The Intercept Page 7

  Pearl clicked through a stream of images of sunflower fields, potted sunflowers, sunflowers on bonnets, sunflowers in paintings by Van Gogh and Monet. He was also reading his output underneath.

  “Okay, these messages are embedded but also enciphered. Now, I’m not a cryppie, but I’m going to make an educated guess that this is a virtually unbreakable one-time-pad system. We’ll know more when they crunch the stuff at Meade, but this is sophisticated, random stuff. No doubt there will be several hundred people working on this tomorrow.”

  “No doubt,” said Geeseman, seeing the intel equivalent of dollar signs. “Let’s flash what you have directly to NSA. Right now.”

  “Easy enough,” said Fisk. “They’re regular digital files. Can fly right through the wires and airwaves just like anything else, once I offload them onto a clean drive.”

  “Gimme,” said Geeseman. “I’ll dispatch on the secure link from the comm station.”

  Fisk said, “Hold on, let him finish this. Let’s make sure we give Meade the entire package at once.”

  Pearl was nodding, like a jazz musician riding a particularly sweet groove.

  Geeseman exclaimed, “We’ve got Al-Qaeda by the fucking beard.”

  Fisk focused on the screen. “Anything, any kind of pattern at all. Location, people, methods . . .”

  Pearl said, “I really can’t read the code. But I can see this.”

  He keyed in a command, and the corner of one of the sunflower images blossomed on the screen to ten times its original size. Its provenance was clear. Fisk had been right. “Metropolitan Museum,” it read.

  Pearl said, “The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Don’t think that’s an accident.”

  Now it was Fisk’s turn to nod. “Bring it, fuckers. We’re on to you.”

  “Wait.”

  Fisk looked at the side of Pearl’s head. “What do you mean, wait?”

  Pearl continued to work his keyboard. “Oh, lookie here.”

  “Look at what?”

  Pearl said, “If this really is a one-time pad, somebody over at the NSA owes me a fruit basket.”

  Geeseman said, “Pearl, talk English.”

  “Those cryptanalysts better put me on their Christmas card list forever.” He stopped typing and turned. “Somebody screwed up and embedded one image in the clear.”

  Fisk’s eyes widened. “And with that, they can—”

  “Maybe crack the other messages. It’s a way in, at least. Don’t know if this was from or to bin Laden, but . . .”

  He clicked his mouse and a message appeared in a window on the screen:

  They must be made to believe that we repeat

  ourselves out of a desperation to act.

  Chapter 13

  By teardown time, Fisk was properly exhausted. No other finds topped the sunflower code discovery, currently being pored over stateside. The air lock was struck, the movers going in and out with hand trucks, transporting the detritus of the late Osama bin Laden’s possessions to the waiting Globemaster.

  The helicopter to Frankfurt was set to lift off in forty-five minutes. Maybe enough time to get a shower, but more likely not. Geeseman was walking around all rooster-chested, thrilled to have such sensitive and potentially lucrative intel going out under his name. He was giving the movers a hard time, following them around like a grandmother making certain her crystal would not be broken.

  “Heavy stuff on the bottom,” he said, and Fisk caught one of the airmen rolling his eyes.

  Fisk rubbed his. He was stuck between feelings of satisfaction for the discoveries they had made, and frustration for the discoveries they had not. His tired mind was tailing off into a useless spiral, so he forced himself to go get cleaned up at the officers’ quarters. He changed clothes and was ready just in time for the ride out to the chopper pad, taking a seat in the front next to the driver.

  It was the same airman whom Fisk had seen rolling his eyes at Geeseman’s officiousness. “It’s Boyle, right?” said Fisk.

  “Right, sir.” He twisted his shoulder toward Fisk so that Fisk could confirm this by reading the name tape across his left breast pocket.

  “Did you put the heavy stuff on the bottom, Boyle?”

  “Yes, sir,” he snapped. Then his gaze flickered to Fisk. He saw Fisk smiling, and then Boyle relaxed. He checked the mirror to make sure Geeseman was not in the vehicle with them. “Just like I learned in grocery-bagging school, sir.”

