The Intercept Read online

  “You’ve had experience with this?” she said.

  “With snake venom?” he said. “Just ask my ex.”

  Gersten smiled at that—not amused, necessarily, or even impressed, but rather appreciative of the banter. Intrigued. Fisk could see that, to her, flirtation was less an invitation than a challenge. “ ‘Ex’ as in ex-wife?”

  “Ex-fiancée,” said Fisk. “She was a snake charmer.”

  “Right,” said Gersten. “Sounds like a fun gal.”

  Fisk held out his hand. “Jeremy Fisk.”

  Gersten made a point of giving him a good, firm, professional squeeze.

  “Easy there,” he said, pulling back his sore hand. “Death grip. Dad in the military?”

  “Not the military,” she said.

  “Uh-oh,” said Fisk, knowing what was coming next.

  “That’s right,” she told him. “A cop.”

  “Christ. Second or third generation?”

  “Me? I’m the fourth.”

  “Gah. Okay. Thanks very much for the warning.”

  “You have no idea,” she said. “What about you, Detective Fisk? What’s your story?”

  “Me? Just your run-of-the-mill first-generation public servant.”

  “Yeah? So where’d you draw the cop gene from?”

  “Mutation,” he said. “A defect.”

  “Okay,” she said, sizing him up, deciding. “You’re interesting.”

  Fisk liked her immediately. Later he would learn that her father had been a sergeant in charge of one of the department’s scuba squads when he suffered a heart attack underwater. Gersten had been thirteen at the time. She still lived with her mother across the Narrows over on Staten Island, which was like a ghetto for New York cops and firefighters. She had also done a tour in Iraq with a national police transition team, following college at CUNY. So for her the cop life had been the one and only course on her life menu.

  The big dance was bad business with another cop, but immediately they had that undercurrent of attraction that kept things fun and interesting. Gersten came recommended to him from street raking for her skills, her work ethic, and the fact that she took shit assignments without complaint and wound up excelling at them.

  “Did I see you limping?” she asked.

  “You might have. Basketball.”

  “Hurts getting old, huh?” she said.

  He smiled at her insolence. “Maybe you can make heads or tails of this. I had this dream last night. I was at a cocktail party at the police academy, which also resembled my high school. Anyway, I watched as the bartender planted a bomb beneath the bar. I saw all this from across the crowded room . . . but I couldn’t get to him, all because of this limp.”

  “Was he Middle Eastern?” she interjected.

  “Of course he was,” said Fisk. “You make pizzas all day, you dream of pizzas. You work mosques and shawarma shops all day, you dream of Middle Easterners.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So finally I get near the bar—I’m the only one who can hear this thing ticking—and I go around the end and dive underneath . . . and there’s nothing there. Just the tanks for the soda taps. I look up—and now the room is in flames all around me. Drapes on fire, walls melting—but people still socializing and chatting.”

  “Good booze,” she surmised. “Open bar, I take it?”

  “I was hoping for a little more insight than that, Doctor.”

  Gersten said, “In my dreams now, I am always aware that I’m dreaming. Never used to be that way before I switched over to Intel. Now I’m always conscious that it’s not really real. That I have to be in control, even in my sleep. Takes all the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

  “Ever vigilant,” said Fisk. “The nature of the job.”

  “The nature of the beast. Not fair, though. I can’t even get away from this stuff in my downtime?”

  “No such thing as downtime,” said Fisk. “Remember, you’re not paranoid, you’re alert. I go to movies now, I can’t stop thinking about all the people in the dark around me—who are they, what are they doing.”

  She nodded. “They’re enjoying the movie.”

  “The way it’s supposed to be. That’s our job. Allowing them to do so.” He sighed. “I used to like movies.”

  “And I used to like sleep,” said Gersten.

  They caught themselves bitching. Fisk said, “Okay, now that we’ve had our cry . . .”

  He brought her up to date on the Shah situation. Just the highlights, for the time being.

