some teams. These guys are helpful at airports, bus terminals, train stations, docks, some bridges and tunnels under their control, and other places where their little empire extends. We have it all pretty much covered, but even if we didn’t, it sounds really impressive.
The idea of the ATTF is to put together all these agencies and contract civilians with their expertise in specialized areas to combat domestic terrorism. The ATTF, for instance, was one of the main investigating groups in the World Trade Center bombing and the TWA 800 crash as well as the African Embassy bombings, though the name ATTF was hardly mentioned in the news, which is how they like it.
The reason the almighty Feds decided to team up with the NYPD, by the way, is that your average FBI guy is from Kansas and doesn’t know a pastrami sandwich from the Lexington Avenue subway. The CIA guys are a little slicker and talk about cafes in Prague and the night train to Istanbul and all that crap, but New York is not their favorite place to be. The NYPD has street smarts, and that’s what you need to keep track of Abdul Salami-Salami and Paddy O’Bad and Pedro Viva Puerto Rico and so on. Not only are the Feds clueless about the streets and subways and buses and all, but they don’t really understand the types they’re watching.
Your average Fed is Wendell Wasp from West Jesus, Iowa; whereas the NYPD has mucho Hispanics, lots of blacks, a million Irish, and even a few Muslims now, so you get this cultural diversity on the force that is not only politically cool and correct, but actually useful and effective. And when the ATTF can’t steal active duty NYPD people, they hire ex-NYPD like me. Despite my so-called disability, I’m armed, dangerous, and nasty. So there it is.
We were approaching JFK, and I said to Fasid, “So, what do you do for Easter?”
“Easter? I don’t celebrate Easter. I’m Muslim.”
See how clever I am? The Feds would’ve sweated this guy for an hour to make him admit he was a Muslim. I got it out of him in two seconds. Just kidding. But, you know, I really have to get out of the Mideast section and into the IRA bunch. I’m part Irish and part English, and I could work both sides of that street. Please, God, get me out of the Mideast and into Clancy’s Pub on Third Avenue.
Fasid exited the Belt Parkway and got on the Van Wyck Expressway heading south. These huge planes were sort of floating overhead making whining noises, and Fasid called out to me, “Where you going?”
“International Arrivals.”
“Which airline?”
“There’s more than one?”
“Yeah. There’s twenty, thirty, forty—”
“No kidding? Just drive.”
Fasid shrugged, just like an Israeli cabbie. I was starting to think that maybe he was a Mossad agent posing as a Pakistani. Or maybe the job was getting to me.
There’s all these colored and numbered signs along the expressway, and I let the guy go to the International Arrival building, a huge structure with all the airline logos, one after the other out front, and he asked again, “Which airline?”
“I don’t like any of these. Keep going.”
Again he shrugged.
I directed him on to another road, then another, and we were now going to the other side of the big airport. This is good tradecraft, to see if anybody’s following you. I learned this in some spy novel or maybe a James Bond movie. I was trying to get into this antiterrorist thing, but the meter was past fifty bucks already, so I got Fasid pointed in the right direction and told him to stop in front of a big office-type building on the west side of JFK that was used for this and that. I paid the guy, tipped him, and asked for a receipt in the exact amount. Honesty is one of my few faults.
Fasid gave me a bunch of blank receipts and asked again, “You want me to hang around?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
I went into the lobby of the building, a 1960s sort of crap modern architecture, and instead of an armed guard with an Uzi like they have all over the world, except maybe England, there’s just a sign that says, RESTRICTED AREA—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. So, assuming you read English, you know if you’re welcome or not.
I went up a staircase and down a long corridor of gray-steel doors, some marked, some numbered, some neither. At the end of the corridor was a door with a nice blue-and-white sign that said, CONQUISTADOR CLUB— PRIVATE—MEMBERS ONLY.
There was this electronic key-card scanner alongside the door, but like everything else about the Conquistador Club, it was a phony. What I had to do was to press my right thumb on the translucent face of the scanner, which I did. About two seconds later, the electronic genie said to itself, “Hey, that’s John Corey’s thumb— let’s open the door for John.”
And did the door
Anyway, there’s also a video scanner overhead, in case your thumbprint got screwed up with a chocolate bar or something, and if they recognize your face, they also open the door, though in my case they might make an exception.
So I went in, and the door slid closed automatically behind me. I was now in what appeared to be the reception area of an airline travelers’ club. Why there’d be such a club in a building that’s not a passenger terminal is, you can be sure, a question I’d asked, and I’m still waiting for an answer. But I know the answer, which is that when the CIA culture is present, you get this kind of smoke-and-mirrors silliness. These clowns waste time and money on stagecraft and such, just like in the old days when they were trying to impress the KGB. What the door needed was a simple sign that said, KEEP THE FUCK OUT.
Anyway, behind the counter was Nancy Tate, the receptionist, a sort of Miss Moneypenny, the model of efficiency and repressed sexuality, and all that. She liked me for some reason, and greeted me cheerily, “Good afternoon, Mr. Corey.”
“Good afternoon, Ms. Tate.”
“Everyone has arrived.”
“I was delayed by traffic.”
“Actually, you’re ten minutes early.”
“Oh…”
“I like your tie.”
“I took it off a dead Bulgarian on the night train to Istanbul.”
She giggled.
Anyway, the reception area was all leather and burled wood, plush blue carpet, and so forth, and on the wall directly behind Nancy was another marquee of the fictitious Conquistador Club. And for all I knew, Ms. Tate was a hologram.
To the left of Ms. Tate was an entranceway marked CONFERENCE AND BUSINESS AREA that actually led to the interrogation rooms and holding cells, which I guess could be called the Conference and Business area. To the right, a sign announced LOUNGE AND BAR. I should be so lucky. That was in fact the way to the communications and operations room.
Ms. Tate said to me, “Ops Room. There are five people including yourself.”
“Thanks.” I walked through the bar-and-lounge doorway, down a short hallway, and into a dim, cavernous, and windowless room that held desks, computer consoles, cubicles, and such. On the big rear wall was a huge, computer-generated color map of the world that could be programmed to a detailed map of whatever you needed, like downtown Islamabad. This was big-time.
Anyway, this facility wasn’t my actual workplace, which is in the aforementioned Federal building in lower Manhattan. But this was where I had to be on this Saturday afternoon to meet and greet some Arab guy who was switching sides and needed to be taken safely downtown for a few years of debriefing.
I kind of ignored my teammates and made for the coffee bar which, unlike the one in my old detective squad room, is neat, clean, and well stocked. Compliments of the Federal taxpayers.
I fooled around with the coffee a while, which was my way of avoiding my colleagues for a few more minutes.
I got the coffee the right color and noticed a tray of donuts that said NYPD and a tray of croissants and brioche that said CIA and a tray of oatmeal cookies that said FBI. Someone had a sense of humor.
