A Murder of Crows (9 page)

The Dean went on. “Are you certain Bajjah’s followers are not planning another attack?”

“I’m fairly confident they’re not, sir.”

“Fairly confident fails to make me entirely confident, James. Explain.”

“Since we’ve already convinced Bajjah he’s been in custody for a couple of years, we couldn’t appear too concerned about plans for attacks that were supposed to be years old. It might’ve made him suspicious about the length of his incarceration, which could have tainted what he told us about his network.”

“I appreciate your concern for the integrity of the incarceration. Why are you ‘fairly certain’ there will not be further attacks?”

“Bajjah admitted to planning the biological attack alone. He said the east coast outbreak was a trial run. The plan was to hit Europe in force if the attacks here proved successful. Since they were a failure, he said the bio-attack plan was likely scrapped.”

“He may be the head of his own network,” the Dean said, “but he is not the only member of the network. Others may have risen to take his place. They may be carrying on his work as we speak. Where is his money coming from?”

“He told me his funding comes from ‘the network.’ I pushed him for information about what ‘the network’ might be, which was when he gave me the names of the people in the network.”

“And did you push him for details? Funding sources? Financial connections? Accounts? Holdings?”

“I did, but Roger’s sensors showed I was pushing him too hard. Bajjah’s vitals began to spike and I didn’t want to push him into another stroke or heart event.”

“Yes, I read about the stroke,” the Dean said. “You are usually more careful with your subjects. I trust you have already taken measures to ensure it will not happen again.”

Roger replied, “Already taken care of.” He had never called the Dean ‘sir.’

“Given the prisoner’s delicate medical condition, I take it that pressing him for further details would be unwise.”

“Roger and I agree we’ve probably pushed him as far as he can go,” Hicks admitted. “Neither of us believe he could stand up to further enhanced tactics.”

“Pity, though I admit that finding the Jabbar connection to his network fascinating. What details has he provided about the elusive Jabbar?”

“He didn’t admit the connection, sir. He didn’t have to. OMNI confirmed a direct correlation between the names he gave us and the Jabbar profile, particularly on the man he called Shaban, who lives in London. The same man he said handled the money for the network.”

“And, once again, you are certain the prisoner was being truthful.”

Hicks signaled Roger to answer, which he did. “My people were monitoring the prisoner the entire time without his knowledge. His biometric responses indicated he was being truthful.”

The Dean didn’t sound impressed. “People beat lie detectors all the time, Roger.”

“My sensors are better than lie detectors, and they can’t be fooled. Bajjah told us the truth.”

“Impertinent confidence has always been one of your most admirable qualities. Let us hope for all our sakes you are correct.”

Roger gave the laptop the finger.

The Dean went on. “James, I noticed you had promised to kill the prisoner if his information proved valid.”

He knew it would come up. “Yes I did, sir.”

“And now you have determined the information he provided is true and that he is too weak to interrogate further. Do you intend to keep your promise to kill him?”

“I do, sir.”

“Tell me why. And please keep in mind his death will violate our arrangement with the Mossad. We had promised to hand Bajjah over to them after we were finished interrogating him in exchange for their silence. They will disapprove of his execution and Agent Saddon will likely take it as a personal betrayal.”

Hicks already knew that, but he couldn’t worry about Tali now. “We’ve already broken Bajjah down as far as we can. His body is clearly beginning to weaken, as evidenced by the stroke he suffered during an interrogation session last night. Since he’s too weak for us to work on, I’m concerned he may either shut down or begin giving us false information in retaliation for refusing to kill him. To put it bluntly, sir, keeping him alive simply no longer makes any sense.”

“Matters of life and death should be put bluntly, James, but too infrequently are. In killing the prisoner, I assume you are fully prepared to reap the whirlwind of the Mossad’s discontentment?”

Hicks had considered that, too. “I am, sir.”

“Is fulfilling your promise to a mass murderer worth risking the alienation of an important ally to our cause? Since Bajjah is close to death anyway, why not hand him over to the Mossad to satiate their thirst for revenge?”

Hicks knew Tali would be furious with him. She may even quit and go back to work for the Mossad full time. The risk was enough to make him consider the consequences of killing Bajjah, but not enough to change his mind. “True, but I’m confident once we give them the information we’ve gathered on Bajjah’s network and we inform them of his connection to Jabbar, their rage will be short-lived.”

“The Mossad does not have a reputation for simply letting things go, James. Agent Saddon even less so. I have heard she is as deadly as she is alluring. It will take a great amount of effort to mitigate their disappointment.”

Hicks understood the point the Dean was making.
I’m not saying no. Convince me to say yes.

This was his chance to make his pitch about leverage. “Any mention of Jabbar by Bajjah and the Israelis will move heaven and earth to find him. But, if Bajjah is dead, we can control their response by redacting anything from our report that might spur the Israelis to act unilaterally to take out Jabbar’s network. If we control the flow of information, we control the situation.”