  “You know the imam who runs the funeral home in Flushing?”

  Gersten nodded. “Samara Abad Salame.”

  “The FBI’s had him in their pocket for a while. Got into a bit of trouble last year with his taxes. Not enough to get him hauled in, but just enough to soften him up for a visit.”

  Gersten got it. “They went salivating,” she guessed.

  “Exactly. Now, Salame has given them the goods so far. And they’ve made him available to us, and he’s been on target, so much as we know. But his loyalty is ultimately neither to the FBI nor to us. So I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to consider the fact that he might not be telling the FBI everything. Now, Analytic got me lineage charts on a guy currently in Gitmo who is apparently Salame’s brother, though maybe by a different mother.”

  Gersten said, “Family concerns trump all.”

  “Exactly. And Shah is also a cousin of his.”

  Gersten said, “Let me ask you this. Do you think Shah was baited in Denver?”

  “You mean, was he encouraged or otherwise coerced to act? Probably.” Fisk waved it away. “I can’t care. That’s the FBI’s problem. This is our job here. Actual lives are at stake. No matter what brought him to this point, there is absolutely no question he is planning and preparing a terrorist act. He’s a dictionary-definition terrorist.”

  “Sounds to me like I’m getting off the street,” said Gersten.

  “For now,” said Fisk. “See, they—the FBI—they wanted to let this guy run some more, see who he meets here in New York, gather up more intelligence crumbs.”

  “You think it’s not worth it.”

  “Nope. Not since Shah shook free of surveillance three hours ago.”

  Gersten’s mouth hung open. “Holy shit.”

  “We’ve got people who knew his family. I’ve got a bead, not on where he is, but where he might go. The FBI might have this information too.”

  “Good,” she said. Then, reading his face, she reconsidered. “No?”

  “This is Intel’s turf now. I need someone like yourself. Someone who doesn’t look cop. Somebody who can dupe not only a terrorist, but perhaps the FBI as well. What I need to know right now is, will that be a problem for you?”

  Of all the answers he could have received, Fisk did not expect her to smile. She said, “Now things are getting interesting.”

  “Peavy?” said Fisk. “Where are you?”

  “The studio.” Peavy was a military sharpshooter, a veteran of four tours of duty over the past decade with eighty-five confirmed kills to his credit. He taught at a Krav Maga studio on the Lower East Side. “I’m in.”

  Fisk said, “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

  “It’s either a job or tickets to the Yankees.”

  “The Yankees are out of town,” said Fisk.

  “This official or not?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how it comes out.”

  Peavy said, “Let’s not do this over the phone.”

  Chapter 6

  At eight o’clock the next morning, Shah entered the unlocked door of a house in Flushing, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes. Majid Kazir arrived less than ten minutes later, looking dazed and dark-eyed from ha
ving stayed up all night. He pulled a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and sat down at the table, plucked open the soda can tab with a long thumbnail, and drank as though to wash away a bad taste in his mouth. He badly needed the caffeine.

  Kazir smelled of bleach. “Mother is finished,” he said.

  This was Kazir’s mother’s house, but Kazir was not referring to her. The beauty salon attached to the structure belonged to his mother, was staffed by his two sisters, and was managed by Kazir. Kazir’s hair was kinky but flat. He had no use for beauty products himself, but the shop did a steady business and his mother and sisters were always pleased.

  The shop had been closed for four days. Their trip to visit relatives in Pennsylvania had been arranged by Kazir to take place this week. He needed the house to himself.

  As the manager, one of his responsibilities was to procure supplies used in the treatments. He had been patiently amassing a modest stockpile of hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and acid from various beauty supply stores over the past eight months. The three ingredients in acetone peroxide, or triacetone triperoxide, could form a primary high explosive. The compound’s notorious sensitivity to impact, heat, and friction earned it a nickname among the Islamist underground organizations.

  Mother of Satan.

  Shah said, “Mother is packed and ready?”

