CHAPTER 21
HORNET’S NEST
Outside the Hoover Building, the capital city’s streets were filling up with rush-hour traffic. Even in the present crisis, the hundreds of thousands of workers employed by the various government agencies, businesses, and law firms seemed to be determined to carry on as much of their daily routine as possible. For all the outward show of normalcy, however, the unpredictable, ever more frequent, and apparently unstoppable terrorist attacks were striking nerves already worn raw.
False alarms were triggered more and more often, with less and less provocation. Whole buildings emptied into the streets at the sight of a package without a return address. Phoned-in threats prompted widespread closures of the Metro or the region’s major highways. Entire neighborhoods, from wealthy, trendy Georgetown to the hopelessly poor northeast sections of the city, barricaded themselves in by day and by night, desperately hoping they could seal themselves off from the terrorist contagion. The drab, olivegreen Army Humvees arid Bradley armored fighting vehicles posted to cover the capital’s major intersections and traffic circles only increased the sense of crisis.
London had been bombed flat during the Blitz and periodically targeted by the IRA, but Washington, D.C., had existed in relative peace for many years. Not since the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s assassination had racial tensions been so high. And not since Jubal Early’s tattered Rebels fell back toward the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 had so many in the American capital felt the oppressive dread of knowing that a deadly enemy lurked close at hand.
Around-the-clock television coverage fed the public’s barely controlled panic. The first pictures of each new terrorist outrage were played over and over again on every news channel, magnifying their scope and impact. In the fiercely competitive war for exclusives, every wild rumor found a reporter to repeat it, deny it, and then repeat it afresh often the same reporter and often within the same hour.
Even the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not immune to the general paranoia gathering force across the country. The security detachments manning its entrances had been reinforced by U.S. Army Rangers. Razorwire entanglements surrounded the building, keeping pedestrians, the press, and potential terrorists at a distance.
Deeply worried by the signs of widespread, almost crippling fear he saw all around him, Peter Thorn followed Helen Gray into the conference room adjoining Special Agent Mike Flynn’s office.
His Metro ride over from the Pentagon had been instructive. Uniformed D.C. policemen were posted on every train coming into Washington. They were backed by heavily armed SWAT contingents conspicuously stationed at every subway stop. Passengers embarking and disembarking were subject to identity checks and random searches. While the heavy security presence provided some deterrence against terrorist attack, it also reinforced the overwhelming feeling of entering a city under siege.
Thorn frowned. The nation’s capital seemed to be nearing a breaking point. They were running out of time.
There were only two men waiting for them inside Mike Flynn and his deputy, Tommy Koenig. Both looked exhausted. That was understandable. They had worked straight through the night trying to follow the lead he and Rossini had given them.
“Thanks for coming, Pete. I’m glad you could make it,” the head of the FBI task force said quietly. “You have any trouble getting through our watchdogs?”
Thorn shook his head, inwardly noting with some amusement the other man’s decision to use his first name. Evidently, he’d been promoted from nosy, Pentagon pain in the ass to helpful, fellow investigator overnight. Interesting. Well, better late than never. He took the chair next to Helen and set his uniform cap aside.
“What’s the skinny, Mike?” she asked.
“We’ve got a preliminary read on the CompuNet address,” Flynn answered. “Andy Quinlan’s team checked in an hour ago.”
Helen leaned forward, her eagerness apparent. “And?”
“I think we have a target.”
Thorn felt himself relax slightly. More than anything, more than he had wanted to admit to himself, he had feared that he and Rossini were only stumbling down the wrong path and dragging everyone else along with them. But they had been right. Their instincts were on target.
Helen, though, appeared unsatisfied. “You think? Or you know?” she pressed.
Flynn shrugged. “Let’s say the evidence Quinlan and his people have assembled is mighty suggestive, but it’s not conclusive.” He glanced at his deputy. “Tommy can take you through it piece by piece. He rode herd on the investigative team every step of the way.”
Koenig nodded. “Mike made it clear that we didn’t want to spook these people prematurely whoever they are. So Quinlan’s been working around the edges for the last twenty four hours.”
He flipped open a file. “Basically, what we’ve got is this: The phone number CompuNet gave us belongs to a house in Arlington just off the Columbia Pike. The place was rented nine weeks ago by a blond-haired man with a slight, but discernible, European accent. He told the Realtor his name was Bernard Nielsen and that he worked for a Danish import-export firm a company called Jutland Trading, Limited. Apparently, this guy Nielsen told her his bosses wanted him to explore business opportunities in the U.S. and that he needed a home base to come back to between trips. He signed a six-month lease and paid his security deposit in traveler’s checks. Since then, he’s paid one time by mail using personal checks drawn on a local bank.”
“Not from his business or from a Danish bank?” Thorn asked.
“Nope. Curious, isn’t it?” Koenig looked up from the file. “One of our guys took a little walk through Nielsen’s account records. There’s been a steady movement of cash money in and out but the balance has always been over five thousand dollars and always under ten thousand.”
Thorn heard the shorter FBI agent’s emphasis on those figures and nodded slowly. Again, that made sense. Five thousand dollars in a checking account made bank managers smile at you and generally kept them from asking too many inconvenient questions. On the other hand, ten thousand in cash triggered an automatic report to the IRS. It certainly looked like this Bernard Nielsen liked cruising in a comfortable financial zone that guaranteed him both flexibility and relative anonymity.
Helen frowned. “Does this Jutland Trading company even exist?”
Koenig shrugged. “We’re still working with the Danish authorities on that. The phone number our blond friend gave the Realtor only connects to an answering service. The Danes are trying to follow the trail further, but it’ll take some time to generate results.” He smiled grimly. “I can tell you this. I spent the morning breathing down some necks in the Commerce Department. And Commerce sure as heck doesn’t have any record of a Jutland Trading company registered to do business here in the States.”
“What a surprise,” Thorn said flatly.
Flynn nodded. “After I heard that, I gave Quinlan the go ahead to dig deeper near the house itself.”
Thorn looked at Koenig. “And what did they find?”
The shorter man’s grim smile faded. “That’s the inconclusive part,” he admitted. “It’s a transient neighborhood. Lots of rentals. Lots of people moving in and out on temporary assignments with the Pentagon or other government agencies. Lots of people who go to work early, come home late, and go right to sleep. Nobody really knows much about any of their neighbors.”
“Nobody’s noticed anything?” Helen asked, surprised. “Nothing odd at all?”
Koenig spread his hands. “We did find one reared couple who said they’d seen several suspicious men coming and going from the house at odd hours…” His voice trailed off.
“But?” she prompted.
“But this Mr. and Mrs. Abbot are both a little blind and hard of hearing. Plus, we checked with the Arlington police. They say the Abbots average reporting one prowler, rapist, or drug dealer a week. The cops don’t usually bother investigating their calls anymore.”
Thorn grimaced. Perfect. If this rented house in Arlington was a terrorist safe house, whoever had picked it had done a brilliant job. He turned to Flynn. “So what’s the next step? Surveillance?”
