An Eye For An Eye

by L. D Beyer

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The man disconnected and dropped the cell phone into his pocket. He climbed out of the car and locked it. This was Brooklyn after all, and he wanted it to be there when he got back. Not that locks meant much to thieves these days. But he was prepared; he patted his side, feeling the reassuring bulge of the gun under his Consolidated Edison uniform. He walked up the block. At the end, he stepped into the store and was immediately assaulted by the strong odors. Specializing in Middle Eastern foods, books, movies, newspapers—the little things that made the transplanted Arabs that had taken over the surrounding neighborhoods feel a little closer to home—the store was busy.

  He smiled as he took in the two aisles of shelves, seemingly randomly stocked with various cans, boxes, and jars. His dark skin didn’t fool those inside. He wasn’t one of them. He could feel the eyes on him as he walked up the first aisle, his hand on his chin. He stopped by the small refrigerator and looked inside. In the reflection in the glass door, he noticed that the two men playing backgammon at the small table in front had turned their attention back to their game. The man behind the counter though, he could see, was still watching him. He took a step to the side and was able to see more of the store. He heard the bell on the door and watched as two women, covered completely except for their faces, entered. They were followed by three children. He listened to the conversations, all in Arabic, and heard the usual topics: politics and food. He could speak fluent Arabic and could imitate several different dialects well enough to fool the locals. This skill had been learned over the years, first as a child, thanks to six years spent in Egypt, then Saudi Arabia, when his father’s company, an engineering firm, had sent him to work on hydroelectric projects. His later training had come courtesy of the foreign ministry. Other than listening, though, he had no plans on using his ability today. He turned and walked to the counter, a smile on his face. The clerk behind the counter stared blankly back at him, not quite hostile but certainly not friendly.

  “Hi,” the man said, still smiling. Without seeming to, he studied the clerk’s face. This was the one, he concluded, the owner. “I was looking for the grape leaves?” he said hesitantly.

  Without a word, the owner pointed to the shelf across from the refrigerator case.

  The man turned and looked, his forehead creased as if unsure, then a second later, he turned back. He shook his head. “No, not the jar.” He held his hands up, as if holding a plate. “I’m looking for the stuffed grape leaves. You know, the dish? I forget what it’s called.”

  The owner shook his head.

  The man heard the bell again and turned, noticing three more men enter. They too regarded him warily as they walked over to the two men playing backgammon. He turned back to the owner.

  “No?” He sighed. “Darn. My wife loves them.” He shrugged, offering another smile which wasn’t returned. “Do you know anyone who makes them?”

  The owner shook his head once more.

  “Oh,” the man said, deflated. “Thanks anyway.”

  A minute later, he stood on the sidewalk and glanced up and down the block as if searching for something. Where to hide it? he wondered. Two more people passed him and entered the store. He turned and walked to the corner, then turned right and headed down the side street. There was a small lot behind the building. He glanced once behind him and, seeing no one, quickly ducked into the lot. The single car, a Honda minivan, was sitting in front of the rear door. Twenty seconds later he was inside. A quick glance at the registration confirmed that the minivan belonged to the store owner.

  A minute later, he was walking back to his car. No one had seen him break in. No one had seen him hide the phone—his prints wiped clean—below the driver’s seat. He hid his smile as he climbed back into his car. He had just earned five thousand dollars.

  ___

  With Special Agent Wendy Tillman at his shoulder, Matthew Richter scanned the crowd streaming through the main concourse of Union Station. He had considered asking his security detail to arrange for Patty to be driven to Washington—something they were authorized and would have been glad to do—but she had insisted on riding the train.

  His schedule that day had been hectic, with meetings with the CIA, the NSA, and the other intelligence agencies lasting longer than he had expected. As usual, he and his team had regrouped after, to sort through what they had learned. No sooner had he taken his seat than Agent Tillman had interrupted his meeting, letting him know that Patty’s train would be on time.

  So, with Agent Tillman and three other agents, he made the quick trip over to the station, while Jessica Williams, his top aide, managed the meeting.

  When he saw Patty coming through the crowd, he knew he had made the right decision.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Closing the gate, Guerrero put the tools in the small cart. With one last look at the cross, he turned and began pushing the cart back toward the stable. He had spoken to the gardeners. They had understood. Or maybe not; it didn’t matter. Regardless, they had provided him with the tools. And so, once a day, sometimes twice, he checked the grass. He cut it when it was long, then pulled the weeds, tended the flowers, and polished the stone, making sure everything was as neat and orderly as he could make it. It had to be, for Carolina.

  He left the gardener’s cart in the stables and made his way up to the house. He walked slowly, another laborer taking his time below the hot midday sun.

  Minutes later, he stepped below the trellis-covered walkway and made his way around the house to the patio by the pool. There, he spotted Alberto waiting for him. Alberto nodded once but said nothing and Guerrero followed him into the house.

