by J. B. Turner
“So where’s the problem?”
“This is where it gets interesting. We’ve checked the United Nations’ records of their field staff, and there’s a three-month assignment where he was in Somalia from June to August 2005.”
“That’s impossible. The UN withdrew in the nineties. I know all about Somalia.”
Chisholm nodded. “We’ve spoken to Franz Topping, a senior official within the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and he insists there definitely was not a UN presence in Somalia. But this contradicts the field records of Dr. Janice Sanderson, from Ithaca in upstate New York, who was working for a Christian medical charity. Her records state that Ford was working in Mogadishu. He was mentioned in her diary. And here’s the kicker. Sanderson was killed in a car crash three months ago.”
Reznick rubbed the top of his head. “So either Ford or a third party wants to hide three months of his life. We need to know why.”
Chisholm nodded. “We’re still working through the records of the other humanitarian agencies. It’s a lot more fragmented. Fewer computer records, so that’s causing a problem.”
“But it’s this three months we need to be concentrating on. Can we rule out that he was in a training camp somewhere?”
Chisholm stared at him. “We can’t rule out anything at this stage.”
Meyerstein looked up from her computer. “Sam, what’s the latest on Ford’s movements?”
Chisholm leaned over and checked a nearby laptop. “Team Two has him back in the park. Alone. Taking pictures.”
“At this time of night?” Reznick said. “Same place?”
Chisholm nodded. “Same as when you were watching him.”
“The exact same?”
“The exact same.”
Reznick shook his head. “Consider this. The main object of surveillance is to check a possible target for security measures, vulnerabilities. Is this what’s going on here?”
“Perhaps.”
“Are we talking a high-profile target, or a target in the park? A spectacular?”
Meyerstein rolled her eyes. “Complete supposition, Jon.”
“So what’s your take on what he’s up to and who he’s linked with?”
Meyerstein was leafing through some papers. She leaned back in her seat and sighed. “I’ve got some analysis that we’re working on. It’s pretty raw, but it’s showing that perhaps Ford is sympathetic to the aims of some of our homegrown militias. Extreme libertarians. Anti-government hard-liners. Perhaps in the Timothy McVeigh mold.”
Reznick blew out his cheeks. “McVeigh? Christ. He was a whack job.”
Malone cleared his throat. “McVeigh, huh? Interesting.”
Chisholm shook his head. “Gimme a break. He was a cold-blooded bastard. The Oklahoma bombing killed a hundred and sixty-eight people, including children in a day-care center. More than six hundred injured. Nothing interesting about that.”
“Hey, keep it down. I’m not disputing that. But I studied McVeigh at close quarters. Psychologically, he wasn’t insane. Not by any means. I can remember he had an IQ of 126.”
“I don’t give a shit what his IQ was.”
“Neither do I,” Malone replied. “Tell me, Sam, have you ever read The Third Terrorist by Jayna Davis?”
“Yeah, and it’s bullshit.”
“The author said McVeigh and one of his accomplices—a guy by the name of Nichols—had significant ties to an Islamic terror group.”
“She’s wrong.”
Malone shrugged. “Maybe. But we can’t rule such thinking out when we’re figuring out where Ford fits in.”
“We can feed that into our analysis, sure, but I don’t see that theory getting beyond first base. I think the book didn’t give credible sources for this hypothesis that there was a Middle Eastern connection to Oklahoma.”
Malone shook his head. “The book calls into question why the FBI turned a blind eye to eyewitness testimony that suggested McVeigh had a Middle Eastern accomplice. Twenty-two eyewitnesses gave written affidavits confirming there was a third terrorist—a guy called Hussain Hashem Al-Hussaini, an Iraqi soldier in the first Gulf War. All the eyewitnesses say that this man accompanied McVeigh to the federal building.”
“Malone, I’ve got to stop you there,” Meyerstein interjected. “I know the case very well. Investigation didn’t back that up.”
“Terrorism makes for strange bedfellows. Unforeseen alliances are not uncommon. Even in prison, the Mexican Mafia and Aryan Brotherhood have a loose alliance against their common enemies. Outside, the Tijuana Cartel operates in alliance with the Aryan Brotherhood at various levels.”
Chisholm sighed. “I think we’re getting a bit off base. The thing that strikes me most about Ford is that he’s lily white. He has no criminal history and no obvious links to Islamic terrorist groups or militias. He just doesn’t fit the profile.”
Reznick cut in. “We need to know where he was for those three months.”
Meyerstein shook her head. “We’ll chase that down, but I feel like we’re going in circles. And I always come back to the same thing . . . How is it that the State Department doesn’t know anything about why O’Grady was contacting Caroline Lieber? Surely they have to have something.”
Chisholm nodded. “Something’s wrong there. To me, the State Department is withholding information.”
Meyerstein sighed. “It’s frustrating. I know from personal experience how one agency jealously guards the very intel they should be sharing the most freely. But unless we get access to their files, it’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“I know. Look, Froch isn’t the most cooperative, I’ll give you that. But I guess that comes with the territory.” She caught Reznick’s eye. “What’s wrong, Jon? You’ve gone quiet on me.”
