Escape (6 page)

Khalifa strode up the stairs and entered the synagogue. He found himself in a wide, deserted lobby and quickly walked over to a bulletin board where he began reading the postings. Most of the notices on the board were for synagogue services and charitable events. But then his eyes fastened on a request for contributions to fund the purchase of "supplemental supplies for an elite paratrooper unit" in the Israeli army that had been "adopted" by the synagogue. It said that the "brave soldiers are fighting terrorists" and that the congregation was being asked to raise money to purchase "custom-fitted combat vests."

Murderers,
Khalifa swore silently.
Jew pigs. Well, I have a combat vest, too!
His mind, which had been clouded by the trickery of the old couple, was as clear and filled with purpose as it had ever been. He walked along the wall, studying a series of photographs depicting Israeli presidents, prime ministers, and generals; chief Jewish rabbis; and Knesset members who had visited the synagogue.

Good, he thought,
they'll hear of this soon in Israel. And all of these important Jews will be able to picture the blood on the walls when they read about what I have done.

Several old men entered the lobby from the temple, but other than a curious glance or two, they paid no attention to him.
Allah has made me invisible so that I can walk into their temple to serve his purpose!
he thought.
Truly God has spoken to me.

He'd heard stories of similar miracles from visiting "freedom fighters" who'd come to the mosque from Muslim countries to raise money. They talked about mujahideen in Afghanistan and Iraq who had walked through clouds of bullets, or emerged from homes destroyed by cruise missiles, without injury.

"The warrior who has given his life to Allah is invincible," they claimed. "Only when Allah is ready to reward their faith can they be killed so that they can enter Paradise."

Their voices and stories filled Khalifa's mind as he found himself standing in front of the door leading into the temple. He had few regrets. He'd never been to Mecca on the hajj and, in fact, had rarely ever left the island of Manhattan. His son would not have a father, his young wife would be a widow. But these were inconsequential in the face of eternity. He was ready.

Pulling open the door, he stepped inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadowed interior, but when they did, he saw perhaps as many as fifty men sitting in the pews. They were facing away from him, their heads nodding in cadence as they recited their prayers. He was reminded of the faithful praying in the mosque. The thought that the two scenes were similar was disconcerting.

With sweat now running in rivulets down his body, he forced himself to dwell on the differences, such as the strange little round caps the Jews wore and the shawls draped across their shoulders. Some had what appeared to be small boxes strapped to their foreheads, and others wore girlish curls instead of sideburns.

The temple hummed with their prayers, and he became aware of a presence that could not be seen or understood. His knees nearly buckled. "All of Islam will know your name," he whispered to give himself strength.

A strange affliction seemed to be taking over his eyes, as if he were looking down a glass-walled tunnel. He was aware of images to either side, but all that he could see clearly was what was straight in front of him, and what he saw now was a young man walking toward him. The man wore a beard and was smiling, but there was a wary look in his eyes.

When Rabbi Greg Romberg saw the young black man enter the temple, he thought at first that the stranger was one of the city's many homeless. The beard was long and scraggly and the long wool coat too warm for such a hot day. The man looked like he had not slept well in several days and might have been hoping for a pew to curl up on.

Then the thought occurred to him that the stranger might also be a black Jew. A surprisingly large community of them lived in New York, though he'd been largely unaware of them until he was in rabbinical school. The newcomer was not wearing a yarmulke, or
kippah,
on his head, but that didn't necessarily mean he was not a Jew. Though some Jews believed that Talmudic law commanded them to cover their heads in the temple, it was actually more of a custom than a religious requirement—a reminder that God was above them. Still, he didn't know if that was also the custom of black Jewish communities.

The synagogue on Third Avenue billed itself as Modem Orthodox, but even within Modem Orthodoxy there was a lot of diversity in personal styles of worship. For instance, some members wore the
phylacteries
, sometimes called
tefillin
—small boxes containing portions of the Torah—during
Shacharit,
the morning prayer service. Others thought this was too old-fashioned and didn't bother. However, nearly all wore the
tallit,
the prayer shawl, which was a reminder of the tents the Israelites had lived in when they had wandered in the desert with Moses.

Romberg was a modem rabbi who respected all the different variations of Judaism. He saw them as reminders of all that Jews had been through since the Diaspora. And yet, they remained one people. God's Chosen People.

"Shalom,"
the rabbi greeted the stranger, using the Hebrew word for peace. "May I help you?"

"Salaam,"
the young man replied.

