Night Fall

“No.”

“But it goes to show you. Five hundred people busted their tails on that case, and it turns out to be a mechanical malfunction.”

Harry didn’t reply.

I added, “Sometimes we get too paranoid on this job.”

“We’re not paranoid enough.”

“Right.” I asked, “What are you working on?”

He replied, “Some stupid Islamic charity out in Astoria-it looks like they’re fu

“Is that illegal?”

He laughed. “How the hell do I know? I guess the illegal part is collecting money for one thing and doing something else with it. It violates some federal law. Problem is the money goes to a supposedly legitimate charity overseas, andthen goes to where it doesn’t belong. It’s like trying to make sense out of my wife’s checkbook. But the FBI forensic accounting people find this fascinating. What are you doing?”

“I’m taking a sensitivity course in Islamic culture.”

He laughed again.

I turned my attention back to the stuff on my desk. There were a lot of memos to read through, initial, and forward on, which I did.

The interesting folders-what the Feds call dossiers-were locked in the records room, and if I needed one, I had to fill out a form, which was processed by persons unknown and either rejected or returned with the dossier.

I have a secret clearance, but my need-to-know was limited, so I had to confine myself to the Khalil case, or cases I’d been assigned. This makes it difficult to discover if one case has anything to do with another. Everything was compartmentalized for security reasons, or reasons of turf protection, which, in my humble opinion, was a major weakness in the intelligence game. In police work, virtually every file is available to any detective with a hunch and a long memory about some case or some perp.

But I shouldn’t make negative comparisons. Nothing succeeds like success, and so far, knock wood, the Feds had been very successful in keeping America off the front lines of global terrorism.

Except once. Maybe twice. Maybe three times.

The first time, the World Trade Center bombing, was a big surprise, but almost every perpetrator had been arrested, tried, and sent to jail for life.

There was a nice granite monument for the six victims of the blast, erected between the Twin Towers directly above the site of the underground garage explosion.

Then there was the TWA 800 explosion, which may or may not have been a score for the visitors.

And then there was the Asad Khalil case, which from my point of view was a terrorist attack, but which the government had passed off as a series of murders committed by a man of Libyan descent who had a personal grudge against a number of American citizens.

This was not quite the truth, as I can attest to, but if I said that, I’d be breaking the law, according to some oaths I’d taken and pledges I’d signed, all having to do with national security and so forth.

This world of national security and counter-terrorism was truly a far different world than I was accustomed to, and I had to convince myself, every day, that these people knew what they were doing. Somewhere, however, deep in the back of my uncomplicated mind, I had some doubts.

I stood, put on my jacket, and said to Harry, “Beep me if someone calls a meeting.”

“Where you going?”

“On a dangerous mission. I may not return.”

“If you do, can you get me a Polish sausage on a roll? No mustard.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I left quickly, glancing at Kate, who was fixated on her computer screen. I got on the elevator to the lobby and went out to the street.

There are still a few pay phones left in the era of cell phones, and I went to one out on Broadway. It was getting warm, and the sky was clouding up.

I used my cell phone to look up Dick Kearns’s cell phone number, and I used the pay phone to call him.

Dick, an old NYPD homicide colleague, had left the ATTF a few months earlier and was now a civilian doing security clearance background checks on a contract basis for the Feds.

He answered, “Hello.”

“Is this Kearns Investigative Services?”

“It is.”

“I think my wife is having an affair. Can you follow her?”

“Who is this? Corey? You asshole.”

“I thought you were doing matrimonial.”

“I’m not, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.”

“Hey, what are you doing for lunch?” I asked.

“Busy. What’s up?”

“What are you doing now?”

“Talking to you. Where are you?”

“Outside 26 Fed.”

“You need me now?”

“I do.”

There was a pause, then he said, “I’m home. In Queens.” He added, “I work from home. Great job. You should consider it.”

“Dick, I can’t bullshit all morning. Meet me soonest in that place in Chinatown. You know the one?”

“One Hung Low?”

“Right. Next to the Vietnamese place called Phuc Yu.” I hung up, found a pushcart, and got two Polish sausages on a roll, one without mustard.

I went back into 26 Fed and up to my office.

I gave Harry his Polish sausage, went to the coffee bar, and got a cup of black coffee. On the wall were FBI Wanted Posters in English and Arabic, including two for Mr. Osama bin Laden-one for the USSCole attack, and one for the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. There was a $5 million reward on his head, but so far, no takers, which I thought was odd. For five million bucks, most people would turn in their best friend and their mother.

The other odd thing was that bin Laden had never actually taken credit for any of the attacks that he’d supposedly masterminded. It was the CIA who had fingered him, but I wondered how they knew for sure. The point was, as I’d discussed with Kate yesterday, terrorist groups and individuals had apparently stopped bragging about their work, and this could be the case in the TWA 800 explosion.

I looked at the face of Osama bin Laden on the Wanted Poster. Weird-looking guy. In fact, all these Mideast gentlemen on the dozen or so Wanted Posters looked scary, but maybe anyone on a Wanted Poster looks like a perp in that context.

I stared at the poster of my old nemesis, Asad Khalil, a.k.a. The Lion. This was the one guy who looked fairly normal-well groomed and good-looking-but if you looked hard into those eyes, you saw the scary stuff.

The text under Mr. Khalil’s picture was vague, speaking only of multiple murders of American and European nationals in various countries. The Justice Department reward was a measly one million bucks, which I personally found insulting, considering this scumbag tried to kill me and was still out there.

Actually, if Ted Nash were still alive, he’d be even more insulted since it was Asad Khalil who had put a bullet from a sniper rifle through Ted’s head.

I went back to my desk, sat down, and turned on my computer. I got on the Internet and typed in “TWA 800.”

The internal security people sometimes checked what you were accessing, of course, but if they were checking up on me, then they already knew what I was up to.

I saw that the entries for TWA 800 could take a week to go through, so I got on to the FIRO Web site first, and spent half an hour reading about conspiracy and cover-up.

I perused a few other Web sites along with some investigative articles from magazines and newspapers. The earlier articles, I noticed, the ones written within six months of the crash, raised a lot of questions that weren’t resolved in the articles written later, even by the reporters who had initially raised the questions.

I sensed Harry looking at me, and I raised my eyes to his.

He asked me, “Are you going to eat that?”

I handed the sausage across the low wall separating us, got off the Internet, and shut down my computer.

I put my jacket on and said, “I’m late for my sensitivity class.”

He chuckled.