  In his office, Guerrero placed the hat on the corner of his desk. Taking the USB drive from Alberto, he slid it into the port of his computer. After he read the message, he stood and looked out the window. Although he could only see leaves, he knew that beyond the trees was the stable, and, beyond that, the grave.

  Soon, Carolina. Soon.

  ___

  “So, Matthew tells me you worked for Barbara Tanner,” the president said.

  “I did,” Patty answered, “For a couple of years.” She smiled. “But I think I was a few years too early. I would have liked to have worked for the senator after she became the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.”

  Richter and Patty were dining with the president and the first lady in the residence section of the White House. A Saturday, he had only worked for a few hours early in the morning, then he had taken Patty on a tour of Washington. Prearranged by the Secret Service, they had bypassed the tourist lines and were given private tours of the Capitol building, the Supreme Court and the Lincoln Memorial. Then they were treated to a rarely seen view of the Washington Monument, bypassing the elevator and taking the stairs—something that had been closed to the public for decades.

  “What did you think of Barbara?” Maria Kendall asked.

  “I think she’s fantastic!” Patty answered. “I admire her for standing up, for making her voice heard, especially in a male-dominated organization like the senate.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Maria said with a twinkle in her eye as she raised her wine glass.

  The two ladies engaged in small talk as white gloved members of the butler’s staff cleared the dishes. The ladies continued talking when the servants left and Richter and the president exchanged a glance. The first lady was keeping the conversation on lighter subjects, not wanting to spoil the evening with a discussion of the threat just south of the border. The conversation shifted to Princeton and Patty’s classes.

  “Do you enjoy teaching?” Maria asked.

  “I do,” Patty said then laughed. “It wasn’t what I intended to do but I somehow fell into it.” Patty took a sip of wine. “So what is Angela studying?”

  “She’s in premed. She has a long way to go, but if she could pick her dream job, she would travel the world with Doctors Without Borders, providing emergency medical care to people impa
cted by conflict, disasters...,” the first lady gestured to the president. “Dave doesn’t like the idea, but she’s determined.”

  Richter and the president exchanged another glance. He understood all too well the president’s concern.

  “That’s impressive and admirable,” Patty said then turned to the president. “But I can understand your worry, especially given what you must see.”

  The president nodded. “You can only bring them so far and then you have to let them go. I am proud—what dad wouldn’t be?—but still it makes me nervous.”

  “Did Matthew give you the tour?” Maria asked, changing subjects again.

  “Of the White House?” Patty asked. “Not yet.”

  “Well then, let’s go.” Maria said as she pushed her chair back. “I’ll give you an insider’s view, show you some things that Matthew doesn’t even know about.”

  The two women stood and the first lady leaned over to Richter. He noticed the twinkle in her eye.

  “I like her,” Maria whispered.

  Richter smiled and it struck him just how alike Patty and the first lady were. They both were comfortable in social settings, able to make small talk with anyone and, when animated, they both had a sparkle in their eye. As the two women left—their excited chatter and laughter ringing off the walls—he and the president exchanged another glance. The president, he could see, had noticed it too.

  ___

  The analyst clicked the icon on his screen and listened to the call again. Despite the fact that both phones were cell phones, it was surprisingly clear. That, he knew, had less to do with the quality of the phone or of the platform of the local cellular service providers and more to do with the sophisticated enhancement of the computers. He had never seen the legendary NSA supercomputers and likely never would. He wasn’t sure if they were even located in his building in the vast, sprawling complex in Fort Meade, Maryland. Everything was need-to-know and what he needed to know, and knew very well, was radical jihad.

  Translation wasn’t a problem. He was fluent in Arabic, having spent the first fifteen years of his life in Lebanon. Members of a small and dwindling Christian community, his father finally decided it was time to leave when their church was burned to the ground. It was one of the rare occasions when he, his parents, and two younger brothers hadn’t attended. His older sister, married and living several blocks away at the time, hadn’t been so lucky.

  No, translation wasn’t a problem, he thought. Still he glanced at the English-language transcript that the computer had spit out. He shook his head. It always amazed him how the system was able to detect subtle nuances in tone and accent and handle the differences between the seemingly endless dialects. He could, but he wondered again how long it would be before the agency told him his services were no longer needed.

  He shook his head again then focused on the task before him. The call was troubling. Although he listened to many calls and read many postings and emails where angry parties discussed the Great Satan and how, one day, God willing, they were going to bring the wrath of Allah to America’s shores, this one was different. It was more than the rant or the blowing off of steam of a disaffected and disenfranchised people, a people who had neither the means nor the conviction to act. This one hinted at a plan that was underway.

  He listened another time to see if he had missed anything.

  “We have acquired the necessary materials.”

  “Allah be praised. Where are they now?”

  “In Ohio.”

  “What is the next step?”

  “We have to remove the critical components. This takes time. We have to be careful.”

  “Allah will protect you. When?”

  “Soon, my brother. Soon.”

  There was a pause and, in the background, he could hear street noises: a car horn, a shout, the rumble of a truck.

  “Allah willing, this machine they use to stop their cancers will now give them cancers instead.”