“What about the ninth-floor apartment at the Baruch Houses?”
Chisholm shook his head. “We sent in forensics and specialist search teams. They scanned every inch of the apartment—drilled through walls, partitions, pulled off crown molding, lifted the tiles, and checked in all dead space. Not a goddamn thing.”
“What about Akhtar’s place in the East Village?” Reznick asked.
“We’ve had to rehouse the wife and kids, but same again—we’ve drawn a blank.”
“Which leaves a deep search of Chantelle McGovern’s place,” Meyerstein said. “We’ve only done a fifteen-minute sweep of the place. And we’re still waiting for the computer analysis to come through.”
Chisholm stifled a yawn. There were dark shadows under his eyes.
Meyerstein looked across at him. “What do you think? McGovern’s apartment—we go in again. But this time we go over it inch by inch.”
Chisholm grimaced. “Tough call. If she’s involved, I doubt there would be anything there.”
Meyerstein looked across at Reznick. “What do you think, Jon?”
“That would make sense.”
Meyerstein closed her eyes. “We could do with having Morales here.”
Chisholm put his hand on her shoulder. “Looks like he’s going to pull through, Martha.”
“How the hell did they know Morales was in the building?” Reznick asked.
“Maybe they got spooked. There was no knife found. Akhtar’s taking the fifth.”
A voice shouted through from the adjoining room, “OK, we got something. He’s out of the park and he’s hopped in a cab. We’re on him.”
Meyerstein rubbed her hands together. “Where to now, Dr. Ford?”
A short while later, surveillance footage showed him getting out of a yellow taxi and buzzing a door on East 81st Street.
“Where is this? Locale?”
A short pause. A young systems expert checking the computers said, “Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter. It houses sixty-five formerly homeless men and women, most of whom are mentally ill.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Shit. OK, I want a list of all volunteers over the last eight
een months. And also the names of the homeless who’ve stayed there.”
Chisholm rubbed his eyes. “Goddamn, what is this guy playing at? I mean, what the hell is all this bouncing around shelters and soup kitchens at this time of night?” He put on a headset, adjusting the microphone in front of his mouth. “Surveillance, we need a female inside the facility. Agent Ferez. Get her made up as a panhandler ASAP. I want her in there and let’s see what we’ve got.”
The rest of the night was spent scanning the surveillance footage coming from inside the shelter. Reznick and the rest of the team monitored the screens as Ford talked with the undercover Fed about her alcohol use and asked when the last time she’d used the facility was. He was attentive. It was a master class in compassion.
As the hours passed, Malone grabbed a nap on the sofa. Reznick, Chisholm, and Meyerstein drank strong coffee after strong coffee. Reznick went to the bathroom and popped a Dexedrine. The chemicals hit his system.
Just after four, Special Agent Ferez was sent on her way, with hot soup, a sandwich, and a few dollars, and asked to come back the following night when they would have a spare bed.
It was strange to think that, less than twenty blocks away, Ford was oblivious to the sophisticated surveillance operation that was tracking him.
What was he really up to?
“Hold on,” one of the surveillance operatives said. “Who’s this? Check this out. We got movement out front of the facility.”
Reznick and the others checked the footage. A figure—clearly female, wearing tight dark pants and a dark shirt, hair tied back, and sunglasses even though it was dark.
Reznick peered at the screen. “Is this a volunteer?”
Then the woman turned, as if spooked, and stared straight up into the camera, unaware she was being watched.
The woman took off her glasses, and Reznick recognized her face straight away.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Meyerstein said.
It was Chantelle McGovern.
Twenty-Three
Just after 6 a.m., Meyerstein was getting ready for a secure videoconference with the three most senior members of the special access program. She had managed to snatch an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep and—after a shower, fresh clothes, and applying new makeup—she was served an Americano and a croissant. She scarfed them down and felt immeasurably better.
She got a rushed, five-minute briefing from an exhausted-looking Chisholm, who hadn’t slept, before sitting down in front of the screen. She punched in the encryption code and found herself staring at the stern faces of Lieutenant General Black, who was in McLean, and Lieutenant Colonel Froch, who was on the eighth floor of the State Department office in New York, directly opposite the UN.
Over the next ten minutes, she gave a situation update. “Bottom line, gentlemen, our analysis is pointing to Ford being linked in some way. Otherwise, the statistical chances of him going to the same homeless shelter as McGovern, in addition to being served by her at a Midtown steakhouse and East Village café, are too ludicrous to contemplate. That’s three separate locations. And that’s in addition to her brother Jamal, an Islamist convert, being holed up in one of the Baruch buildings on the Lower East Side.”
Black leaned back in his seat. She could tell he wasn’t convinced. “You have not given one iota of evidence to show that he is in any way linked to anything. And there’s no forensic proof linking him with anything.”
Meyerstein sighed. She hadn’t expected to be dismissed so readily.
Froch cleared his throat. “Can I jump in here?”
“Sure, Ed,” Meyerstein said.
“I’ve got to say, I feel uneasy when people talk about a person—in this case Ford—being linked in some way. In what way is he linked, other than these bizarre coincidences? I’m not ruling out the possibility, but come on . . .”
