Nemesis

  As Sherlock lifted her foot and stepped away from the man, a half-dozen security agents covered him, picked him up, and dragged him away.

  Big Dog shouted, “Okay, Security, back behind that concrete column!” and he led them all briskly away from the grenade, pulling Sherlock with him.

  A mustachioed man trotted up. “Pritchett, bomb squad—it’s a grenade? Was the ring pulled?”

  Sherlock said, “Yes, about four minutes ago. The safety lever’s still in place.”

  “I see it. What a stroke of luck. It could also be defective, but let’s not take any chances. Chief Alport, move your crew back another dozen feet.”

  Pritchett said into his portable radio, “Grenade, ring pulled four minutes ago, safety lever still hanging on, could be defective. Let’s not take any chances. No frag bag, bring in the PTCV.”

  Sherlock said, “PTCV?”

  “Portable Total Containment Vessel.”

  Sherlock watched along with everyone else as a few minutes later two members of the bomb squad, looking like green space aliens in their heavy protective suits, walked clumsily to the grenade. One of the men was pushing a large white cylinder on wheels, maybe four feet high, nearly four feet wide, with an opening in the center front.

  They studied the grenade, then, after instructions from Pritchett, gently lifted it with long-handled prongs and eased it inside the vessel. They closed the opening, rotated the cylinder. There was a huge collective sigh of relief.

  Pritchett said to Big Dog, “You took a big chance getting that close, Chief. I’d say an extra Mass is in order.”

  Sherlock and the chief watched Pritchett follow the two suited men wheeling the containment vessel toward an emergency exit. The security people gave them wide berth. Twenty feet short of the doors, there was a loud muffled bang. The containment vessel box shook, but it held.

  No one moved for a second. Then Pritchett yelled, “Guess the safety lever fell off, or the grenade wasn’t defective after all. Talk about a bit of pucker action. You can bet that’s going to make the news.”

  The chief let out a big sigh and crossed himself.

  Sherlock saw he was still stiff as a board, the muscles in his arms and back knotted with tension, but now he was smiling at her. Sherlock turned to him. “It’s a pleasure to see a Big Dog in action.”

  “Big Dog?”

  She lightly laid her hand on his forearm. “Yeah, I’d recognize you guys anywhere. My husband’s a Big Dog—you’re a rare breed. But I gotta say that was way too close.” She stuck out her hand. “FBI Special Agent Sherlock.”

  He shook her hand. “Guy Alport, chief of security in this nerve-fragging zoo. A pleasure to meet you. My people were telling me about this crazy woman who faced him down, got right into his face, and kicked the crap out of him.”

  Crazy, that was about right, but Sherlock only smiled and turned away when his people crowded around him. She prayed she’d never be tested like that again. She went looking for Melissa Harkness and found her outside the doors, surrounded by security, airport employees, and passengers. Behind her, she heard an alarm sound, then the loudspeaker: “Everyone will leave the terminal by the nearest exit. The terminal is closed until further notice.”

  What had she expected? She wondered when she’d get home. Probably in the next millennium. The security people saw her, let her through. She lightly touched Melissa’s shoulder. “You did great, Melissa. You brought him down, saved the day.”

  Melissa Harkness grabbed Sherlock and hugged her close. “Thank you so much. Even my ex-husband thanks you.” As she hugged Sherlock close again, fiercely, she whispered in her ear, “The jerk might even send you flowers. I’m his golden goose, after all.” Then she grinned. “I don’t think I’m going to go on that low-carb diet yet. My weight came in handy today.”

  “Don’t you change a thing, you’re perfect.” Sherlock drew in a deep breath. “We all survived.” She turned when a black-suited agent called out to her. She said to Melissa, “Sorry, no bath for either of us for a while. Now the fun starts.”

