The Intercept Page 14

  He reflected a moment on their conversation, briefly smiling. The National Security Agency’s New York field office was monitoring cell phone communications per Intel’s request, routing everything off the Flatbush, Cobble Hill, Astoria, and lower Manhattan cell towers down to Fort Meade’s big machines. They could not process every call, legally or practically, so they were digitally scanning for Arabic words and certain terrorist keywords. He was smiling at the thought of his own conversation with Gersten being flagged. The snake eating its tail.

  The bubble. The paranoia.

  Thirty-six hours.

  If there was to be a terror attack in New York City this weekend, Fisk had two nights and a day to find one man in a city of millions.

  Chapter 24

  Gersten could have checked out and gone off duty at the end of her shift, but her talk with Fisk had reawakened the dutiful cop in her. She decided to accompany DeRosier, the more tolerable of her two detail partners, to the television broadcast.

  The hotel location of The Six had leaked out via media and the Internet, so the first thing they encountered upon leaving the Hyatt—besides a blast of early evening heat—was the bombardment of cheers and applause from a street-clogging crowd gathered to watch them cross the sidewalk into the hospitality vans. The uproar was such that Gersten went on full alert, feeling more like a Secret Service security detail in that moment than a cop.

  But the mood of the mob was ebullient. This truly was a hero’s welcome. The only threat was that their enthusiasm could lead to a trampling.

  Once aboard the air-conditioned van, The Six looked out the windows, shocked and amazed by their fans.

  Aldrich eased into his seat and pronounced the crowd, in his words, “Crazy people.”

  “Love it!” said Maggie, waving as though she could be seen through the one-way windows. “We love you back!” she said, laughing.

  Frank opened the notebook he had begun carrying and jotted down a few observations. Nouvian winced as though beset by a high-pitched whine.

  Jenssen took a seat in the back of the van, looking out the window like a man on a safari. Sparks quickly made her way to his side, Gersten noticed with a smile.

  The NYPD escort led them across the city, sirens rising to a scream at every intersection. Gersten thought it fascinating to look out and see pedestrians fighting their way through the July heat to look up at the police escorts and figure out who was in the van and raise their hands in salute. The city was rising up together on a muggy Friday night.

  To DeRosier, she said, “I don’t think a ticker tape parade is out of the question.”

  They were sitting together in one of the front seats. He nudged her to look in the back. “You see that?”

  He was referring to Sparks and Jenssen. Both clad in fresh threads courtesy of Barneys New York, Ms. Sparks was pointing things out to him as the cross streets went past, giving him a guided tour. Jenssen was not uninterested, in both the city and Ms. Sparks, but she was clearly the more aggressive of the pair.

  Gersten said, “Ten bucks it ends ugly.”

  “It always ends ugly,” said DeRosier. “But what does he care? Oh, to be that Swede here in New York. Wonder if he needs a good wingman.”

  Gersten said, “Think your wife would approve?”

  “My wife?” said DeRosier. “She’d be first in line to give this guy tongue. You know what I mean—purely patriotically. In a welcome-home-soldier kind of way. Did you know I used to have blond hair too?”

  “And blue eyes?” asked Gersten.

  DeRosier frowned. “Goddamn handsome son of a bitch.”

  Gersten got on her phone, ordering up some more exterior security at the Hyatt. Sawhorses weren’t going to cut it. They needed some fencing and mounted officers for crowd control. She requested some more down-market transportation as well. This van was like a tour bus. She called Patton and asked him to secure the hotel’s delivery entrance for their return.

  Nightline was normally produced at ABC News headquarters in Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side. For this special broadcast, featuring The Six and a New York City–centric story, they returned to the iconography of their Times Square studios.

  The producers waiting for them outside the side entrance were overwhelmed by the sudden rush of interest from tourists and savvy New Yorkers. The Six were hustled inside, but not before they got a glance at the big media screens all around the Crossroads of the World, showing excerpts from their earlier news conference.