  Fisk nodded, pleased to find a guy with a decent sense of humor. “So what do you do when you’re not hauling around a bunch of nosy civilians?” he asked.

  “Mortuary Affairs, sir.”

  “What’s that? Undertaker?”

  “Kind of, sir,” said Boyle. “All the bodies from both wars come through here on their way home. Not the best assignment, though in a sense it is an honor to be doing it . . .”

  “Grim work,” said Fisk.

  “That’s the word for it, sir. Just seeing the dead for real . . . it’s something I thought I’d never understand.”

  “Does that mean you understand it now?” asked Fisk, the chopper coming into view ahead.

  “Not exactly, sir. I understand that the big picture doesn’t mean a damn thing to any of those men and women anymore.”

  Fisk nodded. “You’re dealing with the pixels, just like we are. Everyone else gets to stand back and take the wide view.”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Boyle. I’m practically talking in my sleep here. My mind’s still back in that bunker.”

  “Intense work, sir.”

  “Eh. Sounds like you’ve put in your share of hard days, Boyle.”

  “I have, sir. But it’s okay. I’m good with it. Nothing compared to what you all were doing in there. Not that I know for sure, but I think I have an idea. Of course, we’re at opposite ends of it. But you’ve got a hell of a lot better chance of impacting this fucking thing than I do.” Boyle winced at his curse word. “Sir.”

  Fisk thought back to bin Laden’s words, which might turn out to be his final statement, his ghoulish message from the grave. They must be made to believe that we repeat ourselves out of a desperation to act.

  Fisk could not quite decipher it right now. He only knew that it meant one thing.

  Something was coming.

  Part 4

  Chatter

  A Few Years Later

  Thursday, July 1

  Chapter 14

  Boston Center, Scandinavian 903 heavy is with you. We’re out of Atlantic Uniform, flight level three six zero, direct Newark.”

  “Scandinavian 903 heavy, Boston Center. Good morning. Maintain three six zero. Expect descent clearance at 1655 UTC.”

  “Roger, Boston Center. Maintain three six zero, clearance at 1655. Scandinavian 903 heavy.”

  Captain Elof Granberg raised his arms over his head in a groaning stretch, his fingertips pointing to the cabin ceiling. The pressure in his bladder had just reached a level of discomfort, which he knew would intensify once he stood. He reached for the direct passenger cabin intercom on the center console.

  “Almost done, Maggie,” he said to the flight attendant who picked up on the other end. “Initial descent in about twenty. Anders and I will pay our visits, then you can let the pax move around a bit before sitting them down for landing. Please let me know when we’re secure.”

  Granberg then leaned across the console and tapped his copilot on the shoulder. “You take the first head call, Anders. I have the airplane.”

  “You have the airplane,” copilot Anders Bendiksen said. Bendiksen unbuckled his shoulder harness, pushed the straps off his shoulders, and slid his seat back, standing to wait for the flight attendant to confirm that there were no passengers in front of the cockpit door.

  The intercom handset buzzed. Bendiksen picked it u
p.

  “All clear for you.”

  “Thank you, Maggie,” said Bendiksen. “Coming out now.”

  The mandatory protocol for cockpit door opening in American airspace had been in place since the attacks on New York and Washington. One flight attendant blocked the aisle leading from the front of the passenger cabin, standing before the drawn privacy curtain. A second flight attendant was a backup, standing on the other side. The armored door to the flight deck could be opened only from the inside, or outside from a keypad. The code was changed for every flight, and was known only to the pilots.

  On U.S. domestic flights, a wire screen was unfurled and secured, sealing off the vestibule from the first-class cabin while the pilots moved about, one at a time, outside the cockpit. On an international flight aboard a twin-aisle jet like the Airbus 330, the guard post was a ten-foot-long vestibule in front of the flight deck door. On one side was a bathroom, on the other, a bar and coffee galley.

