Code White Part 13

"And do you know who's having trouble keeping up with the mortgage? Who's getting divorced? Who has a gambling habit? Kids in college? Mother who's got to have a kidney transplant? In short, do you know who might have a sudden and overwhelming need for money?"

"No."

"Then I think we need to start playing our cards very close to the vest."

Harry was rankled by Lee's aspersions. It was true he didn't know much about the personal lives of his staff, but he had worked with them for three solid and often stressful months, and he had gotten to know their characters pretty well. Harry couldn't imagine a single one of his people being involved in something like a bomb plot-not for any amount of money. He thought Lee was overreacting, but it would just have redoubled his suspicions if Harry got in the way.

"Round number two," Scopes called out, holding the telephone to his ear. "Getting set right now."

Once again, the room fell silent as the seconds ticked away.

At last Scopes gave a thumbs-up. "Mayor's office says the transfers are complete. Just like clockwork."

"That was painless!" said Lee. "That should take the heat off for a few hours."

"What's the story on those two prisoners in New York?" asked Harry.

"Meteb and Mossalam? Was.h.i.+ngton's still deciding. We've made plane reservations and notified Rikers Island to expect a transport van around 4:00 P.M. Eastern. But people in the know at the Bureau are urging us to resolve the situation here as quickly as possible. That's code for 'Ain't f.u.c.king likely.'"

Harry looked at Lee skeptically. How could there be any doubt about it? The lives of two thousand people are at stake. "Maybe you want to work that end a little harder."

"Don't you have calls to make, Mr. Lewton? I think you'd better get dispatch to stop diverting the ambulances."

"Sure." Harry turned to pick up the phone but Scopes was still on it. As before, Scopes was saying little, simply waiting for some news from the other end. "You still talking to the mayor's office?" Harry asked.

"No. First deputy superintendent of police."

Harry looked at Lee. "What's that about?"

"A lead. Something else turned up while you were out battling wits with Miss America. It may just be the key to this case." Lee looked past Harry toward Scopes and raised his voice a notch. "What is he saying, Terry? Anything yet?"

"They've got six squad cars in position, with men covering the front and the back. The SWAT team's just gone in."

Lee turned back to Harry. "We decided to wait until this moment-just as the ransom payments went through. We figured he'd almost certainly be at home watching the money come in. His guard's down. He feels like he's on top of the world. No better time to nab him."

"Who? Nab who?"

"The guy who-"

"Whoooeah!" Scopes slapped the desktop. "Way to go, guys!" he shouted into the phone. Turning to Lee, "They got him, Ray! It's him! Definitely him, they say."

Harry was mystified. "Who? Got who?"

Lee grinned so broadly that he showed his upper teeth. "Right here in Chicago. Over on the Northwest Side-"

"Who, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!"

"The brother," said Avery.

"The brother?"

Lee waved his hand with a flourish. "Rahman Abdul-Shakoor Al-Sharawi."

There was a click as Scopes hung up the phone. "He's on his way. E.T.A. twenty minutes."

12:31 P.M.

Outside the largely deserted ambulance entrance at the rear of the medical center, Harry, Judy Wolper, Lee, Scopes, and Avery stood waiting for the arrival of Rahman Al-Sharawi. Judy said little and was uncharacteristically tense. At Harry's request, she had armed herself with a Glock 17, a big gun for such a small woman, but one that was dependable and easy to use even if you didn't stay in practice.

Across the alleyway, a man in a hospital gown with an IV pole at his side sat smoking on a concrete bench. From time to time he would tap the ashes of his cigarette between his outspread knees. Harry himself felt the lack of a cigarette acutely. He had quit smoking when he came to Fletcher Memorial, but standing around with his hands in his pockets brought old cravings back.

"What I'd like to know is how you found this guy so fast," he said to the two FBI agents.

"His sister led us right to him," said Scopes. "Not intentionally, of course. It was her phone records. She had called him at least three times this past year from her home phone. So we just traced the number-you'd be surprised how quickly we can get cooperation in a high-profile terrorism case-and there he was."

