CHAPTER SIX
Monday morning.
Kate and I got to 26 Federal Plaza at 8 A.M.
The lobby elevators are surrounded by thick Plexiglas walls and a Plexiglas door with a security pad. I punched us in and greeted the three armed and uniformed security guards, who are actually FBI Police. I gave the senior guy, Larry, my card, on the back of which I’d written Nabeel’s info, and told him, “Arab gent to see me. He’s supposed to show in the A.M. If he’s late or he doesn’t have his passport, beat the shit out of him until I get down.”
Larry thought that was funny. Kate, Ms. FBI poster girl, pretended she didn’t hear that. But on the way up in the elevator, she said to me, “Tom’s right. You’ll do better overseas.”
“I do just fine here.”
“Every Islamic civil rights group in the city has a wanted poster of you hanging in their office.”
I assured her, “I just joke around.”
“Like when you punched that Iranian U.N. diplomat in the groin?”
“He slammed his nuts into my fist.”
Anyway, we got to our office on the 26th floor and separated. Kate is in the FBI cube farm, I’m on the NYPD side. The FBI gets more sunlight, but the cops are closer to the elevators.
I gave ICE a call. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in the same building and they work closely with us. I explained to a woman I know there, Betty Alvarez, that I had a possible informant and he had a work visa problem. I gave her the info from my notebook, and she said she’d try to check him out in her data bank. She asked, “Do you have his passport info?”
“No. But if he shows, I will.”
“Okay. Call me later.”
“Right.” I asked her, “Are you here legally?”
“John, fuck off.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I was feeling a little nuts this morning, a result no doubt of the liberating effect of my pending departure to Siberia.
I used my landline phone to call Alim Rasul. Alim is NYPD, working for the Task Force. He was born in Iraq, but now lives in Brooklyn and calls himself Al.
He answered, and I said, “Are you around this morning?”
There was a second of silence, then he asked, “Is this Corey?”
“Yeah. Are you around?”
“John, I’m sitting right next to you.”
“Good. Do you speak Arabic?”
“Why are you calling me on the phone?”
“This is a secure landline.”
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“Me? You’re the one still talking on the phone.”
He hung up and came around to my cube. “What can I do for you?”
I explained about Nabeel and said, “I need you to be in the interview room.”
“To translate?”
“No, Al. I just need you to hold him while I head-butt him.”
Al smiled politely.
I said, “I have to see Walsh at nine. If Nabeel shows while I’m with El Cid, maybe you can go down and get him.”
“Sure.”
I also informed him, “I may be out of town for a while. Maybe you want to handle this guy.”
“Okay.” He asked, “Where you going?”
“Sandland.”
“That’s a derogatory term.”
“Sorry. I’m going to the shithole of Yemen.”
“You screw up?”
“Not recently.” I let him know, “This is a promotion.”
He thought that was funny. He asked me, “Kate?”
“She’s coming.”
“Good. It’s b.y.o.b. in Yemen.”
“Yeah? I thought the babes were hot.”
“No, it’s the guys who will make you lose your head.”
So, with all the cultural jokes and slurs out of the way, I thanked Al for sitting in on the interview-formerly known as the interrogation-and I promised to bring him back a crucifix from Yemen.
I spent the next half hour on my computer, reviewing and updating my cases for whoever was going to get them.
Kate came over to my desk and said it was time to go see Tom.
On the way up the elevator to Tom’s office, she asked me, “Are we still okay with this?”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Sweden.”
“It’s Yemen, John.”
“Oh… well, that’s different.”
We got off at the 28th floor-housewares, supervisors, aggro, and bullshit-and walked to Tom’s door.
I was about to knock and enter, but Kate said, “Last chance.”
I knocked on the door and said to her, “You make the decision. Surprise me.” I added, “Remember the Cole.”
I opened the door and we entered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tom stood and greeted us at his desk. He asked, “How was your weekend?”
I informed him, “We saw the Monet exhibit at the Met.” And I got laid Saturday night. How about you?
All the pleasantries aside, he asked us, “So have you reached a decision?”
Kate, without even a glance at me, said to Tom, “We’ll take the assignment.”
He smiled. “Good. Have a seat.”
There’s a grouping of armchairs and a couch around a coffee table that Tom uses for important people, or people he needs to screw nicely, and Kate and I took the chairs facing the window. Tom sat on the couch and began, “First, I want to say that I appreciate your willingness to accept this overseas assignment.”
And so on. We got a short speech that he probably gives to everyone who’s going off to some craphole or another.
I interrupted Tom’s good-bye, good-luck speech and asked, “Are you going to tell us what this is about?”
He feigned surprise at the question and replied, “It’s pretty much what I said Friday.” He elaborated, “One of the three masterminds who were behind the Cole attack is in Yemen. He has been indicted in absentia. You will be part of a team that is looking for him.”
I asked, “What do we do with him when we find him?”
“You arrest him.”
“And?”
“And, we will extradite him to the U.S. Or maybe to Guantanamo.”
“Right. But as I was told when I was there, and as you probably know, Tom, the Yemeni constitution specifically forbids extradition of any Yemeni citizen for any reason-including terrorism and murder.”
“Yes… that’s true. But they make exceptions. And that’s what Kate will be working on as our legal attache.”
“They haven’t made an exception yet, but okay.” I asked him, just to set the record straight, “Are you sure we’re not supposed to terminate this guy?”
He informed me, “We don’t assassinate people.”
“We don’t assassinate people,” I agreed. “But we have used Predator drones with Hellfire missiles in Yemen and elsewhere to… let’s say… vaporize about fifty or a hundred people.”
“That’s different.”
“I’m sure the vaporized guys understood that.”
Tom seemed a little impatient with me and said, “I’ll give you both a piece of information that you will get in Yemen. This suspect holds an American passport. He claims dual citizenship-Yemen and U.S. So yes, we have a good case with the Yemeni government for extradition.” He also reminded us, “We don’t kill U.S. citizens.”
“Actually we do if they’re enemy combatants. Also, as you know, if we do apprehend him and turn him over to the Yemenis, we may never see him again.” I reminded him, “Some of the Cole plotters were captured, put in Yemeni jails, and miraculously escaped.”
Tom nodded, then said, “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. First things first. First, we need to apprehend this man.”
“Right. So to recap, we find this Yemeni with U.S. citizenship, turn him over to the Yemeni government, and hope they give him back to us.”
“Correct.”
“Can we at least torture him? Just a little?”
Tom asked, “Any other questions?”
Kate asked, “What is this man’s name?”
“You’ll be given his name when you get there. But he goes by the nom de guerre of al-Numair. Means The Panther.”
It seems to be my fate to get mixed up with Arabs who name themselves after big cats. The last guy was Asad-The Lion. Now I’ve got a panther to deal with. Hopefully, the next one will call himself Kitty.