Part 18 (1/2)

”It will take shoe leather and money,” said Dimmick. ”It could get expensive. We'd have to take the photographs you gave us and the pictures from the FBI's wanted posters, when we get them, and send somebody to each of these places to ask questions. See if anyone recognizes him.”

”Don't worry about the expense,” said Snyder. ”Do it.”

”You got it,” said Dimmick.

”Thanks. Call me when you have more,” said Snyder. Then he hung up.

Snyder swiveled around in his chair to face the computer. He opened his e-mail, hit Compose, and started to type in the name Joselyn Cole. Before he got to the l in her first name, the computer produced her e-mail address. He typed ”Liquida and Thorn” in the subject box, and began to unload all the information the investigator had just given him. He laid heavy emphasis on Thorn and his presumed activities at the boneyards, underlining the name of each place and their locations.

Snyder left out the fact that he had hired an investigator and told her instead that the information had been obtained from un-disclosed but highly reliable sources. This made it sound more important, the inference being that he had more than one. He told her that these sources had credible information that Liquida was involved in the attack on the naval base near San Diego a year earlier. Then Snyder mentioned that he had seen Internet news items in which Madriani's name appeared in connection with this same event, and asked whether she knew anything about this. He wondered if this would surprise her, or if she already knew. Snyder wanted to believe that he could trust her. He desperately needed an ally, and Cole had history on Thorn.

She was also a mover and shaker with friends in high places and access to the press. For the last several days file footage of Cole coming down the steps of the Capitol and reports of her testimony before Congress had been on the airwaves. She had ignited a firestorm of debate. Snyder was impressed. He studied how she'd done it.

Joselyn had emphasized the danger of precision weapons by telling the panel that these were the dream weapons of future a.s.sa.s.sins. As far as the cold logic of the weapon was concerned, the only difference between a carload of terrorists and a room filled with elected officials was the finger on the trigger and the selection of targets. The suggestion that in time this might change was all it took. Cole pushed their b.u.t.ton and suddenly the weapon was a threat to them.

It was an obvious point, but it wasn't lost on Snyder. All politics is local, and nothing is more local to most politicians than saving their own a.s.ses. If Cole could do it in the halls of Congress, why couldn't he do the same thing outside, on the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton? Hold a news conference and go public.

He had already sent letters to the Metropolitan Police in Was.h.i.+ngton about Liquida and Thorn. He'd received nothing in reply. Follow-up phone calls netted the usual response. They couldn't discuss the investigation, talk about persons of interest, or identify suspects.

The fact that Dimmick, with his inside sources of information, was unable to confirm whether the police were actively looking for Thorn or Liquida convinced Snyder that he was getting nowhere.

Dimmick had given him plenty of information, especially on Thorn. Snyder had the photographs from the FBI showing Thorn with his son. He could blow them up into posters. That would play well on television. The fact that he could now identify Thorn by name and provide details about his background, the fact that he was a merchant of death, that he bought airplanes and was linked to terrorists and wanted by the FBI. Snyder started to smile at the thought. It could be a hot story if it was handled the right way, the way Joselyn Cole had done it in front of the committee.

He could toss out Liquida's name, the fact that he was a former hit man for the drug cartel and was now believed to be a.s.sociated with terrorists, and that his fingerprint was found at the scene of Jimmie's murder. He wondered about Madriani and what he might say. It was Madriani who'd told him about Liquida and his thumbprint on Madriani's business card. Snyder could skate around it at the press conference. Just tell them there was a fingerprint. No need to tell them where it was found. Let the police deal with it.

His son was murdered because, as Madriani or his partner had said, Jimmie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a victim. Now, from what Snyder could see, the police were looking for his killer in all the wrong places. Either that or they weren't looking at all. Crime was like everything else. Cases went cold because cops got lazy. He wasn't going to allow that to happen to Jimmie's case. To Snyder, the investigation of his son's murder was like a living, breathing soul. It was all he had left. It galled him that there was no death penalty in the District of Columbia, a place where violent crime was the local sport. If the killer was arrested before Snyder could get his hands on him, Snyder would move on to the trial and live for that. And if the killer was convicted, he would live for the trial's penalty phase. And if you cornered him and asked him what he would do once the killer was marched off to prison and locked away, Bart Snyder couldn't tell you, because he didn't know. To him the concept of closure was a lie.

But for now he would be satisfied to have the media asking questions, demanding to know why the cops weren't developing the information he had given them on Thorn and Liquida. He would blow the lid off the investigation, smoke out the people in charge, and force them to answer his questions. He was tired of standing on the outside looking in, calling and getting no answers. It was his son who was dead. He had a right to know what was happening. And he wasn't going to sit around and wait to find out.

TWENTY-FIVE.

