Driscoll nodded. “Me, too, but he was waving a

gun at our badges.”

Jack looked at Dog, still lying where he’d fallen. “I get it, I just wish I could ask another question or two. But I think I got what we needed. You know anything about a guy named Farrigian?”

Driscoll had driven Jack’s car, and they walked to it now as the detective called in any information on that last name. By the time Jack was behind the wheel, he knew that Farrigian was an importer with a history of minor scrapes with customs. He’d also been brought up on charges of possession of illegal weapons, but the charge had been thrown out on a technicality. He was on a number of Federal, state, and local watch lists, but he was considered small-time.

Jack stuck his hand out the window. “Thanks, Harry. I owe you.”

Driscoll shook his hand. “Bet your ass. And I’m collecting now. Keep me up on this. I want to stay in the loop.”

“What, you don’t have enough work?”

Driscoll checked his watch. “If you’re right about your shit, then something’s going down in less than a day. I don’t want terrorist crap in my town. You keep me involved.” He smacked the side of the car.

Jack pulled off the dirt field and onto the highway. Driscoll was a good man. If CTU could get him, or people like him, they’d be okay.

As he drove, Jack picked up his phone and called Christopher Henderson. “You’re still there, right?” he asked when Henderson answered.

Henderson didn’t sound happy. “What do you think? I’ve been on the phone with the State Department for the last forty minutes. Jesus, you think we’ve got bureaucracy!”

“I’ve got something,” Jack said bluntly. “Not much, but I’m on the trail.” He told Henderson about the meeting with Gelson and the encounter with Dog Smithies.

“I’m following this plastic explosives back to its source. I’m going to figure out who has the rest of it.”

“Hold on, I’m going to conference in Chappelle.” Jack waited on hold, then heard several beeps, then Henderson’s voice again. “Jack, you there? Chappelle?”

“Present,” Chappelle said unhappily. “You know what time it is, right?”

“Justice never sleeps,” Henderson quipped. “Jack has an update.”

For the second time, Bauer explained what he’d been up to for the last two hours. Chappelle was quiet, except for the occasional resentful grunt. When Jack was done, all his questions were cynical.

“You’re assuming it’s the same set of plastic explosives?”

“For now. I’ll know for sure once I get to Farrigian.”

“Your theory is that this Farrigian sold some of the plastic explosives to this biker and some to the terrorists. You think if we find the seller we’ll be able to track it back to the terrorists?”

“Yes.”

“But what if Abu Mousa, the guy we have in custody, was the buyer?”

Jack shook his head at the phone. “I don’t see Mousa as the brains. They were storage and fall guys.”

“Probably right,” Chappelle agreed reluctantly. “But I still don’t see the urgency. Even if Ramin was right about some plan for tomorrow, we’ve stopped it. We have the plastic explosives. If you’re worried about some missing bricks, then you just answered your own question with this biker. He got the rest.”

Jack shrugged. “You may be right,” he conceded. “I just want to make sure.”

There was silence, except for the faint white noise of the cellular transmissions. Jack knew that Chappelle was trying to decide whether to give his authorization for this. Of course, neither one of them was sure what the District Director could do to stop him. Chappelle could help him by endorsing him, but could not hurt him directly. If Jack, acting as a CIA operative, was going to get in trouble for operating domestically, he’d get called to the carpet by the CIA’s Director of Operations, not by Chappelle.

In the end, Chappelle made the decision worthy of a government employee at any level. “I don’t want to know about this,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is a CTU case and CTU personnel are working on it.” He hung up.

Christopher Henderson said, “That’s as close to approval as you’re going to get.”

“I wasn’t looking for approval,” Jack replied as he turned south on the 405 Freeway.

“Come into the office. We’ll plan a move on Farrigian from here. It’ll make Chappelle feel better.”

“On my way.”

10:31 P.M. PST Baldwin Hills, California

There were oil wells in Los Angeles. You could see them when driving down La Cienega Boulevard toward the airport. Where the street passed between the shoulders of two hills, on the west side you could see the pumps, like metallic dinosaurs bobbing their heads up and down. Nearby was the growing suburb of Baldwin Hills, but the oil wells were surrounded by undeveloped land and the expanse of Baldwin Park. Plus the pumps themselves emitted a continuous dull groan.

So there was no one to hear Don Biehn scream.

His captor had rolled the tire of his car over Biehn’s handcuffed hands, crushing them and pinning him face-up on the ground. Biehn’s legs were strapped together with something he couldn’t see, and tied off to the metal base of one of the great pumps, which nodded its giant hood over him as he stared up at the dark sky.

Biehn didn’t know who had kidnapped him, or why. The man hadn’t even asked him questions yet. Biehn had woken from his drug-induced stupor (chloroform?) to find his fingers already crushed under the car. He’d played possum for a few minutes while his captor stood a few feet away, whispering into a cell phone. Biehn heard very little of the conversation, but what he heard was startling. If he could survive this, he might be able to use that conversation to avoid prison or the gas chamber.

The captor, not quite visible in the gloom, had hung up his phone. He knelt down beside Biehn and slapped him to wake him. Then he cut Biehn’s shirt away and carved a bloody line down his chest, causing Biehn to scream despite himself.

Now his captor came close. There was a dim light somewhere nearby on one of the pumps. In the very faint light, Biehn saw a gleaming bald head and a handsome, clean-shaven face staring down at him.

“That is to let you know I am serious,” said his captor, holding up his knife. “Don’t make me show you how truly, truly serious I am.”

Biehn said nothing. What the hell was going on? Was this guy with the church?

The man held up Biehn’s badge. “Were you there

to arrest Father Collins?”

“Yes,” Don lied.

The captor cut away a sickle-shaped piece of skin below Biehn’s left nipple.

“No,” he said calmly as Biehn sobbed. “Police officers do not sneak around the backs of houses to break and enter. They do not come alone, either. Don’t lie to me again.”

This time, Biehn had not screamed, but the cut hurt like hell. He blinked away tears of pain. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

The man cut him again. Biehn thrashed in his confinement, feeling his fingers tear and nearly break under the weight of the car tire.

“I see that you want to ask questions, too,” the man said. “Well, I’m not unreasonable. I will let you ask questions. But your questions will come at a cost. Every time you ask one, I will cut a piece from you. Now, do you want to ask something?”

“Do you work for the church?” Biehn asked.

“Yes,” the man said. “You can call me Michael.”

Biehn spat into his face.

The man cut a thin fillet, just below the epidermis on Biehn’s left side. Biehn cried out and thrashed again. He felt two of his fingers dislocate. But he also felt them start to wiggle in the space he’d created.

“Now it’s my turn,” Michael said. “What did you want with Father Collins?”

“To kill him.”

“Why?”

“Because he deserves to die.”

That answer seemed to strike Michael as curious. He started again. “What do you know of the plan?”

“What plan?”

“That was a question,” Michael said. He gouged a piece from Biehn’s right side. Blood trickled from both sides of his body down into the mud. “What do you know of the plan?” Michael asked again.

Biehn didn’t know how many more cuts he could take. He was losing blood, and the pain was excruci

ating. “I don’t know about any plan.”

“I will make deeper cuts for lying.”

“I really don’t!” Biehn sobbed. “I have my reasons

for killing that piece of shit!’

“What reasons are those?” Michael asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Nobody!”

Another cut, not deep, but in the sensitive area of

the armpit. Biehn thrashed again, felt another finger dislocate, and this time his arms came free. Michael looked genuinely startled when Biehn sat up. Gripping his two battered hands into a club, Biehn smashed Michael across the jaw, and the torturer crumpled sideways. Biehn snatched up the knife and cut the leather strap—a belt, it seemed to be— from around his ankles. Michael stirred, and Biehn turned to stab him. But his feet were cramped and asleep, and his hands were too battered to hold the knife well. Michael slapped the blade from his grip. Biehn clutched at Michael’s shirt with his handcuffed hands and headbutted him in the face. His position was weak and the strike wasn’t strong, but it was enough to stun Michael again. Biehn stood up, his legs feeling like dead wood beneath him. He wanted to stay and fight, but he was weak from pain and blood loss. He ran into the darkness.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

11:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jack walked into CTU’s shell of a headquarters looking like a dog’s chew toy. His hair was tousled, and his clothes and face were covered with dust. His wrists were still sticky from the duct tape. But his eyes were on fire, and he was all business as he walked through the office toward the bare meeting room. He passed a woman sitting impatiently in a chair. He recognized her as the same thin, pretty woman he’d passed earlier in the evening. She seemed eager to talk with anyone who would pay attention to her, but Jack hurried past her into the room where Christopher Henderson waited. Nina Myers was there, too. The analyst Jamey Farrell was also present, as were a few others Jack hadn’t met.

“Everyone’s up to speed?” Jack asked.

“You want to clean up first?” Henderson offered.

Jack waved him off. “Do we have a list of likely targets?”

Jamey Farrell spoke up, but she spoke to Henderson out of deference to his position. “Yeah, but it’s so long it’s not usable.” She passed around packets of paper. “Sorry, our monitor isn’t hooked up to the network yet. These will have to do. Look at the first six pages.” They did, and saw a long list of Los Angeles landmarks. Jack frowned. With the exception of a few financial institutions, he could have found the same list in any Los Angeles guidebook.

“We have to narrow this down,” he said.

Henderson observed, “Our working assumption is that the weapon is plastic explosives. If that’s the case, they can’t have much of it. Even if they have twice as much as we’ve already uncovered (and that’s next to impossible), they still don’t have huge amounts.”

“Which means their target is specific,” Jack added. “Something small.”

Nina Myers made a skeptical noise in the back of her throat. “That doesn’t fit their MO.” She sat down, leaning back in one of the brand-new chairs. “I mean, our theory is that this is Yasin, right? One of the Blind Sheik’s guys? Maybe even al-Qaeda. You all know al-Qaeda, right?”

Jack did. Al-Qaeda was an Arabic phrase that literally meant “the base.” It was the catchphrase for a network of Islamic fundamentalists with very anti-Western, anti-American sentiments. The loose network had gotten its start during the Russian war in Afghanistan. In 1991, al-Qaeda turned its anger on the United States when that country dared to maintain its troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the two mosques, Medina and Mecca. Al-Qaeda had bombed an embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing a number of Americans. One of the primary terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bomb attack was Ramzi Yousef, a known associate of al-Qaeda. Although the al-Qaeda name hadn’t gotten much play in the media yet, operators in intelligence circles were already talking about them as the next big threat.

Nina continued. “They don’t seem to pick small targets. They go after headlines. Embassies. The World Trade Center.”

Jack studied the list while she spoke. “Always the big-ticket items?”

Nina considered. “The Blind Sheik was implicated in the death of Meir Kahane, the ultra-rightist Israeli rabbi. But if it’s just an assassination, why use plastic explosives?”

Henderson added, “And if they want an explosion, they’ve already proven they can make homemade explosives.”

Jack knew what they were thinking, what they were trying to tell him through the facts. This wasn’t adding up. All of them were trained investigators, accustomed to uncovering facts that began to form a pattern. There didn’t seem to be a pattern here.

“Here’s what we know for certain,” he said, returning to the beginning. He picked up the laser pointer, but the monitor was as dead now as it had been before.

“Sorry,” Henderson apologized.

Jack snatched up a pen, flipped over one of the packets Jamey had provided, and started scribbling a flowchart. “One: Israeli agents contacted the CIA a while ago with intelligence that some known terrorists were planning an attack in the United States. After tracking down leads in Cairo, I was given the name of Ramin, who I knew had been distantly associated with the Blind Sheik. When I tried to question him, someone blew him up. But he did say that Yasin, another WTC bomber, was involved, and that he was planning an event for tomorrow night.

“Two: you guys uncover some Muslims in Los Angeles who are hiding plastic explosives under their bed. Some if it is missing.

“Three: a washed-up actor apparently gave money to some low-level troublemakers to buy plastic explosives from an arms dealer who got his hands on some.”

Nina Myers rubbed her temples. “There’s enough here to tell us something is going on, but not enough to know what.”

“No luck with the guys in custody?” Jack asked.

Nina scowled and said sarcastically, “They are holding up under our most ruthless interrogation methods. We’re only serving them tea twice a day now. They still won’t break.” Jamey Farrell chuckled.

“If it is a smaller target,” Jack mused, “what would it be? What people or events are happening tomorrow?”

Jamey ticked off a few things from memory. “The Pope is in town for the Unity Conference. The Vice President will be attending, but he’s not scheduled until the day after tomorrow and isn’t in town until the early morning of that day. The Governor of California will be in the city for a huge Democratic fundraiser, which is a likely political target. The space shuttle is scheduled to land tomorrow, although Edwards Air Force isn’t the primary landing site, always the emergency one.”

Henderson held up a hand to stop her. “Actually, it’s not. I read there are issues with the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center. Edwards is the primary zone now. Has been for over a month.”

They all paused. “The shuttle would be an interesting target,” Jack said. “If it’s Edwards, that adds new meaning to the fact that these bikers are somehow connected. Lancaster is a lot closer to Edwards than we are down here.” He looked at Henderson. “Do you have someone you can put on that?”

Henderson opened his arms wide. “I’ve got a whole room full of people,” he said humorlessly.

“Can you borrow—?” Jack started to say.

“Relax, Jack,” Henderson drawled. “You’re not the only resourceful one. There’s someone I’ve been after to join up. Guy named Almeida. I’ll see about him.”

“Another recruit?” Jack laughed.

“You’re not the only fish in the sea.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “So we’ll pursue the space shuttle angle. I’m going to deal with this Farrigian issue. I guess that’s it for now. Thank you all.”

