The Lost Codex (4 page)

“Meaning?”

Vail lifted her brow. “Well, I think because a woman is more disarming than a man, she’s able to get closer to a male target, no matter how well guarded he is. His defenses are down. So when you’ve got a specific target you want to kill, using a woman for the job is more successful. Bottom line, I don’t think we can rule out the use of women as part of this operation. But since we don’t know what or who their targets are, and we don’t know their motivation, for now we can’t say women are or aren’t involved. If there’s a revenge component or if they’re trying to kill a specific person, we have to look at women. Otherwise it’ll likely be males.”

“Do we have a more specific profile?” Knox asked. “Somewhere to start?”

“I’m not sure we have enough to formulate anything definitive.”
Who am I kidding? We definitely don’t have enough.

“Your ass is covered,” McNamara said. “We realize you’re winging it. We’re just looking for some direction based on what we know.”

A bead of perspiration broke out across her brow.
So I should make you feel like I’m giving you something useful without sending us off in the wrong direction. Yeah, sure. And for my next trick …

Vail took a sip of water, then set the bottle down. “Broadly speaking, given what we have, we’re looking for young adult male bombers, but as I said, we should not be blind to women. Males will be twenty to thirty-five, women will be younger, twenty to thirty. Regardless of gender, they’ll be educated, middle-class individuals who may have a connection to a family member who’s been killed in either an American action abroad or an Israeli action. The recent war in Gaza is a possibility, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves to that. Hamas has been an active terror group for over twenty years and they began suicide attacks in the early 1990s. Al Humat started a few years later, if I remember correctly.

“Some studies suggest the bombers may be depressed or mentally ill individuals. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at here. This is a sensitive, very daring operation and the planners wouldn’t entrust such a difficult operation to an unstable personality.

“I do think we’re dealing with a group—that much seems obvious from the crime scenes we visited tonight—and that fits with the intel we got from Ekrem. As Uzi mentioned before, we need to be aware of groupthink mentality. Are you all familiar with that?”

She got a couple of blank stares. “Briefly, it’s a situation where members of a group blindly follow the opinions and directions of their leader because they place greater value on gaining consensus and harmony than on the critical analysis of an issue. So if a lot of people are fervently onboard with an approach laid out by their leaders, the others will set aside their personal opinions in favor of acceptance within the group, to keep from being rejected, ostracized, or kicked out. It can be an efficient way of getting things done—but if the group leaders are bad actors, as in this case, you get the situation we’ve got. Good for them, not so good for us.

“One other thing,” Vail said. “This is a group that looks at themselves as the underdogs going up against the big, bad USA: they use these asymmetric terror tactics as a mask to project strength and invincibility.”

Knox stopped pacing. “So if I can sum this up, it sounds like you believe Ekrem’s info is accurate: al Humat and/or Hamas.”

Vail bit the inside of her lip. “Let’s say I think Ekrem’s info is accurate insofar as it’s a group
like
al Humat and/or Hamas. I can’t tell you it’s specifically those groups or another one like the Islamic State or Islamic Jihad. Then again, a behavioral profile is only designed to tell you the
type
of person or group who committed the crimes. We need conventional forensics and investigative procedures to put an identity to our attackers.”

Knox frowned, then took his seat. “Understood.”

“Getting back to what Agent Uziel said earlier, sir, we really need to open an official investigation. I can then get full cooperation from my unit. ASAC Gifford—”

“Cannot be apprised of the situation,” Bolten said. “Absolutely not.”

Tasset leaned forward in his chair. “You’re on this team for a reason.”

I wish he’d stop saying that.

“And it’s got nothing to do with London.”

Bullshit.
Vail tried to keep a poker face, but her gaze strayed over to Knox. His expression was as impassive as the sandstone columns of the White House.

“Your expertise in behavioral analysis,” McNamara added. “It gives OPSIG a dimension we’ve lacked. You may prefer to confer with the profilers in your unit, but the cases we handle are black. Your group does not exist. The things you do, the missions you carry out, have not happened. Just like in London. That’s the way this works. This meeting, in fact, is not happening.” He turned to Knox. “I thought you explained all this to her.”