  He glanced at the transcript again. No, he hadn’t missed anything, he thought, as he began to type. He needed to get this one out immediately.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  As Richter climbed into the back of the SUV, he yawned. He was tired. The previous afternoon, he had decided to return to New Jersey with Patty. She had made the trip to Washington, then decided to stay for two days, something which had surprised him. Some sort of holiday at the university she had said. Whatever the reason, he was glad she had come. And so while he had worked, Patty had played tourist, seeing the sites they hadn’t been able to visit together. The evenings had been nice, he thought with a smile. After two days, he realized that he didn’t want her to leave and, although she had insisted on taking the train to Washington, he had decided to drive her home. Or rather, the Secret Service drove her home while he and Patty sat in the back. After another late dinner, this one in New Jersey, they returned to her apartment close to midnight.

  It was a long time before they finally fell asleep.

  The next morning, after he climbed into the SUV, Agent Wendy Tillman handed him his morning briefings and a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks,” he said with a smile as he took the cup. “I was going to ask you to stop along the way.” He took a sip and sighed. The briefings could wait.

  Tillman smiled back. “I figured you would, so we stopped on the way over.” Her eyes shifted back to the road as the driver signaled for a turn. She glanced back again. “Got a second cup up here for you too.”

  Richter raised his cup in salute. “You go above and beyond the call of duty, Agent Tillman.”

  Ten minutes later, they had just pulled onto the New Jersey Turnpike when the phone rang. He glanced at the number then frowned. When he hung up moments later, he felt a chill running up his spine. He leaned forward and gave the agents a new address. It was always better to get information directly from the source, he reasoned, and he was so close. As the driver made a U-turn—illegal, but it hardly mattered since they were cops—he sat back and considered the news.

  Fifty minutes later, he was sitting in Mark Crawford’s office in the federal building in lower Manhattan. Crawford’s face was grim as he filled Richter in on the theft.

  “Are you familiar with cesium-one-thirty-seven?” he asked.

  “The basics,” Richter responded as he remembered the training he had received while with the FBI. “Give me the summary.”

  “It’s a man-made element, a radioactive isotope created in nuclear fission. It’s used in industrial gauges and certain types of measurement devices and,” he paused, “in radiation therapy for treating certain cancers.”

  Richter frowned as he briefly thought of Brett Watson. He shook his head and gestured to Crawford to continue.

  “In these devices,” Crawford said, “it’s referred to as sealed-source radiation. In brachytherapy devices—the machines used for cancer treatment—it’s in a stainless steel tube, about three quarters of an inch long.”

  Richter’s eyes narrowed. And it was dangerous and lethal even in such small quantities, he knew, as he recalled an incident in Brazil where one such device had been stolen. After the scrap metal, the thieves had nonetheless been intrigued by the radiation capsule. They punctured it, no easy task, and in the ensuing chain of events, a handful of people had been killed and several hundred sickened. All from just a few small grains, he remembered.

  “This stuff, obviously, is regulated,” Crawford continued. “The canisters are stored and transported in a sealed lead container. Records must be maintained each time the lead container is opened, serial numbers of each canister recorded…” He waved his hand. “Long story short, a medical equipment and supply company in New Jersey had one of their trucks broken into in Newark. And although they had ten of these canisters in a sealed lead container in the back at the time, only one was taken.”

  Richter was silent for a moment as he considered the implications.

  Crawford nodded as if he could read his mind. “I think that we ha
ve to assume that the threat we’ve been worried about for the last decade is real.”

  ___

  Five hours later, Richter, Pat Monahan, and the Secretary of Homeland Security sat down in the Oval Office across from the president. They all wore the grim faces of those who bore bad news. Burt Phillips joined them a moment later.

  “Sir,” Richter began, “we have credible intelligence that an Islamist terrorist organization is planning to detonate a radiological dispersal device—a dirty bomb—somewhere in the U.S.” He paused, his eyes locked on his boss’s. “This is not just chatter, sir. We believe the group now has the necessary materials.”

  He turned to Monahan and, as the director provided details on the theft and the FBI investigation, he thought again about what little they knew. The ride back to Washington had been spent on the phone, checking with his team, then with the intelligence agencies, and learning as much as he could about dirty bombs. It was then that he had learned about the intercepted call. But, outside of the thefts and phone call, they had nothing specific to tell them where or when.

  “And the tie to Islamist terrorists?” the president asked.

  Richter handed him a piece of paper.

  “We’ve intercepted a phone call that appears to reference the thefts.” He nodded toward the paper. “That’s the transcript.”

  A moment later the president looked up. His face was pale. “God help us.” He paused. “Why Ohio? Are they targeting Cincinnati? Chicago?”

  Richter shook his head. “We don’t know, sir. Ohio might just be a location where they plan on disassembling the machines and building the bomb. It’s far enough away from New Jersey that anything peculiar noticed might not be linked back to the thefts. And if they’re in a rural area, on a farm for instance, they might not draw attention to themselves.”