True Faith and Allegiance

Then he turned off the lights in the room, locked the door, and left for the day without even turning off his monitor back at his desk. He wouldn’t leave the country until sometime during the day tomorrow, so he knew he needed to make it appear as if everything was the same as ever, so as not to arouse real suspicion from his coworkers.

After Dalca had climbed into his Porsche, he headed off in the direction of Luca Gabor’s daughter’s house. After that, he would make some emergency preparations, just in case the walls closed in before he had a chance to make a run for it tomorrow.

He had too much riding on the next few hours to leave anything to chance.

As he left the neighborhood, wailing fire trucks passed him by. He thought nothing of those in the building — ARTD wasn’t a concern of his any longer.

Dalca thought of the present, and of the days to come. Even though he was about to give some woman he barely knew the obscene sum of three million dollars, he had to admit it would be money well spent. His original plan to flee Bucharest today a rich man had turned into a plan to flee Bucharest tomorrow a rich man, with the prospect of more riches in his future.

He was more than satisfied with his plan.

55

Adara and Dominic arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport on Saturday afternoon, rented a car, and drove east toward downtown. They booked a room at the Chicago Athletic Association hotel just a few blocks from Lake Michigan, and then immediately climbed back into their rental for the fifteen-minute drive to the Roosevelt Road building that housed the Chicago Division of the FBI and the local branch of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Adara held no classified access, so she dropped Dom off while he waited to meet with a supervisory special agent named David Jeffcoat who’d agreed to brief him on the situation here on the ground. Dom was taken upstairs to the JTTF floor, where he walked by desks manned by high-ranking representatives of most every government law enforcement, emergency management, and intelligence agency in America.

They stepped into an unused office, and Jeffcoat asked Dom about his interest in the case. It was odd, Jeffcoat explained, that Caruso was just a special agent tasked to the D.C. Bureau, but had shown up after a call from the director’s office asking him to be briefed about anything he wanted to know.

Dom said, “I understand the question, Special Agent Jeffcoat, but I can’t go into a lot of details. Suffice it to say I’m just on a fact-finding mission for interested parties in D.C.”

Jeffcoat said, “I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, but some guys were wondering if the fact that your uncle is the President had anything to do with you getting your assignment.”

Dom just shook his head, thinking the man a bit of an ass for his comment. “No, this isn’t a nepotism thing, and I’m not sure there was a right way to suggest that it was.”

The supervisory special agent considered this a moment, then said, “Well, as you can imagine, we’re pretty busy since three of the cell members who went to El Salvador lived around here.”

“Right,” said Dom. “And the fact the killer from Brooklyn flew straight here.”

Jeffcoat said, “We think he might have been passing through.”

“Oh?”

Jeffcoat gave a thorough but rather boilerplate briefing about the JTTF’s operation and setup here in Chicago. Dom was pleased to see the JTTF locally was keenly aware that at least three of the attendees of the Language School came from the area, and that the man from New York traveled to O’Hare, but it was clear to Dom halfway through the briefing that the local authorities didn’t think it likely that any of the ISIS cell members were still in the area.

Dom said, “Why don’t you think Chicago faces any particular threat, especially in light of the fact several cell members have been tied to the area in one respect or another?”

“Look,” the FBI man explained, “the three locals who went to El Sal just flew back into O’Hare because it made sense for them to book roundtrip tickets. We’ve canvassed all the known associates of these three, and nobody has seen or heard of them. We think they’ve gone to ground in some other part of the country. Plus, the guy from the New York attack might be here in the area, but that’s unknown. We’ve spent the past day checking hotels from here to Aurora. We’ve shown pictures around, and have come up with zip. He could be on the West Coast or in Canada by now.

“Chicago doesn’t have any major military bases, it’s not exactly a hub of CIA activity, so there is a dearth of good targets for al-Matari’s men. The D.C. area is a better bet for where to find these guys. You should focus your attention there, or maybe around some big military base somewhere.”

Dom couldn’t argue with the man, although he thought the lack of activity in this area had a significance of its own.

He asked, “Is this top-down thinking around here?”