said you paid his bail,” the first officer said.
“Well, I—” She hated being called on a lie.
“He’s not here. If you had something to do with it, you better tell us.”
“I have no idea where he is. If I did, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I can try calling him.” She dug her cell phone out of her purse.
“Do that.”
She dialed and waited. It went right to voicemail. She told that to the commander.
“Jesus Christ.” The commander turned to the other cop. “Samuelson, go ask around. See if anyone’s seen him. I need a damn walkie. Samuelson, wait, gimme your radio.” He pointed at Michelle. “Stay here.”
He hailed a fire fighter, and then walked up to him. The commander put a hand on the fighter’s shoulder and started to talk, waving his free hand. Then the commander said something into his walkie. He listened for a moment, then returned to Michelle.
“His lawyer set the damn fire. Who are you?”
“Um,” Michelle said. His lawyer?
The commander shook his head. Another explosion—soft, sounding like a firecracker—came from the building. The commander looked back at the building, then again at Michelle.
“Wait here. We’re going to want to talk to you. I have to check on some other things. Obviously. Jesus Christ.”
Michelle didn’t wait. As soon as the commander was ten feet away, she slowly, so as not to draw attention, turned and walked behind the barrier. Once the officers were out of sight, Michelle dashed toward her car. With luck, she’d be back on the Turnpike before they even noticed she was gone.
An hour and a half after taking the train in, Callahan took a cab out of New York.
No one was looking for him according to Weller, and as far as he could tell, the cops were watching the trains, not automobile traffic. Port Authority had never been any good at watching the tunnels anyway. They put one cop on the Jersey side, and he was supposed to catch the one suspicious truck out of the ten thousand that went through the tunnels each day.
On the car ride, his cabbie Ranjit tried to convince him that the Lincoln Tunnel was the best way to Jersey City. It wasn’t, but Callahan didn’t argue. The longer routes were the safest. He checked his voice mail.
No messages. There were several missed calls from Michelle, however. He guessed that if John had gone to the police, he’d been arrested. By now, Michelle must have heard.
Callahan should call her back. But there was no time. He couldn’t get in an argument now.
Instead, he dialed the DHS. After going through the code phrases again, he was put in touch with Candy Balascio. Candy was the one who put him in touch with Omar when Callahan had first come over from the CIA, two years after he’d started working for the government.
He needed to find Omar Thabata, and Candy was the first place to go.
That was how the night had started, but with the explosions and violence, he’d lost sight of that. If Thabata was smart, he’d be packing his shit, aborting his plan—whatever it was—and booking a flight back to Pakistan.
****
The first time Callahan had heard of Thabata, though, he was sitting in long term parking outside Newark Liberty Airport. It was the summer of 2003, and Callahan had just been hired by the DHS. They sent him to New York to learn the ropes with some of the members of the FBI Terrorist taskforce. Callahan looked through the windshield of his car, staring at the New York skyline and imagining mounds of rubble and cracked buildings where the Twin Towers used to be.
They’d just dodged another bullet.
One of the FBI agents working the case, Hank Manfra, opened the passenger door and sat down next to him.
“Did you shower?” Callahan asked.
It wasn’t a code. The guy smelled like rotten Parmesan cheese. Leave it to Callahan to get assigned his first case, and have to meet up with someone with B.O. Candy Balascio had called Callahan before the sun came up and told him and Manfra to get down to the airport.
Manfra laughed. “Arresting bad guys makes me work up a sweat.”
“Me too.” But I shower.
“The bomb would have taken out front of the terminal. All those people waiting to be picked up.”
“C4?” Callahan wished he’d gotten out of the car before Manfra got in. He’d need at least three air fresheners to salvage the interior.
Manfr shrugged. “Haven’t gotten a look at the device yet. There are things going on in Jersey City. Even better, one of the guys in cuffs is willing to tell our bosses about them.”
That seemed too easy to Callahan. In the past it’d taken an electric drill aimed toward the ear, a scream, and a gunshot, leaving these assholes to infer that the friends who kept quiet were dead. His personal favorite was waterboarding. Watching a guy try to talk while spitting water, knowing you had him in the palm of your hand. The CIA’d been doing anything to get these guys to talk. And here, this guy wanted to just hand him the information.
DHS was proving to be an easy job. “What kinds of things?” Callahan tried to picture the guys they’d arrested talking to each other in the back of the van they were currently handcuffed in, panicking.
Two young Muslims, Mohammad Al-Fariq and Jawad Ibrahim, had taken a cab to the airport. When they got out, they each carried a large gym bag. Just as they were about to place them on the ground, Manfra and Callahan approached with a warrant. The men were arrested and the bags were searched. Once Manfra saw the explosives inside, he ordered the terminal evacuated.
Now one of them wanted to talk. Callahan shifted in his seat and took a deep breath through his mouth.
“The email we intercepted from Al-Fariq—it was going to someone important, wasn’t it?”
Manfra sat straight and turned slowly toward Callahan.
“You ever hear of Omar Thabata?” he asked. “I haven’t. We’re lucky we caught the email. Al-Fariq was so confident, damn thing wasn’t even written in code. Check the files.”
Callahan sent a text to Candy, asking her to look him up.
“I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?”
“According to Ibrahim, he’s the guy who planned this whole thing. Lives in J. C.”
“Let’s talk to him.”
Callahan radioed over to the van and told them not to leave yet. He drove over to it and stood outside the double doors. He could hear muffled voices through them, and it sounded like arguing. The conversation stopped when Callahan opened the doors. Al-Fariq turned his head toward Callahan, while Ibrahim stared at the floor.
