Mayfield would be arriving soon. Maybe they’d have someone at the airport to greet us.
Another thought popped into my head—a thought about the speed of all this paperwork—and I asked Jennifer, “When did State call the Yemeni consulate about our visas?”
She replied, “Thursday.”
Kate and I glanced at each other. Thursday?
Anyway, we finished up with Jennifer, who said, “You get to do exciting things. I wish I was going.”
I wish you were, too, Jennifer.
As we walked down the hallway, Kate said, “Thursday?”
“The Friday meeting was just a formality. Yemen is our fate. It is written in the sands of time.”
No reply. Clearly she was not happy with her friend Tom. Good.
I said to Kate, “By the way, I went into ACS and there’s a file called Numair, which is Arabic for ‘panther,’ and it’s restricted.”
“Who do we see about getting access?”
“Didn’t say.”
“Odd.” She suggested, “We’ll ask Tom.”
“Did that. He said go to Yemen.”
We took the elevator down to the nurse’s office, where a young lady named Annie was expecting us.
Because Kate and I were scheduled for departure within five days, we couldn’t get the shots spaced over the recommended seven days, and sweet Annie stuck us like we were voodoo dolls.
We got eight shots—diphtheria, dysentery, typhoid, anthrax, scarlet fever, and three diseases I’ve never heard of. I especially enjoyed the two shots in the butt. Annie gave us each a starter vial of malaria pills and said, “Start taking these now.” She added, “Come back Friday morning for the rest of the shots.”
“How many more diseases could there be?”
“Leprosy, for one.”
Jeez.
She advised us, “You have a lot of vaccines in you, so you may not feel well later.”
“Can I have alcohol?”
“Sure. Just be close to a toilet.”
We went to Kate’s desk, and she called the FBI Travel Office at Headquarters in D.C.
Kate put it on speaker phone, and a woman answered, “Travel Office. Mrs. Barrett speaking. How may I help you?”
Kate said we were calling from the New York office, and she gave our names and our travel authorization numbers.
Mrs. Barrett replied, “Hold on… yes, here you are. Sana’a.”
“Santa Ana,” I corrected. “California.”
“No… Sana’a. Yemen.”
Kate picked up the phone and disengaged the speaker, saying, “Ready to copy.”
She listened to Mrs. Barrett, made some notes, then said, “Thank you,” and hung up. She said to me, “American Airlines to London, British Air to Cairo, Egyptair to Sana’a. First class.”
“Hard to believe there are no direct flights to Sana’a.”
“There are. From Cairo.”
“How do the deli guys get back and forth from Brooklyn?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” She informed me, “If you really want to go direct, there is a military flight twice a week from Dover Air Force Base in Maryland. One to Sana’a, one to Aden.”
That was interesting. Sounded like we were getting our noses a little farther under the tent.
Kate said, “If we want to go that way, Mrs. Barrett will check it out. Departure times and days vary.”
“Yeah. Let’s check it out. Might be interesting to see who and what is going to Yemen.” Also, this was probably the way we’d sneak The Panther out of Yemen. Direct U.S. Air Force flight from Yemen to Guantanamo. The shithole to hellhole express.
I went back to my desk, and Al informed me that Nabeel had not shown. It was 12:15.
Al called Nabeel’s cell phone, but got his voice mail again and left a loud message. I phoned the deli, a place named George’s in Bay Ridge, and spoke to some guy with an accent who wasn’t helpful. Al took the phone and spoke sharply in Arabic, then discovered that the guy was Mexican. Funny. What a great country.
Al volunteered to drive us to George’s Deli, but I had lots to do and Brooklyn was not on that list. I suggested, “Find one of our guys in the area and ask him to check out the deli and Nabeel’s home address.”
“No, I’ll go. I could use a break here. What’s this guy look like?”
“Green teeth.” I described Nabeel’s other features and related a little of my short conversation with him in Ben’s Deli. I suggested, “See if this deli is under the eye for any reason. Maybe we have surveillance photos.”
“I did that. Nothing.”
“Okay. Thanks, Al. I owe you one.”
My next task was to go to a separate stand-alone computer where I could access the Internet. We can’t do that from our desk computers, or we’d be playing video games all day. I did a Google search on Al Qaeda in Yemen, and