The Templar Reprisals (The Best Thrillers Book 3) by James Best (read any book txt) 📕

Kamil. He gave up the names of one of the cells. General O’Brian is currently trying to ascertain whether these are real or made up names. If real, we’ll need all of your men here to round up this crew.”

Crenshaw placed a hold on his order to pull the team back to headquarters.

Wheeling on Evarts, Crenshaw demanded, “Give me the names.”

Evarts handed him his phone. “It’s the only recording under voice memos.”

Crenshaw brought up the app and pressed play. Evarts jerked the phone out of his hand and pressed the sound level down until it was silent. He could have hit stop on the playback, but he instinctively quieted the machine the fastest way he knew how without looking at it. Once the sound was off, he pressed stop on the voice memo.

“What the hell?” Crenshaw said too loudly. “I should arrest you for obstructing an investigation.”

“Follow me,” Evarts said under his breath.

Evarts walked out of the room, through the lobby, and out the door. He proceeded toward an isolated section of the sidewalk. Crenshaw followed in a tizzy.

Crenshaw blurted, “If you think—”

Evarts whirled on him. There must have been menace in his eyes because Crenshaw stopped mid-sentence.

Evarts fumed. “If you expect any further information from either of those two, you better start doing your job better. Yousef has no inkling that Kamil gave up the cell. If Yousef heard those names in Kamil’s voice, he would be as good as dead. Now I don’t want to lecture a senior FBI agent but if we’re going to stop this attack, we need to be at the top of our game. That means you need to get off your damn high horse and act like a professional.”

For a moment, Evarts thought he would need to block a punch, but Crenshaw’s face gradually relaxed and his anger seemed to fade.

“Okay, you made your point,” Crenshaw said. “May I listen to your phone.”

Evarts handed him the cell phone. After listening, he said, “I need to get these names to Headquarters.”

“Of course,” Evarts said.

After he had completed the transfer of information, he hesitated before handing the phone back.

“That may be evidence.”

“Let’s hope so. Otherwise, I wasted my best interrogation techniques to no avail.” He held up the phone. “I’ll turn this over to one of your technicians as soon as we return to the Hoover building. But I’ll need it back as soon as possible.”

Crenshaw seemed satisfied with the answer, so Evarts asked, “Did your boys give you any indication of how long it would take to run those names down?”

“No, but I’m to stay put until they complete a background check.” He shuffled his feet a bit. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Who the hell are you?” Crenshaw asked.

“I’m a retired Army intelligence officer brought back as a consultant by General O’Brian to help with this mess. But your real question is can I fuck up your career? The answer is I don’t know, but if this lead pans out, it will certainly make your career.”

“Okay, good enough. I’ve dismounted my high horse. What next?”

Evarts phone rang and he looked at the caller ID. “It’s the general,” Evarts said. “I think he’ll have an answer to that question.”

Evarts said hello and listened. When O’Brian finished, he said “Yes, sir, got it.” and terminated the call.

He took a deep breath before telling Crenshaw, “Those names are valid attendees to the conference. None of the names popped as a known terrorist, but they could be aliases. We should proceed with caution. To protect the real terrorists, Kamil might have given us student names he remembered. That said, all five are enrolled in a session starting in fifteen minutes that supposed to be taught by a Yosef Gamal, who just happens to be our Yosef detained in the dining room. How do you want to handle it?”

“Are you familiar with the Convention Center layout?”

“No, but the desk should be.”

They went inside and soon discovered from registration that the conference center auditorium assigned to this session had two student entrances to the rear and a separate door at the front for instructors. Campus police would assist Adams and Meadow with the two detainees, who would be transferred to FBI headquarters. After this was accomplished, they met as a group in the dining room. Six agents made the deployments easy: two at each door. Baldwin would join Crenshaw and another agent at the academic entrance to the stage, and Evarts would take a seat in the audience.

After Crenshaw doled out assignments, Evarts asked to speak.

“Okay,” Crenshaw said. “Go ahead.”

“One more piece of information from Army Intelligence. They’re likely armed.”

“How do they know that?” Crenshaw asked.

“Washington municipal police. A couple of students were clubbing and bragged that they were in D.C. for this conference. While dancing, a girl felt a gun under her partner’s robes. When she asked him about it, the two men bolted. She called the cops because of the bombings, but their dance partners were long gone by the time the police arrived. Might be someone else attending this conference, but how many gun-toting Arabs do you think are at this shindig?”

Crenshaw appeared worried. “That’s going to make apprehension difficult. We can’t have a shootout in an auditorium full of students.”

Evarts wanted to say that might be preferable to the destruction of our government but had a better idea.

“Trish, do you really know anything about Qutb?”

“Superficial stuff,” she answered. “I did some research on the flight.”

“What important topic would Yousef write a learned paper about?”

She didn’t even need to think about it. “Hakamiyya, which is God's sovereignty over everything. It’s the basis for Sharia Law.”

“Okay, what if you were to announce that Yousef Gamal needed to prepare a paper on Hakamiyya for the Library of Congress and a substitute would arrive shortly. He apologizes, but it’s rare that a United States institution requests a truthful position paper from a devout Muslim. He can’t let the opportunity pass. He also needs assistance and would like to request