by John Whitman
He was in trouble. What kind of trouble, he didn’t yet know, and he would certainly never find out by waiting around inside for MS–13 to kill him.
By 10:16 Jack had made his decision, and by 10:18, he had a plan.
10:18 P.M. PST Bauer Residence
The truth of it was that Peter’s schoolboy style wasn’t an act. He’d been raised in Glendale, Arizona by his maternal grandparents, and they’d trained him up to be polite with a combination of what his grandma called “beatings and sweets,” rewarding good behavior and smacking the sass out of him when necessary. Sir and ma’am came naturally to him, and so while his aw-shucks habits weren’t an act, he was conscious of their usefulness during interrogations. He was an instinctive good cop.
He walked out of Jack Bauer’s house sure that Teri Bauer knew more than she was saying, but equally sure that she had no information about any personnel conflicts inside CTU. He’d watched her closely while they talked. When she’d mentioned that Jack never talked to her about what he’d been doing, her eyes had moved up and left, an indication that she was accessing the creative side of her brain. When she claimed that he never mentioned personnel conflicts her eyes flicked down and right, usually suggesting use of the brain’s factual side.
Peter got into his car and drove away in the fading twilight. He hadn’t gone more than two blocks when a Crown Victoria pulled up beside him. The window slid down, and a man in sunglasses flashed a badge and motioned for him to pull over. Peter complied, rolling to the curb. He was tempted to get out of the car, but he knew that if he was on the job and pulled someone over, even another Federal agent, he’d want them to stay put. Common courtesy.
Two men got out of the Crown Vic, both wearing half-decent blue suits and inexpensive, comfortable dress shoes. They split off, one to each side of Peter’s car. The one on the driver’s side, who looked Japanese, showed his badge again. FBI.
“Agent Jiminez, I’m Jason Fujimora, FBI, and that’s
Special Agent Holmquist.”
“You want to see my ID?” Peter asked.
“We know who you are, Agent Jiminez,” Holmquist said, making Peter turn his head to look the other way. “We just wanted to pass on a quick word.”
“Lay off the Bauer case,” Fujimora said.
Peter swiveled his head again. “That’s five. Words, I mean.”
Fujimora ignored that. “There’s nothing for you to find there.”
Peter smiled a friendly smile. “Well, fellas, if there’s nothing to find there, there’s no harm in looking. Nothing wasted but my time.”
“Wouldn’t want you to waste the taxpayers’ money,” said Holmquist. This time Peter didn’t bother to look. “Bauer’s in jail for good reason, and he’ll stay put. Understood?”
“Not really,” Peter replied. “Why you guys? Was Tintfass involved with the FBI? Informing for you, maybe? You guys pissed that Bauer offed him?”
“Bauer’s in the zoo where he belongs,” Fujimora leaned in a little, resting his hands on Peter’s window frame. “Just don’t disturb the animals too much. No one wants to get bitten. Good talking to you.”
10:21 P.M. PST Intensive Care Unit, UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Kris Czikowlis plucked a blue pen out of the pocket of her white medical coat and began scribbling on a notepad. It was standard stuff, but she always felt better when she made notes: Get medical history. Seizures? Family history. Strokes? She used layman’s terminology because it prompted her to use the same words with the family.
The patient lying on the bed in front of her was a male, mid-forties, Mr. Ryan Chappelle. Some sort of government employee or cop. Not overweight, although of course that didn’t rule out some sort of heart condition. No prior signs of distress, until he’d collapsed less than an hour earlier. By the time he arrived at UCLA Med he was comatose.
History of drug use?
He wouldn’t be the first government employee, even police officer, to use drugs, and the right drugs in the wrong hands could turn the brain off like a light switch.
A man in a gray suit walked into the ICU, tugging at his tie. He saw the patient and then Kris. His eyes slid down her body and then back up to her eyes. But he did it quickly, and that passed for politeness these days.
“You’re his doctor?” the man said, offering his hand. “Chris Henderson.”
Kris replaced her pen and shook his hand. “I’m Dr. Czikowlis. Are you family?”
“No, colleagues. I was there when he collapsed. Do you know what happened?”
“Not yet,” she said. “He’s stable now, but comatose. Did you give a history to the paramedics?”
Henderson looked at Chappelle. On his best days the Regional Director looked thin. Lying in the ICU he was practically skeletal. “As much as I could. We’re not that close, really. But he always seemed to be pretty healthy.”
“We’ll find out what’s going on,” Dr. Czikowlis promised. “I’m ordering blood work and a few other tests.”
“What will the blood work show?”
“Anything in his system, drugs, like that.”
Henderson handed her a card that listed him with the Department of Homeland Security. It was official enough to look important, without giving away any classified information about CTU. “It’s fairly important that we get him well as soon as possible,” he said. “Also, it’s standard procedure for us to keep track of any information that goes out. Please let me know where the blood work is being sent.” She wrote it down for him.
“Thanks,” he said. “Will you call me the minute you know anything?”
