Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  Reggie tried to scream again.

  “But as I told you, I will leave you with your sense of smell. That is so you can smell food you will never taste. And there is another reason I leave you your sense of smell, but I will not tell you because you will learn it on your own before very long.”

  Reggie began to sob. This could not really be happening. They were just trying to scare him. They couldn’t be this bent out of shape about a whore, a fucking nobody!

  He screamed as something cut into the back of his neck. Soon after he felt as if his entire body had been set on fire from the neck down. The fire died as quickly as it came, leaving … nothing.

  12

  Kadir heard a heavy knocking on the door. He stopped mixing his latest batch of urea pellets and nitric acid and went to see who it might be. A peek through the side window showed Ayyad standing outside. He removed his goggles and mask and opened the door.

  “Who’s with you?” Ayyad said in Arabic.

  “Ramzi.”

  “Come outside. I can’t go home smelling like that.”

  He had been recently married—a match arranged by his parents and hers—but he did not share his efforts for jihad with his bride.

  Kadir grabbed his coat and motioned to Ramzi to follow him. They gathered in the lengthening shadows outside the door.

  “Are we on schedule?” Ayyad said.

  Kadir nodded. “We will have everything mixed by tomorrow. What of the hydrogen?”

  “That is proving to be a problem.”

  “I thought you could get it through your company,” Yousef said.

  “It is not as easy as I thought. The suppliers I have approached will sell it to me but only with a purchase order from my company’s stockroom. That is proving difficult to acquire.”

  Yousef began waving his arms as he walked in a circle. “We told you from the beginning that we would be needing it. And we need it tomorrow at the latest! After that it will be too late.”

  Ayyad gave him a stony look. “Do you think you are telling me something I do not already know?”

  “I don’t know what you know. Kadir, Salameh, and I do all the hard work while you go to your office and drive around in your car. And when it comes time to produce the final ingredient, you show up with empty hands.”

  “And just what—?” Ayyad began.

  “Please, please,” Kadir said, raising his hands between them. “Let’s be calm. We are all tired, hungry, and thirsty.”

  He was seeing that Ramadan, even though a holy month, was a less than ideal time to fashion a bomb.

  “I have one more place to try,” Ayyad said, “but I wanted to make sure we had enough of the nitrate mix.”

  “Even now we have enough,” Yousef said, then added pointedly, “if we get the hydrogen.”

  “You will have it,” Ayyad said, then turned and walked toward his car.

  Kadir prayed he was right.

  May Allah guide you.

  13

  Al-Thani wasn’t quite the guy they’d brought here. Physically he didn’t look too much different. His right shoulder and upper chest were bandaged, as was his left upper back, but otherwise pretty much the same. His eyes, though alert, said he’d been through some kind of hell. He seemed to understand the questions, but his answers were garbled.

  “He appears to be suffering from a form of expressive dysphasia,” Dr. Moreau said as she entered the room.

  “And what the bloody hell does that mean?” Burkes said.

  “It means what he wants to say does not come out the way he means it to. It can happen after a stroke in a certain area of the brain. It is not exactly what is called ‘word salad,’ but it is almost as useless.”

  “It’s permanent?”

  She shrugged. “I do not know. We have entered terra incognita here.”

  They’d listened to the doctor’s tape of her interrogation but gleaned little more than what she’d had in her notes. Jack had noticed al-Thani’s answers becoming less and less focused through the tape … could almost hear whatever drug he’d been given decaying his speech.

  So they’d gone to the source … with zero gain. They gleaned strange snippets of little use, like:

  Why bomb the UN?

  Towers off-limits.

  What towers? The Trade Towers?

  Towering towers.

  Why are they off-limits?

  Because Roman said so.

  Why?

  Wouldn’t tell me. Nobody would tell me. Just that they mustn’t be damaged. So we diverted them.

  “Could he be faking it?” Jack said.

  She smiled as she shook her head. “He is broken.”

  “And what about the other guest we brought you?”

  “The one with the bad hair? He is in hell. Come and see.”

  They all trooped into her procedure room to look. Jack stopped at the door as a wave of queasiness swept over him. Reggie was still strapped faceup into the frame as they’d left him, but there the resemblance ended. A bandage encircled his head, covering his eyes and his ears. A curved suction hose like dentists use ran from his mouth to a receptacle. Blood oozed through the tube.

  “What happened to his mouth?” Jack said.

  He could still see bloody teeth. Had she done a Marathon Man number on him with a drill?

  Dr. Moreau showed him a stainless steel basin containing two eyeballs and … was that his tongue?

  “What … what…?” was all Jack could manage against his rising gorge.

  But he settled it back down by picturing Cristin’s body in the morgue. Then added Bonita and Rico.

  “Are you saving those?” he finally said.

  She smiled. “Do you want them?”

  “Jeez, no.”

  “Neither do I. But human remains require careful disposal. They are evidence. I will build a fire tonight and let it reduce the eyes to ash. The tongue will go in the oven.”

  Jack fought a Hannibal Lecter vibe. “You’re not going to…”

  “Let good roasted tongue go to waste? Absolument pas! Charlot loves roasted tongue. And by tomorrow, thanks to him, the evidence will be merde.”

