At exactly 1:20 a.m. on Halloween morning, 1999, Ahmed El-Habashy, captain of Egypt Air 990, gently eased the nose of his Boeing 767 into the night sky. Seconds later, the last of JFK Runway 22-Right dropped behind him. He retracted his landing gear and felt the bonds of earth loosen, experiencing the familiar and exhilarating rush of raw power as the massive, twin Pratt & Whitney turbines pulled his craft steadily upward.
As the 767 climbed through seven thousand feet, El-Habashy banked the aircraft slightly, turning east. The light fog at ground level was now well beneath him, and he could see lights poking through the low-lying mist along the left side of the aircraft, outlining the southern shore of Long Island. It was the same path followed by hundreds of flights each day, including one three years earlier that was still steeped in controversy—TWA 800.
In the darkened cabin sat a full planeload of tourists, students, businessmen and deadheading crew, along with the two relief pilots and flight engineer who would take over the cockpit sometime during the ten-hour flight to Cairo. Also aboard were thirty-four Egyptian Air Force officers, a dozen of them generals, returning home from training in California. A total of 217 men, women and children.
They had thirty-two minutes left to live.
El-Habashy keyed the intercom and asked a flight attendant to bring him a cup of coffee—one sugar, two creams. His first officer, Adel Anwar, thirty-six, ordered nothing.
The night ahead was clear, the ride smooth, and like coworkers do, El-Habashy and Anwar engaged in easy banter about their bosses and their company. During the conversation, seemingly apropos of nothing, El-Habashy suddenly raised the issue of a passenger, possibly one of the military officers, who had boarded the flight without some required paperwork.
Whether this man had come aboard at LAX, where the flight had originated, or at JFK, where El-Habashy had assumed command, is not clear. Nor is the passenger’s identity. But El-Habashy indicated that he had been pushed into turning a blind eye to the violation of regulations by others traveling with the man.
What is clear is that Captain El-Habashy, fifty-seven, an organized, meticulous officer with more than thirty years’ flying experience, was perturbed enough by the anomaly to raise it again with his copilot twice in the next few minutes.
Twenty minutes after takeoff, Flight 990 was approaching its cruise altitude of 33,000 feet when the reserve first officer, Gameel Al-Batouti, fifty-nine, nicknamed “Jimmy,” entered the cockpit. Al-Batouti was not due to assume the copilot’s seat for several more hours, when the entire reserve crew would take over, and when he told Anwar that he intended to fly now, Anwar said that he had already slept and wanted to continue.
Words were exchanged, and the disagreement ended only when Al-Batouti invoked his considerable seniority and told Anwar unconditionally that he would be taking over as first officer. It is unknown why El-Habashy did not intervene on behalf of his friend and first officer, but it appears he did not. Al-Batouti then left the cockpit for a few moments and returned, taking the right seat as Anwar departed.
Captain El-Habashy then also left the cockpit to use the restroom.
Twenty-one seconds later, Al-Batouti, now alone at the controls, uttered the phrase, “I rely on God,” and disengaged the autopilot. He then moved the throttles to idle, thereby cutting off all engine thrust.
As the nose of the plane tilted down, it rolled slightly to the left, and Al-Batouti again said, “I rely on God.” He then shut off the engines.
Captain El-Habashy bolted back into the cockpit, struggled into his seat and began trying to wrestle the nose of the plane up, imploring Al-Batouti to help. “Pull with me! Pull with me!” he screamed.
But in the right seat, Al-Batouti repeated, “I rely on God” several more times and fought to keep the nose of the aircraft down.
During the next ninety seconds, the men struggled for supremacy. Then suddenly, the plane lurched upward again. Whether this was an aerodynamic reaction to the speed brakes applied by El-Habashy or whether it was because he had regained momentary physical superiority is unclear. One can only wonder how those in the back felt as they experienced unimaginable g-forces and perhaps sensed reprieve.
But the captain was no match for the combination of Al-Batouti and gravity, and when he could no longer hold them both off, the 767’s nose once again turned down.
On the cockpit voice recorder, the terrified screams of the passengers can be heard for more than a minute and a half. Finally, 400,000 pounds of aircraft, traveling at six hundred miles per hour, hit the water, and all sound ended.