I'm getting a little hungry. Would you mind if we stop?” Harry looked over to discover that Sarah had dozed off in the pa.s.senger seat next to him.

”What? What did you say?” She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and stretched her arms. ”You want to stop?” She yawned. ”Sure. Where are we, do you know?”

”Somewhere west of Gallup. I'm not sure how many miles. We crossed the ArizonaNew Mexico line a ways back,” said Harry. ”Just pa.s.sed a sign. There's a restaurant and truck stop just up ahead.”

”How far to the next town?” she asked.

”What, you don't like truck stops?”

”If you want to stop, it's fine with me,” said Sarah.

”We're going to need gas anyway. How are you doing?” Harry looked over at her and smiled.

”I'm fine. Rather be home.”

”Wouldn't we all,” said Harry.

”After we gas up and eat, I'll drive if you want. You can rest up.”

”Sounds good.”

”You must be tired,” she said.

”Actually, I am a little.” Harry had been up half the night, keeping one eye out the window of the motel room toward the car. He had parked it almost a block away, under a streetlight in front of another motel across the road. He had told Sarah it was too dark in front of the motel where they were staying and they had a lot of stuff in the car.

She called him Uncle Harry, told him he was weird, and asked him if anybody had ever told him that before.

”No. Just you. Oh, and maybe a half dozen judges in town.”

Harry had known Sarah since she was three. Until she was six, Sarah thought he was her uncle. When she was finally told they were not related, it was like finding out that the tooth fairy was a fraud. Harry hung around the house more than most of her relatives. He was often there for dinner. And when her mom, Nikki, died, it was Harry who sat with Sarah for long hours and played games with her, cards and anything that came in a box out of her closet. While Paul arranged the funeral, Harry tried to keep Sarah's mind from grasping the permanence of death.

The images of him in that effort were forever engraved on her memory. She could still see his hulking form scrunched up sitting on a ridiculous little chair at her play table, looking like the giant who'd lost his beanstalk. He would move the Parcheesi pieces around the board with his thick fingers and he would cheat just to keep her mind on the game whenever she asked an uncomfortable question, like what they were doing to her mom at that place where they'd taken her, or where Dad was going with one of Mom's pretty dresses on a hanger.

There were times when Sarah still called him Uncle Harry, but usually now it was only to get his goat, to remind him of how old he was getting. But Harry didn't care. Harry was timeless, like a comfortable old pair of jeans. The fraying and the holes only added character. He would be there forever, at least in her memory.

”Explain something to me,” she said.

”If I can.”

”How did we get in this mess?”

”You mean Liquida?”

”No, I mean the stuff with terrorism. The attack on the base in Coronado, 9/11 and the World Trade Center. All the hostility from the Islamic world. How did it happen?”

”Why don't you just cut to the chase and ask me what happened before the big bang?” said Harry.

”No, really,” she said. ”I was just a little kid when most of it happened. Now we're caught up in it. Dad, you, me, Herman. I'd like to have a better understanding.”

”Fair enough. Where should I start?”

”The Middle East. I didn't take any world history,” said Sarah.

”Oil and money, what can I tell you? From the history I've read, it began before the First World War with the Western powers when their wars.h.i.+ps went from coal to oil. When the war ended, the winners carved up the Middle East and installed friendly leaders to get oil. The national boundaries didn't make much sense. They didn't take into account many of the ethnic groups, clans that had been warring with each other for centuries. Some of the poorer countries got none of the oil but had most of the population. Add to that the creation of Israel in the late forties, the loss of Palestinian lands, and you get a region that's a boiling cauldron. We shared in the division of spoils from the oil. Saudi Arabia and the shah of Iran fell into our sphere.”

”Iran?” said Sarah.

”Yeah. Strange as it seems now, we were thick as thieves with the shah before he fell. It started in the fifties when a CIA-inspired coup brought him to power, but got real ugly in the late seventies. Yeah, I'd say that's when the real trouble started. The origins of jihad and the terrorist movement.

”Then once in a while you get a leader who decides to do what he thinks is right, by that I mean morally correct. Jimmy Carter was one such soul. He had his share of failings, but most agree that his heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, in the twisted world of foreign affairs that's probably a disability. Carter's big thing was human rights.

”But you see, it's not that easy. After a couple of thousand years using avarice, malice, greed, and tyranny as the steady diet of the body politic, a sudden dose of human rights can make the patient upchuck. The shah had all the jails in Iran bulging, some of them with political prisoners who wanted to replace him. Every once in a while he'd stick 'em with cattle prods and do other nasty stuff. Needless to say, this didn't go over big with Carter.

”He turned his back on the shah. The message to the world was that unless the shah cleaned up his act, we wouldn't support him. It was a new day. Human rights were suddenly in vogue. But the regime was already sitting on a powder keg.