"Then I guess she lied to us. She said she hadn't had any contact with him."

"Big surprise, huh?" said Scopes.

Harry pursed his lips, as though inhaling from a phantom cigarette. "I knew she was holding something back, but I didn't think that was it."

Avery chuckled. "They caught him sitting in an apartment in Albany Park, watching CNN and eating a bowl of lentils."

Harry turned to Lee. "What's the game plan?"

"We'll see," said Lee.

Scopes sn.i.g.g.e.red. "You'd be surprised how helpful a guy can be once he knows he's gonna be blown up by his own bomb."

Before the motorcade itself was visible, Harry saw the flas.h.i.+ng blue and red lights reflected from the white stone of the Children's Hospital across the alley. Then they pulled up, three squad cars running without sirens. Two uniformed officers got out of the front seats of each of the cars. Rahman was in the backseat of the middle car. Harry strained to get a look at him as the cops pulled him out. Harry had seen sc.u.mbags of all persuasions in the past, but he had never yet looked into the eyes of someone so low that he thought he could prove his manhood by blowing up a few sixty-year-old ladies on ventilators. He was struck by how ordinary this guy looked-not at all like one of those wild, bearded Talibans with the long skirts over their trousers. He was of middle height, lean, clean-shaven, with short black hair that was starting to thin on top. He wore jeans and a red and black soccer jersey. Some terror mastermind! Harry walked past a hundred guys like him every day of his life.

In handcuffs and leg irons, surrounded by blue uniforms, Rahman was slowly conducted to the entrance. His sly, sideways glance gravitated toward the bearlike, uniformed figure of Avery. He seemed surprised when the little Asian man in the dark suit spoke first.

"Mr. Al-Sharawi, I am Special Agent Raymond Lee, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You are being transferred to my custody, to be held as a material witness in the investigation of a bomb threat against this hospital. If you are subsequently charged with a criminal offense, any statements you make can and will be held against you in a court of law."

Rahman said nothing, but looked up at the sky.

"Do you understand English, Mr. Al-Sharawi? Do you require a translator?"

Again there was no answer.

"Okay, bring him in. Mr. Lewton, see if the hospital has an Arabic translator available."

"I already have one standing by." Harry was a little rankled by Lee's peremptory tone.

Rahman quit his sky-gazing and looked at Lee with contempt. "One needs no translator to speak to the devil," he said. His voice was soft and whispery, with a trace of a British accent.

"Oh, we're not the devil," said Lee with a thin-lipped smile.

Scopes couldn't resist a chuckle. "But we can fix you up with an appointment in h.e.l.l," he added.

At a nod from Lee, the entourage marched through the door. Harry led them through a corridor to the automatic double doors of the Department of Emergency Medicine. From there, they pa.s.sed through the Intake and Triage Unit, where patients were first examined as they came off the ambulances. Triage opened onto the Resuscitation Unit, a big room with a square nurses' station in the middle, and an outer perimeter divided by curtains into a dozen treatment bays for the most critically ill patients-heart attacks, gunshot wounds, car wrecks, burns. At this time of day it was pretty quiet, with a few interns in scrubs and short white coats chatting up the nurses. But by 7:00 P.M., it would be boiling over with activity-shouts and screams, staff running in and out of the bays, the floor littered with b.l.o.o.d.y sponges, plastic tubes and shredded clothing-the battlefield debris of a hand-to-hand struggle between life and death.

Beyond Resuscitation lay the "Majors," the Major Medical Unit, as big as a bus station. Here patients with serious but not so urgent problems-shortness of breath, stomach pains, dizziness, fevers, jaundice or b.l.o.o.d.y bowel movements-were observed and worked up with tests before admission to the hospital.

