Night Fall

“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 thePost 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 su

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 a

“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 i

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 co

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.