Capitol Murder (21 page)

Keith nodded and the agents crept into the kitchen. The lights were on, and there were pots soaking in the sink and half a loaf of bread and a knife with a serrated blade on a cutting board.

Keith and Maggie entered the dining room cautiously. They saw half-finished meals at place settings where two chairs had toppled over when their occupants leaped up from them. Neither the man nor the woman had made it very far. Mr. Cooper had been shot in the head and had toppled to the floor. A woman who Keith assumed was Mrs. Cooper had made it halfway to the living room when a shot to the back had brought her down and a second shot to the back of the head had finished her off.

Maggie knelt beside Mr. Cooper and studied the entry hole in the center of his forehead.

“One shot, dead center. That’s not easy,” she said.

“Tying up loose ends,” Keith said wearily as he took out his cell phone and dialed Harold Johnson’s number.

“The bombers didn’t do this,” Maggie said as soon as Keith finished the call.

“Their handler, the guy who told Cooper to place Bashar and the others?”

“That’s a good guess.”

“Let’s check Cooper’s bank records to see if he deposited a large sum of money recently.”

“He could have been a dupe. I mean, Bashar and the others were probably smuggled in, so they couldn’t have gotten jobs legally. Cooper might have thought he was getting a group of illegals jobs without knowing what they were planning to do.”

Keith looked at Cooper’s corpse. “We may never know the answer to that one.”

Chapter Thirty

O
ne of Imran Afridi’s companies owned a home on the beach in Southern California. Another owned a palazzo near Lake Como in Italy and an apartment in Tokyo. But Afridi had watched the Redskins play the Giants on a big-screen television in the den of his mansion in northern Virginia because he wanted to be close to the terror and chaos that would follow the demolition of FedEx Field.

Afridi knew that the networks used many cameras during a football game so they could film the action from many angles. He hoped some of them would still be filming as FedEx Field crumbled to dust beneath the feet of the infidels. Lying naked between silk sheets in his bedroom was a fifteen-year-old girl who had been provided to him by a Russian who specialized in such things. Afridi planned to ravish her as soon as the full extent of the devastation at the football stadium was clear. Violent sex was his preferred way to release tension.

Afridi waited with a combination of elation and nerves as the game clock counted down the minutes. He tensed when the scoreboard clock showed seven and a half minutes left in the first quarter. He leaned forward expectantly when the clock showed 7:00. Then nothing happened, and the clock ticked down to 6:59.

One of the announcers commented on disturbances in several sections in the stands. Another commentator said that it looked as though some of the vendors were being arrested. Then Washington’s tight end caught a pass in the end zone, and the incidents in the stands were forgotten by everyone except Imran Afridi.

Afridi waited five minutes more, to see if the ambulances would explode, before grabbing a disposable cell phone and calling Steve Reynolds.

“We will meet in one hour! You know the place,” Afridi shouted into the phone before disconnecting and repeatedly slamming the phone against his coffee table until it was smashed to pieces. Then he stormed upstairs to visit his fury on the naked girl who was bound and gagged in his bedroom.

Half an hour later, Imran stuffed a bonus into the purse of the severely battered girl and had his driver take her to a private clinic that had dealt with the objects of his sexual attentions in the past. He was calm now that his needs had been satisfied, and he was able to think clearly about the debacle at the football stadium. There had to be a traitor, but who was it?

T
he Chesapeake and Ohio Company was chartered in 1825 to construct a canal connecting tidewater on the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., with the headwaters of the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. The canal would open a trade route for ships between the eastern seaboard and the trans-Allegheny West. The endeavor did not go smoothly, and the canal was not completed until 1850. In 1938, the 185-mile-long C&O Canal was sold to the United States government, and the C&O Canal National Historical Park was established by Congress in 1971.

Afridi parked in Georgetown and followed a walking path alongside the canal until he arrived at a stone bridge that crossed it. He was wearing jeans, running shoes, and a hooded sweatshirt that hung over a black Glock. A sheath holding a hunting knife was attached to his belt on the side opposite the holstered gun. Afridi was no stranger to violence and had used the knife and the gun on different occasions.

