The Rule Of Nine Part 18

"It will take shoe leather and money," said Dimmick. "It could get expensive. We'd have to take the photographs you gave us and the pictures from the FBI's wanted posters, when we get them, and send somebody to each of these places to ask questions. See if anyone recognizes him."

"Don't worry about the expense," said Snyder. "Do it."

"You got it," said Dimmick.

"Thanks. Call me when you have more," said Snyder. Then he hung up.

Snyder swiveled around in his chair to face the computer. He opened his e-mail, hit Compose, and started to type in the name Joselyn Cole. Before he got to the l in her first name, the computer produced her e-mail address. He typed "Liquida and Thorn" in the subject box, and began to unload all the information the investigator had just given him. He laid heavy emphasis on Thorn and his presumed activities at the boneyards, underlining the name of each place and their locations.

Snyder left out the fact that he had hired an investigator and told her instead that the information had been obtained from un-disclosed but highly reliable sources. This made it sound more important, the inference being that he had more than one. He told her that these sources had credible information that Liquida was involved in the attack on the naval base near San Diego a year earlier. Then Snyder mentioned that he had seen Internet news items in which Madriani's name appeared in connection with this same event, and asked whether she knew anything about this. He wondered if this would surprise her, or if she already knew. Snyder wanted to believe that he could trust her. He desperately needed an ally, and Cole had history on Thorn.

She was also a mover and shaker with friends in high places and access to the press. For the last several days file footage of Cole coming down the steps of the Capitol and reports of her testimony before Congress had been on the airwaves. She had ignited a firestorm of debate. Snyder was impressed. He studied how she'd done it.

Joselyn had emphasized the danger of precision weapons by telling the panel that these were the dream weapons of future a.s.sa.s.sins. As far as the cold logic of the weapon was concerned, the only difference between a carload of terrorists and a room filled with elected officials was the finger on the trigger and the selection of targets. The suggestion that in time this might change was all it took. Cole pushed their b.u.t.ton and suddenly the weapon was a threat to them.

It was an obvious point, but it wasn't lost on Snyder. All politics is local, and nothing is more local to most politicians than saving their own a.s.ses. If Cole could do it in the halls of Congress, why couldn't he do the same thing outside, on the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton? Hold a news conference and go public.

He had already sent letters to the Metropolitan Police in Was.h.i.+ngton about Liquida and Thorn. He'd received nothing in reply. Follow-up phone calls netted the usual response. They couldn't discuss the investigation, talk about persons of interest, or identify suspects.

The fact that Dimmick, with his inside sources of information, was unable to confirm whether the police were actively looking for Thorn or Liquida convinced Snyder that he was getting nowhere.

Dimmick had given him plenty of information, especially on Thorn. Snyder had the photographs from the FBI showing Thorn with his son. He could blow them up into posters. That would play well on television. The fact that he could now identify Thorn by name and provide details about his background, the fact that he was a merchant of death, that he bought airplanes and was linked to terrorists and wanted by the FBI. Snyder started to smile at the thought. It could be a hot story if it was handled the right way, the way Joselyn Cole had done it in front of the committee.

He could toss out Liquida's name, the fact that he was a former hit man for the drug cartel and was now believed to be a.s.sociated with terrorists, and that his fingerprint was found at the scene of Jimmie's murder. He wondered about Madriani and what he might say. It was Madriani who'd told him about Liquida and his thumbprint on Madriani's business card. Snyder could skate around it at the press conference. Just tell them there was a fingerprint. No need to tell them where it was found. Let the police deal with it.

His son was murdered because, as Madriani or his partner had said, Jimmie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a victim. Now, from what Snyder could see, the police were looking for his killer in all the wrong places. Either that or they weren't looking at all. Crime was like everything else. Cases went cold because cops got lazy. He wasn't going to allow that to happen to Jimmie's case. To Snyder, the investigation of his son's murder was like a living, breathing soul. It was all he had left. It galled him that there was no death penalty in the District of Columbia, a place where violent crime was the local sport. If the killer was arrested before Snyder could get his hands on him, Snyder would move on to the trial and live for that. And if the killer was convicted, he would live for the trial's penalty phase. And if you cornered him and asked him what he would do once the killer was marched off to prison and locked away, Bart Snyder couldn't tell you, because he didn't know. To him the concept of closure was a lie.

But for now he would be satisfied to have the media asking questions, demanding to know why the cops weren't developing the information he had given them on Thorn and Liquida. He would blow the lid off the investigation, smoke out the people in charge, and force them to answer his questions. He was tired of standing on the outside looking in, calling and getting no answers. It was his son who was dead. He had a right to know what was happening. And he wasn't going to sit around and wait to find out.

TWENTY-FIVE.

I'm getting a little hungry. Would you mind if we stop?" Harry looked over to discover that Sarah had dozed off in the pa.s.senger seat next to him.