Meyerstein leaned forward, hands clasped, as she felt the anger rise within her.
“Counterterrorism strategic analysts, military intelligence, and behavioral analysts all conclude unequivocally that Ford is far more likely to be involved than not. We’re talking probability.”
“Involved in what?” Froch said.
“At this stage? We just don’t know.”
“Oh, come on, Assistant Director, that’s not gonna wash. We believe someone may be involved in something we don’t know anything about? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Meyerstein kept her anger in check. “Ed, we’re building a picture. It takes time.”
Black said, “O’Grady is dead, Martha. Lieber is still missing. These are concrete facts. And we can’t keep this from the media forever.”
“I know exactly where we stand. Look, we’re getting closer to this. The analysis favors our focus on Ford and Chantelle McGovern. We’re peeling it back.”
“What about the Iranians?”
“We have them covered. There’s nothing, no chatter or movement, to indicate anything in the offing.”
“Let’s be honest, Martha. We’ve been playing catch-up since the get-go. And to make matters worse, consider this . . . I was informed that, last night, the parents of Caroline Lieber met with the President, begging him to allow them to make a public appeal, to see if someone out there knows anything. They’re beside themselves. They believe it’s the only way.”
“If I can make a suggestion here, I’d like to talk this over with them, face to face.”
Froch nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. The State Department should be able to open up some diplomatic channels to reach out to the Liebers.”
“When are you free?”
Froch scratched his chin. “I’ve got a meeting with the Secretary of State at eight a.m. How does nine thirty sound?”
Meyerstein nodded. “I’ll be there.”
Black was also nodding. “Let’s keep this tight. I want a goddamn breakthrough. And I want it real quick.”
The monolithic concrete tower on First Avenue housed the US mission to the UN. Hundreds of diplomats and support staff worked behind thirty-inch concrete walls specially designed to withstand explosive-laden trucks. There were no windows on the first seven of its twenty-six floors.
Meyerstein was dropped outside a side entrance on 45th Street at 9:26 a.m. “I won’t be long. Twenty minutes max,” she told Chisholm, who was sitting up front beside the driver, talking to one of his team on his cell phone. She turned to Reznick, who was sitting in the back seat. “Let’s see what Froch has to say. Wish me luck.”
Reznick stared at her, long and hard, before he smiled. “Good luck.”
She strode up to the entrance, flashed her ID at the armed guard, and was ushered inside to go through security. She walked through metal detectors and was searched by a poker-faced female guard.
“Sorry for the inconvenience, ma’am,” the woman said.
Meyerstein looked at her and smiled. “Not a problem.”
She rode the elevator alone to the eighth floor and was escorted through a maze of corridors to Froch’s office by an attractive, twenty-something intern.
Froch was sitting behind his desk, leafing through some papers. He stood up and pointed to the chair opposite. “One minute early. You want a coffee?”
Meyerstein smiled as she sat down. “Morning, Ed. Black coffee, please.”
The intern left the room and Froch made small talk. The high humidity, plans for vacations. When the intern returned, she placed the cup on the desk in front of Meyerstein.
“Ma’am,” she said.
“Thanks for that.” Meyerstein sipped some coffee, enjoying the caffeine taking hold. She was so tired.
“Gillian, can you shut the door behind you? Make sure I’m not disturbed.”
The door closed, and Froch let out a long sigh.
“Thanks for making it at such short notice.” He leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Firstly, I want to say that any State Department involvement does not impinge on your role leading this investigation. I was briefing the Secret
ary of State and she is being kept in the loop, as you can understand.”
Meyerstein nodded. “I would expect nothing less.”
“There are one or two people within the State Department who say this should be led by Counterterrorism. But the feeling is that you have that base amply covered with Sam Chisholm being on board.”
Meyerstein smiled but said nothing.
“Here’s where I’m at. I’ve already dispatched an old family friend of the Liebers to calm the waters. He heads up the State Department’s Office of Global Intergovernmental Affairs.”
“Charlie Stanton?”
“The very man. He’s known the Liebers for over thirty years. He’ll be asking for seventy-two hours’ grace.”
Meyerstein sighed. “You kidding me? Ed, I need more time.”
“That’s all that’s on the table. Charlie believes we can get that seventy-two hours. Nothing more.”
Meyerstein shook her head. But she knew it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation. Not up for discussion. She was tempted to fire off a volley of criticism in his direction on how unforthcoming they had been with regard to O’Grady, his undefined role within the State Department, and who he had or hadn’t been in contact with. But she knew, from long experience, it was better to try to be constructive, or at least appear to be.
Froch averted his eyes from her direct gaze. “The State Department’s intelligence bureau and our counterterrorism people are studying the developments closely. They’re pretty smart.”
Meyerstein knew that was correct. She only had to think back to the national intelligence estimate of 2002 on whether Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. They were about the only intelligence agency who had emerged with any credit, primarily because of their dissent.
“They’re very nuanced. I like that,” she said.
Froch gave a thin smile. “I’ll pass that on. We pride ourselves on the rigor of our reports and the quality of our staff.”