Fatal Conceit (21 page)

Blair burst out of the alley just as she saw the sedan's driver—another young man in a black T-shirt and dark glasses—emerge and start for her. In terror, she raced across the street, dodging traffic and running past the coffee shop.

Then up ahead she saw a bike messenger, a former boyfriend, who was just getting off his bicycle to deliver a package. “Joey!” she screamed.

Joey turned at the sound of his name and smiled as he saw Blair running toward him. Then, seeing her face, he frowned. “What's up, Jenna . . .”

“I need your bike!”

“What?”

“That guy behind me wants to hurt me. I have to get away. Please, Joey . . .”

“Sure,” Joey replied, handing her his bike. “Just lock it up—7, 19, 23—call and let me know where . . .”

“I will,” she said, already up on the pedals and starting to pump for all she was worth. She could hear her pursuer's footsteps pounding on the street. She looked back in time to see Joey step
in front of the first young man, with the second man, the one with the tattoo, closing as he shouted, “Goddammit, I'm a federal agent, stop!”

“What's your problem,” Joey demanded.

Thwarted and with his prey riding swiftly away, the first young man struck Joey in the stomach, doubling him over, and then kneed him in the face, sending him back against the building.

Sorry, Joey
, Blair thought as she pedaled furiously around the corner.

The man with the tattoo on his forearm ran a few feet past the fallen bike messenger. “FUCK!” he screamed and then got back on his cell phone. “She's on a bike headed south on Seventh Avenue . . . wearing a blue top and khaki shorts. I don't care what it fucking takes, she has to be stopped. I need that computer.”

T
HE SMALL, OLIVE-SKINNED MAN WITH
the large hooked nose and wearing a traditional Arabic
keffiyah
headscarf smiled out from the television screen. “
Allahu akbar
, I am Sheik Amir Al-Sistani,” he said with a small, condescending bow of his head. “I am sure you are familiar with the name.” His dark eyes hardened. “Your plan to stop me has failed, as has your attempt to arm the heretic separatists who resist Allah's will that I establish the Islamic Republic of Chechnya.”

He shrugged. “It doesn't matter to me that you intended to bring down the apostate government of Syria, except that it is further proof to my Muslim brothers that you Americans will do anything in your hatred of Islam. But hasn't that always been the way in your arrogance and conceit?”

Al-Sistani waved his hand, apparently at the cameraman, who panned back to reveal that the terrorist was standing behind two blindfolded individuals seated with their wrists bound in front of them. One was a tall man and the other a young woman.

“That's David Huff,” Lindsey told Fauhomme.

“Who's the girl? And what does he mean, our ‘plan to stop him'? I don't even know who the fuck he is,” Fauhomme said, pausing the recording.

“Hell if I know who the girl is; we assume she's the one who tried to call the embassy during the attack. But who she is and what she was doing there, we don't have a clue. Al-Sistani is the guy who tried to take down the New York Stock Exchange a couple of years ago. We extradited him to Saudi Arabia and they turned him loose . . .”

“Another national security fuckup. Let's listen,” Fauhomme said.

The Arab continued. “However, I realize that this would be something of an . . . embarrassment . . . to your president should he be forced to acknowledge that Al Qaeda not only continues to exist,” he said mockingly, “but indeed, we are quite capable of striking at our enemies wherever we find them—in Zandaq or in the heart of his sinful cities. Or should I say that if you cut the head off the great serpent of Allah, another will grow to replace it.”

Again he made a small bow as he walked out in front of the two captives. “So, where does that leave us? It is quite clear to me that this embarrassing situation would greatly harm the president's chances of re-election. But I do not care who is in power—and in fact I may prefer such a weak and ineffectual administration to another—so perhaps we may strike a deal that benefits us both? You will deliver to me, at a place of my choosing, the great Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently held in your federal prison in Colorado, or the next recording will be distributed worldwide and will include . . . Raad, take your place . . .” A huge, bare-chested man stepped in behind the young woman and placed a large, curved knife at her throat. “. . . the slaughter of these sheep!”

