But that wasn’t the bad part. The clock kept ticking on those two missing kids.
DR. HALA AL DOSSARI WAS TWENTY-NINE years old, slender and attractive, humorous when it was useful, very bright, with a photographic memory. Her husband, Tariq, was thirty-nine, pudgy everywhere, and hopelessly in love with his wife. They looked like they had everything to live for, but in reality, the Al Dossaris were prepared to die at any time. Probably sooner rather than later. That was their mission.
Hala snuck a sideways glance at her watch. They had been warned repeatedly about the dangers of Dulles Airport. The International Arrivals area was one of the most scrutinized in the world. Besides the armed security and usual customs agents, the terminal was staffed with a well-trained team of behavior detection officers — BDOs. The purpose of these police devils was to scan the incoming crowds for anything considered beyond the norm.
Too much sweat on the brow could get you pulled out of line here.
So could rapid eye movement.
Or a nervous gait.
Or a cranky BDO.
“Almost through,” Hala said, giving her husband’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Not much longer. Give me a smile. Americans love a nice smile.”
“Inshallah,” he answered.
“Tariq, please — a smile. Just show your teeth for the surveillance cameras.”
Finally, he did as he was told. It was a stiff-jawed attempt — but a smile, anyway. So far, so good. Another minute or so and they would be perfectly safe.
Passport control had gone by without incident. Baggage claim, other than feeling like a cattle yard, had been fine. Now they were down to luggage screening, one final queue to wait in before they could truly say they’d arrived safely in Washington.
But everything had suddenly slowed to a crawl. This was a nightmare.
In fact, Hala realized, the line had completely stopped.
A couple of uniformed TSA agents were unhooking the stanchion belt up ahead, motioning for two people to step out of line. It was another couple — also Saudi, also in Western dress.
“Sir? Ma’am? Could you come with us, please?”
“What for?” the other man asked, immediately on the defensive. “We haven’t done anything wrong. Why should we lose our rightful place in the queue?”
His accent was Najdi, Hala noticed. The same as theirs.
But who were these people? Could this just be a coincidence? One look at Tariq’s worried face and she knew he was wrestling with the same questions. Was their American mission about to be compromised before it had even begun?
More American security personnel hurried over now. A husky black female officer took the Saudi woman firmly by the arm.
“Farouk!” the woman screamed for her husband. Then she yelled at the security police. “Leave us alone! Take your dirty hands off me!”
As Hala watched the husband, her heart skipped. He was reaching for something in his pocket. One of the guards tried to pull his arm away. But the man pushed back hard. The guard went down on his ass.
Two more officers rushed forward. There was a violent scuffle. The police threw the Saudi man to the floor. Jumped on his back. But he fought and got one hand free. The next moment, he’d stuffed something into his mouth.
And that’s when Hala knew — this was no coincidence. She had a potassium cyanide capsule in her pocket as well. So did Tariq.
Whatever this couple had done to tip off the authorities, there was nothing the Al Dossaris could do for them now. Their only obligation at this point was to avoid detection. Above all, they mustn’t be captured, too.
And they wouldn’t be. Not if they kept their heads, Hala knew. Service to the cause was everything. Their mission could change the world. But first, they had to make it out of here alive. The Family was depending on them. Their mission here meant everything.
Tariq grasped her hand tighter. His own hand was wet with sweat. “I love you, Hala,” he whispered. “I love you so much!”
“THIS GUY JUST ate some thing!” one of the TSA officers shouted to his partners. He held down the struggling, writhing husband while another guard tried to force the man’s mouth open.
Hala saw the stream of blood run down over his chin. That meant he’d bitten through the capsule’s rubber coating, into the glass bead inside. Her heart was thundering now. As a doctor, she knew all too well about the effects of potassium cyanide on the body. It was going to be horrible, absolutely awful to witness. Especially with a capsule right there in her own pocket.
Almost immediately, the man began to convulse. His torso bucked slowly, his legs kicking back and forth. It was an instinctive but ultimately useless response. While the oxygen built up to dangerous levels in his blood, less and less of it would reach his vital organs, including the lungs. The panic alone would be excruciating. The terrible burning inside.
The man’s young wife collapsed at his feet next. A trickle of blood ran down her chin, too. Then more blood, from her nose.
“Something’s wrong!” the female guard yelled. “Call emergency services! We need a doctor right now!”
Border Protection was doing its best to maintain order, but panic had begun to take over the arrivals hall. People started bottlenecking toward the screening stations. Frantic voices echoed against the high ceiling. Two-way radios crackled everywhere.
“Tariq?” Hala said. He was standing perfectly still, even as other travelers pushed past them. “Tariq? We have to go. Right now.”
His eyes seemed to be locked on the other couple, dying there on the terminal floor.
“That could have been us,” he whispered.
“But it wasn’t,” Hala said. “Move. Now! Keep the pill in your hand, just in case. And speak nothing but English until we are out of here.”
Tariq nodded. His wife was also his superior. Slowly, he tore his eyes away from the two suffering martyrs. Hala hooked her arm firmly into his and turned to go. Then she pulled him forward like a stubborn animal.
