Dead on Arrival Read online

  So maybe it was his money that caused the Republican czars to place Broderick in the Senate, but the cynics on the Hill, Mahoney included, didn’t think that was the whole story. The cynics thought Broderick had been chosen because of his malleability, meaning that the Republican pooh-bahs would be able to make young Bill dance to whatever tune they felt like playing. Well, it looked like they’d all been wrong about that.

  The cop had almost reached the end of the Mall and was about to make the turn to pass behind the Lincoln Memorial. Just before he did, Mahoney saw the Einstein statue on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences. The statue is bronze and twelve feet tall, and Einstein is seated on a bench in rumpled suit. Children like to climb the statue and sit on Albert’s lap. In the statue, and every picture of Einstein that Mahoney had ever seen, the genius always looked relaxed, like a man who had all the answers – and maybe he did. Mahoney wished he could say the same about himself.

  Radical Muslims – al-Qaeda and its spawn – scared the hell out of people. Governments didn’t seem to be able to stop them. They were always blowing up something, and, when they did, old ladies and little kids were killed. Broderick’s bill, flawed as it was, appealed to a lot of folks because it sounded as if it might make them somewhat safer. And he’d timed it perfectly, coming out with it right after those two pea brains tried to blow up the tunnel.

  The reaction to the bill had been as predictable as old men dying. Hard-core right-wingers thought the man was making good sense. Radical Muslims were indeed a threat, they were the enemy, and they, the non-Muslims, were sick and tired of the government dancing around the issue. At the other extreme were the liberals. The ACLU rose up en masse against Broderick, as if its entire roster had been goosed with a four-foot cattle prod. Broderick, for them, was the most energizing thing to come along since caffeine had been discovered.

  The reaction of Broderick’s fellow politicians was equally predictable. Mahoney and the Democrats denounced him for the devil he was; comparisons to Hitler, McCarthy, and lesser-known demagogues were frequent and loud. Broderick’s own party had to walk a finer line. They couldn’t just scream that the man was a friggin’ nut! They said instead that he had a good point – action was indeed needed, not mere rhetoric – but maybe young Bill, in the heat of the moment, had gone just a little too far. All these politicians, both Republican and Democrat, were surprised when they returned to their offices to find hundreds of e-mails from their constituents telling them to quit being such wimps and get on board Bill Broderick’s train.

  Because his bill was so controversial, Broderick had become a frequent guest on radio and tele vision. Mahoney had noticed that the senator preferred shows where he just got to talk and didn’t have to defend his position, but the producers liked it better when they could pair him up with a liberal opponent. Watching Broderick and a liberal go at it was a lot better than watching two fat girls fighting over an ugly boyfriend on the Maury Povich show.

  One of Broderick’s opponents, on two different telecasts, had been Reza Zarif, a prominent Muslim attorney and now the most famous terrorist in America.

  But still, Mahoney thought, Broderick’s friggin’ bill would have eventually died a quiet death in a Senate committee. People would have calmed down and come to their senses, realizing that the thing was not only horribly xenophobic but fraught with a number of practical problems. Broderick wasn’t just proposing to kick out visiting foreign Muslims. He was also proposing to do background checks on Muslim Americans but had yet to address exactly how one defined such a person. What about ex-Muslims who no longer practiced their faith? What about people married to Muslims? And what about Christians who’d converted to Islam, a category that included a number of high-profile African Americans like the boxer Muhammad Ali, to name one. Not only hadn’t Broderick addressed these small points, he also hadn’t explained to anyone’s satisfaction how his proposal would be paid for or the economic impact on universities and tourism or the likelihood of retaliation from countries who sold us oil. None of these issues had been adequately addressed. But these were just details, Broderick said, and to a degree Mahoney had to admit the man was right. Once Broderick’s proposal had been accepted in concept, the details were small matters for lawyers and accountants and other nitpickers to resolve.

