The Hiding Place Read online

  “The usual polarities came into play. Hezbollah received support from Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries, while the United States backed Israel’s right to self-defense. More generally, however, the fighting was met with widespread international protests, and there was particular outrage over Israel’s targeting of civilian sites.”

  “What was somewhat surprising,” Linder said, “was that the United States was quick to fulfill requests from Israel for military weaponry in the form of satellite and laser-guided bombs that were later used on Lebanese civilian targets. In fact, the Bush administration rejected calls for a cease-fire during the early days of the conflict.

  “Many Lebanese Americans were angered by the U.S.’s willingness to support the apparent targeting of Lebanese civilians. There were protest demonstrations in Washington, although small and not highly publicized. But the military conflict ended relatively quickly—the thirty-four-day war, they called it—and, for most people, life returned to normal.”

  “But not for Amir Massoud,” I said, hazarding a guess.

  “No,” Remy responded. “Because his mother, who’d returned to Lebanon several years before, was among the civilian casualties.”

  Linder shook his head. “The loss of a loved one is never easy,” he said. “But the loss of a loved one at the hands of a government that you’ve adopted as your own …”

  “Such motivations are the building blocks of revenge,” Remy observed. He lifted his cup toward his lips, but paused to regard me before taking a sip. “You think something like that is easily forgiven, Dr. Shields?”

  “No,” I answered, allowing my gaze to fall to the table. From the back of the restaurant, I could hear the clink of silverware being unloaded from the dishwasher.

  “Planning an act of revenge on the U.S. government and its people takes time, intelligence, coordination, and patience,” Linder said. “The big things—bombings and the like—often require funding and support, and for that Amir Massoud turned to a small terrorist cell here in the United States who call themselves Al-Termir.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine they’d be too thrilled with his sexual orientation,” I noted. “Isn’t homosexuality a capital offense in many Arab nations?”

  “Technically,” Remy advised me, “he wouldn’t have been considered Arab. Amir was born in the United States and was a U.S. citizen. He wasn’t even Muslim. But even if he was, he’d expressed hostility toward the United States and a willingness to act on it. He would have been seen as an ally to be exploited for a greater good.”

  “So he made contact with this organization,” I said, “and then?”

  “And then he waited,” Linder replied, “and planned.”

  Remy shifted in his seat. “During that time, Amir graduated from G.W. and pursued graduate training in civil engineering, which means he understood how to design and build large structures, but also knew the critical points in which—with the right impetus—they would fail. The goals of a domestic terrorist attack are to maximize casualties, to make the rescue of survivors difficult, and to make some sort of political statement. He lived close to D.C., and selecting any public or government target would have fulfilled the third objective. Satisfying the first two objectives, however, are a little more difficult. People move from place to place, which makes timing tricky. Large events bring lots of people together, but security is tight and rescue personnel are nearby. Duffel bags and backpacks are checked at the gates, and getting something—an explosive device, for example—into position and then getting out of there before the thing goes off poses certain technical challenges.

  “So what you’re looking for is a highly trafficked area with easy access and egress, lots of commotion to obscure any conspicuous activity and to contribute to the ensuing panic, and the type of structure that will fail so catastrophically that emergency rescue providers will encounter monumental obstacles in the process of finding and rescuing any survivors.”

  “Terrorism 101,” I commented, and felt a chill slide down my spine.

  “The Washington Metro is the second-busiest rapid public transportation system in the United States, second only to New York City’s subway. On any given weekday, it moves almost three-quarters of a million passengers and has numerous strategic stops throughout the nation’s capital. The busiest stop, with almost thirty-three thousand passengers per day, is Union Station along the Red Line. The subterranean portion of the facility is two levels housing twenty-nine tracks shared by Amtrak, MARC train, and Virginia Railway Express. The station itself houses shops, restaurants, and eateries and is a major tourist destination. The U.S. Supreme Court Building is less than a mile away.”