In the moment he heard the Arabic response, Romberg knew what was going to happen.
Such is the darkness of these days,
he thought sadly.
But haven't we been expecting this?
He watched the young man open the long coat to reveal the vest beneath it. He'd never seen one before, but he'd heard a lot about them during a recent trip to Israel—about what they'd done to school buses and crowded discotheques and shopping malls.

There was no time to give a warning that would do any good. Instead, he used the deep, resonant voice he'd worked so hard to train in rabbinical school to shout the
Shema,
the declaration of Jewish faith.

"Shema Yisrael
A
donai Eloheinu
A
donai Echad!"
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

The black man responded in kind as he reached for the cord at his waist.
"La ilaha illal lah! Allah-u-Akbar! Allah-u-Akbar!"
There is no God but God! God is Great! God is Great!

Those who lived told the police of the voices shouting in the ancient languages of two closely related peoples.

"Like prophets in the wilderness," said an old man, a baker by trade. He and his wife had seen the man outside the synagogue. "He seemed sad, not dangerous," he said.

The baker had not seen the man enter but had heard the shouts from inside the synagogue just before the explosion. "Then there was a flash and an enormous roar," he recalled, wiping tears from his eyes. "I was struck by a hot wind and flung through the air like a leaf. It is only by God's grace that I survived ... again."

Karp listened with interest and a mouth full of peach pancakes as the old men debated at the table next to him on the sidewalk outside of The Kitchenette, a small cafe on West Broadway. One of them, a former newspaper editor named Bill Florence, had fished an article out of the day's
Times
about the Islamic Society of America, which had complained about television shows portraying Muslims as "the bad guys."

"I guess I can see how they'd be concerned that sort of stereotyping might lead to antagonism against Muslim Americans," said Murray Epstein, who'd retired as one of the top defense attorneys in Manhattan, though he frequently appeared on CNN when they needed a legal mind with a liberal viewpoint.

"Oh puleeeeze," moaned Dennis Hall, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Epstein's conservative counterpart on Fox News. "It's not like we're at war with blond Swedish Catholics. I haven't noticed any Episcopalian Icelanders becoming suicide bombers and charging into any synagogues. I guess they're saying that if somebody makes another movie about World War II in the Pacific, they shouldn't use Japanese actors because it might offend someone in Japan."

"But isn't it true that the people attacking us are terrorists who happen to be Muslims?" a handsome man with a short gray crewcut and a priest's collar said.

"Oh come on, Father Jim," Hall argued. "We identify them by how they identify themselves. They claim to be Islamic, to a man, and they are terrorists; therefore, they are Islamic terrorists. Now, if the rest of the Muslim world wants to disown them, or better yet, get involved in stopping them, instead of playing 'see no evil' and couching every denunciation of someone murdering other people in the name of Allah with a denunciation of Israel, then welcome to the circle of humanity."

"Says here that Americans are insensitive to Muslims," said Florence, a short man with thick bushy dark eyebrows who looked a bit like Albert Einstein on a bad hair day.

"Bullshit," exclaimed Saul Silverstein, an ex-Marine who'd survived Iwo Jima and then made a fortune in women's apparel. "Six months after a bunch of terrorists—who claimed to be acting in the name of Islam—murdered a few thousand people in the World Trade Center, Columbia University held a one-day, in-service training session for more than one hundred New York City high school teachers to teach them how to be more sensitive to Muslim students. The whole thing was paid for by the Ford Foundation. It's like we're apologizing because some of their fellow Muslims have declared war on us. It's not as if every Jap in Japan personally attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 either, but we sure as hell were at war with Japan and the Japanese people for the next four years. They can kiss my hairy Semper Fi ass."

"Well, on that patriotic note, I guess there's nothing further to debate," Epstein said dryly as the others burst out laughing. "Not unless you'd like to comment, Mr. District Attorney sir?"

"Pretty much says it all. I don't think there's anything I could add to the sentiment," Karp responded to more laughter.

"The Sons of Liberty Breakfast Club and Girl-Watching Society" met several times a week at The Kitchenette to haggle over politics, the arts, the law, and foreign affairs. And, of course, girls, particularly those walking by on sunny days. But they were more than—as self-described by their resident artist and poet, Geoffrey Gilbert—"a bunch of dirty old men who like to argue."

