The Identity Thief (16 page)

Okay, that makes a crazy kind of sense
, she thought.

"Well, wouldn't it be more prudent to use one of our own agents? Why would you want to use an untrained, unscrupulous - to put it mildly - civilian on a sensitive mission like this?"

"As I said, the U.S. Intelligence community is riddled with moles. And how many CIA agents just happen to be dead ringers for Ali Nazeer? When this 'Ali Nazeer' suddenly surfaced a few weeks after the real one was eliminated, well, it presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Particularly since, of course, he's a totally deniable - not to mention disposable - asset."

"What's my role supposed to be?"

"You'll be 'Nazeer's' handler. You know how he thinks better than anyone."

"I know nothing about him," she protested. "I thought he was Ali Nazeer until five minutes ago."

Mr. Jones smiled.

"You captured him. You out-thought him. There's every chance this con artist will bolt the first chance he gets. You have to prevent that."

Traci's role would be to accompany "Ali Nazeer," Asar, and a third man, whose identity had not yet been revealed to her, after their escape, to the mountains where it was believed The Chief's lair lay. Her cover was to be a member of the Jihadist movement.

"But my Arabic," she protested. "My accent is far from perfect."

"Your cover is that you are a Liberian," explained Mr. Jones. "Their official language is English, so your accent will be perfectly fine unless you run into Henry Higgins. You are also familiar with Pashto and Dari, correct?

"Enough to do some translations for the Bureau, but -"

"That's all we need." Mr. Jones raised a hand, silencing her. "Now I want you to meet someone." He pressed an intercom button. "Send in the prisoner."

The door opened, and a Marine shoved in a bearded man in handcuffs and leg irons.

For a moment she thought it was X in eyeglasses. He had a similar small, wiry frame and swarthy complexion. But on closer inspection she realized it was a stranger.

"Harry Assad, meet Special Agent Traci King," Mr. Jones said.

"Excuse me for not shaking hands," the guy said with a little smirk that made Traci decide right off the bat she didn't like him.

Mr. Jones explained, "He's been planted among the inmates under the name Moammar el Shabaz. He'll be moved in with 'Ali Nazeer' today."

"You're Saudi intelligence?" Traci suggested.

"Harry's a Lebanese American in the Defense Intelligence Agency," Mr. Jones informed her. "And, like you, now working for the Committee."

"How do we know he's not a mole?" she said sarcastically. "A Muslim fanatic."

"I happen to be a Christian," Harry responded with obvious irritation.

"Well that's a relief. Hallelujah!"

"Have a seat, Harry," Mr. Jones said with a courteous smile, gesturing to a seat beside Traci. "Harry's a computer whiz. He graduated first in his class at MIT. Made $20 million creating computer games."

"Well that'll come in handy if we run into an army of zombies," she said, using her finger as an imaginary gun to pick off targets. She was liking this less and less.

"We recruited him in 11
^th
grade, and in exchange for a modest sum of start-up capital, he agreed to create programs for us," Jones said. "Some rather nifty ones, I must say - including a virus that's made all of Russia's nuclear missile systems inoperable and some artificial intelligence stuff that would, well, let's just say it would blow your mind."

Traci shrugged.

Mr. Jones opened his mouth to continue his sales pitch, but Harry raised a hand to stay him.

"I sold my company to Microsoft and retired at 23," he said in a somber voice. "But when 9/11 happened, I wanted to do something about it. So I volunteered to be a field agent."

Traci had no snappy comeback to that. Invoking 9/11 was a trump card that had a way of extinguishing debate.

"Harry is an expert marksman. He can match the best of the CIA farm boys shot for shot," said Mr. Jones. "Farm boys" was a euphemism in the intelligence agency for assassins, Traci knew.

"And he has a black belt like you," Mr. Jones went on. "Perhaps you'd like to hold a sparring match some time."

Traci had no interest in Harry's resume, although kicking someone's ass right now held a certain appeal. She had no doubt she could take the little guy.

"So what's the plan, Mr. Smith?"

"Jones."

"Of course."

The spymaster knocked off the friendly host act and got down to business.

"After raiding an Islamist safe house in Berlin, our friends at the BND did some routine neutron bombardment to scan captured documents. They uncovered invisible writing pertaining to The Chief on pages of a Koran," he revealed.

The BND was Germany's intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst; Traci knew that much. It literally meant the Federal News Agency, thus a nickname for
their
assassins was "cub reporters."

"The Chief has amassed a war chest of approximately $45 billion," Mr. Jones went on. "We believe he intends to use the money to purchase a WMD from Ukraine. Where the funds are hidden, we don't know."

That got Traci's attention, as talk of nukes generally does with law enforcement officers.

"Nuclear material?"

"We don't know what it is. Our Ali Nazeer and Harry here will penetrate The Chief's hideout and execute a computer theft of those funds."

"Is this con man a computer nerd too?"

"Leave the technical stuff to me," Harry boasted. "All 'Ali Nazeer' has to do is get me to a computer terminal in The Chief's headquarters, or near enough to hack in with a laptop. I'll do the rest."

"Glad it's going to be such a cakewalk," Traci said, crossing her arms with a sour expression. "So, what's next?"

Mr. Jones was beaming again, in full Santa Claus mode.

"First we get you some language tapes to brush up on your dialects," he said. "Then we measure you for a burqa."

X ought to have been in better spirits now that he knew he faced no 15
^th
century torture. But it was hard to put out of his mind the little fact that within a matter of hours the Black Plague symptoms would kick in. The disease that had wiped out more than a quarter of Europe's population. So it took all his acting talents to remain jovial when he dined with fawning fellow prisoners in the mess hall.

