Counterplay

Chechen nationalists who want to establish an independent state…full of patriotic anti-Russian rhetoric, but really just a collection of thugs, gangsters, and Islamic extremists. The Russians think he was behind several bombings last year in Moscow that killed a lot of civilians. He may also have been involved in the Nord-Ost musical theater takeover in Moscow, 129 people killed, as well as the school massacre in Beslan last September. They killed 341 people in that one, 172 of them children. Obviously, the world’s a better place without him. The Russian ambassador will be appearing at the White House tomorrow with the president to use this attack to blast Chechen terrorists as a worldwide threat and renew his country’s commitment to the ‘War on Terrorism,’ whatever that means.”

“What have these guys got to do with Kane?” Karp asked.

“Good question. But as you know,” Ellis pointed out, “we suspect that one of Kane’s ‘extracurricular’ businesses, while maintaining the public persona, was arms dealing-much of it supplying terrorist organizations and various insurgencies with everything from rifles to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Your guy, Newbury… who, by the way, is very, very good, we’d like to steal him away-”

“He’s spoken for,” Karp said with an equally false smile while thinking, This guy certainly likes to work the crowd.

“Ah, the jealous boyfriend.” Ellis laughed. “But I’ll leave it for the moment. Anyway, your guy Newbury has also uncovered some paper trails indicating Kane was sort of a one-stop supermarket for terrorists…weapons, maybe even working on acquiring WMD…and banking. He apparently had connections and accounts at a number of U.S. and offshore banks and was transferring, laundering, and funneling large amounts of cash from a variety of sources including, get this, the Little Sisters of Islam Home for War Orphans…. Hey, who says these guys have no sense of humor?”

“With Newbury’s help, we’ve frozen a lot of Kane’s assets,” Jaxon added. “I doubt we have them all, but it had to hurt.”

“There are other arms dealers and crooked bankers,” Karp said. “Why go through all the trouble-including murdering kids, which they knew was going to bring the heat in spades-for this one guy?”

Ellis shrugged. “What can I say? He’s got something they want. We do know that they sent one of their top field operatives to get him.”

“Don’t tell me,” Fulton said. “The girl.”

Ellis snorted in disgust. “Some girl. She goes by Samira Azzam, though we don’t think that’s her real name. More of a political statement-the ‘real’ Samira Azzam was a Palestinian poet who was vehemently anti-Israeli way back when it all started in the forties.”

“What happened to her?” Fulton asked.

“She died of a heart attack during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War when she heard that the Jews had captured Jerusalem. The current Samira Azzam is made of sterner stuff…. She does appear to be Palestinian, although there are no known photographs of her. She first surfaced as a militant with Hamas, but switched allegiances to al Qaeda in the late nineties. She’s a born killer, ruthless, pitiless…as you saw with the children. In fact, while we suspect Kadyrov of being involved with the Beslan school massacre, we know Azzam was from reports by survivors and the one terrorist who was captured alive. She apparently supervised the setting of explosives in the gymnasium where most of the victims died, as well as the execution of twenty teachers early on in the siege to let the Russians know she was serious. How she got out of there when everyone else died is the million-dollar question.”

“But she’s Palestinian,” Fulton noted. “These Chechens are Russian, right?”

It was Karp who shook his head and answered. “Ethnically different from Russians. More Asian than Slav, and mostly Muslim. They also speak their own language but will use Russian as a common language.” When the others looked at him with raised eyebrows, he added, “My people are from the Galicia area of Poland. I know a little about the region that’s down south in the Caucasus Mountains.”

“Exactly,” Ellis said. “But the question’s still valid. What’s a Palestinian terrorist, an Arab, doing mounting attacks in Russia, working with Chechen nationalists and local Islamic hard-liners? The unfortunate answer is that these groups are networking far more than ever before, merging into one big happy homicidal family. The bigger question is, what is Samira Azzam doing in the United States helping Kane escape?”

“So do you know the answer?” Karp asked when the agent hesitated.

Ellis looked at him as if trying to decide whether he could be trusted. Karp got the feeling that Ellis was putting on an act, attempting to indicate that they were “in this together.” Karp had used this same technique plenty of times himself to lull recalcitrant witnesses and defendants into admitting more than they wanted.

Ellis looked at Jaxon, who nodded. “We’re not sure, but we do know that the Chechen nationalists feel that the United States has joined the Russian government in siding against them. They’re also Muslim, an alliance with al Qaeda seems likely. So our best bet is something that will strike a blow at both countries…or maybe cause a rift between them.”

“Any idea what that might be?”

“Nothing for sure, yet.”

“What about the Pope’s visit?” Fulton asked. It had just been announced that the pontiff would be coming to Manhattan in September for the installment of the new archbishop of New York.

“We’ve considered it,” Jaxon said, “but there are a couple of problems with the theory. One is that security around the Pope is almost heavier than the president of the United States. He’s surrounded by his own security people, and the church keeps everything very close to the vest. The ceremony’s going to be at St. Patrick’s, invitation only inside, and the crowds will be searched and scanned and, along with unauthorized vehicles, be kept at a safe distance. It’d be a tough nut for anyone to crack.”

“The bigger problem with the theory,” Ellis interrupted, “is that Kane escaped before the Vatican announced the visit. Since the escape was obviously planned for months, and these things take time and money to implement, it’s pretty obvious that Kane and the terrorists have something else in mind. We’re getting a lot of conflicting information and rumors, but with Kane, the problem is knowing who to trust, even the cops.”

Fulton stiffened at the implied criticism, which Jaxon noted. “Sorry, Clay,” the FBI agent said, taking over for Ellis. “We all know that ninety-eight percent of the department is clean. But between Newbury’s Gang and what help we’ve been able to lend, we’ve uncovered a pretty extensive network of cops with ties to Kane. As you know, the DAO has been bringing charges against those we can prove committed crimes. But it would be a mistake to believe that we’ve found them all…any more than we should assume that there are no more traitors within my agency.”

Karp silently congratulated Jaxon for taking some of the sting out of Ellis’s comment by accepting that they all had better look within before blaming other agencies. He knew that Jaxon had taken the defection of Agent Grover personally. They’d gone through the academy at Quantico together, Class of ’76, and he’d considered him as trustworthy as they came, which was how Grover got the nod when he volunteered to be part of the escort detail.

Jaxon had told Karp about the conversation when Grover asked for the job. Maybe I can get him to chat a bit. He’d probably prefer to spend his time in a federal pen than Attica. So there’s a chance he’ll want to make a deal.

Ellis walked over to the window and looked out, peering both ways as if on the lookout for suspicious cars on the streets outside. “We do have a couple of assets going in,” he said. “The first is that we have a man on the inside. He’s the one who identified Azzam. He’s still trying to work out an introduction to Kane.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Karp said.

Ellis smiled. “It is. But this guy’s good. The…um, people, he worked for before signing on with Homeland Security planted him with an antigovernment white supremacist group years ago, mostly to feed us information on their plans. We kept him there but were careful not to overuse him or act on everything he told us. We occasionally even took a pretty good hit in order not to blow his cover. Then just before this little debacle with Kane, he learned that Azzam was in the country looking to buy plastic explosives and automatic weapons.”

“From white supremacists?” Fulton asked, his forehead furrowed like a freshly plowed field. “Now I’m really getting confused.”

“Lots of people are,” Ellis said. “But there’s an old Arab proverb, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ These Islamic terrorists have one thing in common with our homegrown antigovernment types, like the late Mr. Timothy McVeigh. They all hate the United States enough to put aside their differences long enough to bring us