The group started to disband. Nina Myers hung back until only she and Jack remained in the room. “You look like hell,” she said.

Jack looked up from the target list and grinned. “I don’t look much better when I’m cleaned up. Although my wife does try.”

She walked halfway to the door, then turned back toward him. “I like the way you take charge here.

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You’re going to help us get this unit into shape.” “I turned down the job. I’m just working my own case through here.”

“Uh-huh,” she said dismissively. “You’re what this place needed. Oh, and by the way,” she said with a Cheshire cat smile. “You didn’t have to mention your wife. I saw the ring. I just don’t see it as an issue.”

Jack wasn’t often surprised, but her boldness left him momentarily speechless. She laughed charmingly at it. “You just keep that thought in mind. Might be a reason for you to stick around CTU. Meanwhile, I’ve got to keep up this ridiculous search for Abdul Ali, a man who seems to have vanished.”

“Excuse me.”

That same woman was standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed in front of her and her feet were planted, as though she was prepared to be defiant. But she wore a look of astonishment. Jack had the impression that he’d caught her halfway between two different attitudes.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Did you say you were looking for someone named Abdul Ali?”

Nina’s own expression had turned instantly from flirtatious to judgmental. “You’re the NTBS investigator, aren’t you?” she asked coldly.

“Diana Christie,” the woman affirmed. “It was Abdul Ali, right?”

Nina shook her head. “All respect, but this is a Federal case we’re discussing. You shouldn’t be eavesdropping—”

“I’m on a Federal case, too,” Christie interjected. For all her frail prettiness, she clearly had a hard, determined core. “And if I hadn’t just eavesdropped, you’d be out running your ass off for no reason. If I’m right, the guy you’re looking for is dead.”

11:12 P.M. PST Shoemacher Avenue, Los Angeles

Father Sam Collins crouched down beside his back door, trying to sweep up the glass one-handed. He’d broken his left arm a few weeks ago in a car accident, and it was causing him a lot of trouble. The break had been bad, apparently, and they’d put a steel rod in his arm and popped his dislocated elbow back into place. He hadn’t had his own doctor, and the archdiocese had recommended one to him. Collins wasn’t sure the man was any good. His arm hurt a hell of a lot.

The pain in his arm wasn’t the only thing making Collins grumpy. Someone had broken one of the glass squares in his beautiful French doors. At first he’d thought it was a robbery, but nothing had been taken. The door itself was still locked from the inside. Probably the gardener, Collins had thought with a sigh. It was probably time to get rid of his current guy. Melanie across the street had told him that you had to change gardeners every year or so because their work got sloppier. Collins didn’t like to believe that—he liked to believe the best in everyone. But someone had broken his window, that was certain.

Collins swept the big shards of glass into a paper grocery bag. Then he got out a Dustbuster and used that to suck up the smaller bits. By the time he was done, his left arm ached. He wished he could take a Vicodin, but they left him groggy for hours, and to

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morrow was an important day. Tomorrow he would sit at the right hand of the Holy Father at the Unity Conference. It was going to be a glorious day.

11:17 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

“This might be a break for both of us,” Diana summarized. “And it’s such a simple, stupid thing.”

“I’ve been looking for a dead man,” Nina said. “Abdul Ali, Ali Abdul. Just a mix-up of names. But why doesn’t anyone know he’s dead?”

“Someone knows,” Jack said. “Someone knows and doesn’t want to make a lot of noise about it, especially if Federal investigators are already asking.”

While Jack and Nina’s tension increased, Diana Christie was obviously relieved. “So this is an answer. At least part of one. If Abdul Ali is a suspect in your case, if he’s involved with this plastic explosive, then maybe he brought some on board. That’s what caused the detonation.”

Nina frowned. “Why would he want to blow up an Alaska Airlines flight? Could a bomb have gone off accidentally?”

Diana shook her head doubtfully. “If the plastic explosive was primed and ready with a detonator, if it was in a state where it might go off accidentally, it’d be hard to get it through security.”

“Same question, then,” Jack repeated. “Why blow up that flight? Was there anyone special on it?” He knew it was a callous question, but it was the kind of question that had to be asked if they were going to find the bombers.

But Diana put a stop to that line of thinking. “I researched everyone, trying to find a motive so I could convince the rest of NTSB that this was a bombing. There was no one on board that made any headlines or would be a target for any of the kinds of groups you guys are after.”

“Maybe Ali was the target,” Nina suggested. “Maybe he knew something and they wanted to shut him up. They blew up Ramin, didn’t they?”

The NTSB investigator agreed. “Okay, but even so, he had to have been holding the bomb. That blast originated in his seat.”

“A gift. A going-away present. Something,” Jack said. “They offed him because he was a witness.” He nodded approvingly at Diana. “So our first clue that something was going on came at us a month ago, and no one listened to you. Sorry about that.”

A look of gratitude unfolded out of the exhaustion on Diana Christie’s face. She might have cried if she weren’t in the presence of the two anti-terrorist agents. “Thanks,” was all she said.

“Okay, but now what?” Nina asked. “We’re still working on lots of hypotheses here, but no concrete evidence and no target. An airplane blows up, either accidentally or on purpose, with a possible terrorist on board. I can already tell you Abdul Ali’s record won’t give us any real leads. He’s a nobody as far as your people are concerned,” she said, meaning Jack’s CIA. “He’s a cipher.”

“Farrigian is still our best lead. I’m going to talk to him.”

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“He has something to do with the airline explosion?” Diana asked. Jack shook his head. “Seller. He may be the source of the explosives, though.” “I want to go,” the NTSB agent said firmly. “I want in on the investigation.” “This is undercover work,” he replied, rejecting her.

“I don’t care. I’ve been on this thing from the beginning. Before either of you. If this guys deals in explosives, I can help. I may hear or see something you don’t.”

Nina waited for Jack to say no again. To her surprise, he hesitated, then said, “No promises. I don’t know what the play is yet. I’ll let you know. If you want to wait around, that’s your business. Now will you excuse us?”

Diana accepted this answer, and the dismissal, reluctantly, and left the room. “What the hell?” Nina said when she was gone. “She doesn’t even work for us!” Jack laughed. “Neither do I.”

11:28 P.M. PST Rectory of St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

If you asked Harry Driscoll, he’d already put in his time tonight. Interviewing Mark Gelson and throwing together the Dog Smithies sting with Jack Bauer were, in his opinion, enough for one night. He’d only returned to the Robbery-Homicide office to finish up his paperwork, and he absolutely planned on coming in late tomorrow. But while he was straightening up his desk (straightening up being a relative term among the detectives, whose desks ranged from untidy to ludicrous) when the 187 call came in from St. Monica’s. He wasn’t inclined to take it, but the city had apparently been lively that night, and there was no one else to respond.

So he found himself, just before eleven-thirty, walking into the rectory of St. Monica’s Cathedral, tramping up the stairs and past the yellow police tape and down the hall. A uniformed officer Driscoll had never met gave him the facts: Father Frank Giggs, one of the priests at St. Monica’s, in charge of the youth program. There was one possible witness, another priest who’d encountered a stranger in the hallway. A uniform was sitting with him in his room.

Driscoll nodded and walked into the crime scene. The victim’s body was on the floor, his back propped up against the bed. A pillow, its center black with powder burns and shredding by a hole, had slid down onto his chest. The priest’s face had turned to bloody pulp, already drying to gray crust. His hands were hidden behind.

“Shit,” Harry said to no one in particular. “There was serious malice here. Forensics?”

The uniform muttered into his radio, then waited. “Two minutes out. Been busy tonight.”

Harry nodded. He crouched down and examined the area, careful not to touch anything, not even the bedspread. He tried not to look at the ruined face, now that he was so close to it. The pillow had obviously been used to muffle the sound of a gunshot. Harry’s eyes, long used to searching for details, slowly scanned down the victim’s chest to his stom

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ach and waist. He missed the groin puncture at first. Then he saw the blood smear on the priest’s pajama bottoms, and his eyes moved back up. Taking out his own pen, he gently moved the bunched-up gusset of the pajamas to reveal a hole in the cloth surrounded by blood. Harry could just make out tiny streaks of the blood that had undoubtedly drained downward below the body.

“Jesus,” Harry muttered. The man had been tortured. Who would torture a priest?

Harry put his pen back in his pocket. As he lifted his eyes a bit, he saw something on the floor, half hidden by the hanging bedspread. Out came the pen again. Harry dragged it into the open with the pen tip. It was a book of some kind—actually, a journal. Harry again used the pen to flip it open. He read only a few pages before he knew that his night was far from over.

11:39 P.M. Culver City, California

Abdul called himself a schoolboy because he couldn’t sleep. He wandered around his apartment in his robe, sipping club soda and listening to a Julia Ford-ham CD. This was haram, of course. His secret sin. Listening to music was not itself forbidden. Abdul was not one of those extremist imams, like those among the Taliban, who forbade music altogether. Abdul, rather, sided with ibn Hazm, who had declared music to be halal. Music could inspire the soul to submit more fully to the will of Allah; at least, Abdul found this to be true. Of course, ibn Hazm had lived a millennium ago, and had not conceived of music like this, or a voice as seductive as that of Ms. Fordham. And therein lay the sin, for Abdul did not simply listen to music in general, he longed for the voice and image of that singer. He played her music as he lay down to sleep, and in his dreams the messengers of Allah spoke with her voice. That was haram.

Yet on this evening even the gentle measures of Porcelain drifting through his apartment could not lull Abdul to sleep. Tomorrow was the opening of the Unity Conference. Intellectually (and, truth be told, Abdul al-Hassan’s intellect was formidable) he knew the conference was doomed to failure. Upon opening, the conference would flare like a television screen turned on: all light and noise, but no heat. Soon it would flicker and die. Abdul had said as much to his friend and opponent Rabbi Moskovitz, and both had felt pity for the Catholic Pope and his minions who struggled valiantly to assemble the Unity event. Yet, even as he laughed with Moskovitz, Abdul felt a romantic hope nestle itself in his heart. Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked? Would it not be grand to find that rival forces, so far apart, could build bridges across the chasm that divided them.

“Maybe,” he said aloud. He would not mind being wrong. To be called a cynic, a pessimist, a skeptic would be a small price to pay if the powerful religions of the world could come together and forge peace now, with the world teetering so close to the edge of chaos.

“Maybe,” he said again.

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His doorbell rang.

Abdul was so startled that he stood in the center of his living room, not sure he had heard correctly. Who would ring his bell at this hour?

But the bell rang again, sounding somehow more insistent now. Abdul hurried over to his stereo and stopped the CD. The bell rang a third time before he reached the door and he opened it, intending to declare the lateness of the hour in his sternest tone.

But when he looked into the face of his visitor, he was stunned into silence. It was not a stranger’s face. It was his own face, but it was grinning happily, eagerly. There was wicked light in his reflection’s eyes.

“Hello, brother,” said his reflection, raising his right hand. Abdul just had time to see that his reflection’s left arm was in a sling, before he stopped seeing altogether.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

12:00 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

“Your Holiness.”

The Pope lifted his head from his hands. “It’s all right, Giancarlo. I am not sleeping.”

Giancarlo Mettler stepped into the room, gliding across the carpet. Giancarlo was skinny and balding, with watery brown eyes and a weak chin, the very image of an anonymous mid-level Vatican functionary. Only that fluid, catlike glide revealed him as the highly trained Swiss Guard that he was. Among all the many, many layers of security that surrounded the Holy Father, Giancarlo was the last and greatest, save for God alone. Only divine grace lay closer to the Pope’s skin than Giancarlo Mettler.

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“There’s been a disturbance in the rectory, Holy Father,” the Swiss Guard said quietly. “Local law enforcement agents are investigating.”

The Pope slowly climbed up from his kneeling position beside the bed. Giancarlo politely took his arm, politely ignoring the loud creaking of his knees. “Do we need to evacuate?” the Pope asked.

“Not yet, Holy Father,” Giancarlo said. “But I wanted you prepared in case that becomes necessary.”

“The disturbance?”

Giancarlo hesitated. “Sadly, a murder. A priest.”

John Paul crossed himself. “You’re sure there is no danger . . . ?”

“Not sure, Your Holiness. There was an eyewitness. We are certain the killer has come and gone. The grounds have been thoroughly searched. We believe it has nothing to do with your presence here.”

A soft knock interrupted them. Giancarlo frowned irritably. “Cardinal Mulrooney, Your Holiness. Security will have let him through. He insists on seeing you. I have not said you are available. I can send him—”

The Pope patted Giancarlo on the shoulder. “I could not sleep anyway, Giancarlo. Let him in, please.”

John Paul arranged himself on a stool at the foot of his bed as Giancarlo opened the door and stepped aside, becoming instantly invisible as Cardinal Mulrooney swept into the room. He knelt perfunctorily and stood quickly. “Your Holiness, you have been informed?”

The Pope nodded. “I understand there is no danger.”

“Not of that kind,” Mulrooney said. He glanced back at Giancarlo, aware of him despite the guard’s ability to fade into the background. “May we speak privately?”

Ever alert, Giancarlo stepped forward, his face a question. John Paul nodded, and Giancarlo departed without a word.

Mulrooney said, “Your Holiness, the murder is terrible, but the danger is not to your body. I believe . . .” He hesitated, reluctant to speak of the topic, even in the most circumspect terms. “I believe this murder may have something to do with . . . the issue.”

The Pope did not immediately take his meaning. “Issue?”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” Mulrooney snapped, annoyed at the man’s thickness. “The issue. The one that we had hoped would never become a problem. A very serious, very public problem.”

