Night Fall (14 page)

I nodded. The OPR is the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, which sounds really nice, but in fact, this is a pure Orwellian name. The OPR is like the NYPD Internal Affairs: snoops, snitches, and spies. I had no doubt, for instance, that Mr. Liam Griffith was an OPR guy. I said to Kate, “Did these guys offer you a transfer to North Dakota?”

“I’m sure that was a possibility. But they kept their cool and tried to make like it was a small error in judgment on my part. They even complimented me on my initiative.”

“You get a promotion?”

“I got a polite, but firm suggestion to be a team player. They told me that other agents were working on this lead, and that I should go on doing eyewitness interviews and confine myself to those duties.”

“You got off easy. One of my commanding officers once threw a paperweight at me.”

“We’re a bit more subtle. In any case, I got the message, and I also knew I’d hit on something.”

“So why didn’t you follow it up?”

“Because I was following orders not to. Didn’t you hear what I said?”

“Ah, they were just testing you to see what you’re made of. They wanted you to tell them you weren’t going to drop it.”

“Yeah, right.” She thought a moment and said, “At that point, I just made the logical assumption that if anything came of this, it would come out in some internal memo followed by a news conference. I wasn’t thinking of conspiracy or cover-up five years ago.”

“But you are now.”

She didn’t reply to that, but said to me, “Everyone who was involved with this case was deeply affected by it, but I know that the witness interviewers were affected in a different way. We were the ones who spoke to people who saw this event, over two hundred of whom described what they believed was a missile or rocket, and none of us could reconcile what we’d heard from the witnesses with the Final Report or the CIA animation.” She added, “The ATTF bosses were having some problems with the interviewers, and I wasn’t the only one called into that office.”

“Interesting.” I asked, “How did the interviewing process work?”

Kate replied, “At first, it was just chaos. Hundreds of NYPD and FBI task force personnel were shipped out from Manhattan to the East End of Long Island within twenty-four hours. There weren’t enough places to stay, so some agents slept in their cars, the Coast Guard facilities were used as dorms, and some agents made it home at night if they lived close by. I slept in an office of the Moriches Coast Guard Station for two nights with four other women, then they got me a hotel room with another FBI agent.”

“Who?”

“Don’t ask me the names of the people I worked with.”

I actually didn’t want names of FBI people who wouldn’t talk to me anyway; but NYPD people would. I asked Kate, “Did you work directly with any NYPD?”

“A few, at first.” She continued, “There were over seven hundred good initial witnesses and about a hundred marginal types. And at first, we couldn’t determine which witnesses saw a streak of light and which saw only the explosion. Eventually, we classified the witnesses as to credibility and what aspect of the crash they saw. Within a few days, we had over two hundred witnesses who claimed they saw a streak of light.”

“And those were the witnesses that the FBI interviewed.”

“Right. But initially, in all the confusion, the NYPD got a lot of the good witnesses, and the FBI got a lot of bad witnesses.”

“What a horrible thought.”

She ignored this and continued, “We got it sorted out, and the witnesses who saw the streak of light were interviewed only by FBI. Then the cherry-picked witnesses-about twenty people who were very insistent about the streak of light rising from the ocean, such as Captain Spruck-were passed over to a higher echelon of FBI.”

“And CIA. Like Ted Nash.”

“Apparently.”

“Did any of these witnesses have unfortunate accidents?”

She smiled. “Not a single one.”

“Well, there goes my theory.”

I thought about this and realized what I’d known from recent experience and observation: The NYPD detectives working for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force were tasked with most of the initial legwork. Whenever they got a hit, they turned it over to an FBI agent. This pleased God.

I said to Kate, “I’ll bet that these interviewers-NYPD and FBI-who had the experience of talking to people who saw that streak of light are the core of the group who don’t believe this was an accident.”

“There is no group.” She got up and went into the bedroom to get dressed for work.

I finished my coffee and also went into the bedroom.

I strapped on my 9mm Glock, which I own, and which is a copy of my old police-issued piece. Kate strapped on her Glock, which is a.40 caliber FBI-issued model. Hers is bigger than mine, but I’m a very secure guy so it doesn’t bother me much.

We put on our jackets, she grabbed her briefcase, I grabbed the
Post
sports pages, and we left the apartment.

I had this mental image of six OPR guys at 26 Federal Plaza cracking their knuckles while they awaited our arrival.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Our doorman, Alfred, got us a taxi, and we began our half-hour trip downtown to our place of employment at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. It was 9A.M., and rush hour traffic was starting to lighten up on this warm and sunny July day.

We’re not supposed to talk about anything sensitive in a taxi, especially if the driver’s name is Abdul, which was this guy’s name on his hack license, so, to pass the time, I asked Abdul, “How long have you been in this country?”

He glanced back at me, then replied, “Oh, about ten years, sir.”

“What do you think happened to TWA Flight 800?”

Kate said, “John.”

I ignored her and repeated the question.

Abdul replied hesitantly, “Oh, what a terrible tragedy was that.”

“Right. Do you think it was shot down by a missile?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I think the Israelis shot it down and tried to make it look like it was the Arabs. What do you think?”

“Well, that is possible.”

“Same with the World Trade Center bombing.”

“It is possible.”

“John.”

“So,” I said to Abdul, “you think it was a missile.”

“Well… many people saw this missile.”

“And who would have such a powerful missile?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“The Israelis. That’s who.”

“Well, it is possible.”

“What’s it say in your Arabic newspaper on the front seat there?”

“Oh… yes, they mentioned this anniversary of the tragedy.”

