The Intercept Page 9

  Gersten and Fisk sat through the rest, Fisk noting his thoughts on paper. The briefing broke up, and he and Gersten went into the interrogation room alone, spending a half hour’s face time with Awaan Abdulraheem.

  With his language skills, Fisk took the lead, speaking to the subject in Arabic while Gersten played the intractable female presence. Fisk laid down a few baseline questions, in order to establish a rudimentary rapport, but the narcosynthesis of the mild hallucinogen the subject had been administered had not fully worn off yet. For Fisk, it was like interviewing a sleepy drunk.

  Abdulraheem was loquacious, neither fierce nor defiant, and often pathetic, like a neglected child who had been bad and looked forward to the attention punishment would afford him. The drug contributed to Abdulraheem’s mood, clouding his true character, but to Fisk it was evident that the would-be hijacker was not very bright. He was hardly the embodiment of the fear, suspicion, and anxiety one might expect, as he would no doubt be portrayed by the media.

  As they huddled outside afterward, Fisk translated a few of his answers for her. He could not mask his annoyance. He understood the need for immediate intervention, but mood-altering drugs should be a method of last resort. Especially when the administrator was unsure of the proper dose, as had been the case here.

  “Bottom line?” said Fisk. “Not a major player.”

  “A lone wolf?” said Gersten. “The odds are against it.”

  “I’m not making any final pronouncements,” said Fisk. “Maybe he’s dogging me—maybe he’s Keyser Söze. But I don’t think so. More likely he’s double-digit IQ, led more by religion than reason.”

  “He got himself on the plane,” said Gersten. “He got a knife on there.”

  Fisk nodded, rechecking his briefing notes, finding the passenger list. “And he—or someone else—paid for a business-class seat.”

  Before Fisk and Gersten finished, the task force released the other passengers and crew, and SAS Flight 903 departed for Newark, its original destination. Each passenger answered direct questions about departure points and destinations, and each was completely rescreened by TSA. In all, their total inconvenience time was seven hours.

  By the time Fisk and Gersten got to the five remaining passengers and one crew member, the balm of free food, relief, and camaraderie had worn thin. Someone made the mistake of telling them about the plane continuing on without them. Now the flight attendant and five passengers just wanted to be someplace else—anywhere but Bangor, Maine.

  Fisk was immediately impressed that a group of people this disparate could come together in the heat of the moment and swiftly overwhelm the hijacker. He supposed that this was part of the legacy of 9/11: when faced with an onboard threat, very few airline passengers would risk waiting to let things play out. These five happened to be the first into action.

  He knew he risked a backlash if he inconvenienced them much further, but he needed to get some additional perspective on Abdulraheem. Like radioactive matter, eyewitness accounts degraded over time, so he put on his most friendly face and went around the room to each in turn.

  The Six, as the preliminary report in his hands had christened them, all gave approximately the same response when asked about their heroic moments in the vestibule outside the cockpit of SAS 903.

  Alain Nouvian, a fifty-one-year-old cellist returning to New York from a brief concert tour in Scandinavia, was a small-eyed man with an unruly comb-over of dyed black hair. He approached the questioning with great care, like a man interviewing at a job fair. “I . . . I didn’t think. I didn’t think I had it in me to do what I did. It looked like I was dead no matter what . . . and I wasn’t going to just sit there. To be frank, I’m still coming to grips with my actions. This is the most alive I’ve felt in thirty years. There was a test earlier today, life or death . . . and I acted. As they say, I rose to the occasion. That maniac was going to blow up the plane, for Christ’s sake—or at least crash it into something. Instead, I crashed into him.”

