Nemesis (FBI Thriller 19)

“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.