Jihad (37 page)

The girl, a very light-skinned Arab-American, looked at the FBI agent as if she had used a four-letter word.

“How often did he go to class?” asked Dean.

“Couple of times. Kenan kind of blows in and out. You wouldn’t see him for weeks, then all of a sudden he’d be there. Like a ghost. He always aces tests. He’s like a genius nerd.”

“When did you last see him?” asked Dean.

Muna shrugged. “First or second week in September, around there. In class. We talked about my trip.”

“Where’d you go?” asked Dean.

“Mexico City. I’d been, like, planning it for years. Months. He was pretty interested—we probably talked about it for two or three hours. Longest I ever talked to him about anything.”

“Was he trying to hit on you?” asked Williams.

“Kenan? Are you kidding? Like, me and Kenan?”

“What interested him about Mexico City?” said Dean.

“I don’t know. How I got there. What the taxis are like, the airport, hotels, buses.”

“Not the mosques?” asked Williams.

The girl made a face and rolled her eyes. “It was just—it was stuff like how to get around, did I have to talk in Spanish, that kind of stuff.”

“Did you give Kenan any Mexican money?” Dean asked.

“Why would I do that?”

“CHARLIE, WE NEED you to go to the airport,” said Marie Telach as Dean and Williams got into the detective’s car a short time later.

“Excuse me just a second,” Dean told Williams, taking out his cell phone. He pretended to punch the buttons, then held it up to his ear. “Hi, it’s Charlie. You have any news for me?”

“Muna gave us some good leads,” said Telach in his implant. “We’re pretty sure Kenan took a flight to Mexico City earlier today.”

“He had a Mexican coin in his room.”

“Oh? So he’d been there before?”

“I don’t know. Maybe in September.”

“Okay, we’re going to check into that. In the meantime, I have a Gulfstream that should land at the airport in about an hour. Can you get there?”

“Yeah.” He snapped the phone closed and found Williams staring at him.

“I have to go to the airport.” he told the detective.

“Why?”

“Catch a plane.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t think I can say.”

“No,”
said Telach.

Williams shook her head. “Which agency are you working for again?”

“Marshals Service.”

“Right. And I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

CHAPTER 113

JACKSON KNEW AS soon as he saw the video from the Detroit area convenience store that it wasn’t Asad bin Taysr. He zoomed in on the side of his head, where he’d been bandaged in Istanbul; there was neither a bandage nor a healing wound there.

But his profile was very familiar, and not simply because his close-cropped grayish beard and sideburns mimicked Asad’s. In height, build, and approximate age, he looked very much like the subject of the German operation: Marid Dabir.

Jackson was tired, and the video, shot by a convenience store security camera, was hardly the best quality. Most likely it wasn’t Marid—the Germans had concluded he was dead—but it was something that should be checked out. Very possibly it was another member of Asad’s circle who had not been previously identified.

“Are there other images?” Jackson asked the city detective who’d shown him and Dallas Coombs the tape.

“Not from this store. There are other cameras in the area. We haven’t checked them yet. We just weren’t sure it was worth it. I mean, the clerk in the store gave us almost nothing. The guy seemed suspicious, that’s all.”

“I’d like to take these to a lab that can analyze them.” said Jackson. “And we should look at other cameras in the area, especially around the same time. Ten in the morning?”

“No. A.M. and P.M. are flipped on the tape. That was shot at night. You can see the darkness at the very edge of the frame there, from outside. It’s nighttime.”

“There’s someone standing watching from outside,” said the FBI agent who’d accompanied Jackson.

“Face is too fuzzy to see,” said the policeman.

“My lab may be able to check that as well. I’d need the original.”

“Not a problem.”

Jackson looked at his watch. “Do you think the clerk at the store would be working tonight?”

YASIF RAMADAN WAS a thirty-year-old father of two who lived on Detroit’s south side. The nightshift gig was his night job; during the day he was a plumber’s helper for a small company in the city. He volunteered his background without prompting as soon as Jackson and Coombs showed him the print from the surveillance tape. Ramadan remembered the man not because he was Arab but because he had stared accusingly at Ramadan through the whole transaction.