  Douglas Aldrich, a sixty-five-year-old retired auto parts dealer from Albany, had been returning from a four-day visit to his daughter and grandson in Göteborg. “Instinct. I don’t even have to think about it. I was more worried about getting some feeling back into my legs at the end of the flight—you know, that thrombosis stuff. I was standing in the aisle trying to stretch out these old muscles when I heard the commotion. I’m a Vietnam vet, which was a long time ago, but today it felt like yesterday. I don’t think of myself as a brave man. There was no orchestra music, you know what I mean? No moment of heroic decision. I—and I think the others—just did what I had to do. The people I’m thinking about right now? Those others on the plane. Who just sat there. All the people in business who didn’t stand up when this terrorist attacked. That’s what’s spinning my mind at this moment. Them getting into their beds tonight. Lying there in the dark with their thoughts. Tell you what—I’m going to sleep like a goddamn baby.”

  Colin Frank, forty-five and paunchy, was a journalist working on an assignment for The New Yorker on a piece about the rise in popularity of Swedish crime literature. His reading glasses were perched high on his forehead, one of the lenses showing a threadlike crack. He had not yet come to grips with what happened. “I haven’t the slightest idea why I did it. I’m being honest—I remember nothing. My body was moving without thought. It’s like a switch was flipped. One minute I was in my seat reading Henning Mankell—and the next I was on top of a terrorist at the front of a plane. I went from reading a crime thriller to starring in one—kind of seamlessly. It didn’t seem extraordinary, the situation . . . and at the same time it didn’t seem real either. Like I was still in the book.” He smiled, lifting off his glasses and admiring the imperfection in the lens, as though needing evidence of his actions. “Sort of like reading a baseball book and then finding yourself rounding home plate. Right place, right time, I guess. I just feel so goddamn lucky to be alive.”

  “When do we get to Newark?” asked Joanne Sparks, thirty-eight, the general manager of an IKEA store in Elizabeth, New Jersey. A fit frequent-flyer business-class traveler, she was returning from the company’s home office in Stockholm and had been seated next to Abdulraheem for the entire flight.

  “Soon,” answered Fisk.

  “How soon?”

  Unlike the others, Ms. Sparks addressed Fisk and Gersten not as an interviewee, but as an equal, with the candor and polish of a combatant on a television talk show.

  “I’m not aware of the exact details, but I—”

  “So we’re not going right home. Are we.”

  Fisk smiled, changing tactics. “Probably not. Again, it’s not my call. But my guess is you six will be bundled onto a government aircraft and flown to LaGuardia for further questioning. This is a big deal, you should realize.”

  “How long?”

  “How long in New York? At least a day.”

  “Bullshit. What am I, under arrest?”

  Gersten jumped in. “No, ma’am. You are not under arrest. You are material witnesses to a terror attack—”

  “He’s a fucking malcontent with delusions of grandeur. There was no boom at the end of those wires. There was nothing. False alarm.”

  Fisk said, “It’s not that simple. But I suggest you take up your complaints with the FBI.”

  “The FBI?” said Sparks, doing a double take. “Wait a minute. Then who are you?”

  He explained himself again. “I’m just trying to get some context on the hijacker. You were seated next to him for the entire flight. Is there anything you can give me?”

  Sparks threw up her hands. “You know how often I travel? I board, the eyeshades go on, the shoes come off, I’m gone.” She softened a little, Fisk’s earnestness working on her. She was angry about the inconvenience, but proud of her courage. “Look, it was pure reaction. Pure fucking gut reaction. Adrenaline, whatever. Fight or flight. Or
rather—fight on a flight, right? This guy . . . he had been asleep the entire way. And I mean sound asleep, to the point that I presumed he’d taken something for the flight. In fact, when he first got up and went right at the flight attendant, my thought was, you know, Ambien. I’ve seen that before on a plane. Jesus. You fly enough, you see crazy things. But there it is. I can’t give you much more than that. Didn’t pay him the slightest attention, nor he me. It was like he was dead next to me for hours, then all of a sudden he was up like a zombie and trying to take over the plane. Crazy motherfucker.”

