“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 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.
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.”
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 committed it to memory nonetheless. He wanted to be done with