“Of course,” the doctor said. “Is he. Look, I don’t know what you guys do, but is this related to his work? Was he doing something. Is he a spy?”
Henderson chuckled. “No, he’s a bureaucrat. But he’s an important bureaucrat, so please try to get him better.”
10:30 P.M. PST Union Station, Los Angeles
He came up from San Diego on the Pacific Surfliner and sighed as the train rolled into L.A.’s Union Station. He loved trains or, more specifically, he had a love-hate relationship with them. When the trains ran on time, their precision was a thing of beauty and, as Keats had said, A thing of beauty is a joy forever. But the trains often did not run on time, and the result was discord. Disharmony. Chaos.
He liked train stations and subways more than airports because they usually displayed maps of the tracks, concise representations of the elaborate systems of paths, cars moving on paths, people getting on cars moving on paths.
The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn. Shakespeare, which play?
He stepped off the Surfliner and into the crowd of travelers. A family composed of a man, a woman, and two twin girls of about nine years passed. The girls were pulling matching pieces of Coach luggage on wheels, and he noticed instantly that the woman constantly looked back to the girls while the man looked to the train schedule. Fulfilling their roles: father-leader, mother-protector. Those were their roles in this situation, but change the situation, he thought, and see how quickly their roles change. Grab one of the girls, smash her head with his fist, and then suddenly the father becomes the protector and the mother becomes the guide, leading them away from danger. Comfortably predictable.
A man in a respectable black suit saw him standing still in the middle of the crowd and mistook him for someone lost. Mistook him for a sheep. The man approached and held out a pamphlet called The Watchtower. “Have you heard the word, my friend?”
He smiled. “I have heard seven from you, and will probably hear more.”
“If you’re looking for guidance, you’ll find it here.” He indicated the pamphlet.
He was enjoying this. He had learned long ago to find pleasure in minor distractions, rather than being annoyed by them. “Will it show me how to get to the Staples Center?”
The man in the black suit laughed. “No, but it’ll show you the word of God.”
“Ah,” he said, pretending only just now to underst
and. “To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.” That was Borges.
It suddenly dawned on the Jehovah’s Witness missionary that he was being toyed with. “Huh?”
“I’m going to make things easier on you. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
He walked away, feeling the eyes of the Jehovah’s Witness on his back for a few seconds. Then the man turned away, passing out more of his pamphlets. His stack contained roughly forty pamphlets, and the traveler estimated quickly that it would take him another fifteen minutes to pass out those pamphlets.
The train exploded ten minutes later. The traveler had just gotten into a taxicab and was driving away when the sound of the explosion roared out of the entrance to Union Station.
It was not a big explosion, and did not cause extensive damage. A truly large explosion would have brought attention that the traveler did not want, so this one was made to look like an explosion of diesel fuel, which was combustible at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It was not, as the traveler had already reminded himself, big enough to cause extensive damage. But it was big enough to stop the train service at Union Station which, at that particular time of day, would cause a ripple affect, disrupting the service of Los Angeles’s Metro transit system, as well as train service in Santa Barbara and San Diego, and, to a lesser extent, delaying train service as far away as Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Chicago, Illinois. The family with the Coach luggage would not be injured but, in some small way, their lives would be changed forever by the ripple effect of his actions. He smiled happily.
“Where you headed?” the taxi driver asked.
“Staples Center,” he said.
“Got it. I don’t wanna lose a fare, but you know you coulda taken the Metro right from Union Station. Drops you off right at Staples.”
The traveler glanced back. Wisps of smoke drifted up out of the Union Station building, barely visible in the streetlights, and he could already hear sirens. “I think they’re having trouble with the trains.”
The drive was a short one, directly across the downtown area of Los Angeles, the only place in the suburban sprawl that simulated the “downtown” feel of New York or Chicago, with concrete canyons formed by skyscrapers looming over streets. Oddly enough, these streets were cast almost completely in shadow during the day. At night they were bright with light pouring out from the buildings. A quick run down one of these canyons and the taxi emerged on the south side of downtown, where the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center together covered whole acres of land.
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the Staples Center and the traveler got out, paid, and walked toward the north side of the building. There were small crowds moving in and around the center for some event or concert that was of no consequence to the traveler.
He spotted Francis Aguillar before Aguillar saw him. This was to be expected, because the traveler changed his appearance quite often. Aguillar, too, had changed his appearance, but the traveler looked past the new van dyke and the longer hair. Aguillar’s posture was the same, his habit of standing with the weight on his left leg was still obvious, and the tilt of his chin was the same.
“Francis,” he said.
“Oh!” Aguillar said. “You shaved your head. Bald suits you. Are you wearing contacts?”
Zapata nodded. “I have always envied the green eyes of others. And in public, I am Charles Ossipon. Remember that technology has made the dreams of the ancients come true.”
