False Prophet: The gripping breakthrough thriller (A Saul Marshall Thriller 1) Read online

  The clock was showing ten past five. Five minutes left. Teague needed to cut to the chase. He registered my glance at the clock and took the hint.

  ‘But Drexler had two new obsessions,’ he said, words tumbling out of him now. ‘The first was the attack on the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. He was in awe of what people would do if they thought they were serving God, and jealous of the leaders of the Jihadist militant movement. But he perceived in them a weakness – they actually believed they were implementing God’s will. So Drexler, in response to this, began imagining a religion which inspired the same manic commitment, but headed by a leader who knew it was a scam, a leader who’d created the religion only to exert power over his followers.’

  ‘And the second obsession?’ I prompted.

  ‘Was Saul Marshall,’ he replied. ‘The young con-artist who, the previous summer, had finally been arrested after eluding the authorities for four years. He studied you meticulously. And he saw in you the ideal traits for leading the religion he envisaged: an intelligent, detached brain, capable of getting followers to believe they’re serving God, when truly they’re serving their leader; capable of conning the believers.

  ‘In fact, he had become obsessed with the art of the con: getting somebody to do something directly against their own interests. And really, this wasn’t so far removed from his old obsession with having victims harm themselves.

  ‘Yet while on one level Drexler admired you, on another, he truly hated you—’

  ‘But why should he?’ I cut in impatiently. ‘I know I was hitting headlines at the time, so I can conceive of someone developing an obsession. But why should he hate me?’

  Teague gave a quick, rueful smile. ‘Does the name Eric Costana ring a bell?’

  I nodded. ‘When I was working for the New York mafia back in 1996 he was our only serious competitor in the drug-dealing game. But because of me, he wound up behind bars. Through a contact I’d made, I received a tip that one of our major cocaine sales was going to be raided by the authorities, so convinced my superiors to pull out. Costana, seeing an opportunity to make a quick buck, stepped in to take our place, and took the rap.’

  ‘Right,’ said Teague. ‘But four of Costana’s men were also busted during that raid and one of them was the thirty-one-year-old Ivan Drexler, who’d only joined Costana’s outfit about six months prior. But while the other heavies received relatively small sentences, it came out that Drexler had put himself forward to do some pretty grim stuff for Costana – severing toes, driving pins under fingernails, once even piercing an eyeball – and that won him a hefty thirteen years.

  ‘And yet, Saul, because of what you did, he held you responsible for his captivity – for his losing more than a decade of his life to prison and the horrors he faced there. And, put simply, he wanted revenge.’ Teague paused. ‘You should have seen his thumbs, they were horrific. He told me the guards had strung him up by them his first week there…’

  Teague broke off with a shudder.

  ‘So what did you do next?’ I said. ‘After you visited him.’

  ‘I did nothing. Didn’t write the article and didn’t tell a soul. His release was a long way off, and so I allowed myself to forget all about it. I was in London in June 2009, when that day finally came. But by the time I’d looked up where he’d gotten to a month down the line, he’d seemed to have vanished altogether, swallowed up by the earth. A little later still, I heard a rumor that he’d died in an accident. But I didn’t buy it. Then all of a sudden, I was in Broadmoor. Out of contact.’

  ‘So why are you telling me all this?’ I said. ‘Because next February is the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack? What exactly do you expect to happen?’

  ‘So you see it!’ he said excitedly. ‘It hit me a few months ago. Drexler was intrigued by anniversaries. This’ll be the twentieth. To his mind, it must seem neglected: a day unjustly overshadowed by 9/11 and its memory, when really it commemorates the original. And though he respected your skills, Saul, he also considered you both his competition and mortal enemy. I just know he will be spoiling for a fight; desperate to take you down in a way that both settles the score, and proves his superiority. And that’ll be the date…’

  ‘What exactly do you expect to happen?’ I repeated.

  ‘I’ve no clue,’ he said, his eyes suddenly distant. Exhaustion was setting in. ‘Perhaps nothing. Perhaps it’s already too late. But I’ve warned you. It’s the best I could do… given my situation.’