Hicks had never heard a smile before, but he thought he heard one in the Dean’s voice when he said, “Congratulations, James. My thoughts exactly.”

Hicks was glad he was pleased because he decided now was an excellent time to bring up the problem of Stephens and the Barnyard. “This way, we can use all of the Bajjah/Jabbar information to barter with Stephens and the Barnyard, maybe use it as leverage to get them to leave us alone and end their investigation of us. We give them what they want, they go away.”

“More solid reasoning, James, but I have already decided the University must address the threat posed by the Bajjah/Jabbar network itself. We will topple this organization in-house.”

Hicks looked at Roger to see if they had heard the same thing. They must have because Roger looked as confused as Hicks felt.

Hicks decided the Dean must have misspoken without realizing it. During their first meeting two weeks before, the Dean had announced he was suffering from terminal brain cancer. The disease must have finally begun to impact his mind because what he had said was complete nonsense.

Hicks didn’t want to embarrass him by correcting him. “Understood, sir. I’ve already directed OMNI to do a deep dive into the lives of all ten men in Bajjah’s network. We should have a detailed packet on each the men and their immediate associates by tomorrow morning at the latest. You can count on being able to pass along our information to the relevant agencies via standard back channels by noontime. It should give us the leverage we need to get the Barnyard to back off.”

The Dean’s response was immediate. “James, did I stutter?”

“No, sir.”

“I already told you we will be handling the Jabbar matter in-house. And by ‘we,’ of course, I mean you will be handling it. We will not be sharing the Bajjah/Jabbar information with any other agencies. The University will bring down the Bajjah and Jabbar organizations on our own.”

The countless hours he had spent overseeing the Bajjah interrogation had finally paid off, leading to solid, actionable intelligence on a known terrorist organization. They had always handed this kind of information to the bigger agencies who were better suited to stop such threats. The Dean was in an excellent position to use the Bajjah information as leverage to stop The Barnyard and the others from encroaching on the University’s autonomy.

But the Dean didn’t want to do it. He was committing the University to a two-front war. On one side, Bajjah’s network which may ultimately lead to Jabbar. On the other side, the combined might of the intelligence community of the United States of America. The University found itself in the middle.

A dull ache began to settle in behind Hicks’ eyes. A bad day had suddenly gotten a hell of a lot worse.

“H
ELLO
?” T
HE
Dean’s voice snapped him out of it. “Are you still there, James?”

Hicks saw Roger silently mouth:
What the fuck?

“I’m right here, sir. I’m digesting what you told us. To be clear, you’re saying you want us to take down all of the cells in the Bajjah/Jabbar network on our own. Without involving any of the other agencies.”

“Precisely.”

“And you expect us to do it without help from any of the other agencies?”

“Yes, that is what I said. You seem distressed by this news. I am disappointed.”

Hicks knew the Dean’s ability to detect the truth beat any sensor Roger had in his arsenal, so he didn’t bother lying. “Sir, Bajjah’s network has five cells in the United States, four cells in the Middle East and one of them is Shaban, the supposed money man in Europe.”

“You have already told me this, James. You are repeating yourself. One might be forgiven for believing you’re the one with brain cancer, not me.”

Hicks ignored the jab. “The University doesn’t have the resources to hit a multinational terror network while evading the Barnyard at the same time. We don’t have the money or the manpower or the firepower to…”

The Dean’s voice came through the laptop once again. “Is Roger still in the room? I take it you have informed him of your encounter with the CIA this morning.”

“Yes, sir, as per our earlier discussion.”

“Good, because allow me to explain the new reality to both of you at the same time. When you captured Bajjah and uncovered his plans, you caused this institution to stumble into a dangerous part of the intelligence jungle where the larger agencies roam. Think of them as the alpha predators, like lions and tigers. And like their counterparts in the animal kingdom, these agencies do not welcome outsiders. They do not tolerate rivals. In Bajjah, we have something these predators want and they will not stop until they get it.”

Hicks saw his chance to reason with him. “All the more reason to hand him over to them now, sir. We can justify why we took him and hand over the information we extracted from him. That should…”

The Dean cut him off. “Sharing the information you obtained from Bajjah will not quell their appetite, James. It will only whet it. They will want to know more about who we are and how we found Bajjah and what methods we used to interrogate him and if we were holding back any information he had given us. I also fear giving the Bajjah information to the Barnyard could risk too many people becoming aware of it, thereby increasing the likelihood that Jabbar could be alerted. We cannot allow this to happen. We are too close to finding and stopping a monster like Jabbar to allow the Barnyard’s bureaucratic bungling to allow him to escape. Capturing Jabbar must be the University’s main focus now.”

Hicks tried to push through the growing pounding in his head.
He’s serious. He’s planned this.
“Finding Jabbar will be a hell of a lot harder if we’re in the crosshairs of three separate intelligence agencies, sir.”