The Lost Codex (13 page)

17

E
astern Market was dominated by a block-long nineteenth-century Neo-Renaissance brick building that sat a quarter mile from the seat of US government. A hundred years ago, it was considered the unofficial town center of Capitol Hill.

Ten feet from the edifice and running its entire length sat a permanent green corrugated metal roofed pavilion where vendors sold their wares, sheltered from the sun and rain. People milled about: men, women, and children, couples young and old purchasing fresh fish and meat, baked goods and various kinds of cheese.

But in the mall’s administrative office in a corner of the far-flung facility, things were not as lively: an array of black-and-white security cameras displaying various angles of the retailers’ stalls and cafés stared back at Omar Jafar. Jafar reclined in his creaky chair and watched the activity on his monitors.

The job was generally tedious, the most excitement coming from an occasional shoplifter or the equally random elderly individual suffering a heart attack. The majority of the time, he passed his shift watching hordes of people pass the prying eyes of his lenses buying merchandise, eating food, and drinking coffee, beer, or wine.

Jafar leaned forward, the back of his chair springing up and snapping against his torso. He tilted his head and spied a male dressed in a black hoodie carrying a backpack and moving through the crowd, which, in and of itself was not unusual. But the man’s demeanor, the wandering nature of his gait, told Jafar that something might not be right. After the mysterious explosion at the Metro station, he had been warned by his boss to keep an extra vigilant eye on customers exhibiting suspicious behavior.

Jafar studied the screen: the “person of interest” was about five foot nine with a dark complexion. Thin, no distinguishable marks that he could see. Watching the man move from one monitor to another as he made his way through the market, Jafar thought back to his security guard training. What information did the police want? Physical description and his reason for suspecting the individual of foul play.

Jafar grabbed his two-way radio and headed out of his office, walking briskly toward the location of his target. He did not want to call the police yet, not until he had a better indication that something was really wrong.

As he approached the two large doors that formed the main entrance to the building, he saw his suspect thirty feet ahead. The man stopped to talk to one of the vendors, then pulled a large brown paper bag from his backpack just as Jafar heard a loud crashing noise off to his right.

Smashing glass—crumpling metal—revving truck engine—

Patrons yelling, diving to the side as an armored vehicle blasted through the doors he had just passed, coming to rest inside the market’s entrance.

“What the f—”

Jafar reached for his radio and fumbled for the dial when automatic gunfire burst out. People screamed as bodies fell—

A man’s guttural proclamation of “Allahu akbar!” snagged his attention. Jafar swung his head left and saw a masked male wearing military-style gear running toward him, spraying the area with high-powered rounds from some kind of machine gun.

Jafar pushed between a woman and a child and dove to the floor. He clapped both hands over his head and hid—until a massive explosion turned everything black.

18

V
ail and Robby walked into Foggy Bottom’s Burger Tap & Shake at Pennsylvania Avenue and 23rd Street.

They stood in the back, away from the line, looking over the menu that featured a description of the restaurant’s meat: “Throughout the day, we grind on premises a custom blend of three-day aged, naturally raised local harvest beef chuck and brisket.”

“My taste buds are moaning,” she said, then noticed Robby was looking at her. “No comment please. I’m just plain hungry, okay?” She glanced at her watch. “Where the hell is Jonathan?”

“Late.”

She took Robby’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks again for getting us Prati. Still a lot we don’t know. But the stuff we do know … it’s just kind of depressing.”

The door opened and Jonathan walked in with rumpled clothing and mussed hair.

“This is how you show up for lunch with me and Robby?”

“I was still sleeping when you called,” Jonathan said, bumping a fist with Robby. “Late night.”

“Oh yeah?” Robby asked.

“It’s Saturday, I knew I could sleep in.”

Vail frowned. “One advantage of you going to school so close to home is that we can get together once in a while.”

“Some might call that a disadvantage,” Jonathan said, his slight chuckle suggesting he was only half joking.

Robby gave him a disapproving shake of the head.

“Just kidding. It’s definitely nice to be able to see you guys.”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with your college experience.”

Jonathan tilted his head. “Well, yeah.”

They ordered at the counter and found a booth, then waited for their food to come.

“So are you closer to catching the terrorists?” Jonathan asked.

Vail shushed him as she glanced around. “You know I can’t talk about it.” Jonathan’s face scrunched a bit, tense from concern. “We’re making headway. We’ll get ’em. Just stay away from public gatherings.”

“Police are all over the place. Barricades up on half the streets around campus. Freakin’ pain in the ass.”

“One of the exciting things about GW is that it puts you at the intersection of politics, law, and power. You can’t walk a block or two without hitting a building of significance to the country—or the world. The International Monetary Fund, the White House, Supreme Court, Con—”

“I get it, Mom.”

“That makes us a target,” Robby said. “More bang for the buck than hitting Kansas or Wyoming, you know?”

As he said that, Vail felt a gust of wind rattle the large glass storefront window to her left. “Did you feel that?”