As the young woman felt the blade, she screamed. “Please help us!” she cried out, raising her bound hands in front of her chest as she pled. “O lion of God, save me!”

Seemingly surprised, Al-Sistani at first scowled as he looked back at the young woman, but then laughed cruelly as he turned back to the camera. “So you see, the American harlot wants to live,” he said. “Imagine the effect on voters should I not only reveal
that the U.S. administration has been lying to them, but its lies led to the horrifying death of this poor child and your embassy lackey. You have one week to deliver Sheik Abdel-Rahman to a place I will name later.”

Al-Sistani made a cutting motion across his neck at the cameraman. When nothing happened, he snarled, “Turn it off, you idiot!”

The screen went blank. Cursing, Fauhomme hurled the channel changer at the television. “I can't fucking believe this shit!” he bellowed. He glared at Ray Baum, who stood in a corner of the room, recalling when the assassin told him that the girl had gotten away.

“I thought you knew what the hell you were doing!” he yelled.

“I do,” Baum replied. “I did what you told me to do, make it look like a suicide. I got on his computer and wrote the note. I swear there was nothing on his screen like he was webcamming with her but she must have been recording. I didn't see it . . .”

“And we're lucky she called Connie. But you managed to botch that, too.”

“She was pretty clever and bought herself time with that hairdryer excuse,” Baum countered. “I don't know how she made me. I kept my face down in front of her security camera.”

“Well, it must have been something, because she ran like a rabbit, and now I have to sweat bullets.”

“So why does this Al-Sistani fuck want this sheik, Abdel whatshisname?”

Lindsey grimaced. “Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known in the U.S. as ‘The Blind Sheik,' is probably the world's most venerated cleric in the eyes of Islamic extremists,” he said. “He was behind the first attempt to bomb the World Trade Center back in 1993 and is in federal custody. If Al-Sistani can force the U.S. to hand him over, it would be a huge public relations coup for him and probably give him a leg up in the Al Qaeda hierarchy, maybe even make him the new number one. Jihadists the world over would flock to his banner.”

Rubbing his temples, Fauhomme felt a migraine coming on. The recording he'd just watched had been delivered to the U.S. embassy in Grozny that morning and transmitted from there to Lindsey's office in the White House. He felt a sudden chill that his old Romanian grandmother would have attributed to someone “stepping on your grave.” He thought of himself as above superstition, but he had to admit that this whole mess was spinning out of control.

He had placed a call Monday morning to his man at FBI headquarters and told him that Allen was dead and that the bureau needed to take over the investigation, which of course would lead nowhere. But then the New York district attorney, Karp, had sent them packing. He wasn't too worried about the general's laptop. As incompetent as Baum had proved to be in getting to Jenna Blair, the muscle-head was sure that he'd inserted a computer virus in Allen's machine that would destroy the hard drive as soon as anyone tried to open the files.

At first Fauhomme worried about Karp, a man he knew only by reputation. He knew that he was no friend of the president or his politics. But there was only a week to the election, and after some initial concerns about what Karp would do and how fast, he knew there wasn't much the district attorney could do before the election. Then, when the president was back in power, and with the help of the media, they'd deal with Karp; the man was up for re-election in two years and it was high time he was voted out of office.

The big concern, the one that could throw a wrench into the machine before the election, was Blair, or more accurately, whatever it was she had on her computer. It had been forty-eight hours since Baum lost her, and despite a federal “Be On The Lookout” bulletin distributed nationally to law enforcement agencies as well as airports, bus stations, and the media, there'd been no reported sightings. The agencies had been told that the computer contained highly classified material and was not to be examined,
under stiff penalties. And “the person of interest in this case is not to be questioned but detained and held for federal authorities.”

“What's the latest with the Russians and finding this joker, Al-Sistani, and the others?” Fauhomme asked.