Knox did not reply, but Vail wanted to—something like, “I haven’t been told a damn thing.”

“Do we have a problem, Agent Vail?” McNamara asked.

“No, Mr. Secretary. I don’t have a problem.”
I’ve got so many I don’t know where to start.

“Agent Uziel,” McNamara said. “You sit on this team for a reason as well. Given your background with Mossad and counterterrorism, is there anything you can add?”

Uzi shoved the toothpick to the left corner of his mouth. “Director Knox mentioned that Ekrem thought Hezbollah might have some involvement in this plot. Around the time the whole thing came to a head with Iran achieving nuclear capability, we intercepted communications indicating that Hezbollah had sleeper cells across the country in dozens of US cities. It sounded like it was a well established network that had been going on for years.”

“That’s never been verified,” Bolten said.

Uzi bobbed his head. “True. But … NSA captured a conversation between someone in southern California and a mobile in Mexico. It belonged to one of the Mexican drug cartels: Cortez. We began piecing it together with HUMINT,” he said, referring to human intelligence—confidential informants, interrogations, and the like. “We’re still working on it but all we’ve been able to verify is that the cartels and Hezbollah have been working together in some financial capacity.”

“That’s a long way from sleeper cells in dozens of US cities,” McNamara said.

“Call it a working theory. Could be that Hezbollah teaches them how to build tunnels and Cortez pays them for the engineering know-how. Or maybe it’s something else. But my instincts as a law enforcement officer tell me that this type of connection makes sense and can’t be ignored. It may just be a matter of finding proof. I’ll double down and check with my DEA guys on the task force.”

“Hector?” Knox said. “Any thoughts on this?”

DeSantos straightened up in his seat. “If we look at a potential threat matrix, if the US went beyond sanctions against Iran and bombed its reactors, and if there were sleeper cells here, their operatives would likely set off bombs here. We’d be under attack within our own borders. The invading army would have been living among us for years.”

The room got quiet.

Finally Bolten said, “We need to know if this sleeper theory is rooted in fact—and if it’s got anything to do with what happened tonight.”

“I can have our CIA and DEA reps on the task force check in with their CIs. But they’re gonna ask why. To get it right, they have to have all the facts.”

“No,” Bolten said. “You can’t say anything about tonight. The president made it quite clear.”

“Some are going to put it together anyway. But the JTTF is a terrorism task force made up mostly of law enforcement officers. This is what we do. That’s our job.”

“Your job, your
orders
, are to work this from inside OPSIG. This is bigger than law enforcement. It’s a matter of national security and we need to be able to operate without every goddamn blogger commenting on it, crying about privacy intrusions and racial profiling, without journalists bombarding us with questions and hampering our ability to do our work—which is finding these fuckers. You need more help, Secretary McNamara and Director Knox will get you personnel with security clearance.”

“I’m not sure that’s enough,” Uzi said.

“For now, it’ll have to be.”

4

W
hen Vail walked into her house at 3:30
AM
, her chocolate brown Standard Poodle puppy, Hershey, greeted her at the door. He stood up on his back legs and bathed her face with kisses. She gave him a piece of duck jerky and found Robby asleep on the couch, a bag of Trader Joe’s spicy flax seed chips on the coffee table perched beside an empty hummus container.

She inched her left buttock onto the edge of the seat cushion beside his thigh and stroked his face. His eyes fluttered open.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Very late at night or very early in the morning. Depends on your perspective.”

He sat up and hung his head. “I was dreaming.”

“About me?”

“Of course.”

“Right answer. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

Hershey followed them into the bedroom and hopped onto the mattress as Robby stepped up to the adjacent vanity and pulled open his drawer.

“So why did I have to leave? And what the hell is going on?”

Vail had been dreading such a question, which she knew would be among the first he asked. “Look, when you’re undercover, you can’t talk about the case, right?”

He popped open the cap on the toothpaste. “What’s that got to do with this? You don’t work undercover.”

“I can’t say any more.”

