The Lost Codex (36 page)

“I get that. But here’s the thing. He detonates the bombs remotely. His finger is literally on the trigger. And he watches.”

“Okay,” Vail said. “But what makes you think he’s a psychopath?”

“He’s got a vacant look in his eyes, the pupils are—I don’t know, strange. Cold, empty, pinpoints of darkness. He killed Mo’s nephew and has no remorse, no guilt. He’s dispassionate, coldhearted, has no empathy for the pain Mo feels.” He recounted the key points of their interrogation thus far.

Vail nodded. “You may be right. But there’s more to it than—”

“Does it really matter?” Claude asked.

Vail turned; she was not aware he had been listening in.
In fact, we might have more than one psychopath in the room.
“It could. In terms of determining the right way to question him.”

Claude looked past her shoulder at Yaseen. “He’s done talking. And so are we.”

“No we’re not.” She walked over to Yaseen and stopped a foot from his chair. “Give me some space.”

“No.” Fahad broadened his stance. “We gave him every chance to cooperate. Whatever happens now is his fault.”

Vail clenched her jaw. “Move. Aside.”

A moment passed. He finally yielded and backed away.

Vail tilted her head and observed their prisoner. He defiantly spit tooth fragments at her. She did not move. “When that bomb explodes, the ground shakes, smoke rises, body parts go flying. It’s quite an extraordinary moment for you, isn’t it?”

His right eye twitched.

“The fear, the pain on the faces of your victims. Their screams, their moans. Their shrieking when a limb is blown off. You’re aroused by it. Seeing your victims’ response to the pain you inflict … it’s exhilarating. Deeply exciting.”

Yaseen’s lips parted. She had his attention.

“When you press that button and watch your bomb explode …” She waited for that image to fill his thoughts. “When you hear the women and children wail and cry …” She leaned in close and whispered. “You’re sexually aroused. Aren’t you?”

His eyes, riveted to Vail’s, narrowed. His head tilted. “Yes.” Barely audible.

“You’re a sexual sadist, Yaseen. People are just objects to you. Things to be used, manipulated. You’ve got no emotional connection to them. Their agony, their suffering are inconsequential.”

He drew back and licked his lips.

She stood up straight. “You get off on risk taking and thrill seeking. And let’s face it. There’s no job on the planet that’s more dangerous than a bomb maker. You’ve obviously lost fingers from an explosion or two, and yet you keep on doing it. Because taking greater and greater risks excites you.”

Yaseen laughed, exposing a row of jagged front teeth. “You know me better than I know myself.”

“Karen,” Uzi said. She turned and headed back toward him, where Fahad and DeSantos were now standing with Claude.

“How does that help us?” Fahad asked.

“To determine the most effective way to question him, I had to find out if you were right. You are. And I can tell you that his psychopathy governs who he is. He’s not going to talk here, no matter what you guys do to him.”

“We’ll see about that.” Fahad stepped to his right and held up two remotes. “Do you know what these are?” He looked at Yaseen, then turned ninety degrees and showed them to Aziz. “I know you recognize them,” Fahad said to Yaseen, “since you built them.”

“So here’s how it’s going to work,” DeSantos said. “We’re gonna ask you again what we want to know. Whichever one of you gives us the answers gets to live. The other one will not.”

Vail nudged Uzi.

“Just a scare tactic,” Uzi said under his breath.

“It’s not gonna work.”

“Mo insisted on trying.”

“What targets have you selected for the US?” Fahad asked.

“Chicago,” Aziz said. “O’Hare.”

Yaseen jostled his chair, scraping it an inch along the cement. “Shut up, you idiot! They’re not going to kill us. Their Constitution prevents it. They have no proof of anything our lawyer can’t twist into a pretzel.
We
are in control, Tahir. Don’t let them fool you.”

“I’m going to give you one last chance, Yaseen,” Fahad said. “Tahir gave us some answers. Now it’s your turn.”

“I’ve been through worse than anything you can do to me, preparing for a day like this. I’m at peace with what must be done. I’ll be martyred. I’ll have my virgins. And my family will be well compensated.”

“Now what?” Uzi asked near DeSantos’s ear.

“Last chance,” Fahad said. He lifted the remote and turned it on, showed the red blinking light to Yaseen.

Uzi placed a hand on Vail’s shoulder. “I think Santa’s right. We should turn him over to Claude and have the Agency get him to Guantanamo to stand trial.”

