“Excuse me?”
“William Binns,” Nina repeated.
“I’m not in the mood for games, Nina. That name means nothing to me.”
“Well, it should. It’s an alias for Frank Newhouse. It’s an alias he’s managed to keep off his record, even from the CIA and Justice. As far as anyone is concerned, William Binns is a nobody. He likes art and doesn’t like excitement. Even his girlfriend thought so
until he tried to kill her.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. It looks like killing his girl was the first bad job he’s done. He must have been in a hurry. He did take the time to smash her face in and send her car over a cliff but she’s a tough cookie for an artist type—”
“Nina!” Jack interrupted. He was too exhausted for her smartass comments. “I need more information. There’s no time for a long explanation, but I think this guy is going to try to set off an EMP device here, in Los Angeles, when the President’s plane flies over. That’s a little after one in the morning.”
“The girlfriend doesn’t know anything about that, and she’s in bad shape. Maybe we can get her healed for a bit and then—”
“To get range for the EMP, he has to get to somewhere up high. Do we have any records on him having a pilot’s license, records of owning an airplane—”
“Oh, I’ve got one thing,” Nina said. “William Binns leases an office on the top floor of the Twin Towers in Century City.”
21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Jack slammed the phone down and relayed the information to Kelly Sharpton as quickly as he could.
“You’ve got a problem,” Kelly said. “There’s no way Chappelle will authorize a strike team for you.”
“Yeah,” Bauer growled. “Why should tonight be any different than last night? I’m going to Century City. You sweat Farid.”
“I bet I know what he’s going to say,” Kelly said, tearing the bandages off his hands.
“Yeah, but I need to be sure.” He took a deep breath. It had been a long day and he’d already turned the world upside down once making the wrong call.
He didn’t want to do it twice. “What’s his game? Frank Newhouse is supposed to be undercover working for Justice to infiltrate the Greater Nation. Then we hear a story that he’s got Iranian contacts and he’s helping terrorists get into the country. Then we hear that the terrorists have been killed and that Frank Newhouse has an alias called William Binns. Who is this guy really working for? What does he really want?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kelly said.
Jack nodded. “I’ll go ask him right now. Call me if you get anything from Farid.”
Kelly Sharpton walked into the holding cell with a smile on his face. Farid shifted around in his chair like a cat stuck in a small box, his narrow face twitching and his eyes glancing from Kelly to the observation mirror and back to Kelly.
“It’s about time someone talked to me,” Farid complained.
“We’ve had a busy day,” Kelly said with the air of someone with a burden on his shoulders. “And, let’s face it, you’re just not that important.”
Farid’s left eye twitched. “That’s right, I’m not important, so I don’t know anything, so let me go.”
Kelly spun his chair around so the back was facing Farid. He straddled the chair and crossed his arms over the back, then rested his chin on his forearms. “I didn’t say you didn’t know anything. I do think you know things. Let’s start with what you told Jack. ”
For the next few minutes, Kelly made Farid repeat the information he’d relayed to Bauer: Farid was a finder who helped get jobs for immigrants, especially illegal ones. A man had called him and told him there were eight Iranian men who wanted into the country and who needed work. This man had put Farid in contact with the coyote who was bringing the men over. Farid got them hired by Babak Farrah, but Farrah got angry when the men didn’t show up to do any work for him. He blamed Farid and came after him.
“That’s all I know,” Farid ended. “Next thing, Farrah tries to kill me, and that blond guy comes in shooting everybody, which I appreciate, by the way, and now I’m locked in here.”
Kelly smiled, but shook his head. “No, that’s not all you know, Farid. For example, I’ll bet you know a little about Farrah. Tell me about him from when he lived in Iran.”
“Iran? What’s there to tell? Farrah was a little nobody, like all of us. Biggest thing about him was that he didn’t like to be religious, and he kept getting noticed by the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice, so he came to America. You can make a good living from vice here.”
“What about his work for Iranian intelligence?”
Kelly watched Farid’s reaction carefully. The reaction would tell him far more than the words. Farid’s face was blank for a moment, then it looked confused. In that instant, Kelly learned what he needed to know. If Farid had been pretending, he would have made some kind of reaction — surprised, confused, annoyed, anything — immediately. But his first reaction had been incomprehension — not confusion, but a complete failure to understand Kelly’s meaning. After that, the words were almost anticlimactic. “Farrah was never in the intelligence service. He was a little sergeant or something. He got out of the army as soon as he could.”
“Why did Farrah want to kill you?” Kelly asked.
“I told you, he was mad because I took his money for the eight workers, but they didn’t do any work for him. He was mad because they stole some guns and some money, he said, and he wanted to blame me.”
Kelly said nothing. Farid had nothing to give him here. That was the story Farrah had told him, and that’s all Farid knew. But Kelly had a theory of his own. From Jack’s story, he knew that Farrah had even tried, at the end, to take a dancer as hostage and trade her for Farid. Farrah had been determined to kill Farid at great risk to himself. That didn’t jibe with Farrah’s reputation as a cold and calculating businessman. Kelly’s theory was that someone had wanted Farid dead and told Farrah to do it.
“Tell me about this phone call you received, the one that told you about the eight men in the first place.”
Farid shrugged, brushing the question off as unimportant. “I don’t know, it was just a guy. I figured he had his reason for calling me, but whatever they were, I didn’t care. He had eight guys I could get into the country, and that was good enough for me.”
“Name?” Kelly asked.
Farid just laughed.
“His accent. He was Iranian?”
“Not Iranian. American. At least, that’s how he sounded over the phone.”
“Tell me about the coyote,” Kelly demanded.
Farid held up his hands. “Fuck, no. That guy works with MS-13. You know that gang? I want nothing to do with them.”
Kelly couldn’t blame Farid. MS-13 was the most violent street gang in the country. People who crossed them ended up chopped into little pieces and spread around several states. Lucky for Farid, they already knew who the coyote was, and they already had him.
Kelly stood up and walked out of the holding cell without saying a word. He closed the door on Farid as the man yelled after him. Kelly ran down to Jessi Bandison’s station. “Get Tony on the line. Get him to send over a picture of one or two of the bodies. I want faces.” She nodded without speaking — there was still tension between them — and he walked down to the next holding room.
They’d sent CTU agents out to get Julio Juarez several hours ago. He’d been arrested without incident— but only because LAPD had gone into his neighborhood in platoon strength — and first brought to Rampart Division. But he’d been quickly transferred over to CTU. Originally, they’d been planning nothing more than a cursory interview,