At 1:52 a.m., Egypt Air Flight 990 ceased to exist.
Despite the usual conspiracy whack-jobs and the spin put on the investigation by the Egyptian government—owing to both economic and cultural concerns—aviation experts, law enforcement and the intelligence community have no doubt what caused Flight 990 to plunge into the sea. Nor is there any dispute that Gameel Al-Batouti had numerous personal problems that most likely contributed to his actions.
The unanswered question is whether this was the last, lone act of a desperate man or the termination point of a conspiracy. And if it was the latter, who was the target? The Egyptian government? The airline? The military officers? Or perhaps another passenger?
One might think that since 9/11, this would be a serious concern worthy of further investigation. One would be wrong.
Though I had showered at Kim’s, I was still wearing the same gamey clothes. I had also taken my last Vicodin, and the pain was returning. But now that I knew where Marta Videz worked, I wanted to talk to her. As I drove toward Los Feliz, I replayed what Archer had told me about Truman York.
After his military career ended, he bounced from airline to airline but couldn’t manage to hold a job. Unauthorized absences, insubordination, heavy drinking—the common themes of a man with no direction and no plan. Eventually, he ended up flying freight in Canada, but when that didn’t last, he took a job as an air courier, and an old air force contact helped get him certified as a “Special.”
It’s not a job many people know exists. They’re not supposed to. Special couriers are authorized to carry a loaded firearm aboard an aircraft, and they get absolute priority, meaning they can bump almost anybody—CEOs, senior government officials, even celebrities.
They used to travel with a case handcuffed to their wrists, but that was a walking billboard for someone to lop off their hand and walk away with the goods. If a professional wants to steal something, he’s not squeamish about a quick amputation with a sharp cleaver and a little blood. Or, as occurred in Lagos, Nigeria, where the thief walked into the outdoor baggage claim area, fired up a chainsaw and removed a CIA courier’s entire arm.
In response, courier cases now have high-tensile steel cable molded into their handles which are then run up the courier’s sleeve and down his back and locked around his waist. This refinement has saved hands, but if the bad guys manage to kidnap the courier, he no longer comes back simply needing a hook to eat his cereal.
Since Lagos, special couriers on assignment for the government usually travel by military aircraft. Otherwise, they travel by charter or in one of the half dozen passenger seats fitted into FedEx, UPS and DHL planes. When it is absolutely necessary to fly commercial, they sit in the first row of first class with the seat next to them paid for and unoccupied. No one, not even a flight crew member, is permitted to sit down next to a “Special.” They are escorted onto the aircraft by security personnel well before anyone else and are the first to deplane.
Being a “Special” was the perfect job for Truman York. He traveled well and lived on an expense account. And he was away from home often. By contrast, according to Archer, Bess hated flying and had no interest in visiting any city she couldn’t reach by car in a day. She was on Flight 990 supposedly because she and Truman were going to celebrate their wedding anniversary in Marseilles. Bess told Archer that she would board the flight in Los Angeles, and Truman, who had a job originating in Washington, would get on at JFK. They couldn’t sit together because he was working, so she would be riding in coach while he was in first class. Once they got to Cairo, and he was relieved of his obligation, they would fly on to France together.
I asked Archer what she’d thought about that.
“You ever been to Marseilles?”
“I have.”
“How many people do you think go there to celebrate anything—except maybe escaping prison? I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. My mom thought the best meal on the planet was the Admiral’s Feast at Red Lobster, and she was claustrophobic in the extreme. The idea that she would cram herself into a narrow seat and fly halfway around the world to a place she couldn’t pronounce is absurd.”
“So why take her?”
Her eyes hardened. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and there’s only one conclusion that works. Truman was going for what the French call a Marseilles divorce—a thump on the head and midnight swim in the Med. There were almost certainly other women in Truman’s life, and it was time to move on.”
I agreed. Truman York wasn’t a guy whose best friend was his wife. And unless Bess was an aficionado of freight terminals, smokestacks and street crime, Marseilles isn’t anniversary material. It is, however, just down the road from Nice, where Benny Joe caught his ferry to Corsica. And it now seemed that Kim had developed a fondness for the South of France as well.
I didn’t think this was about another woman, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Los Feliz is “Old Hollywood.”
