Nelson Demille: The Panther

Kate and I clinked and said grace. “Thank God it’s Friday.” There was a piano in the corner, and the player was just getting started. I said to Kate, “Ask him to play ‘Midnight at the Oasis.’ ”

She rolled her big baby blues.

A word about Kate Mayfield, a.k.a. Kate Corey. We met on the job when we were both working on the first Asad Khalil case. FBI and NYPD are different species, but we fell in love, married-about four years ago-and it’s still heaven.

Kate is a little younger than me-actually, about fourteen years-and the age difference is not an issue; she’s mature beyond her years, and I can’t seem to grow up.

She’s originally from Minnesota, as I said, and her father is retired FBI and her mother is a loon. They both hate me, of course, but being from Minnesota they’re really nice about it.

Also on the plus side, Kate and I have been shot at together, which is good for any relationship, and she’s cool under fire. If she has any faults, aside from her divided loyalty, it’s that she doesn’t fully appreciate my NYPD work habits or methods. Also, the Feds are almost humorless, while cops are funny. I’m trying to get more serious, and Kate is trying to see the funny side of terrorists.

Away from the job, we get along well. I wondered, though, how we’d do in Yemen, where we’d be on the job together 24/7. Maybe she’d appreciate my cowboy style better in a place where the only law is a man with a gun. Better yet, maybe we’d never find out.

I asked for a table and was happy to learn it would be a thirty-minute wait. “Another round,” I said to the bartender. Can’t walk on one leg.

Kate said to me, “If we don’t take this assignment, your contract may not be renewed, and I may wind up in Washington.”

“He’s bluffing.”

“He’s not.”

“I don’t respond well to threats,” I assured her.

“It’s not a threat. It’s a transfer.”

“Whatever.”

“Would you live in Washington?”

“I’d rather live in Yemen.”

“Good. We’ll be together. In a year, we’ll be back in New York.”

“Right. It’s that year in Yemen that might be a career killer.”

She didn’t reply.

Regarding my last visit to Yemen in August 2001, the same month I was there, Kate was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as a legat investigating the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing, which was an Al Qaeda attack, planned by Osama bin Laden, whose name was then unknown to most of the American public. A short time after Kate and I returned from our respective overseas assignments, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda both became famous for murdering three thousand people.

Our separate assignments overseas, by the way, were a sort of punishment-or a warning-resulting from my and Kate’s unauthorized snooping into the mysterious midair explosion of TWA Flight 800. So off we went. Kate to Dar es Salaam, which was not such a bad place to be, and me to Yemen, which is like the Siberia of the Task Force, though I did feel like I was doing something useful. We returned to New York a few days apart, as I said, just in time for September 11. Tom Walsh was not the boss then, so I can’t say he was now making another effort at adjusting my attitude. So what was he up to? Kate was taking this at face value. I was not. Tom doesn’t do things for people; he does things to people. Also, this came from higher up. John Corey has to go to Yemen. But why?

Anyway, all this was running through my mind as I stood at the bar in Ecco’s, observing Western civilization at its best or worst, thinking about my career, my marriage, my country, my life, and my future.

I normally don’t reflect on any of this, and I pride myself on a low level of introspection and zero self-awareness. But I’d just been unexpectedly presented with a life-changing choice, and I needed to think about my response.

Kate asked me, “What are you thinking about?”

“There’s a new Monet exhibit at the Met.”

She looked doubtful, then said, “John… if you don’t want to go, I will understand.”

I said to her, “You should take my word that this is not a place you want to be for a year.”

She reminded me, “A lot of our people are or were there. And we have troops in places like Iraq and Afghanistan who are making great sacrifices every day.” She informed me, “You can’t pick where you want to fight a war. You have to go where the enemy is.”

“They’re here , Kate,” I reminded her. “We’re manning the ramparts of Fortress America.”

She thought about that, then said, “We’ve done a good job here. But now we need to go into the belly of the beast.”

“The asshole,” I corrected.

Our table was ready, and as we made our way through the restaurant, who should I see but my ex, sitting with yet another beau. I mean, this lady has had more mounts than a Pony Express rider.

She saw me and waved, so I went to her table and said hello and got introduced to Mr. Right Now, who looked like he was about halfway through a sex change operation.

Kate, who is cool about this, said hello to Robin and her date, and Robin asked us, “How’s the war on terrorism going?”

I informed her, “The alert level is still yellow.”

Robin didn’t respond to that, but said, “God, sometimes I think they’re going to blow this place up.”

Kate had a nice comeback and said, “Why would anyone want to kill lawyers, judges, and politicians?”

Robin wasn’t sure how to take that and asked me, “Are you still in the apartment?”

The apartment in question is the former marital residence, a very expensive place on East 72nd Street that Robin had lived in when I met her. She’d signed over the long-term lease to me on her way out, a very nice gesture that took care of most of my monthly income. I said, “Still there.”

“Good. I wanted to send you both an invitation for a fund-raiser I’m running. It’s for the Downtown Association for the Arts.” She explained, “To raise money to commission artists to create murals and sculpture in Lower Manhattan.”

More shit.

“It’s at the downtown Ritz-Carlton. Black tie. March twenty-sixth. You’ll be my guests.”

I found myself saying, “Thanks, but we’ll be out of the country.”

“Where are you going?”

“Classified.”

“Oh… well… good luck.”

“Thanks.”

We followed the hostess to our table, and Kate asked me, “Does that mean you’d rather go to Yemen with me than a black-tie fund-raiser with your ex-wife?”

“You know I’d follow you to hell.”

“Good. We leave next week.”

It was Saturday, and Kate and I agreed not to discuss Yemen until Sunday evening.

Kate went to the office Saturday morning to clean up some paperwork and to identify cases that she would need to hand off if, in fact, she was going to Yemen.

I had an appointment with a guy named Nabeel, who coincidentally was from Yemen. I didn’t know Nabeel, but he’d called the ATTF office, using only his first name, asking for me by my full name, and saying to me that we had a mutual friend. I doubt that, but that’s how I get half of my contacts in the Muslim community; my business card is all over town. Well, Muslim neighborhoods. It pays to advertise.

My brief phone conversation with Nabeel revealed that his legal status in the country was a little shaky, and he wanted some help with that in exchange for some information he had. Nabeel worked in a delicatessen in Brooklyn, so I wasn’t sure what kind of information he had for me. Phoney baloney? Exploding beans?

A little-known factoid is that many Yemeni immigrants work in delis in Brooklyn and Queens. Why? Who knows? Why do the Turks own so many gas stations? Why do Indians own all the 7-Elevens? Who cares as long as the Irish still run the pubs?