FBI HOUSE
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Sunday evening
So show me how you make pizza as good as your mom’s.”
Cal issued the challenge, Kelly punched him in the arm and told him he better be willing to help if he wanted any, and Sherlock shook her head at both of them and took herself and her cell off to the living room to speak to Dillon and Sean.
Cal unloaded the grocery bags while Kelly looked around the kitchen for what she needed: a big square cookie sheet that would make do as a pizza pan, and bowls for dough and sauce. She’d forgotten to buy yeast, but she found an ancient packet she prayed was alive enough to make the dough rise. The kitchen was vintage 1950s, tired, its cabinets saggy, but thankfully the oven worked and there was enough room for them to move around each other. He’d set the table while she mixed up the pizza dough, listening to her hum the Harry Potter theme. Then they’d chatted while waiting for the dough to rise. “Hey, Giusti, you ever get yourself hitched?”
“Yeah, for about five minutes. He was—still is—a big professor at Berkeley, probably a department head by now, very likely still spouting that America is bad, you know the type. I can hear him telling the students that the bombing of Saint Pat’s was all our fault, that we deserved it.
“The happiest moment of that marriage was when the divorce came through.” She stopped tossing the pizza dough to wipe her nose, leaving a streak of flour. “I’ll never forget the call I got from my cowboy uncle in Casper, Wyoming. When I told him, he yelled ‘Yehaw!’ I remember wanting to yell that, too. When I think of him now, I think he deserves a nice stay at a Siberian gulag.” She moved to the stove to stir the sauce, the smell making Cal’s mouth water. “We’re going to make what my mom calls the carnivore’s delight—sausage, hamburger, and a surprise: small hunks of ham artfully hidden beneath some artichokes and tomatoes. Your turn. You ever take the plunge? Any ex-wives in the closet?”
“Once, when I was a green lad, new at the FBI and working my butt off in the Philadelphia office. She left me for her country-club golf pro, who had a lot of time to work on her swing. I hear they’ve got a couple of kids and he’s doing well on the pro circuit. Actually, Mandy’s nice, I’m glad she’s happy, so I don’t wish any diseases on her.” He clasped his hands over his belly, closed his eyes. “I’ve come to believe life is a crapshoot. People come into your life, some good, some bad.” He straightened, breathed in the aroma of the pizza sauce. “The trick is to know when you’ve met a good one, and not let them go.”
She eyed him, said slowly, “That’s pretty much what I think, now that I’m at least a mature adult. The problem is there isn’t much time for us to find a good one, is there?” She waved her hand. “We’re usually up to our eyeballs in something. People depend on us—never, it seems, the other way around.”
“There’s always time, Kelly. I mean, here we are, and we’re making your mama’s pizza together, rubbing along nicely, don’t you think?” He watched her arrange the meat and artichokes on top of the sauce.
She stepped back. “What do you think?”
“You can never have too much sausage,” Cal said. He sliced another half-dozen circles of sweet Italian sausage and artistically laid them on top of the big rectangular pizza.
“You’re an artist,” she said, grinning at the smiley face he’d made, and they both slid it into the oven. “Wait till that sauce bubbles up and melts the cheese, you’d shoot anyone who gets near your third of that pie.”
While the pizza baked, Kelly checked with the agents guarding the house, parked half a block away. All quiet. Agent Larry Rafferty, the lead of the protection team, told her, “We’re ready for anything.” She phoned Gray Wharton, asked if they’d found Jamil’s family in Algeria. He told her Jamil had been right, they were gone from their home and their town, simply disappeared.
Kelly saw Cal was also on his cell. Was he speaking to his girlfriend in Washington? Was she one of the good ones? Was he going to keep her? She rather hoped not.