"What? What did you say?" She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and stretched her arms. "You want to stop?" She yawned. "Sure. Where are we, do you know?"

"Somewhere west of Gallup. I'm not sure how many miles. We crossed the ArizonaNew Mexico line a ways back," said Harry. "Just pa.s.sed a sign. There's a restaurant and truck stop just up ahead."

"How far to the next town?" she asked.

"What, you don't like truck stops?"

"If you want to stop, it's fine with me," said Sarah.

"We're going to need gas anyway. How are you doing?" Harry looked over at her and smiled.

"I'm fine. Rather be home."

"Wouldn't we all," said Harry.

"After we gas up and eat, I'll drive if you want. You can rest up."

"Sounds good."

"You must be tired," she said.

"Actually, I am a little." Harry had been up half the night, keeping one eye out the window of the motel room toward the car. He had parked it almost a block away, under a streetlight in front of another motel across the road. He had told Sarah it was too dark in front of the motel where they were staying and they had a lot of stuff in the car.

She called him Uncle Harry, told him he was weird, and asked him if anybody had ever told him that before.

"No. Just you. Oh, and maybe a half dozen judges in town."

Harry had known Sarah since she was three. Until she was six, Sarah thought he was her uncle. When she was finally told they were not related, it was like finding out that the tooth fairy was a fraud. Harry hung around the house more than most of her relatives. He was often there for dinner. And when her mom, Nikki, died, it was Harry who sat with Sarah for long hours and played games with her, cards and anything that came in a box out of her closet. While Paul arranged the funeral, Harry tried to keep Sarah's mind from grasping the permanence of death.

The images of him in that effort were forever engraved on her memory. She could still see his hulking form scrunched up sitting on a ridiculous little chair at her play table, looking like the giant who'd lost his beanstalk. He would move the Parcheesi pieces around the board with his thick fingers and he would cheat just to keep her mind on the game whenever she asked an uncomfortable question, like what they were doing to her mom at that place where they'd taken her, or where Dad was going with one of Mom's pretty dresses on a hanger.

There were times when Sarah still called him Uncle Harry, but usually now it was only to get his goat, to remind him of how old he was getting. But Harry didn't care. Harry was timeless, like a comfortable old pair of jeans. The fraying and the holes only added character. He would be there forever, at least in her memory.

"Explain something to me," she said.

"If I can."

"How did we get in this mess?"

"You mean Liquida?"

"No, I mean the stuff with terrorism. The attack on the base in Coronado, 9/11 and the World Trade Center. All the hostility from the Islamic world. How did it happen?"

"Why don't you just cut to the chase and ask me what happened before the big bang?" said Harry.

"No, really," she said. "I was just a little kid when most of it happened. Now we're caught up in it. Dad, you, me, Herman. I'd like to have a better understanding."

"Fair enough. Where should I start?"

"The Middle East. I didn't take any world history," said Sarah.

"Oil and money, what can I tell you? From the history I've read, it began before the First World War with the Western powers when their wars.h.i.+ps went from coal to oil. When the war ended, the winners carved up the Middle East and installed friendly leaders to get oil. The national boundaries didn't make much sense. They didn't take into account many of the ethnic groups, clans that had been warring with each other for centuries. Some of the poorer countries got none of the oil but had most of the population. Add to that the creation of Israel in the late forties, the loss of Palestinian lands, and you get a region that's a boiling cauldron. We shared in the division of spoils from the oil. Saudi Arabia and the shah of Iran fell into our sphere."

"Iran?" said Sarah.

"Yeah. Strange as it seems now, we were thick as thieves with the shah before he fell. It started in the fifties when a CIA-inspired coup brought him to power, but got real ugly in the late seventies. Yeah, I'd say that's when the real trouble started. The origins of jihad and the terrorist movement.

"Then once in a while you get a leader who decides to do what he thinks is right, by that I mean morally correct. Jimmy Carter was one such soul. He had his share of failings, but most agree that his heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, in the twisted world of foreign affairs that's probably a disability. Carter's big thing was human rights.

"But you see, it's not that easy. After a couple of thousand years using avarice, malice, greed, and tyranny as the steady diet of the body politic, a sudden dose of human rights can make the patient upchuck. The shah had all the jails in Iran bulging, some of them with political prisoners who wanted to replace him. Every once in a while he'd stick 'em with cattle prods and do other nasty stuff. Needless to say, this didn't go over big with Carter.

"He turned his back on the shah. The message to the world was that unless the shah cleaned up his act, we wouldn't support him. It was a new day. Human rights were suddenly in vogue. But the regime was already sitting on a powder keg.

"The shah saw the fuse being lit and left town. The army threw down its guns, students overran the palace and the American emba.s.sy, and suddenly the Islamic revolution was in full swing.