John Paul was still for a moment, his mind scrolling through a list of possible problems, the vastness of which only he could know. Then he trembled ever so slightly as he summoned, from some locked place in his mind, one of the greatest of fears. “How could it possibly . . . oh.” John Paul was much quicker than Mulrooney wished to admit. In a flash, he grasped the possibilities: discovery, a vengeance killing, the police, capture, a trial, exposure, a suspect on trial beyond the reach of the church, embarrassment beyond measure.

“Was this one of the priests that was relocated?” the Pope asked.

“Twice, Your Holiness,” Mulrooney said. “And . . .

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it seems the police discovered a book of some kind. Written by one of the children. The killer was the father.”

12:11 A.M. PST West Los Angeles

Big cities were sometimes the best places to hide. Andre Farrigian operated a small import/export business out of a nondescript warehouse on Pico Boulevard just a few blocks west of the 405 Freeway. His warehouse was a mile away from Sony Pictures, a few miles west of UCLA, and only a few blocks from a police station, but no one noticed him. Who cared about one more gray and blue building surrounded by a plastic-sheath and chain-link fence?

Farrigian’s import business was legitimate, but it was a loser, and had operated in the red for all three years of its existence. Neither Andre nor his two brothers cared. The business offered plenty of cover for their more profitable hobby—small-scale arms dealing. They were small-scale because they were smart enough to realize that they weren’t smart enough to get bigger. A bigger operation meant greater danger and more watchful eyes. A bigger operation required better contacts among various governments, and bolder action to secure both equipment and customers. The Farrigians were neither bold nor well-connected. Besides, they made a decent enough profit distributing small quantities of automatic weapons to local gangs, snatching up explosives for the mob, and sending the occasional ordnance overseas to a few Palestinian and Lebanese organizations they had come to know. Big business just sounded like big trouble, a thing that Andre had avoided with an almost religious devotion.

So when the man called saying he was named Stockton and using Dog Smithies’s name as a reference and giving out Dog’s cell phone number, Andre was only a little suspicious. He told the man he’d call back, then he dialed Dog’s number, which he already knew, of course. No answer. This didn’t surprise Andre since he knew the motorhead usually parked his carcass at the Killabrew around this time of night.

Farrigian called over to the bar.

“Killabrew,” said a gruff, vaguely feminine voice.

“Hey, it’s Andre Farrigian,” he said, not remembering her name. “Dog there?”

The bartender lady snorted. “What’s left of him. Drunk out of his gourd. Can’t get him off the floor. Sure can’t get him to the phone.”

Farrigian frowned. He didn’t know the bartender well, but Dog had told him that they moved in the same circles, so he thought the risk was minimal. “You ever hear Dog talk about a guy named Stockton?”

The bartender lady hesitated . . . but maybe it was the usual thief’s hesitation before speaking on a telephone. The untrustworthy trusted no one. “Maybe,” she said at last. “Kind of blondie. Raspy voice.”

Farrigian nodded. “Thanks. Gaby,” he added, remembering her name at last.

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12:14 A.M. PST Killabrew Bar, Lancaster

Gaby hung up the phone and turned to the Federal agent standing next to her. “Okay?” “Good enough,” the man said, already walking out.

“Just don’t take my liquor license!” she yelled.

“We’ll be in touch.”

12:15 A.M. PST Farrigian’s Warehouse, West Los Angeles

The blond man and the skinny chick walked into his warehouse at about a quarter after midnight. Farrigian was sitting at the steel desk in his cramped, frosted-glass office in a corner of the warehouse. The desk was piled high with invoices, customs forms, shipping manifests, and other assorted documents. All of it was as real as it was neglected. Andre hated paperwork. He stood up and moved toward the door as they approached.

“Hey there,” Andre said. His English was perfect and his slang very American, but he could still hear traces of that clipped Armenian accent he cursed his parents for. “No sense going in there,” he said. “Not even room to fart.”

“Glad you could see us,” the blond man said, holding out his hand. “Stockton. This is Danni.”

Farrigian smiled. Smiles seemed to relax people and cost nothing, so he doled them out freely. “How’s Dog?”

“Drunk, last time I saw him,” Stockton said.

“Most of the time.” Farrigian laughed. “So, what can I do for you two?”

The blond one, Stockton, said, “I’m looking to buy something kind of like what you sold to Dog.”

Andre kept the big, friendly grin on his face, which was easy. He was the jovial type. But he wasn’t stupid. “Hmm, I guess I sold some stuff to Dog. I sell a lot of stuff, you can see. We talking about imports here? I got these great office decorations. It’s like a crystal ball, but there’s a Chinese scroll inside, all decorated.”

The woman spoke up. She was hot by American standards, but Andre liked his woman with more hips and ass. “We’re talking about something a little more interesting. Some people are throwing a party. We’re looking for something that will make a big bang.”

That was corny, Farrigian thought, but he was used to it. Truth was, he’d spoken more than a few corny lines in his time. No one wanted to come right out and ask for illegal weapons.

“Well, I don’t usually deal in party favors,” he said, trying to help her out. “You mean something like Chinese firecrackers?”

“Chinese or whatever,” Stockton said. “Whatever you can get your hands on right away.”

“Oh, a rush order,” Farrigian said. “There’s a delivery charge for that, okay?”

Stockton nodded irritably, but not because of the money. The man had no patience for the obvious. Rudeness never bothered Andre, as long as the customer paid. “We’re looking for something in plastic,” Stockton said purposefully. “Dog told me you found him some plastic, too.”

Farrigian scratched his chin. This was getting a little

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too close for comfort and moving a little too fast. “I am sure I can help you,” he said. “But I’ll have to call a distributor or two that I know. Give me a number and I’ll call you back. An hour, no more,” he said in response to Stockton’s impending objection.

Stockton nodded and handed him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. They shook hands and Stockton and Diana walked out.

12:19 A.M. PST West Los Angeles

Jack and Diana walked casually out of the warehouse and into the narrow parking lot on the inside of the fence. They hopped into Jack’s SUV and drove slowly out of the gate, turned on a side street, then made another turn onto Pico.

“Do you think he’ll call back?” Diana asked.

Jack nodded. “If he’s suspicious, he’ll make a few calls. We’ve covered everyone we can find connected to Dog Smithies, so any of those people will back up our story.”

“How long can you keep those people under your thumb?”

“Not long. Rumors will start flying, but by tomorrow night it won’t matter anyway. We don’t know what kinds of sources Farrigian has. I doubt he’s all that sophisticated, but if he is connected and has a way to check out the cell number, it’ll come up as James Baker, giving Tom Stockton as an alias. That’ll make us more believable.

“I’m not worried about him checking us out, though. I want to know who his people are.” Jack tapped a phone number into his cell while keeping one eye on the road. Henderson answered immediately, sounding a little surly about working so late.

“Christopher, I want to get wiretaps on this Farrigian character. He’s going to start making calls right away, and I want us to trace them.”

There was a moment of faint white noise. “Jack, Chappelle has to authorize all wiretaps and surveillance.”

“Well, let’s get him to authorize it!” Jack urged.

Henderson made a noise. Something more than a grunt and less than an actual word. Whatever it was, its meaning was clearly miserable. Jack waited. There was some shuffling and several clicks, then Henderson came back on. “The District Director is on the line with us,” Henderson said simply.

“What?” Chappelle snapped.

Jack told his story. To his credit, Chappelle listened without interrupting once. When Jack was done, Chappelle actually agreed. “Don’t sound so damned surprised, Bauer. You play by the book and I’ll back you one hundred percent. You’re following a lead, you got a suspect’s name, you investigated and got probable cause.” Jack was indeed surprised by Chappelle’s cooperation. “As far as I’m concerned, though, this is LAPD, CTU, and NTSB investigating, not the CIA. But I’ll let your people sort this out when the time comes. I’m fine authorizing your wiretap. Just get the paperwork to me in the morning and we’ll proceed.”

Jack’s heart sank. “In the morning? No, I need it right now. Not the paperwork right now, the wiretap. Right now!”

“Never happen,” Chappelle said matter-of-factly.

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“There’s me, there’s the judge, then the actual surveillance guys to do the wiring. We’re looking at mid-morning, tomorrow evening at the latest.”

Jack squeezed the phone till his knuckles turned white. “You don’t seem to get the urgency.”

“And you don’t seem to get that the plot has been stopped!” Chappelle snapped back. The moment of cooperation vanished. “We need to make arrests, but we have some of the plotters and we have the plastic explosives! You even found the few bits left over. So get them, but get them by following procedure! Henderson, deal with this jack-off before I have to deal with you!” The phone clicked.

“That went well,” Henderson quipped.

“I think he’s warming up to me,” Jack agreed. “Don’t worry about it, Christopher, I’ll take care of everything.”

12:23 P.M. PST Brentwood

Harry Driscoll was used to knocking on doors after midnight, but usually all the cops were on the outside when he knocked. This time the cop was on the other side.

Driscoll didn’t know Don Biehn. He thought he’d met him once or twice, at the funeral of a slain police officer, maybe, or the retirement party for another. But he’d never worked with Biehn and couldn’t have told anyone a thing about him . . . except that his son’s diary had been found at the scene of a priest’s murder, and that, according to that diary, the priest had molested Biehn’s son repeatedly.

Driscoll held up his hand, balled into a fist, but hesitated. He stood there for more than a minute, reluctant. No good, no satisfaction, would come from knocking on that door. That door would open on nothing but horror and politics and most likely the destruction of a fellow badge. Harry wanted no part of it. The man, the father in him protested that justice—real justice by any definition he could muster—had been served the minute that child-violating son of a bitch had his face blown off. The man, the father in him told him to lower his hand and walk away. Leave the door unopened.

But the cop in him replied that there were rules and laws, and those laws allowed the just to live among the unjust with the belief that they were shielded from iniquity. But the only way for that shield to work was for men to pin it to their chests and walk around day and night, enforcing the laws it represented, opening the doors that did not want to open. All the doors.

Harry knocked.

To his surprise, the door opened almost immediately. The man standing before him looked like the victim of a car wreck. His face was battered and swollen. Three fingers on one hand were splinted together with tape, and the fingers of the other hand looked like a dog’s chew toy.

“Detective Don Biehn?” Harry said.

Biehn nodded.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Father Frank Giggs.”

Biehn didn’t panic, nor did he look relieved at being caught. He nodded matter-of-factly and said, “I figured as much. Won’t you come in?”

Driscoll was nonplussed. Procedure told him not

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to, of course. Take control of the suspect; don’t give him any control. But this battered man was no threat of any kind. Even so, Driscoll motioned to the two uniforms behind him, and all three walked into the house together.

Biehn walked them into the living room. He didn’t seem to mind at all when the two uniforms took up positions at right angles to each other—positions that would allow them to draw and fire without risk of hitting each other. Only Driscoll sat down, in a seat opposite Biehn’s.

“Is your wife home, Detective Biehn?” Driscoll asked. Biehn shook his head. “Hospital. Our son is in critical condition.”

“I’m sorry to hear—”

“He tried to kill himself a couple of hours ago. He was tormented by the idea that his priest had been sodomizing him for the last three years.” Biehn delivered the message with a dryness more vicious than any venom. Driscoll steeled himself against sympathy.

“I’m sorry for your trouble,” he said weakly. “But you’re still under arrest. I need you to cooperate with us, Detective. You’re in no condition to resist.”

Biehn smiled. “I want to do more than cooperate. I want to make a deal.”

12:33 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Pope John Paul sat by himself in the first pew of the chapel of St. Monica’s. The chapel would have been empty at that hour in any case, but at his request Giancarlo had positioned Swiss Guards at each entrance.

He had spent the last half hour here in private meditation. He could have remained alone with his thoughts in the rooms Mulrooney had provided him, but truth be told, John Paul did not feel the presence of God in private. He had wished all his life for God to speak to him as he had spoken to Abraham. Instead, the Lord spoke to him through inspiration that he felt here, in the great echoing cathedrals throughout the world.

For twenty minutes he had prayed for guidance in this most delicate matter, but for once the majesty of the cathedral failed him. God’s word did not speak to him out of the echoing corners. He was truly alone with his thoughts.

Mulrooney appeared again, his face taut. As the Holy Father had ordered, Giancarlo allowed him through. Mulrooney hurried forward, discarding all pretense of humility. “Your Holiness, we must act,” he declared.

John Paul looked at him with his pale blue eyes, his gaze far away. Mulrooney nearly grabbed the man and shook him. “There is no more time.”

The Pope’s eyes hardened and focused on the Cardinal. “I’ve been thinking of it, Your Eminence. You are right. We have to do something, if there is still time. I am not happy about it.”

Mulrooney relaxed visibly. “It’s for the sake of the church.”

John Paul nodded. “We have a man who does this sort of thing. In the service of the church. I can have him here in ten hours—”

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Mulrooney interrupted. “I have a man here.”

Now the Pope’s eyes turned hard as sapphires, gleaming suspiciously at Mulrooney. The Cardinal was reminded that they did not send up the white smoke for just an ordinary man. “Your Holiness,” he said appeasingly, “you and I may not agree on some things, but on this we are in accord. These accusations must not become public. Certainly there must be no trial. I have a man who can handle the job.”

John Paul did not trust Mulrooney, but he was right on this count. “Very well, Your Eminence. But I want Giancarlo to meet him.”

Mulrooney stood immediately, executed the briefest of bows, and turned away.

12:40 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jack was just walking through the now-familiar doors of CTU when his phone rang and flashed Driscoll’s number. “Jack, where are you? I need you to meet with someone right away.”