  At that, Teague fell uncannily still, and shot me a look that spelled relief, pity, and powerlessness in equal measure; a look that seemed to stretch out interminably. And then, all at once, the stillness was shattered: the guards shouted the word “time” across the room, and all the patients, including Teague, clattered to their feet and herded towards the exit.

  I was unsure what to think as Gillett and I exited the complex. My first instinct was skepticism. It seemed most likely – given that I was dealing with a schizophrenic who’d been medicated to within an inch of his life – he’d made the whole damn thing up. And even when I looked up the Costana bust that evening, and found that Ivan Drexler had indeed been among the men arrested and sentenced, I remained unfazed. After all, I’d crossed a lot of people in my time, and had never worried about it much before. And ultimately, Teague’s warnings were based on wild speculations. There was no guarantee something would happen – no guarantee it would involve me.

  I decided to write Teague off as a waste of an afternoon.

  Chapter 2

  Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 11:30 p.m. CST. – Jazz Quarters Hotel, Tremé, New Orleans.

  I was in New Orleans, on a week-long vacation, when I received the call from Lucinda Parkes – Director of the Office of Intelligence at the FBI.

  Immediately my stomach lurched. I didn’t get a call from Lucinda Parkes unless it was Christmas day, or the shit had hit the fan. And it sure as hell wasn’t Christmas.

  ‘There’s been an incident,’ she said. ‘More than one. Will you come back to Washington?’

  ‘You’re not asking me, are you?’ I replied, knowing the answer already.

  ‘We’ve booked you onto an American Airlines flight. It’s due to take off at 2:30 a.m. CST from Louis Armstrong Airport. Will you come back to Washington?’

  ‘You’re not asking me, you’re telling me.’

  Silence. After a moment, I added:

  ‘I’m on holiday. What’s happened?’

  ‘This is important,’ she said. ‘A car will pick you up from your hotel at midnight, CST. After landing, you’ll be partially debriefed in the car from Dulles. You’ll then attend the meeting in the Situation Room at Headquarters at 6:30 a.m., EST. Thank you.’

  The line went dead. It wasn’t open to debate. But her omissions and decisive action were telling. People had died, and there was a good chance more were in danger. So I returned to my room at the Jazz Quarters Hotel, and packed my carry-on bag. Then, at midnight sharp, I caught my cab.

  So much for the vacation.

  *

  It was a half hour’s drive to the airport. The cab worked its way through the city.

  Between summer 2005 and summer 2009, a call from Lucinda Parkes would’ve been commonplace. At the time, I’d been working in The Office of Intelligence as her right-hand man. But I had a messy past, intent on making trouble for me.

  It was the early 1990s that were to blame – those years in Salt Lake City, masquerading as a psychiatrist despite a complete lack of medical training. Because I’d done more than that. I’d fallen in love – a mistake. And then I’d got the girl pregnant – a bigger mistake. Samuel was born August 7, 1994, and life, for a time, was perfect. But then disaster struck: I discovered that my co-worker was killing patients. As the body-count mounted, I knew I had to tell the authorities. Yet I also knew that once the authorities entered the equation, I’d be investigated as a matter of course which, given that I was on the run for stealing m
illions of dollars, was a major problem. So when I eventually bit the bullet on January 24, 1995 – my twentieth birthday – and tipped off the FBI, I did the only thing I could: I vanished. And in the process, I abandoned a six-month-old child, and my fiancée…

  It wasn’t till 2005, ten years on, that the woman I’d abandoned – now living in Washington – let me meet my son. And Parkes had understood in summer 2009 when I’d requested time off to spend with Samuel. But, unfortunately, years of absence does damage to a father-son relationship that can’t be fixed with a bit of time off work; damage that leaves a son unable to recognize his father as anything more than an acquaintance, and a father ignorant of his most basic responsibilities. Damage that runs deep. And, of course, my incompetent attempts to heal it weren’t helped by the fact that I was still receiving calls from Parkes. At the FBI, time off doesn’t make you immune to emergencies.

