Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 51

The agent typed several commands, and grainy footage appeared: a swarthy man in his late thirties strapped to a chair and glaring defiantly at a man in a denim outfit who had his back to us.

“Guy in the chair is Abdul Mokiri. He’s Syrian, here on a research grant at Tulane University. He’s also a member of Al Ayla, and he trained with Hala Al Dossari and her husband in Saudi Arabia three years ago.”

“Where’s she gone? What is she doing?” the man with his back to the camera demanded. “Hala?”

“You can’t do this,” Mokiri said. “I have the civil rights.”

“You only have rights if you’re in America,” the man we couldn’t see said. “And let me assure you, you’re not in America, Abdul, and therefore we do not play by American rules.”

The Syrian spit at the interrogator. Someone very big, his upper body and face lost in the shadows, pushed Mokiri’s chair forward and up close to a card table that had been blocked from view by the interrogator. The same person grabbed the terrorist’s right hand and stretched it toward something on the table I did not recognize at first. Mokiri began to squirm, and he shouted, “You can’t do this!”

The hot plate turned brilliant red. Mokiri’s hand was lowered toward the coils.

“Shut it off,” I said.

The agent did. I glared at Mahoney and Bobby Sparks as intensely as the Syrian had at his interrogator. “Didn’t know the Bureau participated in torture, Ned.”

“It doesn’t,” Mahoney shot back. “I don’t know where it came from, Alex. I don’t want to know where it came from. But I’m glad I know what Mokiri spilled.”

“Confessions made under torture can’t be taken seriously,” I said. “They’re half-truths mixed with what the tortured person thinks the torturer wants to hear.”

“Maybe,” Bobby Sparks said stonily. “But we didn’t have the luxury of thinking that way when Mokiri said that Hala was planning to bomb Union Station on Christmas morning.”

“She’s kind of late,” I said.

“Snowstorm,” Mahoney said.

I closed my eyes. “But she’s in there now? No doubt?”

“Show him those videos of her coming into the station,” Mahoney told another one of the agents working the screens.

A moment later, several of the lower feeds showed Hala Al Dossari moving about the south side of the main hall looking directly at the cameras.

“She had to have known we run facial-recognition software on everyone who enters that station,” I said.

“It’s been written about,” Mahoney agreed. “And she certainly seemed to want us to see her in there.”

“Right, but why?”

“We were hoping you might have some insight on that.”

I shrugged, trying to get my brain to think clearly. “She could be trying to lure you guys in there so she can detonate and kill a bunch of federal agents.”

“That occurred to us,” Bobby Sparks said.

“Okay. Any other information I need to know?”

Mahoney nodded. “We’ve had NSA targeting the station since yesterday afternoon, picking up all mobile transmissions. Only one seems pertinent.”

The agent with the red hair gave her computer an order. The interior of the command center filled with whispers in what I guessed was Arabic, a woman speaking with a man.

Bobby Sparks said, “That’s her twenty-five minutes ago, after she entered the station. She says, ‘Why?’ Then the unidentified male replies, ‘One, four, and zero.’ She says, ‘Seven and five.’ Unidentified male replies, ‘Inshallah.’”

“So a code?” I asked.

“Obviously,” Mahoney said.

“Give me a break, Ned,” I said. “I’m running on fumes here. You get a location on the guy’s cell?”

“We pinged the towers,” Mahoney replied. “He was in the Suitland-Silver Hill area, but we didn’t have enough time to get him located better.”

Before I could filter that, the third agent working the camera surveillance inside Union Station tapped his headset and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got someone down and dead inside the McDonald’s, street level, northeast corner of the station.”