east of the Federal Building — to Veteran, following the furtive movements of Smith. They were both moving against the current, which several times threatened to carry Mercy backward.
“Don’t go that way!” a well-meaning protestor said, wrapping one arm around Mercy’s shoulder. “They’ve got horses! They’re clubbing people!”
Mercy shoved him off. “I’m a cop!”
“Then fuck you!” he yelled, and was carried off by the stream of bodies.
Her twenty minutes of working against the crowd had paid off. She was exhausted, but as she reached the western edge of the riot she saw Smith again. He was cagey, sometimes sprinting ahead, sometimes slowing down to the pace of the crowd, often changing directions. But though he was sneaky, Mercy was tenacious. She had him in her sights, and she simply refused to lose him.
Mercy’s eyes stung from the tear gas. Though she hadn’t been in proximity to any shells, there was enough of the stuff in the air now that everyone was feeling some effects— runny noses, teary eyes, labored breathing. She wished that was all that was slowing her down. She’d done more running in the last hour than she had in the last year. She swore that if she got through this case, she’d get back on the treadmill.
Though she couldn’t see well, she knew she was near the veterans’ cemetery because she could see the alabaster statue. Smith had just passed it. Mercy hurried that way as well, when she saw several uniforms hauling protestors into a paddy wagon.
Jack Bauer sputtered and coughed, spitting mucus out of his mouth, trying to gather enough air in his lungs to speak. The goddamned cops had blasted him with enough oleoresin capsicum, or OC spray, to drop an entire cell block. He was blind and he could feel snot running down his nose. His mouth frothed. His hands were secured with flex cuffs behind his back, and angry hands were hauling him to his feet.
“I’m a…” He coughed. “I’m a Fed—”
“Shut up and move!” a cop yelled, softening him with a punch to the stomach.
Mercy saw two cops half dragging one protestor toward the black police wagon. One of the officers punched the protestor in the stomach and he doubled over, his wispy blond hair quivering atop his head.
She took one step toward the officers, but hesitated. She would lose Smith. She would lose him, and the Monkey Wrench Gang would fade away, and she had no idea if she had disrupted their plans or not. Jack would have to take care of himself. Eventually the cops would figure out that he was a Federal agent and release him. She had lives to save and a terrorist to capture.
Smith looked back to see if he was still being followed. His eyes, too, had been attracted to the cops on the corner. He saw the police officer punch his captive, and his eyes flew wide.
In that moment Smith felt all the energy sucked out of his plans like the sap draining from a tree. Mercy Bennet had broken open the vials of his virus. Jack Bauer had evaded his tracking device. This was more than he had bargained for. He’d gone up against the full forces of the Federal government for the first time and found himself lacking. But he still had his anonymity. The riot had given him the cover he needed, and Mercy Bennet had not yet been able to call in support. If he could get away from her with his anonymity intact, he would have time to regroup and leave the country. He could go back to the Amazon, where he felt most at home, and fade into the forest for as long as the forest still stood.
He ran.
Jessi presented her findings to a room full of people that included Chris Henderson, Nina Myers, Jamey Farrell, District Director George Mason, and even Regional Division Director Ryan Chappelle. Both had been called in from other appointments as the protests at the Federal Building heated up.
“The entire investigation began with a lead from Jack Bauer,” Jessi began. Immediately Ryan Chappelle shifted in his seat. The Regional Division Director had no patience for a man he considered a troublemaker. “Agent Bauer was certain he spotted the known terrorist Ayman al-Libbi slipping past border security aboard a flotilla of ships sailing up from Central America to protest the G8 summit.
“These suspicions were strengthened when Bauer was kidnapped briefly, then released, by subjects unknown but assumed to be al-Libbi. We began to search for connections between al-Libbi and the G8.”
“Al-Libbi’s a gun for hire these days,” Chappelle said in a high voice that, along with his narrow face, contributed to his reputation as a weasel. He did, however, do his homework.
“Yes, sir,” Jessi said. “Since China is at the top of the G8 agenda, we searched for groups with motivations in that area. A random search for anomalies uncovered a transfer of two million dollars to an account associated with the East Turkistan Independence Movement, or ETIM. Two million dollars is a huge sum of money for a movement that small. The money was then immediately withdrawn from that account, destination unknown. We traced backwards. The transfer came from a Cayman Islands account associated with one Marcus Lee, a Chinese national.”
“Would a Chinese-born person want to help a separatist group?” Mason asked.
“We almost hit a dead end there,” Jessi continued. “But I discovered that our information on Marcus Lee and the Cayman Islands account had actually come from a data exchange with the Russian SVR. I had a contact there, and through them I learned that Marcus Lee has an alias that the Chinese withheld from us. In fact, Marcus Lee is pretty much an invented person. Marcus Lee’s real name is Nurmamet Tuman. He was born in Urumchi, in what the Chinese refer to as the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.”
“East Turkistan,” Chappelle murmured. “So the money trail leads from this Nurmamet whatever to ETIM and then possibly to al-Libbi. To do what? Do we have ID on al-Libbi except for Bauer seeing someone who looks like him in a crowd?”
Henderson hid a grimace. That was Chappelle summed up in two sentences: a mind sharp enough to put the details together in a snap, and a tongue sharp enough to insult everyone who’d done the work before him.
“Nurmamet
“I plan to bring him in,” Chris said. He looked to George Mason for approval, and Mason nodded.
“You said one of our leads,” Chappelle noted. “What’s the other?”
Jessi continued. “Earlier in the day surveillance spotted someone who looked very much like Muhammad Abbas, alLibbi’s aide-de-camp, meeting with an unknown subject. A short time ago, Bauer, who is still at the Federal Building, spotted the same man.”
Jessi looked to Jamey Farrell, who took over the narrative. “Bauer sent us a photo of the man, which we ran through computer enhancement and facial recognition. We have a nearly one hundred percent match for a man named Kasim Turkel, another Chinese national. His record was a little more transparent than Tuman’s. No criminal record we could find, but he’s from Urumchi as well.”
Henderson summed things up. “Turkel meets Abbas. Abbas means al-Libbi is around somewhere. Money goes from Nurmamet Tuman to ETIM, and then disappears. We’re guessing it went to al-Libbi as payment for whatever he’s planning. He’s in L.A. now, so it’s got to be the G8.”
“What’s on the agenda?” Mason asked. “Likely targets?”
Chris replied, “That’s our next problem. Each is as likely as the next. Security is tight everywhere. Hitting a target this hard isn’t al-Libbi’s usual style.”
“There was the Russia-Israel detente meetings back in ’94,” Chappelle reminded him.
“He missed and was nearly caught,” Mason observed. “He never tried anything like that again.”
“He’s desperate for money,” Chappelle said. “Anyway, so we bring this Marcus Lee or whatever his real name is in for interrogation.”
Chris hesitated. “There’s a complication. The Chinese are insisting that this Marcus Lee has nothing to do with ETIM, that he’s not Nurmamet Tuman. They say we’ve got the wrong guy.”
He saw the look on Chappelle’s face change, watched what little color there was drain out of it. Henderson wanted more than anything for Chappelle to say,
