Without Warning

  Matt remained quiet, and in the silence I suddenly realized I was talking myself into a decision I couldn’t have imagined making just a few hours before.

  “Matt, this is my fault. I know that, and I’m sick about it. But I can’t undo what’s happened. This is it. This is our reality now. And you and I can’t simply think about what we want. We need to do what’s best for Annie and Katie, and as much as we’re resisting it, I think we both know what that is.”

  45

  The agent brought us the omelets and the side dishes.

  We nodded our thanks and waited again for him to leave us.

  “There’s something else I have to tell you,” I said.

  My older brother just looked at me. He was already on information overload. What I was about to tell him wasn’t going to help.

  After making sure there was no one approaching us, I told him about my visit to Sullivan & Sullivan, about the will and the $30 million—give or take—we had just inherited. I didn’t tell him about the fake passports or my new fractional ownership of a Learjet. Those weren’t details he needed to know right now, or maybe ever. The first part was enough.

  “Even as we speak, the Sullivans are setting up two untraceable bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, one for you and one for me,” I said. “At the same time, they’re liquidating all of Khachigian’s assets. The house will take time to be sold, obviously. But the rest will be in our accounts in the next twenty-four hours.”

  He looked pale, close to being in shock. “What about Laura?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I asked that too. She’ll get a big share as well.”

  “And taxes?”

  “I’ve already instructed the Sullivans to set aside whatever they think we’ll need to pay into a separate account and to pay our tax bills as soon as possible.”

  “And their share as executors?”

  “All taken care of.”

  “J. B.—I can’t believe this,” Matt said. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  I shrugged. “I know. I had the same reaction. I’ve just had an extra day to process it.”

  “And you told all this to Harris?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “He doesn’t need to know. It’s none of his business.”

  “But if we end up going into the Witness Protection Program—which still sounds ridiculous to me, by the way—isn’t he going to find out eventually?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We can worry about that later. For now, all we have to worry about is keeping you and Katie and Annie safe. And that means we have to come up with an answer for Harris.”

  “But you’re not—”

  “Keep your voice down, Matt.”

  Harris and his colleagues turned toward us. I smiled and nodded.

  “Fine,” Matt said, more quietly this time. “But you’re not seriously considering this, are you?”

  “Yes, I am, actually. But that’s not the point, Matt. It’s not about what I do. It’s about keeping you all safe. If I don’t go into the program, none of you can. I’m the witness. I’m the one they need to protect.”

  I could see in my brother’s eyes he couldn’t tell whether to laugh in my face or get up and punch Harris in his.

  “You wouldn’t be able to write for the Times anymore.”

  “No.”

  “You couldn’t write your memoirs.”

  “No.”

  “Couldn’t write op-eds.”

  “Not if I want to have a long and happy life,” I said softly, knowing how hard it was for him to hear it. “Eat your omelet.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  Matt stared at the eggs, then at me. Finally he sprinkled on some salt and pepper and wolfed down the entire meal in just a few minutes. I took a few bites of my own meal but couldn’t summon any appetite.

  “So how does this play out?” Matt asked when he had finished and had washed it all down with another cup of coffee.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they have to get rid of us, right? So how do they do that?”

  I took that as a good sign. Despite his resistance, he was asking questions, which meant he was finally considering the idea, which meant he might actually get to yes.

  “Once we’re safe in wherever they’re going to resettle us, the news will come out that we’ve all been killed in a car bombing just outside of Portland.”

  “Kinda grim.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When would that happen?”

  “Next few days.”

  “And then?”

  “There’ll be another memorial service, I guess. I imagine there will be a lot of press. Big story, right? Another terrorist attack and all? And then that’s it.”

  “Everyone we know will think we’re dead.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that’s all right with you?” he asked again.

  I pushed my plate away angrily. “No, it’s not all right with me. But, Matt, how many ways can I say it? The guy the FBI caught? He had your private mobile phone number. He had mine. He had floor plans of Mom’s house. He had dozens of photos of your family, notes on their daily routines, friends, acquaintances, church attendance, favorite restaurants, you name it. And he had a trunk full of automatic weapons and plastic explosives. The guy was a professional. And there are three more just like him in his cell—three more the FBI haven’t caught yet. Harris says the guy was also in contact with two other cells in the region. He isn’t just being dramatic. This is real.”

  “Can’t they catch these guys and be done with it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Harris says they’ve got more than three hundred agents hunting them down. So yeah, he’s confident they’ll catch them. He’s just not confident that will be the end of it.”

  “’Cause he’s never going away,” Matt said, half under his breath, looking out the windows again at the twinkling lights across the water.

  There was no hint of a question, just a statement of a bitter reality. And he was right. I couldn’t tell him what Carl Hughes had told me. But it wasn’t even necessary.

  “No,” I said quietly. “Abu Khalif is never going away.”

