online.”
Jack thanked her and hung up. He was aware that Harry Driscoll and Dr. Siegman were staring at him, but he ignored them. He had to think, and his insights were coming few and far between. He wished he’d had at least a few minutes of sleep when he’d been home — not for his own comfort, but so that his brain would have had time to reset. Maybe it’d be working better now.
“Okay,” he said at last. “This is what we have to go on. There is roughly ten pounds of plastic explosives out in the open. Some fraction of that is here, in Father Collins’s arm. The rest isn’t enough to do any huge damage to any buildings or important structures, so we can rule out that sort of terrorist attack.
“Father Collins apparently had no motive to murder anyone, and was working toward becoming the next Mother Teresa. But we know that’s not true because he stuck a bomb in his arm. I’m going back to the office to start working on this.”
“Mr. Bauer?” Dr. Siegman said, holding up the tiny electronic device. “This might interest you. You should take it and have it double-checked, because I might be wrong about this thing.”
“It’s not a receiver?”
“Oh, it’s definitely a receiver. But unless I’m mistake, there’s also a little timer built into it. A kind of fail-safe, maybe.”
“A timer.”
“Set to go off at five-thirty today.”
19. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Rabbi Dan Bender had to admit that he was enjoying himself. It had been years since he’d attended a truly splendid party, and the reception that preceded the official start of the Unity Conference was nothing if not splendid. Clerics and holy men from a number of religions were in attendance — not just rabbis, imams, and Christian clergy, but also a few Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists. The Dalai Lama had been invited, but was unable to attend due to illness.
Although he tried not to appear obvious about it, he searched the crowd for Father Collins. He didn’t like the man, but for reasons obvious to himself, Bender felt it very important to know the man’s whereabouts.
He could not find Collins, which concerned him very much. But he did spot Abdul al-Hassan who, quite out of character, was standing by himself near a tall indoor plant in a large pot. Bender sidled over to him. “I’ve never known you to avoid a crowd, Abdul, at least not when you thought you could turn it into an audience.”
Abdul turned on him sharply, and for the briefest of moments, Bender thought he saw real hatred in the Muslim’s eyes. But the emotion, whatever it was, vanished in a flicker. “Well, I suppose I am just trying to hold back,” he said quietly. “This is the Christians’ affair, after all. It would not be good to step on toes.”
Bender laughed. “What, haven’t you read the brochure? This event is for all of us.”
“It is a political stunt for the leader of the Crusaders to appear to be the leader of us all,” al-Hassan said simply.
Bender hesitated. “Are you in an especially bad mood, Abdul?”
Marwan hesitated. He knew his brother shared that view — he’d heard him speak against the paternalistic approach taken by the Christian Pope. Had he said something wrong? “No, why?”
Bender shrugged. “There’s an edge in your voice. I hope everything is all right.” “Fine,” Marwan said, thinking of what was to come. “I am absolutely fine.”
Jack remembered hearing that somewhere, though he couldn’t recall where. The truth is that he had been picking up his investigative skills in a sort of on-the-job training program. His training with LAPD SWAT, and in Delta, and with the CIA, had much more to do with field operations than mystery solving. But someone somewhere had once told him that when the clues start slipping out of your mental grip, go back to the beginning.
“What’s the earliest event?” he said aloud, alone in his car. Driscoll was trailing him. “If we count it, there’s the airline bombing that Diana Christie was working on. No,” he corrected, “there’s the timeline Farouk gave me. The purchase of C–4 out of Cairo and its shipment to the U.S. When was that?
“Six weeks ago, he said,” Jack answered himself. “Then the airline accident or bombing, whichever it is. Four weeks ago. Yasin arrives in Los Angeles four days ago. I question Ramin yesterday, and the house blows up.”
Jack was still reciting the timeline of events as he pulled his car up to CTU’s nondescript building and walked inside. He caught the attention of Nina Myers, Jamey Farrell, and Christopher Henderson and motioned them toward the conference room. They followed, and he began to repeat his timeline so far, this time writing it on a whiteboard in the almost-bare room.
Jamey Farrell shook her head. “You missed something. Nina arrested the Sweetzer Three. That was two days ago. One day before you went to Ramin’s house.” Jack nodded and crammed that onto the whiteboard above Ramin.
“Well, that’s a thing to think about,” Christopher Henderson mused. “Yasin — assuming it’s Yasin we’re talking about here — didn’t care at all about the three Muslims we captured with a load of plastic explosives. But the minute you questioned Ramin, he blew the place up.”
“Maybe he couldn’t get to them when they were arrested,” Nina suggested.
Jack saw where he was headed. “Could be. But he was ready and waiting for Ramin. That bomb was planted long before we got there. Not these three, though. Why not?”
“They’re too important to kill?” Henderson proposed.
But Nina was headed in the other direction. “No. They weren’t important enough.” Her eyes met Jack’s, and both realized the other was thinking the same thing.
“They don’t know anything,” Jack said first. “They were meant to live, so we would waste time on them. They were the first decoy, just in case we were on the trail of the C–4.”
“So the airplane, then,” Nina wondered. “Where does that fit in? If Christie was right, then they blew it up. Why?”
“Something about Ali, the guy in the seat,” Jack said. “You did a thorough background on him?” Nina crossed her heart. “Trust me. Nothing in his past. Squeaky clean.” “Like Collins,” Jack said. He paused, then said,
“Forget his past. What was his future? Where was he going?”
Jamey Farrell blushed. “I never looked for that. Give me a minute.” She hurried out of the room.
Michael rode shotgun in the Cardinal’s car, but his mind had leaped five miles and more than an hour ahead.
After so much work, only a short time to wait, and then the heresy of Vatican II would be eradicated.
Jamey Farrell reentered the conference room with a look of pure embarrassment on her face. “It was there all the time,” she said meekly. “If only I’d thought to look.”
“What is it?” Jack said, although he thought he already knew.
“Abdul Ali was arriving in Los Angeles to attend several meetings. The most important one was the Unity Conference. He was scheduled to meet with the Pope.”
Giancarlo swept the reception hall as he planned to do several times in the next hour or more prior to the arrival of the Holy Father. Every precaution had been taken, of course, but he did not feel right unless he had personally walked every inch of the area. In order to better mingle with the crowd of eighty or ninety clerics in the hall, he was dressed in the black robes of a priest, and, if necessary, he could speak eloquently on various theological topics. But at this moment he avoided all conversation, simply smiling and tipping his head to anyone who made eye contact with him.