“After this came in I called my contact at their embassy,” Lindsey replied. “I'm meeting with him tomorrow. He indicated they have a man on the inside but are waiting to hear from him.”

“What the hell is taking so long? Can't you people get off your asses?”

Lindsey's eyes narrowed. “I'm not the one who murdered an American general, or . . .” he said, looking over at Baum, “. . . got myself recorded doing it.”

Baum's expression of barely concealed contempt didn't change, but Fauhomme pointed a fat finger at Lindsey. “No, you are the one who created this fuckup in the first place. But it's water under the bridge. We have a mess and we need cleanup on aisle four before the voters go to the polls. Let this Russian know what we expect and that we need it in a hurry.”

“And if the Russians can't help, what are we going to do about Al-Sistani's demands?”

Fauhomme looked as if he'd been asked an incredibly stupid question. “Why, we'll give him the old fart. Say it's on humanitarian grounds or some such bullshit. I mean, they bought it about that guy who blew up the jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, didn't they?”

“And if it comes out that we were blackmailed into it by a leader of Al Qaeda, which as you pointed out doesn't exist anymore?”

“I don't give a shit,” Fauhomme said, “so long as it's after next Tuesday. My job is to win this election. Besides, we'll spin it that the president knew all along that Al Qaeda was still a player, but he was trying to lull them into a sense of security until we were betrayed by these separatists.”

“Think the press will buy it?” Lindsey said skeptically.

“Hell yes,” Fauhomme snorted. “They're already complicit in
the cover-up for not asking questions in the first place. They'd have to swallow their overblown egos and admit that they didn't do their jobs. You think that pack of hyenas are suddenly going to become good journalists? In what hole have you been hiding? They'll lap up anything we feed them that will get them off the hook. If it's going along with more lies, they'll go along. Now what about the girl?”

“We have surveillance on all of her known acquaintances, including her folks in Colorado.”

“Have you talked to them?”

“Yes, we told them that she and Allen were ‘friends,' and that we were concerned about her well-being.”

“They believe it?”

“Who knows.” Lindsey shrugged. “According to my guy, they hadn't heard from her since last Friday. They were obviously worried, but he couldn't get a reading on whether they were hiding anything.”

“I assume we've got all these phones tapped?”

“Of course, and if she sends an email we'll track it back to the IP—internet provider—address and we'll know where she sent it from,” Lindsey said. “We've frozen her bank account. So she's going to be out of money pretty quick. We'll find her.”

“You'll let me know when you do,” Fauhomme said, and glanced at Baum. “I'd prefer if Ray took her into custody, as well as her computer.”

“I understand that ‘took into custody' is a euphemism, and this girl won't be making any court appearances,” Lindsey said. “But what are you going to do if some other law enforcement agency gets to her first? It's going to look pretty funny if she dies after they turn her over to your goon here.”

“Watch your mouth,” Baum snarled.

“Watch yours,” Lindsey shot back. “Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? I have a hundred goons like you I can call right now. If my boss hadn't put your boss in charge until the election, I
might do it just for kicks. And remember, the election is over next Tuesday.”

Baum considered an angry comeback but thought better of it and shut his mouth. But Fauhomme laughed. “All right, boys, the testosterone is getting a little thick in here. As for your question, I think you were the one who pointed out to me that it's a dangerous world out there, and accidents do happen, even suicide.”

“What if she goes to the press before we can get to her?”

Fauhomme's lips twisted. “I've thought about that and I have a plan. I'm going to call one of my pals in the press and tell him—completely off the record, of course—that Allen and Blair were ‘special friends.' Not much more than that. I'll feed him what more I want him to have as circumstances dictate. That will get the hyenas' attention off of Chechnya; nothing they like better than a good sex scandal, it's easier than covering real news.”

Lindsey shook his head and blew out his breath. “So we're still going to destroy his reputation and do that to his family.”

“What? You suddenly developing a conscience?” Fauhomme scoffed.