The end of the march was the Acute Psychiatric Subunit, located just to the right of the Majors. It was laid out like Resuscitation with bays and a central work station, but on a smaller scale. This was where Triage sent schizophrenics, attempted suicides, and manic-depressives high-flying off their meds- night people with dark, fearful visages, fleeing from invisible furies, or cowering before choruses of disembodied voices. For the very worst-those wracked by inhuman rages against themselves or others, unquenchable by reason or by drugs-there existed the Isolation Room. This was the closest thing in the hospital to a maximum-security prison cell. It had a steel door, unbreachable walls, and continuous closed-circuit monitoring. One had to be very, very sick to earn admission there.

Isolation itself was fronted by a small guardroom, containing a desk with a computer terminal, a small wooden table, and a half-dozen chairs of different makes. As the entourage filed in, Raymond Lee had Rahman sit down at the table and then pulled up a chair opposite him.

"Can we get you anything to make you comfortable, Mr. Al-Sharawi? A gla.s.s of water, perhaps?"

"Nothing."

Against the ascetic proportions of his angular chin, narrow-bridged aquiline nose, thin lips, and flaring nostrils, Rahman's eyes seemed sensuous and fluid. They were deep-set, watchful, and outlined by a thin script of black mascara-like pigment that, to Harry's thinking, made him look not so much effeminate as serpentine. Harry found the incongruity unsettling-half voluptuary, half holy man.

Lee placed his digital voice recorder on the table. "So, let's get started. Could you state your name, please?"

Silence.

"Do you not know your name?"

"I am who I am."

"Do you need help answering that question?"

"He who made me knows by what name He will call me on the Day of Judgment."

"Very well. Let me rephrase that. Are you Rahman Abdul-Shakoor Al-Sharawi, born in Cairo, Egypt?"

"Yes."

"Progress!" Lee slapped the table in mock relief. "And is Aliyah Sabra Al-Sharawi your sister?"

"No."

"Half-sister?"

"She is nothing."

Lee sat forward and tapped his fingers on his lips. "Was she born to Dr. Bas.h.i.+r Al-Sharawi, who is your father?"

"As a b.i.t.c.h may be born to a dog, yes."

Standing behind Lee, Scopes stifled a laugh. Lee himself was unruffled. "Are you aware that she works in this hospital?"

"What she does is of no concern to me."

"Mr. Al-Sharawi, I am not interested in your family affairs. I ask you only to confirm certain facts that may potentially have a bearing upon our investigation. If you cooperate, the law will not be unmindful of that."

Silence.

"Very well, let's take a different tack. I believe you know of the existence of an organization called the Al-Quds Martyrs' Brigade."

Silence.

"Are you a member of that organization?"

Silence.

"Are you authorized to speak for it?"

Silence.

"Let me be candid, Mr. Al-Sharawi," said Lee. "We have received a threat against this hospital, demanding the release of two men, Mohammed Meteb and Ha.s.san Abo Mossalam, from custody in New York. The government has decided to comply with the demands of the ransom note we have received. However, we need to discuss with someone the specific arrangements for the release, to make certain that all goes smoothly and that there are no misunderstandings. We are ready to take action on this demand. But we don't know who to talk to. Are you the person we should approach?"

"Say what you will."

Lee raised his hands impotently. "I'm not going to discuss anything unless I know that you are authorized to negotiate on behalf of Al-Quds."

"I have ... some influence."

"Not good enough. It must be someone whose word can be trusted. Someone with the authority to make a binding agreement."

"What I promise will be adhered to."

"Then you have such authority?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Then you can confirm that a bomb is in fact present somewhere in this facility?"

"There is a bomb, yes."

"Where did the explosive come from?"

"Quantico."

"What is its destructive power?"

"Enough."

"Enough for what?"

"To destroy everything."

"Did you yourself construct the bomb?"

Rahman looked away from Lee. For one unsettling moment, his gaze landed on Harry. "These questions have no concern in the matter of the release of the honored mujahideen Meteb and Abo Mossalam. You will confine yourself to that issue."