  I could feel my stomach sinking at the thought of it—all those people moving about the station. An elderly couple on their first trip to the District, a class of fourth graders arriving on a field trip, mothers pushing infants in strollers …

  “Now, cases regarding acts of domestic terrorism are the FBI’s jurisdiction,” Remy said, “but intelligence and data gathering, identifying threats and tracking them—that’s the CIA’s strong suit. And Jason Edwards’s sister spearheaded that investigation.”

  “It was clearly a conflict of interest,” Linder pointed out. “Once they uncovered Amir’s ties to Al-Termir and identified him as a potential threat, she should’ve bowed out. Because she was compromised—too close to it—and that’s when mistakes get made.”

  Remy toyed with his napkin for a moment, sliding the material between his thumb and index finger. “CIA agents, by and large, are conspiracy theorists at heart. It’s part of their training, their culture. And once they latch on to something, it’s hard for them to let go. They want to see it through to the end.” He glanced at his partner, then turned his attention back to me. “Some of us in the bureau—myself included—had the feeling she was becoming a liability. I find it difficult to believe she never divulged information to her brother. From what I understand of their relationship, she was very protective of him.”

  I thought of Jason’s sister at the age of seventeen, stepping forward defiantly amid the small gang of her brother’s tormentors, the heavy whisper of the bat beginning its swing.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think she was.”

  “I can imagine the conversation, though,” Linder said, leaning forward. “Jason’s sister comes to him with something like that, with allegations against his domestic partner. I can imagine the resistance, the denial, even the anger Jason must have felt. How receptive do you think he was to those accusations?”

  “Not very,” I replied, and Linder nodded his agreement.

  “You know, I think you’re right,” he said. “I think he probably stood up for Amir, told her to back off, to leave them alone, to go sniff up some other tree.”

  “And what do you think Ms. Edwards said to that?” Remy asked.

  I considered it. “I don’t know for sure, but my gut tells me she was not the type of person to be easily dissuaded.”

  “Your gut is correct,” Linder responded. He looked up toward the door of the restaurant, as if he’d heard a noise and expected someone to walk in, to intrude on our privacy. No one did.

  “It’s unclear whether Jason told Amir about his conversation with his sister, although I suspect that he did. You cannot make those types of remarks to one person in a relationship without the other finding out. If he did, it’s also unclear whether Amir would have disclosed that information to the extremist group he was working with. They would’ve dropped him, I’m sure—abandoned the entire plan and scattered like bits of ash in the wind. They might have even killed him, since he’d be perceived as a loose end who might cooperate with the CIA and FBI in exchange for his freedom. While they were at it, they probably would have gone for Jason, too. They would’ve assumed that Jason knew what Amir knew, and that was too much information to risk surrendering to the hands of the U.S. government.”

  “Are you sure he was guilty?” I asked. “You know this for a fact?” />
  “He was guilty, yes,” Remy told me. “Guilty of conspiracy to commit murder—to perpetrate a terrorist act on the United States. According to Ms. Edwards, Amir Massoud admitted as much to her in the doorway of his town house on the evening of May 12, 2010.” Special Agent Remy paused for the span of a single heartbeat—I felt it go clunk in my chest—before adding, “Just before she killed him.”

  Chapter 23

  I sat in my apartment that night, my mind turning over the rest of our conversation again and again like a flat stone in my hand. With each turn the surface appeared both familiar and alien. I could understand the basic facts of the story as Linder and Remy had presented them, but I couldn’t make sense of what they meant, or how to proceed from here. There was a struggle between Amir and Agent Edwards, Remy had told me, accusations and denials building toward violence. We’ve been able to piece together details of that night from interviews with those involved.

