., a light above the Laundromat went on. An hour later, Akhtar emerged onto the street. He headed across to the mosque and opened it up, turning on the lights inside.
The night shadows disappeared like ghosts as dawn broke. Just after 6:30 a.m., men began to arrive at the mosque for the Salat al-Ishraq post-sunrise prayer.
The sidewalks became busier. The hustle and dirt and grime of a blazing hot day, kicked up by passing cars on First Avenue. The SUV’s driver cranked up the AC a notch. The cool air felt good.
After early-morning prayers, the worshippers went their separate ways with handshakes and hugs. Just before eight, Akhtar emerged, locking up the mosque before he turned and walked down East 6th Street.
“Where’s he headed now?” the driver said.
Chisholm yawned and leaned forward, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Just stay where we are, and let Team One cover him.” He held a radio to his mouth. “Team One, do you copy? It’s over to you.”
The driver nodded. “Got it.”
Half an hour later, a voice crackled on the radio. “OK, he’s headed into the Baruch Houses at the corner on Delancey Street. Overlooking the Williamsburg Bridge.”
“How far’s that?” Reznick asked.
“Mile and a half, give or take. Lower East Side.”
Chisholm spoke into the radio again. “Keep on his tail.”
“Yeah, I got that. Stand by.”
Chisholm tapped the driver on the shoulder again. “Let’s drive over there, park up on Delancey.”
The driver nodded and pulled away from First Avenue, heading over to the FDR. In the distance, the giant steel shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge loomed large over the neighborhood. Reznick could see the grim, crime-ridden Baruch public housing, almost identical to the Riis projects.
Chisholm dialed a number on his cell. “Karen, it’s Sam. Baruch housing project . . . I need to know if there are cameras either inside or outside any of these apartment blocks.” A brief pause. “Shit. OK, thanks.”
Chisholm shook his head as the driver cut right onto Delancey and pulled into a parking space near a side entrance door. “Not one damn camera for seventeen separate Baruch buildings. Not one.”
The radio crackled into life. “We have no number for the building—been ripped off—but Jeff is in. He’s identified it as having the word BOYZ in black spray paint across the blue door. And he’s on eleven.”
The minutes passed by but there was no word from Jeff Morales, the agent on the ground. Chisholm tapped on his cell phone’s plastic casing. Reznick stared at the graffitied blue door of the side entrance. He wondered if Morales was in an elevator, unable to talk or relay where the target had gone.
Reznick’s mind was racing. He wondered if something had gone wrong. Why was it taking Morales so long to respond?
Chisholm bit his lower lip. “Where the hell is he?”
A voice ove
r the radio said, “Stand by.” Time seemed to slow down.
Chisholm began to grind his teeth and tap his fingers. “It’s taking too long. This doesn’t feel right.”
Reznick turned to him. “Let me go in and have a look.”
Chisholm nodded. “You packing?”
“Yup.”
“Just be careful.”
Reznick headed across to the blue door and found it was open, despite having a controlled entry system. Inside was graffiti all over the walls and the smell of piss and bleach and old booze and smoke. Even the ceiling had a black blotch of graffiti emblazoned on the concrete.
“You OK, Jon?” The voice of Chisholm in his earpiece.
“I’m fine. I’m taking the stairs.”
Before he entered the stairwell, the elevator lights showed that it was making its way down from the eleventh floor.
Ten. Then nine.
It stopped at nine, then kept going.
Eight. Seven.
His senses were all switched on. He positioned himself in an alcove so whoever came out of the elevator wouldn’t see him.
Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
The elevator didn’t open. Reznick waited a moment before walking over and pressing the button. The doors remained shut. He pulled a penknife out of his back pocket and tried to pry the doors open. Again, nothing.
Reznick headed up the stairs. The soft rubber soles of his Rockports meant his steps were virtually noise-free. His breathing quickened as he climbed higher. Step by step. He reached the third floor and saw that the elevator was still stuck on eleven—or, more likely, was just broken.
The light in the stairwell was bad. The smell was musty, damp, and smoky; cigarette butts, trash strewn everywhere. Graffiti scrawled on doors: Lower East Side Boys, Baruch Boyz.
The names of girls; phone numbers for “girlz.”
The sound of hip-hop from a nearby apartment. Higher and higher he climbed. He was on seven, heading up to eight.
Onto the landing at eight, and two tough-looking kids were smoking, hats at an angle, pants down low.
“Yo, whitey, you got a lightey?”
The kid grinned like an imbecile and stepped in front of Reznick.