The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06] Page 6

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Because whenever you lapse into one of your uncomfortable silences, it’s because there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Ben smiled in spite of himself. “I’m calling from Detroit.”

  “Not to visit family.”

  “No. The U.S. State Department hired me to help them find a terrorist they believe is plotting a strike on America.”

  “And this terrorist is somehow linked to Akram Khalil and Hamas, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Ben said, letting his answer hang in the air.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 12

  I

  wanted to hear from you first, before you report to the National Security Council,” the president said from behind his desk in the Oval Office.

  “I understand, sir.”

  Stephanie Bayliss, director of homeland security, was seated in a chair opposite the president. Bayliss came from a military family. Her father was a retired marine corps general, her three brothers all ranking officers. But she had surpassed them all, becoming the youngest female colonel ever commissioned by the army. She had volunteered for every combat mission available to her, been dispatched to all of them but, much to her regret, had never taken up a forward position where she could engage the enemy. Despite this, the army gave her a fat promotion and a transfer to intelligence, which she embraced publicly while seething inside.

  Privately, those who had held back her combat career complained she was too pretty. Stephanie tried different hairstyles, stopped wearing makeup. It didn’t help. The only offers she got were from someone putting a “Women in the Military” calendar together and a men’s magazine that offered her fifty thousand dollars to do a centrefold.

  Her selection as the nation’s latest director of homeland security came as much a surprise to her as to everyone else. Her background was military, not political, but the president had decided that’s what was needed. Someone who took no shit and was comfortable behind a microphone. She had never given a press briefing before in her life, Stephanie told them. That was okay, they said, she wasn’t being hired for her looks.

  “So far we’ve been able to keep this whole mess out of the press,” the president said. “I don’t know how much longer that will remain the case. We’d better make sure our wagons are circled in the meantime.”

  “We’re doing our best, sir.”

  “Give it to me from the top, from the moment USAMRIID personnel realized they had admitted imposters onto the base and the commanding officer issued—what was it called?”

  “A Code Seventeen.”

  “A Code Seventeen,” the president repeated.

  “We believe those imposters executed the real Hazardous Materials team moments after the contamination signal came in.”

  “They had that station under surveillance, then.”

  “That’s the assumption at this point, yes, sir.”

  “When was the last drill conducted?”

  Bayliss consulted her notes. “Twenty-six days ago, sir.”

  “So they must have been watching the Hazardous Materials station for at least twenty-five days.”

  “Not necessarily, sir.”

  “Not necessarily? I was under the impression that no one other than the base commander knew the timetable for Monday’s drill.”

  “That’s no longer the case, Mr. President. The last two unannounced drills both caused such chaos for others working on the grounds of Fort Detrick that base commander Walter McClendon agreed to furnish the date of the drill, though not the time, to local officials.”

  “Can we assume that’s where the leak sprang from, Director?”

  “Not entirely, Mr. President. Departments of Defense and State were also informed as a matter of courtesy.”

  “Courtesy,” the president repeated, as if it made no sense to him.

  “After 9/11, communication among the various departments and agencies became the new watchword. Everybody sharing everybody else’s business.”

  “No longer a need-to-know basis.”

  “Procedure, sir.”

  “So the imposters entered the base disguised as the HazMat team after learning the timetable,” the president concluded.

  “They were inside the building for six and a half minutes, enough time to raid the Level Four containment area and escape with the entire stores of Strain EF309.”

  “Smallpox.” The president had learned that much from a previous briefing. “And just how did these imposters manage to get USAMRIID’s entire stores of the virus off the grounds?”

  Stephanie Bayliss took a deep breath. “We’re still looking into that.”

  The president made no effort to disguise his displeasure. “What now, Director?”

  Bayliss tried to sound as professional as she could. “We’ve increased security at all airports, but the vials that were stolen can be disguised so many ways I don’t hold out much hope any increased security will produce very much.”

  “I don’t like that attitude, Director.”

  “I’m just being realistic, sir. You’ve got a highly trained, highly mobile, highly efficient team here. They had everything planned to the exact second and clearly that must have included escape.”

  “And what are we doing about it?”

  “I’m bringing in the country’s foremost expert on biological warfare and terrorism, Mr. President. He was with USAMRIID during the Ebola scare of eighty-nine. There are those who say he single-handedly saved the country. I expect him to be ready to brief you personally within twenty-four hours.”