Robby nodded slowly as he swiveled in his seat and looked out at the people on the sidewalk and across the street in Washington Square Park. Most had stopped and were craning their necks in all directions. A few started to run and—

Vail’s Samsung began buzzing. It was a text from Uzi:

new attack. eastern market. meet me there.


on my way, im close


Shit, that wasn’t a gust of wind, it was blowback from an explosion.

“Gotta go.” She rose from the booth.

“Everything okay?” Jonathan asked.

Vail looked at her son. Even if she had thoughts of lying to him, she knew he would know. “Another bomb,” she whispered.

Robby started to rise but Vail waved him back down.

“I’ll see you later.”

VAIL ARRIVED AT THE INTERSECTION of 7th Avenue SE and North Carolina Avenue and pulled her car against the curb in front of Port City Java. Several Metro Police cruisers were lined up along 7th, blocking access to the wide cobblestone road that fronted the market.

But what caught Vail’s eye was the carnage before her. The covered pavilion that ran the length of the brick building had been toppled, the steel columns supporting it knocked out from beneath the roof and folded in half as if struck with a baseball bat.

Bodies lay sprawled on the pavement, paramedics and first responders triaging the injured and yelling orders to others in the vicinity. Vail jogged along 7th, headed toward a concentration of police cars, fire engines—and a SWAT van.

She pulled on crime scene booties and moved closer. The double wood doors at the entrance to the market—doors she had passed through many times over the years—were missing, the opening enlarged by what appeared to be an armored truck, the rear of which was partially protruding from the building’s interior.

DeSantos, wearing a wool overcoat, was inside talking to a CSU technician. He caught Vail’s gaze and waved her in.

She made her way over the chunks of cement and fragmented brick, getting some assistance from another officer who helped her across the debris-laden threshold.

Inside, devastation. The normally bustling marketplace, which featured vendors and restaurants on both sides of a central aisle, was in pieces. Bloody bodies, and parts of others, were strewn across the wreckage—as far as she could see.

“What the hell happened here?” she asked under her breath.

DeSantos apparently heard her because he said, “Just setting off a bomb must be getting boring for them.” He handed a piece of the rubble to a nearby technician. “Best we could tell—I only got here about ten minutes ago—they drove up 7th in that armored truck and crashed through the pavilion, mowing down as many people as they could. They swung right into the building, plowed through the entrance. Then they got out.”

“How many?”

“Two, best we can tell.”

“What happened after they got out of the truck?”

“They started moving through the crowd, firing AK-47s. Two cops saw the truck hit the pavilion, so they were on scene immediately. They came in through the east entrance, drew down, and that’s when the jerkoffs detonated their vests.”

Vail climbed atop the front bumper of the truck and looked out over the interior. Headed in her direction was Uzi, stopping to render assistance to medics who were administering to some of the fallen victims. The scene looked like a war zone.

“So, what do you make of this?”

Vail turned. “What?”

“Instead of loading explosives into a backpack or suitcase, they used a truck, assault rifles, and suicide vests. I’m not a detective, but I do understand the concept of MO. And they just changed their MO completely.”

“Objective was to kill as many as they could. Invoke fear. What better way to do that than by changing the method of attack? You don’t know what’s coming next. You can’t draw a pattern. More terror that way.”

“Why hit the market?” asked Uzi, who was approaching.

“We’ve increased police presence and restricted access to important buildings, made it more difficult for them to go after hard targets. So they chose a soft one.”

“Smart.”

“Scary smart. They’re well organized, prepared, flexible, and as we know, well funded.”

Uzi’s phone rang. He glanced at the display and said, “I gotta take this.”

GIDEON AKSEL’S VOICE WAS TIGHT, concern permeating his tone. “I’ve got something for you, Uzi, but you’re not going to like it.”

“I’ll be the judge. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Just so you know, I’ve verified this. There is no question of its accuracy. None.”

“Got it. What’d you find?”

“You wanted info on Mahmoud El-Fahad.”

“Anything and everything.”

“January ’03. The suicide bombing in Haifa.”

“The commuter bus?”

“The bomber, he was Fahad’s nephew.”

Uzi glanced over at Vail and DeSantos, still chatting by the armored truck. “His nephew was a suicide bomber?” Uzi closed his eyes. “Fahad’s nephew was a radicalized terrorist?”

“It sounded like this man meant something to you, so I knew you weren’t going to like it. But facts are facts.”

Uzi found a clearing and sat down on a damaged metal stool that had belonged to a now-destroyed deli. The prone body of a dead security guard was laid out before him. He averted his gaze. “Was Fahad involved?”

“Answer me. This man is important to you, no?”

“In some ways, yeah.” He wanted to give Aksel more, but he was already dangerously close to stepping over the line.

“I don’t know if he was part of the plot, Uzi. I dug around, talked with the men involved in the investigation. Mossad’s got nothing. Shin Bet had nothing on Fahad. Now that could be a good thing—”

“Or it could mean nothing.”

“Or it could mean nothing. I can tell you he was there. He saw his nephew blow himself up.”

Uzi could not help but cringe. “Anything else in Mossad’s file? Did we have any contacts with Fahad?”