"You would think the students in the streets would be grateful to Carter for his stand on human rights. But they weren't. Everyone in the U.S. emba.s.sy became a hostage. Carter became a victim of the law of unintended consequences.

"After that it was like a house of cards. It led to the Iran-Iraq War. We backed our good pal Saddam Hussein, the tyrant in charge of Iraq. A few million people got killed. Saddam lost a lot of face when we got tired and the war ended up in a draw. In Middle Eastern politics, loss of face is a terminal condition. Generals seeing their dictator walking around with half a face figure they could do a better job and they start measuring the other half to see where a bullet might look good.

"A few years after this, Al Qaeda declared war on us, but given everything that was going on, we didn't notice. They set off a bomb in the World Trade Center. We treated it as a criminal matter, made a few arrests, and shook it off. A few years later they blew up two U.S. emba.s.sies in East Africa. We lobbed a few missiles at Al Qaeda training bases and then went about our business. They attacked a U.S. wars.h.i.+p in port in the Middle East, killed a bunch of sailors, and we started another round of investigations. Then came 9/11.

"We went after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, ousted their allies, the Taliban, only to have them come back later.

"Which leaves us with Iran, their quest for nukes, and their continuing threats to use them on Israel the moment they get them. And of course Al Qaeda, who would like to borrow a couple of these for use in gift baskets to New York and Was.h.i.+ngton."

"So what are we doing to stop them from getting the bomb?"

"Oh, the State Department's on top of it. They're talking to the Iranians through third parties. Trying to convince the international pariah that they wouldn't want to be viewed as an international pariah. Threatening to isolate them with economic sanctions. And trying to make sure that if Israel incinerates them, they do it on a day when the rest of the world is upwind."

"You are a cynic." Sarah laughed.

"I know. What can I say? I founded the party and our numbers just keep growing. We have our government to thank for this."

"Whatever happened to Jimmy Carter?"

"He lost to Ronald Reagan in the next election. Reagan wrinkled his brow, took one look at Iran on his way to take the oath of office, and the Iranians released all the hostages that day."

"Reagan was that strong?"

"He had a big advantage. He was standing tall, on top of the heap of mistakes made by Carter. It's always easier when someone else has cleared the way through the minefield. Carter tried to negotiate the release of the hostages. The Iranians used the negotiations to humiliate him. It failed. He tried a rescue mission. A U.S. plane and a helicopter collided in the dark in the desert, and that failed. The Iranians knew that the American public had reached the end of its tether. Americans weren't just angry, they were mad as h.e.l.l. It was the reason they elected Reagan. He had a mandate to kick the c.r.a.p out of Iran, and the Iranians knew it. And he wasn't coming into office on a platform of human rights singing 'k.u.mbayah.' It's a n.o.ble concept, but worn on a presidential sleeve and advertised to the world as the guiding principle, it tells the devil more than you want him to know. The Iranians figured they'd milked the hostage crisis for all they could get. So why put Reagan to all the trouble of fueling up the B-52s?"

Harry could see the sign and the off-ramp coming at them fast, up ahead. He eased to the right and took the ramp up the incline. At the top he hung a right, went a little ways, and pulled into the truck stop. There were fuel pumps off to the left under a large corrugated metal roof. To the right was a hexagonal building with signs out in front, what looked like a shop and a restaurant.

"Tell you what, that looks like the restaurant, and maybe a small shop next to it," said Harry. "I'm gonna drop you off right in front and go get gas so that we're ready to go when we're done. I'll be over at the pumps. Why don't you check out the menu, and here, get me a bottle of water." Harry reached into his pocket for some cash.

"Don't be silly. I've got money. You're the one who's hungry. Why don't I get the gas, and you can go in and check the menu and get some water?"

"No," said Harry. "Listen. I want you to go in and look at the menu. See what the place looks like. If you don't see anything you like, we'll go on to the next town."

"Whatever."

He drove over in front of the building. Sarah grabbed her purse and got out. She closed the door and Harry drove away slowly, heading in the direction of the fuel pumps about a hundred yards away.

Harry watched Sarah in the rearview mirror as she went inside the restaurant and closed the door. He wasn't comfortable leaving her alone, even for a minute. But he had no choice. He glanced down at the car's fuel gauge. He still had a quarter of a tank, plenty of gas to get to the next town.

Harry had been nervous as a cat since the previous evening when he'd failed to find a good truck stop to take care of business. It was why he'd parked the car so far from the motel the night before. If Sarah had known, she would have been in his face. It violated her rule of no more secrets.

Harry counted seven large trucks, sixteen-wheelers, parked in the back along a gravel strip just beyond the pumps. Off to the right there were four more big rigs. These were over behind the back of the restaurant.

Harry took one look and turned right. He figured there was a better chance that the drivers of these four trucks would be down out of their cabs, probably inside the restaurant having lunch. The last thing he needed was an ugly confrontation with an angry truck driver.