  A half-bulkhead separated the vestibule from the business-class cabin. The aisles began on each side of it, running aft through business, economy extra, and economy-class sections to the rear of the airplane.

  As the purser on the SAS nonstop from Stockholm to Newark, Maggie Sullivan took her position as the forward blocker. Maggie was a solid five-four with dark hair in a French plait and a long, angular face bred from centuries of black Irish seafaring stock. She possessed that perfect combination of politeness and firmness common to the best flight attendants and nurses—but as a sentry, she was hardly imposing.

  Her colleague that flight, a slight Nordic blonde named Trude Carlson, stood behind her. Seven years before, they had together attended a daylong instructional seminar from a martial arts trainer who taught them incapacitating kicks, chops, and pressure-point gouges. The aim, the trainer told them, was to delay an assailant at least long enough to secure the door to the flight deck, and therefore the controls of the airliner. Self-sacrifice, should it be necessary, was implicitly part of the job.

  They had performed the door-opening procedure so many times that it had become a ritual rather than a tactic of true vigilance. So when the cockpit door opened, Maggie and Trude were chatting through the curtain about their plans for the unusually lengthy seventy-two-hour layover. They planned to visit the TKTS discount ticket booth in Times Square and were discussing the current must-see Broadway shows. And Trude had an old flame who lived on the Upper East Side who might have a friend for Maggie.

  The cockpit door was thrust open and Anders Bendiksen appeared. “Hej-hej,” he said, with the singsong lilt of the customary Scandinavian greeting.

  Trude chirped “Hej-hej” back to him, glancing over her shoulder.

  “Good group this flight?”

  “Not bad,” said Maggie, still steamed about the man in 11D who had spilled tomato juice on her shoe. Her stocking squished with every step, and she would never get the odor out.

  Anders opened the lavatory door and ducked inside, sliding the OCCUPIED lock behind him.

  The passenger was on Maggie before she even turned her head back toward the seats.

  No outcry. No noise from the business-class cabin. No warning.

  A blur, his first contact with her. An arm across her chest, crushing her breasts. Lifting her off her feet, startling her painfully. Jerking her inside the privacy curtain.

  His other hand was at her throat. She felt something else there: the icy sting of a sharp blade.

  Trude froze. She got her hands in the air, but they were empty. She felt powerless and stunned. This was not happening.

  “ON YOUR KNEES!” he shrieked, his English heavily accented, and further warped by rage. He pulled Maggie deeper into the vestibule, out of sight of the majority of the passengers. “BOTH OF YOU! NOW!”

  Trude looked around for help, for a weapon, for anything. A pitcher of coffee sat in the galley, but it was nowhere near scalding, and anyway out of her reach. She looked at Maggie’s face and saw a long-stare look in her eyes that frightened her as much as the intruder.

  “Now!” the man ordered. “She dies now! Obey me!”

  Trude fell forward to her knees. The man lowered Maggie, pushing her down to the floor. He thrust out his other hand, showing them a contraption molded out of toy plastic, with wires extending from it into the cuff of his black cotton shirt.

  “I have a bomb!” he declared, showing them the detonator trigger. He spoke loudly enough to be heard in the lavatory, and perhaps even inside the flight deck. He pounded once on the lavatory door with his knife hand.

  His eyes were wide, his face intense, like a man staring into a blazing fire. He was young, in his very early twenties. Obviously of Arabic descent, though dressed as a Westerner, his skin tan, his face beardless.

  Maggie remembered him in a microsecond flash of her brain cells. He had boarded, took the front row aisle seat on the right side in business class, held an open magazine during takeoff, wrapped himself in a blanket, and slept all the way from Stockholm. His seatmate, a woman, was geared up with the expensive kit of a well-off executive road warrior. Loose-fitting designer gym suit, plush eyeshades, Bose headphones, and a neck pillow leaned against the cabin window. She had slept most of the way too, dropping off soon after takeoff. Neither of them took any service at all until water at wake-up before preparing for landing.