“Only one. Nothing of any significance. He was questioned. The interrogators noted that he seemed distraught but he denied any knowledge that it was going down. There was no proof either way, so he was not held. We had no further contact with him. He left the West Bank five months later for the US.”

Uzi remembered being told that Fahad had lived in the West Bank and knew Gaza well. “Has he been back?”

“Multiple times. Nothing unusual about his visits.”

And he’s a CIA operative whose territory included those areas. Uzi rubbed the back of his neck. He turned and saw Vail walking toward him.

“Thanks, Gideon. I’ll look into this.”

“Why are you asking about him? Any reason for us to be concerned?”

Uzi thought about that a second. “I honestly don’t know. He’s—and you didn’t hear this from me—he’s working for us. So he should be fine. But …”

“But if his nephew was a suicide bomber, someone he was close to, you just don’t know.”

“Thanks, Gideon. Gotta go.” He disconnected the call as Vail stepped in front of him.

“Everything okay?”

Uzi rose from the stool and took a long look at Vail. He did not know if he should say anything about what he had just learned so he went with how he genuinely felt: “We’re under attack and our enemy has been able to do anything they want, whenever they want. No, everything’s not okay.” In the distance, Uzi caught sight of Fahad approaching.

“There’s something else. That call.”

“Yeah, that call.” He watched as Fahad closed to within twenty feet then stopped and looked at one of the victims sprawled facedown across a vegetable counter: a man wearing a backpack, a brown bag still clutched in his right hand. “Let’s go see what our new task force member thinks of what happened here.”

VAIL AND UZI CAME UP BEHIND FAHAD, who was examining a deceased sweat-shirted male slumped over a vending stand.

“Mahmoud,” Vail said.

He turned, a frown etched into his face. “Call me Mo.” He gestured at the body, which showed evidence of multiple bullet entry wounds across its back. “These bastards aren’t going to stop unless we stop them.”

Kind of like a serial killer.

“This is not like any attack I’ve seen carried out by Hamas or al Humat,” he said. “Completely different methodology.”

“Hey. Boychick!”

They turned to see DeSantos walking toward them, negotiating the ruins littering the market’s floor.

“We got something.” Two Metro police officers brushed past, an injured man wedged between them, his arms draped around their shoulders. “A finger.”

“A finger?” Vail asked.

“A severed finger, probably from one of the bombers.” DeSantos handed her an evidence bag containing the bloodied digit.

“You’re giving me the finger?”

“I think they’ve already done that,” Uzi said.

“No kidding,” DeSantos said as he took the bag back. “CSU found it several dozen feet from the remnants of the bomber’s vest. When a suicide bomber blows himself up, the direction and location of the explosives sever the head and send it flying clear of the blast.”

“Thanks for that image,” Vail said.

“In this case,” DeSantos continued, “because of the double blast, both their heads were obliterated. This finger may be our only lead in terms of giving us an ID.”

“Well if it isn’t Aaron Uziel.”

They turned to see Tim Meadows, an FBI forensic scientist, approaching from the opposite direction. “Should’ve known you’d be working this case.”

“The worst criminals bring out the best and the brightest the Bureau has to offer,” Uzi said. “Except that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“I see our agent with the name of a submachine gun is locked and loaded with humor.” He turned to DeSantos and eyed him a moment. “No offense, but if you’re on the case, that’s not a good sign.”

DeSantos shrugged. “Guess that depends on how you look at it. I think it’s a good thing. Actual work is going to get done.”

“And my favorite female shrink,” Meadows said, giving Vail a hug. “Or maybe just my favorite female.” As he leaned back he seemed to notice Fahad for the first time. “Hmm. I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Mahmoud El-Fahad. CIA.”

“Guess we’re pulling all the cans of alphabet soup off the shelves for this one, eh?” Meadows chuckled.

Alphabet soup was a common slang term to describe the government’s acronym and abbreviation nomenclature for its agencies: CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD, among dozens of others.

“We’ve got a finger,” Uzi said gesturing at the evidence bag in DeSantos’s hand. “Can you make sure it’s processed—”

“ASAP, yeah, I got that. Don’t you know that I’ve come to realize that if you’re on a case, it’s automatically important?”

Uzi leaned back. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I’ve learned that certain things are not worth fighting. Death. Taxes. Bureaucracy. Aaron Uziel.”

“That’s some great company, Uzi,” Vail said.

Uzi frowned. “Yeah, whatever. When can we get an ID?”

Meadows rocked his head side to side. “How about ten minutes?”

“Don’t play with me, Tim.”

Meadows took the bag from DeSantos and held it up to the light. “I’ve got a mobile lab outside. Let me see what I can do.”

MEADOWS WAS WRONG: he didn’t have an answer for them in ten minutes. He had something for them in eight.

“The digit was intact, so I didn’t have to play with it to raise the print. I scanned it, uploaded it, and the computer got a match.”

“Can you email it to me?” Uzi asked.

Meadows pulled out his phone, tapped and scrolled and the image of whorls and ridges was on its way.

Uzi forwarded it to Gideon Aksel the second it hit his inbox, with a request for information.