The Panther

CHAPTER FIVE


It was Saturday, and Kate and I agreed not to discuss Yemen until Sunday evening.

Kate went to the office Saturday morning to clean up some paperwork and to identify cases that she would need to hand off if, in fact, she was going to Yemen.

I had an appointment with a guy named Nabeel, who coincidentally was from Yemen. I didn’t know Nabeel, but he’d called the ATTF office, using only his first name, asking for me by my full name, and saying to me that we had a mutual friend. I doubt that, but that’s how I get half of my contacts in the Muslim community; my business card is all over town. Well, Muslim neighborhoods. It pays to advertise.

My brief phone conversation with Nabeel revealed that his legal status in the country was a little shaky, and he wanted some help with that in exchange for some information he had. Nabeel worked in a delicatessen in Brooklyn, so I wasn’t sure what kind of information he had for me. Phoney baloney? Exploding beans?

A little-known factoid is that many Yemeni immigrants work in delis in Brooklyn and Queens. Why? Who knows? Why do the Turks own so many gas stations? Why do Indians own all the 7-Elevens? Who cares as long as the Irish still run the pubs?

Anyway, I told Nabeel to meet me in Ben’s Kosher Deli on West 38th Street, a place unlikely to be frequented by others of the Islamic faith—though, ironically, kosher food is halal, meaning okay for Muslims, so this works.

And here I was now in Ben’s, sitting in a booth across from Nabeel. He had to get back to his deli in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, so this was going to be a happily short meeting.

Nabeel looked to be about mid-thirties, but he was probably younger, with a scruffy beard, dark skin, and teeth stained green by khat—a narcotic leaf that keeps ninety percent of the male population of Yemen perpetually stoned and happy. I wished I had some now.

Nabeel ordered tea and a bagel with cream cheese, and I had coffee.

I asked Nabeel, “Where did you get my name?”

“I tell you on phone. From friend.” He also reminded me, “Can not tell you friend.”

“Was it Abdul?”

“Who Abdul?”

“Which Abdul. Who’s on first?”

“Sir?”

“Talk.”

Nabeel talked. “There is big plot from peoples of Al Qaeda. Saudi peoples. No Yemen. All Saudi. Plot is to make bomb exploding in New York.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” And maybe grammatical?

“Yes? What more?”

“Bomb where? When? Who?”

“I have all information. I give you. I need work visa.”

Maybe I could give him my visa to Yemen. I asked him, “You have ID on you? Passport?”

“No.”

They never do. I really didn’t want to speak to this guy unless I could see his passport, so I said to him, “I need you to come to my office.” I took a card from my pocket and asked him, “What’s your last name?”

He gave me a scrap of paper on which his name was written in badly formed Latin letters—Nabeel al-Samad—saying to me, “I copy this from passport.” He said proudly, “I can sign name.”

“Wonderful.” I wrote on the back of my business card, Nabeel al-Samad to see Det. Corey. I signed it, dated it, and handed it to him, saying, “I’ll have an Arabic translator and I’ll have someone from Immigration for you to talk to. Capisce?”

“Yes? You arrest me in office?”

“No. I can arrest you here.” And f*ck up my day. Not to mention yours.

“Talk here first.”

“Okay. Talk.”

Nabeel confided that he was in contact with people who knew more about this bomb plot, but he needed more time—like a six-month visa—to get the details. Sounded like bullshit. But you never know.

Finally, he agreed to come into the office on Monday if he could get the morning off. These guys work twelve-hour days, six or seven days a week, and they send what amounts to a fortune home to their wife and ten kids. A deli in Brooklyn is like a gold mine in Yemen.

I asked him, “Where you from in Yemen?”

He named some place that sounded like “Ali Baba.”

“You like it there?”

“Yes. Beautiful country. Good people.”

“Then why do you want to stay here?”

“No work in Yemen. I go home, two months. Three months. See family. Come again here. Go again Yemen.”