“I’m at CTU. Counter Terrorist Unit headquarters.” “Give me the address. You need to meet this guy.”

12:41 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Mulrooney brushed past the Swiss Guard and out into the hallway. He knew Giancarlo had fallen into step behind him, though he could barely hear the man’s footsteps. It was a few minutes’ walk across the cathedral grounds to his private quarters, where the man he had in mind waited.

“We are on,” Mulrooney said as the man stood up. He indicated Giancarlo. “This is one of the Holy Father’s security men. He wanted to meet you.”

The man extended his hand. “You can call me Michael.”

Mulrooney watched the two men shake hands. They were similar, he thought, though they looked nothing alike. Giancarlo was gangly with thinning hair and a sunken chin. Michael was bronze-colored, with a sleek bald head and a very fit appearance. Yet both of them emitted the same aura.

“Michael has worked for me before,” Mulrooney said. Giancarlo nodded and smiled faintly, but didn’t take his eyes off the man. “He has some expertise in work that has been useful in the past.”

“I caught someone trying to break into the house of another priest,” Michael explained. “I stopped him, but he got away. I am sure he has a list of priests he wants to murder.”

“Did you know he was going after this other priest?” Giancarlo asked. “Do you already have the list?”

“No,” Michael said, glancing at Mulrooney. “I was watching that priest for other reasons.”

“Unrelated,” Mulrooney said.

Giancarlo shrugged. “You’re not from the U.S.,” he said to Michael. “Your accent is very good, but there’s a hint of something.”

“Lebanese Christian,” Michael said. “And I lived in Jerusalem for a while when I first started working

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with the church. But that was a long time ago. I’ve been here for a long time.”

This answer seemed to satisfy Giancarlo. “Please keep me up to date on anything, even the smallest thing. His Holiness will want to know.” Mulrooney promised, and the Swiss Guard took his leave.

“Will they check on you?” Mulrooney asked.

Michael stared at the spot where Giancarlo had stood as though he could still learn something from the invisible air, and said, “Yes. They will find a Michael Shalhoub who was born in Beirut as a Christian and moved to Jerusalem to join the Catholic Church.”

“But that’s not your real name,” the Cardinal inquired.

Now Michael turned his bronze face toward the priest. “No. You don’t want to know my real name, Your Eminence. All you need to know is that, for the moment, our goals are in alignment. I will stop this policeman’s vendetta because it’s a danger to my own plans, at least until tomorrow.”

“How can I be sure you’ll keep your promise after tomorrow?” Mulrooney fretted.

Michael looked at him disdainfully. “I am not interested in your filthy church secrets. Our deal is intact. Help us, and I will remain silent. Betray us, or get in our way, and the pittance this policeman knows will be a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of crimes that we expose.”

Mulrooney stiffened slightly. “Like you said, our paths are in alignment.”

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 A.M. AND 2 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

1:00 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jack watched Harry Driscoll escort another man through the main doors of CTU. The bags under Harry’s eyes looked big enough to pack a lunch. Jack wondered how he looked himself. He wondered if there might be a moment or two to catch some sleep. But he stifled a yawn when he got a clear view of the man Driscoll escorted, walking with his hands cuffed behind his back and the detective’s arm firmly planted on his. He looked like someone had beaten him with a stick. That wasn’t Driscoll’s style, so Jack assumed it had happened prior to his arrest.

“What’s up, Harry?” Jack asked with more energy than he felt.

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“Conference room?” Driscoll replied.

Jack led them to the empty room, and Driscoll sat his prisoner down. Jack closed the door. “What’s the story?”

“Jack, this is Don Biehn. Detective Don Biehn, by the way. I’m arresting him for murder. But he says he’s got—”

“There are terrorists in Los Angeles,” the man, Biehn, reported. “No shit,” Jack said. “We already knew that. That’s why we set up these great offices.”

“I can tell you what one of them looks like,” Biehn said. “I can tell you his real name, and his alias. I can also tell you part of what their plan is.”

Jack’s confusion and annoyance fused into a laser-like focus. “Okay, tell.”

“Two things,” Biehn said. “First, amnesty. I killed a monster tonight, there’s plenty of evidence to convict me, but I want to go free. Second, you let me finish the job I started.”

“Forget it,” Driscoll said. “I told you in the car that was—”

“They’re monsters!” Biehn snapped.

“Then put them behind bars with all the other monsters!” Driscoll shot back.

Biehn looked at Jack. “My son was being molested by priests at our church for years. I never knew it. I even made him go to Sunday school some days. He would cry about it. I figured he was being a baby. I made him go!” Biehn shuddered.

Jack felt sorry for the man, but he knew he couldn’t help. Even he was willing to bend the rules only so far. “I’m not going to release a murderer. I’m sure as hell not going to let him loose to go kill more people.”

“Abdul Rahman Yasin.”

Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. “What?”

“He’s a terrorist, right? I can tell you when he arrived in the city. I can tell you a lot more, but let’s start with that.” Biehn sat back in his chair, smiling out of his haggard, exhausted face.

“How the hell do you know that?” Jack was stunned.

“I’ll tell you that, too. After you let me go.”

“Let’s start with your proof,” Jack said. “When did he arrive?”

Biehn had overheard a conversation between Michael and Yasin just before Michael had begun to torture him. He had heard quite a few interesting details. “I don’t know what airline. But I know that he arrived at LAX four days ago, in the afternoon, I think. And that he’s leaving tomorrow.”

Jack really had no idea how this battered, broken cop with murderous intentions had gathered information on a terrorist suspect, but he knew he had to check it out. “Wait here,” he said.

He walked out of the conference room and through the main room, toward Christopher Henderson’s office. He entered without knocking to find Henderson sitting at his computer, though his eyes were closed. Jack rapped his knuckles on the desk.

“That’s impressive,” he said as Henderson started awake. “I haven’t learned to see through my eyelids yet.”

Henderson shuddered himself further awake. “Long friggin’ day. What’s up?”

“Is that Jamey Farrell around? I need someone to run down some intelligence.”

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“Try bay one. It’s one of the data banks down the hall past the conference room. She has a cot in there.”

“A cot?”

“She’s dedicated.”

Bauer hurried down the hall and into the same technical bay he’d visited with Nina Myers. There was indeed a cot there, and Jamey Farrell was asleep on it. She was a light sleeper and popped up as soon as Jack entered.

“What?” she demanded.

“I need some data analysis,” Jack said. “Did Henderson give you any instructions earlier about downloading feed from LAX for facial recognition?”

Jamey yawned. “Yup. For the last week. That’s a lot of data. If you don’t narrow it down, it’s gonna take—”

“Four days ago. Afternoon. Let’s do 1200 to 2100.”

Jamey hopped out of the cot, grumbling, and went over to the half-finished tech bay. “It’s all here. Let me get to the right area.” She fired up the monitor and punched in some time code. A series of squares appeared within the monitor like a checkerboard, each square representing a camera. In each square was a time code set at 12:00:00. “Starting facial recognition.” Jamey punched in a few more commands, and the video started running at high speed, the travelers hurrying through the frame like Keystone cops. For a brief instant, each face flashed as the facial recognition software captured it. Jack and Jamey watched for a while as the time code ran forward from 12:00 to 13:00, then 13:22, and then suddenly pinged.

“Oh, shit,” Jamey said. She clicked on the warning window that had appeared. A face in the security footage opened up in a new window, and the system summoned another face from its own data banks, an older picture. The older picture had a mustache whereas the security photo did not, and the hair was different, but the features were the same. Under the older photo appeared the name “Abdul Rahman Yasin” and in larger letters under both pictures appeared the word MATCH.

“Right,” Jack said. “Now please get me a list of all flights landing at gates—”

“—coming out of that area and passing that security camera. You want about thirty minutes prior?”

“You’re good,” Jack said. “This CTU might be in good hands after all.”

“Better damned believe it,” she muttered as he walked out.

Jack hurried back to the conference room, but his phone rang on the way. He stopped in the hall when he saw the number flashing on his screen.

“Bauer,” he said quickly. “Thanks for answering the page, Carlos.”

“Sure,” said a throaty, cigarette-induced voice on the line. “No reason I should be sleeping anyway. I mean, why should I still be sleeping when it’s already . . . oh, damn, look at that, I should be sleeping!”

“Can’t be helped,” Jack replied. “I need help only the NSA can give me at the moment. I need a wiretap run immediately.”

When Carlos was truly annoyed, as now, all the sarcasm left his voice. “Wiretap? Call the locals.”

“I need speed,” Jack explained briefly. “My window to gather information is hours, not days. I need it yesterday and I’ll deal with the FISA court.” The Federal Intelligence Services Act had been estab

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lished in the early seventies. It allowed intelligence agencies broader surveillance powers under the supervision of a secret court. One of its primary benefits was the ability to set wiretaps and other invasive forms of surveillance prior to getting a court order.

Jack practically heard the espionage man’s shrug through the phone. “It’s your head, Jack, not mine. Gimme the info. I’m on it.”

Jack passed on Farrigian’s information, then hung up and hurried into the conference room, where Biehn and Driscoll sat in silence. Jack threw a you’re-notgoing-to-believe-this look at Harry. “Abdul Rahman Yasin was identified passing through LAX four days ago, in the afternoon.”

“Told you,” Biehn said. “We have a deal?” Driscoll said, “So what? So cooperate and you’ll get a reduced sentence.” Jack said, “What you know has to be worthwhile, or I’ll scrap any deal we make.”

Driscoll turned on Jack as though he’d just suggested they mug a cripple. “Jack, you’re not serious. No one’s making a deal with him—”

“I might be,” Jack replied firmly.

“He killed someone, Jack. Let the DA talk to him. He can cut a deal for a reduced charge, maybe even manslaughter, but—”

“I don’t have time!” Jack snapped. He knew he didn’t have to snap like that. He was getting tired, too. He steadied his voice. “I still don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’ve got all kinds of circumstantial evidence that it’s going down tomorrow. You’re talking about booking him, interviewing him, getting the DA down to talk to him, paperwork, an attorney . . .” Jack was frustrating himself with the list, so he stopped. “The last time Yasin was in this country, he tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Whatever he’s doing tomorrow, we need to stop it.”

Driscoll was still staring at Jack, aghast. It was as though he was staring at a stranger. “To stop it you’re going to make a deal with a murderer.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to stare at Harry, but his look was pure disdain at his old friend’s naïveté. “You mean am I willing to get information on a known terrorist by releasing a guy who killed a child molester? Yes.”

It occurred to Driscoll that he had never really known Jack Bauer. Or perhaps the CIA had changed the former LAPD SWAT officer. Either way, it was clear that Jack Bauer was willing to leave closed the doors that Driscoll felt obligated to open, and was probably willing to open doors Harry wouldn’t touch. “That’s against the law,” he said quietly.

Jack pretended he hadn’t heard.

1:18 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Nina Myers had tried to go home and sleep. She had told herself there was nothing left to do that night; that Jack Bauer seemed to want to play with the little blond chippie from NTSB; that she would be a better investigator after a good night’s sleep.

But that hadn’t lasted much beyond midnight. As the clock swung around toward one a.m., she was out of bed and pacing her living room, trying to think of angles she hadn’t covered. When the clock struck one she was in her car, and fifteen minutes

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later she was walking into CTU. She saw the log and knew Bauer was there, but he looked busy and she was feeling competitive. He hadn’t responded to the direct approach at all. Maybe he’d warm up to a girl who could keep pace with him.

Despite what she’d said earlier, she thought that the Ali Abdul/Abdul Ali mix-up might actually produce some new data. She hopped on to one of the office’s working terminals—these were in short supply during the day, but this late at night, with most of the analysts gone, she had her pick of stations—and logged into the FAA’s records. Through the FAA, she was able to look at Alaska Airlines’ manifests. That’s when she started to learn something about Abdul Ali. According to the airline, he’d been traveling in Pakistan under the mixed- up name. His flight back to the United States had been canceled. For some reason, he had been eager to get home, so he’d jumped airlines to get back to the United States—a flight up to Moscow and then another one to Juneau, then down to Los Angeles. It had been a crazy and uncomfortable jaunt, but it had gotten him into Los Angeles sooner than any other combination of flights.

“So the first thing I know about you, Mr. Abdul Ali, is that you really, really wanted to get home,” she said to the humming computers.

She knew there was nothing to be learned by his contacts in Los Angeles. All had been dead ends. If he was part of some plot, he’d been chosen well. But Pakistan was a very interesting country for a cipher to visit. Nina switched from the FAA’s logs to her list of intelligence reports—a collection of reports from the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, and NSA. Someday, she hoped, someone would come along and gather all these reports into one official album. It was ridiculously inefficient to have to cull through so many different reports. She did searches on “Pakistan” and “terrorism,” which did almost nothing to narrow the field. Limiting the reports to a window of one week prior to the Alaska flight—which would have been about five weeks prior—helped somewhat, and Nina began skimming the articles.

The list was still long, and Nina couldn’t do much more than spot check the more likely sources. This was ten minutes of boring, frustrating work at that late hour, but it was the kind of work that got the job done. Nina had gotten into fieldwork for the excitement, and there was plenty of that, but every moment in the field was backed up by hours of research. She remembered something Victor had told her: Before you pull the trigger, you must know where to aim the gun.

She was just about to give up when a string of words caught her eye. It was a report on a meeting in Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, close to the tribal regions that bordered Afghanistan. That area was a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, and was an unusual place for an American to visit. The meeting itself was a bit dubious: it had been billed as a Sunni-Shiite détente, which was itself unusual. Not malignant, but unusual. And why would an American with no apparent ties to Islamic fundamentalism be in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the same time as an Islamic conference?