  Inside, they were fawned over by the producers and assorted other people associated with the broadcast. The walls were lined with people, and it was obvious to Gersten that not everyone waiting for a glimpse of The Six was essential personnel. Even normally jaded broadcast employees were swept up by the excitement.

  The Six were made up, miked, and led into the studio overlooking Broadway. They were introduced to hosts Cynthia McFadden and Terry Moran, who were sharing duties for the fifteen-minute segment. Gersten stood back behind the lights, on the smooth, glossy floor the huge cameras glided over.

  After they were seated, the president of the network walked in and introduced himself to each of them in turn. After he left, Cynthia McFadden broke the ice by assuring The Six that the network president didn’t drop in to greet just anyone.

  The studio was lit, The Six bathed in a honey glow, seated on high-legged director’s chairs in a wide semicircle across from McFadden and Moran. Moran studied his notes as the stage manager counted them down, and McFadden launched into the segment. Her introduction cited Nightline’s own birth during the Iran hostage crisis, linking that incident of terror to the heroics of SAS Flight 903. She then threw it to a quick package of video of the plane touching down safely in Bangor, with attendant emergency vehicles rushing to meet it. They aired clips from the newly released flight recorder conversations between the captain and air traffic controllers, and then the red lights came back on and the live interview began.

  The hosts predictably took The Six through the details of the attack, describing their feelings at the time. Gersten noticed that their answers had become burnished a bit over the past twenty-four hours, as all good stories do. Instead of selfless and self-deprecating claims of unthinking reaction, their heroics were gradually taking on a more deterministic bent. Frank, especially, explained about how he “knew he had to do something,” and that if he didn’t, “the loss of life would have been tragic.”

  Gersten got a sour taste in her mouth, watching a journalist sell his story.

  In the interview’s most poignant moment, Maggie Sullivan welled up describing her fears as the hijacker overpowered her. Her emotions were true, still so raw, and threatened to overwhelm her. She again spoke glowingly of Jenssen, describing his action as the first man into the vestibule, hurling himself at the Yemeni, wrestling the fake trigger away from him and fracturing his wrist in the process. When the tears flowed and she had nowhere else to go, she turned to Jenssen, seated next to her, and he put his arm around her shoulders, comforting her in silence.

  DeRosier, coming up behind Gersten, whispered, “How long until they record their first hit single?”

  She smiled, but Maggie’s need for consolation touched her—and, she knew, would touch the millions who were watching the program that evening, and the many more millions around the world who would view the clip online throughout the weekend.

  Chapter 25

  Baada Bin-Hezam returned to Penn Station dressed in jeans, black leather dress shoes, a T-shirt, and a casual brown sport coat. He wore a pair of expensive black-rimmed eyeglasses and a trim mustache dyed to perfectly match his hair color. He had trimmed his hair tightly and further distracted from his facial appearance with a fashionable neck scarf. The heat had not diminished as much as he expected, and he was instantly uncomfortable. But to all eyes, he appeared to be a young, upwardly mobile Arab headed out for an evening on
the town.

  He entered the subway caverns underneath the vast station. The A train, an express, did not stop at 116th Street, his desired destination. The train he wanted was the C, the local. Confusing, but he had rehearsed this day many times in his mind. He had memorized all of his instructions.

  He did not know whom he was meeting. He had a cell phone number and a password. Helilmoya was the word. It means “Sweeten the water.” The countersign was to be Samak Allah alim. “Fish God knows best.”

  The C train came to a stop in front of him. Its doors opened in welcome.

  Bin-Hezam looped his arm around the pole in the crowded, lurching subway car as it hurtled north through the tunnel beneath Eighth Avenue. It was rush hour at the end of the week. Each person had a square foot in which to stand or sit, the car packed so tightly that there were no distinct demarcations between one body and another.

  Bin-Hezam forced himself to adjust to the sensations of being touched by sweaty strangers, suspending his usual vigilance about his own flesh, fighting off claustrophobia. He closed his eyes and envisioned a calming night sky beneath a crescent moon.

