Bender laughed. “What, haven’t you read the brochure? This event is for all of us.”
“It is a political stunt for the leader of the Crusaders to appear to be the leader of us all,” al-Hassan said simply.
Bender hesitated. “Are you in an especially bad mood, Abdul?”
Marwan hesitated. He knew his brother shared that view — he’d heard him speak against the paternalistic approach taken by the Christian Pope. Had he said something wrong? “No, why?”
Bender shrugged. “There’s an edge in your voice. I hope everything is all right.” “Fine,” Marwan said, thinking of what was to come. “I am absolutely fine.”
Go back to the beginning.
Jack remembered hearing that somewhere, though he couldn’t recall where. The truth is that he had been picking up his investigative skills in a sort of on-the-job training program. His training with LAPD SWAT, and in Delta, and with the CIA, had much more to do with field operations than mystery solving. But someone somewhere had once told him that when the clues start slipping out of your mental grip, go back to the beginning.
“What’s the earliest event?” he said aloud, alone in his car. Driscoll was trailing him. “If we count it, there’s the airline bombing that Diana Christie was working on. No,” he corrected, “there’s the timeline Farouk gave me. The purchase of C–4 out of Cairo and its shipment to the U.S. When was that?
“Six weeks ago, he said,” Jack answered himself. “Then the airline accident or bombing, whichever it is. Four weeks ago. Yasin arrives in Los Angeles four days ago. I question Ramin yesterday, and the house blows up.”
Jack was still reciting the timeline of events as he pulled his car up to CTU’s nondescript building and walked inside. He caught the attention of Nina Myers, Jamey Farrell, and Christopher Henderson and motioned them toward the conference room. They followed, and he began to repeat his timeline so far, this time writing it on a whiteboard in the almost-bare room.
Jamey Farrell shook her head. “You missed something. Nina arrested the Sweetzer Three. That was two days ago. One day before you went to Ramin’s house.” Jack nodded and crammed that onto the whiteboard above Ramin.
“Well, that’s a thing to think about,” Christopher Henderson mused. “Yasin — assuming it’s Yasin we’re talking about here — didn’t care at all about the three Muslims we captured with a load of plastic explosives. But the minute you questioned Ramin, he blew the place up.”
“Maybe he couldn’t get to them when they were arrested,” Nina suggested.
Jack saw where he was headed. “Could be. But he was ready and waiting for Ramin. That bomb was planted long before we got there. Not these three, though. Why not?”
“They’re too important to kill?” Henderson proposed.
But Nina was headed in the other direction. “No. They weren’t important enough.” Her eyes met Jack’s, and both realized the other was thinking the same thing.
“They don’t know anything,” Jack said first. “They were meant to live, so we would waste time on them. They were the first decoy, just in case we were on the trail of the C–4.”
“So the airplane, then,” Nina wondered. “Where does that fit in? If Christie was right, then they blew it up. Why?”
“Something about Ali, the guy in the seat,” Jack said. “You did a thorough background on him?” Nina crossed her heart. “Trust me. Nothing in his past. Squeaky clean.” “Like Collins,” Jack said. He paused, then said,
“Forget his past. What was his future? Where was he going?”
Jamey Farrell blushed. “I never looked for that. Give me a minute.” She hurried out of the room.
Michael rode shotgun in the Cardinal’s car, but his mind had leaped five miles and more than an hour ahead.
Almost, he thought. Almost there.
After so much work, only a short time to wait, and then the heresy of Vatican II would be eradicated.
Jamey Farrell reentered the conference room with a look of pure embarrassment on her face. “It was there all the time,” she said meekly. “If only I’d thought to look.”
“What is it?” Jack said, although he thought he already knew.
“Abdul Ali was arriving in Los Angeles to attend several meetings. The most important one was the Unity Conference. He was scheduled to meet with the Pope.”
Giancarlo swept the reception hall as he planned to do several times in the next hour or more prior to the arrival of the Holy Father. Every precaution had been taken, of course, but he did not feel right unless he had personally walked every inch of the area. In order to better mingle with the crowd of eighty or ninety clerics in the hall, he was dressed in the black robes of a priest, and, if necessary, he could speak eloquently on various theological topics. But at this moment he avoided all conversation, simply smiling and tipping his head to anyone who made eye contact with him.
Another “priest”—actually one of his Swiss Guards in a similar disguise — approached him and said quietly in Italian, “There is a telephone call for you. It may be urgent.”
Giancarlo bowed and turned, gliding out of the room. In the hallway outside, he opened a nondescript door that led to a separate room filled with video monitors. In this room, there was no attempt to hide security. Four men in body armor and wearing automatic weapons slung over their shoulders waited with professional patience, while three others watched the video screens intently.
One of them handed a headset to Giancarlo. He slipped it over his head and said in English, “This is the Chief of Security, may I help you?”
“This is Federal agent Jack Bauer,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m concerned that there may be an attempt on the life of the Pope.”
Jack admired calm, and the man on the other end of the line sounded almost serene. “I see,” he said. “I am aware that my people have already vetted this call, but can you tell me what agency you’re with?”
“Well,” Jack said, almost smiling at the complex answer to such a simple question, “I am in a special capacity with the State Department.”
“You are CIA,” the man, Giancarlo, interpreted.
“I’m currently working with a special counterterrorism unit on a domestic case. It’s led us to believe that there may be a plot for suicide bombers to assassinate the Pope.”
Giancarlo allowed himself the faintest flicker of a smile. “Be assured, sir, there is no way for a suicide bomber to get anywhere near His Holiness.”
In the most straightforward way that he could, Jack described the hunt for the C–4, the horrific discovery of the bomb planted inside Father Collins.
As Jack ended his story, the security man seemed nonplussed. “That is startling,” he said without inflection, “but I don’t understand. You say that you have found the C–4, and that you have stopped this suicidal priest. Do you think the Holy Father’s life is still in danger?”
Jack explained their theory about Abdul Ali. “We’re not sure if we’re right about Ali. And if we’re right, we’re not even sure if the priest was a replacement for Ali, or if they were both supposed to be there. But I thought you should know.”
Giancarlo said, “Thank you. I will inform His Holiness, but I fear that without solid proof, he will not cancel this conference. He has committed himself to see it to the end.” Jack sighed. “Let’s just hope the end doesn’t come too soon.”