Another fifteen minutes before the pizza was done, so Kelly called her mother. She saw that Cal had punched off his cell and he could hear her end of the conversation. “Yes, Mom, Agent McLain and I made the pizza together. He even sliced the artichokes just right to hide the ham. What does he look like? Hmm, well, he’s not all that short, maybe comes to my nose, and the paunch doesn’t show all that much. His hair? Only receding a bit,” and then she ruined it by laughing. “He’s very nice, Mom, and he’s cute; in fact, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers—well, never mind that. Looks like the crust turned out really well. I wish you could smell it, talk about a motive for murder.” She paused, then Cal heard her say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I’m still involved up to my eyebrows in the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral case. It should push me right up to the director’s chair, maybe next year, who knows?” She laughed again. “Love you, Mom. Gotta go. Pizza’s ready.”
“I don’t ever eat crackers in bed.”
“No, I never thought you did,” she said, and then Sherlock stepped into the kitchen, sniffing. “I’ve been smelling it for the past half-hour. Do you know I was ready to kick Sean to the curb—conversationally, at least—and he was in the middle of telling me about his checkers games with his grandmother, in great detail. Oh, my, Kelly, that looks incredible. Mama’s recipe, right?”
“Yes, the same recipe she taught me when I was twelve.”
The house didn’t provide anything as esoteric as wineglasses, so Cal filled three water glasses with Chianti.
Sherlock raised her glass to theirs. “Here’s to our hard work today. I feel like we’re close, it’s only a matter of time. And here’s to Kelly’s mom’s pizza.”
They all sipped their wine.
Sherlock was on a roll. “Look at what we already know: there’s no private plane registered to anyone named Hercule, so it’s either not the Strategist’s real name or the plane is registered to someone else. What good that does us, I’m not certain yet.
“I know we’re going to get another hit soon, maybe on one of those terrorists holding Mrs. Conklin, or one of the handlers who brought them into Boston, or the man who placed the bomb at Saint Patrick’s. None of them can be complete unknowns.”
Cal said, “Maybe you’re onto something, Sherlock. If Hercule isn’t his real name, maybe it’s a nickname.”
Kelly nodded. “Something we can plug in to the mix in the morning. You know, guys, when I was growing up, there always came a time to shut it all down, and that was the time for mangiare, so let’s eat.”
When the three of them were eyeing the empty pan, all wanting one more slice, Cal looked down at his watch. “Okay, after we clean up the kitchen, it’s time for some TV—the BBC, more precisely.”
There might not be wineglasses, but there was a big flat-screen TV, about sixty inches, and Sherlock wondered who’d authorized the big bucks for a TV like that.
Kelly said, “Are you a BBC fan, Cal?”
“It’s as good a way as any to catch up on breaking news on the TGV explosion, and I’d like to hear their take on what’s happened. The world can look like a different place on the BBC than on CNN or FOX. Sometimes you can’t understand everything they’re saying because the Brits tend to swallow their words, when they’re not trying to sound all upper-class and intellectual.” He sat down, pulled off his boots, and raised his stocking feet to the coffee table. He placed his Glock on his thigh and waved to Sherlock and Kelly. “Plenty of room. Come on, Sherlock, it’s too early to go to bed yet. Might as well see if the terrorists have come up with anything new before we black out the house.”
Kelly eyed the ratty brown sofa. It didn’t look comfortable, but Cal, who was sleeping here, would have to make do. “Okay, for a few minutes, then,” Kelly said. Before she sat down next to Cal, she checked that the draperies were tightly closed, the doors dead-bolted, the chains drawn tight and hooked, then pulled the draperies aside for one final look to be sure the agents stationed outside were where they should be. As she settled in next to Cal, the program came on.
The camera zoomed in on a studio where two men sat across from each other, one of them a BBC newscaster Kelly recognized, Roland Atterley. He was hard to miss with his white hair, thick mustache, and magnetic voice. The other was a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, beautifully suited. He seemed to be an Arab, and wasn’t that interesting?
Atterley looked directly into the camera. “I would like to welcome Dr. Samir Basara, professor at the London School of Economics, popular lecturer and writer on what he claims will be the coming economic destabilization of the Middle East. Thank you for being here with us this evening, Dr. Basara.”
