The Towers (14 page)

“That was what I wanted the damn phone for. Good thing I got through. We got new orders. Whatever's necessary.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“The interrogation. Al-Nashiri. They said, use whatever means necessary. Find out what he knows about the hijackers. Their plans. Any other operations. He's the highest recently active ALQ in custody. At least, that we have access to—the Paks and Russians might have some, but so far they're not sharing. Vacuum it out of him and send it back.”

She rocked as the speeding SUV took corners. “Whatever means necessary.” She'd never heard the phrase used before. Not in federal service. What did it mean?

The gates of the castle were open. The barrier was up. The guards were ranged along a newly sandbagged emplacement from which the flared barrel of one of their big Russian machine guns poked out. The lead jeep turned into the courtyard. A slim figure silhouetted against floodlights—the colonel—waved the white cars through. “Putting on the dog, this time,” Doanelson murmured.

Gamish's office was large, with a queerly-carved gold and veined marble fireplace in the old Ottoman style. Another of so many offices she'd sat in across the Mideast, playing chess with so many spymasters and police chiefs. Or maybe poker was the better analogy. Accepting another of how many thousands of cups of bitter coffee. Plowing through the chitchat that had to be endured before anything substantive could be addressed, however tangentially.

This time, though, the formalities were brief. Gamish was in full uniform. He took her hand, surprising from an Arab male. Bowed over it. “This is an evil day for your country. And, I fear, for ours.”

“Thank you, General.”

He waved a hand. “Another call from the prime minister. People think he is powerless, in our system, but believe me, that is not so. We are prepared to cooperate in your investigations. Completely. We will also extend refueling facilities for your navy once again.”

“Thank you, General. And for these very helpful arrangements…?”

“There will be no price. No haggling.” His narrow face sharpened. “We too are beginning to realize there are no limits to which these people will not go. We accepted Saudi money. Saudi religion. But you should not swallow honey without inspecting it for ants. Al-Nashiri is yours.”

She glanced at Doanelson. He took a step forward, and she hastily turned back to Gamish. “Ours? How do you mean that, General?”

“Direct interrogation. With all the assistance at our command.”

“About time,” Doanelson muttered. “Let's take the gloves off.”

“The gloves indeed, Special Agent Doanelson, are about to come off. I hope you will like what you see and hear, when they do.” Gamish looked grave; Benefiel apprehensive; Al-Safani grim. Understandable, if he'd backed or helped these people. It had to have been with Gamish's consent, or even President Saleh's; but backblast always seemed to take out the level just beneath the higher-ups.

She caught a glimpse of her own face in an age-freckled, marble-and-gilt mirror. She looked neither frightened nor vengeful. Only determined.

“Shall we get to it?”

She nodded reluctantly, and followed Al-Safani to the marble steps leading down.

*   *   *

AFTER
Al-Nashiri's interrogation, no one said anything in the SUV on the way back through the dark streets. It was 4:00 a.m. Close to dawn. Her ears were still ringing, knees still shaking. She gripped her purse. Across from her Doanelson and Benefiel did not meet her eyes. Each seemed sunk within himself.

They'd split the interrogation. First, her and the FBI. The implication being that they were the good guys, or at least the ones who wouldn't get their hands dirty. But this time, when Al-Nashiri stayed defiant, the PSO had taken over. Doanelson had wanted to go down to the basement with them; she'd had to read the riot act to keep him from sitting in. And seen the unspoken question in his eyes: Why are
you
so concerned?

But sometimes that was what counterintelligence was like in the Mideast. At least Gamish hadn't insisted they watch.

Whatever's necessary.

At any rate, the PSO could no longer be accused of not cooperating. She cleared her throat, remembering Al-Nashiri's battered mouth when they'd brought him back. His hands had trembled uncontrollably; he'd looked shriveled, decades older. “We'll have to write this one together,” she muttered.

“Ma'am?” said Benefiel, jerking. He wiped his face with his sleeve. Losing one's innocence was always traumatic.