  They were on Independence Avenue now, headed back toward the Capitol, and on the right was the Tidal Basin. Mahoney could never look at the lagoon in front of Jefferson’s memorial without thinking of Ohio Congressman Wilbur Mills, who, in 1974, got drunk one fine night and went frolicking in the Tidal Basin with a stripper named Fanne Foxe. Mahoney had done some dumb things in his cups, but nothing quite that bad.

  Yeah, Broderick and his bill should have faded into the woodwork, but Broderick had two things going for him. The first was that he had supporters and the number was growing. Ads, similar to campaign ads, were now appearing on television, and the most frequent one showed Broderick on the Senate floor making his now famous statement: I’m here to tell you it’s only a matter of if – if nothing changes. One thing Mahoney thought he’d have DeMarco do was find out who was paying for the ads.

  But it was the second thing that was the real problem. When Reza Zarif, son of Mahoney’s old friend, decided to crash a plane into the White House, Broderick became a damn prophet. He was the one who had warned that all Muslims were a threat, including American citizens, and Reza had proven him right.

  ‘Mr Speaker – uh, sir, we’re almost back to the Capitol. Was there anyplace else you wanted to go?’

  ‘No. In fact, drop me off right here, by that hot dog cart over there.’ The cop stopped the car and Mahoney reached out and placed a big paw on the cop’s shoulder. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Dolan, Mr Speaker.’

  ‘You like watchin’ the Redskins get their asses kicked, Dolan?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, you sneak on up to my office later today. There’ll be two tickets waiting for you with a nice lady named Mavis. Being a fan of the Patriots, I’m frankly used to a higher standard of play, but maybe you and the missus will enjoy the view from the owner’s box.’

  5

  He had been in Philadelphia for more than two months, and then two days ago, when he was finally on his way to Cleveland, on to the next target, that man tried to crash his plane into the White House. He’d been walking toward the bus depot when it happened, and he’d just passed a crowd gathered around the window of an electronics store when he heard a woman say, ‘Oh, my God! Not again.’

  He should not have stopped, it was foolish to have done so, but he did. He looked at the enormous television in the window of the store and saw a small plane flying; then, an instant later, he saw the plane explode and a military jet fly through the ball of flame and smoke where the plane had been. The caption at the bottom of the television screen read, ‘Katie, we don’t know who was flying the plane at this time. One high-ranking official at the Pentagon, who we can’t name, said the pilot was a well-known Muslim attorney, but we have not been able to confirm that. What we do know is that the man appeared to be trying to crash his plane, a Cessna, into the White House. The Cessna was shot down by Air National Guard pilots flying F-Sixteen Falcons, and the president was evacuated from the White House only minutes before the plane was destroyed.’

  As he had stood there looking at the huge television set, he became aware that people were turning and beginning to stare at him, so he had lowered his head and continued on his way, trying to remain calm. Someone in the crowd had called out to him, but he’d kept walking.

  He had decided immediately that it would be too risky to go to the bus depot that day. People would be too vigilant. So he had returned to the safe house where he’d been staying since the debacle of the Baltimore tunnel. Once inside, he had turned on the television and listened to the news reports, realizing as he listened that he was going to have to postpone going to Cleveland for a few days, maybe longer,
because of what had just happened.

  He had only God to thank that he was not at that moment in a jail cell being tortured. He had left the garage in Baltimore that night to make a phone call, a call from a public phone booth, and had difficulty finding a working phone in a country inhabited by animals. And then he had gotten lost because he didn’t know the city very well. Had it not been for making a wrong turn, he too would have been in the garage when the FBI blasted their way in. But God saved him. Praise be to God.

  He knew from subsequent news reports how the two fools had been caught. He’d told them to buy the ammonium nitrate in small batches, very small batches, but for whatever reason – laziness, recklessness, stupidity – they had purchased enough fertilizer in one place to draw suspicion upon themselves. Worse yet, he had been identified.

