The Global War on Morris (17 page)

THE SAFE HOUSE WITH LOX

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2004

“T
his is Paradise.”

“No it isn't.”

“It seems like Paradise.”

“Then where are the virgins?”

“Maybe no virgins. But it's got the Emeril Signature kitchen, satellite television, and look at that ocean view!”

“You are a fool.”

Hassan cradled his head in his hands as his cell members bickered in the Feldstein living room at The Residences at Paradise.

Azad was sprawled on the Berber carpet, leafing through a
People
magazine. He wore his favorite designer jeans, which annoyed Hassan. They must have cost Azad a month's pay mowing lawns at the landscaping company.

Achmed napped on the couch, snoring through a gaping mouth.
He was constantly tired from his night job cleaning jets' cabins. Achmed was the cell's explosives expert.

And Pervez. On the battlefields of Afghanistan, he was famous for uncoiling on his enemy like a venomous snake. Now he seemed stitched into a green microfiber recliner. He was bloated from the employee discounts he received as a counterman at McDonald's.

Gleaming marble, sparkling glass, and textured wallpaper with extravagant pastel streaks surrounded them. Hassan's nostrils tingled from the scent of the recently installed Berber carpet.

Almost as soon as Rona and Morris returned to New York, he had relocated the cell from a hovel in Little Havana. It seemed like a sensible idea at the time. The Residences at Paradise was the last place the FBI would be on the lookout for global crime (unless they were investigating an international mahjong ring). And the relocation would improve the cell's morale, which was just as low as his own, at least prior to meeting Rona. Here, they could plan their attack, and when fatigue set in, they could take a break, have a little nosh, and watch the gigantic plasma television mounted on a wall.

Hassan stared at the screen. CNN was regurgitating a comment the Vice President had made earlier in the day: “It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November second, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.”

How did he find out?
Hassan thought.

Achmed awakened with a grunt. “I am sick of CNN,” he said. “Turn on Fox News!”

Azad protested: “I refuse to watch Fox! I want to watch
That '70s Show
!”

“But we had a deal!” insisted Achmed. “Your shows on odd-numbered days. Fox on even days. Today is the eighth. We watch Fox. Right, Hassan?”

Before Hassan could take a side, Pervez chimed in. “Excuuuuuse
me! Someone is trying to read here!” He was now leafing through a copy of Rona's glossy coffee-table book,
Marc
Chagall: Masterpieces.

“Shut up, Pervez!” Azad yelled.

“Enough!” Hassan said. He grabbed the television clicker from the coffee table and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. The gesture caught everyone's attention. They trained their eyes on him, not quite ready to confront the authority that befalls one who possesses the television clicker.

Hassan stared back, making sure to fix his eyes on each one. They wouldn't challenge him, he knew. They couldn't. They were too lazy. Draped around the room like discarded clothing.

This terrorist cell would bring the West to its knees. Right after Larry King on CNN.

Hassan clapped his hands like cymbals. “We must stay focused!” he demanded.

“Focused on what, Hassan?” Pervez grumbled. “It's been thirty months. And still we know nothing about when we will attack, where we will attack, who we will attack, or even if we
will
attack! I thought I would be in Paradise by now. Instead I just got my fourth raise at McDonald's and I'm up for assistant manager. I can't keep waiting. Maybe I'll apply to al-Qaeda. I hear they're expanding.”

“Then go to al-Qaeda,” said Azad. “Whine to them. See how fast they take you!”

“I will go, Azad. But first I will cut out your tongue,” Pervez snarled. There was a time, Hassan reflected, when that threat would have petrified Azad. The first time that Hassan saw Pervez—at the Abu al-Zarqawi Army of Jihad Martyrs of Militancy Brigade training camp—he immediately requested that headquarters assign him to the South Florida cell. That snarl would come in handy at the right moment. It would strike fear into someone's heart. But Pervez's transfer to America required him to change his appearance to blend in. His beard came off, and after he started at the McDonald's, the pounds went on. His jowls grew puffy, and his once-fierce jaw drooped with
wobbly flesh. Now, his snarl was no more threatening than the annoyed expression of a McDonald's employee toward a customer who took too long deciding on which value meal to order. And it's hard to effectuate a good snarl when your lips are orange from Doritos crumbs.