“Like I was a bug,” said Ramadan. “I could tell he was a slime.”

“Did you think he was trying to steal from you?” asked the FBI agent.

“No. I watched him—I watch everyone at night. Of course I watch them.” He pointed to the side below the counter, where a split television screen carried feeds from four video cameras stationed in the store. “I saw that he was not stealing. You could tell he wasn’t from around here, because of the way he looked at things in the store. He couldn’t read English very well, if at all.”

Jackson surveyed the store. The surveillance cameras were so well hidden that he couldn’t spot them, even though he knew from the screen where they must be stationed.

“Was he with anyone?” Coombs asked.

“Guy stood in the door the whole time,” Ramadan told the FBI agent. “That was creepy. Was he the victim?”

“We’re not sure,” said the FBI agent.

“Why did you think he was?” asked Jackson.

“I heard that it was an Arab,” said Ramadan. “There are rumors he was a terrorist.”

Word spreads quickly, Jackson thought.

“We really don’t know,” said Coombs.

“We should hang all of them,” said the clerk.

“Where did you hear the rumors?” Jackson asked.

The clerk shrugged. “Everyone is saying it. Maybe because he’s a Muslim.”

Jackson saw the pain on Ramadan’s face, as if the accusation against someone who used the same words to pray as he did implicated him as well.

“If you think of anything else,” Jackson told him, “please call Agent Coombs.”

CHAPTER 114

AN OPTIMIST MIGHT have pointed out that the Louisiana raid had not been a complete fiasco, given that it had broken up a major drug lab; indeed, it was very likely that the illegal drugs manufactured there had already ruined a hundred times more lives than terrorists ever could.

William Rubens had never been accused of being an optimist, and so he described the operation without making any note of a positive side. Neither did anyone else who was listening in on the late-night conference call with the president.

“This puts us back at square one,” said Bing. “Worse—we’ve lost twelve hours.”

“Maybe the attack died with him,” suggested the vice president.

No one wanted to state the obvious—they couldn’t count on that—and after a few moments of dead air, the head of Homeland Security gave a report on different preparations around the country, ending by recommending that the security status be raised from orange to red. Rubens had never liked the color codes and had little use for the system in general, but this was neither the time nor place to voice his objections. In the end, the president vetoed the change, noting that the guidelines called for such an alert to be given only if a “site specific” threat had been clearly identified.

“Well, hopefully we get that intelligence before it’s not too late,” said Bing, characteristically driving a knife into Rubens’ ribs as the phone conference ended.

Tired, Rubens rose from his desk and kicked off his shoes, beginning a Yoga routine to stretch his tight muscles. He leaned back, breathing from the pit of his stomach. The yogis who’d taught him as a boy had said that the exercise emptied the bad energy from his body, replacing it with fresh strength. Rubens had stopped believing most of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo that accompanied yoga when he was fourteen or fifteen, but he welcomed that particular idea now.

He remembered his promise to Irena Hadash. It was far too late to call her; he’d do so tomorrow, first thing.

Perhaps he should call now anyway.

No. It was too late. Better to let her sleep.

The Art Room phone rang as he started another stretch. Rubens exhaled slowly, then picked up the receiver.

“Rubens.”

“Mr. Rubens, Ambassador Jackson has something you ought to know about,” said Chris Farlekas, who had relieved Telach as Art Room supervisor for the night. “I have him on the line right here.”

“Let me speak to him.”

“I think Marid Dabir was in Detroit the night before Asad was murdered.” Jackson told him when he came on the line. “I have a video surveillance tape of him, or what might be him, in a convenience store near where the murder took place. It looks very much like the video from Istanbul.”

“How soon can you get the tape to us?”

“My flight leaves in two hours.”

“I will have Mr. Farlekas see if he can arrange a courier to take the tape,” Rubens told him. “I’d prefer you to stay and help the task force. Mr. Dean is investigating another lead.”

“I did have a commitment back home.”

“Meals On Wheels,” said Rubens, remembering Jackson’s weekly charity, delivering food to shut-ins. “We’ll arrange for someone to cover that for you. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” said Jackson. He sounded disappointed.