He stood there, the tube in his right hand and the brush in his left. His brain was not fully awake yet so it was taking him longer to put it together. He set the toothpaste down. “You’re telling me you’re undercover?”

Vail started removing the makeup she had put on before she and Robby had left for the evening. She glanced at him in the mirror and he seemed to get it: she could not talk about it.

He went back to his teeth, then spit and rinsed his brush. “Is it dangerous?”

Vail thought about that, about her run-in with the terrorist tonight, about what Uzi had said about how she had handled it. “Yes.”

Robby set the brush down and looked at her image in the mirror. He apparently decided against commenting.

What can he say? His undercover ops with DEA are dangerous too.

“I don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot.”

Vail tossed the cotton cleansing pad in the garbage. “I know.”

VAIL ARRIVED at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at 8:30
AM
—and found a note on her desk from Lenka, the administrative staff for her boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Thomas Gifford.

Rather than lifting the phone, she walked over to Lenka’s desk.

“Morning.”

“Agent Vail. I left a note—”

Vail held it up. “Found it. Boss wants to see me?”

Lenka nodded.

“He pissed about something?”

Lenka nodded again, then buzzed Gifford and told him Vail was there. “Go on in.”

Vail pushed through the door and Gifford motioned her to sit.

“I got a strange call this morning,” Gifford said, “from Liz Evanston. Do you know who Liz Evanston is?”

Not even a hello. Yeah, he’s pissed all right.

“Your ex-wife?”

“No.”

He didn’t say any more, so Vail asked, “If this is twenty questions, sir, can I have a pad and pen?”

“She’s Director Knox’s executive assistant.”

She raised both hands, palms up. “You just ruined the game. I had at least another nineteen guesses left.”

“She had a message for me. From the director. And it was about you.”

“Right. Now I understand why I’m sitting in your office.”

“Well, that makes one of us. I was told that you’re on special assignment. But when I asked for clarification and details—like how long this assignment would last—she said she didn’t know. When I asked if I should reassign your active cases, she said, ‘Probably’.” He leaned forward and rested both forearms on his desk. “Now your unit chief and I have the BAU to run, with a lot of cases and very few agents. As hard as it is for me to admit it, you’re one of my best analysts. So when you’re removed from the equation, I kind of have to know why, and for how long.”

“Well, you don’t really have to know
why
.”

Gifford looked at her.

“I’m just saying. ‘Why’ isn’t releva—”

“Karen,” he said through clenched teeth. “What the hell is going on?”

“I can’t go into it. But I do need to be excused from my duties for the foreseeable future. I’ll be working offsite.”

“I’m your ASAC. And that’s not an acceptable answer. Where are you getting your orders?”

“I don’t think I can say.”

Gifford frowned, hiked his brow, then grabbed a file off his desk. “Then no, you can’t be excused from your duties.”

“But—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Gifford’s line buzzed. He hit the intercom. “Lenka, hold my calls.”

“It’s Director Knox, sir.”

Gifford glanced at Vail, as if he was starting to put it together. “Put him through,” he said in the direction of the speaker, then lifted the handset. Vail started to rise but Gifford motioned her down. “Mr. Director.” He listened for a bit, his face flushing, then looked at Vail again. It was not a pleasant expression. Finally, he said, “Sir, how can I run my unit without—” The jaw muscles in his face tightened. “The good of the country. Yes sir, I understand … Yes sir, I will do that … No, we’ll manage … Yes. Thank you, sir.”

As Gifford set the handset back in the cradle, Vail slapped her thighs. “Okay, then. We’re good?”

Gifford steepled his fingers, his eyes locked with Vail’s.

“If it helps, sir, I’m not enjoying this.”

“I don’t believe you. And it most certainly does not help. What am I supposed to do with all your cases?”

“If I were the ASAC, I’d reass—”

“That was a rhetorical question.”

“Right.” Vail rose from her seat. She started to leave, then stopped with a hand on the knob. “You have your orders, sir. And I have mine. Neither of us are happy about it. How about we leave it at that?”

Gifford did not reply, so she pulled the door open and left.