“The interrogation report. We write it together. Only what we observed. Only what he told us. About the breaching attack.”

They'd gotten a lot, though not all of it was usable. She'd have to evaluate it dispassionately, which she certainly couldn't just now. Yes, Al-Nashiri had been ALQ. The link between the locals who'd planned the ship bombings from El-Hadedah, Makullah, and Ashahr. Al-Safani had been involved, all right. He'd stood with downcast gaze as the prisoner accused him through his shattered mouth. The colonel had murmured about keeping contacts open. Aisha hadn't probed it. Allegiances were shifting. Better to keep that process moving, than point fingers.

They hadn't learned much about New York. The old man didn't seem to have been privy to that operation. But now they knew who had the Saggers, the antitank missiles. Where they were headed. And they had names: Yemeni, Saudi, Afghani, British. More suspects to pick up, more grist for the databases. Bin Laden's reach was daunting. The organization was far bigger than she'd thought. Worldwide.

They also knew something more immediately important.

A foreign ALQ cell was going to attack the embassy. A breaching attack. Blast through the walls, push in a suicide squad, kill everyone. Al-Nashiri didn't know who, only that they were foreign and would be based here in Sana'a. She had to tell the deputy chief. Get security beefed up. She and Doanelson would send a joint report, write it together. Now, before dawn.

She'd gotten no sleep at all, and there probably wouldn't be any tomorrow either. She stretched and hid a yawn. Her mouth tasted of vomit. She put her head back against the cushions, trying to forget what the old man had called her, over and over, through the bubbles of blood.

 

4

New York

BLAIR
didn't so much emerge or swim up as simply open her eyes and there the world was again. A shape hovered in the striped light from a venetian-blinded window. It had a name. Names were attached to objects. But the names themselves wouldn't come.

Other, less geometric shapes came and went. After a time she recognized them as people, but nothing more.

Later she put a name to a transparent bag of fluid hanging by what must be her bed. Then, suddenly, to a voice. She rolled her head and opened an eye. “Dad?”

“Honey.” Her father smiled, familiar reddened cheeks and big, broken-veined nose, looking older than she remembered. His skin coarser, silver hair thinner, with sun blotches she didn't remember being there before. As if she was actually seeing him, rather than the picture she carried in her mind from long ago. But his hand on hers felt the same, big and rough and warm. “Back with us?”

“Think so.”

“Don't talk. You need to rest.”

“The Trade Center.”

“Let's talk about that later.”

“Dan … where's Dan?”

He didn't answer. Maybe she hadn't actually said it aloud. She got her left hand up after a struggle with something soft and touched her face. A hardness guarded it. Had she grown a shell? “I can't see out of this side.”

“That's a bandage. The doctors had to fix your eye. But you'll get it back. You'll get everything back, honey. Now just go back to sleep, okay? I'll be right here. Right here with you.”

She closed her eyes and lay resting. Holding his hand.

*   *   *

“MS.
Titus. Ms. Titus.”

She felt stronger, but her whole right side hurt. She couldn't move her right arm or leg. She slowly realized they hurt like fucking sin. Was she paralyzed? Where was her dad? A nurse came and turned her over. Did she need to go to the bathroom? She did but it was a long and humiliating task, and when it was over, everything really, really ached and burned.

She lay and tried to remember, and little by little it came back. Except she couldn't remember getting out. She recalled the firefighters, trudging up the stairwell as if scaling a mountain. Calling after them to be careful. The scrape and rasp of heavy boots and heavy breathing. Then she and Cookie and Sean going on down the empty stairwell. Cookie so heavy. Sean flashing Blair a grin. And then the slamming. A noise she'd never forget, as if the sky itself were falling in on them.

Maybe there at the end a hot hard fist of wind, a flash of scorching air. Burning her as she screamed.

Then … then …

She fought her breathing until she got it back under control and lay there flaming in pain.

A male face over hers. Murmured questions. Then the head of the bed powered upward. The rest of the room rolled up into view. A man in a white coat, and across from him, her dad. Silent. Looking worried.