  Magnus Jenssen, twenty-six, was a Swedish schoolteacher on a sabbatical, planning to tour the East Coast of the United States by bicycle before running the New York City Marathon in early November. He was sitting up on a gurney in the makeshift examination room, his left wrist in a gel cast, his arm snug in a white muslin sling. He was fair-haired with antifreeze-blue eyes, handsome, fit. “I don’t know why I jumped,” he said, his accent strong but his pronunciation clear. “He had a bomb. Or certainly seemed to at the time. He was hurting the attendant. I saw that trigger device in his hand and it just looked terrifying. That someone could press a button and have that kind of power over me to end my life and everyone around us. It was too much to bear . . . and again, all this in an instant. I really zeroed in on that switch. I locked in on that device and I pounced. Too hard, I guess.” He turned his arm at the elbow, wincing. “This will make it difficult to bicycle. I may have to adjust my travel plans, no?”

  Fisk said, “I cracked mine playing basketball a year ago. Six weeks to heal, another four to six for physical therapy, and you’ll be good as new.”

  Jenssen nodded warmly, appreciating the encouragement. He had a smile for Gersten as well, but a little different, flirtatious. Fisk couldn’t blame the guy; in fact, he admired his panache. This guy had foiled a terror attack and had a broken wrist to show for it. The media was going to anoint him a hero. He was in for a good weekend in New York that could stretch on for weeks and weeks.

  The thirty-two-year-old flight attendant Maggie Sullivan hailed from the shipbuilding village of Georgetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. A white bandage covered the wound on her neck, and she proudly wore a Bangor Police Department sweatshirt. “The Fourth of July weekend,” she said. “Is that what he was thinking?”

  “I can’t confirm that,” said Fisk. “But it looks likely.”

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do either of you smoke?”

  Fisk shook his head. So did Gersten.

  “Me neither,” said Maggie. “My dad used to smoke cigars. I kind of want one now. Don’t ask. This is me, post-frazzled.”

  Gersten said, “Are you ready for a hero’s welcome?”

  “Why not?” said Maggie, smiling, pushing back her short chestnut brown hair. “Damn! I wish Oprah still had her show!” Maggie laughed, a throaty growl with the sudden intake of breath particular to that part of Atlantic Canada. Gersten laughed harder than Maggie did. The flight attendant was easy to like.

  “I just wish I had gotten in one really good shot at him,” said Maggie, making a fist and grinding it into the air in front of her. “Right in the nuts.”

  Part 5

  Eavesdrop

  Friday, July 2

  Chapter 17

  On the flight back to New York, Fisk and Gersten sat shoulder to shoulder. Fisk listened to the unexpurgated initial interrogation of Awaan Abdulraheem, which had been downloaded onto his iPod, while Gersten read the translated transcript on her laptop.

  By the time they pulled out their ear buds, both had arrived at the same conclusion.

  “This guy is way wrong for this,” Fisk said. “It’s not adding up.”

  Gersten nodded. “But what’s it mean?”

  Fisk looked out at the lights of New York unrolling below them. “A diversion?” he suggested.

  Gersten said, “From what? Some other event?”

  “No. I’m thinking more on the plane.”

  “On the plane?” She mulled this over. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to find a reason. A reason why someone would train, sponsor, brainwash, coerce—but, bottom line, get this stooge on a plane to try to take it over.”

  Gersten said, “You’ll have to tell me, since you speak the language, but the translation made it sound to me like he was a true believer.”

  Fisk nodded. “He thought he was going to get in the cockpit with the bomb bluff and take them down. He believed he was going to succeed. No question. But air security was set up precisely to stop crackpots like this.”

  “You’re convinced he’s not a lone wolf.”

  “I’m not convinced of anything just yet. But I’m sure as hell ready to be.”

  Gersten took a sip of bottled water. “The other passengers were all vetted and cleared.”

  “I know. Luggage and cargo too. Let’s get the list from Newark customs and break it down, take another long look at everybody else on that plane.”

  Gersten sighed. “I was looking forward to getting home, taking a hot bath . . .”

  “A hot bath? It’s ninety degrees out.”

  “I wasn’t planning on taking it alone.”

  Fisk smiled. “I’ll owe you one. How about that?”