Aguillar nodded, though Zapata could see from his face that he did not understand. To Zapata, the comment was quite clear. Ancient shamans and wizards believed that names held power: to know the name of a thing gave one power over the thing itself. Modern technology turned the shaman’s fantasy into the police officer’s reality. A single name, entered into the right database, laid a man naked before the powers that be.
“Everything you asked for is ready,” Aguillar said.
“Good. We have a little time. Let’s get something to eat.”
But instead of walking, he stopped as he had done in the train station, and looked around. In his mind’s eye he saw this spot, then suddenly his vision pulled back from it, expanding to encompass this whole city, and then the state, and then the United States. Every point within the scope of his vision was connected like the stops on a train station map. All interconnected, all interdependent. Choose the right spot, identify the nexus at just the right place, well, then one bomb, even a small bomb, could affect the lives of millions. By this time tomorrow, he would have done just that.
He smiled happily.
4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
11:00 P.M. PST Van Nuys, California
The building was large, constructed right on the main thoroughfare of Van Nuys Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles, and because it was so obvious it was completely and utterly anonymous. A person might drive by that building five days a week for ten years and never notice it. Most of the building was owned by Barrington Suites, an executive rental company that specialized in leasing office space to small businesses, who could use a common receptionist, common conference rooms, copy rooms, and the like. According to the data Jamey Farrell and her people had gathered, there were more than thirty small businesses renting executive suites from Barrington in that building.
One of those small businesses was called Mataram Imports, owned by a Riduan Bashir, a naturalized citizen of Indonesian origin.
Tony Almeida reached Bashir’s office door a minute after eleven. He didn’t see the urgency in this investigation, but Chapelle had insisted. He had the license plates for two cars registered in Bashir’s name and one was in the parking lot, so he expected to find the man at work. The door itself was not welcoming — a solid wood door, locked, with a small sign reading MATARAM IMPORTS on the wall beside it, hung over a doorbell. Tony pushed the bell. He heard nothing, but a moment later the door clicked and buzzed.
Almeida pushed the door open. The office inside was humble — a small reception area that opened onto an equally small office strewn with papers. Through the opening, Tony saw a wall map and a large dry erase board with a hand-drawn calendar grid, covered in notations.
Riduan Bashir was getting up from his desk and walking toward Tony, his face open and unsuspecting, his manner unguarded.
“Yes, may I help you?” the man asked. His English was musical, though as he spoke further Tony found his speech gently clipped with the uninspirated “K,” “T,” and “P” of the Malay accent.
“Tony Almeida,” he said, handing over a card similar to the one Chris Henderson had used at UCLA. “I just have a few questions for you.”
The official seal on the business card put Bashir immediately on edge. Tony noted this, but reached no conclusions. He was the government, and the government always put people on edge.
“You work late, Mr. Bashir. I tried your home and they said you were here.”
“I am at the mercy of Indonesian time, sometimes. Am I in some sort of trouble?” Bashir asked. Like most Indonesians, he was dark-skinned, and Tony could not tell if he had blushed or lost color. But he was definitely nervous.
“No, sir,” Tony said, falling easily into a spiel meant to put the subject at ease. “This is fairly routine. I’m sure you know that we’re always following up on information we get from all kinds of sources. Most of the leads go nowhere, and most of the people we question are just innocent bystanders like you. But we have to be thorough because that’s what we’re paid for.”
The phrase “innocent bystanders like you” acted like a tonic, washing tension from Bashir’s body. “Well, of course. Would you like to sit down?” He indicated his office.
“Why not here?” Tony pointed to the small couch and visitor’s chair in the reception area. Bashir would feel less secure if he wasn’t sitting behind his desk.
They sat, and as soon as Bashir was settled, Tony said easily, “Are you familiar w
ith Jemaah Islamiya?”
Bang. The question was like a cannon shot. It was a hurry-up version of a classic interrogation technique: make the suspect feel like he is not the suspect, then surprise him with a hard question.
This one certainly threw Bashir off-balance. “Jemaah.? Yes, well, of course. From the news.”
“Then you know Jemaah Islamiyah is a terrorist group operating in Indonesia, and that they were responsible for that bombing in Bali that killed 202 people and injured hundreds more? They also claimed responsibility for the truck bomb that blew up a Marriott.”
Bashir shook his head sadly. “I remember the newspaper. Not just the Times here. I get several papers shipped over from Indonesia. It was terrible.”
Tony sifted through the papers he had brought with him. He only had one pertinent question, but he wanted Bashir to think he had reams of information. “Do you recall making a trip to Jakarta in May of 2002?”
Bashir leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, clearly anxious, but clearly trying to look helpful. “I travel home once a year, and sometimes twice. I don’t remember the dates exactly, but May sounds correct.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Both, of course.”
“Sure. While you were there, you met with Khalid Ismahuddin, a member of Jemaah Islamiyah.”
Bashir uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “Is that a
question?”
“No.”
“Well, yes, I met with Ismahuddin. But not because of Jemaah Islamiyah. He runs a shipping business out of Jakarta and I was looking for lower prices for my own merchandise.”