Although they were all now retired, they'd all been successful in their careers—Hall and Epstein as attorneys; Gilbert as an artist; Florence as manager of the newsroom at the
New York Post;
Silverstein as a trendsetter in the apparel industry, making pants culturally acceptable attire for women in the 1950s; and Sunderland, a Catholic priest, as a social activist and writer. The only one missing from the group today was Frank Plaut, who, while currently sporting a silver ponytail and Neil Young-style muttonchops, had been a respected federal judge with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and a professor of law at Columbia University.

Karp had been told when he arrived at 7 for breakfast that Plaut was on a "secret mission." He didn't doubt it. The group seemed to have any number of secrets. For instance, Karp had only recently discovered that they'd all known his dad, Julius. The lawyers and the judge had all gone to law school with him, and they'd attended the Saturday evening socials at his house in Brooklyn. There, they had talked law and politics over cigars and glasses of whiskey. Most remembered Karp as a boy, sitting at the foot of his father's easy chair to listen in on the conversations.

He'd been introduced to the group by Sunderland, whom he'd met by accident. Or, rather, by attempted assassination. Nearly a year ago, Karp's political opponent for the district attorney's seat, a former sex crimes bureau chief named Rachel Rachman, had tried to win the election by gunning him down from a moving car. Unfortunately for Rachman, Marlene had been there—armed as usual—to terminate her candidacy. Fortunately for Karp, the priest had been present to help Marlene apply pressure to his wounds.

Karp had almost died, but as he rehabilitated from wounds to his shoulder, chest, and leg, Sunderland had volunteered to be his walking companion. Then one day he'd brought him over to The Kitchenette, where Karp had discovered peach pancakes drowned in strawberry butter—and met The Breakfast Club.

"Anything you can tell us about the bombing at the synagogue?" asked Gilbert, who could be counted on to blurt out whatever was on his mind.

"Terrible business," Sunderland said.

"Yes, it was. But there's not much I can tell you," Karp replied. "It's a federal case, for now anyway. About all I know is what you've read in the newspapers. So far no one has identified the bomber, or claimed responsibility for the attack. It appears that he was acting alone."

"I read that there's a competency hearing for Jessica Campbell tomorrow," Florence said, changing the subject.

"Correct," Karp replied.

"Are you still trying the case?" Epstein asked. "An insanity defense I presume."

"Yes, though my colleague, Kenny Katz, is co-counsel, and he'll be handling the competency hearing." Karp looked at his watch. "Speaking of which, I have a meeting this morning that I need to get to in ten minutes. I'll see you gentlemen the next time my diet prescribes peach pancakes."

Even though it was only 8 A.M. on a Monday, the sidewalk in front of the Criminal Courts building was already swarming when Karp pulled up in a taxi. At that hour, most of the people out and about were men and women in business attire making their way to the government buildings and the Financial District farther to the south. Some were content to fall in and move at the pace of traffic; others dashed in and out of the stream of pedestrians when they saw openings. But they all walked with single-minded purposefulness, like salmon swimming up a river to spawn.

Karp noted dour expressions and vacant looks. Mondays were never the best day for Joe Blow office-worker; however, today their expressions were a bit tighter than usual. People seemed more lost than usual in their own concerns.
They've been struck again in the gut by the madness of terrorism,
Karp thought, grabbing a copy of the
New York Times
from the newsstand in front of the courts building.

At the top in bold, 72-point type, the paper blared: "WHO WAS HE?" The subhead complained that the feds were still withholding the identification of the suicide bomber—if they had it—under provisions of the Patriot Act, which these days seemed to override the rights of a free press.

No one knew how long the secret would be kept. Karp had heard over the weekend from Ariadne Stupenagel, the investigative reporter who was shacking up with his aide-de-camp, Gilbert Murrow, that the
Times,
as well as the rest of the media—including the
New York Guardian,
the weekly she was currently working for—intended to go to U.S. District Court to force the government to release the bomber's name, or, if they did not have it, to at least admit that fact. She'd also learned that they would be joined in court by U.S. Senator Tom McCullum, a tough-talking politician from Montana who'd been the chief critic on Capitol Hill of overreaching actions by federal law-enforcement agencies using the Patriot Act as their carte blanche to "spy on U.S. citizens."

Karp noted that the main story wrapped around a sidebar report on eyewitness accounts from the bombing site. Several described the bomber as a black man in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a long dark coat.

"I saw the guy outside," Lydia Sheffield, a twenty-two-year-old cosmetology student, was quoted as saying. She had walked past the synagogue with her boyfriend a few minutes before the blast. "He gave me the creeps," she added.