  FBI agents from the New York Field Office took the terrorist from the TSA guards and airport security while Homeland Security agents and NYPD officers weeded out gawkers from witnesses and herded them to several conference rooms. It was an alphabet soup of agencies, all wanting to take charge. Sherlock knew that the FBI—namely, the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force—would take the lead, because the resident FBI agent at JFK would have called them right away. She also realized the adrenaline rush was bottoming out, also knew this was long from over. She and Big Dog were separated, each taken to a room to be interviewed. The last she saw of Melissa, she was in the middle of a knot of agents.

  Sherlock was escorted to a small security room filled with TV monitors and computers and seated at a battered rectangular table. She was handed a cup of coffee and introduced to two FBI agents. They turned on recording equipment and started right in, going over and over what had happened, why she was in New York, what exactly the terrorist had said to her, his affect, his accent, his tone of voice, what she believed his intentions had been, and on and on it went. Sean would earn his college degree before she was finished answering questions. She heard agents talking about the airport reopening again soon, after security was certain there were no threats in the offing. Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise? She no longer wanted to flop her head onto the table and take a snooze. It was a remote possibility she’d even get home before midnight, if only someone would pull the plug on all the questions. The door opened and she was instantly aware of the eerie quiet in the terminal. There were no passengers hurrying to their gates, nothing at all.

  A woman came in and marched directly over to Sherlock. “I hear you’re FBI.”

  “Yes, Special Agent Sherlock.” She held out her creds.

  The woman studied her creds, handed them back, and stood over her, arms crossed over her chest. She was about Sherlock’s age, with straight dark hair to her shoulders, a milk-white face, a body honed to muscle and bone, and no humor at all in her dark eyes. She looked severe and tough as nails in a black suit, white shirt, and low black pumps, but when she spoke, her voice was quite lovely, lilting, with a hint of Italian music. “That name, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Sherlock had to laugh. “My dad’s a federal judge; it suits him even better. Criminals and defense lawyers do a double take.”

  “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Kelly Giusti, New York FBI. Why didn’t you keep out of the way and let the agents do their job? They’re all very well trained for exactly this sort of thing.”

  Sherlock gave her a sunny smile. “I was right there when he grabbed Melissa. No choice.”

  “What you did was stupid.”

  “You’re sure right about that. Put a big question mark in my day, that’s for sure. Tell me, Agent Giusti, what would you have done in my place?”

  Giusti stared at her. Was that a crack in that severe mouth, a meager smile trying to burst through? “I guess I’d have been as stupid as you.” They shook hands. “I heard most of your interview on my way over. Do you think he was going to try to get through security with the grenade? To blow a plane out of the sky?”

  Sherlock said, “It seems like a pretty stupid thing to attempt. I know, I know, knives and guns still could get through, but it’d be unusual.”

  “Maybe you’re underestimating your fellow humans’ capacity for stupidity. You forget that numbskull Brit who tried to get the bomb in his shoe to go off?”

  Sherlock laughed. “And thanks to him everyone walks barefoot through security now. The thing is, our guy didn’t even try to go through X-ray, even though it looked like he was going to. I mean, he’d taken his shoes off and put them in the bin. No, he pushed two passengers out of the way, grabbed Melissa, pulled out the grenade, and started yelling. I’m thinking that was his plan all along. He said to me that I??
?d ruined it all, and that means to me that something else may be going on here, somewhere else.”

  “All right, let’s say this drama was a smoke screen for something else. Chief Alport immediately began checking throughout the terminals. As of three minutes ago, nothing hinky was reported anywhere else at JFK, which is why they’re going to reopen soon.

  “It’s possible there’s nothing complex at all here. It’s possible he’s a lone wolf who came here to blow up at the security station, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it before you disarmed him.”

  “He also said a woman’s name—Bella. His wife?”

  “You mean a final good-bye?”

  “Maybe.”

  Giusti opened her mini-tablet. “The passport he had with his boarding pass identified him as Nasim Arak Conklin, thirty-six, address in Notting Hill, London, not one of the popular Muslim neighborhoods, like Newham, for example. I wonder why he was living there.