“If Dabir is in Detroit,” Rubens continued, “it’s possible he helped set up the mission. He met Asad bin Taysr in Istanbul and was involved in the German operation.”

“I seem to recall from the background paper that they didn’t get along. Even in the transcript of their meeting, they seemed restrained.”

“Yes.” Rubens knew from personal experience that it wasn’t necessary for people who worked together to get along. Besides, the information on the inner workings of the al-Qaeda leadership was so thin that any account of friction had to be regarded skeptically.

“The reason I brought it up,” continued Jackson, “is that maybe he was involved in the murder. Maybe he thinks Asad set him up in Germany, and he wanted revenge.”

A possibility, agreed Rubens, though it was more likely that Marid Dabir was some sort of accomplice.

“Whatever his motivations,” said Rubens, “finding him will be a priority, if this does turn out to be him.”

“Understood.”

“I was wondering, Mr. Ambassador,” added Rubens, “what you thought of Dr. Ramil’s performance in Detroit.”

“He was very good,” said Jackson. “I sensed he bristled at being forced to stay in the background, however. The other doctor was somewhat aggressive, and I believe they clashed. Doctors, in my experience, never like to play second fiddle, especially to other doctors.”

“Very well,” said Rubens. “I’m going to hand you over to Mr. Farlekas. Please stay on the line.”

CHAPTER 115

KENAN GOT TO the Mexico City bus station with only ten minutes to spare. But that was enough—he already had a ticket and remembered the way to the boarding area quite clearly. He joined the queue and got a seat about halfway down the aisle.

Kenan still held the paperback he’d found at the St. Louis airport in his hand. He was convinced that the book was a sign that God was watching him.

Just as the bus driver started to close the door, another passenger ran up. The man boarded the bus; though there were plenty of empty seats, he sat next to Kenan.

For a moment, Kenan bristled. Then the man took a small Koran from his pocket.

With trembling fingers, Kenan took out his own and showed it to his guide.

CHAPTER 116

BY THE TIME Dean landed in Mexico City Sunday morning, the Art Room had found the alias Kenan Conkel had used during his September visit and connected it with a pair of stolen credit cards used for a cash advance and meal in Mexico City, as well as an airline ticket to Veracruz, a city on Mexico’s Gulf Coast.

“I doubt he was there on vacation,” said Telach sarcastically as she briefed Dean, “but we haven’t figured out what he was doing. If he was setting up a safe house or some sort of network, that may be why he’s there.”

The fact that it might be part of whatever attack Asad was planning was left unsaid. The Mexican police had been told that Kenan was wanted in connection with the murder in Detroit; Dean was to talk to them first thing Monday. He would also check in with the CIA, which had an extensive file on al-Qaeda dealings in Mexico.

“First, get some sleep,” Telach told him. “I know you haven’t had much the last week.”

Dean grunted. He took a cab to the hotel the Art Room had booked, then went out again to check the area where the cash advance had been made, a business district largely deserted on Sunday. The restaurant, by contrast, was in a bustling neighborhood, the street choked with locals and a smattering of tourists. Dean wandered through the nearby streets as if he were a jet-lagged, awestruck tourist, sizing up the area. After about five minutes he realized it was useless to look for Kenan here, but he kept walking anyway, hoping for a lucky break that would snag the kid. When he finally gave up, he had an impossible time getting a taxi and ended up walking nearly three miles back to the hotel.

Worn out, Dean collapsed on his bed as soon he got into the room. Within moments, he was sound asleep.

He woke at three A.M. the next day. Dim yellow light filled the room, as if it were encased in amber. Smog had descended on the city, filtering the bright lights of the hotel and nearby buildings. Outside, the city was cast in a sinister sepia, the color something stolen from a 1930s gangster movie. It would be the scene right before the good guy was shot, thought Dean, the setup for the big tearjerker at the end.

He closed the curtains and went back to the bed, but couldn’t sleep. He thought of Kenan Conkel and then his parents, clueless and confused back home.

Dean thought of his own father, stubborn—twenty times more stubborn than Kenan’s for sure—and ornery. He’d have come after Dean if he heard he’d been mixed up in something like this.