A Yemeni jet-setter. I tore a sheet out of my notebook, gave it to him with a pen, and said, “Write your info.”

Unfortunately, he couldn’t write English beyond his name, so I said, “In Arabic.” No luck. Illiterate in two languages. “Spanish?”

“Sir?”

Three languages. I asked him the name of his deli in Brooklyn, his place of residence, and his cell phone number.

He spoke—slowly, please—and I wrote in my notebook, saying to him, “I want to see you Monday morning at 26 Federal Plaza or I’ll send a police car to pick you up. Have your passport with you. And your visa—expired or not. They’ll have your name at security. Bring my card. Understand?”

He nodded.

I dialed the cell number he’d given me and it rang in his pocket. Trust, but verify. I threw a twenty on the table and left.

I was supposed to meet Kate at the Met to see the stupid Monet exhibit. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.

I had some time, so I began walking the forty blocks. Good exercise.

I thought about Nabeel. Most informants have or can get you some information, or they wouldn’t come to you. All of them want something in return. I’ve never seen a Mideastern informant who just wanted to do their civic duty to their adopted country. In Nabeel’s case, as with most of them, he wanted permanent citizenship or a green card in return for ratting out someone. Sometimes they just wanted money. Money for informants was easy—green cards not so easy. Meanwhile, I still can’t figure out why they want to live here. Could it be that their beautiful countries suck?

I have a theory about immigration. Wherever you were born, stay there.

Kate and I made cell phone contact and met at the Met. We had lunch in the museum restaurant, then went to the Monet exhibit. Was this guy going blind? Or do I need glasses?


Saturday night we joined two other couples at Michael Jordan’s Steak House. This is a cool place. Cholesterol and testosterone.

The restaurant is located on the balcony above the Grand Central Station Concourse, with an overhead view of the famous clock under which lovers and others meet. I watched the mass of humanity arriving and departing by train—a scene that hasn’t changed much in a hundred years, except now there were soldiers and police watching everything. No one seemed to notice them anymore; they were part of life now. That sucks.

Cops tend to hang with cops, but I’ve expanded my social circle since joining the Task Force, and tonight we were with Feds. Fortunately, the two guys, Ed Burke and Tony Savino, were ex-cops like me, working for the Feds like everyone else these days. One of the wives, Ann Burke, was an MOS—Member of the Service—and still on the job, working in the 103rd Precinct. The other lady, Marie Savino, was a stay-at-home mom with two crumb snatchers under five and one in the oven.

Which gave me an idea. If Kate were to get pregnant—like about four hours from now—then the Yemen thing was off. I reached under the table and ran my hand over her thigh. She smiled.

Anyway, we tend not to talk business when we’re out, but tonight I said, “Kate and I have been asked to apply for a posting to Yemen.”

Ed Burke, a former NYPD detective with the Intelligence Unit, advised, “Just say no.”

Tony Savino said, “I know two guys who were there.”

I inquired, “What do they say about it?”

“I don’t know. No one has ever heard from them again.”

This got a big laugh. Cops have a sick sense of humor.

I informed everyone, “I was actually there for a month in August 2001. The beaches are topless. You get your head blown off.”

Good laughs.

“John.”

“In Yemen, the men are men and the camels are nervous.”

“Enough, please,” said Kate.

So I dropped the subject.

But Tony said, “Seriously, the two guys I knew who were there said there’s no place safe outside the American Embassy.” He added, “They know who you are when you get off the plane, and you have a target on your back every time you move.”

I already knew that. And now Kate had heard it from someone else—but she did not waver. In fact, she’s stubborn. She said, “If we don’t go, someone else will have to go.”

Hard to argue with that. But the problem, as I saw it when I was there, was that we had a very small American presence in a very hostile environment. A recipe for disaster. Ask General Custer about that.

We dropped the subject completely, or so I thought until Ed Burke said to the waiter, “I’ll have the camel dick on a stick.”

Everyone’s a comedian.