Five minutes after Afridi settled into the shadows beneath the bridge, Steve Reynolds materialized out of the darkness. The American was dressed in black. The bill of his baseball cap left his face in shadow. Afridi was certain that Reynolds had been hiding, watching him, when he arrived.

“This isn’t smart,” Reynolds said. “The last thing we want is to be seen together.”

“Don’t tell me what is smart. Tell me what happened,” Afridi demanded. “I have been planning this . . . this event for years. Everything was in place. Why is that stadium still standing?”

“The detonators failed.”

“How do you know that?”

“I tried to detonate the explosives in the ambulances. Nothing happened, and I never heard any explosions in the stands, just the normal noise you hear during a game. When I was certain that the plan had failed, I drove to the safe house to sanitize it. When I was through, I set charges using the detonators we bought. They didn’t explode, so I torched the house. Then I took a close look at one of the detonators. It was defective.”

Afridi looked furious. “You told me your seller was reliable.”

“He’s an arms dealer, Imran, a criminal. I checked him out the best I could. Everyone I talked to said he wasn’t law enforcement, but he could also have been FBI or CIA or ATF. Anyone can be bought or scared into cooperating.”

“And if he did not betray us?”

“Ali Bashar is the only member of the cell with the skill to sabotage the detonators. He was trained to use explosives in the camp, and he’s smart.”

“Why would he betray us?”

“I have no idea.”

Afridi thought for a minute. Then he looked directly at Reynolds. “Did you test the detonators before you bought them?”

Reynolds glared back, and Afridi saw the American’s hand drift toward his side. “Are you accusing me of something, Imran? Let’s get this shit into the open.”

“Did you test the detonators?” Afridi repeated. His voice was steady and his tone was as cold as ice.

Reynolds started to answer Imran angrily, but he stopped and his brow furrowed.

“Ali tested a stick of dynamite and a detonator, and they worked. The box with the detonators and the box with the dynamite were open. While we got the money out of the van, the seller had his men go into a barn where the rest of the explosives were being kept. They also brought the open boxes into the barn to reseal them. A switch could have been made while the boxes were out of sight.”

“You idiot,” Afridi snapped.

“Calling me names isn’t going to solve anything, Imran. And if you calm down, you’ll see that we have a bigger problem. It’s the reason I think this meeting is a mistake. I’m going to find the man who sold us the detonators, and you can be certain that he’ll tell me if he’s responsible for this clusterfuck by the time I’m finished with him. But whether it’s him or Ali or someone else behind the switch, one thing is obvious. Someone got to the seller or Ali, and that person knew what we planned to do, where we planned to do it, and when. And they may know that you and I are involved in this, which could mean we’re under surveillance. So we should not meet or communicate unless it’s absolutely necessary. And we should both try to figure out who the mole is in this operation.”

“Do you think Ali Bashar is in custody?”

“I’d bet on it,” Reynolds said.

“Can he tell the FBI about you?”

“Yeah, but he’d have no idea where I live or who I am. He just knows me as Steve.”

Afridi was quiet. The men could hear the water flowing softly beside them.

“You’re right. We should have no further contact unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Reynolds nodded. Then he folded into the darkness and disappeared.

A
fridi had brought another disposable cell phone with him, and he punched in an overseas number as soon as he was in his car.

“What happened?” Rafik Nasrallah asked.

“It was the detonators. They were all faulty.”

“How could that happen?”

“We were betrayed.”

“By who?”

“I’m not certain, but I have my suspicions. We may have made a mistake with Reynolds.”

“You think he was deep cover?”

“It’s possible, but there is another possibility. Koshani knew about the operation. She was tortured before she was killed.”

“I thought that escaped serial killer murdered her.”

“Perhaps that is what the CIA wants us to think. Koshani was blackmailing Senator Carson for information on what the CIA knew about the operation. What if he went to them, and they had him arrange for the Intelligence Committee to subpoena her? They could have been waiting for her and tortured the information about FedEx Field out of her.”

“Is there something I can do?”

