The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(87)

“The luggage,” Rhyme interrupted.

Sachs was nodding. “He checked the bags separately on each flight but they weighed the same.”

Mulbry laughed with delight. “See, Lincoln, Amelia, I told you you’re just the material we need at AIS! Exactly. What’re the odds that four different men on four different flights would check luggage weighing exactly twelve point three kilos? Nonexistent. Pictures would prove it, and I’m sure you’d love one of his mug but we can’t get those from Passport Control. That would involve the NSA and, well, getting you data for a domestic case would be so…‘illegal’ is the word that trips into my mind. But we’re convinced it’s your boy.

“The passport for the final leg, when he landed at Newark, was Georgian. Josef Dobyns. Not a watchlist baby. And his address here was a fake one in Paterson, New Jersey. I’ll send you all the names he used on the flights. You can check hotel registries. Though my bet is he’s got another ID that he hasn’t used before.”

“Five passports?” Sachs asked.

Mulbry only chuckled.

Rhyme gave the man Mel Cooper’s email and asked him to send the names on the passports.

“Now,” Mulbry continued, “you were asking about explosives. About a week ago we had an alert about a weapons package that was reportedly smuggled into the East Coast: three one-kilo packets of C4 and a crate of a dozen lehabahs.”

“Of what?”

“Gas line bombs. Lehabahs. The word’s Hebrew. It has two meanings: ‘flame,’ and ‘the tip of a spear or weapon.’”

Which, Rhyme reflected, described the mean little things pretty well. He asked, “A Mossad invention?”

Now that he dabbled in the world of espionage, he’d done some homework on the various intelligence agencies around the world. None was more clever at weaponry, or more talented at its deployment, than the Mossad.

“Yep. For just what you’re talking about: making it seem that there was a gas leak and explosion. Who knows how many Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist homes have gone up in flames quote ‘accidentally’?”

Three loads of C4. They didn’t know how much the unsub had used for the IEDs in the Northeast Geo shafts. They’d have to assume he had some left for at least one more “earthquake.” He had other lehabahs too. How much more carnage did he have in mind?

Mulbry now asked, “So, please, Lincoln, give. What’s this all about?”

“You followed the earthquakes in New York? And the fires?”

“Yes, sure. It’s big news everywhere.”

Sachs explained that their perp was creating the phony quakes and accompanying fires.

“So that’s what he was using the devices for. Hm. Clever.” His job, as head of the AIS, was to come up with ways to, well, alternatively engage the enemy. Faking earthquakes as a mask for arson fell squarely within the AIS toolbox. Mulbry was clearly impressed. “Why?”

Rhyme said, “That we don’t know. Our best guess is to stop the drilling. Somebody doesn’t want that geothermal operation up and running. We don’t see it as political terrorism.”

Mulbry said, “I agree. The C4 shipment and gas bombs raised eyebrows—anything like that always does, of course—but our algorithms scoured the intel and they couldn’t pin the explosive to known terrorist actors. We’ll keep an eye on that side of it, though.”

“Please do,” Sachs said.

“While I’ve got you on the line?”

“Yes, Daryl?”

“I got your email about the dozenal coding—that nobody at NYPD or FBI New York knew anyone who’d ever used it. Thank you again for checking, by the way. Now, actually there’s more to the matter. We were never able to decrypt the messages but we did trace the traffic pattern of a couple of them. To a hotel—a long-stay residence hotel—near the Seine in Paris. The Left Bank. Have you been?”

“No. Go on.”

“It’s remarkable—a whole different smell and feel. And the cultural history. Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialists. I digress.”

True.

“A couple of EVIDINT folks got inside and, my, had the place been scrubbed. And I mean literally: Beaucoup de bleach and le Windex for DNA and fingerprints. Traces of sandpaper to remove something from the floor and Gorilla Glue in places where trace had lodged, then pulling it out. I mean, really, whoever this person or cell is, they’re very, very good. But they missed one thing, a small piece of metal. Didn’t show up in any metal parts database. Homemade. We scanned it. Positive for radium. Not nuclear-device-quality but it might be part of a dirty bomb. Makes us all a bit nervous. Could you take a peek?”

“I will, sure, Daryl. Tell me: What does it look like?”

“Flexible, springy, silver-colored. Typical of mechanical detonators. There’s a trend away from electronic. You know, EMPs—electromagnetic pulses—can take out the digital detonators.”

“Send it overnight.” He gave the man his address.

As soon as they’d disconnected, Rhyme’s phone trilled. It was Crime Scene headquarters in Queens. He picked up and, via speakerphone, had a conversation with an analyst there. The man reported that searching the basement in Claire Porter’s apartment, near Cadman Plaza, had revealed that the fingerprints on and around the gas line were the superintendent’s or were very old and, in any case, came back negative from the IAFIS database. The lock was easily jimmied with basic tools, and whoever did it had apparently taken these with him when he left. The local precinct told him that a canvass of tenants and residents of nearby buildings found no one else who had seen the man in the hard hat and vest.