Port Authority Police cars blocked the available lanes, routing all visitors to the city to a checkpoint just beyond the tollbooths.. As the city passed across his windshield, Shah’s con
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BAckground noise
september 2009 new York city
Trang 3Bassam Shah had driven through a day and two nights from
Denver, stopping only for gas, eating fried pies, drinking Red Bull, and urinating into a plastic milk jug between gas station fill ups
At dawn, in the chaos of merging lanes on the New Jersey side
of the George Washington Bridge, orange traffic cones squeezed the
cars to the right Port Authority Police cars blocked the available
lanes, routing all visitors to the city to a checkpoint just beyond the
tollbooths Commuter congestion into New York City was building
at that early hour, though still not at its heaviest
Two men in blue Windbreakers and baseball hats waved flash
lights up ahead, peering into a car’s rolled down windows They
wore wires in their ears
Shah saw no dogs For that, he was relieved He was ten cars back from the search point
He watched the driver, a man traveling alone like him, get out
to open his trunk The searchers— now he saw the words port
au-thority police on the backs of their jackets— shined their lights
inside They lifted the mat off the spare tire, conferred
then let the man drive away
Shah had to risk it The decision was not a difficult one If he fled, they would stop him and search him intimately and rejoice at
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their success Instead, he made himself small, exactly as he had been
trained to do, settling into the persona of a grateful immigrant
His story— he was driving into New York to check on his fam
ily’s coffee cart— had the benefit of being the truth It was verifiable
Truth by admission was imperative in a situation such as this one
He eased the Ford Taurus forward, warm vent air breathing
on him, soothing him It was a muggy early autumn morning He
counted down as each driver was quizzed, each car scrutinized
When his time came, he lowered his window and faced his inter
rogators
“Where are you going?” asked the younger of the two black
cops, shining his light in Shah’s face
“To Queens,” Shah answered He felt his confidence ebb as the
words left him Something felt wrong here But to be this close and
fail was impossible He had felt certain the police were watching him
in Colorado But his cross country drive had been uneventful He
had to push past his self consciousness
“You are coming from where?” the cop asked
“Denver,” answered Shah “My home Near there— Aurora.”
All true No lies
The cop nodded Truth or lies, it did not seem to matter much to
him “Step out of the car, please.”
Of course they would make him get out Shah was an Afghan,
twenty four years old, with caramel skin His neck beard, hair, and
eyebrows were all reddish brown Physically, Shah fit every little
box on their desperately simplistic checklist of profiling character
istics The embodiment of what many Americans considered a dan
gerous man
He clicked open his seat belt obediently, attempted a smile, and
emerged before the great bridge in the warm air over the Hudson
River
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The other policeman leaned inside the open car door, scouring the front seats with his flashlight as though it were a laser irradiating
the floorboards and upholstery in search of clues
“Mind unzipping that?” the cop said, stabbing his light beam at the Nike gym bag on the backseat
Shah could have refused He knew his constitutional rights under U.S law; indeed, most every Afghan in the States knew these
laws by heart These men had no warrants, but they could “ask” him
to accompany them somewhere else for more searching All they
needed was a pretense Such was the thin thread upon which Shah’s
freedom now hung
He pulled out the bag, feeling the heat of the high candlepower flashlight beam upon his tan hands He opened it, removing a long
head wrap, bunching it in his hands He pulled out two robes thick
with a few days’ body odor He pulled out a half burned candle and
sticks of incense
In other words, he had exactly what these men expected an Afghan to have
They peered further inside, touching nothing with their blue
gloved hands Shah’s laptop case was on the seat next to the bag; he
showed it to them, and they were satisfied They asked him to open
the trunk and he complied They discovered nothing there except
the spare tire, a basic tool kit, and some grime
And then it was over They nodded to the driver’s seat as a ges
ture that they were done and looked to the next vehicle Shah de
ferred to them without making eye contact, got into the rental car,
buckled up, and drove away
All along the bridge, spangles of light glistened off the morning dew that coated the thick steel cables Below, the running lights of
barges on the Hudson River dimmed as though in awe of the dawn
ing sun
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He felt great exhilaration at having passed the checkpoint, which
was meant to discourage interlopers, but in fact seemed to him now
like a threshold
He was inside now And it had been easy
At the same time, Shah’s anger began to rise anew He cursed the
deference the bridge trolls forced him to adopt He was a man who
valued his dignity So he took in the beauty and magnificence of the
view with a sneer
As the city passed across his windshield, Shah’s confidence re
turned, knowing that the detonators were securely fish lined into
the passenger side air conditioning vent
Trang 7in lower Manhattan, on the twenty third floor of FBI headquar
ters at 26 Federal Plaza, not far from City Hall, the Joint Terror
ism Task Force meeting was already under way Jeremy Fisk, a
detective assigned to the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, arrived late,
hobbled by a sprained ankle
He had missed a layup in his over thirty league the previous night— he played twice each week at ten p.m., a ridiculous time for
an amateur to pursue any sport, but the only time he could reliably
make with his schedule— and came down on someone else’s foot and
rolled his He had sat on the court floor gripping his shin just above
his hyperextended ankle, waiting for the swelling to begin and curs
ing himself
That’s it, he’d thought, for the thousandth time in his life
Enough with the basketball They said that biology is destiny, and