  She leaned across Fisk to take in the view of Flushing Bay and the approach strobes guiding them into LaGuardia. Doing so allowed him to sneak in a quick nuzzle behind her ear, then a kiss.

  Gersten said, “Deal.”

  Chapter 18

  Crossing Queens and Brooklyn from LaGuardia Airport in an unmarked car took them forty-five minutes. Little traffic on the streets at three thirty in the morning except taxis and cop cars. People without air-conditioning sat out on their stoops at that late hour, too hot to sleep. It was going to be a classic Fourth of July weekend in New York City, with asphalt-baking temperatures in the upper nineties and hothouse humidity. Even before dawn, the temperature had barely dipped below eighty degrees Fahrenheit.

  The duty driver delivered them through the automated gate at Intel. They carded in, quick-timing it toward Fisk’s office.

  The terrorist thwarting had gone real-world. This was the end of the first news cycle, the early newspaper editions already in the trucks and on their way, their online editions posted and commented on, the morning network news shows readying their broadcast rundowns. Success meant nothing to them. The predictable issues would be the question of how 125 Intel detectives, a dozen brainy analysts, hundreds of informants, as well as the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all the rest, did not catch even the faintest whiff of this hijacker’s plan.

  The former Border Patrol had, after 9/11, become a muscular police force with a new name—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—a more complicated bureaucracy, with lots of planes, helicopters, and cars. ICE was part of the Department of Homeland Security, the premier agency of the terrorist age in America, with the second-largest budget in the government after defense spending.

  Fisk and Gersten received fingerprints, retina scans, passport scans, and travel histories for every passenger on SAS Flight 903. Gersten took the top half of the alphabetized list, Fisk the bottom. He rinsed out two mugs and filled them with coffee and sugar. They only had a few hours before the bosses came in and meetings would pull them away.

  He gave Gersten his desk and dragged his chrome-legged Naugahyde couch over to the credenza, spreading out pages and opening his secure laptop.

  There was no art to their process. It was profiling, pure and simple. They filtered for Arabs, for Muslims. They filtered for anybody whose travels had taken them anywhere near Yemen, Pakistan, or Afghanistan in their lifetime. This was the only game plan available.

  A little after five, they compared results.

  “Pretty clean plane, all in all,” Gersten said. “Mostly summer tourists.”

  “Same here. You first.”
>
  She said, “I’ve got a Pashtun author, last name Chamkanni. Says she’s going to a writers’ colony in New Hampshire, which checks out. Got a Pakistani family, thirtysomething parents, two kids under five. Last name Jahangiri. Declared themselves as traveling to a family reunion in Seattle. They look fine, already made their connecting flight. The Seattle branch of the family runs a squash club, and the grandparents filled a blog with pictures of the grandkids—looks tight. Worth following through, though.

  “I got only one maybe. Saudi passport, Baada Bin-Hezam, thirty-two years of age. He’s an art dealer coming to New York to consult on the repatriation of a collection of early Arabian artifacts looted by the Brits when they occupied Iran. This guy gets around. London and Berlin earlier this month. Stockholm just to change planes. Fits his occupation, of course. ICE has him coming out of Sanaa to Frankfurt three months ago, soon after bin Laden went down.”

  “And he’s not no-fly?” said Fisk.

  “No. Nothing about him looks especially hinky, except now that we’re looking for something.”

  “The genius of profiling,” he snarked. “Turning square pegs into round ones.”

  Gersten stretched her neck and felt it crack. “What did you get on your list?”

  Fisk rubbed his tired eyes. “Not much. Two families, very low probability. Really only one guy I want to look at a little bit. Engineering student at Linnaeus University in southern Sweden. From Tunisia originally. Lukewarm. He’s got a cohesive CV. He’s published legitimate papers on wind turbines.”

  Gersten said, “I think the Saudi is worth a thorough look-see.”

  “I guess I do too. Any idea where he is now?”

  She pulled his sheet. “Cleared customs in Newark at twelve thirty this morning. No track after that.”