  Yeah, if anyone deserved IV as well as having a Yorkshire terrier dine on his tongue, Reggie was the guy.

  “What…?” He was almost afraid to ask. “What else did you remove?”

  “Four of his five senses,” the doctor said. “He is in very near complete sensory deprivation except for pain. At the moment he is in agony from the neck up. But that will pass. Leaving him with one sense—smell—and one sensation: vertigo. His inner ear damage and lack of visual input will prevent him from telling up from down. He will exist in a state of constant spinning. As far as his brain is concerned, he has no body and is merely a head whirling in a black void.”

  Living hell indeed.

  “Forever?”

  “For as long as he lives.”

  Jack had wished him dead before. Now he wished him a long, long life.

  14

  As soon as her shift ended, Hadya gambled by taking a Kennedy Boulevard bus south to a point just past its intersection with Danforth Avenue.

  It turned out her uncle did have a Jersey City map—indispensable for a business that made deliveries—and she’d used it to trace possible routes the Chevy might take after she’d last seen it heading south on West Side Avenue. The map showed that particular street ending at Danforth. And Danforth crossed Kennedy. Something in her gut told her the Chevy would take Danforth to Kennedy and turn south.

  After getting off at the Columbia Park stop, she again traded her hijab for the plaid scarf and adopted her old lady posture as she waited by the thick trunk of a barren tree. She spent an hour in the chill wind and lengthening shadows before the Chevy surprised her by passing along Kennedy on its way north. She recognized her brother in the passenger seat. Watching it make a left onto Danforth, she knew where it was going—but where had it come from?

  At least her hunch had been right: The Ch
evy had traveled from the Space Station to Kennedy. She began walking south, but slowly. She didn’t want the Chevy to return and disappear unseen onto a side street behind her. On the other hand, her brother and his driver could have come from Bayonne and soon be headed back that way, leaving her in the lurch again.

  The streets here were lined with garages and muffler shops between multifamily homes. She pretended to look in the shop windows or watch the repairs going on in their open bays, but all the while she was eyeing the street.

  Finally the Chevy reappeared, rolling south. She picked up her pace, determined to keep it in sight as long as she could. Because she knew, just knew that with her luck it was heading into Bayonne.

  But no … its left blinker signal began to flash. It turned onto a side street four blocks ahead. She shook off the old lady guise and rushed along. The street sign said Pamrapo Avenue but when she looked she saw no sign of the Chevy. Was it parked beside or behind one of the houses here? Or garaged?

  Did she dare to wander the street looking? No, she decided. She did not. At least not while she knew they were here. But if she could see them leave, see what driveway they pulled out of, she could sneak in for a closer look.

  She’d have to warn Uncle Ferran she’d be late for work tomorrow.

  15

  “Kill me! Please, just kill me!”

  At least that was what Reggie was trying to say. He knew his lips were moving but had no clue as to what he sounded like, or if he sounded at all. Or if anyone was nearby to hear him.

  They’d moved him, he knew that. He could feel cool air on his face, but that was all he could feel. He guessed he was sitting up because nothing was pressing against the back of his head. He wished they’d laid him flat on his back because then maybe he’d choke to death on his own puke.

  He knew he’d hurled. Couldn’t taste it, but the acid—the only thing he had in his stomach anyway—burned like a blowtorch where his tongue had been cut out.

  The spinning was the worst—spinning in endless blackness. He didn’t know up from down and that made him puke some more.

  He wanted to cry but he had no eyes, wanted to scream but had no voice, wanted to—

  What was that stink? He sniffed again and realized what that French bitch doctor had been talking about before she’d started cutting on him.

  And there is another reason I leave you your sense of smell, but I will not tell you because you will learn it on your own before very long …

  He’d just shit himself.

  16

  “That was quick,” Burkes said, turning off his phone as Jack entered the waiting room.

  As soon as dark had fallen, Jack, Rob, and Gerald had bundled up Reggie and taken him away in the van.

  “We didn’t go far,” Jack said. “Left him sitting at a bus stop near the entrance to Saint John’s Cemetery.”

  “Good. Now he’s someone else’s problem.”

  Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  “What’s eating you?” Burkes said. “Not happy with the way things played out?”

  “Does it show that much?”

  “Seems you’ve got a ways to go in learning the art of the poker face, lad. You’re sitting there not feeling any closure, am I right?”

  “Jeez, am I that transparent?”

  “You would have preferred to put a bullet in his face, right?”

  Jack nodded. “Right. Very right.”

  “You’ll feel different after a while. That bullet would be a gift to him now. He’ll never harm another soul, and he’ll spend the rest of his days wishing he was dead—wishing for that bullet. And the last thing you want to do is grant that minger his last wish, am I right?”

  “Right again.”

  “Instead, he’s been properly paid for everything he did to Cristin and for everyone else he’s left hurt or dead in the slime trail of his life. And he’ll go on paying and paying. IV is the gift that keeps on giving.”