Sunday morning we got up late and I offered to make breakfast. I asked Kate, “Do you feel like pickles and ice cream?”

“What?”

“You should make sure you’re not pregnant before we see Walsh tomorrow.”

“John, I’m on the pill.”

“Right. How about scrambled eggs?”

We had breakfast, read the New York Times, and watched a few morning news shows. BBC is really the best source of world news that Americans don’t give a shit about, and we tuned in just in time to discover that there was yet another civil war going on in Yemen.

Apparently some tribal leader in the north named Hussein al-Houthi was trying to topple the government in Sana’a and restore the Imam to power and create an Islamic fundamentalist state. Hussein, according to the reporter with the British accent, wanted to kick out all the foreigners and infidels in the country and return Yemen to Sharia law. Not a bad idea. Kicking foreigners out, I mean. Me first. Hussein also wanted to cut off the head of Yemen’s longtime dictator president, a guy named Ali Abdullah Saleh. Hussein sounded like a guy who took the fun out of fundamentalist.

Kate hit the mute button and said to me, “I didn’t realize there was a war going on there.”

“There’s always a war going on there.” I inquired, “Did you know that Yemen has the highest ratio of guns to people in the whole world?” I explained, “They have to do something with those guns.”

She didn’t reply, but I could sense she was rethinking her year abroad.


We belong to a health club on East 39th Street, and we spent a few hours there, burning off the beef fat from Michael Jordan’s and sweating out the red wine.

Kate and I stay in pretty good shape, and we also spend time at the pistol range. If we were FBI accountants, we probably wouldn’t bother with any of this.

I needed a drink after the health club, so we walked up to Dresner’s, a neighborhood pub where they know my name too well.

We took a table near the window and ordered two beers to rehydrate.

Kate asked, “Do you want to talk about Yemen now?”

I replied, “I thought that was a done deal.”

“Well… I’m still leaning toward it, but I want you to go with me.”

What she actually wanted was for me to talk her out of it. My role—if I choose to accept it—is that of bad guy. But I didn’t want to play that role or that game. I said, “If you’re going, I’m going.”

“I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to do.”

“I want to do whatever you want to do, darling.”

“Well… maybe we should weigh the pros and cons.”

I couldn’t think of a single pro, but in the spirit of weighing all the issues, I said, “Maybe your parents could come for a long visit.”

She seemed a little annoyed and said to me, “If you’re going to be flippant about this, then I say we should just go.”

“Okay with me.”

End of discussion. Right? Well, no. It doesn’t work that way. She said, “I don’t think you mean that.”

Obviously Ms. Mayfield was wavering, and I was elected to give her the push one way or the other. I could have killed this thing right then and there, but I was taking some perverse pleasure in this. I mean, she was gung-ho for Yemen on Friday, but now some reality had set in.

Oddly enough, I was starting to think of some reasons why we should go. Not good reasons, but reasons—the biggest being that like most husbands, I sometimes let my wife do something I’ve advised against, which gives me the pleasure of saying, “I told you so!” I was actually looking forward to that moment. I pictured us in the desert with an overheated vehicle—maybe with bullet holes in the radiator and all the tires shot out—surrounded by Bedouin tribesmen with AK-47s. As I was slamming a magazine into my Glock, I’d look at her and say, “I told you so!”

“What are you smiling at?”

“Oh… I was just thinking about… how beautiful the desert is at night. Lots of stars.”

The waitress came by and I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries and another beer. Kate did the same. Hey, life is short. I informed Kate, “Not much beer or pork in Yemen.”

“If we go, I don’t want to hear you complaining for a year.”

“I’m not a complainer.”

“That’s a joke—right?”

“Complaining is a New York thing. It’s an art.”

“It’s annoying.”

“Okay. I won’t complain in Yemen. No one there gives a shit anyway.” I added, “Or they just kill you. End of complaint.”

She suppressed a smile.