They were looking, acting, more like the Weight Watchers Club of Boca Raton than a terrorist cell, Hassan realized. Thirty months was just too long to maintain unit cohesion and discipline.

What is Tora Bora waiting for? How long can they expect me to keep everyone motivated without even giving us a hint of our mission? How many towels must I fold? How many Happy Meals must Pervez serve, lawns must Azad landscape, planes must Achmed vacuum, before the order comes to activate the cell?

A string of commercials droned on the television, broken by some gentle piano notes. A woman stared through a window at a slightly falling rain. And then this: “Sometimes, even your depression medicine isn't enough. That's why there's Enhancify. Prescribed by your doctor, Enhancify gives you the added tools you need to make it through the day. Every day.” In the next scene, the woman walked with her husband, under an umbrella with the bright-yellow Enhancify trademark.

“This I do not understand,” Azad commented. “They give you depression medicine for your depression medicine?”

Which gave Hassan an idea.

Rona. The surrogate mother/therapist. With her UJA tote bag full of kaleidoscopic pills and tablets.

T
he words were recorded slowly and methodically. The voice heartened Hassan.

“Hello. Thank you for caw-ling Row-nuh Feldstein, C-S-double-yuuuuuu. I am unable to come to the phone at the present time. But if you leave yaw name, phone numbuh, day and time of yaw call, I will return it as soon as possible. Please. You should wait for the beep. And then tawk.”

“Hello, Mrs. Feldstein? So,
nu
? Please call me. It is important. Good-bye.”

Please call back soon
, he thought.

T
he call was intercepted by Alonso Diaz of FBI–Boca. He plugged into his computer the New York phone number that Hassan had called. Leaned back. And waited.

His monitor flickered with information about the recipient of Hassan's call: Rona Feldstein of Great Neck, New York. He scrolled through her driver's license number, her social security number, her current address (19 Soundview Drive), her previous known address/addresses (“none”), her employer (“self-employed”), her husband's name, social security number, and employer, her record of arrests and infractions (“none”), and miscellaneous details about her life that had all the intrigue of a PBS series on the Blue-winged Warbler.

He clicked the icon on his photo gallery and found the images of Hassan and Rona at the Paradise. It brought a delicious smile to Diaz's lips.

The camera doesn't lie. People do.

What turns ordinary people into secret agents, skulking in the shadows, disguising phone records, and creating clandestine greetings like “So,
nu
?”

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” he liked to quote Freud. It was the only Freud quote he knew, but it seemed to explain most of the entries on the “persons of interest” list.

Lust.

Take Hassan and Rona. How perfect! Not only was a middle-aged Jewish woman from New York cheating on her husband, but she was doing it with an Arab! What could be more dangerous? More arousing? Less kosher! Talk about mixing milk with meat!

Diaz got excited just thinking about it.

Still, he had a job to do. His supervisor—Mr. Terrorist Behind
Every Tree—would demand an update about the people under Diaz's watchful eyes.

He pecked at his keyboard until this message flashed on his screen:

YOU ARE ENTERING A RESTRICTED SITE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW. PRESS ENTER FOR NICK. PRESS EXIT FOR HOME PAGE.

After typing a succession of passwords, authorization codes, and secret answers to secret questions, he arrived at his file on the Network Centric Total Information Collection, Integration, Synthesis, Assessment, Dissemination, and Deployment website.

“FELDSTEIN, RONA, he typed. He added her social security and phone number, and, just for good measure, he typed the name of her husband.

While NICK contemplated, Diaz daydreamed over one of the pictures hanging on his partition. He and his wife were posing on the deck of a cruise ship, the sun setting at their backs.

