Night Fall

“I miss you already.”

She asked me, “How do you feel right now?”

“I think the alcohol goes to the brain faster at this altitude. I feel like the room is swaying.”

“Itis swaying.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I’m going to miss your sense of humor.”

“I’m going to miss my audience.”

She squeezed my hand and said, “Let’s promise to come back the same as when we left. You understand?”

“I do.”

It was Disco Night, and a disco band began playing at 9P.M. I took Kate onto the small dance floor and showed her some of my seventies moves, which she found amusing.

The band was playing “The Peppermint Twist,” which I renamed the “Yemeni Twist,” and I made up some dance steps called “Camel Ride” and “Dodge the Bullets.” Obviously, I was drunk.

Back at the bar, we started drinking a house specialty called Ellis Island Iced Tea, which at sixteen bucks a pop needed a more upscale name.

Kate ordered sushi and sashimi at the bar, and while I don’t normally eat raw fish and seaweed, when I’m plastered, I put things in my mouth that I shouldn’t.

We got out of the Greatest Bar in the World around midnight, with the greatest pounding in my head I’ve had in a long time.

Out on the street, we got into a taxi, and Kate fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I stared out the side window as we made our way home.

New York after dark. I’d have to remember this in the months ahead.

The FBI travel office had thoughtfully arranged to get us flights out of JFK within two hours of each other; Kate had a Delta flight to Cairo, and I had an American Airlines flight to London. I’d fly on to Amman, Jordan, then Aden, and Kate would fly directly to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Hopefully our guns would arrive in the diplomatic pouches before we did.

Our doorman wished us bon voyage, and we took a limo to the airport, arriving first at the Delta terminal. We parted at curbside, without too much soppy stuff and no tears. I said, “Be safe. I love you. See you later.”

She replied, “You be safe.” She added, “To make up for the vacation we didn’t get to take, let’s try to meet in Paris on the way home.”

“It’s a date.”

A skycap took her luggage into the terminal, and she followed. We waved to each other through the glass.

I got back into the limo and proceeded to American Airlines.

We both had diplomatic passports, which are standard issue in our business, so checking in to Business Class was relatively painless. Security was a combination of a hassle and a joke. I probably could have handed my Glock to the brain-dead security screener and picked it up on the other side of the metal detector.

I had a few hours to kill, so I spent the time in the Business Class lounge, reading the papers and drinking free Bloody Marys.

My cell phone rang, and it was Kate. She said, “I’m about to board. I just wanted to say good-bye again, and tell you I love you.”

I said, “I love you, too.”

“You don’t hate me for getting you into this thing?”

“What thing? Oh,this thing. No problem. It just adds to the Corey legend.”

She stayed quiet a moment, then asked, “Are we done with TWA 800?”

“Absolutely. And Jack, if you’re listening, it was a mechanical malfunction in the center fuel tank.”

She stayed quiet again, then said, “Don’t forget to e-mail me when you arrive.”

“You, too.”

We exchanged a few more “I love you’s” and hung up.

A few hours later, while Kate was over the Atlantic Ocean, the video screen said my flight to London was boarding, and I walked toward the gate.

It had been exactly one week since the memorial service for the victims of TWA Flight 800, and in that week, I’d learned a lot of new things, none of which were doing me any good at this moment.

But in this game, you have to think long-term. You talk. You snoop. You rack your brain. Then you do it again.

There isn’t a single mystery in this world that doesn’t have a solution, if you live long enough to find it.

BOOK THREE

September

Home

Conclusions: CIA analysts do not believe that a missile was used to shoot down TWA Flight 800… There is absolutely no evidence, physical or otherwise, that a missile was employed.

CIA “Analytic Assessment,” March 28, 1997

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Home

Not having contracted malaria or been abducted, kidnapped, or murdered, I arrived at JFK on a Delta flight from London at 4:05P.M. on the Friday after Labor Day, having spent about forty days and forty nights in the desert wilderness of Yemen.

For the record, the place sucks.

Kate was still in Dar es Salaam, but she’d be home within the week. She seemed to be enjoying Tanzania, e-mailing me about friendly people, good food, interesting countryside, and all that. Rub it in.

Exactly why we’d gotten off with short tours was more of a mystery than why we’d been exiled in the first place-which was no mystery at all. Possibly, Jack Koenig and his colleagues believed that, as with a prison sentence, a short one teaches you a lesson, and a long one breeds resentment and revenge.

Wrong. I was still pissed off and not a bit grateful for my early release.

I cleared Passport Control and Immigration quickly since I wasn’t carrying anything except my overnight bag, a diplomatic passport, and a concealed grudge; I’d left my safari clothes in Yemen where they belonged, and my Glock was being shipped home through the embassy dip pouch. I was wearing tan slacks, a blue blazer, and a sport shirt, which looked good when I’d put them on about a day ago.

It seemed strange to be back in civilization, if that’s the right word for JFK International Airport. The sights, sounds, and smells-which I’d never noticed before-were jarring.

Aden, as it turned out, was not the actual capital of Yemen-some shit-hole town called Sana’a was, and I’d had to go there a few times on business, where I had the pleasure of meeting Ambassador Bodine. I introduced myself to her as a close friend of John O’Neill, though I’d met the gentleman only a few times. I didn’t get kicked out, which was the plan, but neither was I invited for dinner at the ambassador’s residence.

Aden, where I was stationed, was the port city where theCole had been blown up, and it, too, sucked. The good news was that the Sheraton Hotel where the team stayed had a gym (the Marines had to show the staff how to put the equipment together) and a swimming pool (which we had to teach the staff how to clean), and I was as tan and fit as I’d ever been since I took three bullets up in Washington Heights about four years ago. I’d kept the drinking in Yemen to a bare minimum, learned to like fish, rather than drink like one, and experienced the joys of chastity. I felt like a new man, but the old man needed a drink, a hamburger, and sex.

I stopped at the lounge and ordered a beer and hamburger at the bar.