“It’s a date.”
A skycap took her luggage into the terminal, and she followed. We waved to each other through the glass.
I got back into the limo and proceeded to American Airlines.
We both had diplomatic passports, which are standard issue in our business, so checking in to Business Class was relatively painless. Security was a combination of a hassle and a joke. I probably could have handed my Glock to the brain-dead security screener and picked it up on the other side of the metal detector.
I had a few hours to kill, so I spent the time in the Business Class lounge, reading the papers and drinking free Bloody Marys.
My cell phone rang, and it was Kate. She said, “I’m about to board. I just wanted to say good-bye again, and tell you I love you.”
I said, “I love you, too.”
“You don’t hate me for getting you into this thing?”
“What thing? Oh,this thing. No problem. It just adds to the Corey legend.”
She stayed quiet a moment, then asked, “Are we done with TWA 800?”
“Absolutely. And Jack, if you’re listening, it was a mechanical malfunction in the center fuel tank.”
She stayed quiet again, then said, “Don’t forget to e-mail me when you arrive.”
“You, too.”
We exchanged a few more “I love you’s” and hung up.
A few hours later, while Kate was over the Atlantic Ocean, the video screen said my flight to London was boarding, and I walked toward the gate.
It had been exactly one week since the memorial service for the victims of TWA Flight 800, and in that week, I’d learned a lot of new things, none of which were doing me any good at this moment.
But in this game, you have to think long-term. You talk. You snoop. You rack your brain. Then you do it again.
There isn’t a single mystery in this world that doesn’t have a solution, if you live long enough to find it.
BOOK THREE
September
Home
Conclusions: CIA analysts do not believe that a missile was used to shoot down TWA Flight 800… There is absolutely no evidence, physical or otherwise, that a missile was employed.
CIA “Analytic Assessment,” March 28, 1997
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Home
Not having contracted malaria or been abducted, kidnapped, or murdered, I arrived at JFK on a Delta flight from London at 4:05P.M. on the Friday after Labor Day, having spent about forty days and forty nights in the desert wilderness of Yemen.
For the record, the place sucks.
Kate was still in Dar es Salaam, but she’d be home within the week. She seemed to be enjoying Tanzania, e-mailing me about friendly people, good food, interesting countryside, and all that. Rub it in.
Exactly why we’d gotten off with short tours was more of a mystery than why we’d been exiled in the first place-which was no mystery at all. Possibly, Jack Koenig and his colleagues believed that, as with a prison sentence, a short one teaches you a lesson, and a long one breeds resentment and revenge.
Wrong. I was still pissed off and not a bit grateful for my early release.
I cleared Passport Control and Immigration quickly since I wasn’t carrying anything except my overnight bag, a diplomatic passport, and a concealed grudge; I’d left my safari clothes in Yemen where they belonged, and my Glock was being shipped home through the embassy dip pouch. I was wearing tan slacks, a blue blazer, and a sport shirt, which looked good when I’d put them on about a day ago.
It seemed strange to be back in civilization, if that’s the right word for JFK International Airport. The sights, sounds, and smells-which I’d never noticed before-were jarring.
Aden, as it turned out, was not the actual capital of Yemen-some shit-hole town called Sana’a was, and I’d had to go there a few times on business, where I had the pleasure of meeting Ambassador Bodine. I introduced myself to her as a close friend of John O’Neill, though I’d met the gentleman only a few times. I didn’t get kicked out, which was the plan, but neither was I invited for dinner at the ambassador’s residence.
Aden, where I was stationed, was the port city where theCole had been blown up, and it, too, sucked. The good news was that the Sheraton Hotel where the team stayed had a gym (the Marines had to show the staff how to put the equipment together) and a swimming pool (which we had to teach the staff how to clean), and I was as tan and fit as I’d ever been since I took three bullets up in Washington Heights about four years ago. I’d kept the drinking in Yemen to a bare minimum, learned to like fish, rather than drink like one, and experienced the joys of chastity. I felt like a new man, but the old man needed a drink, a hamburger, and sex.
I stopped at the lounge and ordered a beer and hamburger at the bar.
I had my cell phone, but the battery was as dead as my dick at the moment, and I asked the bartender to plug in my charger, which he was happy to do. I explained, “I was in the Arabian desert.”
“Nice tan.”
“Place called Yemen. Dirt cheap. You should go there. The people are great.”
“Well, welcome home.”
“Thanks.”
There had actually been e-mail service in Aden, through Yahoo! for some reason, and this is how Kate and I had kept in touch, along with an occasional international call. We never mentioned TWA 800, but I’d had lots of time to think about it.
I’d e-mailed John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explaining that I was on a secret and dangerous mission for the government, and I might be a few days or years late for class. I suggested they start without me.
The TV over the bar was tuned to the news channel, and it appeared that nothing had happened in my absence. The weather guy said it was another beautiful late summer day in New York, with more of the same in the days ahead. Good. Aden was a furnace. The interior of Yemen was hell. Why do people live in these places?
I ordered another beer and scanned aDaily News on the bar. There wasn’t much news, and I read the sports section and checked my horoscope: Don’t be surprised if you have feelings of ecstasy, jealousy, agony, and bliss all in a day’s work. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
Anyway, in Aden, I worked with six FBI agents, including two women, and four NYPD guys from the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, two of whom I knew, so it was okay. Along with the investigators, we had about twenty Marines armed to the teeth, and an eight-man FBI SWAT team, all of whom rotated duty as sharpshooters on the roof of the Sheraton, and which the hotel, I think, used in their marketing strategy for the few other guests.
The mission also included about a dozen Diplomatic Security Service people, and a few Army and Navy intelligence personnel, and of course, the CIA, whose identity and number was a big secret, but I counted four. All the Americans got along fairly well because there was no one else to talk to in that godforsaken place.
My duties in Aden consisted of working with their corrupt and stunningly stupid intelligence people to get leads on the perpetrators of theCole attack. Most of these guys spoke some kind of English, left over from the British colonial days, but whenever my teammates and I got too nosy or aggressive, they forgot their second language.
Now and then, Yemen intelligence would round up the usual suspects and drag them down to police headquarters so we could see some progress in the investigation. About once a week, five or six task force guys would be taken to the police station to question these miserable wretches through inept and lying interpreters in a fetid, windowless interrogation room. The intelligence guys would smack the suspects around a little for our benefit and tell us they were getting close to the “foreign terrorists” who blew up theCole.