  Kazir nodded, suppressing a carbonation belch. He looked at his still-trembling hand. Kazir had been heating and mixing the ingredients all night. “Mother was a bitch tonight, my friend.”

  Kazir finished his soda and tossed the empty can into the sink. Shah had been put in contact with him through the network. Kazir did not come to him espousing jihad and anti-American sentiments—which was good, since those are all hallmarks of a law enforcement plant. Kazir was serious, and he was quiet. His only hot point of anger was the place of women in American society. He detested their independence, which he claimed was the reason he had so much trouble finding a wife. Indeed, his own mother and sisters venerated him as the man of the household, so much so that he was required to contribute very little to the family business. Even this, he resented.

  He believed that he was meant for bigger and better things. This was his first stride toward greatness, following in the footsteps of his Moroccan countrymen, who had orchestrated the Madrid commuter train bombings. Outwardly, he appeared to pay Shah’s bid for martyrdom much respect, but Shah suspected that Kazir would never exhibit the same level of commitment as Shah—that is to say, the ultimate commitment. In this endeavor, Kazir had taken great care that his participation not be discovered.

  Kazir had been trained as a chemist in the same camp Shah had attended, in the high mountains of Waziristan on the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. Shah had confidence that the explosive would not fail him—nor he it.

  Shah pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “Here.” He placed it on the table before Kazir, who regarded it as one might regard a cockroach.

  “What is this?”

  “A telephone,” said Shah. “It contains my statement. My video. You will upload it precisely at eleven A.M.”

  Kazir looked at the flip phone. “You videoed it yourself?”

  “Of course.” It was an older device with the chipset of a pay-as-you-go convenience store phone. He had used its low-res camera to record his final words while locked in the bathroom stall of a Middle Eastern restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street. His other phone, his public phone, he had “lost” along with his laptop. Those devices could not be trusted.

  “Dispose of this when you are done,” said Shah.

  “I do not like handling electronic devices,” said Kazir.

  High-impact explosives, yes. But smartphones, no. Shah shook his head. This man refined hydrogen peroxide and acetone into explosive crystals as powerful as C-4. But he was paranoid about handling a microprocessor. Shah was not unhappy to leave this world.

  “I have been very careful, I assure you,” said Shah. “Where is it?”

  Kazir nodded to the back entrance. Shah rose and found a gym bag there, a small duffel. He lifted it, tentatively at first. It was heavy, but not prohibitively so.

  He thought to say something more to Kazir, who remained slumped in a chair in the kitchen. But there were no words.

  In the end, he tucked the pack beneath his arm and simply headed out the door. His farewell would be one not of words but of deed.

  Chapter 7

  Fisk looked through the high-powered monocular spotting scope mounted on a tripod resting on the rubber-coated roof of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. The scope’s end was topped with a nylon visor to eliminate any telltale glints of sunlight.

  He was set up between the blowing strands of hair of a model’s image atop a giant Victoria’s Secret billboard advertising their newest padded bra.

  Next to the scope was a tented monitor showing a shaky, human’s-eye view of the Crossroads of the World below. Fisk was connected to the monitor by headphones.

  He bowed toward the spotting scope, panning the square at late morning. Tourists in pairs and in groups, hundreds of cameras going—both 35 millimeter SLR and phone-based—and signboard walkers working to push passersby into comedy clubs, tour buses, and restaurants.

  Fisk looked back up. He did not want to loosen the hinge that would allow him to use the monocular to scan the other rooftops, only to have to reset on his target on the square. But he guessed that the FBI had their own people at vantage points around Forty-fifth Street. As usual, he wondered what they were waiting for. Were they still relying on Shah’s supposed three-day timeline?

  For that matter—what was Shah waiting for?