  46

  BAR HARBOR, MAINE

  It was the dead of night, and I lay in my bed, tossing and turning.

  Unable to sleep, I just stared up at the ceiling fan as the moonlight streaming in through the windows cast long, dark shadows across the stucco surface. The fan itself was off, of course. After all, the temperature outside was well below zero and sinking. A new storm was approaching. I could hear the howling winter winds gusting across the North Atlantic, rattling the windows.

  My hands mindlessly toyed with my grandfather’s pocket watch, which now read 3:18, but my thoughts were a thousand miles away—well over five thousand miles away, actually, in Israel. Against my better judgment, I’d sent Yael a text. Told her I missed her. Asked what she was up to. Told her I wished she would write and hoped she was well. In Jerusalem, it was now after 10 a.m. on a workday. She was, no doubt, immersed in meetings, perhaps with the prime minister, perhaps with the full security cabinet. I didn’t really expect to hear from her. But if I was about to “die” in an FBI-staged car bombing, I guess I just wanted to say good-bye. Inside, I raged against the notion that I would never be able to see her again, never be allowed to talk to her again. Not that we’d interacted much in the last few months anyway. But never? If not for the need to make sure Matt and his family were finally and truly safe, the thought would be inconceivable.

  The latest news from the hospital was not encouraging. Annie’s vital signs were stable. But earlier that night, Matt had received a call from the ICU that Katie’s breathing had suddenly stopped. They’d caught it instantly, thank God. They’d gotten her breathing again within seconds, and she was now on a respirator. At this point there was nothing we could do but pray. And try to sleep.

 
If only I were following my own advice.

  I got up and got a glass of water. However frigid it was outside, I was soaked with sweat. Was I coming down with something? Did I have a fever, or was I just consumed with anxiety? I had no idea. But one look at my bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror was enough to make me wonder if I needed to check into the hospital for a few days myself.

  Matt was clearly going through the five stages of grief. At the moment, he seemed to be shifting from denial to anger. I, on the other hand, was calm and functioning better than Matt. But that was simply because I was still fully immersed in a state of denial—and not just because of the murders of my family members, but because of the murders of so many people I loved.

  All around me, the death toll kept mounting, and I just kept moving. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, a faint and distant voice was telling me I had to stop. I couldn’t keep up this pace. I couldn’t keep living off adrenaline. I had to face the reality that my world was crashing down all around me, or I was going to crash too. Everything I’d known, everything I’d trusted, everything I’d ever taken for granted, was rapidly coming to an end. My career. My connections with everyone I’d ever worked with or befriended. Even my name, my very identity. I knew it, but I certainly hadn’t accepted it. How could I?

  Clicking off the bathroom light, I walked back through the bedroom to the windows overlooking the water and pulled aside the drapes. I stared out into the oncoming storm. Thick, heavy clouds rolled in off the sea, obscuring the full moon and shrouding my room with darkness.

  I still had no idea what I was going to tell Harris in the morning. Matt and I had spent more time arguing about it before going to bed. He’d kept trying to convince me how ridiculous the FBI agent’s plan was. And everything he’d said had made perfect sense.

  There was only one argument I could make in response: We were all going to die unless we accepted Harris’s offer. It was a compelling argument because it was true. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.

  I flipped on the television and roamed through a hundred and fifty channels, but there was nothing I wanted to watch. I scrolled through my iTunes account, but there was nothing I wanted to listen to. I checked my messages again, but Yael hadn’t responded. Why would she? She had a life of meaning and purpose. I was about to give mine up.

  I suddenly woke up to someone pounding at my door.

  Groggy and disoriented, I forced myself out of bed and stumbled to see who in the world was making such a racket so early. It was Matt, and the look on his face told me I was in serious trouble.

  “J. B., what are you doing?”

  “Sleeping,” I said. “Why aren’t you?”

  “We’re waiting for you.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “It’s 9:15.”

  “And?”

  “You were supposed to meet us in the lobby ten minutes ago—it’s time to go.”

  47

  Fifteen minutes later, Matt and I were in the lobby.

  I told Harris we’d have an answer for him after the memorial service. Then I told him Matt and I were going to drive ourselves to the church, not be driven by him and the agents he’d assigned to us. He didn’t like it. But I refused to budge. I told him he could follow behind us, but my brother and I needed to be alone before the service, and that was final. We weren’t under arrest. We weren’t employees of the federal government. We hadn’t yet agreed to enter the Witness Protection Program. The FBI had no legal basis to prevent us from doing what we thought was best, and at the moment, this was it.

  We immediately exited the hotel, not waiting for Harris’s response. I headed straight for the driver’s side of the black Lincoln Navigator assigned to us. Matt headed straight for the passenger’s side.

  “Out,” I told the agent behind the wheel.

  He just stared at me with a blank expression.

  “Please,” I added.