  But on September 2, 2010, the calls from Parkes stopped altogether. A sixteen-year-old Samuel had vanished on his way home from school. He’d been spotted leaving, but had never come home. Now you see him, now you don’t. So I did what anyone in my position would’ve done: I dropped everything. I quit my job, and spent the rest of 2010 with a few close friends, searching high and low. Made myself sick with searching. But there were no leads, no clues. Samuel had disappeared. And I was devastated.

  Quickly I realized that if I wanted any chance of keeping sane, I needed the routine of work – and this meant it was my turn to call Parkes. And when I did – on New Year’s day, 2011 – asking for a job at the DC Field Office, Parkes agreed to my request. Since then, Parkes had called me only three times: twice to wish me merry Christmas; and once, in late 2011, to ask my advice about Najibullah Zazi – the Afghani national who’d been plotting to bomb the New York subway to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

  The cab arrived at Louis Armstrong’s Concourse C. After I indulged in a quick smoke outside, I checked in and passed through security and before long, I was in a window seat in Business Class, cruising at 37,000 feet.

  I only had a short two-and-a-half hour flight ahead of me, but was feeling antsy; so, to take the edge off, I ordered a small bottle of Glenfiddich. Then, making use of the aircraft’s Wi-Fi, I proceeded to access the internet on my iPhone – I wanted to see if any of the major US news outlets were reporting on trouble brewing. But though it was soon clear that the FBI had kept a lid on whatever it was that was happening, there was a story on the CNN website which, while surely unrelated, immediately caught my attention: The Silent Ripper Incites Prison Riot in Utah. I clicked through to an article describing how the inmate, and renowned serial killer, Ernest Philipert, had instigated a riot at Utah State Prison; and how – though the situation was still unfolding – it appeared as if as many as three members of staff had been taken hostage. Then came the obligatory potted history of Ernest Philipert. He’d been a psychiatrist in Salt Lake City, and had secretly been murdering elderly patients for years. He was finally caught when the FBI received a tip off from former con-artist, Saul Marshall. And following his arrest, it came out that he’d in fact changed his name to Ernest Philipert years beforehand, and had done so because it was an anagram of ‘The Silent Ripper’, the insane nickname he’d privately invented for himself to celebrate his sick pursuits.

  For a moment, Philipert’s cold, sneering face flashed before my eyes. It didn’t surprise me a bit that he was still causing misery.

  Pushing him from my mind, I knocked back another couple of whiskies, while half-watching Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe crack skulls in Mississippi Burning on the in-flight entertainment. Eventually I reclined my chair, and slept the remainder of the journey.

  The plane landed in Washington at 4:30 a.m., EST, and I alighted feeling groggy. A chauffeur was waiting for me in arrivals, a guy called Quinn who’d been with the FBI for years. He handed me an envelope as we got in his car, and I extracted the document within.

  The page contained, in black ink, a brief outline of three incidents. The first involved a man called Aaron Woolf who’d been found dead, hanging from the ceiling of his Manhattan apartment. It was thought he’d been made to stand on a metallic table, at which point a noose was strung around his neck and the table heated, forcing him to jump. The second involved bestselling novelist, A. J. Aimes, who’d been found dead in the freezer room at the Mayflower Hotel in DC. The evidence suggested she’d been forced inside a makeshift igloo in which the temperature had been so cold that her breath had solidified on the structure’s inner-surface, causing the walls to slowly close in and crush her to death. The third involved the Walsh family – a mother and father, and two infants – who’d been found dead in their suburban Philadelphia home. All signs indicated they’d been forced into a bathroom which had then been hermetically sealed. The four suffocated on their own carbon dioxide emissions.

  Beneath these outlines was a short note offering two factors connecting these incidents – aside from the obvious theme of self-infliction, and the fact they’d all occurred yesterday morning. Firstly, each victim was found with their right-hand index finger amputated, and tied around their neck. Secondly, each had a family member on the missing persons register. For Woolf this was a teenage son; whereas for Aimes and the Walshes this was a teenage daughter.

  I exhaled hard as that all but forgotten meeting with Teague – along with everything he’d said about Drexler and his delight in self-inflicted harm – suddenly came flooding back. And then there were the missing children. It almost felt personal.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 3 a.m. CST – 7505 South Laflin Street, Englewood, Chicago.