  Fisk returned to the scope, trying not to get antsy. He eyed the Naked Cowboy posing for pictures with tourists near the bleacher seats at the TKTS discount tickets booth. He watched a walking blue-green Statue of Liberty working the ticket sale lines. He scanned the knot of potential shoppers surrounding a pair of giant M&M’s in white gloves and shoes, one red, the other yellow. He looked at the tables of knockoff handbags and cheaply made souvenirs along the fringes, operated by nervous-looking black marketeers.

  Then he went back to his target, the coffee cart owned and—today, at least—operated by Bassam Shah.

  “Okay,” said Fisk, speaking into a small microphone jutting out of his earphones. “This is ridiculously dangerous. Enough waiting. Time to initiate contact.”

  Krina Gersten wandered the square with a map in one hand and a guidebook in the other. Somebody tapped her on the shoulder, an Asian tourist wanting to get a photograph with the mime dressed up as Lady Liberty. Everybody wanted their picture taken with the green-painted lady holding a foam torch. Gersten obliged and took the picture, watching the coffee cart out of the corner of her eye.

  Tourists everywhere. Gersten played her part, accepting every flyer offered her for discount pizza and free stand-up and strip club admission and bus tours.

  She wore a Bluetooth headset on her ear. The call was open. She could hear Fisk, and he could eavesdrop on her in real time.

  In the Y in the insignia on the front of her stiff new New York Yankees ball cap was a tiny pinhole camera, relaying her perspective to Fisk.

  “Time to initiate contact,” Fisk said.

  “On my way now,” she muttered.

  She walked to the coffee cart, waiting behind a hassled office worker on a break who was arguing into his cell phone. Shah worked the carafe, squirting in flavored creamer and two Splendas. The customer slipped him three one-dollar bills and walked away yammering.

  Gersten stepped up. She could see the sweat on the Afghan’s brow. He looked at her strangely, distractedly. He looked ill.

  “Hi!” she said brightly. “Do you have any hazelnut decaf?”

  He appeared puzzled. Then he checked the labels on his own carafes.

  “No decaf.”

 
“Okay, I’ll take the caffeine, I guess. I’m on vacation, right? Probably need it anyway.”

  He did not respond or acknowledge. She didn’t believe he even heard her. He lifted a thick paper cup from the tower on the cart spike and filled it.

  “Black, please, with two Splendas,” said Gersten, once he finished the pour. She watched him tear open the yellow packets of artificial sweetener. “Sorry to intrude, but . . . are you okay? You don’t look so hot right now.”

  Shah looked at her briefly, hard. Part of it was an ethnic predisposition against independent women, perhaps. But part of it was certainly suspicion.

  He did not answer, swishing a thin wooden stirrer through her coffee.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” she said. “Just concerned. Hey, can I take . . . ?”

  She went around the side of the cart, trying to get a full view of it. She was reaching for a coffee lid, but Shah quickly stepped in her way, blocking her with his body.

  “I get!” he said. “I get!”

  “Okay, jeez. Sorry.”

  He handed her the coffee. Gersten juggled her maps and travel guide, taking out a few dollars, which she straightened out and handed to him.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Have a great one.”

  She walked back toward the TKTS ticket booth, her map tucked beneath her arm. The coffee cup was not warm in her hand. She sipped it immediately and found it tepid—and horrid. The worst cup of coffee she had ever had.

  “I think it’s happening,” she said.

  Peavy, the sniper, lay atop the third-story theater marquee and watched the coffee vendor through his scope. They had set up overnight, erecting a low, tented roof for cover, draped in the same obscuring fabric as the advertising material that covers transit bus windows. Peavy and his spotter could see out, but no one could see in.

  Times Square was a great spot for a high hide. If people looked up, they looked way up. Probably no more distracting location in the world.

  Wally, his spotter, had trained in from D.C. the day before, no questions asked. Wally’s talent had been forged in urban situations overseas. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team—Fisk said they were possibly perched nearby—was very good at range shooting, famous for their vaunted “aspirin” test, the ability to hit a baby aspirin at one thousand meters. Not so much in urban landscapes.