  He was grateful when the train reached 116th Street and he emerged from below into the neighborhood, lately known as Le Petit Senegal. The street, which he had never before visited, was familiar to him through his intense study of Google’s amazing Street View feature. He had also used an Internet site to search for nearby public telephones, which were a rapidly vanishing breed.

  The first one he encountered was broken, the receiver cracked in half, exposing wires. He crossed the street to a narrow market with an interior pay phone installed above a small ATM machine whose LCD screen flashed American dollar signs.

  He fed the machine quarters and dialed the number. A man’s voice answered gruffly, “Hello?”

  “Helilmoya,” Bin-Hezam pronounced each syllable carefully, thinking it unlikely that whoever was on the other end of the call was a native speaker of Arabic.

  “Samak Allah alim.” He was mistaken. The accent rang true.

  Bin-Hezam said, “My instructions, please.”

  The man responded with another phone number. A local number with the same exchange. Bin-Hezam used his trick of visualizing a number to memorize it, something he had been pridefully good at since childhood.

  “Repeat,” said the man’s voice.

  Bin-Hezam recited it back to him. Then the line went dead.

  Bin-Hezam had not expected such rudeness, but it did not unnerve him. Perhaps it indicated caution, and caution was good. These were people of a different world, he remembered. Mercenaries at best. If they behaved professionally, he would be pleased.

  Bin-Hezam dropped in more quarters and dialed the next number. He gave his code word, and was asked to repeat it before receiving confirmation. This one’s accent was much less assured.

  “You will walk one block east to Seventh Avenue. You will stand at the curb in front of a barbershop named Meme Amour. You will stand facing away from the shop, toward the street.”

  Again, a hang-up. Good. Bin-Hezam stepped outside the shop and began walking east right away. He caught sight of himself in a store window and was momentarily shocked at his appearance, forgetting he was wearing a false mustache.

  More important, no one moved with him.

  The barbershop was small, with photographs of smiling men of varying ethnicities pasted in the window. Bin-Hezam stole a glance inside the shop. No lights. It appeared closed.

  He did as he was instructed, standing near the curb, facing the street. He felt visible and vulnerable instantly, and so pulled out his phone and thumbed through different applications, pretending to be engaged.

  An oncoming automobile slowed, and in his anxiety Bin-Hezam almost stepped forward to meet it. The vehicle, driven by a woman, sped up again and continued on. It was not his contact. Bin-Hezam felt certain he was being watched by his contact, examined, judged.

  Ten minutes passed like thirty. Was this mere caution, or was it some sort of test? If the latter, he was deeply offended. Would his contact stand for a test from him?

  Still, he remained. Courtesy was unnecessary in this instance, as was impatience. He realized he had to allow himself to be at another’s mercy. He trusted in God.

  A man’s voice spoke behind him.

  “Assalamu alaikum.”

  Bin-Hezam turned to find a somber-looking black man whose considerable bulk was little obscured inside an all-black nylon Adidas sweat suit.

  “Walaikum assalam,” Bin-Hezam replied.

  The man turned without another word, and Bin-Hezam followed. Instead of entering the barbershop, he led Bin-Hezam into a doorway just to its right.

  They entered a narrow, unbroken corridor, like a tunnel into the building, lit only by light from the opaque stained-glass windows in the doors at either end. Bin-Hezam followed the waddling man through darkness, out to a small, fenced yard cluttered with used and discarded appliances. Microwaves, television sets, toaster ovens, bicycle frames, boxy computer monitors. They walked ten yards on a curving path delineated by this junk to the back of a low garage.

  The fat man unlocked the dead bolt with a key from his pocket and stood aside, admitting Bin-Hezam.

  Inside the garage, the chaos of the junkyard gave way to a meticulously ordered electronics and machinist toolroom. Workbenches were set on opposing sides, running most of the length of the structure. A variety of tools hung from Peg-Boards and from the rafters.