“What are they saying? American military accident? Or the Jews?”

“They are unsure. They mourn the loss of life and look for answers.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

Kate said, “Okay, John.”

“I’m just trying to warm up a little.”

“Why don’t you try to shut up a little?”

We rode in silence toward 26 Fed, and I read the sports.

The Federal government, and all its employees, are very sensitive to the rights and feelings of all minorities, recent immigrants, Native Americans, puppy dogs, forests, and endangered species of slime mold. I, on the other hand, lack this sensitivity, and my level of progressive thinking is stuck somewhere around the time when police regulations were rewritten to prohibit beating confessions out of suspects.

In any case, Special Agent Mayfield and I, while not on the same wavelength, do communicate, and I had noticed in the last year that we were learning from each other. She was using the F-word more and calling more people assholes, while I was becoming more sensitive to the inner anguish of people who were fuckheads and assholes.

We got to 26 Fed, and I paid Abdul and gave him a five-dollar tip for causing him some anxiety.

We entered the big lobby of the forty-one-story building from the Broadway entrance and walked toward the security elevators.

Federal Plaza is home to an alphabet soup of government agencies, half of which collect taxes for the other half to spend. Floors twenty-two through twenty-eight are the offices of various law enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies and are accessible only by special elevators, which are separated from the lobby by thick Plexiglas, behind which are guards. I flashed my creds too quickly for the guards to see, which I always do, then I punched a code into a keypad and the Plexiglas door opened.

Kate and I entered, and went to the seven elevators that service floors twenty-two through twenty-eight. None of the guards asked to see our credentials more closely.

We got into an empty elevator and rode up to the twenty-sixth floor. I said to Kate, “Be prepared to be called separately into someone’s office.”

“Why? Do you think we were followed last night?”

“We’ll find out.”

The elevator doors opened on the twenty-sixth floor into a small lobby. There were no security guards here, and maybe there didn’t have to be if you’d already gotten that far.

There were, however, security cameras mounted overhead, but whoever was watching the monitors was probably paid six bucks an hour and had no clue what or who they were looking for or at. Assuming they were awake.

On a more positive side, Kate and I had to again punch a code into a keypad to enter our corridor.

So, to be fair, security at 26 Federal Plaza for floors twenty-two through twenty-eight was good, but not excellent. I mean, I could have been a terrorist with a gun shoved in Kate’s back, and I’d be in this corridor without too much trouble.

In fact, security hadn’t improved much here or probably anywhere in the last two decades despite clear evidence that there was a war going on.

The public was only vaguely aware that we were at war, and the government agencies that were conducting that war had never been told, officially or otherwise, by anyone in Washington that what was happening around the world was, in fact, a war directed against the United States of America and its allies.

Washington and the news media chose to see each and every terrorist attack as a single event with little or no connection, whereas even an imbecile or a politician, if he thought about it long enough, could see a pattern. Someone needed to rally the troops, or some event needed to be loud enough to wake up everyone.

At least that was my opinion, formed in the short year I’d been here, with the advantage of being an outsider. Cops look for patterns that suggest serial killers or organized crime. The Feds apparently looked at terrorist attacks as the work of disorganized groups of malcontents or psychopathic individuals.

But that’s not what it was; it was something far more sinister and very well planned and organized by people who stayed up late at night writing things on their “To Do” list about ways to fuck us up.

My opinion, however, was not popular and not shared by many of the people working on floors twenty-two through twenty-eight, or if it was, no one was putting this viewpoint in a memo or bringing it up at meetings.

I stopped at a water cooler and said to Kate between slurps, “If you’re questioned by a boss, or the OPR, the best thing to do is tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”

She didn’t reply.

“If you lie, your lie will not match my lie. Only the unrehearsed truth will keep us from having to get a lawyer.”

“I know that. I’m a lawyer. But-”

“Water?” I offered. “I’ll hold the handle.”

“No, thanks. Look-”

“I won’t push your face in the water. Promise.”

“John, fuck off and grow up. Listen, we haven’t really done anything wrong.”

“That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it. What we did last night was because we’re dedicated and enthusiastic agents. If you’re questioned, do not look, act, or feel guilty. Act proud of your devotion to duty. That confuses them.”

“Spoken like a true sociopath.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“This is not funny.” She added, “I was specifically told five years ago not to involve myself in this case.”

“You should have listened.”

We continued our walk down the corridor, and I said to her, “My guess is that if they’re on to us, they won’t let on right now. They’ll keep an eye on us to see what we do and who we talk to.”

“You’re making me feel like a criminal.”

“I’m just telling you how to deal with what you started.”

“I didn’t
start
anything.” She looked at me and said, “John, I’m sorry if I got you-”

“Don’t worry about it. A day without trouble for John Corey is like a day without oxygen.”

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek, then walked to her workstation in the big cube farm, greeting her colleagues along the way.

My workstation was on the other side of the room-away from the FBI-types-among my fellow NYPD detectives, both active-duty and retired contract agents like me.

While I enjoyed the company of my own people, this physical separation between FBI and NYPD bespoke a separation of cultures wider than ten feet of carpeting.

It was bad enough working here when I didn’t have a wife on the high-rent side of the room, and I needed an exit strategy from this place, but I didn’t want to just resign. Poking around the TWA 800 case might get me kicked out, which was fine with me and wouldn’t look to Kate like I was bailing out of our nice working arrangement, which she liked for some odd reason. I mean, I embarrass everyone I know, even other cops sometimes, but Kate, in some perverse way, seemed proud to be married to one of the problem cops on the twenty-sixth floor.