The monitor flashed:

NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT

AMBER WATCH UPGRADE

NICK HAS FOUND MULTIPLE THREAT PATTERN[S] FOR FELDSTEIN, MORRIS SOLOMON

DATA FILE: 30/5/NYLIFO/1527HRS/0-14-1051-1455-R

DECLARED POTENTIAL PERSON OF INTEREST

FILED BY DC HEADQUARTERS

FIELD OF INTEREST: LONG ISLAND, NY

SEE LINKS:

D'AMICO, VICTORIA ELLEN

MONTOYEZ, RICARDO XAVIER

FELDSTEIN, CARYN—ARREST

FILE # PPI-FELD136-NY-4268-7010(a)

Then NICK blinked, and added the latest news reported:

UPDATE THREAT PATTERN

DATA FILE: 12/08/FLFTL/1725HRS/3-22-150M-4320-F

INQUIRY

FILED BY FLORIDA HQ, BOCA

FIELD OF INTEREST: FT. LAUDERDALE, FL

SEE LINKS:

MUZAN, HASSAN

FELDSTEIN, RONA JANET

FELDSTEIN, CARYN—ARREST

FILE # PPI-FELD136-NY-4268-7010(a)

NICK ALERT NICK ALERT NICK ALERT

UPGRADING FELDSTEIN, MORRIS S. TO:

AMBER WATCH

AMBER WATCH

AMBER WATCH

:/

Amber watch! That was about five colors away from a SWAT team kicking down a door somewhere. NICK had always blown him off, with nothing but a blank stare from the monitor.

Now, amber!

Maybe this isn't just another cigar,
he thought.

G
oddamn amber watch! In Florida! Why me? Why does this always goddamn happen to me?

Agent Fairbanks felt his neck muscles tighten as he glared at his computer screen. It was taunting him with the news of Rona and Morris Feldstein. From Florida. Fifteen hundred miles south of Fairbanks's Long Island jurisdiction. Florida. Where all the action was. The Feldsteins, the terrorists, the Feds, the Jews, the Cubans, the suspicious elections, the suspicious persons of interest, NICK's goddamn amber alerts.

Calm down
, Fairbanks coached himself, trying to remember his anger-management sessions.

The Feldsteins were now on Long Island, having brought back their weekend sunburns, their sacks of Florida oranges, and the various federal agencies that trailed them. Resuming their life of crime and their consorting with counterfeiters and terrorists and other
enemies of the State. And now that they were back in Fairbanks's jurisdiction, he was ready for them. He would kick in their doors and elbow out his law-enforcement rivals. He would assert his authority and stand at the press conference and feel the warm glare of the klieg lights and the thankful embrace of the media and announce the arrest of Morris and Rona Feldstein for heinous crimes against the government of the United States.

What those crimes were, however, he didn't know at the moment. But, sitting at his desk, his neck muscles pulsating, he resolved to find out.

He would need proximity. Someone to watch the Feldsteins' every move.

He punched at his phone. Agent Russell answered.

“Go pay a visit to that nut, McCord,” Fairbanks ordered. “It's time to tighten the noose.”

I
n Washington, Bill Sully dug his thumbs into his temples and nodded his head in disbelief. He had gathered assets from every available federal agency, department, division, bureau, and office in his pursuit of Ricardo Xavier Montoyez. And what happens? Some local yokel in Boca Raton blows the whole thing wide open with an amber watch on NICK. Like one of those tests of the federal emergency broadcast system. Buzzing throughout the entire department. Setting off lights and sirens in the darkness that he craved. Inviting everyone with a colored windbreaker and stenciled acronym to join the investigation. His investigation. They would push in and crowd him out. Assert their jurisdiction. Point him back to his place at the bottom of the law-enforcement food chain. He could already hear the condescension: “Leave this to us, Bill. We're the CIA. You go back to where you belong. To the Meat, Poultry, and Egg Security Division.”