Occupying the high ground north of downtown L.A., it’s where the early movie legends like DeMille, Jolson and Lugosi built their mansions, and where the next generation—Gable, Grant and Garbo—unwound at a branch of the Brown Derby. It’s also where the Manson Family scrawled “Healter Skelter” (Tex Watson couldn’t spell) in blood on a refrigerator door.
Recently, Los Feliz has been rediscovered, and an energetic new crop of homeowners has started buying up the old estates and bringing them back to their former glory. The rebirth has attracted some current stars too—the ones who want to be able to fish the morning paper out of the shrubbery wearing a ratty old bathrobe without having to check the tour bus schedule.
A couple of friends of mine—Stephen Bennett, owner of a chain of hair salons in the Valley, and Warren Van Meter, an Academy Award-winning set designer—bought the old Valentino villa, the one Rudy lived in before he built Falcon Lair, and turned it into a showplace that’s become the backdrop for some of the town’s most talked-about parties.
Redoing the gardens alone cost “The Valentino Boys,” as they call themselves, half a million. But it got them the cover of California Design. And when some sultan saw it and sent his lawyer to offer them so much for the place that they could have bought a small country, they slammed the door in his face and threw a “Take Your Cash and Shove It Party” that went on for two days.
So after having heard Manarca say that Kiki Videz’s mother worked as a domestic in Los Feliz, finding her hadn’t been difficult; Stephen and Warren’s housekeeper just tapped into the neighborhood network, and now I was sitting in the kitchen of a big house on Chislehurst Drive while sunlight streamed through a large bay window and a pair of Siamese cats lolled on the white tile floor.
Marta was a slight woman with large brown eyes, but despite having borne five children, she was still trim and attractive. She hadn’t made eye contact with me since I’d arrived, and as I spoke to her in quiet Spanish, she kept glancing at the bandage on my hand and crossing herself nervously.
I finally said, “Mrs. Videz, I don’t think Kiki is the one who shot me.”
Her voice was so soft that, as close as I was, I still had to strain to hear her. She spoke with a peasant accent, but there was an articulateness to it that indicated she had attended school for at least a while.
“I brought my family to this country so they could have a better life. My husband didn’t want to come. He was afraid. But I insisted, and now he is dead. In Guatemala, the nar-cotraficantes make you carry drugs, then they kill you. In America, you take the drugs and kill yourself.”
Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, and she dabbed them with the back of her hand. “Kiki was such a good boy. When he was little, he used to sit on my lap and just hold onto me. And when he went off to school, he cried so much the teacher asked me to come and sit in the class. The other children made fun of him, but Kiki would just look at me and smile.”
“Mrs. Videz…”
But she wasn’t finished. “Kiki didn’t want to join a gang, but they beat him so many times that he finally gave in.” Then, with an anguish that sent a chill through me, she looked into my eyes for the first time. “Why did they cut off my baby’s arms? Why?” Now her tears spilled with no sign of slackening. I gave her my handkerchief.
I had no words of comfort for this kind of pain, so I simply reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. She wept for a few more moments, and then struggled and got control. “But you did not come here to listen to a mother’s heartache. I am glad you do not think Kiki shot you or that woman. How can I help you?”
Here was the strength that had carried Marta Videz and her family from the dirt streets of the tropics to the barrio of East Los Angeles. “Mrs. Videz, I need to know if Kiki had a tattoo on his right arm.”
She nodded. “Yes, so many tattoos, so awful. It was like he was trying to show the world how much he hated himself.” She gestured to her left forearm. “Here, he had a knife, a dagger, dripping blood down to his hand.” Then, gesturing to her right, “And here, he had a leaping tiger. Very large with many colors. Los Tigres.”
“No spiders?”
She shook her head. “Kiki was very afraid of spiders. He would never have let anybody draw one on his skin.”
“Mrs. Videz, did you ever hear Kiki mention someone named Tino?”
“No.”
“Or Dante?”
Her face took on a fierceness I could not have imagined. “Oh, I know him. Dante with the marks on his face.” She pointed to both cheeks, and I was sure she meant acne scars. “I saw him twice. He came to our house to pick up Kiki. While my son was out of the room, he put his hand here.” She pointed to her breast and blushed deep red. “He didn’t say anything, he just…how do you say it…pinched the…the tip…until the pain made me so weak I couldn’t move. It was not the touch of a man who knows women. It was a touch of evil—and a warning.”