so it was that a formerly tall for his age fourteen year old now
spent two evenings a week with like minded desperadoes throwing
himself around a basketball court He loved the game, but never the
sheer exhaustion of running up and down the court— an exhaus
tion that came more easily these days Fisk had topped out at five
eleven, never playing college after the JV team at Villanova, riding
the bench because everybody else was better and, eventually, taller
than he was
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Fisk limped over to the wall The briefing room was over
crowded with representatives of the various agencies that comprised
the JTTF There were similar task forces in over one hundred cities
nationwide, but New York’s was, appropriately, the biggest Besides
the host agency, the FBI, full time federal participants included the
U.S Marshals Ser vice, the Secret Ser vice, the Bureau of Alcohol, To
bacco, and Firearms, the Diplomatic Security Ser vice, Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, the Internal Revenue Ser vice, the army,
the Naval Criminal Investigative Ser vice, and more than a dozen
others, in addition to state and local law enforcement departments
Such task forces are often derogatorily referred to as “alpha
bet soup,” due to the large number of acronyms To Fisk’s eyes, the
JTTF was worse It was alphabet, minestrone, potato leek, French
onion, clam chowder, gumbo, and Scotch broth many great tastes
that did not belong on the same menu
Fisk’s department, the Intelligence Division, was not part of
the JTTF It functioned as a separate intelligence gathering agency
within the New York Police Department He was here as little more
than a courtesy
Fisk shifted his weight off his hurt ankle, leaning against the
wall behind a liaison from the Postal Inspection Ser vice At the head
of the room, Cal Dunphy, the current top FBI special agent assigned
to the JTTF, was bald by choice, his broad jaw forming his head into
a perfect oval His eyes briefly flashed on Fisk when he entered, but
nothing was said Dunphy pulled notes from a file and consulted
them through the lenses of his rimless eyeglasses
“We’re in his car and on his phone We’re in his laptop Mr Shah
is moving with full confidence, and yet has no idea that we’ve got a
flashing beacon on his back, bright and strong.”
The FBI and Intel had had many operational differences of opin
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ion in the past The chief source of friction was their shared jurisdic
tion: a good old fashioned turf battle Two well financed ops groups
with similar but not identical agendas, going toe to toe in the great
est and most targeted city in the world And neither side had either
margin or tolerance for error
They did not work well together Recently, and too often, they had stepped on each other’s toes, compromising the other’s investi
gation Various attempts had been made at improving communica
tion and coordination, but nothing altered the fact that they were
two dogs fighting over the same piece of meat
So each agency kept the other at arm’s length The FBI had Shah all to itself in Denver Now Shah was in the Big Apple, on Intel’s ter
rain They had learned enough from the mistakes of the past to es
tablish a baseline of coordination, resulting in Fisk’s presence at this
briefing But that didn’t mean they were suddenly on the same page
As Dunphy went on, it was clear to Fisk that the FBI was merely going through the motions They were sharing the results of their
surveillance info but not the sources They wanted point on Shah
They certainly didn’t want Intel tracking him independently
A couple of different liaisons asked questions that were intended
to make them appear smart and involved, but without any true in
terest in moving the issue forward Groupthink Fisk saw Dunphy
glance his way Dunphy, to his credit, knew Fisk wasn’t going to let
this ride
Fisk stuck out his hand, as though hailing this train that was going around in circles “This whole thing makes me itchy,” he said
“I don’t like it He’s here now Right in the city We know what he’s
got We know what he’s here for I think letting him dangle like this
is too goddamn risky You say you’re confident of his timeline— ”
“We’ve got three days, Fisk.”
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“Having a GPS tag on a fox who’s already in the henhouse
doesn’t reassure me much.”
Dunphy all but sighed “Nothing would reassure you, Fisk.”
“Grabbing him now would.”
“And give up three critical days of intelligence gathering? Who
knows what we can get from this guy? This is crux time Invaluable
This is the fruit at the bottom, Fisk The sweet stuff I understand
your skittishness, but we’re holding a strong hand here— ”
“It’s not skittishness; it’s common sense You’re telling me this
guy is on a controlled burn I’ve seen those things get out of hand
many times All it takes is a sudden shift in the wind.”
Dunphy smiled Fisk knew what that smile meant He saw par
ents use it on their kids in the park “We’ve got the best meteorolo
gists in the business.”
“Predicting the weather is not the same as making it rain,” said
Fisk
The FBI had conducted various undercover terror stings since
the dawn of domestic terrorism For every terror plot that arose
organically, which is to say without domestic law enforcement
interference— the underwear bomber in a jetliner over Detroit, or
the planned attack on Fort Dix, New Jersey— two others originated
with the prodding of undercover federal agents Not unlike actual
terror cell leaders, they radicalized vulnerable Muslim suspects by
fomenting anti American dissent and supplying the conspirators
with dummy materials, such as fake C 4 explosive or harmless blast
ing caps These paper conspiracies were then passed off as major law
enforcement victories, vanquished threats to homeland security But
it was no exaggeration to say that the FBI had instigated more terror
plots in the United States since 9/11 than Al Qaeda
Fisk continued, “My concern is that everyone is on board with
your plan— except the terrorist himself.”
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“Noted,” said Dunphy, pissed off now, and finished with Fisk
“Anybody else?”
Fisk had heard enough One of the pleasures of not being be
holden to the JTTF was the ability to walk out of a meeting— or
hobble, which was just what Fisk did