Rick Mofina - They Disappeared

Klaver had taken the plant outside and hosed it for her.

Brewer and Sheri waited in the awkward silence until Brewer spoke.

“Forgive me for asking you at a time like this,” Brewer said, “but is there anything more you can tell us about Donnie and Omarr, about any other people who may have been involved in any way?”

Sheri was pressing clouds of tissues to her face.

“Are you going to charge me? Because I won’t survive now, not without my kids, I just won’t.”

“If you continue to cooperate, I give you my word I will do all I can to ensure the D.A. knows.”

Klaver returned and passed Sheri a glass of cold water. She thanked him.

“Before this happened, Donnie called me and said he was going to make ten thousand dollars if he helped Omarr.”

“Helped him with what?”

Sheri stared at her tissues, then at a picture of her and Donnie with the kids at Coney Island.

“Help him with what, Sheri?”

“I had nothing to do with any of it.”

“Sheri.”

“That job I told you about was to help pick up something for some foreign guy.”

“What foreign guy? Did he say who, or where, or have a phone number?”

She shook her head and sobbed.

Manhattan, New York City

The pressure to clear the case was mounting.

Under the media glare it was growing into a hydra.

Several aspects worried investigators: the murders, the brazen abductions and the chase. But most troubling was the discovery of the microdetonator, made all the more chilling because it had surfaced when more than one hundred and fifty world leaders were in town for the UN General Assembly.

But NYPD Lieutenant Ted Stroud remained calm.

He’d faced nightmares before, he thought a few short hours after the press conference when he’d arrived at the FBI’s New York headquarters at Twenty-six Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan where he showed his ID at the FBI security window.

Riding the elevator up to the case-status meeting, he glanced at the photo he’d tucked in with his own: U.S. marine corporal Kirby Stroud in his dress blues. Killed in Iraq in 2007 at age twenty-five and buried in Arlington.

He blinked at it for several floors.

Kirby was his son.

Yes, Stroud thought, drawing inspiration from the picture, he’d faced nightmares in his life and he was still standing.

He closed his wallet, stepped off at the twenty-eighth floor and headed to the boardroom. It was a large one with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Already, some thirty people had taken their seats around the cherrywood conference table.

Stroud knew most of the players with the NYPD, the FBI, the Secret Service, Homeland, Port Authority, State Police, ATF, Customs and the TSA. He nodded to them, settled into his seat and reviewed his files when Ken Forsyth, FBI supervisory agent with the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, entered.

It was determined that because the case was deemed to be related to terrorism, the JTTF, with the support of all other involved agencies, would control the investigation.

“Let’s get started.” Forsyth began the meeting with introductions of those at the table and those on the line in Washington, D.C., and other locations. “We believe we have discovered the threads of a plot,” Forsyth said.

“First, I’ll state the obvious-absolutely no information on this case is to be released without authorization.” Forsyth’s eyes went around the table. He knew many investigators had cozy relationships with members of the press. “Everything said in this room and subsequent case-status meetings is classified. If certain facts were passed to the public they’d give rise to alarm, create panic, weaken our case, which could thwart us from saving lives. We must maintain the integrity of the investigation. Is that understood?”

Throats cleared but no one spoke as Forsyth continued.

“Interest in this case is intensifying minute by minute,” he said. “The White House has just informed this office that the State Department has received a number of ‘inquiries of concern’ from several foreign governments. At this stage no major events will be canceled.”

Forsyth moved on with an update. The detonator had been flown to the FBI lab in Quantico where it would undergo further analysis.

“In relation to the detonator, the FBI is pursing the information passed to us by the NYPD concerning Hans Beck, the subject who made contact with Jeff Griffin over the mixed-up luggage. We’ve determined through passport tracking that in the past seventy-two hours, a Hans Beck of Munich, Germany, flew from Paris, France, to Montreal, Canada, to LaGuardia. We suspect the passport was forged using the identity of a Hans Beck, a civil servant in Hamburg, Germany, who’d reported the theft of his passport and wallet four months ago from a hotel in Vienna, Austria. We’ll continue working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Interpol on the subject. I’ll move on to you first, Adam.”

Concern was written on the face of Adam James, a senior agent with the Secret Service, the agency in charge of security for all world leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly. James had already made extensive notes, punctuated with cross-checks with his own files.

“The detonator is key,” James said. “We’re damned lucky that Jeff Griffin did not hand it over to the suspects. Second, it was an excellent catch by the people at the NYPD lab.”

James removed his glasses before he continued.

“This is obvious, but the discovery raises so many red flags. That someone is plotting an attack, that they are either here or on their way. And if we’ve caught this one, how many are out there that we haven’t caught? We’ve got one hundred and sixty-two world leaders in town. Most of them are in the crosshairs at home. Any one of them could be a target here.”

James replaced his glasses and returned to his notes.

“Thanks, Adam,” Forsyth said. “We’re working with other national security agencies, examining all intelligence and all known groups for any links to the case. We’ll share a key-points summary as soon as possible.”

Forsyth said the task force was running down leads on international elements of the investigation.

“We are also following up on all credible tips that have come since the press conference ended,” Forsyth said, then checked off other areas, before going around the table.

The ATF was working on the arson homicides with the fire department’s Bureau of Fire Investigation, the NYPD’s Arson Explosion Squad. They each gave brief reports before Forsyth came to Stroud, whose team played a leading role.

“We’re looking for connections,” Forsyth said, “connecting evidence to the suspects to give us the full picture. Ted will give us the foundation as to how all of this surfaced with the abductions.”

Although Adam James came close, Stroud was relieved that there was no armchair quarterbacking, or criticism on their handling of Jeff Griffin, the contact with the suspects and the chase. Too much was at stake.

Since September 11, 2001, there had been more than a dozen plots by extremist groups to kill New Yorkers. Everyone knew the challenges and the risks. Unlike TV shows, movies and books, nothing in a real investigation was simple or uncomplicated with all loose ends coming together nicely. No, it never, ever worked that way in the real world.

For the benefit of all investigators, Stroud quickly outlined the chronology of the Griffin abductions and homicides, contact, the chase, the airport bag mix-up and discovery of the microdetonator.

“Bear with me,” he said. “I’ll explain how this is connected to the major ongoing undercover investigation by my task force, which was formed primarily with the D.A.’s Organized Crime and Rackets Bureau, the NYPD Auto Crime Division and the Insurance Frauds Bureau.