Whoever had done the reporting on the Peshawar conference had been thorough. The report included

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a complete list of registered attendees. Nina felt herself in the groove now, like a bloodhound latching on to the scent, nose to the ground. She knew his name would be there even before her eyes settled on “Abdul Ali.”

Nina could have gotten an analyst to help her, even woken one up if need be, but her own computer skills were nothing to sneeze at. In seconds she had the computer running a match between her list of “persons of interest” in Los Angeles and the guest list from Peshawar. Aside from Abdul Ali, there was one match: Sheik Abdul al-Hassan.

Nina sat back and stared at the name as it burned a mark into her screen and into her brain. This was interesting. Al-Hassan was already on her list. She had questioned him briefly. If he was a terrorist, he was so deep under cover, even he had forgotten who he was. According to a very thorough background check, al-Hassan was an avid promoter of Islamic causes, but an equally avid promoter of peace. The Imam al-Hassan had proven himself to be an outspoken critic of Western intrusion into the Middle East . . . but an even more outspoken critic of Islamists who used violence to achieve their ends. According to the report, the conference had been a small part of a global religious peace effort. Even if Peshawar was an unusual place for the conference, the meeting’s purpose fit with al-Hassan’s file. From what Nina could tell, Ryan Chappelle was more likely to attack the United States than Sheik Abdul al-Hassan. And yet the Imam hadn’t mentioned that trip during his interview. That bothered her. Bothered her enough, in fact, that she was going to go wake Mr. al-Hassan up.

1:31 A.M. PST West Hollywood, California

Jack had no intention of letting Don Biehn kill anyone. He didn’t care at all if Biehn never served a day in prison for killing a child molester, but Jack wasn’t an accomplice to murder. But letting Biehn confront his son’s molester in private, away from the public eye, was a small price to pay for information that might save hundreds of lives.

He was still thinking of Abdul Rahman Yasin as they turned off Sunset into a West Hollywood neighborhood. Yasin, the Blind Sheik, and others had tried to bring down the World Trade Center about seven years earlier. Their plan had been simple: they’d parked a vehicle filled with homemade explosives in the parking structure beneath Tower One. They had hoped to blast loose the support foundations on one side, causing that building to fall into its twin. They had also included cyanide gas, hoping the gas would expand through the ventilation system and cause additional deaths.

The explosion had injured more than one thousand people and killed six. But considering its potential, the plan had been a failure. Tower One’s foundations stood, and the heat from the explosion had burned the cyanide away.

None of this made Jack feel any better. Yasin and whoever he was working with now had had years to learn from their mistakes. It was the grandeur of their schemes that worried him. Had the WTC bombing been even a moderate success, thousands of people would have died. If that was the scale on which they still operated, Jack had to find out what

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they were planning and stop it. And he had only a few hours left in which to do it. Until Carlos and the NSA plucked any information out of Farrigian’s communications, Biehn was Jack’s best lead. He had to follow it, and Harry Driscoll’s righteous indignation be damned.

Father Dortmund’s bungalow was a holdout against the redevelopment of West Hollywood, a one-story cottage holding its ground against the six- and eight-story condominium complexes on either side. It was not unkempt, but it was plain—a square lawn with no flower bed, a small white porch front, and white paint. The porch light was the kind of tolerable but unimaginative light sold at big box hardware stores across the country. Jack had the distinct impression that Father Dortmund wanted his residence to be livable without investing too much time or affection, as though he might need to move at any moment.

Jack parked a few houses down and used a second pair of handcuffs to hobble Biehn’s feet. “I’m not in running condition,” the detective protested.

“Now you’re not,” Jack agreed. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jack got out, moved toward Dortmund’s house, and performed a quick reconnoiter. One car in the detached garage, which sounded right for a priest living alone. A light went on in back when Jack hopped the fence, but it was one of those motion-sensor lights so it meant nothing. Jack checked for the alarm certification that was required by the city for any residence that contained a burglar alarm, and found none. Just to be sure, he checked one or two windows, searching for telltale wires or tabs that indicated an alarm circuit. Nothing. Apparently Father Dortmund trusted his safety to God.

Jack hurried back to his car and uncuffed Biehn’s legs. “I’ll get us in,” he said firmly. “I’ll take control of the situation. You talk to him when I say so.” He didn’t ask if Biehn understood. If there was a problem, he would make Biehn understand.

Jack led Biehn over to the porch and left him there, then walked around to one of the side windows. The bungalow was decently maintained, but it was almost all original. The old-style casement window was easy to jimmy, and Jack slid it open in a few seconds. He hopped up and slid himself through the window into what appeared to be the living room. No alarm had sounded, and there was no noise inside the house. Jack stood and walked carefully and quietly to the door. He unbolted the door with only the faintest of clicks, and opened it. Biehn was standing there, his bruised face ghastly in the porch light. The man looked eager, perhaps manic, and it occurred to Jack that he might be collecting information from a madman. Still, Biehn had known the time and place of Yasin’s arrival. There was bound to be more.

The two men, one cuffed and the other guiding him, entered the house, and Jack closed and relocked the door. Together they moved down the hallway and easily found the one bedroom. Jack’s heart started to pound as a rush of adrenaline hit him. Now was the time for both speed and stealth. He moved forward quickly.

Dortmund was a light sleeper. He was sitting up, drowsy and startled, as Jack reached him and clamped a hand hard over the priest’s mouth, shov

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ing him back down into the pillow. He put a knee across the priest’s sternum, robbing him of breath. Dortmund panicked, thrashing ineffectually under his blankets. Behind Jack, Biehn hopped onto the bed, straddling Dortmund’s legs and pinning them down. Madman or not, he knew how to gain control of a suspect.

“Stop. Listen,” Jack commanded.

Dortmund, realizing he was trapped, went limp.

“Good. Don’t give me any trouble and you won’t get hurt. Don’t change positions. Don’t move at all. Don’t make a sound unless you’re told to. When you speak, speak quietly. Understood?”

He could see Dortmund’s eyes wide and gleaming in the dark bedroom and felt him nod his head. He released his grip over the priest’s jaw and face, but kept his knee on the chest. Dortmund did not say a word.

Jack lifted his knee away and nodded at Biehn, who crawled awkwardly off the priest’s lower half. He stepped back and allowed the detective to step forward. Dortmund was frantic to ask a question, but the authority in Jack’s voice still held him in silence.

“You’re Father Dortmund from St. Monica’s,” Biehn said menacingly.

“Y-yes,” the man said. He was mid-sized, perhaps 160 pounds, Jack guessed, with close-cut brown hair. His face was slightly chubby. There was terror in his eyes.

“You know Aaron Biehn?” the detective asked. He fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His hands twitched inside the cuffs, but Jack could see that they were still on.

Dortmund looked bewildered for a moment, then replied, “Y-yes, I know him. He’s a good kid—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Biehn said, his voice quiet but as intense as a scream.

“Please, what did I—?”

“Don’t ask what you did! Don’t ask. You know. You tortured my son. You molested him!”

Had Jack been present for Frank Giggs’s interrogation, he would have seen that Dortmund’s reaction was entirely different. Giggs had been forced to confront his monstrous self for the first time, and in public, and it had sent a shudder through him. Dortmund’s reaction was fearful, of course, but there was more disappointment and resignation than sudden self-loathing.

“I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about,” the priest said. “I didn’t do anything.”

Biehn’s hands twitched again, and Jack knew that he wanted to strike the priest. He was glad he’d kept the handcuffs on. “You violated my son. My son, you sick son of a bitch.”

“Please,” Dortmund said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jack needed this all to happen much faster. “We already have one confession,” he said. “You might as well confess, too.”

“Confess—?” Dortmund said. “Are you . . . are you the police? I want a lawyer.”

“We are the people who decide what happens to you next,” Jack threatened. “And that depends on what you say next. Did you sexually abuse Aaron Biehn?”

Despite the darkness, he could see Dortmund look from one of them to the other, trying to decide what to do. Jack suspected that the priest saw the madness

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in Biehn’s eyes, and that it scared him, because he finally said in a tiny voice, “Yes.” Biehn said something that was lost behind a choked sob.

“Who else?” Jack demanded. “Who else did this? We know there were others. Tell me now, or I won’t be able to control him.” He pointed at Biehn.

“Giggs. Father Giggs,” Dortmund replied. “And Mulrooney.”

“The Cardinal?” Biehn said.

“Not . . . He didn’t . . . didn’t do it,” Dortmund said. “But he knew why I moved to this diocese. He helped make the arrangements.”

Why I moved to this diocese . . . Jack guessed what that meant. “Are you saying you did this in other places? Is that why you moved here?”

Dortmund nodded. “In my old parish. The church moved me after the parishioners complained. They moved me here. I was supposed to . . . was supposed to control myself.”

Jack’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked the number. Shit. This couldn’t come at a worse moment. “Wait,” he said. He stepped back so that he’d be out of earshot, but kept his eye on Biehn. The man was still twitching, still asking Dortmund a question, but Jack had to answer this.

“Carlos, go,” he said quickly.

“Hey, man,” the NSA operative said. “We got you something. Your boy works late, like me. He made a call a little while ago. Having a meeting at three a.m. at his place with someone. They were definitely talking about plastic explosives. He wants to get hold of more for a new client, he said.”

That’s it, Jack thought. He’s our man. “Who’d he call?”

“That’s a harder one, my friend,” Carlos replied, a little dejected. “Someone with a little sophistication. It was a scrambled line, and sent our tracers all over the damned planet. Could have been right next door for all I know. But we’re on it. He calls that number again, and we’ll get ’em.”

“Thanks, Carlos. This was helpful. I—”

What happened seemed to occur in slow motion. Jack saw Biehn’s hands twitch again, but this time they twitched and came loose. The handcuff stayed on his good hand; the bandaged one came free. Jack was already in motion. He’d already taken one step by the time Biehn’s good hand snatched up the loose ring off the handcuff, turning it into a weapon, and Dortmund’s eyes were growing big as saucers. Jack was finishing his second step and taking his third when the detective punched downward, smashing the sharp edge of the handcuff into Dortmund’s throat.

Life sped up again, and Jack was tackling Biehn across the bed. Biehn turned into a rag doll and Jack rolled him onto the floor, crashing against a dresser. He put Biehn on his face and dragged his hands behind him. He couldn’t see the hands clearly in the darkness, but by the feel of it he could guess what had happened. Biehn’s hand was more damaged than he realized. The fingers had dislocated. Biehn’s twitching had been an effort to dislodge them further. He’d popped his own thumb out of its socket, letting him slip the cuff.

“Damn it!” he cursed. He cuffed Biehn again, this

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time digging the cuff in so tight it drew blood. He couldn’t leave the cuff like that forever or the man would lose his hand. But for the moment he was taking no chances. Jack pulled his second pair of cuffs out again and resecured Biehn’s feet.

He jumped up and vaulted the bed to check on Dortmund. The priest was in the middle of convulsions, gagging and clutching at his throat. Jack reached for the small lamp on the nightstand and turned it on. He pulled Dortmund’s hands away from his throat. A deep bruise was already forming there, and Jack knew what had happened. Biehn had crushed his throat with the blow. Dortmund was choking to death.

“Calm down. Calm down!” he said, slapping Dortmund. The man’s thrashing was not helping. Shit, he had to do something. If he didn’t, he was an accomplice to murder. Jack pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand. It was a gallimaufry. He dug through the odds and ends, shoe polish kits and old watches, until he found a Bic pen. Using his teeth, he tore the top off it and plucked out the ink tube in the middle, until all he had left was a hard plastic straw.

Dortmund was turning blue and clutching at his throat. Urgent, terrified, gurgling noises came out of him, and his eyes were shiny with tears and fear. “I’m trying to fucking help you!” Jack said, shoving him back down on the bed. He stuck the tube between his teeth and pulled a knife out of his pocket. It was a small folder. He snapped it open and held it over Dortmund. He made his voice calm. “Don’t move. This is going to hurt. But it will help you breathe. Understand? Don’t move.”

Dortmund nodded but couldn’t stop from twitching. Jack jumped on top of him, straddling him, his knees pinning the priest’s arms to his sides. With his free hand, Jack grabbed Dortmund’s forehead and pushed it hard into the pillow and mattress. Then, quick as he could, he touched the tip of the knife to the throat below the bruise. He made a quick incision. There was blood, but not much because Jack hadn’t come close to the carotid arteries. Jack put down the knife and snatched the pen tube out of his mouth. Lining it up with the hole he’d just made, he pushed it, driving it steadily through the resistance he felt. A second later, a wet rasping sound emerged from the outer end of the tube. Dortmund’s chest heaved and the wet sound was repeated. After a moment, the priest’s natural color returned. He moved his mouth but could not speak.

“Don’t try,” Jack said. He touched his own throat. “Your throat was crushed. I gave you a kind of tracheotomy.”

Dortmund’s hands probed his throat.

“Don’t touch. It’s a pretty bullshit emergency rig. You need to get to a hospital.”

The priest looked at Jack with something like tearful appreciation. Jack sneered at him. “Don’t thank me. You’re a piece of shit and you probably deserve to die. But I don’t have time to deal with it right now.”

1:49 P.M. PST Culver City

The door opened on Nina’s second loud knock. The man who answered was in his mid-forties, with a well-trimmed dark beard and soft black eyes behind a pair of wire-framed glasses perched crookedly on

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his nose. He was still arranging a robe about his body as he looked at her. “Are you aware of the time?” he said indignantly. “What is this?” “Mr. al-Hassan, Nina Myers again,” she said. “I have more questions for you.” “I’m sorry, who are you? Why are you here so late?”

