John Weisman - Direct Action

“The last night-the night of the bombing-did Malik suggest that you take the backpack?”

“No-I loved it. Loved the way people admired it. I carried it everywhere. I stored the camera in it, and my makeup, and our street maps. It was very handy.”

“When Malik brought the backpack from Paris, how was it wrapped?”

“He carried it in a big Vuitton shopping bag.”

“And inside the bag?”

“I told you last time we covered this ground.” She shrugged. “Inside the shopping bag was the backpack. Malik bought it at the duty-free.”

That was what had struck Tom as odd. First, there was no Vuitton duty-free shop at de Gaulle. And second, Vuitton wrapped its backpacks like the treasures they were. They put them inside sturdy cardboard boxes and protected them with tissue paper.

The Israeli assumption was that Malik slipped the bomb into the backpack and set it off when Dianne went to the bathroom. The interrogation verified that he’d had the opportunity to do so before they’d left the hotel, even though her debriefings indicated that Dianne had not seen Malik slip something into her backpack, nor had he asked her to carry any of his belongings that night. Nor had the security guard at Mike’s seen anything suspicious when Dianne and Malik entered the club.

Tom had his own ideas. Shahram had emphasized that Tariq was always pushing the envelope when it came to explosives. Like Richard Reid’s sneaker bombs. What had Shahram said? Al-Qa’ida had pushed Ben Said to use a prototype fusing and detonator. If they’d waited, Reid would have brought the aircraft down.

Tom focused on Dianne. “Did he say that?”

“Yes.”

“Said he bought it at the duty-free.”

“Yes.”

Now Tom abruptly shifted gears. “Which of Malik’s friends did you see in Paris on the March trip?”

She paused. “March? None. We spent all our time alone together.”

“And in July?”

“Malik had some sort of business to do. I visited the Louvre while he met with his editor.”

“That was the only time you were apart?”

She thought about Tom’s question for about ten seconds. “No.”

“Tell me.”

“He went out one morning. To buy a newspaper, he said. Something they didn’t have at the kiosk in the hotel.”

“How long was he gone?”

She paused. “About forty-five minutes.”

“And?”

“I asked him where he’d been. He told me he’d run into an old friend and they’d stopped for a cup of coffee.”

“And the friend’s name?”

“I didn’t ask.”

Tom nodded. But his mind was racing. “Now let’s fast-forward to August.”

“We were by ourselves, except one evening we had a drink with Malik’s editor from Al Arabia .”

“What was his name?”

“Talal Massoud.”

“Describe him.”

“He’s-” She brought herself up short. “I’ve been over this material many times before, you know.”

“Not with me,” Tom said. He’d saved this part for last. “Describe him, please.”

“Average. Your height-maybe a bit taller. Overweight. Thick black hair, very curly-” She ran her hand from her brow across the top of her head. “Dark eyes.”

It wasn’t much of a description and Tom said so.

“He was pretty nondescript.”

“Dressed how?”

“Cheap white shirt open at the neck. It was so thin you could see the singlet underneath. Light-colored suit coat and trousers-tannish. And brown loafers.”

“Did he wear jewelry or a watch?”

“Not that I remember. He wore some kind of plastic disposable watch.”

“Glasses?”

“Oh, yes. Heavy black-framed glasses with tinted lenses.” She paused and looked up at the ceiling. It was a sign she was remembering a detail. “The lenses were rose-colored.”

“Did he use them to read the menu?”

“He didn’t read the menu. He ordered off the top of his head.”

“Did he carry a cell phone?”

“I think there was one clipped to his belt.”

“Did Talal take any calls?”

“Not until just before he left.”

“How was his French?”

“Good, I guess, since he lives there.”

“You guess?”

“He spoke to me in English, and to Malik in Arabic. He spoke to the waiters in Arabic, too.”

“And the phone call?”

“Arabic.”

“You met where?”

“A Lebanese restaurant in the seventeenth.”

“What was its name?”

She frowned. “I don’t recall.”

“Where is it?”

“About a block from the Villiers metro stop.”

“How did you get there?”

“From George V, by metro. We changed at Étoile.”

“Describe the restaurant.”

“It’s nothing special to look at.”

“Don’t be nonspecific, Dianne. You edit cookbooks. You deal with this sort of material every day.”

She shot Tom a sharp look. “There were Formica tables and white tablecloths-the inexpensive kind. They used paper napkins. It was nothing special. There were posters-Lebanese tourist posters-on the walls. No unique decor; no style. It was just another neighborhood place. We went there because Malik said Al Arabia ’s offices were nearby. The restaurant sits at the intersection of boulevard Courcelles and boulevard Malesherbes. There were tables on an enclosed veranda adjacent to the sidewalk-the kind of thing you can enclose during the winter. The main dining room was raised off street level by two or three steps. I can’t really recall.”

“And the editor? What direction did he come from?”

“He was waiting for us.”

Tom nodded. “Where did he sit? Where did you sit?”

“He and Malik sat next to one another. They sat with their backs to the sidewalk. I sat facing the intersection.”

“And behind you?”

“There was a wall-a divider, really, about four feet high. Malik said he wanted me to have the view.”

Tom was familiar with the intersection and there wasn’t much of a view. Not that it wasn’t good tradecraft. With their backs to the sidewalk, a lip-reader in a surveillance vehicle wouldn’t be able to follow Malik’s conversation with Talal. And with the wall behind Dianne, eavesdropping would be nigh on impossible from over her shoulder without being very obvious about it. “What did you talk about?”

“It was small talk mostly. Talal asked a lot of questions about me. About my family, and my job, where I’d gone to college, where I lived in London-that sort of stuff.”

“Did he know London?”

“I’m not sure. He said he came to London occasionally.”

“Did he say why?”

“He mentioned he had a friend in Finsbury.”

Tom blinked. Mentioning Finsbury had been a tactical error on Talal’s part. Finsbury was a trigger word. The Finsbury Park mosque in a northern London neighborhood was riddled with al-Qa’ida sympathizers.

Dianne seemed to be unaware of its significance. “Did that mean anything to you?”

Hands clasped, she said, “No.”

Her tone told him the Israelis had probed the area and come up empty. He decided to leave the subject. “How long did you spend with him?”

“Talal? About an hour. We had some mezze -it was quite spectacular, actually-and a half bottle of Moroccan wine. Talal and Malik talked business for about a quarter hour. Then he got a call on his cell phone. He paid the bill, excused himself, and left us to ourselves.”

There were no inconsistencies or contradictions from the interrogation transcripts. She had seen nothing passed between Malik and Talal. Tom was convinced she was telling him the truth as best she could remember it.

It was time to wind things up. Time to play out the hunch that had smacked him upside the head when he’d read about the Vuitton backpack. Tom slid his hand into the pocket of the coveralls and felt for the first of the three photographs he’d concealed in the handkerchief. The one he’d decided to show her first had one of its corners folded back so he could identify it by feel.