Magnus Jenssen, twenty-six, was a Swedish schoolteacher on a sabbatical, planning to tour the East Coast of the United States by bicycle before running the New York City Marathon in early November. He was sitting up on a gurney in the makeshift examination room, his left wrist in a gel cast, his arm snug in a white muslin sling. He was fair-haired with antifreeze-blue eyes, handsome, fit. “I don’t know why I jumped,” he said, his accent strong but his pronunciation clear. “He had a bomb. Or certainly seemed to at the time. He was hurting the attendant. I saw that trigger device in his hand and it just looked terrifying. That someone could press a button and have that kind of power over me to end my life and everyone around us. It was too much to bear . . . and again, all this in an instant. I really zeroed in on that switch. I locked in on that device and I pounced. Too hard, I guess.” He turned his arm at the elbow, wincing. “This will make it difficult to bicycle. I may have to adjust my travel plans, no?”

Fisk said, “I cracked mine playing basketball a year ago. Six weeks to heal, another four to six for physical therapy, and you’ll be good as new.”

Jenssen nodded warmly, appreciating the encouragement. He had a smile for Gersten as well, but a little different, flirtatious. Fisk couldn’t blame the guy; in fact, he admired his panache. This guy had foiled a terror attack and had a broken wrist to show for it. The media was going to anoint him a hero. He was in for a good weekend in New York that could stretch on for weeks and weeks.

The thirty-two-year-old flight attendant Maggie Sullivan hailed from the shipbuilding village of Georgetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. A white bandage covered the wound on her neck, and she proudly wore a Bangor Police Department sweatshirt. “The Fourth of July weekend,” she said. “Is that what he was thinking?”

“I can’t confirm that,” said Fisk. “But it looks likely.”

“Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do either of you smoke?”

Fisk shook his head. So did Gersten.

“Me neither,” said Maggie. “My dad used to smoke cigars. I kind of want one now. Don’t ask. This is me, post-frazzled.”

Gersten said, “Are you ready for a hero’s welcome?”

“Why not?” said Maggie, smiling, pushing back her short chestnut brown hair. “Damn! I wish Oprah still had her show!” Maggie laughed, a throaty growl with the sudden intake of breath particular to that part of Atlantic Canada. Gersten laughed harder than Maggie did. The flight attendant was easy to like.

“I just wish I had gotten in one really good shot at him,” said Maggie, making a fist and grinding it into the air in front of her. “Right in the nuts.”

Part 5

Eavesdrop

Friday, July 2

Chapter 17

On the flight back to New York, Fisk and Gersten sat shoulder to shoulder. Fisk listened to the unexpurgated initial interrogation of Awaan Abdulraheem, which had been downloaded onto his iPod, while Gersten read the translated transcript on her laptop.

By the time they pulled out their ear buds, both had arrived at the same conclusion.

“This guy is way wrong for this,” Fisk said. “It’s not adding up.”

Gersten nodded. “But what’s it mean?”

Fisk looked out at the lights of New York unrolling below them. “A diversion?” he suggested.

Gersten said, “From what? Some other event?”

“No. I’m thinking more on the plane.”

“On the plane?” She mulled this over. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to find a reason. A reason why someone would train, sponsor, brainwash, coerce—but, bottom line, get this stooge on a plane to try to take it over.”

Gersten said, “You’ll have to tell me, since you speak the language, but the translation made it sound to me like he was a true believer.”

Fisk nodded. “He thought he was going to get in the cockpit with the bomb bluff and take them down. He believed he was going to succeed. No question. But air security was set up precisely to stop crackpots like this.”

“You’re convinced he’s not a lone wolf.”

“I’m not convinced of anything just yet. But I’m sure as hell ready to be.”

Gersten took a sip of bottled water. “The other passengers were all vetted and cleared.”

“I know. Luggage and cargo too. Let’s get the list from Newark customs and break it down, take another long look at everybody else on that plane.”

Gersten sighed. “I was looking forward to getting home, taking a hot bath . . .”

“A hot bath? It’s ninety degrees out.”

“I wasn’t planning on taking it alone.”

Fisk smiled. “I’ll owe you one. How about that?”

She leaned across Fisk to take in the view of Flushing Bay and the approach strobes guiding them into LaGuardia. Doing so allowed him to sneak in a quick nuzzle behind her ear, then a kiss.

Gersten said, “Deal.”

Chapter 18

Crossing Queens and Brooklyn from LaGuardia Airport in an unmarked car took them forty-five minutes. Little traffic on the streets at three thirty in the morning except taxis and cop cars. People without air-conditioning sat out on their stoops at that late hour, too hot to sleep. It was going to be a classic Fourth of July weekend in New York City, with asphalt-baking temperatures in the upper nineties and hothouse humidity. Even before dawn, the temperature had barely dipped below eighty degrees Fahrenheit.

The duty driver delivered them through the automated gate at Intel. They carded in, quick-timing it toward Fisk’s office.

The terrorist thwarting had gone real-world. This was the end of the first news cycle, the early newspaper editions already in the trucks and on their way, their online editions posted and commented on, the morning network news shows readying their broadcast rundowns. Success meant nothing to them. The predictable issues would be the question of how 125 Intel detectives, a dozen brainy analysts, hundreds of informants, as well as the FBI, CIA, NSA, and all the rest, did not catch even the faintest whiff of this hijacker’s plan.

The former Border Patrol had, after 9/11, become a muscular police force with a new name—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—a more complicated bureaucracy, with lots of planes, helicopters, and cars. ICE was part of the Department of Homeland Security, the premier agency of the terrorist age in America, with the second-largest budget in the government after defense spending.

Fisk and Gersten received fingerprints, retina scans, passport scans, and travel histories for every passenger on SAS Flight 903. Gersten took the top half of the alphabetized list, Fisk the bottom. He rinsed out two mugs and filled them with coffee and sugar. They only had a few hours before the bosses came in and meetings would pull them away.

He gave Gersten his desk and dragged his chrome-legged Naugahyde couch over to the credenza, spreading out pages and opening his secure laptop.

There was no art to their process. It was profiling, pure and simple. They filtered for Arabs, for Muslims. They filtered for anybody whose travels had taken them anywhere near Yemen, Pakistan, or Afghanistan in their lifetime. This was the only game plan available.

A little after five, they compared results.

“Pretty clean plane, all in all,” Gersten said. “Mostly summer tourists.”

“Same here. You first.”

She said, “I’ve got a Pashtun author, last name Chamkanni. Says she’s going to a writers’ colony in New Hampshire, which checks out. Got a Pakistani family, thirtysomething parents, two kids under five. Last name Jahangiri. Declared themselves as traveling to a family reunion in Seattle. They look fine, already made their connecting flight. The Seattle branch of the family runs a squash club, and the grandparents filled a blog with pictures of the grandkids—looks tight. Worth following through, though.