Fahad began counting. “Five … four … three …”

“I’m fine with that,” Vail said. “Except how are we going to explain—”

A thundering blast blew debris into Vail, Uzi, DeSantos, Fahad, and Claude. Vail drew her Glock and swiveled on the balls of her feet, her ears ringing and her heart pounding in her head.
What the hell happened?

She wasn’t sure if she said it aloud—and her hearing was so muffled that she would not have heard it if she had verbalized the thought. One thing was certain, however: the chair occupied by Yaseen was now an empty, twisted hunk of metal.

“You out of your mind?” DeSantos said. He had Fahad by the lapels of his jacket, pushing him backwards into the brick wall.

“Get the fuck off me.” He shoved DeSantos away and shrugged his coat into place. He faced Aziz, who was in shock. His mouth was agape, his eyes wide.

“Tell us what we want to know!” Fahad said. He was hyperventilating.

“Mo,” Uzi said. He waited till Fahad looked at him, then set his jaw and said slowly, “Dial it down.”

“I want answers!” He pointed at Aziz as he advanced on him. “Where are the attacks planned?”

“I told you,” Aziz said, recoiling, shrinking into himself. “Chicago.”

“Where else?”

“I—I don’t know.”

Vail wanted to intercede. But if there was a chance of getting Aziz to reveal the information, it was this very moment, when he believed that Fahad would press that button. Objecting, attempting to rein in Fahad, would undermine him, make him impotent. She only hoped he had not completely lost it. Fahad's brutal murder of Yaseen was unexpected, and yet it was not: one of the oldest motives in humanity’s long, bloody history was revenge. While their orders were to eliminate Yaseen, it was best done quietly, efficiently, without malice. And without leaving evidence behind.

Fahad stopped a safe distance from Aziz.

“Last chance. You saw what I did to Yaseen. Now it’s your turn. Five. Four—”

“Los Angeles, the defense contractors. We have someone on the inside.”

“Which one?” Vail asked. “Look at me, Tahir. Which one?”

He turned to face her. “I don’t know. One of the major ones.”

“Man? Woman?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about nukes?”

“We had plans. A dirty bomb. I told them no, it was crossing a line.”

“How were they going to do it? Where’d the nuclear material come from?”

“Iran, we got the material from Iran. We had two plans. We’d bring some in through South America. The drug cartel—Cortez—was going to take it from Mexico into the US, through their tunnels. The other way was through Canada. I don’t know which Sahmoud chose, or if he did both.”

“When?”

“Soon. I don’t know exactly.”

“And?” Vail asked. “You talked them out of it?”

Aziz hesitated.

“Answer her,” Fahad said firmly.

“I thought so. But Yaseen said he was told to expect the delivery. He was in charge of coordinating the movement of the material once it got into the US. Two cities were being discussed.”

“Which two?”

“Yaseen insisted on New York. Sahmoud and Dosari wanted Washington.”

Vail turned to the chair that once held Yaseen. It was now a pile of rubble, blood spatter, and, no doubt, flesh.

“We need to get out of here,” Uzi said. “The explosion. Police and fire will be here soon.”

“They won’t know where to look,” DeSantos said. “The building’s already condemned. The walls are intact. We’ve got another minute or two.” He swung toward Aziz. “Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, DC. Where else?”

“I can only tell you the places we discussed. Abu Sahmoud and Dosari, they’re the ones who make the final decision.”

“We know about New York,” Vail said. “When are the others going down?”

“Next week. That’s all I know.”

“Okay,” Uzi said, advancing on Aziz. “Claude, call your people and have them meet us somewhere to pick him up. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Then what?” Vail asked.

DeSantos and Uzi cut Aziz free of the chair. “Then we’ll figure it out.”

Vail lifted the lantern and toolbox; they had to get rid of any trace that could be tracked back to them. She noticed Fahad standing in the dark, staring ahead at the spot where Yaseen had been sitting.

“You okay?”

“I thought it would make me feel better.” He faced her. “Revenge. But you know what? It doesn’t change anything. Akil is still dead.”

She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I know.”

60

C
laude spent the entire drive on the phone, jabbering in French to several people. The first call, he explained, was to the man who had brought Vail and DeSantos to the abandoned building. They met him a mile south, passing two police cars that Vail surmised had been dispatched to the general area in response to what sounded like an explosion—even if no one could pinpoint its location.

