"Thanks. But how do you know what he's told them?"

"Sometimes that's very difficult," Fernando said, chuckling.

He started to say something else but saw that she had her cellular telephone out and had punched an autodial button.

"Sergeant Schneider, sir," she said a moment later. "I just picked up Mr. Castillo at the airport and we're headed for the Roundhouse. I sent one of the Highway cars out to the arsenal. Mr. Castillo brought some kind of special radio-and a guy to set it up and work it-with him. The antenna has to go someplace where it can be aimed at a satellite. The porch roof of Building 110 will work. Is that okay with you?"

"Whatever he wants, Schneider," Chief Inspector Dutch Kramer could be heard, faintly but clearly. "You want me to call out there and set it up?"

"That would probably be a good idea, sir."

"Okay, done. I'll see you in a couple of minutes."

A security guard waved them through the airport gate.

Betty reached to the dashboard and turned on the flashing lights under the grille and the siren, stepped heavily on the accelerator, then turned her head.

"You were saying, Mr. Lopez?"

"Call me Fernando, please," he replied. "I was wondering why your brother wants to break the Gringo's legs."

"Jesus Christ!" Castillo exclaimed.

There was another momentary meeting of Betty's and Charley's eyes and she shook her head.

Charley said to Dick: "What I'm wondering is what you found out from the undercover cop. Can we get to that, please, Dick?"

"Charley, not only because I also wonder what you've done to annoy Betty's brother, I think you'd better wait and get it straight from the undercover cop. It's pretty weird."

"Give me what you think I can understand," Charley ordered.

"Okay. None of this is confirmed. But I think there's a good chance the guys who stole the airplane have been here in Philadelphia, as mullahs, visiting from Somalia."

"You mean the guys who actually stole the airplane or the guys behind the idea?"

"Maybe both. According to Britton:"

"Britton is the undercover cop?" Castillo interrupted.

"Right. When these characters showed up at Britton's mosque, he reported it. Chief Inspector Kramer took it to the FBI. The names these two guys gave at the mosque didn't mean anything to the FBI, so Kramer got photos of them at the mosque. The FBI got a match and said they were legitimate, they were pilots for Air Yemen and in this country for flight training: some place in Oklahoma."

"Probably my alma mater," Castillo said.

"What?"

"On my graduation leave-remember, Fernando?-for reasons that now seem pretty foolish, I went to Spartan-the Spartan School of Aeronautics; it's been around forever-and got my Airline Transport rating. They train pilots from all over the world; from small airlines that don't have their own facilities. It's in Tulsa."

"Okay," Miller said. "That fits. And according to Britton, it's all over the AAL community that the Liberty Bell's going to be taken out."

"AAL, Dick?" Fernando asked.

"Cop shorthand for African American Lunatics,' " Miller said. "And defined as African American-and some white guys, believe it or not-quote, Muslims, end quote, who are not part of the bona fide Islamic community and who happen to be black."

"I don't think I understand," Fernando confessed.

I know I don't," Miller said. That's why I want Charley to hear all this from Britton. I don't want to say something, imply something, that may not be the case."

"But we have the names-and photographs, you said-of these people?" Castillo asked.

"Photos, probably," Betty Schneider said. "We tend to hang on to photos. I didn't think to ask. But we don't have names."

"Why not?"

"The FBI didn't give them to Chief Kramer, and-when this came up just now-he said if he called down there he was probably going to get the duty officer, who would stall him until the SAC came to work in the morning, so we decided to wait for you."

"Jesus Christ!" Castillo exclaimed. "You said the undercover cop, Britton, is in Homicide. What's that all about, Betty?"

"Why don't we go back to 'Sergeant Schneider'?" she said.

"You mean until this is over?"

"No, that's not what I mean," she said. "The reason Detective Britton is in Homicide is because we picked him-Ali Abd Ar-Raziq-up for questioning in a homicide."

"You're talking about the undercover cop?" Fernando asked.

"Yeah. The AALs like to know where every other AAL is all the time and what they're doing. So when we really have to talk to them-more often when they really have to talk to us-we pick them up, with other unsavory characters."

"Jesus Christ! I wouldn't mind taking on the FBI duty officer as a Secret Service agent, but I can't walk into an FBI office in my uniform! They'd lock me up until-"

He banged his fist on the dashboard.

"We need those damned names!" Castillo said, clearly frustrated.

No one said anything.

"And I don't have any dates or anything," he said after a moment. "Betty, when was this?"

"I'll have to look it up, Mr. Castillo," she said. "And I can't do that until we get to Homicide or out to the arsenal."

"'Mr. Castillo'?" he parroted.

"Yeah. You're 'Mr. Castillo,' and I'm 'Sergeant Schneider.' Okay?"

"Whatever you say, Sergeant Schneider."

"We'll be at the Roundhouse in just a couple of minutes, Mr. Castillo," she said. "We'll deal with it then."

[THREE]

Homicide Bureau

Police Administration Building

8th and Race Streets

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

0225 10 June 2005

Chief Inspector Dutch Kramer was almost visibly of two minds when he saw Major C. G. Castillo in his Class A uniform.

"What's with the uniform?" he asked.

"I never really got out of the stockade, Chief," Castillo said. "They sort of paroled me to the Secret Service."

"So why are you wearing it now?"

"I just came from the stockade," Castillo said. "Most of the guys in there think the Secret Service is a bunch of candy asses."

"And they're right. They're not as bad as the fing FBI, but they also think their sh-"

Kramer remembered gentlemen don't say things like "their shit don't stink" in the presence of ladies, and Betty Schneider was both one hell of a cop and a lady.

"Schneider tell you about what Britton came up with?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I think this is good stuff, Chief," Castillo said. "We'll have to check it out, but if these two at Britton's mosque went to flight school in Oklahoma they probably went to Spartan, in Tulsa. And I know they teach the 727 at Spartan."

"How do you know that?"

"I went there," Castillo said. "But we can't check it out until I get the names. What about their photos? Do you still have them?"

"I had one of my guys go through the files. He brought them over here."

"But no names?"

For an answer, Kramer shook his head and slid a manila folder across his desk-actually, that of the captain commanding the Homicide Bureau-to Castillo. It was labeled, using what looked like a broad-tipped Magic Marker, UNKNOWN MULLAHS 1 amp; 2.

There were perhaps twenty eight-by-ten-inch color photographs in the folder. Some showed the men, wearing robes and loose black hats-the sort of floppy berets favored by mullahs-but with creased trousers and wingtip shoes peeking out the bottoms of the robes, entering and coming out of a building Castillo presumed was the mosque where Britton was working undercover.

They had intelligent faces, and in several photographs-some of those in the folder were blowups of their faces-they were smiling.

Are these the guys?

How the hell can anybody calmly plan to fly an airplane into the ground?

He looked at Chief Inspector Kramer.

"We need their names," he said.