"We heard how bravely you withstood the torture of the Americans, waterboarding and electric shock and other, unthinkable things," a member of his entourage marveled. "Is it true that they put you on the rack?"

X nodded. "It was nothing. I may get one for my mansion."

His peers roared with laughter.

X grinned and took a bite out of a baloney sandwich (the pork-free variety, of course). At least he could eat without discomfort. Right after his
tete a tete
with Mr. Jones, he'd been wheeled to the office of the prison dentist, where he'd been outfitted with a new filling to replace the one that had been knocked out of his head. X found this random act of kindness on the part of his captors rather bizarre.

He was dragged from his cell for a "torture" session each of the three succeeding days after his initial meeting with Mr. Jones. And the daily two-hour sessions, in which Mr. Jones briefed him on details of the terrorist network he supposedly ran, were somewhat torturous to X. After being forced to repeat back to his mentor intricacies of the Jihadist Brotherhood's chain of command - more mind-numbing than the British monarchy's line of succession - he told Mr. Jones, "Please, don't you have an iron maiden you can shove me in instead of this?"

And of course, he was told about Harry, his new partner in crime.

Back in his cell, he and Asar were trading riddles (Asar seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Arabic ones dating back 1,000 years) when Harry was shoved into their cell.

X greeted the newcomer with exaggerated enthusiasm, embracing him, then clapping his hands on his face and bringing it close to his own.

"Moammar, I thought you were dead," he said excitedly.

"And I you," Harry replied.

X turned. "Asar, this is my friend and ally Moammar. It was he who engineered the destruction of the American consulate in Riyadh."

"I thought that was Al-Qaeda," Asar said, looking puzzled.

"Those rascals try to take credit for everything," X replied without skipping a beat. "No, it was Moammar here and his team, with the aid of Allah. Moammar, I thought you were killed in the firefight by Saudi secret police."

"I escaped in the back of a Red Cross truck that was passing at that very moment," Harry said.

X nudged Asar. "Throw this one in the sea and he'll come up with a fish in his mouth. He's the luckiest devil I know."

Harry laughed. "And you are the cleverest and bravest, my friend."

X placed a hand on Harry's shoulder and announced to Asar, "Moammar is one of my dearest friends. My sister is promised to him."

"Adadwiya, the youngest?"

X nodded. He had described his sister's beauty to the teen so many times, in such vivid detail, he could picture her himself.

"Allah has given Moammar a great gift when it comes to computers," X said. "Many times he has hacked his way into the infidels' computers and retrieved vital intelligence."

For a moment, Asar regarded the two old chums like a jealous lover. Then he stood up and took Harry's hand, shaking it vigorously.

"It is a blessing to meet you," he said. "Ali and I have forged a close bond here. We are like brothers."

X tousled Asar's thick mop of hair.

"This is true. Asar was the personal driver to The Chief, and one of his confidantes. He saved The Chief's life on many an occasion."

"It is an honor to meet you," Harry said, gripping the teen's hand and forearm with conviction.

* * *

X's symptoms were beginning to kick in. First an upset stomach, then a hacking cough. He was feeling dizzy when he was led down the hall for yet another interrogation. He was puzzled. The last time, Mr. Jones had wished him a fond farewell, grinning "Break a leg." X hadn't expected to see him again.

When Traci entered the little room, she found X strapped, fittingly enough, to an X shaped steel crucifix. (He'd heard once, by the way, that this was the true shape of the cross on which Christ was put to death.) Presumably for her benefit, he'd been allowed the dignity of underwear.

"Well, well, well," he said. "Don't you keep turning up like a bad penny?" Then he coughed.

"Feeling under the weather?" she said, being sure to keep her distance.

"I'll live - or so I've been told." He added with a smile, "I never got a chance to tell you, you give one hell of a good massage. You still owe me a happy ending, though."

Traci blushed as the whole humiliating episode rushed back into her mind, along with the usual attendant fury.

"I came to let you know that I'll be your handler on this mission," she said evenly. "I'll be watching you every step of the way."

"Like a fairy godmother?"

She leaned forward, but, knowing he was infectious now, resisted the urge to get all up in his face. "Like the Godfather," she hissed. "You try to escape, you do anything to compromise this mission and you'll get -"

"A horse's head in my bed?"

The agent stepped back "Just be a good boy."

* * *

By the next morning, the three cellmates had been quarantined in the isolation room of the hospital ward. In the bed next to X, Asar was throwing up voluminously into a metal pan - a spectacular spray of reds, greens, oranges and browns that would put Jackson Pollock to shame. Harry, AKA Moammar, was thrashing about on his cot, strange purple swellings extruding from every inch of exposed skin.

X could not believe the pain in his gut. He was curled up in the fetal position, holding his belly, closing his eyes against the blinding fluorescent light. He was convinced that death was imminent. Try as he might to remember what Mr. Jones had said about the disease being designed to peter out, reason fled and delirium overcame him.

He was a boy again, on the tennis court of his father's mansion in Kuwait, taking lessons from his instructor, a fair-haired young Englishman who smiled patiently as they batted the ball back and forth.

"You know, this never happened," the instructor reminded him in a pleasant Yorkshire accent.

He was a boy again, crawling on an Oriental rug, captivated by the pattern, a toy airplane in his hands. He heard a familiar voice and turned. A woman stood in the doorway, bright light streaming from behind her. He recognized his mother's face, not sad and prematurely aged, but young again, happy. She smiled, surrounded by a corona, like an angel.