A moment later, the Al Dossaris had allowed themselves to be swallowed up in the crowd. People around them were crying. A young girl vomited right there on the floor. Then they were clamoring for the exits, just like anyone else. Only after they were clear of the security guards did they put away the cyanide pills.
They had made it to America.
AFTER I GAVE my statement at the hospital, I headed back to the Branaff School. I called Bree and told her what had happened and that I’d miss dinner. She got it, which is the nice thing about being married to another cop.
A solid double line of MPD cruisers was parked up and down Wisconsin Avenue when I got there. This was as bad a crime scene as I’d ever witnessed.
The press had already been cordoned off behind a row of blue police barriers, and I saw a group of what looked like very concerned parents and a few nanny or housekeeper types waiting closer in toward the main gate. Some students were crying.
There wouldn’t be any official statements for several hours, if at all, but that wasn’t going to stop people from figuring out what had happened. The whole scene was barely contained chaos. Something terrible had obviously gone down here and none of us knew the full extent of it yet.
“Catch me up,” I said to one of the uniforms lined across the sidewalk. “What’s going on? Anything in the last hour?”
“All I know is what you can see right here,” he told me. “MPD’s on street security. But FBI’s got the whole school locked down tight.”
“Who’s the lead agent on campus?” I said, but the cop just shook his head.
“Nobody’s going in, Detective, and the only ones coming out are kids and parents. They’re literally clearing them one by one. They’re even detaining the teachers. I wouldn’t hold my breath for intel.”
I left the officer alone to do his job, and I got on the phone instead. For several months now, I’d been the police department’s liaison to the FBI’s Field Intelligence Group. I figured that had to be worth some kind of ticke
t inside.
But I figured wrong. Every line I tried at the Directorate of Intelligence went straight to voice mail.
Same deal with Ned Mahoney, who was a good friend at the Bureau. They were all probably on the other side of that damn school fence right now. Maybe even Ned was there. It was crazy-making.
The worst of it was worrying about Ethan and Zoe Coyle and what they might be going through while I was out here spinning my wheels. The first twenty-four hours after a kidnapping are absolutely crucial and I didn’t think the Secret Service would make all the right decisions.
So I did what I could. I started walking. Maybe I wouldn’t get onto campus, but I could get a feel for the school perimeter, including any possible exit points the kidnapper — or kidnappers — might have used.
I also kept working the phones while I walked. I put in a call to MPD’s Command Information Center. I finally got through to somebody. “CIC, this is Sergeant O’Mara.”
“Bud, it’s Alex Cross. I need to get a couple of disks burned, ASAP. I’m looking for everything we’ve got in a two-block radius around the Branaff School. From five to eleven this morning.”
Washington’s metro surveillance isn’t state of the art, like London’s, but we are ahead of the curve, nationally speaking. We’ve got cameras at intersections all over the city; maybe one of them had picked something up.
“You want me to have someone drop these off at headquarters when they’re ready?” O’Mara asked.
“No, I’ll swing by and get them myself,” I said. “Thanks, Bud.”
I turned off my phone when I hung up. I didn’t want anyone calling and telling me where to be today. If I played it right, I could pick up the disks, spend some time going over them at home, and not show my face at the office until the next morning. I’d learned a long time ago that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Maybe I was just flattering myself — or even lying to myself. Maybe there was nothing I could do on this that the Bureau or Secret Service wasn’t already covering. But I’d worry about that after the first twenty-four hours.
Finally though, around six, I gave up and went on home. Obviously nobody needed my help here. I didn’t like it, but what I thought didn’t matter. The president’s kids were missing.
IF I’D HAD any idea about the string of horrifying things that were about to happen in Washington, I wouldn’t have gone to help out Sampson that night.
My best friend, John Sampson, and his wife, Billie, were on the steering committee for a much-needed charter school they were trying to get going in our neighborhood in Southeast DC. Tonight’s event was supposed to be an informational meeting, but people around the neighborhood had already started lining up on either side of the issue.
So I brought reinforcements with me — my “ninety-something” grandmother, Nana Mama; and my wife, Bree, who works as a detective with the MPD’s Violent Crimes Branch and was also just crazy enough to marry me a few months earlier.
The three of us showed up early at the community center to help set up. I was trying to keep Ethan and Zoe Coyle off my mind.
“Thanks for doing this, sugar. I owe you,” Sampson said. He was running sound cable while I pulled folding chairs off a big rack. “It’s probably going to get a little ugly in here tonight.”
“Can’t be helped, John. You were just born that way,” I said, and he started for me. Sampson and I bring out the smart-ass kid in each other — ever since we were smartass kids growing up in this same neighborhood.
“And we’re focusing.” Billie came whizzing by with a handful of flyers for us to give out at the door. She was excited, but also nervous, I could tell. A lot of misinformation had been spread around the neighborhood, and the opposition to the charter school was mounting.