  “We don’t know anything more yet. I’m betting the passport isn’t forged. There’d be no need for it, not if he or his handlers set him up to do exactly what he almost did—blow himself up along with as many passengers as he could take with him. We’ll know soon enough; his fingerprints are being run through the system now. He hasn’t said a word yet. Evidently he did all his talking to you.” She rose. “The name Bella—I wonder if it might start him talking again. But it’s no concern of yours. The upside of what you did is that no one got hurt, and we nabbed ourselves a suicide bomber.”

  “And the downside?” Sherlock asked.

  “Once the terminal opens again and you leave the protection of this room, the media is going to eat you alive. When Chief Alport was outside the terminal, the media swarmed all over him. He was going down for the third time when he threw you under the bus.”

  Sherlock closed her eyes for a moment. “It isn’t going to be fun, is it?”

  “How fast can you run?”

  Sherlock laughed. “I should call my husband before he hears about this and strokes out.”

  Giusti’s cell buzzed. “Giusti here.” A short pause, then, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” And she was off and running.

  ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL

  NEW YORK CITY

  Wednesday afternoon

  Maddix Foley, vice president of the United States, took a quick look at his watch, then resumed his vigil, his eyes on the white rose–covered casket on its gurney in front of the beautiful altar three rows in front of him. Inside that lovely ornamental box lay the remains of New York’s senior senator, Cardison Greiman, a longtime party force who’d ruled the Senate with a personality like a nail-studded hammer until his face had hit his desktop in his own Senate chamber five days earlier, right after he’d lost the vote for a bill the president particularly wanted passed, and he was dead from a heart attack. A pity about the bill, but then again, it was likely Card’s successor would pick up his hammer and doubtless use it handily. Foley had liked the old buzzard, who’d claimed in drunker moments that he could show the lead in the TV series House of Cards a thing or two. Foley thought that could be true.

  There was organ music—Bach, Foley realized—overlaying the low conversation of nearly eight hundred mourners here to pay their final respects, punctuated by an occasional sob from Mrs. Greiman, who’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two weeks before, which had shaken Card Greiman to his core. In Foley’s opinion, it was the realization of losing his wife after more than fifty-plus years that had brought on Card’s heart attack. Now it was Eleanor Greiman who was left to grieve him instead. Foley wondered if it wouldn’t have been more merciful if she’d been further gone so she wouldn’t now have to know the soul-wrenching grief.

  Foley sighed, looked again at his watch. It was after five o’clock and the funeral mass should have begun five minutes ago. Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan would be leading in the priests and altar boys and deacons, ritual incense filling the air from their swinging thuribles, and Card’s final send-off would begin. Foley saw one of his Secret Service agents speak into the unit on his wrist. He must have spotted Cardinal Dolan, which meant they were about ready to get Cardison Grieman’s last big show on the road. He turned in his seat and looked down the long nave toward the narthex.

  In the narthex, altar boy Romeo Rodriguez was swallowing hard, praying he wouldn’t throw up, not with His Eminence Cardinal Dolan six feet away from him, looking resplendent in his vivid red cassock. The Cathedral’s rector, Monsignor Ritchie, was at his side, Father Joseph Reilly behind him. Romeo realized Father Joseph was looking at him, and he looked worried. Romeo had the horrible feeling he looked as bad as he felt and he was going to hurl after all. He swallowed again and tried to distract himself, saying a Hail Mary, concentrating with all his might. He’d been a full-fledged altar boy for only seven months now, and it was Father Joseph who had recommended that he be a part of the service today. It was a great honor, his father had told him over and over, and his mother had kissed him and told him how proud she was that he would be carrying out his duties at this great man’s funeral. But now his stomach twisted and cramped and he knew he couldn’t hold it any longer. He was going to throw up.

  Now.