The handoff went smoothly in the parking garage of a building that Claude identified as one that did not have security cameras. Uzi and DeSantos removed Aziz, blindfolded and bound, from the trunk and transferred him to the other vehicle and then both left the garage, thirty seconds after arrival, with no words spoken. Aziz apparently understood what was happening, as he did not resist. He was probably relieved to have survived being blown to bits and was accepting his legal fate in the hands of Americans—an infinitely better disposition than his colleague had received.

The second phone call, now that they were free of their prisoner’s ability to hear, was to a man who was to arrange safe passage out of France. After hanging up, Claude explained they would be leaving from Le Bourget Airport, about nine miles from downtown.

The plane was parked at a secluded gate and they were ushered to the tarmac in darkness. It was late and the airport was ready to close for the night, but they were able to file a flight plan and keep the control tower personnel dialed in until they went wheels up.

“Headed where?” Vail asked.

“Ben Gurion airport,” Uzi said. “You’ll like it. Very modern.”

I may like the airport. Not so sure about what will follow.

While en route, DeSantos called Knox to update him and tell him they were headed to Israel to secure the documents and apprehend Sahmoud. They talked in coded language to neutralize eavesdroppers, but DeSantos felt like he got the message through and Knox understood the major points.

Shortly after ending the call, Uzi’s phone rang. “It’s Prati.” He pushed the speaker button. “Tell me you’ve got good news, Richard.”

“You were spot on with that intel. The barge came through Canadian waters, right where you said. They offloaded onto a cabover van. We had a squad there but they couldn’t intercept because of the terrain. We’ve got surveillance teams in unmarked vehicles lined up along the interstate, passing the eye.”

Vail knew that “passing the eye” meant that a tailing law enforcement vehicle dropped off the suspect as another one, down the road, picked him up. It prevented the target from realizing he was being shadowed.

“We’ve identified a stretch of roadway,” Prati continued, “two hundred miles outside the city that’s thinly populated. It’s being evacuated right now and state troopers are getting ready to deploy a tire deflation device in front of the van.”

“What if there really is a nuclear device onboard?” DeSantos asked.

“There is,” Prati said. “We’ve got mobile sensors picking up higher than normal background radiation. Enough to raise the alarm.”

“And you still think blowing out the tires is the way to go?” Vail asked.

“Obviously there’s risk,” Prati said. “But we’ve been over it and that’s our best option.”

“We just got some other information,” Vail said, “about al Humat bringing in Iranian nuclear material through the Cortez tunnels.”

“When? Where?”

“All we know is Mexico. No idea when. Probably soon.”

“And,” DeSantos said, “they’ve apparently got an operative at a defense contractor in Los Angeles. Which one, we have no idea.”

“Does Knox or Bolten—”

“No one knows yet.”

“I’ll bring them up to speed,” Prati said. “We’ll check it all out.”

Ten minutes later they arrived at Le Bourget Airport. Claude led them to the tarmac and onto a set of self-deploying stairs that led to the hatch of the Boeing business jet.

They followed him inside—as Vail tried to keep her jaw from dropping open. It did anyway.

“A modified 737,” Claude said. “It’s got the range to take you where you need to go. Master bedroom, showers, dining area, living room.”

Four plush ivory leather seats were arranged around a polished walnut table opposite a matching couch that stretched half the length of the room.

Claude looked around, seemed satisfied, then shook DeSantos’s hand. “Bon voyage.”

They thanked him for his help and he left the cabin, heading back down the steps.

Despite her misgivings about him, Vail appreciated his dependability and assistance.
Don’t ever let me find out that you’re a serial killer, Claude. Because then I’ll have to track you down and arrest you.

The captain left the cockpit and introduced himself. “I’ve filed a false flight plan that’ll use a specially outfitted transponder to make us appear to be traveling half our air speed and heading toward Germany. On the return flight I’ll pick up that flight plan and return here. No one will know where we really went.” He nodded at a satchel sitting on the table. “It’s all we could put together on short notice.”

DeSantos peered inside. Vail saw what looked like satellite phones—and money in Israeli notes—shekels.

“We’ll make do,” DeSantos said. “Thanks.”

“The phones have one special feature you should know about: RF fibers on a microchip. Pop the chip out and you’ve got a tracking device.”

“How long in the air?” Vail asked as she sat down on one of the plush leather seats.

“Five hours. There’s food, drink, beds, showers. My orders are to get you out of French airspace ASAP. We’ll be pushing back in two minutes.” He returned to the cockpit, where it looked like he was joined by a copilot—which Vail assumed was another Agency employee or contractor.

“I suggest we grab three hours of sleep,” DeSantos said, glancing at his watch. “Then we’ll meet back here for a mission briefing.”