In a crisp upper-class British voice, Basara said, “It is my pleasure, Mr. Atterley.”
“Dr. Basara, the terrorist attack on the TGV and the resulting large loss of life, as well as the failed attacks at JFK and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City this past Wednesday, has come as a tremendous shock to the world. Do you believe these attacks were related, though no one group has yet claimed responsibility?”
“Yes, I do. I also believe the failed bombing attempt in New York has only fueled their hatred and resolve.” Dr. Basara turned his head to look into the camera. He was darkly handsome, Kelly saw, and he looked very intense and intelligent. “Unfortunately, I fear these attacks may leave the United States and the Continent and move here to Britain. I believe it possible that Saint Paul’s may be the terrorists’ next target, or Westminster, or some other important symbol of our history. They seem to be targeting whatever they can destroy that we ourselves might see as defining who we are, and that includes our churches. For them, destroying our holy symbols means destroying our civilization itself.” Roland Atterley hadn’t expected Basara to leap to the guts of the situation so quickly, without his expert guidance. He wanted to ask him why an Algerian Muslim would care so much about Western cathedrals, but naturally, he didn’t. He saw Dr. Basara was looking quite comfortable, sitting a bit forward in his chair, resting his hands lightly on its arms. It was time for him to take back control. “If you are right and these attacks continue, the economic consequences might be more far-reaching than the attacks of Nine-Eleven. Dr. Basara, are you concerned your predictions might cause undue alarm, even panic, in this country?”
Basara nodded, his face serious, his demeanor solemn as a hanging judge’s. He had the look of an aesthete, Sherlock thought. “As well it should, Mr. Atterley. No sense tripping all over ourselves to avoid saying the obvious. In the short term, we must tighten our security measures, do our best to find the fanatics responsible. But that is only a partial solution. Much of this hatred is fueled by our own actions, our own omissions. I have argued for years that the key to fighting terrorism is to remove its economic causes, and that means providing more economic opportunities for our own disaffected Muslim minorities, and even more critical, providing far more focused and abundant economic aid to those governments we can work with in the regions of the world that are the wellsprings of this hatred for us.” He looked down at his fisted hand. “Until then, I have no hope we can put all this behind us, that we can, in fact, ever achieve a meaningful and lasting peace.”
There was a moment of stark silence. Roland Atterley cleared his throat but managed not to roll his eyes. “Some, shall I say, of the more enlightened members of our society—”
Cal’s cell buzzed “Born Free,” which got him an incredulous look from Kelly.
“McLain.”
“Savich. Tell me exactly what you guys are up to, Cal, and don’t even think of leaving anything out.”
“We’re hunkered down for the night now in the house the FBI picked out for us in Brooklyn, watching some big-time Arab economist on the BBC expound on why we’re all responsible for the terrorist attacks.” He paused. “Don’t worry, Savich, we ain’t gonna let anything happen to Sherlock tonight. All is good.”
“I’m depending on you, Cal. Keep her safe.”
“Has MAX made any progress on finding Hercule?”
“No luck yet with that name online or on the deep Web as either a moniker or a nickname. We’ll keep trying.”
When Cal punched off, he looked at Sherlock, who’d been waiting for him to hand over his cell. He grinned at her, shook his head. “Your husband only wanted to remind me my neck’s on the line if anything happens to you. So let’s take great care, all right?”
Kelly laughed. “Well, I guess a husband who’s your boss at the FBI is better than a hysterical civilian cursing us for keeping you here, Sherlock. Sorry, Cal, the interview’s over and we missed the big wrap-up. Lights out in five minutes, everyone. Cal, alas, you get the sofa. There are blankets in the hall closet and I even saw a couple of pillows. You can take the bathroom first, Sherlock and I are going to share.”
Showering with a woman brushing her teeth not two feet away was a new experience, but Sherlock really needed that shower. As she washed her hair, she prayed a very simple prayer. Keep me and my family safe.