Crazy, that was about right, but Sherlock only smiled and turned away when his people crowded around him. She prayed she’d never be tested like that again. She went looking for Melissa Harkness and found her outside the doors, surrounded by security, airport employees, and passengers. Behind her, she heard an alarm sound, then the loudspeaker: “Everyone will leave the terminal by the nearest exit. The terminal is closed until further notice.”
What had she expected? She wondered when she’d get home. Probably in the next millennium. The security people saw her, let her through. She lightly touched Melissa’s shoulder. “You did great, Melissa. You brought him down, saved the day.”
Melissa Harkness grabbed Sherlock and hugged her close. “Thank you so much. Even my ex-husband thanks you.” As she hugged Sherlock close again, fiercely, she whispered in her ear, “The jerk might even send you flowers. I’m his golden goose, after all.” Then she grinned. “I don’t think I’m going to go on that low-carb diet yet. My weight came in handy today.”
“Don’t you change a thing, you’re perfect.” Sherlock drew in a deep breath. “We all survived.” She turned when a black-suited agent called out to her. She said to Melissa, “Sorry, no bath for either of us for a while. Now the fun starts.”
FBI agents from the New York Field Office took the terrorist from the TSA guards and airport security while Homeland Security agents and NYPD officers weeded out gawkers from witnesses and herded them to several conference rooms. It was an alphabet soup of agencies, all wanting to take charge. Sherlock knew that the FBI—namely, the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force—would take the lead, because the resident FBI agent at JFK would have called them right away. She also realized the adrenaline rush was bottoming out, also knew this was long from over. She and Big Dog were separated, each taken to a room to be interviewed. The last she saw of Melissa, she was in the middle of a knot of agents.
Sherlock was escorted to a small security room filled with TV monitors and computers and seated at a battered rectangular table. She was handed a cup of coffee and introduced to two FBI agents. They turned on recording equipment and started right in, going over and over what had happened, why she was in New York, what exactly the terrorist had said to her, his affect, his accent, his tone of voice, what she believed his intentions had been, and on and on it went. Sean would earn his college degree before she was finished answering questions. She heard agents talking about the airport reopening again soon, after security was certain there were no threats in the offing. Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise? She no longer wanted to flop her head onto the table and take a snooze. It was a remote possibility she’d even get home before midnight, if only someone would pull the plug on all the questions. The door opened and she was instantly aware of the eerie quiet in the terminal. There were no passengers hurrying to their gates, nothing at all.
A woman came in and marched directly over to Sherlock. “I hear you’re FBI.”
“Yes, Special Agent Sherlock.” She held out her creds.
The woman studied her creds, handed them back, and stood over her, arms crossed over her chest. She was about Sherlock’s age, with straight dark hair to her shoulders, a milk-white face, a body honed to muscle and bone, and no humor at all in her dark eyes. She looked severe and tough as nails in a black suit, white shirt, and low black pumps, but when she spoke, her voice was quite lovely, lilting, with a hint of Italian music. “That name, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Sherlock had to laugh. “My dad’s a federal judge; it suits him even better. Criminals and defense lawyers do a double take.”
“I’m Supervisory Special Agent Kelly Giusti, New York FBI. Why didn’t you keep out of the way and let the agents do their job? They’re all very well trained for exactly this sort of thing.”
Sherlock gave her a sunny smile. “I was right there when he grabbed Melissa. No choice.”
“What you did was stupid.”
“You’re sure right about that. Put a big question mark in my day, that’s for sure. Tell me, Agent Giusti, what would you have done in my place?”
Giusti stared at her. Was that a crack in that severe mouth, a meager smile trying to burst through? “I guess I’d have been as stupid as you.” They shook hands. “I heard most of your interview on my way over. Do you think he was going to try to get through security with the grenade? To blow a plane out of the sky?”
Sherlock said, “It seems like a pretty stupid thing to attempt. I know, I know, knives and guns still could get through, but it’d be unusual.”
“Maybe you’re underestimating your fellow humans’ capacity for stupidity. You forget that numbskull Brit who tried to get the bomb in his shoe to go off?”
Sherlock laughed. “And thanks to him everyone walks barefoot through security now. The thing is, our guy didn’t even try to go through X-ray, even though it looked like he was going to. I mean, he’d taken his shoes off and put them in the bin. No, he pushed two passengers out of the way, grabbed Melissa, pulled out the grenade, and started yelling. I’m thinking that was his plan all along. He said to me that I’d ruined it all, and that means to me that something else may be going on here, somewhere else.”
“All right, let’s say this drama was a smoke screen for something else. Chief Alport immediately began checking throughout the terminals. As of three minutes ago, nothing hinky was reported anywhere else at JFK, which is why they’re going to reopen soon.
“It’s possible there’s nothing complex at all here. It’s possible he’s a lone wolf who came here to blow up at the security station, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it before you disarmed him.”
“He also said a woman’s name—Bella. His wife?”
“You mean a final good-bye?”
“Maybe.”
Giusti opened her mini-tablet. “The passport he had with his boarding pass identified him as Nasim Arak Conklin, thirty-six, address in Notting Hill, London, not one of the popular Muslim neighborhoods, like Newham, for example. I wonder why he was living there.
“We don’t know anything more yet. I’m betting the passport isn’t forged. There’d be no need for it, not if he or his handlers set him up to do exactly what he almost did—blow himself up along with as many passengers as he could take with him. We’ll know soon enough; his fingerprints are being run through the system now. He hasn’t said a word yet. Evidently he did all his talking to you.” She rose. “The name Bella—I wonder if it might start him talking again. But it’s no concern of yours. The upside of what you did is that no one got hurt, and we nabbed ourselves a suicide bomber.”
“And the downside?” Sherlock asked.
“Once the terminal opens again and you leave the protection of this room, the media is going to eat you alive. When Chief Alport was outside the terminal, the media swarmed all over him. He was going down for the third time when he threw you under the bus.”
Sherlock closed her eyes for a moment. “It isn’t going to be fun, is it?”
“How fast can you run?”
Sherlock laughed. “I should call my husband before he hears about this and strokes out.”
Giusti’s cell buzzed. “Giusti here.” A short pause, then, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” And she was off and running.
ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL
NEW YORK CITY
Wednesday afternoon