Other accounts described the horror of a man blowing himself up, along with an innocent rabbi, and sending the blast, along with thousands of steel ball bearings, through men who'd gathered peacefully to pray.

Over the years, Karp had witnessed the aftereffects of dozens of heinous crimes—the viciousness of sadistic serial killers, the gut-wrenching horror caused by child killers, the senseless deeds of men and women armed with shotguns and knives, and even the gory aftermath of bombings. But he'd been stunned by the carnage at the synagogue that day.

Within minutes of Fulton announcing "it finally happened," the two of them were in the DAO's armored Lincoln with a blue flashing light on top heading north on Third Avenue. By the time they arrived, the block had already been cordoned off by the cops while bomb-sniffing dogs circulated in the gathering crowd as well as inside the police perimeter.

Looking up as he got out of the car, Karp saw police snipers on rooftops scanning the spectators from open windows of nearby buildings. He recalled what a speaker had once told the Five Boroughs Anti-Terrorism Task Force: that unlike lightning, terrorists often struck the same place twice. The purpose of the second attack was to kill those who responded to the first, especially medical and police personnel.

A wadded-up piece of colored paper lay on the ground near his feet. He bent over to pick it up—a $20 food-stamp voucher.
I'll give it to Booger or one of the others,
he thought, and stuffed it into his pocket.

Inside the perimeter, police officers, firefighters, and paramedics rushed about on errands or stood in small clusters with a hand on a comrade's shoulder. An undercurrent of cries and sobs punctuated the space between siren screams. Some of the relatives and friends of the victims had been allowed past the yellow tape to help the wounded as they were loaded onto ambulances, or to identify the dead, who had already been placed in body bags off to the side of the front entrance.

Aside from the activity, the front of the synagogue looked the same as it had when he'd last taught one of the bar mitzvah classes. As Karp climbed the stairs with Fulton at his side, he felt an anger rising in him that was personal, unrelated to the job. The bomber had attacked "his" synagogue. He rarely attended services or other functions, but he'd met many of the parents of his students, and he hoped that they were not among the casualties, though he knew that only transferred the ramifications to someone else.
What if the twins had been here, or any of the other kids?
The thought enraged him as he entered the synagogue.

Inside, Karp and Fulton crossed the lobby to the temple entrance, where they stopped to adjust to what they were seeing. The interior was brightly lit by klieg lights, which lent a harsh texture and stark reality to a sanctuary Karp remembered as softly lit and dedicated to the worship of the divine. The air that had once been filled with the praise of God now carried the acrid smell of an explosion and fire, plus a sweet, metallic scent that always took him a moment to recognize. Blood.

A crime-scene technician in a white HAZMAT suit walked up and handed them both respirators. "Please, wear these and stay back, Mr. Karp," the technician said. "There is biological material all over the place that we haven't got to yet."

Other technicians were working throughout the temple, looking like astronauts on the moon. Karp recalled that at the same task force meeting where the speaker had addressed the issue of second attacks, a crime-scene investigator from Israel had spoken about the dangers to first-responders and survivors from exposure to pathogens in blood and body parts following a bombing. The Israeli ended his talk with a slide depicting people fleeing the billowing gray clouds that had chased them down the streets when the WTC's twin towers crumbled. "That's not just crushed concrete and glass," he'd noted. "It's also the pulverized remains of several thousand human beings. Along with all the other crap, breathing that was an extreme biohazard."

Once his mind adjusted to the scene, Karp was able to grasp what had happened. The side of the synagogue closest to where it appeared the bomb detonated looked like the disaster path of a tornado. Pews lay overturned and shattered; splintered pieces of wood and pieces of clothing, including bloodstained prayer shawls, littered the ground. The wall and floor nearest to the blast looked like something the artist Jackson Pollock could have done if he'd been turned loose with cans of red paint.

As Karp watched, a crime-scene technician carefully plucked what appeared to be a human finger from a pile of rubble and bloody rags. He held it up for a moment, then dropped it into an evidence bag. Karp learned later that night, at a briefing of the task force, that the finger belonged to an ex-con named Rondell James. The briefing was led by a spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security, who said they still had no clue why this Rondell James had blown himself up, or whether he was working alone.

Now, standing at the newsstand on Centre Street in front of the courthouse, Karp looked up and met the gaze of the little vendor with the pointed, perpetually dripping nose, who peered at him through filthy, half-inch thick glasses that magnified his watery blue eyes to make him look like some cartoon character.