  “The code!” the man screamed at the door of the lavatory, striking it again with his fist. “I want the cabin code! If you come out, I detonate! Five seconds—or the first woman dies!”

  Maggie looked at the man’s shoes, his knees, his crotch. Seeking a weak point.

  But she would have to get past his knife first.

  The man kicked the lavatory door so hard Maggie thought he might have damaged it. “Answer me!”

  Anders said from behind the door, “I hear you.” His voice was loud enough to be heard, but modulated for calmness. “I do not have the code. Only the captain has the code.”

  “Liar! You do have it! She dies now!”

  He reached down to Maggie, the knife blade pressing against her trachea, the detonator held high. She felt a burn, then warmth running down her neck.

  She had been cut. She didn’t know how badly.

  Trude screamed. The man kicked at her, striking her shoulder, knocking her onto her side.

  Anders was saying from behind the door, “Let me come out! I can talk to the captain!”

  “Give me the code now!” yelled the intruder.

  “I am coming out!” said Anders.

  He was trying to open the door, but it was jammed.

  “Give me the code!”

  At once the vestibule entrance erupted. The hijacker, who had turned his head toward the lavatory, did not see the onrushing passenger explode through the privacy curtain.

  Charging, screaming.

  Maggie, more out of self-preservation than foresight, grabbed at the man’s knife hand. Had she not, the momentum of the passenger hitting him would have run the knife blade right across her throat.

  The first passenger in, a fit-looking blond male, grabbed the man’s other hand, the one gripping the detonator. He tore it from the bomber’s hand ferociously—and then two more men entered from behind, hitting them, driving the blond and the bomber against a stowed serving cart in the wall compartment, then down to the floor.

  Another man dug for the knife. A woman pulled Maggie back to the wall.

  Two men pinned the bomber to the floor. He was writhing and growling madly.

  The blond rolled over onto his back. He held the detonator, but his other hand held his own crooked wrist, his mouth twisted in pain.

  Wires dangled from the detonator. The men on the floor yanked up the bomber’s shirt, tearing the cotton fabric, searching for an explosive device.

  There was nothing but hair and belly.

  It happened so qui
ckly, it took time to realize that it was already over. The bomber lay with his face mashed into the floor, a knee upon the back of his neck. Everyone was panting, sweating, exuding adrenaline.

  Trude began sobbing into her open hand, staring at Maggie. The female passenger who had joined the men in charging the hijacker instinctively pressed her bare hand against Maggie’s bloody throat. Trude pulled down linen tray cloths to stanch the blood flow.

  Maggie sat blinking and gasping, allowing them to minister to her. She broke out of her daze when she saw that the hijacker was in reach, extending her leg and heel-kicking the prone bomber.

  “You cocksucker!” she screamed. “Evil! Fucking! Cocksucker!”

  She looked down and saw her white service blouse soaked red with blood, and she burst into tears. The woman rescuer probed her neck to find the source of the bleeding. The cut was small. The bomber’s knife had nicked a vein, but the flow of blood wasn’t pulsing. The woman stripped off her own zippered warm-up jacket, mashed it into a compress, and pressed it to Maggie’s neck with the towels.

  “You’re okay,” she told Maggie. “It looks like he missed the artery. You’re okay.”

  Banging on the lavatory door. One of the rescuers, an older man, banged back, yelling, “We are safe out here!” he barked. “Stand back as far as you can!”

  The man put his shoulder into the broken door, throwing himself at it, but couldn’t bust through. Trude was on her feet and went around with him and both of them rushed the small door.

  It gave inward this time, the lock cracking out of the frame. The door struck Anders, but he was ready for it, having braced himself with his arm and leg.

  He stepped out of the tiny bathroom and looked down at the foiled terrorist, who lay immobilized on the floor wearing tan pants and a ripped white shirt.

  “Merde,” Anders said.

  The enormity of what had just occurred was only now becoming apparent to everyone inside the crowded vestibule. Anders reached past Trude to the intercom on the wall next to the bar and coffee station.

  “Captain? This is Anders here. We’ve had an attempted hijacking.”