Nina was annoyed that he didn’t remember her. She held out her Federal identification again. “Federal agent Nina Myers,” she reminded him. “I questioned you once before.”

“Oh!” he said, rubbing his eyes as though just coming awake. “Ms. Myers. I’m sorry, I was asleep.

I . . . may I ask what is going on?” “I’d like to come in.” “Of—of course.” He stepped aside, and she entered. “What hap

pened to your arm?” she asked. His left arm was in a sling.

“I fell,” he replied. “Off a curb on the street. I hit my arm on the curb and broke my arm, if you can believe it.”

“I’m not sure what to believe, Mr. al-Hassan,” she said bluntly. “Why didn’t you tell me about the conference in Peshawar?”

Abdul al-Hassan looked genuinely shocked. “Peshawar? What conference?”

She put her hands on her hips, which brought her right hand that much closer to the gun at her hip. “The one you attended. A month or so ago.”

“In Peshawar,” al-Hassan said, as though piecing together clues. “The Muslim union!” he said at last, his eyes lighting up. Nina swore that he was legitimately pleased with himself for figuring it out. “The reconciliation conference in Peshawar. And I didn’t tell you about it?”

“It’s late to play games,” she said impatiently. “Would you rather I take you into custody and we do this in a less comfortable situation?”

“No, no,” al-Hassan said, recovering his composure. “I’m sorry, Ms . . . Myers. I had simply forgotten. I’d forgotten I hadn’t told you about that conference.”

Nina glared at him. “I specifically asked you if you’d had contact with any Islamic fundamentalists recently and you said no. I believe at that time you might have mentioned a trip to a hotbed of radical Muslim beliefs.”

The imam shook his head gently. “Ms. Myers, the problem is just that our definitions of ‘radical Muslim belief’ are different. The conference was a debate between Sunni and Shiite clerics. An effort to unify the Muslim community. To me, that is hardly a ‘radical’ notion. It would not have occurred to me to connect that meeting with any discussion of terrorism.”

“But Peshawar—

“Yes, I apologize,” he said sincerely. “To you, northern Pakistan must seem like the end of the world.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Nina snapped. Something about al-Hassan seemed different than her memory of him. If she recalled correctly, he had been superficially stern, but ultimately cooperative and concerned for justice. Now he seemed much more deferential on the surface, but harder underneath. “I understand the region pretty damned well. If I were going somewhere to meet with a terrorist organization, Peshawar would be ideal.”

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“And if I were going to confront a schism in my religion,” al-Hassan retorted, “I would choose a place just like Peshawar, in Pakistan, which has seen much violence between Sunni and Shi’a since the 1980s.” He shrugged at her. “Light does its best work in a dark room, Ms. Myers.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nina said simply. “I don’t believe you just forgot. I think you’re hiding something from me. Tell me more about your brother.” She was fishing now, but she wanted to keep him talking, and al-Hassan had proved in the past that he was more than willing to talk about his brother.

Al-Hassan’s eyes flashed. “My brother. Someday, by the will of Allah, he will understand the truth. Until then, his actions are his own. I have not spoken with him in years.”

“Do you think he is still involved with radical fundamentalists?” she asked.

“Most assuredly.”

“And where is he?”

Al-Hassan shook his head. “I have no idea where my brother might be, nor do I care. If I had any such information, I promise I would tell you.”

1:54 A.M. PST Culver City

Marwan al-Hassan listened to the woman ask several more of her questions. He answered them in the voice he had known from childhood, the voice he hated so much. The voice of his ridiculous embarrassment of a brother, that poor excuse of a Muslim who tried so hard to make peace with the nonbelievers.

Despite his disdain, Marwan played his part well. He tucked his filial dislike into a secret place within him. There was plenty there to keep it company, not least of which was fury at being forced to answer questions from a woman. As far as he was concerned, she should be beaten. Instead, he stood there smiling innocently and answering her questions. Patience, he told himself. Patience. The time would come when Allah would give the faithful the opportunity to bring real Islam to this country.

“Are you aware that we could not locate your brother?” the Federal agent asked.

“Excuse me?” he said, genuinely startled. “I didn’t know that.”

“His last known location was Afghanistan, but he could be anywhere. What do you think the chances are of his coming here?”

“Here?” Marwan said, still using his brother’s scholarly tones. “You would know that better than I, Ms. Myers. I don’t know why he would want to come here. I can’t imagine he would be allowed in. And surely you must have some sort of registration, or visa, or—”

“We do keep track,” she said. “I was just wondering. Would he contact you if he came here?”

“His last words to me were filled with hatred and venom,” Marwan said, which was very true. He remembered speaking them. “I doubt he would have anything new to say.”

The Federal agent nodded. She spoke some more words—instructions on how to contact her, an urgent request to reach her if he heard anything out of the ordinary, and then she was gone.

As soon as the door was closed, Marwan al-Has

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san allowed the genial mask to slip from his face, revealing his utter and complete disdain. In his home, she would be beaten for impertinence, and for wearing such revealing clothing, and for so many other efforts to live and move beyond a woman’s legitimate place.

Marwan looked at the clock. It was a matter of hours, now. Only hours left until martyrdom.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

2:00 A.M. PST Culver City

Nina Myers walked down the steps from al-Hassan’s apartment with the nagging feeling of uncertainty, like the feeling of someone who’s just walked away from a sale unsure if she’d been had. The only real purpose of her meeting had been to look him in the eye when she asked him about his trip to Pakistan. She had to admit to herself that he had looked genuinely startled. That genuine reaction, more than any words he might have spoken, suggested that he might be telling the truth.

What bothered her was his overall demeanor. She’d spoken with him only once, but she had a good memory for interviews, especially on an active case,

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and she was sure that al-Hassan had been much more abrupt, even abrasive, with her during their previous meeting. Frankly, she had appreciated his candor. Tonight he had seemed slicker, a little more polished. But she had little to go on—to get any information more thorough than her report on Peshawar would take days. Tracking down the elusive brother in Pakistan or the Middle East would be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.

She shrugged. It was either that or go back to sleep. She headed for CTU.

2:03 A.M. PST West Hollywood

Jack had called Christopher Henderson rather than the regular emergency services, laying a bet that CTU had set up some kind of exfil system or cleanup procedure. His gamble paid off. Ten minutes after his call, paramedics arrived, along with a dark-haired man in slacks and a dress shirt, but the sleepy look of someone who’d just dragged himself out of bed.

“Almeida,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand. “These are our people. We’ll check him in and give a story. Is he going to give us any trouble?” He nodded at Dortmund, who was being stabilized by the paramedics.

“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “He’s a pedophile and there is evidence on him. Tell him to agree with your story or you’ll tell the real one.”

Almeida nodded as though that sort of reply was commonplace. He indicated Biehn, still handcuffed on the floor. “We taking him, too?”

“I’m not sure yet.” He studied Almeida’s dark eyes. “You haven’t even asked what’s going on.”

The other man shrugged. “My job’s to solve the problem, not slow down the solution with questions. Although if you did ask me, I’d say this whole thing looks pretty f’d up.”

Jack walked over and knelt beside Biehn. “What do you think of that?” he said sarcastically. “This guy thinks the situation here is fucked up, just because I let a suspected murderer visit a priest and then you tried to kill him. What do you think?”

Biehn, his words muffled by the carpet, replied, “I can give you another name in the plot.”

Jack sighed. “In return for letting you try to kill someone else? I don’t think so.”

“I promise I won’t try to kill him.”

“Oh, well, if you promise! That’s a whole different story,” Jack said acidly.

“I just want to see Mulrooney’s face. I want to know if he’s guilty.”

Jack grabbed Biehn by the shoulders and sat him up. He held Biehn’s anguished, frantic eyes with his own. “Of course he’s guilty. Everyone’s guilty of something. He’s guilty, but you’re not going to kill him. Deal with that right now.”

Almeida watched them. “You know, I am starting to get a little curious.”

Biehn did not back away from Jack’s stare. “You’ve got a daughter. I know her, she’s friends with my son. What would you do if priests had been raping her for the last four years?”

Jack knew. He’d thought about it already, driving in the car with Biehn. He’d make them all disappear

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quietly and painfully, law be damned. The law was a fine instrument, a useful tool. But it occurred to him that it was a tool that was often too clumsy, like a shovel with too long a handle. There were times when you wanted to cut it short. When did I start thinking that way? he wondered.

To Biehn, he said, “Doesn’t matter what I’d do. The only thing that matters is that I’m not going to let you do it.”

“I can give you a name directly associated with the plot. I don’t know if he’s one of the terrorists or just a shill, but I know that he’s a key component. And I can give you a description of the main guy.”

“How do you know all this?” Jack demanded. “What’s your source?”

Biehn said, “The guy in charge kidnapped me. He tortured me. I overhead a conversation and then I escaped.”

Jack processed this. Biehn was not involved in the terrorist investigation. He was a detective from West Hollywood Division, not Robbery-Homicide. “Were you on a case?”

“I’ll tell you that, too, if you let me look into Mulrooney’s face.”

Jack stood and helped Biehn to his feet. He turned to find Almeida practically in his face. The man was close enough to trigger Jack’s fight response, but he held back. Almeida himself was like ice. “I should probably remind you that none of what you’re doing is procedure. But I get the feeling you don’t really give a shit.”

Jack gave a curt nod. “You’re a good judge of character.” While Almeida saw to the paramedics and Dort

mund, Jack took a deep breath and gathered his arms around the situation. Biehn first, he thought. “Come on.” He uncuffed the detective’s feet and half-dragged him back out to the car. He put him in the front seat and recuffed his legs. “Are you going to—?” Biehn tried to ask, but Jack slammed the door.

He stood outside the car and dialed his cell phone. “Jack, what a surprise,” said Christopher Henderson. “Does everyone at the CIA work this late, or do they regret hiring you, too?”

“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it,” Jack quipped in reply. “Don’t tell me you signed up for a nine-to-five job, anyway.”

“Nine to nine, nine to nine-thirty, but this!”

“You want to gripe, go back to the military. Meantime, you’re the one who wanted me on this thing, so here I am.”

“Does that mean you’re signing on?”

“It means I’m going to figure out why the hell Yasin slipped back into the country, and how a small-time dealer is getting ahold of high-end plastic explosives and passing it around like pot at a party.”

“Does figuring that out include hauling a suspected murderer around the city?”

Jack chewed his lip. Driscoll. Of course Driscoll would have gone over his head. Why wouldn’t he? “Yes,” he said firmly. “I don’t know how it happened, but this guy Biehn has information on Yasin. But in the meantime, I need another lead followed.”

“Shoot,” Henderson said wearily.

“The arms dealer is going to call me any minute. I’m not going to be able to meet with him. I need Diana Christie to go do it.”

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There was a long pause on the far end. “She’s with NTSB, Jack. She’s not undercover. She barely even knows fieldwork—”

“I know, but Farrigian met with the two of us. I can’t go. If he makes the meet now, then there’s no other choice.”

“Let’s just arrest him.”

“For what?”

Henderson snorted. “Says the guy hauling around a murderer!”

“I’m serious, Christopher. Dog Smithies gave us Farrigian’s name, but he hasn’t sold us a damned thing and Smithies is dead. So we haul in a middleman who probably knows next to nothing about the actual plot, and put him in jail for two years for possession of illegal arms? Big deal. No, we are looking for the guys on either end of the deal, either the buyers or the sellers.”

Henderson seemed to consider this for a moment. Jack watched the paramedics roll Father Dortmund out and load him up, then the ambulance drive off, black and silent. Almeida gave him a wave and hopped into an unmarked car.

“Okay,” Henderson said at last. “I’ll see if she’s up for it. Shit, she’s going to be all alone in there, Jack. We don’t have any backup teams yet.”

“She’ll be okay,” he said, willing it to be true. “Now, about Biehn—” He looked toward the car window, where Biehn was staring back at him. “I’m going to take him on one more little trip, then I’ll bring him in. Can you run interference for me?”

“Do you mean can I keep that Driscoll guy away from Chappelle?” “Something like that.”

“Funny thing, I don’t think Driscoll has the heart to go too much higher. He likes you. You guys have history, I take it?”

“When I was with SWAT I saved his ass during a raid that went sideways. I also saved his ass from a cross-dresser, but that’s a different story.”

“Chappelle’s going to hear about it soon enough anyway. Other people know Driscoll brought his prisoner to us. Someone’s going to be calling CTU to find out what’s going on.

“Oh, and Jack. Your friend Driscoll didn’t come to rat you out. He asked me for advice on how to stop you before you got into trouble. Thought you should know that before you see him in person.”

“Much appreciated.” Jack hung up. He pulled open the car door again, stared hard at Biehn, and lied, “I’ve got my bosses threatening to throw me into prison with you. But I won’t have company long because they’ll drag you off to the interrogation room.”

“I’ll go singing,” Biehn said miserably. “After I let my son be molested by—”

“Save it!” Jack snapped. “Fucking crybaby. Your son got molested. Stop making this about you.”

Biehn was dumbstruck by the sudden accusation.

“I’ve got a known terrorist in this city somewhere, a guy who tried to kill thousands of people a few years ago. I need to find him fast. So stop blubbering and help me. Give me one more piece to go on.”

The detective hesitated, clearly reluctant to play the only cards he had left. “I’ll tell you one more name. I have more. But I heard the name Abdul al-Hassan.”