  Here were the junk man’s works in progress. A small engine in pieces. A television set with a huge screen. Two laptop computers, connected side by side.

  Bin-Hezam unwound his thin scarf and tucked it into his jacket pocket, looking around. He feigned curiosity, but in reality was establishing an escape route in case he needed it. The interior smelled of grease and spiced tomato. The garage was windowless and cool.

  “A good business,” the man finally said, turning to face Bin-Hezam, aware of his scrutiny. “At home, in Dakar, we waste nothing. Here, they waste everything. They leave it out like gifts in the street. A people who do not understand the devices they use do not deserve them.” The fat Senegalese crumpled up a food wrapper and dropped it into a pail beneath the counter. “Now, to our business.”

  He pulled latex gloves from a cardboard tissue-style box. He offered a pair to Bin-Hezam, which he accepted.

  The man crossed to the other counter. He moved a pile of gray rags from the shelf beneath it and pulled out a lockbox. He opened it with a key from his ring. He removed a top tray of tools from the inside, withdrawing a cloth bag.

  He slid out a nickel-plated pistol with a black rubber grip—holding it openhandedly, offering it to Bin-Hezam for inspection.

  “Thirty-eight special. A revolver. It will never jam.” The man flicked the release and flopped open the cylinder, showing Bin-Hezam that the weapon was not loaded. “This is what I was told to have ready for you.”

  Bin-Hezam took the weapon into his hand. A good weight, polished but not brand new.

  “Ammunition?” said Bin-Hezam.

  The man reached into the toolbox again and pulled out a paper bag containing brass cartridges.

  “They told me six,” he said. “There are twelve here. I assume you want more, just in case.”

  Bin-Hezam said, “I will take exactly six.”

  The man gave him another moment to reconsider, then relented. “Six it is,” he said.

  The man counted out six bullets with his gloved hands, standing them on the countertop. Bin-Hezam laid the .38 next to them.

  “Holster,” said the Senegalese. This he pulled down from a shelf, a sling made of Cordura and Velcro. “Fits over your shoulders,” he said, miming putting it on—the holster straps were much too small for his bulk. “The butt of the gun is down for clean pull.”

  Bin-Hezam nodded. He watched the
fat man lay the holster down on the counter. He did not need to touch it or try it on.

  “Eight thousand,” the fat man said.

  Bin-Hezam turned his head slightly. “Eight? I have three. I was told the gun would cost three thousand.”

  “That was the floor price. The request was for an untraceable late-model thirty-eight caliber with a rubber grip. No serial numbers, not even any which could be raised by chemicals. That meant procuring the weapon directly from the manufacturer. Test-firing it and field-testing it to ensure its accuracy, reliability, and durability. For a tool of such precise specifications, I ask a minimum eight thousand. It is a fair price.”

  Bin-Hezam neither smiled nor frowned. “You must have known I would not have that much.”

  “How would I know that, brother?”

  Bin-Hezam was not one to show emotion. Part of his preparation for this journey was an exercise in self-control. To do what he was going to do required the highest level of discipline. He was a pillar of restraint.

  “I do not have that much money,” Bin-Hezam said. “You have wasted my time.”

  The Senegalese shrugged. “I will remain here all evening. Surely you can get five thousand more.”

  “I can,” said Bin-Hezam. “With five thousand questions and five thousand complaints.”

  The fat man shrugged again. “I am the best. I will be paid accordingly.”

  Bin-Hezam pulled off his latex gloves, dropping them into his jacket pocket. He turned back to the door. “Am I to find my own way out?”

  The fat man sighed and waddled past him, opening the door to the junkyard. Bin-Hezam passed him and slowed, waiting for the fat man to lock the door with his key. Bin-Hezam then led the way, following the path back to the building. He opened the door himself, entered the hallway, and stopped there, again waiting for the fat man. Bin-Hezam listened for the solid click of the heavy door behind him, sealing them inside the tunnel-like hallway.

  “I trust you are not offended—” the fat man began to say.