  “Can you answer me one thing now, Colonel Bayliss?”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  “I was under the impression we had destroyed the last reserves of smallpox years ago.”

  “No, sir. Pentagon personnel decided to retain a relatively small amount for future studies.”

  “And how much is this relatively small amount, Director?”

  “Enough to infect half the world, sir.”

  The president spun in his chair and gazed out the window over the lawn, imagining the city and world beyond. “Too bad these Pentagon personnel didn’t realize that half might be ours.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 13

  K

  halil’s been on our watch list for years,” Harry Walls told Danielle the next morning, using the euphemism for what everyone knew meant targeted for possible execution. They had met in the shade of some young olive trees in a grassy, tree-lined park in Jerusalem, set between the Jewish and Moslem quarters, called the Forest of Peace. Brown splotches of earth, scattered in slivered, rectangular sections, formed a reminder of the days before all the benches had been removed to discourage loitering.

  Walls was a Mossad agent who had been recruited for the Sayaret, Israel’s most elite commandos, at the same time as Danielle fifteen years before. They had gone through training together under David Vordi, two out of a hundred ultimately selected for membership, and remained friends to this day.

  “I understand that until the settlement attack he’d been keeping quiet,” Danielle said.

  “Still have your sources?” Walls asked her.

  “A few.”

  “We don’t believe Khalil was responsible for the settlement attack at all.”

  Danielle tried not to look as shocked as she felt.

  “We believe,” Walls continued, “that he’d been focusing all his energies on a cell he was running in the United States.”

  “Al-Qaeda?”

  “The links were there, yes.”

  “And the Americans knew this?”

  Walls narrowed his gaze. “If you’re thinking they were the ones who took out Khalil, forget it. The Americans don’t work that way—at least not without informing us.”

  “I’d be more interested in learning who wanted us to believe Khalil was behind the attack on the settlement.”

  “The same force that want
ed him killed. What’s the difference now that the bastard’s dead? Rogue operations are only called into question when they fail, Danielle.”

  Walls shifted his weight from his right leg to his left. He had retained his rugged good looks, even though his many years of service had brought a cold, steel glimmer to his eyes that washed the emotion straight out of them.

  “But you’re telling me you don’t know whose operation it was.”

  “That’s right.”

  “If Khalil was targeted, you must have been watching him,” Danielle insisted. “From time to time, when he surfaced. The watcher would provide location and intelligence in case a strike was mandated. For God’s sake, Harry, I know how this stuff works.”

  “You want to speak to our watcher.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can’t, because he’s dead. We found what was left of his body a week ago. The only thing I’m sorry about is I didn’t get to kill Khalil myself.”

  “There must be someone else I can go to, another contact.”

  Walls shook his head. “You’re never going to learn, are you?”

  “About what?”

  “Politics. Restraint. You’re two months from taking over as commissioner of National Police, and you’re ready to throw it all away. For what? Nothing.”

  “I asked you to trust me.”

  Walls frowned, his face a mask of harsh indifference. “I do, and I care about you too. I’ll tell you something else. When I first heard what happened in Idaho, at Pine Gulley or Valley or whatever you call it, I thought of you, because there aren’t ten people in the world who could pull off what you did. And every time you call I come because I hope you’ve given up being one of those ten.”

  Danielle swallowed hard. “So you can’t help me.”

  “Actually, I can. Be careful of David Vordi.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “I’m serious, Danielle. He likes getting what he wants, behaves badly when he doesn’t.”

  “Anything else, Harry?”

  He smiled slightly at her and walked off.

  Danielle was watching him go when her cell phone rang, startling her. She drew it quickly to her ear, expecting it might be Ben.

  “I gather your friend wasn’t very helpful, Chief Inspector.”

  “Colonel al-Asi?” Danielle swept her eyes about her. “Where are you?

  “It doesn’t matter. I figured you would be following up the circumstances surrounding the strike on Akram Khalil’s compound and thought I might be able to help. In return for your looking into the Arab woman’s death.”

  “I told you that wasn’t necessary.”

  “I know what you told me, Chief Inspector, but your help would leave me in your debt and I can’t accept that.”

  “You gave me Khalil; that’s enough.”

  “I gave you Khalil, and someone else ended up killing him. I find that as troublesome as you do. So I’m doing this as much for me as for you. The question is, do I do it alone or with you?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pay a visit to Gaza to see a man who survived the attack on Khalil’s hideout.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 14

  A

  m I supposed to be happy to see you?”