“What was Kiki doing with him?”
“He only told me he was doing some work. And he was being paid a lot of money. If I had just told Kiki what this Dante did to me, he would never have gone with him, and my son would be alive. But I was too ashamed.” I thought she was going to cry again, but she didn’t.
“Did you find anything unusual in Kiki’s car?”
“Kiki didn’t have a car. When he went someplace with Dante, he picked him up. In a truck.”
“You mean a van. Dark blue.”
“Yes, very clean and shiny. He always parked it in the middle of the street, so nobody could get past. One day, a man got out of his car to yell, and Dante put a gun in his face. Then he laughed. But not a funny laugh.”
“Did your son tell you where they met?”
“At the Home Depot. In the back, where the men wait for work. Sometimes, on Saturdays, Kiki would go there to make extra money. He was good with his hands, and my husband taught him how to put down cement.”
“You said you saw Dante twice. Was the other time at your house too?”
She shook her head but didn’t offer anything.
“Can you tell me?” I asked gently. “It might be important.”
She looked at me, and I could see real fear. She thought for a moment, then made a decision. “On Sunday, my day off, I get up early and help my cousin, Rita, clean the bar at the Biltmore Hotel. We ride the train downtown, and that way we can finish in time to walk to eleven o’clock mass at Our Lady of Angels. It’s such a beautiful place, and there are so many people. It makes God feel very close. Do you go to church, Mr. Black?”
“Not as often as I should.”
“I will say a prayer for you.”
“Thank you, I’d like that.”
“The Sunday before Kiki was…was killed, Rita and I were finished with our work and getting ready to leave for church, when Dante came into the hotel. He was dressed in a suit—very expensive.”
“Was he alone?”
“No, there were other men there.”
“In the lobby?”
She nodded. “Five or six. All young, dressed very nice. They were with a man with much white hair. A very, very big man, but not so old like you would expect with such hair.”
“When you say big, do you mean tall? Like me?”
“Tall, yes, but also very…” She used her hands to demonstrate a thick torso. “Very anchuro.”
“Wide?” I said.
She nodded. “Yes, wide. But graceful. Like a dancer. Like he was big all his life. And his mouth. Much teeth…much teeth. Not a nice man to look at.”
She stopped, looked at me. “I also saw the woman.”
“The woman?”
Marta nodded. “The woman who was shot…with you. Dr. York. She was standing on the balcony that looks down over the lobby. Watching the men.”
I was taken completely off guard. “Are you sure?”
Marta’s voice turned firm. “Her picture was on television. I am sure.”
“How long did you watch?”
“Not very long. At first, they just stood there, like they were waiting for somebody else. Then Dante said something that made the big man angry, because he slapped him—hard.”
“What did Dante do?”
“Nothing, he didn’t even put his hand on his face. Then all of sudden, more men came into the hotel, some of them from across the other ocean. Many men, maybe ten, twelve, and they had things in their ears, like when you are deaf. They went to different places in the lobby and stood. One of them was right next to me.”
Somebody’s private security, I thought. Wearing earbuds, like the Secret Service. “When you say from across the ‘other ocean,’ do you mean they were Asian?”
“Yes, Asian. But I cannot tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese and the others.” She seemed embarrassed. “I have a friend who is Korean, and she looks like them too. I’m sorry.”
I reassured her. “It’s okay, Marta. What happened next?”
“A man wearing sunglasses came in. He was not Asian, like the ones who were protecting him. He went to the man in the white hair, and they shook hands. Like they were old friends.”
Old friends don’t bring security. And somebody had insisted on meeting in a public place. It was the kind of show reticent people participate in only when they think there is real danger.
Marta had started speaking again, and I had to stop her and ask her to start over.
“The elevator opened, and everybody got very nervous. Like it wasn’t supposed to open. The man standing next to me took out a gun. Then from the elevator, a man got out…an American.”
“An American?”