The name meant nothing to Jack, but he commit

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ted it to memory nonetheless. He wanted to be done with Detective Don Biehn, but something was nagging at him. Not a clue, exactly, but an absence of explanation. If Biehn had already started his vendetta (which Jack assumed was true), and that’s when he was grabbed by Yasin, or whoever tortured him, was there some kind of connection? Why would Yasin bother with an LAPD detective? There was an enormous gap in the logical flow of events, and the only way to fill that gap was to follow Biehn down this dark hole into his own personal hell.

“Come on,” he said at last. “We’re going to see Mulrooney. “Then you’re going to tell me everything you know, or I’ll kill you myself.”

2:15 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

“You sure you’re up for this?” Christopher Henderson asked again.

This time Diana Christie glared at him. “Yes. I met him before. He’s not that hard to handle. I go in, I try to buy the plastic explosives. My goal is to figure out where he buys from or who else he sold to.”

“Don’t push it,” Henderson cautioned. “It’ll be enough for us to get the goods. We may be able to trace—”

“—them back to their point of origin. You said that, too,” the NTSB agent interrupted. “Look, I’ll admit. This is new for me. But I can always just play dumb. Jack’s character was the boss.” She twisted her finger in her hair and turned one knee in girlishly. “I’m just his girl Friday.”

Henderson grinned. “Works for me. Good luck.”

He watched her walk out the door, hoping to god that everything went well, and praying for the day CTU was fully staffed and able to send backup.

2:17 A.M. PST Los Angeles

Michael was asleep when the phone rang. He had willed himself to bed. Years of experience had taught him that, although he needed very little sleep, his circadian rhythms demanded rest from around two o’clock to five o’clock in the morning. With those three hours of sleep he could operate at full capacity. If he remained awake during that block of time, he could sleep eight hours on any other cycle and feel exhausted.

“What,” he said grumpily.

“This is Pembrook,” said the voice of one of his men. “There’s been more trouble. The police detective was taken by Federal agents, but he’s disappeared since then. And another of our clerics, Father Dortmund, has just been hospitalized.”

“Was he attacked?”

Pembrook replied, “According to our sources, it was an accident. A dresser fell on him while he was asleep. It nearly crushed his throat. A neighbor found him. But . . .”

“Finish.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence. Dortmund was one of the church’s . . . relocations.”

Michael considered this. Biehn had most certainly killed Father Giggs. He’d been taken into custody by the Federal government, but now suddenly an

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other priest, whom Michael knew to have the same unsavory habits as Giggs, had been injured. “Get a man over to Dortmund. Find out what happened to him.”

He hung up and then sat up in bed. He could feel the Federal government nipping at his heels. Federal agents had captured their extra plastic explosives— thank god he’d left it in the hands of those bumblers on Sweetzer Avenue for just such a reason. Federal agents had nearly gotten their hands on Ramin. Federal agents had spoken with al-Hassan, but the man seemed to have passed with flying colors. Federal agents were tracking the plastic explosives backward, talking to the middleman he had hoped would divert curious eyes. Well, he had shored up that breach as best he could. That was the key, and Michael hoped that Yasin was right about what tactics to use in that battle. According to Yasin, it was foolish to try to hide from Federal investigators. They were relentless, and they had the resources to break down any defenses, once they spotted their objective. They could not be blocked, only redirected. So Michael, following Yasin’s advice, had prepared to redirect them. He would know within the hour.

Ironically, the government’s actual terrorist investigation was leading them only in circles. But this rogue detective was ruining everything.

Damn that detective, Michael thought. Damn his son. Damn those boy-fucking priests who can’t keep their hands to themselves. And damn me for not killing Biehn when I had the chance.

2:22 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Jack had no way of knowing, but he parked in exactly the same spot that Don Biehn had used hours earlier. After freeing Biehn’s feet, he pulled the man out of the car and escorted him down the street. Biehn was looking haggard, almost a walking corpse, except for his eyes, which were bright with an unhealthy glow.

“I meant it,” Jack warned, speaking for the first time since they’d left Dortmund’s. “You give me the slightest bit of trouble, and I’ll shoot you. I’m already in enough trouble over this. Shooting you is not going to make it all that much worse.”

“I’m thinking,” Biehn said in a hollow voice, “that you and I aren’t that much different. I’m throwing everything away for something really important to me. You look like you’re willing to do the same. I’m doing it for Aaron. What’s your story?”

Jack shrugged. “A terrorist kicked my dog when I was a kid.”

“No, really. Why risk your career?”

“Because someone has to care more about saving the world than saving his job.”

“Exactly!” Biehn laughed. “I knew it. You’re the hero of the story.”

“I guess that makes you the villain,” Jack answered.

“Nope, but I bet you’re about to meet him.”

Jack didn’t stand on ceremony. He led Biehn straight through the cathedral and into the grounds beyond. Biehn seemed to know his way around the place, and led Jack past the rectory to the small

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house standing alone at the far corner of the cathedral grounds. Lights were on in the house, and there was a man standing in front. He looked utterly dumbfounded by the appearance of the two men. “We need to see the Cardinal,” Jack said simply. “It’s urgent.”

“I’ll have to—”

But Jack hadn’t stopped walking. He brushed right past the guard and pulled on the door of the house. It was unlocked and opened easily onto a small hallway. Jack, still holding tightly to Biehn’s arm, walked down the hallway and turned left into the first lighted room, to find himself staring at an utterly average man. He had the look of a man of about sixty; his hair was medium brown and only slightly thin on top; he was of average height and medium build. Jack was immediately reminded of one of his daughter’s old “Felt Friends,” ambiguous human figures that could be dressed up in different costumes with different expressions. This man could have been dropped into the suit of a Washington politician, or a sales clerk at Nordstrom’s, or an Iowa farmer’s overalls, and he would have blended perfectly.

The nondescript man looked shocked, but said nothing to the newcomers. He looked past Jack, to the flustered guard who was coming up behind.

“I’m sorry, Your Eminence,” the guard said. “He just walked right past. I didn’t expect—” “Apologize later,” Jack interrupted. “You’re Cardinal Mulrooney?” The man, wearing black slacks and a white shirt, unbuttoned, nodded. “Tell me what this is about.” “It’s about the perverts who abused my son!”

Biehn shouted. Jack should have known he’d find the energy to work himself back into a frenzy. “The ones you knew about!”

Mulrooney was extremely self-disciplined. For a man interrupted at such a late hour, and so accused, he remained impressively calm. Jack saw the Cardinal’s eyes dart from Jack, to Biehn, to the placement of his hands behind his back, noting everything. But he said to both of them, “Are you the two who killed Father Giggs?”

“No,” Jack replied. “I’m—”

Jack felt the change in air pressure more than he heard anything. The men who rushed in through some unseen door were quiet as wraiths. Jack was already dropping to a crouched position as the first pffft! pffft! sounds of bullets leaving silencers spat into the room. As the rounds thudded into the wall behind him, Jack already had his own gun out and put two rounds into the lead man. The report of his SigSauer was loud and alarming in the otherwise quiet room, and seemed to shock everyone into the reality that there was a real gunfight going on. Mulrooney dove for the floor. Biehn dropped heavily to the ground. The flustered guard flung himself backward, terrified of friendly fire.

The newcomers were all dressed in black, nonmilitary attire. As the first man dropped under Jack’s fire, the second stumbled over him. Jack fired again, blasting the enclosed room with noise, but the third attacker had rolled around the corner in the hallway. Jack saw the muzzle of his gun stick itself blindly around the corner. He rolled away, entering fully into Mulrooney’s living room.

Jack glanced at Biehn. He was lying facedown on

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the floor over a widening pool of blood. “Stop!” Jack shouted. “I’m a Federal agent!” Pfft-thunk! Pfft-thunk! Silenced rounds sought him out, finding the floor and walls around him. “Federal—!” but he lost his voice as he rolled to the far corner to avoid a dangerous angle as one of the attackers moved down the hall, “slicing the pie” to cover more of the space with his muzzle.

Jack realized that these gun-happy security men were going to kill him first and ask questions later. He was sure Biehn was already dead. Jack fired several rounds into the hallway, then fired two more into a window behind him. He leaped up and hurled himself through the shattered glass. He hit the ground hard on the other side, making an awkwardly timed roll through some kind of wet ground cover. He couldn’t be sure over the noise he was making, but he thought he heard more silenced rounds discharge behind him. As he stood and bolted for the cover of a nearby tree, he heard a definitive cough, a sound he recognized as the report of a weapon whose silencer has worn out its usefulness. They were still shooting at him. They weren’t protecting the Cardinal. They were trying to kill him.

Jack’s mind transitioned smoothly from the problem-solving, fact-finding mode of an investigator to the hunter-killer instincts that had served him well during his time in Delta Force. He swung around to the other side of the bole of the tree and leveled his weapon. The first man who tried to climb through the window after him fell back. Jack hesitated for only a moment to see if anyone was foolish enough to try that way again. No one appeared. Jack moved backward, dropped to one knee, then rose and retreated farther. He heard sounds in the darkness and knew that he was being hunted.

2:31 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Michael checked to make sure Don Biehn was dead, then checked his fallen operative, also dead, before moving out onto the grounds where his team was hunting the Federal agent. They had only a few moments left—not to let him escape, but to kill him and claim that they did not know who he was. The opportunity had been ripe when the man first entered: an armed intruder, a man wanted for the murder of a priest. Michael had been hoping they would show. He’d put his least experienced man on the Cardinal’s door and pulled back the additional security put in place after Giggs’s murder. He had been hoping to lure Biehn in. The appearance of the Federal agent had been unwelcome but not unexpected.

“Station One, this is Station Four,” someone whispered into his earpiece.

“Station One here. Go,” Michael said softly into his collar mic.

“He’s over the wall,” his man said. “Station Five is down.”

“Roger,” Michael replied. “Maintain a perimeter. I’m going back to the residence.”

Michael hurried back across the lawn. He had to admit he was enjoying himself. He liked this upfront tactical work much more than the idea of assassination, which he found necessary but repugnant. He jogged into the house, where two of his men stood,

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weapons drawn, with Mulrooney crouched down below them. It was hardly a fitting position for a Cardinal of the church, but it kept him safe. Michael motioned for them to be at ease, and they allowed Mulrooney to stand. “Check upstairs,” he said to them, and the two men nodded and left the room.

Michael pulled a ring of keys from his belt and unwrapped a Velcro strip that kept them from jangling. He sorted through them until he found a handcuff key, then used that to free the hands of Biehn’s corpse. Then he pulled a second handgun out of his ankle holster, wiped it down carefully, and then put it in the detective’s cold hand for a moment, moving it around slightly. Then he tossed it forward where it clattered on the floor.

“Easier for us to explain if he came in with a drawn weapon,” Michael said in answer to Mulrooney’s bewildered look. He went on to describe to Mulrooney their version of events: how the insane-looking man had burst into the house brandishing the gun, with the other man right behind him, and how the security team had come in, shooting him down while his accomplice escaped.

“But . . . won’t the other man tell a different story?”

Michael shrugged. ‘Let the investigators sort it out. The more confusion, the better. Besides, this story will be hard to disprove, since this one already killed one priest. And the other man, whoever he is, was helping a suspected murderer. His position will not be very solid.”

2:37 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles

Jack stumbled back to his car, dirty, exhausted, and thoroughly pissed off. He wanted to go back into St. Monica’s with a SWAT team at his back and burn the place down. That security team was a bunch of cowboys who needed to get their asses kicked. But it occurred to Jack that he could not call for backup. He had been the intruder, in the company of a man wanted for murder. He was beginning to realize how far behind the eight ball he’d put himself.

He jumped into his car and drove off, trying to figure out what to do next. His prisoner had been shot and, he was sure, killed. The Cardinal might or might not be able to identify Jack himself, but that hardly mattered. Everyone knew Jack and Biehn had been together. Besides, Jack’s own sense of morality wouldn’t allow him to just walk away from what happened. He had to tell someone.

Jack dialed a number in Langley, Virginia. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Bauer,” he said simply. “Sixteen-twenty-two. Out in the open.”

He heard several clicks as his call was routed through scrambled lines to a caseworker. He’d had to use this line only once before, and that had been in Ankara. He wasn’t sure what would happen when he called from Los Angeles.

“Bauer,” said an unfamiliar voice. “You were in

L.A. Is this now a domestic issue?”

“As domestic as it gets,” Jack said, turning onto the 110 Freeway North. As quickly as he could, Jack relayed the pertinent information. The person on the other end didn’t complain or quote the rule book.

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That wasn’t his job. His only job was extraction, as neatly and cleanly as possible. Not because Jack was important, but because the secrecy and reputation of the Agency were.

“Stand by.” There was a click followed by an emotionless hum that lasted from the Sixth Street on-ramp to the 101 Freeway. The voice came back on. “Stand by. We’re gathering information. It sounds like your problem is being solved for you.” This time the dull hum lasted from the 101/110 juncture all the way to Gower. Finally the caseworker returned. “Problem solved.”

“How—”

“The church is reporting that a madman, probably the same one who killed a priest earlier, broke into the Cardinal’s residence, but was killed by security. They are reporting that a second assailant escaped, but there is no description.”

“I’m working with an agency here, Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack said. “They know I had Biehn in custody.”

Another pause. “We’ll make a call on that. Go to ground and let us take care of that. It’s going to be messy, but we’ll try to make it a quiet mess. There will be follow-up.” Click.

There will be follow-up. That meant trouble, though Jack couldn’t blame them. Although the Agency went to great lengths to protect itself, that didn’t mean its agents got a free pass every time they colored outside the lines.