  Ben found his brother Sayeed in the detached garage of his Victorian home. The gray clapboard house was located on Coleman Street in north Dearborn near Patton Park. He ducked to slide beneath the half-open garage door where Sayeed was at work on the classic MG sports car he had painstakingly restored from scratch. But the car looked no different than it had in the wake of the death of Ben’s nephew three years before, as if Sayeed just kept polishing the same paint over and over again.

  “Sabaha l-hayr,” Ben greeted. “Good morning.”

  “What’s good about it?” Sayeed asked and went back to his polishing.

  Ben knew his brother had never managed to lift himself from the sullen gloom that had ensnared him after his son’s murder. This in spite of the fact that he had two other children, a son and daughter both in high school, and an excellent job as a professor at the University of Michigan. None of that had cleansed the bitterness from his eyes. They were angry, raw, looking rubbed forever red. Sayeed had let his hair grow longer, but it was virtually all gray now. His shoulders had taken on a perpetual slump, and his belly stuck out over his belt, as if exercise too had become a thing of the distant past.

  Normally when Ben came back home, he made it a point to drive by his old house in the Copper Canyon section of Detroit, where his own wife and children had been slain a decade before. He had finally gotten to the point where he didn’t have to stop anymore, and this morning he actually took another route altogether. He drove straight to his brother’s home, passing Fordson Park and Woodmere Cemetery, where his family was buried, on the way instead.

  “You could at least pretend you’re glad to see me,” Ben said.

  “And listen to you tell me how to straighten out my life again? Why should I?”

  “A man from the State Department came to see me in Boston yesterday.”

  Sayeed Kamal didn’t look up, kept polishing the fender. He was darker and taller than Ben, though his perpetual slouch made it impossible to tell.

  “You promised me you had given up your participation in Palestinian interest groups.”

  “No, I told you I’d think about it.”

  “According to the State Department, you must not have thought about it very hard.”

  “So they sent you out here to make me a better citizen.”

  “Would you rather they had sent someone else?”

  “Are you threatening me, my brother?” Sayeed asked, finally looking up. “Then again, it always seems to come down to that. You come here on the pretext of my interests when it’s really your own you’re pursuing. Save yourself the trouble this time. I’m not interested.” And he went back to his polishing, then stopped again. “By the way, I have something to show you.”

  Sayeed left the rag on the fender and moved to a box tucked near the MG’s front tires. He located a framed photo on the top, swiped the dirt off the glass, and handed it to Ben.

  “I found it in the attic. I’ve been saving it for you.”

  Ben studied the framed eight-by-ten photograph of him and Sayeed as young boys standing on either side of their father. He remembered his mother taking the picture, remembered everything about the day, their first in the cabin their father had purchased on Saginaw Bay in central Michigan. Thinking back, Ben could never recall a time in his life when he’d been happier, not realizing that two months later his father would travel back to Palestine never to return again.

  “I’ll make you a copy,” Ben offered, tucking the frame under his arm.

  “Don’t bother,” Sayeed said and went back to the fender. “Our mother still owns the cabin, you know. Refuses to sell it, even though she hasn’t been there in ten years.”

  “That’s her decision.” Ben drew a deep breath and took a step closer to his brother. “The State Department believes you’re still active in raising funds for Hamas.”

  “Raising funds, yes. For Hamas, no. I have raised and will continue to work toward raising money for the Palestinian Educational Fund.”

  “Which continues to sponsor Palestinian students.”

  “You have a problem with that?”

  “The State Department does,” Ben told him, “so long as they are students like Mohammed Latif.”

  “A fine young man.”

  “Who happens to be an associate of Akram Khalil. Hamas.”

  “I know who Khalil is.”

  “But not apparently who Latif is,” Ben said and dropped the pages Danielle had faxed to him in Boston the previous night on the hood of the restored MG.

  “What’s this?”

  “Khalil was killed in a raid yesterday. These were found burning in his Gaza headquarters.”

  Sayeed Kamal kept the polishing cloth in hand as he began t
o read, disinterestedly at first until he neared the end of the first page. Then the contents grabbed all of his attention, and he brought the pages up off the hood and held them close to his eyes in the garage’s murky light, a sheen of sweat rising to his brow.