We all mulled that over. I saw Kate looking at me, which I guess meant she wanted me to stick my neck out. I'm only here on a contract anyway, so I said, "I think Khalil is in New York. If he's not in New York, then he's someplace else in this country."
Captain Stein asked me, "Why do you think that?"
"Because he's not finished."
"Okay," Stein asked, "what is it that he needs to finish?"
"I have no idea."
"Well," said Stein, "he made a hell of a good start."
"And that's all it is," I replied. "There's more to come."
Captain Stein, like me, sometimes lapses into station house speech and commented, "I fucking well hope not."
I was about to reply, but Mr. CIA spoke for the first time and asked me, "Why are you so certain that Asad Khalil is still in this country?"
I looked at Mr. Harris, who was staring at me. I considered several replies, all of them starting and ending with "Fuck you," but then I decided to give Mr. Harris the benefit of the doubt and treat him with courtesy. I said, "Well, sir, I just have this gut feeling, based on Asad Khalil's personality type, that he is the sort of man who doesn't quit while he's ahead. He only quits when he's finished, and he's not finished. How do I know that, you ask? Well, I was thinking that a guy like this could have continued to cause damage to American interests abroad, and get away with it like he has for years. But instead, he decided to come here, to America, and cause more damage. So, did he just stop by for an hour or so? Was this a Seagull Mission?"
I looked around at the uninitiated, and explained, "That's where a guy flies in, shits on everybody, then flies out."
A few people chuckled, and I continued, "No, this was not a Seagull Mission. It was a… well, a Dracula mission."
I seemed to have everyone's attention, so I continued. "Count Dracula could have sucked blood in Transylvania for three hundred years and kept getting away with it. But, no, he wants to sail to England. Right? But why? To suck the blood of the ship's crew? No. There was something in England that the Count wanted. Right? Well, what did he want? He wanted this babe-the one he saw in Jonathan Barker's photo. Right? What was her name? Anyway, he has the hots for the babe, and the babe is in England. You follow? Likewise, Khalil didn't come here to kill everybody on that plane or everybody in the Conquistador Club. Those people were just appetizers, a little blood sucking before he got to the main meal. All we have to do is to identify and locate the babe-or Khalil's equivalent-and we've got him. You follow?"
There was this long silence in the room, and some people, who'd been staring at me, turned away. I thought that maybe Koenig or Stein was going to put me on medical leave or something. Kate was staring down at her pad.
Finally, Edward Harris, gentleman that he was, said to me, "Thank you, Mr. Corey. That was an interesting analysis. Analogy. Whatever."
A few people chuckled.
I said, "I have a ten-dollar bet with Ted Nash that I'm right. You wanna bet?"
Harris looked like he wanted to leave, but he was a good sport and said, "Sure. Make it twenty."
"You're on. Give Mr. Koenig a twenty."
Harris hesitated, then pulled a twenty out of his wallet and slid it to Koenig, who pocketed it.
I passed a twenty down the table.
Interagency meetings can really be boring, but not when I'm there. I mean, I hate bureaucrats who are so colorless and careful that you couldn't even remember them an hour after the meeting. Aside from that, I wanted each and every person in that room to remember that we were there on the assumption that Khalil might still be in the country. As soon as they started to believe he was gone, they'd get lazy and sloppy, and let the overseas guys do the work. Sometimes you've got to be a little weird to make the point. I'm good at weird.
In fact, Koenig, who was not a fool, said, "Thank you, Mr. Corey, for that persuasive argument. I think there's a fifty-fifty chance you're right."
Kate was looking up from her pad now and said, "Actually, I think Mr. Corey is right." She glanced at me,, and our eyes met for half a second.
If we'd slept together, my face would have turned red, but no one in that room-all of them trained face readers-could detect an ounce of post-coital complicity. Boy, I really made the right move last night. Really. Right?
Captain Stein broke the silence and said to Edward Harris, "Is there anything you'd like to share with us?"
Harris shook his head and said, "I was recently assigned to this case, and I haven't yet been briefed. You all know more than I do."
Everyone had the exact same simultaneous thought, which was "Bullshit." But no one said anything.
Harris did say to me, however, "The lady's name was Mina."
"Right. It was on the tip of my tongue."
So, we all chatted for another ten or fifteen minutes, then Koenig glanced at his watch and said, "Last but not least, we'll hear from Alan."
Special Agent Alan Parker stood. He's kind of short for his age, unless maybe he really is thirteen. Alan said, "Let me be very frank-"
Everyone groaned.
Alan seemed confused, then got it and chuckled. He began again, "Let me… well, first of all, the people in Washington, who wanted to manage the flow of information-"
Captain Stein interrupted and said, "Speak English."
"What? Oh… okay… the people who wanted to keep a lid on this-"
"Who is that?" Stein demanded.
"Who? Well… some people in the administration."
"Like who?"
"I don't know. Really. But I guess the National Security Council. Not the FBI."
Captain Stein, who knows about these things, pointed out, "The Director of the FBI is a member of the National Security Council, Alan."
"Really? Anyway, whoever these people are have decided that it's time to begin full disclosure. Not all at once, but within the next seventy-two hours. Like a third of what we know each day, for the next three days."
Captain Stein, who has a sarcastic streak, inquired, "Like nouns today, verbs tomorrow, and everything else on Wednesday?"
Alan forced a chuckle and said, "No, but I have a three-part news release, and I'll pass out the first part to everyone today."
Stein said, "We want it all within the next ten minutes. Continue."
Alan said, "Please understand that I don't make the news, and I don't decide which facts are made public. I just do what I'm told. But I am the clearinghouse for news items, so I'd appreciate it if people didn't give interviews or hold press conferences without first checking with my office." He further advised us, "It's very important that the media and the public are kept informed, but it's more important that they only know what we want them to know."
Alan didn't seem to see any contradiction in that statement, which was scary.
Anyway, Alan was babbling on about the importance of news as another weapon in our arsenal and so forth, and I thought he was going to say something about using me and Kate as bait, or about Gadhafi laying the wood to Asad's mommy and putting that out to the press, but he didn't touch on any of that. Instead, he told anecdotal stories about how leaked news got people killed, tipped off suspects, ruined operations, and caused all sorts of problems including obesity, impotence, and bad breath.
Alan concluded with, "It's true that the public has a right to know, but it's not true that we have a duty to tell them anything."
He sat.
No one seemed certain they understood what Alan was saying, so to clarify, Jack Koenig said, "No one should speak to the press." He added, however, "This afternoon, there will be a joint press conference of the NYPD and the FBI, followed by another joint press conference that will include the Governor of New York, the Mayor of New York City, the NYPD Commissioner, and others. Someone, at some point, in some manner, will announce what a lot of people already know or suspect, which is that Flight One-Seven-Five was the subject of an international terrorist attack. The President and members of the National Security Council will go on TV tonight and announce the same thing. There will be a media feeding frenzy for a few days, and your respective offices will get many phone calls. Please refer everyone to Alan, who gets paid to talk to the press."