Merry Christmas, Alex Cross

CHAPTER 83

I went into Captain Johnson’s office, saw two FBI agents I didn’t recognize standing on either side of Dr. Al Dossari’s stretcher, near a window that overlooked the terminal and the tracks. Hala gazed at me, seeming to feel a mixture of contempt and interest. Facing this woman who lived beyond the pale, whose beliefs and actions were virtually incomprehensible to me, I felt pretty much the same way about her.

“I need a doctor, Cross,” she said.

“You are a doctor,” I replied.

“Have you not heard? One cannot heal oneself.”

“I have heard that. What I don’t get is how a doctor becomes a terrorist.”

“But you would understand how a doctor becomes a soldier?”

Before I could figure out how to respond to that, I heard the now familiar sound of train wheels on tracks and watched a freight train emerge from a tunnel at the station’s east end and chug toward the Ivy City Yard and points north. Despite the fact that I was talking to a ruthless terrorist, I couldn’t help thinking that some degree of normalcy had returned to Union Station.

“What was this all about?” I asked, gesturing out the window. “I mean, was it a spur-of-the-moment thing? Or part of something bigger?”

She studied me, and I noticed her eyes were glassy and her pupils pinpoint. She said, “Spur-of-the-moment. I was in the area, bored on a holiday I don’t believe in, and decided to go out and play in the snow.”

One of the agents pressed his earbud and then said, “Let them in.”

Four U.S. Marshals came into the office, signed the necessary paperwork, and took Hala into their custody.

“Good-bye, Cross,” she said as they wheeled her out. “I hope to meet you again.”

“Probably sooner than later,” I said, and watched her go.

I heard diesel engines starting, looked out the window, and saw the Crescent light up.

“Dr. Cross?”

I turned to find Captain Johnson, who’d stepped up to the window beside me. “I wanted to thank you. Without your bravery-”

“Without a lot of people’s bravery, including yours.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said, his eyes watering as he gestured out at the terminal and the trains. “But what if she’d managed to get something big in here? What if it had gone off?”

“We can only guess at that kind of thing, Captain,” I said as the last car in the freight train disappeared from sight. “But for now, Christmas goes on.”