The Hammer of God

“So that’s how you stayed employed?”

“No. It’s how I got fired. Actually, on that last page? He rewrote the end to say, ‘This entire report wouldn’t be possible without the ingenuity and determination of desk assistant Peter Remo.’”

“Nice touch.” Bill said.

“Actually, not really. When the head weenie in personnel read that about me, he checked his list and found that I was nobody’s kid and fired me the next day. A week later, I was hired back.”

“Great story Peter, but what the hell’s that got to do with why you called me?”

“What happens then is Professor Brodenchy sets up his committee and gets Kasiko to be the Sergeant of Arms. Around the holidays a year or so after I started working there, Kasiko invites me to his home for a little Christmas Dinner…”

CHAPTER FIVE

Roll Of Quarters

Joey Palumbo didn’t like off the record meetings. They ran against his Quantico cut, by-the-book, grain. His reluctance to meet with Agent Burrell, “out of the house,” was hard to hide as she approached the bench in the park located at the beginning of Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Palumbo.”

It still stung that he’d lost the SAC salutation ahead of his name. “No problem, Special Agent Burrell.”

“Brooke, please.”

“Brooke. So what’s on your mind?”

“Aliz Berniham.”

“Nice job processing him. That was a career-making collar if there ever was one.”

“NYPD SWAT did the hard cheese. Your guy Hiccock’s magic network zipped the I.D.s in record time. I just mopped up.”

“Still, it goes on your dance card.”

“I’ve been dancing with the good Sheik, and I got a bad feeling.”

“Did you report this?”

“I don’t report feelings because, being FFBI, they still don’t rise to the same level of male intuition. “

“So then unofficially give me the Female FBI intuition.”

“Something big is in play… I don’t know what… I just know that this creep knows that another shoe is going to drop and drop big.”

“How or what can SCIAD do to help you?”

“I didn’t want to meet with you because of SCIAD, sir.”

That surprised Joey.

“I wanted to talk with you because you were a good agent. How can I stop whatever this is that I think is going on?”

“He’s been in ‘iso,’ right?”

“From the moment he came conscious, it’s been FBI only.”

“So he couldn’t have any current info.”

“Exactly, so this must be a long range plan.”

“Like 9-11!” Joey said.

“That’s my fear.”

“But, Brooke, you stopped him and his plot, which at the end of the day could have killed 80 to 100 million Americans. That isn’t chopped liver. That was a big shoe, too! Maybe the one and only, not a pair.”

“See, that’s part of my… Okay, let’s say you were him, the mastermind of the biggest bio-plot ever, and it failed like it did. You would think that was it; the big wad had just got shot. Wouldn’t you be defeated, introspective, hell, angry! Yet …”

“Your other shoe feeling?”

“See why I didn’t want to send this up the chain?”

“It could just be him in denial?”

“He’s too cool. Too smart.”

“Yeah, we forget that despite the popular opinion, most of these terrorists are college-educated, most with degrees, and all middle-to-upper class.”

“This guy talks like he has two degrees in science, but we can’t track him back further than 15 years.”

“Can you work him?”

“Not in this environment. The director is yielding to public pressure, so the Sheik has had uninterrupted sleep at night, in climate control comfort, without any discomfort caused by his detainment. He is allowed to pray five times a day and he has weekly, monitored visits with a holy man.”

“So you have no interrogation leverage?”

“None. That’s why I have been flat out straight with him on how his life can get even better.”

“Get better? What’s the death toll estimate at, right now? 26,000 additional deaths?” Joey curtailed his instinct to slam down on the park bench with his fist.

“Around that number. Thousands needlessly killed just because this asshole decides to infect America.”

“And because those deaths are statistically within the range of possible deaths from influenza, a really bad influenza, there isn’t the same hatred of this bag of excrement that there would be if he poisoned the water supply of a small town, or blew up 80 airliners to reach 26,000 dead.” Joey was getting less objective and more agitated as he focused on the kid glove, politically correct, religiously sensitive handling of this mass murdering scumbag.

“So he gets the royal treatment, while his ‘comrades in alms’ don’t think twice about cutting off Daniel Pearl’s head. Makes me wanna go in there and introduce him to flesh-eating bacteria. Slow, flesh-eating bacteria.”