  A moment later, he pressed on the wire running to his ear. He radioed back, asking if he’d heard right. Apparently he had. Mystified at such an unprecedented turn of events, he got out. I got in, and Matt climbed in beside me. The agent moved to get in the back, but I hit the gas and shot out onto the street without him. I turned left on West Street, then took a right on Main, as the agents scrambled into their vehicles to catch up.

  “Good work,” Matt said as he quickly fastened his seat belt and held on to the handle over the door. “Now you’ve got the FBI mad at us. Brilliant.”

  It was snowing again. Another inch and a half of fresh powder had fallen overnight. The forecast was calling for another few inches throughout the day, and the temperature was a mere twelve degrees. I notched up the heater and flipped the headlights on. “We need to talk,” I said.

  “About your driving or your manners?” he asked.

  “About Harris’s offer,” I said.

  “I thought last night you said we had no choice, that we’d die if we didn’t accept.”

  “I did say that. But I was up most of the night thinking about it from every angle, you know, to see if there was any other way.”

  “Is there?”

  “I haven’t come up with anything yet.”

  “Then we have to say yes, right?”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “But what about Annie? What about Katie?” he asked. “You kept saying we had to put them first.”

  “We do—absolutely,” I said as we approached the first of several police checkpoints in a town that today looked like an armed camp.

  “And?”

  “And I don’t know,” I admitted as I slowed to a halt. “As far as I can tell, we have until the service is over to come up with an alternative, or we’re going to have to say yes. And I don’t want to say yes. I really don’t.”

  We both handed over our photo IDs to the heavily armed officer, then showed him the pins we were wearing, one from the FBI, the other from the Secret Service, indicating that we had all-access clearance for the event at the church and the reception to follow back at the Harborside. The officer checked them carefully, then nodded and told us to pop our rear cargo door.

  “I got the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in days last night,” Matt said as we idled. “You know why? Because I stopped fighting this thing and decided to believe you.”

  “That we’d be safer by saying yes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That this is the best chance—and maybe the only one—to protect Annie and Katie?”

  “Exactly.”

  The officer radioed ahead our names and the license plate number. Meanwhile, a K-9 unit sniffed for explosives as another officer used a mirror attached to a long metal pole to check the underside of the car for explosives. Finally we were waved through, just as Harris and his men pulled up behind us in two more Navigators.

  I took a right onto Mount Desert Street and passed the church parking lot that Allen was using as a media staging center. It was lined with rows of satellite trucks and cars bearing the logos of dozens of media outlets. Then we turned into the parking lot beside St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church. There were local police and Secret Service agents everywhere. But beyond their vehicles with all their flashing red-and-blue lights, the lot was mostly empty, and there were no reporters or cameras in view. This clearly was not the parking area for the general public. Not today.

  An officer wearing a bright-orange safety vest pointed us to our spot. I parked and turned off the car but didn’t get out.

  “Matt, do you remember what I told you in Amman?” I asked.

  “You mean that Abu Khalif had threatened to kill you and all of us if you didn’t report exactly what he wanted you to report?” Matt asked.

  “Right.”

  “Of course I remember. How could I forget?”

  “Well, before we go in there, I just need to say this face-to-face.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I
never should have written those stories. It wasn’t just my life at stake. It was all of yours. I had no right to put you all in harm’s way.”

  “No, don’t say that, J. B.—you had to do those stories. I know that.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did—the world had to know.”

  “But I got Mom killed. I got Josh killed. And for what?”

  “This isn’t your fault, J. B.,” Matt shot back with a vehemence I didn’t expect. “You did your job, and I’m proud of you. This isn’t your fault. It’s Abu Khalif’s and his alone.”

  “But I—”

  “Stop it. Seriously—just stop. You’ve done a lot of stupid things in your life, a lot of stuff I would never have done. But telling the world who ISIS really is—who Abu Khalif really is—wasn’t one of them. Yeah, it cost us—more than we ever imagined. But it also saved a lot of lives. And the truth is, I know where Josh and Mom are. They’re in heaven, right now, with Christ. They’re safe. They’re free. And someday Katie and Annie and I are going to be there with them. No more pain. No more sorrow. No more tears. God will wipe them all away. The only thing that really scares me—terrifies me, actually—is the thought that you won’t be there with us.”

  48

  As we got out of the Navigator, Harris and his men pulled into the lot.

  A moment later, we could hear the sirens and the motorcycles, and soon the motorcade roared up, stopping just a few yards away from us. Secret Service agents in long winter coats and black Ray-Bans fanned out to set up their perimeter. I watched as the head of the detail surveyed the scene and received a status check from each of his agents. Then he opened the door of the armor-plated and snow-covered black Chevy Suburban. Immediately Vice President Martin Holbrooke stepped out and came directly over to Matt and me.

  “Mr. Vice President, thank you for coming,” I said, taking off my gloves and shaking his hand.