  “Yeah, I guess so, but…” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s because this Trejador guy is still on the loose.”

  “We’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that leaving Reggie where he can be found will spook him?”

  “Reggie won’t be identified. Part of the IV treatment is scarring the fingertips to preclude that. He’ll be tagged a John Doe.”

  “Yeah, okay. But if we put al-Thani on a bench somewhere he’ll be tagged an Abdul Doe and Trejador will figure it out as soon as he hears.”

  Burkes smiled. “That’s why we’re going to wait until just before dawn to drop him. We have Trejador’s address—”

  “Yeah, what’s with this hotel suite business?”

  “You heard al-Thani’s tape: That’s the way he lives. But trust me, that will make it easy for us.”

  Jack would have to take his word for it. Before consigning Reggie to hell, they’d asked him what he knew about Roman Trejador. He’d been anxious to please but couldn’t help—he’d heard his name, knew he was al-Thani’s boss, but had never laid eyes on the man.

  “I want to take him down,” Jack said.

  “La Chirurgienne will do that.”

  “I mean bring him in.”

  Burkes stared at him awhile. “Think you can handle that?”

  “I know I can.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe that’s true, but it’s too risky. I’ll let you go in with Gerald and Rob and—”

  “I need this, Burkes. Trejador gave the order. And just like Klarić and Reggie and al-Thani, he thought Cristin was just a whore, a nobody who just might have heard something.” Jack felt the heat growing. “She was so dispensable, so fucking disposable, with no value to anyone, that he felt perfectly free to wave his hand to his minions and order her taken out and tortured and killed. I just want to see his face when he looks down the barrel and I tell him why I’m there. That it’s not because of his plot against the UN and Rabin and D’Amato and Tin Pan Alley or whatever his name is. That I’m in his face because of what he did to a nobody.”

  “I appreciate your feelings, laddie, but—”

  “What you appreciate doesn’t matter. You owe me this.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Oh? And how do you figure that?”

  “I brought you Reggie, someone you never would have found in a million years. He gave up the Arab. You might or might not have ever found al-Thani, but that wasn’t a problem because I already knew where he lived. Your ties to Cristin were hiring her now and again. Mine? I knew her since she was fourteen and we spent two years as lovers—or bidies, as you say. If you don’t think that earns me some personal face time with this human dung pile before your guys take over, then fuck you. I’ll go myself, right now.”

  “Easy, lad, easy. Let’s not get our knickers in a twist.” He chewed his upper lip, then gave a slow nod. “Right then. You make a good case. You can face him, but I’ll have Rob and Gerald outside in the hall to help you move him downstairs and ferry him here for some quality time with La Chirurgienne.”

  “What if that leads to someone further up the line?”

  “After what we heard from al-Thani, I don’t think it will. Trejador suspected she’d overheard something in his suite. That was where this whole bloody mess started. But if it should lead higher, whoever’s up there will be our next stop after Trejador gets his own dose of IV.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Now, something else…” Burkes looked uncomfortable.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been calling around on that Rabin visit—”

  “And?”

  “Nothing yet, but I learned something else.” Again, that uncomfortable look.

  “What?”

  “Dane Bertel is dead.”

  The news hit Jack like a bucket of cold water.

  “Aw, no. How?”

  “That shooting in Virginia? Outside the CIA? He was one of the victims.”

  Jack shook his head. “No, wait. Can’t be. Before we left to take Reg
gie for his ride, CNN put up the faces of the two dead guys.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “But three were killed. Bertel was the third.”

  Jack didn’t get it.

  “Then why—?”

  “He was deep cover in the Middle East most of his career. Showing his face could compromise people in the field now.”

  A wave of sadness tightened his throat. Bertel … gone … gunned down while he sat in his car. Lousy way for anyone to go, especially a good man, a decent man. Jack wanted to stalk around the waiting room and break a few things. No, break everything.

  He’d always remember that first day they met, when Dane intervened with some guy who was beating up on a woman in a park. The two were obviously a couple and had been sitting together drinking. Dane had refused to get involved when the fight started, saying it was a no-win situation. But the guy was getting pretty rough. After flattening him Dane had explained his change of mind in a way that said everything about the man:

  There are certain things I will not abide in my sight.

  Jack would never forget those words.

  He looked at Burkes. “But you told me you didn’t know him.”

  Burkes shrugged. “Not a lie. I didn’t know him—we’d never met—but I knew of him. I figured if you didn’t know who he was, maybe he hadn’t told you for a reason. I didn’t want to interfere. I don’t know how much you know, but he was a legend.”

  “I had no idea. A legend no one’s ever heard of?”

  “Well, a legend in the intelligence community, and that sort of notoriety usually remains in the community.”

  “He was CIA?”

  Burkes nodded. “He was let go after becoming too strident about radical Islam’s threat to the U.S. They knew—we all knew—but you can’t go shouting it in the halls. Your intelligence agencies seem to think they’ve got a handle on the jihadists and want to keep things quiet. Apparently he mended enough bridges to wrangle an appointment with one of the higher-ups this morning, saying he had ‘proof’ that their handle was nowhere near as firm as they think.”