Three of the trucks were long-haul jobs with sleepers behind the cabs. One of them was hauling an empty flat-bed trailer. He didn't like the rigs with the sleepers. Harry couldn't be sure that somebody wasn't up inside taking a nap. Instead he picked the red Peterbilt. The load on the back was covered by a tarp. It was perfect, and unless the driver was stretched out low across the seat, sleeping, the truck's cab was empty.

Harry drove all the way around the back of the semitrailer, pulled up behind it, and turned off his engine. He stepped out of the car and stood behind the open door for a second, then looked around to make sure n.o.body was watching. He reached down into the wheel well of the car and pulled the lever. He heard the latch pop.

Harry quickly closed the driver's-side door, went to the front of the car, and lifted the hood. He didn't have to waste much time looking. Herman had done a good job. For Harry, driving with it for two days, knowing it was there, was like driving with a bomb under the hood.

Herman had located the GPS tracking devices a week earlier, about the time Jenny was murdered. He'd discovered them while doing an electronic sweep of the office and Paul's house. The sweeps had become routine after they'd discovered a year earlier that the law office had been bugged during the period just before the attack at Coronado. Herman found nothing in the office or the house. But he got a weak signal from the front of Paul's car, in the driveway, where he found the GPS device affixed to a magnet under the front b.u.mper.

At that point he checked all the cars. He found similar tracking devices on Sarah's VW bug, his own car, and Harry's. The vehicles belonging to the rest of the office staff were clean. It was the reason they were confident that if they got the staff out of the office now, they would be in the clear. Liquida hadn't targeted any of them because he figured there was no need. He could easily keep tabs on the two lawyers, Sarah, and Herman.

The tracker was smaller than the palm of Harry's hand. It had a tiny antenna about the size of a toothpick and was shaped like a twig that swiveled out to pick up the satellite signal. For long-term power it was connected to the car's battery by a wire from underneath up into the engine compartment.

The day before they left, Herman purchased two small batteries and went to work on Harry's and Paul's cars, the two they were going to use.

If he pulled the trackers and tossed them, Liquida would know it. So he disconnected the wire from the car batteries and reattached it to the new ones. The small battery would provide power for about five days. In Harry's car the extra battery was held in place by bailing wire in an open area along the side of the engine compartment.

Harry used his fingers to unwind the wire. In a few seconds the battery came loose. He reached underneath and pulled the tracker off the b.u.mper, and then fished it up from the inside using the power wire connected to the battery.

The normal GPS most people use plots the position of a vehicle on a map and shows it to the driver on a software-provided map displayed on a small screen located in the receiver. You key in your destination and the GPS either talks to you and tells you when to turn or shows you waypoints on the map.

But not the little tracker Harry had in his hand. It gathered positioning data and sent it to a remote receiver where it could be plotted in any number of different forms, including map references. You could purchase this service from several different vendors. It was used by employers to make sure drivers weren't off on some private frolic when using a company vehicle. It could locate a stolen car or track a load of freight across the country, making it easier to project delivery schedules. In Harry's case it would allow Liquida to track them right to the farm in Ohio, where he could stalk them at his leisure.

Harry glanced around to make sure n.o.body was watching. He walked over to the back of the semitrailer, lifted the tarp, and slid the battery underneath. Quickly he ran a loop with the bailing wire around the battery connecting it to the load under the tarp so the battery wouldn't slide around. Then he dropped the tiny tracker into one of the steel postholes along the rear of the truck bed. He heard the metallic click as the magnet attached. Harry used his fingers to push the thin power wire from the battery into the crack between two of the scarred wooden boards on the bed of the truck. Then he checked the antenna. Unless the driver was neurotic, there was now a tiny twig that no one should notice just sticking up out of the posthole.

Less than two minutes later, Harry was in the restaurant. Sarah was waiting for him, seated at a booth. He walked over. "Did you already order?"

"No. Thought I'd wait for you. Did you get the gas?"

"No. They want an arm and a leg," said Harry. "Listen, why don't we go on to the next town? We can fill up there and get something to eat. The gas will probably be less."

"What, you think you're going to save three cents a gallon? Besides, the waitress already brought me water," said Sarah.

"Good." Harry picked up the gla.s.s and downed the whole thing in a single gulp, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "Now I don't need to buy any. Let's go."

"G.o.d, Uncle Harry, gimme a minute. Let me get my purse."

Harry was guiding her by the arm.

"Anybody ever tell you you're a penny pincher?" she said.

"Yeah, matter of fact, most of the women I've dated. Probably why I never got married."

"I can understand that," said Sarah.

For the moment all Harry wanted to do was put distance between themselves and the tarp-covered trailer in the parking lot behind the restaurant. If they were lucky, the driver was headed to Mexico. Then Liquida could follow it home.