  Amir had grabbed her, the report stated, his fingertips digging into the sinewy base of her neck just above the collarbones. She’d been caught off guard, stumbling and falling backward as the two of them crashed to the floor in their locked embrace, the full force of the man’s weight landing on top of her and punching the breath from her lungs. She’d tried to go for her service weapon, slung high in its shoulder holster under her left arm, but couldn’t get to it, couldn’t bring her right arm across her body with his weight on top of her. The world around her began to blanch, she’d said in her statement, the man’s clenched, livid face floating above her like a balloon tethered to his shoulders, and she’d realized she was on the brink of unconsciousness. But there was a tactical knife she carried in a sheath affixed to her belt. She’d been able to arch her torso slightly, to work her right arm into the space created by the curve of her spine. Her fingers had found the small dark handle and she’d delivered the knife from its leather casing, her arm completing a half circle and driving the weapon home between the fifth and sixth ribs.

  The fingers had loosened their hold, Amir’s body going limp on top of her, and she’d lain there taking deep whooping gasps of air as the color of the room fell back into place, and with it, the image of her brother—the ovals of his eyes and mouth wide with horror, his clawed hands filling the slim hollows of his cheeks, the silent scream only she could hear—looking down on the two of them. As gently as she was able, she’d pushed Amir’s body off her and to the side. She stood up, still gasping for breath and leaning over at the waist, a bloody palm leaving its mark on the right leg of her jeans as she braced herself with her hands. Jason fell to his knees, turning the man over in his arms. He grasped the tiny hole in the fabric of Amir’s shirt and tore open the blood-matted clothing, pressed his hands against the wound. “Help me hold pressure!” he pleaded, but his sister knelt down beside him, taking hold of Jason’s forearms as she shook her head slowly from one side to the other.

  “He’s gone, Jason.”

  “No. He’s not gone. Help me move him to the couch. We’ve got to—”

  “He’s dead,” she said, the words tasting like cardboard in her mouth. Amir Massoud had conspired to carry out a terrorist attack on American citizens. Hundreds of innocent people would have died, their bodies blown apart or crushed beneath tons of rubble, bloody hands sticking out from the debris. She had tracked him, photographed him in D.C.’s Dupont Circle conversing with two militant extremists from Al-Termir, and when she had finally confronted him with the accusation, Amir had tried to kill her. And if he’d been successful, what would he have done with Jason? Would he have killed him, too? Yes, she thought. There would have been no other choice.

  “What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Jason cried out, his face turned away from her. And the answer to that question, of course, was that she had managed to save herself and, in doing so, to save the life of her brother and countless others. And now one person lay dead in this room instead of two. She’d admitted in her formal report of the incident that she did not regret the action she’d been forced to take in order to remain on the living side of that equation. And yet …

  And yet her brother had loved him. He’d trusted him, confided in him, had established a life with him. And now … now Jason would mourn him. And for that—for the suffering Jason would endure in sporadic waves over the many years ahead—she was intensely sorry.

  She’d fished her cell phone from her pocket, dialed a number.

  “Are you calling an ambulance?” he’d asked, his face puffy but still hopeful, and the innocence of his question must have broken her heart.

  “No,” she said. “I’m calling my field office. We’ll need a cleaner.”

  “A cleaner?”

  “Someone to … yes, this is Edwards,” she said into the phone, her voice becoming more formal as she rattled off her ID number. The conversation lasted less than thirty seconds, and when she was done she turned to study him, to gauge how quickly he was adjusting to the situation.

  “We should call for an ambulance,” Jason reiterated.

  “No,” she said. “We stand right here and wait. Don’t touch anything.”

  He got to his feet and they stood facing each other, hands hanging limply at their sides as the minutes ticked away. Outside, the night was quiet, except for the usual sounds of the city: a car passing by along the residential street; a dog barking; a siren somewhere far off in the distance.

  “I’m sorry, Jason,” she said. “I really am.”

  He nodded slightly—a subtle downward tilt of his chin as he stood there reeling in the shock of the past few minutes—signaling his acknowledgment of what she’d said, but not his forgiveness. Perhaps never his forgiveness.

