“Nothing short of a nightmare,” Erwin said, looking back at Cal. “And you wouldn’t believe the gawkers—tourists, for the most part. New Yorkers take one look, go home, and order Chinese takeout.”
Cal said, “This bomber Sherlock will be interviewing, Nasim Conklin. Your theory is he was coerced into lobbing the grenade at JFK? He was threatened with the murder of his family?”
Giusti nodded. “You’ll see from the profile there’s no other likely conclusion. We’ve found no suspicious electronic communications, not in his e-mail, Internet activity, or phone records, no evidence he might be capable of this. Every professional contact who knows him agrees this was way out of the blue. If he really is an operative, under deep cover for some purpose, blowing himself up would be a waste of a good resource.”
“They expected him to die at the airport,” Sherlock said. “And we’d never be able to find out who forced him there.”
“Correct,” Giusti said. “MI5 video surveillance records have confirmed Conklin did visit a radical London mosque, the South London Mosque, on three occasions in the past two weeks, twice in the company of his mother at afternoon prayers and once alone. Nothing unusual in that, except that the mosque is run by Imam Al-H?di ibn Mirza, who is radical enough to be capable of this. MI5 has had him under surveillance for some time. Nasim Conklin’s mother, Sabeen Conklin, has attended the mosque for several years, seems to admire the imam and his bombastic rhetoric, his relentless recruiting efforts, his calls for a jihad against the West despite her big, lovely home in Belgravia. She lawyered up immediately, won’t answer any questions.”
“Using family as leverage, another common practice,” Cal said. “I wonder about Conklin’s mom, though. I can’t imagine she’d put her grandkids at risk to be killed—or her son, for that matter.”
Erwin said, “We don’t know what she knew or knows. She’s not talking. MI5 hopes she might roll on the imam if the grandkids are hurt, but like you, I can’t imagine she’d knowingly sacrifice her own son.”
“Agreed,” Sherlock said. “My guess is she didn’t have a clue about much of it.”
Giusti said, “We suspect Nasim’s mother disapproved of Nasim’s wife, Marie Claire, since she is French and a Catholic. But you’re right, it’s a stretch. Since Nasim won’t talk to us either, we assume he’s more afraid of the people holding his family than he is of us. And yet he demanded to speak to you, Sherlock, for some reason. It’s going to be up to you to convince him to open up. We may be able to help him if he tells us what he knows. You’ve got some time to think about it. We’re coming up to Great Neck, and it’ll be another forty-five minutes in the god-awful traffic before we exit at Colby.”
Erwin said, “My stomach’s rubbing against my backbone. I know a good deli in Great Neck. Anyone want a sandwich?”
ON THE WAY TO QUANTICO
Friday morning
Savich carefully steered the Porsche around an eighteen-wheeler, accelerated, and seamed back between two cars. Traffic would lighten later as they approached Quantico. It was a day you were happy to be alive. The sky was a clear blue, no summer heat yet to blanket Washington, but it would come. He wished Sherlock were with him, especially this morning, but she’d been pulled back to New York to interview Conklin. He’d promised her he’d take another agent with him to Quantico for Brakey’s hypnosis, and she’d known it would be Griffin for the simple reason that Griffin would believe what had happened to Savich the previous night, without question. She’d known he’d take the leap of faith. He himself was gifted.
Savich looked over at Griffin sitting beside him. Not only was he gifted, he was very smart, ferocious in his dedication, and intuitive, some of the reasons Savich had asked him to transfer from the San Francisco Field Office to Washington. He knew Griffin would be well able to see the possibilities and the problems of the psychic they now faced. It didn’t hurt that he was already involved in the case and knew Brakey. If Savich was right, Griffin would hear Brakey describe exactly the scene Savich himself had been drawn into under hypnosis.
He’d started telling Griffin about it this morning in the office as if he was telling him a dream, about the pine forest, about following the smell of smoke to the ancient tower, about Stefan Dalco appearing. Griffin had listened, sure, but it wasn’t until Savich had baldly told him it wasn’t a dream but an illusion created for him, probably exactly what Walter Givens and Brakey Alcott had experienced before they’d become murderers, that Griffin’s eyes had blazed—no other way to describe it. As Savich had hoped, he wanted to know everything. Savich took him through it, step by step.
Griffin was quiet now, thinking about everything. He said matter-of-factly, more to himself than to Savich, “What do you think would have happened if Dalco’s knife had stabbed you?”
“I don’t know what would have happened, but I’ll tell you, Griffin, the illusion had substance, it felt real.”
“And you believe it’s the same illusion Dalco used on Walter Givens and Brakey Alcott.”
“Yes, a variation. Dalco came after me for a very different reason than Walter or Brakey. Dalco came after me to kill me. He wanted the investigation stopped.”
Savich shook his head. “We don’t even know all that much yet. Doesn’t he realize you’d simply pick it up where I left off if something happened to me?”
“It wouldn’t be the same, and you know it. It’s amazing what you did, Savich—changing the scene to Winkel’s Cave. Maybe it saved your life.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Sherlock did when she started shaking me and slapping me to wake me up.”
“We know it had to be Brakey who killed Deputy Lewis. It would have been an insane risk for anyone other than Brakey, even in the dark. But Dalco said nothing about why he chose Brakey? Why Walter Givens?”
Savich shook his head, settled the Porsche behind a Volvo like Sherlock’s that cruised right at the speed limit. “I think Dalco, as our Brit friend Nicholas Drummond would say, is barking mad. He has his reasons, though. Revenge, perhaps. The deputy may have been unlucky enough to arrest him or someone he cared about very much, and his murder was payback. Why did he use Brakey? I don’t know yet.”
“How did you do it, Savich? How did you escape Dalco?”
“I concentrated with everything in me on that huge chamber in Winkel’s Cave. I don’t know who was more surprised when we popped right there, me or Dalco.”
They passed a hitchhiker, a gnarly-looking bearded man with a backpack and banged-up leather boots. Griffin said, “It sounds amazing. And scary. Now, you think Brakey’s going to tell us about a pine forest and a tower? That he’ll remember Dalco telling him to murder Deputy Kane Lewis?”
“I’m betting on it, which means Dalco, whoever he is, is living in or near Plackett, Virginia, and that Deputy Kane Lewis and Sparky Carroll have something in common with him, something that made both of them his targets. Dalco said they deserved to die, so whatever it is he believes they did was enough for him to murder them, or rather manipulate Brakey and Walter into doing it for him.”
“Both Brakey Alcott and Walter Givens are young,” Griffin said. “Did Dalco pick them because he found them malleable, suggestible? And the Athames, Savich, they’re common to Dalco and to both murders. And the Alcotts own them, you know they do. All of this is somehow connected to them, no doubt in my mind. Dalco knows them, interacts with them, at least he does Brakey. Did you and Sherlock meet the whole family yesterday evening?”