  Special Agent Ali Haddad removed his headset, leaned back in his seat, and sighed.

  ‘Another marathon conversation to end with a debate on wanking,’ he said.

  ‘Just because you’re a terrorist in the making, doesn’t mean you don’t have urges like the rest of us,’ replied Special Agent Francis Bindle, shutting the lid of his laptop.

  The two men were sitting before ten monitors, each of which offered a live stream of a different room within a Chicago apartment. Occupying this apartment were six men – five Albanian immigrants and a Palestinian cab-driver – each of whom harbored Jihadist sentiments. It was the job of anti-terrorist specialists Ali Haddad and Francis Bindle – operating out of a dilapidated warehouse, just under a quarter mile from the apartment on their monitors – to catalog the activities of these six men: Haddad translating their Albanian and Arabic, and Francis recording their every word on the laptop. For the past six hours, their eyes had been glued to a monitor displaying a sitting room, where the six men had been lounging. But they had now dispersed to their respective bedrooms, and were appearing on six separate monitors.

  Aside from Ali and Francis, and the three other agents involved in the investigation, nobody but the Director of the FBI knew about this operation. Not the agents’ wives, parents, or children. Not even the President.

  Ali sighed again, his eyes heavy.

  ‘Are Fred and Dennis still…?’ he said, motioning towards the door.

  ‘Yes, they’re in bed,’ replied Francis vaguely.

  ‘And Liam?’ said Ali.

  Francis checked his watch. ‘Not expecting him for a while yet – at least eighteen hours.’

  ‘You worry about him?’ Ali asked.

  Liam was Francis’s younger brother. He’d been sent to break into the cab-driver’s apartment and bug it with cameras and microphones because the Jihadists had recently started frequenting this apartment as well as the flat already under observation. It was a risky job, made all the more difficult by the cabbie’s wife and two children living there full-time.

  ‘Nah,’ Francis replied with a smile.

  Ali knew he was lying – Francis always worried about his brother. But Ali also knew that Liam was a capable agent, and could handle himself fine. He smiled back reassuringly.

  ‘I know this sounds ridiculous,’ said Ali, ‘but when
I was first asked to join this assignment, I’d thought top secret work meant exciting work. The reality couldn’t be more different, just, thankless…’

  Francis chuckled. It wasn’t that Ali was naïve. He was simply used to a different kind of work. As one of the Bureau’s few Arabic speakers, he’d been right in the thick of things post 9/11 – he’d been given a crack at some of the key conspirators, the likes of Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mohammed al-Qahtani, immediately after their capture. So this sit and wait business wasn’t what he was used to. Whereas Francis was an old-timer – he’d done this all before.

  ‘Given that for all intents and purposes we don’t exist, we can hardly expect to be thanked,’ Francis replied. ‘But being away from the wife and kids – not being able to tell them you’re okay, or make sure they’re okay – that never gets easier…’

  Ali nodded. ‘Let’s hope the sacrifice is worth it.’

  Pure chance had brought these agents to Chicago. In October 2012, an Albanian man had entered a Wal-Mart in the Englewood district of the city, looking to transfer a VCR to DVD. But that had been stupidity, not chance. What happened next, however, was good fortune. The clerk, instead of simply making the transfer, had watched the footage and seen five men shouting “God is Great” in Arabic, as well as confessionals in which each man, in full Islamic garb, stated his hostility to America.

  And then there was a second stroke of luck: instead of dismissing the video, the clerk tipped off the Chicago FBI Field Office.

  A number of people could’ve taken the tip that day. But it happened that Fred Vitelli took the call: an agent who’d only the month before been transferred to Chicago. Not yet at home in The Windy City, Vitelli bypassed his superiors at the Field Office, and contacted Carol Taft instead – the FBI’s intermediary with the NSA, and an old acquaintance of Vitelli’s. But after Taft had watched the tape, she did more than simply grant authorization to monitor the men; she sent it through to Robin Muldoon, Director of the FBI. Because Taft had a nose for trouble – and as far as she was concerned, the video stunk.