After a few more minutes of driving, Jack heard his phone ring and he saw Christopher Henderson’s number, but when he answered, it wasn’t Henderson’s voice.

“You are in so fucking deep!” Ryan Chappelle shrieked into the phone. “Do you know the phone call I just got!” Jack held the phone away from his ear until Chappelle had exhausted his rant. In the silence after the mini-storm, he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to reply or not, until Chappelle said, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I assume that you’ve heard about St. Monica’s?” he asked.

“Everybody’s heard about it!” Chappelle snapped. “And I’ve got string pullers at Langley calling in chits, telling me to go easy on you. You know I don’t work for them. I don’t have to do any goddamned favors.”

“Listen, there is something odd,” Jack said. He told the story of his visit, and how he’d tried to identify himself as a Federal agent. “Those guys were determined to kill us no matter who we were.”

He could practically hear the veins in Chappelle’s forehead popping through the telephone. “That’s not my case. Maybe that detective was on to something and they wanted him quiet. We don’t investigate murders here, we stop terrorists.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Jack said. “Biehn had information—”

“And instead of extracting it, you chauffeured him around town. And got him killed.”

“No one except us knows it was me. There’s containment here,” Jack said, trying to control his own temper. He didn’t mind getting chewed out once in a while, but this pencil neck who wasn’t even his commanding officer was starting to get under his skin. “I did what I thought necessary to get the information I needed as soon as possible. There have been no major consequences—”

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“No major—!” Chappelle sputtered. “A priest in the hospital and three dead men!”

“A pedophile and two trigger-happy security men who were trying to kill me,” Jack retorted. “Biehn, they murdered.”

“Get into this office now. I’m going to decide whether you need to be put into custody or not. If you don’t show up here in the next fifteen minutes, I’m putting out a warrant for your arrest.”

2:44 A.M. PST Parker Center, Los Angeles

Harry Driscoll could not work, but he could not go home, either. After leaving CTU, he had returned to his desk at Robbery-Homicide. But the work he had to do was unpleasant: to write a report on his transfer of Don Biehn’s custody to Jack Bauer of the CIA, and to accuse Bauer of endangering the case and, further, currently unaccused citizens, in pursuit of an unrelated investigation.

The office lights at Parker Center were all dark. Only the fluorescent lights in the hallway were awake, casting their pale greenish glow down on the beige, speckled tiles on the floor. When it was quiet like this, you could hear the fluorescent tubes buzzing like bees in a glowing hive. The sound made Driscoll feel even more alone.

He had heard about Biehn’s death a few minutes before. By morning, he’d have his captain breathing down his neck for an explanation. He’d be under water and he would have no choice but to describe how he’d turned custody over to Bauer. What would

Bauer say? What was Jack possibly thinking?

As if to answer his question, Jack Bauer called him.

“Jack,” Harry said sadly.

“You heard?”

“Yeah, one of the responding uniforms called me. It’s a mess over at St. Monica’s.”

Jack defended himself with an explanation of how gun-happy the security men were. No wonder, Driscoll thought, with a murderer on the premises.

“But something was wrong with the Cardinal. And the security team. They were way more interested in killing us than protecting their man.”

‘So?”

“So they succeeded in doing one thing. I never learned the connection between Biehn’s vendetta and the terrorists.”

“Was there one?”

“You heard him talk about Yasin, the terrorist. And someone did all that to him. I need you to help me.”

Without hesitation, Harry said, “I’m not helping you, Jack, except to talk you into settling down before there’s any more trouble.”

“Can you look into Cardinal Mulrooney for me?” Jack asked as though Harry hadn’t spoken. “I want to know his background, who works for him. Any skeletons in his closet.”

“He’s a Cardinal in the Catholic Church,” Driscoll said, as though that concluded the matter.

The tone in his voice alerted Jack. “Harry . . . I never knew you were Catholic.”

“Why would you?” the detective asked. “I don’t need to wear a sign on my back.”

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“No, I guess it’s not my business,” Jack replied simply. He wondered if Driscoll’s faith had affected his view of Biehn. No wonder, at least, that it had been hard for Harry to turn the man over to Jack. “You’re still the only guy I can turn to right now. This group I’m working with, it’s a new unit, and they are stretched thin. I don’t know what the CIA will have on Mulrooney. I need someone local. I just want to know the Cardinal’s background.”

Driscoll pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Damn it. All he’d wanted to do was stay involved in the potential terrorist case the Feds had taken away from his unit. How had that morphed into this debacle?

“If I help you, then you need to help me,” the detective said at last. “I’m just shy of twenty years on, Jack. This thing could kill my career when my captain hears about it in the morning. Shit, forget the Captain, I’ll probably hear from the Chief himself, and you know I don’t want to get the call.”

“What do you want me to do?” Jack offered sincerely.

“I want off the hook on this. I want it clear that I turned custody of Biehn over to you at your insistence, and you made all the decisions from there.”

Jack smiled unhappily. He remembered what he’d said to Biehn: Someone has to care more about saving the world than saving his job. “Don’t worry, Harry. All the heat is headed at me anyway, I guarantee it.”

“Okay. I’ll do it.” “Thanks. Listen, if you need help, there’s someone I want you to call. Name’s Maddie Marianno.”

He recited an unusually long number. “Give her my name.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

2:47 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

The regular police were still milling about the crime scene, and Michael could only give thanks that the Unity Conference would be held elsewhere. He was sure they would cancel the event rather than let civilians trample over any potential evidence. He had already given an immediate interview, and had been told to wait around until more detectives arrived so that he could answer the same questions again. At the moment, though, he was alone, and decided to make a call.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, still using the name Gabriel, answered after two rings. He listened quietly while Michael updated him. “It would all be easier,” Michael said, not for the first time, “if I just did the job myself, quickly. I could probably do it right now.”

And, not for the first time, Yasin replied, “But that is just murder. Assassination, nothing more. The tool we are using is terrorism. It must be a spectacle. It must be public.”

Michael had known the answer before he heard it. He shrugged off the rejection. He had worked for enough men to be accustomed to following orders. Yasin was the man in charge at the moment, and Michael would do as he was told.

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“But,” Yasin said cautiously, “there is no danger of canceling the conference?”

“There is talk of it,” Michael replied, “but I know this Pope, and he will push forward if he can. He doesn’t get sidetracked easily.”

“Good,” Yasin said. “And how are our delivery-men? All in good condition?”

“Yes,” Michael replied.

“Then all this trouble will come to nothing. Well done, Michael. We are going to have a very interesting day.”

2:50 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jack walked into CTU’s headquarters, which seemed almost morguelike at this late hour. Overhead lights had been turned off, except in the conference room, whose doorway appeared like some extra-dimensional portal in the darkness. Jack walked toward it but was met halfway by Ryan Chappelle, wearing khaki pants, a sweatshirt, and a more than usually pinched look.

“You are fucked,” Chappelle said to him.

“Right,” Jack replied, following him into the conference room. Christopher Henderson was there, as was Diana Christie. Her left arm was heavily bandaged from her wrist all the way to her shoulder.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Later,” Chappelle snapped dismissively. “Tell him the important part.” Diana looked chagrined. She was clearly embarrassed to relay her information—not embarrassed

for herself, but for Jack. “I think . . .” she started, then winced a bit as she moved her injured arm. “I think you’re headed in the wrong direction, Jack. Based on my meeting with Farrigian.”

Jack felt a cold weight settle into his stomach. “What do you mean? Did he get you more plastic explosives? Can we trace his other customers?”

“Yes,” Diana said. “But it’s not Islamic terrorists.”

“Or the Catholic church, which you just terrorized,” Chappelle pointed out. Henderson dipped his head.

The weight in Jack’s stomach grew heavier. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Diana Christie began, and no one interrupted her. “I met with Farrigian. He didn’t suspect anything about me. You saw how he was before. We checked out, as far as he was concerned. He told me who the buyers were—they were more people like that Smithies character. Some biker gang coming down from the San Joaquin Valley. He gave me names. As far as I can tell, he has no connection to the plastic explosives found on Sweetzer Avenue.”

Jack tried to process that, but couldn’t. “That’s ridiculous. Two different groups, both suddenly appearing on the scene with plastic explosives? It’s pretty unlikely.” That was obvious to him, and he hoped it was obvious to them, too. Henderson met his gaze just long enough to shrug, but he remained silent. “What’s the point here?”

“The point,” Chappelle said condescendingly, “is that you’re on a wild-goose chase. You and the detective you helped get killed.”

“Not possible,” Jack argued. He listed the evidence for them: the assassination of the informant

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Ramin; Biehn’s knowledge that Yasin was back in Los Angeles, which had been confirmed by security cameras; the three Islamists in possession of plastic explosives. “You’re going to put all that aside based on comments from a small-time arms dealer?”

“Your small-time arms dealer,” Chappelle pointed out. “The one you dug up. If he confirmed your theories, you’d be calling him a vital source of information. Instead”—he pointed at Diana—“the evidence points elsewhere, so suddenly we should ignore him?”

“Just don’t ignore all the rest of it.”

“We’re not, Jack.” Christopher Henderson played good cop, speaking in slow, measured tones. “We’ve already got the three men with the plastic explosives. We think that did a lot more to mess up their plans than you realize. Maybe Yasin got here just in time to find out we’d fucked up his plans. But we’ll get him, if he’s still in town.”

“And Biehn . . . ?” Jack challenged. “Had his own agenda,” Chappelle said, “which you fell for hook, line, and sinker.”

It was possible. Jack hated to admit it, but it was possible. There was one gaping hole, of course—how did Biehn know about Yasin? That was an enormous question mark squatting on any other theory. But put it aside for a moment, and what they were proposing made sense. In that moment, Jack tried to step back and away from his ego. Ego was the enemy of a good investigator, he had decided long ago. Men fell in love with their own theories, and once enamored, held on to them like prize possessions. The very best investigators pursued their theories with determination but not tunnel vision. Jack hadn’t been at this long enough to know if he was one of the very best, but he refused to stumble over his own ego.

Yasin certainly was up to something. But maybe CTU had shattered that plan. Maybe Jack, who had thought himself to be the man exposing the plot no one else had foreseen, was instead just a latecomer to a party that was already over.

“Jack, we’ll get him,” Henderson said, continuing to act the friend. “But according to Diana, that’s not where the urgency lies.”

Jack looked at the injured woman. She nodded. “Farrigian says the buyers were friends of Dog Smithies, who I guess you dealt with. They bought more plastic explosives than what was found on Sweetzer. A lot more. The buyer was a man named Dean.”

“Jamey Farrell ran down his information,” Henderson went on. “Dean runs a biker gang that is an offshoot of the Hell’s Angels. They want the Angels to go back to the old days. Back when they’d take over towns and make themselves the law. One of their gang was arrested last night in Fresno. He said that Dean was on his way down to L.A. He said they were going to ‘Blow some shit up.’ He said everyone would wake up tomorrow morning to a big surprise.”

Chappelle checked his watch. “Which gives us only a few hours to find them and stop them. And, much as I hate myself for saying this, Agent Bauer, you are going to help.”

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

3:00 A.M. PST Santa Clarita, California

His real name was Dean Schrock, but he’d just been Dean for so long that even he had mostly forgotten the last name. He was old enough to feel a long day’s ride in his ass and lower back, but he was still young enough to bully the one-percenters who were part of his gang, and hell of bad enough to terrify the crap out of any cagers he saw on the streets.

Dean was part of a dying breed, and he knew it. Hell, he took pride in it. He’d been a kid during the heyday of Altamont, so he hadn’t been busting heads back then, but he was old enough to remember when whole towns would head for the hills when the Hell’s Angels rode down Main Street. These days most people calling themselves Hell’s Angels were wannabes or squiddies who’d just as soon ride a rice burner as a Harley and pretend to be badass. Sure, there were still a few throwbacks; Dean had heard about a Hell’s Angels club in New York City, and another up in Canada (friggin’ Canada, of all places!) that were hard-core and full of one-percenters, but they were few and far between.

Dean pushed an empty beer bottle off his belly and sat up. They were in a house on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, in the upland valleys north of Los Angeles. He’d forgotten—or, more to the point, he never really cared—whose house it was. Four or five of his boys were sprawled out on couches or chairs or on the floor. A couple of women were there, too— nothing to look at, or he’d have taken them into one of the bedrooms and had them himself. A few more of his boys were crashed in the bedrooms or the hallways, sleeping off the ride down from Bakersfield and the six-packs they’d swallowed since then.

All Dean’s boys were one-percenters—that is, part of the “one percent” of bikers that were outlaws, rather than the ninety-nine percent that the Hell’s Angels claimed were law-abiding citizens—and in just a few hours they were going to prove that even if only one percent of the biker population were outlaws, it was one hell of a one percent.

Bleary-eyed, he checked his watch. Little bit of time left. That puke Dog Smithies was supposed to show up before sunrise. Dean was looking forward to meeting him face to face, see what that bullshitter was really like. But right now he could close his eyes a little bit and dream of the big explosion.

178

3:06 A.M. PST Parker Center, Los Angeles

As far as LAPD was concerned, Cardinal Mulrooney was a candidate for beatification. They maintained a small dossier on him, but the contents might as well have been provided by the Catholic Church’s public relations department. The report discussed Mulrooney’s upbringing in a poor Irish neighborhood of Chicago, his travel to Los Angeles as a teenager in the fifties, where he slept on the floor of the Catholic mission and then volunteered for their soup kitchen. Soon after, he had promised himself he would become ordained, and Allen James Mulrooney had been a servant of the Catholic Church ever since. There was, to Harry’s utter relief, not even a whisper in the dossier of child abuse or hushed-up scandals.