“Send Mustapha. If he thinks he needs help, tell him to choose some men to come with him. The traitor is Ali Bashar, Senator Carson, or Steve Reynolds. We can’t get at Bashar but we can get to Carson and Reynolds.”

“It’s done.” Nasrallah paused. When he spoke, he sounded subdued. “I’ve been sick with disappointment. How are you handling this failure?”

“I have been too angry to process what happened. Everything was in place. Every contingency was accounted for. Then this.”

Afridi choked up. Nasrallah waited for his friend to gather himself.

“Be strong,” Nasrallah said. “You will find who did this and make him pay. Then we will regroup. Allah’s vengeance will come. It will just take more time. Do not despair. Allah has great patience.”

Chapter Thirty-one

W
hen Ali Bashar came to, he was lying on a cot in a narrow, windowless concrete cell wearing an orange jumpsuit. Shining down on him was a caged lightbulb. The light hurt Ali’s eyes. He closed them and forced himself to sit up. The effort made him dizzy. He rested for a moment, then struggled to his feet. His knees buckled, but he managed to stay upright.

Ali looked around. His only furnishings were the cot and a squat toilet. There was a thick metal door in one wall with a spy hole in the middle and a slot at the bottom. Ali tried to open the door even though he assumed his efforts would be futile. They were. He was sealed in. Ali sank down on his cot and tried to clear his head.

In the camp, Ali had been told how to act if he was captured. Ali’s instructors had told him that he would be tortured, and he had been briefly subjected to waterboarding and other cruelties so he would know what to expect. The consequences of capture were an added incentive to carry out his mission.

Ali’s imagination started to work on him. His life was filled with incidents in his village when he was singled out for teasing or beatings by older and bigger children. Ali was always too frightened to fight back, and he endured humiliation and pain daily. It was his fervent hope that he would find the peace in paradise he had never found on earth, and now his hope of meeting Allah had been dashed. Fear ate at Ali and robbed him of his strength and his will. He waited for his torturers to come. But no one came.

There were no clocks in Ali’s cell, and no one fed him. The ceiling light was always on, and every time he tried to sleep, loud music blasted into his cell through an invisible loudspeaker. Once he had slipped into unconsciousness despite the noise, and a guard had slapped him awake and threatened worse if he caught him dozing off again.

Other than these intrusions, silence was Ali’s constant companion, with one exception. Every so often someone would scream. The screams would go on and on, and they were horrible. Ali would get sick to his stomach as he imagined what you would have to do to people to make them scream like that.

Ali had been clean-shaven when he was arrested. By feeling his stubble, he estimated that he had been a captive for two to three days. He hoped that he would be brave when his time came to be taken for interrogation, but his bowels loosened and he grew faint when the locks in his door finally snapped open.

The guards were big and moved with athletic grace. Ali knew that there was no point in resisting. They pulled Ali to his feet without a word, shackled his hands and ankles, and placed a hood over his head. Ali’s legs felt like jelly. If the guards had not held him up, he would have melted onto the floor.

When the hood was removed, Ali found himself in a bare concrete-block room. The guards sat him on a chair with a headrest. Then they secured his head to the headrest, tied his arms and legs to the chair’s arms and legs, and put a strap around his chest. When they stepped away, Ali could not move.

Seated in front of Ali behind a metal desk was a slender man dressed in a suit and tie. He had on old-fashioned tortoiseshell glasses with thick lenses and his black hair was slicked back. He looked like an attorney.

“How has your stay been so far, Ali?” he asked.

Ali found the question odd. It was a question a friend would ask a guest. Ali had been told that he should not answer questions and should resist any attempts by his captors to seduce him with kindness, so he remained mute.

“Do you know where you are?” the man asked. “No? I’ll tell you. You have disappeared into hell. But there are different levels in hell, and you will have a chance to save yourself from being cast down into the depths. Answer my questions, and you will save yourself from pain and receive the most comfortable quarters available to our prisoners. You will have access to the Koran, books, and television. You will be allowed to exercise. Your food will be decent. If you resist, there will be terrible consequences.”