His mother had received the money. Fifty thousand dollars. Money that would be spent feeding the poor and caring for the sick. The money was nice. But he was not doing this for money. Neither he nor his mother cared about physical rewards. They cared about their people. And the purity of their own souls.
She was proud of him, he knew. Proud that he was about to become a martyr for Allah. A martyr to help rid the world of sin and evil and Jews and Americans. How could a mother not be proud?
Muaffak Abbas looked at his watch, waited for the second hand to tick off thirty more seconds, then he walked into the restaurant. Went straight past the hostess without so much as a nod or acknowledgment of her existence. He did not acknowledge insignificant, godless insects. He walked right up to the man at the table, the man whose picture he had studied. The man who sat alone at a table for two, waiting for his luncheon partner. Waiting for someone who would never arrive.
Abbas stood in front of the man, who looked up, confused. The man’s eyes narrowed when Abbas threw his hands out, a grand gesture to God, welcoming Him as he would soon be welcomed in return.
He screamed out the words, realized that he was in America, that these people would not know what he was saying, and he wanted them to know, wanted them to understand. A final moment of vanity. So he screamed the words out again, this time in English: “I am ready!”
It took another few seconds. Abbas stood there, arms outstretched, the man at the table staring up at him, the restaurant silent.
He wished they had let him do this himself. He wished they had trusted his strength. And then he wished for nothing more.
Because that’s when his cell phone rang.
And Muaffak Abbas was, at last, bathed in light and glory.
And flesh and blood and bone and devastation and death.
He had received his reward.
Somewhere his mother was smiling and her heart was glad.
13
The morning after his dinner with Wanda Chinkle, Justin’s chartered plane left the Providence airport at nine-thirty. At eight o’clock, he’d gone to pay his respects to Katy Billings and tell her of his final conversation with her husband. He didn’t feel as if he was much comfort. He told her that he and Chuck had spoken about work, about the bomb at Harper’s. He recounted the gist of the conversation-she did not seem very interested in the details-and then he told a small lie. He said that Chuck told him he was happy he was leaving East End Harbor earlier than expected because he’d be so happy to see his wife. He couldn’t tell if Katy believed him. He hoped so. By the time he left, he was certain that she did. If there was one thing he knew from his years of talking to witnesses and to victims, it was that people ultimately believed what they wanted to be true.
When he touched down at the East End airport, he went straight to his house. The first thing he did was call Reggie Bokkenheuser and tell her she had the job. She tried to play it cool but couldn’t. She was too excited. When he hung up the phone, she was still telling him how he’d never regret this. He told her he didn’t expect to regret it. And he told her to report to work the next day.
Justin walked to the station after that. He needed the three-quarters of a mile or so of fresh air. The conversation with Katy Billings and the flight in the small plane had felt stifling and confining, emotionally and physically claustrophobic. It felt good to be out in the cold; it refreshed him to see his breath billow out in front of him as he walked. By the time he got to the station it was twelve-fifteen, his hands and face were turning red, and he felt both awake and alive.
When he got settled, he motioned for Gary and Thomas to come over to his desk. He gave them the name Hutchinson Cooke, told them to find out where the man lived. When they stared at him, baffled, he told them it was the name of the pilot who’d crashed in the small plane, the Piper, told them he needed as much background material as they could provide, and then he realized they weren’t staring because they wanted more information about the assignment, but because they simply didn’t know where to begin. So he said to start in Washington, D.C., check the city and every suburb within thirty miles for an address and phone number. He told them to use the Internet, to check Air Force bases around the country, any Air Force records they could get their hands on, anything it took to find out where he lived and anything else about him, no matter how much time they had to devote to it. They nodded, took one step away, then Justin cleared his throat, which meant they were supposed to stop and pay attention. When they stopped and paid attention, he said, “I hired someone. A new cop.”
“Cool,” Gary said. “Who is he?”
“He’s a she.” They gave that same confused stare and Justin said, “Her name’s Regina. Reggie. Reggie Bokkenheuser.” And then, for some reason, he said, “That’s Danish.” They nodded, satisfied, turned to walk away again, and Justin said, “She’s got a lot of experience. She’s going to be second in command here.”
This time the two young cops didn’t just look confused, they registered some hurt. Justin said, again, “She’s got a lot of experience.”
Neither Gary nor Thomas said a word. They just nodded one more time, went back to their desks, and began working the phones and the Net.
Justin thought, Hey, that went pretty well. As he started to go through the mail, mostly junk or crank mail that came in to the police chief-unsigned notes complaining about barking dogs, angry letters decrying the mess left by the weekend tourists-he decided, Maybe this management thing’s not as bad as I thought.
The smug feeling didn’t last very long. In fact, it lasted less than a minute, because that’s when Justin looked up and saw the man in the dark gray suit standing in the front door of the station house. The guy was wearing a dark overcoat, unbuttoned, so it flapped open. He was in his late forties to mid-fifties, hard to tell exactly because his hair was light and cut too short to reveal much gray, and dark sunglasses hid his eyes. He was tall, a little over six feet, and lean; he didn’t look as if he could have weighed more than one-seventy, one-seventy-five. The muscles on his neck were taut, and Justin had a feeling the rest of him was probably just as taut. A Fed, Justin thought. And after that he thought, I already don’t like him.
The man didn’t hesitate, walked over to Justin’s desk and stood over it.
“Justin Westwood?” he asked. And when Justin nodded, the man said, “Hubbell Schrader, FBI.”
“You guys should think about neon,” Justin said. “It’d be a little less obvious.”
Hubbell Schrader grinned. “It’s in the handbook,” he said. “We have to look like this.”
Justin had to return the grin. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Schrader said. “I thought I should check in with you, though.”
“About what?”
“For one thing, Chuck Billings. I was dealing with him and he was a good guy, damn good at his job.”
“So this is a sympathy call?”
“I know all local cops are supposed to hate us Feds, but maybe you can give it a rest for a while. I don’t have any hidden agenda here and I’m not looking to bust your balls.”
Justin’s warning light came on. He remembered what Billings had said about this guy: an asshole. And worse, an asshole who didn’t want to get to the meat of the case. He’d basically told the bomb experts what to think and what to say. The warning light glowed only brighter at the words “I don’t have any hidden agenda.” That meant that Special Agent Schrader was out for blood. He was a magician masquerading as a cop: anything that was revealed was going to be fake; anything he placed in plain sight was not going to be real.