“Blair, I'm Dr. Doen. Your surgeon.” Stocky and serious-looking, about forty. Two young women standing behind him, holding clipboards. Jotting notes. “Do you know where you are? Has your father told you?”

“A hospital, I assume.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

“Two thousand and one.”

“Good. You were brought here four days ago from the South Tower. To what point do you remember things, Blair?”

“I was with two others. In the stairwell. We were almost to the ground floor. Then we heard a noise. A huge noise. I woke up here.”

“That noise was the South Tower collapsing. You're a lucky woman.
Very
lucky; always remember that. Okay? You were pinned under hundreds of tons of burning wreckage. A rescue team from Ohio found you buried in a stairwell, covered with concrete. They had to put a fire out to get to you, which explains your burns. But you must have been close enough to a wall or some support structure to have some shelter when the building came down.” Doen glanced at something in his lap.

“What about the others?”

“I'm sorry. What others?”

“Sean and Cookie. They were with me.”

“I don't believe they made it,” Doen said, looking at his lap again. “At least, you were the only one brought out alive from that section of the collapse.”

“How badly am I hurt?” she whispered.

He cleared his throat. “We have hundreds of other injured to take care of, so I'm going to be brief and factual. All right? You sound as if you can handle it. They tell me you're a federal official?”

“I—I was.”

“That explains the senators and generals who keep leaving messages. Well, you're seriously injured. You have fractures to the right hip, right arm, and crush and burn injuries to the right face and eye. It took us seven hours to put you back together. The fractures were simple breaks. I think you'll be happy with the way the arm heals; the hip may be a little rougher.

“The facial injuries are more complex. We saved the eye, but the face will be a challenge. When the skin goes, reconstruction's difficult and not always satisfactory. Hard to say, but I'd guess you'll get a lot back, but not everything. Do you want to hear more? Or is that enough for now?”

“… More.” She groped with her left hand, encountered her father's. Gripped it.

Doen told her about crush and burn injuries and what happened with full-thickness skin loss and cartilage. She'd lost her right eyebrow and ear and eyelid and other skin on her face. Some of the facial bones were broken, but she forgot the names as soon as he said them.

“Is there … brain damage?” she muttered. Her father looked away.

“Don't think so. Crushing's not as bad that way as high-velocity impact. You're getting a pretty heavy titration of painkillers. Once we taper that off, you'll have more pain, but your acuity should return. At that point, we'll get some of these bandages off. Then we can discuss follow-up surgery. Reconstruction.” He looked at one of the women, then back at her. “We have specialists to help you cope with this. A shock. I know. But remember, like I said—you were lucky to survive. Thousands didn't. Any questions?”

She asked if he meant plastic surgery, and he said yes, but he didn't want to get into the details; surgeons would give better advice once they saw what kind of damage they were dealing with. He stood and her dad stood too. They shook hands and Doen patted her shoulder. Then he was gone.

She lay and looked into the light. Her dad came back. Then she remembered; how could she have forgotten? “Dan. Did you hear from … where is…”

“His daughter called. He's in hospital too. Smoke inhalation, but not critical now. There was an attack on the Pentagon as well.”

The Pentagon too? She tried to struggle up. What else didn't she know about? But her father's hand pressed her down again. “Just lie quiet, I'll tell you.”

He told her things she both couldn't believe and yet recognized as what the secret estimates had long predicted. Nonstate actors, spreading terror in the name of religion. The president declaring a crusade. She squeezed her eyes closed, feeling something crawling inside the right one, the hidden eye, as she did so. A queer, nauseating tickle. She wanted to go to the office. Her old office, in the Pentagon. Maybe it was wrecked by now. What about her aide? Her staff? The civil service civilians? Would it be a breach of protocol for her to call and find out? Well, she didn't give a damn if it was.

“Dad? I want to use your phone.”

*   *   *

HE
wouldn't let her. Kept telling her to sleep. But it hurt too much to sleep. Finally she told him she had to pee again, to get the nurse. As soon as he was gone, she began worming her way to the side of the bed.