I said, “There’s actually an off-Broadway theater in Sana’a, and they’ve got a long-running musical called ‘Guys and Goats.’ ” I broke into a show tune: “I got the goat right here, the name is al-Amir—”

She reminded me, “You’re an idiot.”


Back in our expensive apartment, we had coffee and watched some TV. The History Channel had yet another documentary about the end of the world, this one about the End of Days, as predicted by the Mayan calendar. December 21, 2012, to be exact. But they weren’t saying what time this was going to happen. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be sleeping and miss it.

Anyway, I felt like a cigar, so I went out to the balcony, lit up, and looked out over the city. It was a clear, cold night and I had great views to the south, and from here on the 34th floor I could see where I worked. We used to be able to see the Twin Towers, and after they were gone we could see the smoke rising for weeks, and then a few weeks later twin light beams rose high into the sky to symbolize the Towers. And now there was nothing.

Kate came out wearing a coat and carrying one for me. “Put this on.”

Real men don’t wear coats while they’re smoking a cigar on their balcony—but I put it on.

We didn’t speak for a while, and we watched the moon rising over the magical lights of Manhattan Island.

Finally, Kate said, “I’m actually going to miss New York.”

“You’ll appreciate it even more when you get back.”

She said, “This is obviously not a routine foreign assignment. This is something important. And Tom is showing confidence in us by asking us to take the job.”

“It’s very flattering,” I agreed.

“Which is why it’s hard to say no.”

“I thought we were saying yes. But if you want to say no, that’s easy.” I reminded her, “I signed on for domestic anti-terrorist work. So I have no legal or moral obligation to go to Yemen or anywhere else outside the U.S. You’re in a different position. So if you feel you need to go, I’ll go with you.”

She thought about that, then replied, “Thank you.” She said, “This may be a chance for us to make a difference. To actually apprehend the mastermind of the Cole attack.”

“Right.”

I looked toward the skyline where the Towers once stood. We’d both lost some good friends that day. And tens of thousands of other people lost friends, family, and neighbors. We were all heartbroken. Now we’re pissed.

Kate stayed quiet awhile, then said, “I really wouldn’t have gone without you.”

“You would have. But you’re not.”

We went inside and I settled into my soft leather La-Z-Boy recliner. I was really going to miss this chair.

Kate was curled up on the couch with her laptop, and she said to me, “You were right—Yemen has the highest ratio of guns to people in the world.”

“It’s a typical baby shower gift.”

She also informed me, “It’s the most impoverished, backward, and isolated country in the Mideast.”

“And that’s from the Ministry of Tourism. Wait until you read what the critics say.”

“Over a hundred Westerners—tourists, scholars, and businesspeople—have been kidnapped in the last ten years and held for ransom. Some were killed.”

I didn’t respond.

She continued, “Did you know that Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden?”

“I did. It’s also the homeland of Nabeel al-Samad.”

“Who?”

“My breakfast date.”

“He was Yemeni? Did you talk to him about Yemen?”

“Yeah. He said don’t drink the water.”

She went back to her computer and informed me, “Yemen is known as the Land That Time Forgot.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“In ancient times, it was the Kingdom of Sheba—where the Queen of Sheba came from.”

“Where’s she living now?”

“She’s biblical. King Solomon’s lover.”

“Right. As long as you’re up, can you get me a beer?”

“I’m not up.” She read her screen silently for a minute or two, then said, “This place is a shithole.”

“What was your first clue?”

“You never said much about it when you got back.”

“I don’t like to complain.”

I launched myself out of my chair and got two beers from the refrigerator. I handed one to Kate and said, “You understand that if we tell Tom we’re going, and he tells us more about this, then there’s no turning back.”

“Tom thinks this is right for us and I trust him.”

“I don’t. Tom only knows part of this. We get the real deal after we land.” I added, “It’s like quicksand.”

“I’m still in. As long as you promise that after we get there, you won’t say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“That’s the only reason I’m going.”

“No, we’re going there to apprehend the man who masterminded the murder of seventeen American servicemen.”

“Correct.” We clinked bottles and drank.