“Hold on a minute!” shouted Kanter. “John, you're completely going wild here. These attacks are on American soil, terrorist attacks in New York, in the capital, for God's sake! Your vengeful furies wouldn't strike here, would they?”
“Why not? To them, the enemy is as much here as there.”
Kanter stared coldly at Savas. “To them, John? Or to you?”
Savas felt anger surge through him, but he held his temper. They had to listen!
“Larry, I haven't done myself any favors for this argument by my actions over the last few years; I know that. But think! If you saw the Islamic nations as the enemy, as a threat, their presence here might be one of the first places to strike! Purge America of them. If they are homegrown, well, hitting here would be a hell of a lot easier than doing a job like this overseas, especially in Islamic nations where they would stick out like sore thumbs.”
“We haven't even established that there is a definite connection between the assassinations, John. It's all circumstantial. Now you want to throw this into the mix? How big a conspiracy?” Kanter waved his hands back and forth. “This isn't Dr. No. At least the murder conspiracy had a consistency in targets. These bombings aren't of Islamic radicals. They're the damn official government representatives.”
“To some, it might be hard to tell the difference.”
“Jesus, John.” Kanter threw up his hands in frustration.
“Damn it, Larry, I'm not justifying this. I'm saying it's a nasty but understandable motive.”
“Perhaps you understand this better than I do.”
Savas clenched his jaw. He was going to come off as some sort of crazed man no matter what he said. Kanter was right about one thing — they had absolutely no hard evidence to link any of this. His hypothesis was emotional, not fact based.
Frank Miller glanced at Savas as if in sympathy, swept his gaze around the room, and cleared his throat. “I'd like to speak freely on something.”
Kanter nearly laughed. “Frank, you aren't in the marines anymore. Shoot. Take a cue from John.”
“OK, as John notes, even if it's not connected to the murders he and I are investigating, evidence is pointing toward a homegrown terrorist group, one that might be targeting Islamic sites.”
“Yes?” said Kanter.
“I mean, we're mobilizing all the forces of the US government to help protect a bunch of nations that have been quietly, under the table, supporting the bastards who bombed us in the first place.” He looked around the room. “I've had friends die at my side in Afghan caves looking for that son of a bitch who was financed by Saudi money, and whose organization was run by Saudi personnel. I'm not sure my heart's in the right place on this one.”
A silence fell across the room. Savas looked over at Miller and saw the anger in his eyes. John Savas also felt that anger. It was what had brought him to the FBI in the first place. He felt it every time he looked at a picture of his son.
“Frank,” said Kanter thoughtfully but firmly, “these attacks are going to test all of us in some way. I think we need to try to focus on what we're about, and that's law and order. We shouldn't forget that Americans also died in these attacks. But I don't think any of us believe that all the Saudis and other workers in those buildings are necessarily hostile to us, or were involved in anything that had to do with supporting terrorist causes. Now, I'm not saying all of them are clean, but I've been around in this world long enough to know that good and evil are found in every corner. That's my belief, and if I didn't believe that, I don't think I'd care much for law or order. On top of all that, we've got an international incident here, and the repercussions are international. So, folks, this is some serious stuff.”
Kanter looked directly at Miller, but Savas knew he was speaking as much or more to him. “Frank, I hear where you're coming from, but around here, we work to enforce the laws of this nation. You understand that, I hope?”
Miller pursed his lips and looked down at his hands. “Yeah, Larry,” he said glancing back up, “I do. It's just that things are a bit mixed up inside, is all.”
Kanter shook his head. “Ain't that the truth of it.”
John Savas closed his notebook as he walked down the hallway from the Operations Room. He and Kanter had stayed for another hour after dismissing the others. Savas was tired and at the stage of fatigue when he knew his thoughts were slow, his logic weak, and his emotions unstable. These last few weeks had drained him — and it was much more than just the work and long hours. Terror attacks on American soil were too raw, too personal.
Cohen was waiting for him outside his office. She was sitting at a desk next to a phone, looking like she had just caught something very interesting after casting her line out to the deep sea. He saw how tired she looked as well. Her long hair was disheveled, and she leaned back in the chair. A fire burned in her eyes.
Still so attractive. Savas thrust such thoughts from his mind as he often had over the last few years. He was damaged goods and too confused to think in those directions. Tonight he was especially not ready to face anything so complicated as feelings.
“John, about damn time,” she said.
“Glad to see you, too, Rebecca,” he responded, noting her briefest of smiles, mainly in the eyes.
“I've been waiting to tell you this for over an hour. While you were undoubtedly figuring all this out with Larry, we got a call in about those symbols.”
“Runes,” corrected Savas.
“Runes. Yes, exactly. That's exactly right.”
He raised his eyebrows at her tone. “What call?”
“A professor from the English Department at Columbia.”
“You cast a wide net.”
“Yes. I'm thorough, remember? The poor old man was very excited, and I had a heck of a time calming him down enough to understand what he was talking about.”
“OK, so what was he talking about?” asked Savas.
“Well, he says he knows what the symbols, the runes mean. Get ready for this, OK? He says they're Norse.”
“Norse? As in Valhalla and pretentious Wagnerian opera?”
“Precisely. Better still, I sent him everything that we had, including images of the pendant you are so interested in. That's when we hit the jackpot, John.” She smiled and tilted her head at a slight angle, triumphant.
“Go on.”
“It's also from Norse mythology, an artifact central to much of those beliefs: the hammer of the Norse god of thunder, Thor. The symbol and the runes match, John. You've been right all along — there is a connection! Not only between the killings but also to the Afghan strikes.”
John Savas blinked. “Thor's hammer?”
“Yes. The professor sounds really anxious to talk with you.” Cohen smiled at his disbelief, her tongue touching the bottom edge of her front teeth. “I think I want to come along.”
18
Fernando Martinez, just twelve years old, weaved and dodged his way through traffic on his small bicycle. The front and back of the bike were weighed down with large wire-caged baskets, loaded with foods from the restaurant that were wrapped carefully in bags for protection. The boy was well tanned from countless journeys through the streets of Caracas; the Venezuelan sun was strong enough even in the winter months to deeply brown anyone spending their hours under its rays. The skies were partly cloudy, the streets full of water and mud splashing against Fernando's legs from recent rainstorms. He could hear the chatter of street vendors and haggling customers as he rode past. He smiled. It was hard work, but it was good to be out, away from a troubled home, feeling the wind on his face and glimpsing the sun through the clouds.