Or, the people in Washington might not have such a positive response to me killing Khalil. We're charging you with pre-meditated murder, Detective Corey. Pre-meditated? I only thought about it three years ago.
Anyway, Boris had ended our tea-and-vodka hour with these words: "I congratulate you both on your survival. Don't waste any of your days."
Thanks for the advice. I hope Boris had taken his own advice. Bottom line on Boris-I liked him, but I didn't like what he'd done, which was to create a monster. And I was sure that Boris was going to regret this himself-if he hadn't already met his monster.
But if Boris was alive, then I needed to find him and warn him that his former student was back in the USA to settle some old scores. Of course, I should assume that the CIA had already done this for their defector, but with those guys you never knew who they had no further use for.
Aside from my benevolent motive of wanting to warn Boris, I also wanted to speak to him about how best to find Asad Khalil. Boris should have a few thoughts on that. Probably, though, he'd advise me, "Bend over and kiss your ass good-bye."
And finally, if Boris was not yet dead, then he would make good bait. Better him than me. Right?
Actually, there was a lot of bait out there for The Lion-me, Boris, George Foster, and probably other people we didn't know about. Plus, Kate, if Khalil discovered she was alive.
And of course there was Chip Wiggins, retired U.S. Air Force officer whose bombing mission over Libya had started this unhappy chain of events. I was fairly certain, however, that Chip Wiggins had by now met up with Asad Khalil, and thus had finally met his inevitable fate. What he doesn't kill today, he will kill tomorrow. I was sure I'd hear the results of our search for Wiggins at this meeting.
I opened the hallway door with my pass code, and as I walked toward Tom Walsh's office, I thought about forgetting to mention Boris at this meeting. I mean, the FBI does this to me. Right? Like the Iranian diplomat going to Atlantic City. What goes around comes around.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tom Walsh's secretary, Kathy, greeted me and said, "Mr. Walsh will be arriving shortly. Go right in and have a seat."
"Thanks." Forgetting protocol, I asked her, "Where is he?"
She hesitated, then said, "Across the street."
Which meant 290 Broadway, which could mean the CIA.
I walked into Walsh's corner office, where Captain Paresi was sitting at the round conference table across from FBI Special Agent George Foster. They looked grim. I also noticed there were bottles of water on the table-long meeting-and no notepads. Nothing leaves this room.
I shook hands with both men, and George inquired, "How's Kate?"
"Resting comfortably, thank you."
He remarked, "This is unbelievable."
I replied, "George, you more than anyone know this is not unbelievable."
He nodded.
George was present at this meeting because he'd been a participant in, and an eyewitness to, the events at JFK three years ago, and as per standard FBI procedure, the Khalil case was his for life-which I hoped was not cut short by the previously mentioned asshole. And as I said, George was part of the ad hoc Lion Hunter team of Kate, me, and Gabe Haytham, who was our go-to Arab guy.
I exchanged a few words with Captain Paresi, and he was a bit cool, which meant that his boss, Tom Walsh, had set the tone regarding John Corey. Never mind that my wife was almost killed-she was fine now. And as for me saving the world from a nuclear incident not too long ago-well, as we like to say here, what have you done for us lately?
I said to Paresi, "I am not being taken off this case."
He didn't respond directly, but said, "We value your dedication and your prior experience with the suspect."
To further set the tone, I replied, "Bullshit."
I went to one of the big windows. Walsh's corner office faces south, and from here on the 28th floor, I could see most of Lower Manhattan. To the southeast was NYPD Headquarters, a.k.a. One Police Plaza, a tall fortress-like building of red brick, where I did a brief stint many years ago, and which made me crazier than I already was. But I did learn how things work at the center, which has helped me at 26 Fed.
Father east was the Brooklyn Bridge, which crossed the East River connecting Manhattan Island to Brooklyn. About half of the city's relatively small Muslim population lived in Brooklyn, and about ninety-eight percent of them were honest, hardworking citizens who had come to America in pursuit of something that was missing in the place they had left. There was, however, that one, maybe two percent who had problems with the law, and an even smaller percentage who were national security risks.
On that subject, even terrorists need a place to shave, so if I had to guess where Asad Khalil intended to hide out in New York City-actually, I did have to guess-I'd say he wouldn't hole up in a Muslim neighborhood in the outer boroughs where we'd be looking for him or where someone might figure out that this new guy was worth a million bucks to the Feds. I mean, Khalil couldn't kill them all, the way he'd killed Amir the taxi driver.
Hiding out in a hotel would be a problem for him because of security cameras and hundreds of guests and staff passing through who might recognize him from the wanted photo that the NYPD would be distributing.
A better bet for Khalil would be a hot-sheet hotel where, if he didn't have so many sexual hang-ups, he could get laid while he was hiding out.
Another possibility was a flophouse, or an SRO-single-room occupancy-that offered daily rates, cash up front, no questions asked.
Or, as I previously suggested, Professor Khalil might have faculty housing at Columbia University.
More likely, though, Asad Khalil would be holed up in an apartment that had been rented under a corporate name by his backers and was used for colleagues visiting New York. That was standard procedure in the well-financed world of international terrorism, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we rarely discovered one of these safe houses-which were usually high-rise apartment buildings in Manhattan-unless we happened to follow some bad guy to the building.
In this case, however, I was certain that Khalil's backers would not put their important killer in a possibly compromised safe house-they'd have a new, clean place just for him.
I looked to the southwest where the Twin Towers once stood. I recalled that Jack Koenig, who had previously occupied this office, had purposely positioned his desk so that he could see the Towers. This reminded him daily of the first World Trade Center attack on February 26, 1993. The bastards got it right on the second try, and Jack Koenig, who'd stared at those towers every workday, died in one of them along with Paresi's predecessor, David Stein, and a few other people from this office who were at a meeting there.
I couldn't see the Trade Center observation platform from here, but Kate and I had been there once, and I could picture the visitors-people from all over the country and the world-staring into the big hole that had been the temporary mass grave of close to three thousand human beings. If you were one of the tens of thousands of survivors who had been in the Towers that morning, or were on your way there, as Kate and I had been, not a day went by that you didn't wonder why you were spared.
On Walsh's office window was a decal that showed a black silhouette of the Towers, and the words 9/11-NEVER FORGET!
To that I would add, If you do, it will happen again.
Also a few blocks from here was Murray Street where Amir the taxi driver had dropped off his last customer. Assuming the fare-beater was Asad Khalil, then what was he doing in Lower Manhattan on a Sunday?
Maybe nothing more than killing his taxi driver. But there were better places for that. This reinforced my suspicion that Khalil intended to stay and operate in Manhattan. So what was in Manhattan to attract him here? Well, John Corey lived on East 72nd Street. Vince Paresi and young wife number three lived on Central Park West, and Tom Walsh, like the Coreys, lived on the respectable Upper East Side. And Khalil's other possible targets, such as George Foster, all worked right here.