“I think it’ll be best if Max flies to Russia as soon as possible. He can coordinate things from there, use the ground station as our primary base of operations,” Gordian continued. “At the same time, Pete, you track down whatever leads you can here in the U.S. I’m hoping for fast progress.”
Nimec nodded again.
“We keep a low profile, okay?” Gordian said. “If the intelligence community gets the slightest hint we’re conducting an independent investigation, they’ll shut us down.”
Gordian swung his gaze around the table.
“Any comments?”
“Only one,” Nordstrum said.
Gordian looked at him, waiting.
“You know that quote about the wrestler and the dancer?”
“Right.”
“It comes from Marcus Aurelius, not the emperor Julius.”
Gordian looked at him another moment. Then he slowly lifted his coffee to his lips, drained the cup, and nodded.
“Appreciate that, my friend,” he said.
The Blue Room at New York’s City Hall, where official press briefings normally took place, was too small to hold the crowd of print and film journalists who wanted to attend the city’s first press conference since the explosion. Figuring out where to hold this briefing had been only one of a hundred decisions that had to be made by the mayor’s office.
But the mayor was gone. Dead. Killed in the blast like a thousand others.
The deputy mayor was in the hospital and expected to be there for at least a week. Internal injuries. He’d taken a chunk of the bleachers in the gut and was considered to be lucky to be alive. Nobody knew when he’d be back on the job.
Half of the borough presidents were too battered to attend, and the police commissioner was both too shattered by his personal tragedy and too focused on the actual investigation to, as he put it, waste his time on PR bullshit.
But the news media was clamoring for anything. For crumbs. So Press Secretary Andrea DeLillo had spent the last fifteen hours pushing her coping skills to world-class levels. She’d fended off politicians determined to make political hay in the glare of the spotlight focused on Times Square. She’d gotten numbers from the crews at the site, from all of the hospitals, and from the EMS sites that had survived. She’d pushed the pain of her own losses into the background, not to mention the fear that she’d probably lose her job as soon as a new mayor took office. If anything she could do would shake loose the killers who had brought the angel of death down on her city, she would do it. She would feed the media the facts as she knew them, and turn them loose to find the perps. It was all she could manage right now. She could only pray it was enough.
The mikes were set up at a podium at the top of the City Hall steps. A huge crowd of reporters of all kinds, all bundled up against the cold, flowed down the stairway and into the street, which had been blocked off and barricaded by the police department. Flanked by representatives from the police, the fire department, the city council, and the FBI, Andrea surveyed the crowd.
Finally she stepped up to the mike and began her presentation. As the grim statistics rolled off her lips, she made a silent vow: Somebody would pay for this if she had to see to it herself.
TWENTY
FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:
FBI Official Leaves Questions of Fifth Bomb Unanswered
Fuels Conjecture With Statements About Evidence at FBI Explosives Lab
Washington — During a news conference today at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Assistant Director Robert Lang remained vague about whether the FBI is in possession of physical clues to the identity of the bomber or bombers responsible for the bloody New Year’s Eve attack that left an estimated 700 persons dead and injured thousands more in Times Square.
In a prepared statement to the media, Lang officially confirmed for the first time that the powerful explosion that occurred at 11:56 P.M. was followed by three secondary blasts of “a deliberate nature,” ruling out the possibility that they may have stemmed from violent damage to underground gas mains in the bombing, as had been reported by some news organizations. He went on to term eyewitness accounts “extraordinarily helpful to the investigation,” and expressed confidence that photographs and video tapes taken at the scene will provide law enforcement agents with a clear picture of “matters of relevant interest that occurred before and after the event.”
Lang was considerably more guarded, however, when asked about an item found by investigators rumored to be a fifth explosive device that failed to detonate. “I can only tell you that we do possess substantial evidence believed to have been left behind by the perpetrator or perpetrators, and presently under analysis in our Laboratory Division’s Explosive Unit-Bomb Data Center,” Lang said in a brief Q&A session following his prepared statement. “We are unable to be more specific right now for investigative reasons, but want to reassure the public, and especially the relatives of those indiscriminately killed or injured in the blast, that we are as sickened by what happened as anyone else, and have committed all our resources to solving this case.”
Rather than quell speculation that another bomb may have been discovered by members of the New York Police Department Emergency Services Unit within minutes of the fatal explosions, Lang’s comments drew attention for having mentioned the EU-BDC— which serves as the FBI’s primary laboratory for the examination of bombing devices — as the unit where the mysterious evidence is being processed. Also, while noting that tests of explosive residue and other trace materials are among the functions normally performed by the EU-BDC, Lang refused to “limit the categorization of evidence to one particular type or another” when responding to follow-up questions by reporters.
The implications of this may be significant, say many forensics experts. Even partial remains of an explosive device are likely to reveal “signature” characteristics that can be matched against those of devices used in other bombing incidents and potentially link it to a suspect or terrorist organization…
The reports about the mysterious fifth bomb were almost on the money.
The undetonated satchel charge was, in fact, found outside a storefront on Fifty-second Street and Seventh Avenue, although by firemen rather than police officers. In response to a request for operational support from the NYPD, technicians wearing bomb protective suits from the FBI’s New York field office were quickly dispatched to collect the evidence. When it was determined that the device’s fusing system was inoperative, and that it was therefore safe for transport, the specialized unit — in a procedure okayed by the local assistant director — arranged for the satchel charge to be delivered to FBI HQ in Washington, D.C., where it was given over to the EU-BDC for scientific examination. A further discovery at the bomb scene by agents equipped with ultraviolet lights had caused the laboratory to buzz with anticipation well in advance of the package’s arrivaclass="underline" fluorescence had been detected in both the unexploded charge and debris samples collected near the site of the initial blast, strongly indicating the explosives had been tagged with chemical markers by their manufacturer. Their reaction was strongly warranted — while not yet legally mandated in the United States, tagging had been required by the Swiss government for years and was a voluntary practice among an increasing number of international explosives suppliers. If indeed present, the expectation was that the markers would lead investigators back to the point of sale, and produce valuable information about the purchaser of the bomb-making material.