  When he had fled Baltimore he had gone to the home of a devout couple in Philadelphia. His intent had been to stay there only a week, two at the most, by which time he thought it would be safe to travel. But then the fools told the FBI about his artificial leg, and the next thing he knew there was a grainy, barely recognizable photograph of him in the newspapers. So he had cut his hair and shaved his beard and stayed in the basement for two months. But it hadn’t been a total waste of time; while he was in hiding he learned more about the boy in Cleveland and about another boy, this one in Sante Fe. And he learned much more about the next objective.

  The Internet truly would set the world free.

  The amazing thing about the incident in Baltimore had been the reaction of this senator, this William Broderick. It was exactly the sort of reaction they had wanted, but he had never expected it when the attack on the tunnel had failed. But now, because of what this lawyer had done, there was talk of some law being passed that would cause even more discontent among the faithful in this country.

  They were truly blessed.

  What he didn’t know was if any of his brethren had helped the lawyer. He knew he was not the only one of his kind in this country, so it was possible that the leader of another cell had recruited the man. But the lawyer was not the type he himself would have selected; he was too old, too well educated, and, most important, he seemed too entrenched in American society, not a devout Muslim at all. So maybe it was as their FBI had said – the man had just gone insane because of all that had happened to him – but that didn’t strike him as sounding right either.

  Whatever the case, the lawyer had helped them, and this senator – he was helping them even more.

  6

  DeMarco had learned long ago that working for John Mahoney was never simple.

  The simple thing would have been for Mahoney to call the FBI, ask his questions about Reza Zarif, and then swear the Bureau to secrecy if he was worried about the press. But no, that would have been simple. And straightforward.

  Mahoney had never done anything straightforward in his life.

  But if Mahoney’s character had been different he wouldn’t have employed DeMarco, a man with an office in the subbasement of the Capitol, a space a long way from the speaker’s realm in terms of both distance and stature. DeMarco’s family history – the fact that his father had worked for the mob – was not something a politician preferred on an employee’s résumé. DeMarco’s lineage, however, was not the only reason he worked where he did. The other reason was that Mahoney liked having a man on his staff who wasn’t really on his staff.

  No organizational chart showed that the speaker employed DeMarco, because this provided Mahoney that ever-important political advantage known as deniability. For example, because it was DeMarco who brought Mahoney envelopes stuffed with cash, Mahoney could honestly deny ever having met with the envelope stuffer, should the need arise. DeMarco was the guy, in other words, that Mahoney used when he wanted something done but didn’t want his fat fingerprints, literally or otherwise, found at the scene. And if DeMarco was ever caught doing something illegal, John Mahoney could, and would, deny that DeMarco worked for him.

  DeMarco could understand, of course, why Mahoney had no desire for the press to know of his relationship to the Zarif family – that he was, as Mahoney had phrased it, a lifelong friend of a man whose son ‘tried to park a plane on the president’s desk.’ DeMarco figured, however, that the news guys would have to dig pretty hard to connect Mahoney to Ali Zarif.

  Ali was an Iranian immigrant who had come to this country when he was ten and had known Mahoney from the time they were teenagers. Mahoney had been the catcher on his high school baseball team, and Ali Zarif had pitched. How the young Iranian had learned to throw a curve ball was but another legend of the American melting pot.

  In his twenties, Ali leased a space near Boston’s Quincy Market and began to sell rugs. Persian rugs, Chinese rugs, Indian rugs. He sold beautiful, expensive rugs. Forty years later, he owned two other stores in the Boston area. When his friend John Mahoney made his first run for Congress those many years ago, Ali helped with the young politician’s campaign, registered his fellow Muslims to vote – and they all voted for John Mahoney. But Ali was just a successful businessman and not a big-name donor or a guy who craved the spotlight. Unless the press discovered that Hassan Zarif had visited Mahoney – or became aware that the floors of Mahoney’s Boston home were covered with Ali’s rugs – Mahoney’s friendship with Ali would most likely remain hidden from the media.