  Twenty minutes later, a car and a dark van pulled up out front, the wheels barely rolling to a stop before their drivers were out of the vehicles and walking up the front steps. The front door opened and they walked in—no knock, no introductions.

  “Twenty-eight minutes ago,” she advised the men.

  The cleaner—a short, neatly dressed man whose thinning hair was combed straight back from his forehead—stood perfectly still, his eyes taking in the scene in one brief sweep and then focusing on the larger man with whom he’d arrived.

  “Options,” the big man said, his voice deep and stern.

  “We call this in to local authorities, reporting it just as it happened,” Jason’s sister replied, her words crisp and disciplined, as if she were reciting the answer to a homework assignment to her teacher. In a way, perhaps she was.

  “No,” the man said. “Any word that a CIA agent was involved will blow this entire investigation wide open. Al-Termir will disappear without a trace, and the agent we have on the inside will need to be pulled immediately. We’re talking years of wasted work.”

  “Second option,” she said, not bothering to explain or justify the unauthorized confrontation. She would be grilled about the incident later, but for now time was short and decisions had to be made. “The suspect disappears. No explanation to his partner or contact with his family—just picks up and leaves town. Maybe he wants out. Maybe he goes into the witness protection program. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter. He disappears and is never heard from again.”

  “Third option,” the man said, wanting everything on the table.

  “This was a home invasion. A struggle. Mr. Massoud was killed. The perpetrator got away.”

  “Both the second and third options will involve investigations by local PD. They’ll suspect Mr. Edwards.” He pointed to her brother. “They’ll push him hard, try to get him to crack. You think he can hold up to that and keep his story straight?”

  All three of them looked at Jason, measuring him with their eyes. It was the first time the two men had acknowledged his presence. Jason met their gaze with resentment and indignation—the three of them standing in his house, deciding what should be done, as if the matter barely concerned him.

  “Fourth option,” Jason said. “I tell the police I killed him.”
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br />   “No,” his sister replied at once. “Absolutely not.”

  The big man held up a hand, silencing her. “Wait,” he said. “I want to hear what Mr. Edwards has to say.”

  Jason’s face was pale and shell-shocked. His hands and clothes were caked with blood, his knees slouching inward, threatening to buckle beneath him. He was bent forward slightly at the waist, as if he’d been kicked hard in the crotch and was standing there during that split second it took for his brain to register what his body already knew. He had the look of a beaten man, one who realizes that nothing he does from this moment onward will ever change that. Only his eyes were alive, peering out at the three of them with sufficient intelligence to demonstrate that he was still present in the moment, that he was still capable of understanding the choices in front of him. The voice that spoke up now came from that part of him. It was quiet and wavered a bit. But it was there in the room and it wanted to be heard.

  “It’s what the police will suspect happened regardless of what I tell them,” he said.

  “And you go to prison for the next couple of decades,” his sister responded. “No, Jason. It’s not an option.”

  The cleaner stared blankly at his superior, awaiting the man’s direction. Neither spoke, but in the brief silence that followed it seemed they had completed the calculations and arrived at the same irrefutable conclusion.

  “You’re not seriously considering this,” she protested, taking a step toward her boss.

  “Yes, I am,” the man said. “He’s right. It’s the option with the least number of moving parts—the simplest and most likely scenario. It’s the most believable explanation.”

  “I won’t agree to it,” she said.

  “You’ll agree to whatever I decide, Agent Edwards.” His voice remained calm, but contained an inherent menace, the tone of a man who will not be crossed. He turned back to Jason. “We could offer you certain immunity. In some ways, the judicial system can be easier to manipulate than local law enforcement—if we want to keep our heads down. Once an investigation is completed, once an individual is convicted, the public’s interest is, for the most part, satiated.” The big man nodded to himself, even smiled a bit although it never touched his eyes. “I could get you released within a few years, have your record expunged as if it never happened. We’ve negotiated similar arrangements many times before. If all goes well”—he shrugged, as if it were the simplest of matters—“we could offer you employment with the agency.”