She nodded. “No matter how hard they try, people who live in other countries cannot dress like Americans. And they cannot walk like them. This man had on jeans and one of those shirts with a horse on it, here.” She indicated her left chest. “The shirt was white and the horse was blue, and he was wearing a leather jacket. An old one. Brown, very neat. And cowboy boots. Not like a Guatemala vaquero. Very expensive.”
“What did he do?”
“He walked right through all of those men with things in their ears like they were not even there. Smiling. That is what Americans do. They are not afraid of anything.”
She was right. It gets us killed sometimes, but it’s also what makes us…us.
“The man in the white hair was angry, and he said something, but the American didn’t seem to care. Then…”
She stopped, and I could see she was clasping and unclasping her hands.
“Go on, Marta,” I said softly.
She nodded, but her hands were still busy. “The woman. Dr. York. She had a camera. One of those little ones you hold out like this.” She extended both arms. “One of the men saw her and pointed. The white-haired man started shouting, and Dante and some of the others went after her. There was much yelling and running, and I was afraid. So I took Rita’s arm and we left.”
“What did your cousin say?”
“That she didn’t see anything.”
“But she did.”
“Of course. She was standing right beside me.”
“Do you think she had ever seen any of them before?”
Marta shook her head. “I waited until she wasn’t expecting it, and I asked her.”
“And you believe she was telling the truth?”
“Yes, Rita would never lie twice. And never on the way to church.” Marta smiled for the first time.
“Marta, I want you to take a moment and think back. Get a mental picture of the scene. Then I want you to describe the man wearing sunglasses.”
Marta thought for a moment. “He was not tall, but not short either. And his suit was tight across his chest, like those men on TV who tell you to buy their machines, and you will become strong.”
“A weight lifter?” I said.
She nodded. “His arms were thick too. Like they were almost too big for his clothes. He had a square face, and his hair was very dark, but it had a white streak in it. Right here.” She pointed at the front of her own hair.
“Did you hear him speak?”
“Yes, and he did not come from America. He talked like Mr. Nik.”
“Mr. Nik?”
“Yes, the man who owns this house.”
She pointed to a framed movie poster on the wall across the room. It was an art film I had never heard of, but as I read through the credits, the composer’s name stopped me. Nikita Kuchin.
I looked at Marta. “Is Mr. Nik Russian?”
She nodded. “He says most people leave Russia because of politics. He just wanted to get warm.”
The Siamese cats suddenly heard something and bolted out of the room. Marta smiled and shook her head. “Loco.”
I got up to leave. “One more question, Marta. Have you ever heard of something called City of War?”
She thought for a moment. “In Guatemala there is a large cemetery called City of the Souls. I have never heard of one for war…but maybe there should be such a place…where we could put the men who start them.”
The wisdom of the unlettered. Once again confirming Buckley’s observation that he’d rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than by two thousand Harvard professors.
I handed Marta my card. “If you need anything, or if Dante contacts you…”
She took the card, looked at it, then at me. “Thank you, Mr. Black. You’re the first person who has been kind. And your Spanish is beautiful.”
At the front door, I stopped and turned. “Marta, you are a very strong person.”
“I am trying,” she answered. “For Kiki.”
As I went down the front walk to my truck, I knew more than when I’d gone in, but, unlike Sgt. Manarca, I was a long way from making out the Eiffel Tower. One thing was clear, however. Kim was batting 100 percent in the bullshit department. And not only had she seen Dante before, it wasn’t in the hot fudge line at Baskin-Robbins.
In the car, I replayed my conversations with her. She’d talked about losing her cell phone, datebook, even her dry cleaning, but she’d never mentioned a camera. And there hadn’t been one in the house or in the box sent over by Dr. Abernathy. I dialed the Getty.
“Everyone in the art world carries a digital camera,” said A.A. “It’s one of the wonderful things technology has brought us. Even a lox like myself can take a picture that it used to take an entire crew to get.”
“Do you know what kind of camera Kim had?”
“The museum issues us each a top-of-the-line Olympus. Nikon be damned. It’s just marvelous.”
“And you didn’t find it in her things?”
He thought for a moment. “No, and I actually thought about it, because it’s supposed to be turned in when an employee leaves. But I didn’t know who to ask, and it seemed unseemly to start calling around. I take it you didn’t find it either.”
“No, but if it shows up, I’ll be sure to send it to tech security.”
He laughed. “You do that.”