I thought the rain might keep people away, but by seven o’clock the room was completely full. John and Billie got things started, talking about a small-community approach, double periods of math and reading, parental involvement — everything that had them jazzed. Just listening to them, I was getting excited myself. My youngest, Ali, might go to this school one day.
But this is Washington, where nobody lets a good idea stand in the way of the status quo, and things started to go downhill in a hurry.
“We’ve heard all this before,” a woman in a housedress and sneakers without laces said from the mike in the aisle. I recognized her from church. “The last thing we need is another charter around here drawing down our public school budget.”
There was a mix of half applause, half boos, and some unpleasant shouting around the room.
“That’s right!”
“Come on, get real!”
“What’s the point?”
“The point,” Billie cut in, “is that not nearly enough kids from our neighborhood go on to college. If we can get them started on the right foot from day one —”
“Yeah, that and a dollar won’t even get you a cup of coffee anymore,” Housedress Lady said. “We should be getting some of our closed schools reopened, not trying to start up new ones.”
“I hear that!”
“Sit down!”
“You sit down.”
The whole thing was kind of depressing, really. Made my head hurt. I’d already taken two turns at the mike and gotten nowhere in a hurry. Sampson looked like he wanted to hit somebody. Billie looked like she wanted to cry.
Then I got a hard nudge in the ribs. It was from Nana. “Help me up, Alex. I’ve got something to say.”
“WELL, DOESN’T THIS feel familiar?” Nana stood at her seat and launched in. “Or is it just me?” She already had everyone’s attention, and apparently she didn’t even need a microphone. Just about everybody here knew her.
“Last I checked, this wasn’t the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t the floor of the Senate,” she said. “This was a neighborhood meeting, where we can speak with more than two voices, have different ideas, listen occasionally, and who knows, maybe even get something accomplished every once in a while.”
The woman had a forty-year teaching career in the day, and it wasn’t hard for me to imagine her lecturing a roomful of disobedient students. A few people around me were nodding their heads. A few looked like they didn’t know what to think about this fierce old lady yet.
“I suppose some of this is understandable,” she went on, tapping her cane as she spoke. “We all know how cheap a promise can be in Washington, and as you said, ma’am, you’ve heard it all before. So if some of you are feeling a little frustrated, or burned out, or what have you, let me be the first to say I understand. I feel the same way most days.”
“But,” I whispered in Bree’s ear.
“But,” Nana said, poking a finger in the air, “with all due respect, we’re not here to talk about you.”
Bree squeezed my arm like the Wizards had just sunk a winning bucket.
“We’re here to talk about the eighty-eight percent of eighth graders in this city who aren’t proficient in math, much less the ninety-three percent in reading. Ninety-three percent! I call that an emergency worth doing something about. I call that a disgrace.”
“That’s right, Regina,” someone said, and “Mmm-hmm,” from another corner. I love when Nana “goes to church,” as we call it at home, and she wasn’t done yet.
“So if you’re here for an actual conversation, I say let’s have one,” Nana went on. “And if not — if you came for politics, and side-taking, and business as usual, I say we’ve got a whole big city out there for you to play in.” She paused just long enough that I could tell she was secretly loving this. “And there’s the door!”
About half the room broke into laughter and applause and cheering. Maybe even a little more than half. In DC, that’s what you call progress.
After the meeting, Sampson came over and gave Nana a big hug, then a kiss on the cheek. He even picked Nana up for a few seconds.
“I’m not sure I changed any minds,” she said, taking me by the arm t
o leave. “But I spoke my own, anyway.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” Sampson said. “And just for the record, Nana? You haven’t lost a step.”
“Lost a step?” She reached up and swatted him on his huge shoulder. “Who said anything about that? I’ve gained a step on you, big man.”
And of course, she got no argument from any of us on that point, either.
THE HUSBAND-AND-WIFE TEAM of Hala and Tariq Al Dossari hid inside their dingy room at the Wayfarer Hotel, waiting for instructions and watching the insipid, repetitious news coverage about the kidnapping of the president’s children while they did. They wondered whether the abduction had something to do with The Family, and thought that it might. Whatever was happening now, it was meant to have historic implications.
“There’s a good likelihood our people took those two spoiled brats,” Hala said. An image of the Coyle children’s smiling faces from some happier time played across the television screen, but all she felt was contempt. No one in this country was innocent. No one was exempt from retribution for America’s so-called foreign policy.
“I’m sure The Family’s plan is the correct one,” said Tariq, who was a good man, but not a complicated one.
“President Coyle’s thinking will be clouded. That’s good for us,” Hala said. “We should eat something. It wouldn’t hurt to get some air, so our thinking doesn’t get clouded.”
When she rose from the bed, Tariq stood up to follow. Hala was in charge in America.
Back home, marriages were still arranged in some families — including their own — and Tariq knew exactly how well he’d done for himself. Hala was a medical doctor, while he was merely an accountant. She was beautiful, especially by Western standards. He was plain and fat, by just about any standard one used. His wife had even come to love him, in time, and had given him two beautiful children, Fahd and Aamina.