“Your American FBI showed me a picture of this man. They have a different photograph, but it is, naturally, the same face. The agent told me this Roger Fratello is or was a notorious criminal in the States. Is it true?”
“I have no idea.” I pretended to dig through my bag, as though I might find the answer in there. I should have figured the FBI would be doing exactly as I was trying to do. I looked around at the growing crowd. “Is the FBI here?”
“No. I was interviewed in Lisbon.”
“This is embarrassing,” I said. “I thought his name was Gilbert Bernays.”
“Yes, so did we all.” He handed the picture back.
“Whatever his name was, he was on this plane, right?”
“I’m told he was.”
“You don’t remember him?”
“The takeover happened within one hour of our departure. We were immediately separated on the aircraft into small groups. Much of the time, we were bent over in the crash position or blindfolded. Beyond my own group, the first time I met most of these people was at our first reunion.”
“I see. I’m going out on a limb and assuming Gilbert Bernays has never been to any of your reunions.”
He laughed. “That’s correct. I don’t believe anyone-at least, none of us-has seen him since the ordeal ended.”
We were being increasingly interrupted as more guests arrived and made a point of saying hello to Dr. Wilson. As he was greeting someone, I pulled out the manifest Dan had given me.
“The other American men who survived”-I checked my notes again-“Voytag, Plume, and McGarry. Are any of these gentlemen here?”
“I’m afraid Peter Voytag died last year.”
“That’s too bad. How did he die?”
“Very sad. He survived the inferno, only to be felled by prostate cancer. He was young, too. But Frank and Tim are scheduled to be here. Perhaps we can find them.” He stretched his body up like a Slinky dog and checked around the room. “I don’t see them yet.” He was about to comment further when a young woman rushed up to him with the distressing news that a reporter was at the door, agitating to come in. A voice of authority was needed.
“Is it Mr. Kraft again?”
“No,” she said. “It’s someone different.”
Dr. Wilson turned to me. “I do apologize, but I must take care of this matter.”
“Who is Mr. Kraft?”
“He’s a reporter. Actually, he insists on being called a journalist. An investigative journalist.”
“Really?” That was very interesting. My cyber pen pal had made the same self-reverential distinction in our chat. “What’s his first name?”
“Max.” I wrote the name in my notebook, on the off chance that I had just stumbled over the Mr. No Comment in possession of Roger’s computer. We were still on for our meeting in Paris, but I had no idea when or where. He had all my contact information. I had none for him.
“What does he want?”
“He’s been agitating for a list of names and numbers of the survivors, and I won’t give it to him.”
“There’s no reason you should.”
“I agree. I feel an obligation to protect these people.” He looked around the room. “We didn’t ask to be hijacked. None of us did. We shouldn’t have to talk to reporters if we choose not to.”
“Is he doing a story?”
“So he says. You must excuse me, but I’ve told people you would be here, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”
“No problem. I can find my own way around.”
He apologized again and rushed off.
I surveyed the crowd. A group of seven or eight was gathered around a nearby table. Some were sitting. Some were leaning in with hands on the backs of chairs. With a range of skin color and dress, they looked to be from an array of different countries and cultures. Checking name tags, I saw that many were marked as survivors. I introduced myself as the researcher from Boston. There were several nods of recognition, which made everything easier.
“I’m looking for this man for a project I’m doing for Majestic Airlines. Have any of you seen or heard from him? I believe his name is Gilbert Bernays?”
I handed the picture of Roger to a woman in a sari. She shook her head and passed it on. The group validated a few things Dr. Wilson had told me. First, that no one had seen or heard from Fratello-Bernays since the hijacking. Second, that the group, on the whole, made for very unreliable witnesses. At the time of the hijacking, they had been scared and in shock. Now, four years removed from an event they wanted to forget anyway, they mostly recognized each other from the reunions and not the hijacking.
The same was not true, however, of Frank Plume and Tim McGarry, the two American survivors I stumbled upon in a corner. They were chatting with another survivor named Helene. I introduced myself and listened in as they talked about their meetings with the State Department.
“I got back three pages of an old expense report and my wallet.” Tim was crisp and angular, with wire-rim glasses, an efficient haircut, and a pale pallor. “I had a flashback moment when I saw it. It was like this list of things I did on the last day of my old life. I don’t even have that job anymore. Hell, I’m not even in that business. After I got back, I quit and started my own-”
“Pictures of my husband were still in mine.” Helene didn’t bother waiting for Tim to finish. “He’s my ex-husband now, but anyway, my license and credit cards were gone. I asked them if they thought my ID had been used to make a fake one. Can you imagine if one of these people got into the country using my name? More and more of those suicide bombers are women now, you know.”
“Did you get any electronic equipment back?” That was Frank. Thicker and healthier-looking than Tim, he had coarse, curly sideburns and a comfortable grip on his highball glass. He also talked really fast. “You didn’t, didja? Me, neither. That’s because they took all that stuff, all the cameras and recorders and laptops, they took it back to that place in Afghanistan, and they reused it.”
“Who?” Helene sounded intrigued.
“The terrorists.”
“Reused it for what?”
“For whatever terrorists do with those things. They’re not living in tents, you know. They’re digital, just like we are. They send e-mails and get e-mails. They have Web sites, which they use to send coded messages. They talk on cell phones. They use video cameras for scouting targets. Just the other day in my neck of the woods, they caught a husband-and-wife team with a videocam on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. They were taking shots from every angle. Bad things are going to happen.” He raised his glass to drink but ended up using it as a pointer. “You watch. It’s only a matter of when.”
His tone was ominous, but I couldn’t blame him. Something bad had already happened to him.
“Are you saying some of our belongings could have been used to set up an attack?” Helene seemed very interested in the idea that her possessions had gone on to participate in some meaningful event.
“That’s what repurposing means-using it for their purposes. That could have been your camcorder they were using.”
“Oh, I didn’t have one-”
“Or my laptop. Did you ever think about that? My laptop sending e-mails to sleeper cells in Detroit.” He raised his eyebrows and gulped half of his drink.
Here was an interesting concept, this idea that the passengers’ computers had been part of the Zormat stash. I had only been thinking about things like wallets and family photos coming out of the Hefty bag.
“Did everyone onboard have their laptops confiscated?”
Frank looked at me. “Who are you again?” I reminded him. Researcher from Boston, Majestic Airlines…“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“They took everything,” Tim said. “Every damn thing we had, they took. Socks. Pencils. Key chains. CDs. They got a big kick out of playing our music. That’s something I wish I could have back, my traveling music. A lot of those CDs were hard to find. A bunch of them were signed by the artists.”