  Regarding Reza Zarif, DeMarco decided that before he talked to the Bureau or anyone else, he needed to do a little preliminary research. And this meant bending over and picking from the stack of newspapers on the floor next to his desk the last two days’ editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. He’d read the articles about Reza before, but when he’d read them the first time he’d just been another shocked citizen and not a man assigned to uncover the reasons behind a terrorist act.

  As he hated to work in his windowless office, DeMarco decided to accomplish his research on Reza in more pleasant surroundings: the Hawk and Dove, a Capitol Hill bar that had been in business almost as long as politicians had been taking bribes. He plopped down onto a bar stool, greeted the barman, and ordered a martini. He had discovered that the first martini of the day sharpened his mental powers; the martinis that followed tended to have the opposite effect. Drink in hand, he then spread open the papers to read for a second time what all the Pulitzer Prize winners had to say about Reza.

  There was no question that he was flying the plane that the Air National Guard had blown out of the sky two days ago. The plane had been co-owned by Reza and three other lawyers, the other men all white Christians. The morning he attacked the White House, Reza had been seen by two people at the Stafford airfield who had known him for five and seven years respectively, and one of those men had seen Reza climb into the cockpit of the Cessna.

  Ten minutes after the F-16 pilot had identified the tail numbers on the Cessna, FBI agents had been dispatched to Reza’s home in Arlington. Inside the house they found Reza’s wife and two children – a boy of eight and a girl of eleven – all dead. They’d each been shot once in the head with a .9mm automatic that had been found sitting in the middle of the Zarifs’ dining room table like some sort of ugly lethal centerpiece. Reza’s fingerprints were on the gun.

  One sentence in the article said that the FBI had found a document in Reza’s house that indicated he had ties to al-Qaeda, but that’s all the FBI would tell the press. The Bureau claimed that the specifics of the document were classified because disclosing them could affect other ongoing operations, which was a fairly standard explanation used by the feds when they wanted to keep something from the media. Whether the explanation was true or not was a different issue.

  Had Reza Zarif been an Iranian national who had slipped into the country using a false passport, his actions might have made some sense: just another radical Muslim who had decided to strike a blow for his brethren in the jihad and sacrificed himself and his family in the process. But that’s not who Reza Zarif had been.

  Reza and hi
s brother, Hassan, were Americans, born and raised in Boston. They attended public schools, and then Reza went to Boston College where he obtained a law degree. After law school, he moved to Washington, worked briefly for the Department of Justice, then established a small private practice near his home in Arlington, Virginia. A large number of his clients had been of Middle Eastern descent and he dealt mostly with mundane matters related to wills, taxes, and property. And he prospered.

  But all this changed with 9/11. Reza became a fervent advocate for American Muslims. He was concerned that, in the backlash following the attacks, Muslims would suffer the same fate as Japanese Americans had following Pearl Harbor. He objected loudly and publicly to the Patriot Act and defended several Muslims, all American citizens, who had been detained or incarcerated for allegedly having terrorist connections.

  Reza was handsome and articulate and passionate. He became an occasional guest on NOW and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and when Senator William Broderick made his famous speech, Reza became one of his most vocal opponents. Two weeks before his death, Reza appeared with Broderick on Meet the Press – and he lost it. He absolutely lost it.

  The morning of the show he’d flown in from New York, where he had been defending a client, and had received disproportionate attention from airport security personnel. So when he arrived on Russert’s set he was already angry. For a while he maintained his composure with Broderick, but then Broderick made a remark about how performing background checks on American Muslims seemed like a pretty sensible thing to do, them being the people most likely to be terrorists. It wasn’t so much what Broderick said as the way he said it, as if it was no big deal – and Reza just went nuts. He rose up from his chair, pointed his finger at Broderick’s pale face, and screamed at him for several minutes, spittle flying from his mouth. Russert cut to a commercial when the fireworks died down, and when the show resumed Reza had left the set – which was too bad, as Broderick was then able to use the remaining air time to give his standard pitch.