  Romeo ran to a small closet few people ever opened, next to the closed gift shop annex. He barely made it inside before he fell to his knees and heaved beside boxes of gift shop supplies. He felt a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. It was Father Joseph, and his deep, soothing voice told him it would be all right, he didn’t have to go in with them, all he had to do was breathe lightly and relax. Romeo dry-retched, sat back, and held himself perfectly still. He felt like his stomach was hollowed out. Then he saw a large backpack stuffed into a corner of the closet. “Why is that here, Father?”

  “What? Oh, the backpack. Some parishioner must have put it here, probably forgot it. Romeo, I have to leave you soon, the service is beginning—”

  Romeo pulled the backpack toward him and opened it.

  Both the boy and the priest stared down at it in horror.

  Father Joseph Reilly had been a medic in the first Gulf War, gone through two tours of duty before all the death and savagery he’d seen there had turned him back to his true calling. He knew instantly what he was looking at in that backpack, grabbed Romeo, dashed out of the closet, and yelled to the Secret Service agent who stood by the huge bronze doors. “Bomb, I’ve found a bomb with a timer, to go off in twelve minutes!”

  The Secret Service agent verified it was a bomb, then went into action. Vice President Foley reeled with the information, then got himself together. Before his Secret Service agents could hustle him out, he dashed to the ambo with its microphone and spoke out loud and clear to the eight hundred people who stared around, alarm on their faces. In a deep, calm voice, he told them to evacuate the cathedral immediately and get as far away as possible.

  There was no stampede, only a sense of urgency, as lines formed and moved quickly at each of the exits. Foley thought he smelled fear in the air.

  People poured out through the huge bronze doors onto Fifth Avenue and out the back of the cathedral onto Madison Avenue. Police cruisers began to block off a two-block perimeter because there was no time to erect physical barriers. Police officers yelled and waved scores of shoppers, pedestrians, and onlookers away from the cathedral as mourners poured out the doors to join them. Still, it would take time to move the hundreds of bodies to safety, too much time.

  None knew this better than Vice President Foley. He’d insisted his Secret Service agents bring Mrs. Greiman with them, so an agent had simply picked up the old lady in his arms and carried her. Foley was now standing with her across Fifth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, surrounded by agents and three NYPD cops, well away from the cathedral.

  Foley prayed no one would be killed, prayed the bomb squad would get here in time to defuse the bomb before it caused massive destruction to one of the most
revered religious landmarks in the world. Where was the bomb squad? New York City had the fastest bomb squad response time in the nation. Where were they? And shouldn’t there be more cops? Soon now it would be too late, and all the beautiful stained-glass windows inside St. Pat’s would be shattered, its incredible art destroyed. It seemed to Foley that everyone around him was thinking the same thing. An eerie silence fell as they stood and waited, Foley praying as hard as he had when he’d heard his son had been in an auto accident three months before. They all stared at St. Pat’s, at the final lines of mourners racing to safety. Was everyone out now? He stood stiff beside Mrs. Greiman, holding one of her gloved hands while her daughter held the other; she didn’t quite understand what was going on.

  Foley couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He stared, appalled to see Cardinal Dolan, Monsignor Ritchie, priests, and deacons wheeling out Senator Greiman’s coffin. Some of them carried objects from the altar, a monstrance and the tabernacle holding the Eucharist. The cardinal walked calmly alongside the gurney, helped lift it down the steps and into the street, pushing it faster now, to safety, the senator’s grandson and the police joining them. Foley had the insane urge to laugh. He knew how much Card would have enjoyed all that attention. He didn’t know it, but in his death, Card had become a symbol. Perhaps they were all symbols, and symbols counted.

  Where was the bomb squad? Not that it mattered, because there was no time left, Foley thought, no more time.

  Father Joseph knew time was fast running out. He’d heard a Secret Service agent tell another that the New York bomb squad and upward of one hundred cops were at JFK because of a terrorist incident, and they weren’t going to make it back in time. A second bomb squad wasn’t going to make it, either. Was there enough explosive to gut the cathedral? Bring down the scores of concrete pillars?