“I saw you this afternoon,” he told her after she’d ordered a burger. “Where were you going in such a hurry?”
“Just back to work.”
“Where?”
“Work.”
“I know Massina set up something new off campus,” said Johnny. “Why all the mystery?”
“You of all people should know I can’t talk about things with anybody.”
“Not even me?”
“Not even you.”
The burger came. She regretted ordering it; she wasn’t nearly hungry enough to finish it. She wasn’t really hungry at all. She picked at the fries.
“I want to tell you,” she said. “I really do. But…”
“Yeah?”
“It’s awkward.”
“What you’re doing?”
“No. No. This.”
“Yeah, those fries look a little burned.”
“I mean, the situation,” said Chelsea. “You can be such a wiseass at times. Inappropriate times.”
Johnny grimaced.
Maybe I’m being too harsh, she thought.
“Want some fries?” she asked.
“No.”
He just said they looked burned. Duh.
“What did you do today?” she asked.
“Usual. Trained some new guys. Worked out.”
“No more personal security for Lou?”
“He doesn’t think that’s necessary anymore.”
“What’s Beefy think?”
Johnny shrugged. “Massina signs the checks. Or maybe he does — how does that work with direct deposit?”
“I don’t know.”
“That wasn’t a real question,” said Johnny. “I was joking.”
“I knew that,” she said, though in fact she hadn’t.
How did thatwork? It went through the clearinghouse system, with tokens attached permanently to the account numbers…
Why wasn’t Socrates following the money trail?
It was discounting it for some reason.
Nice pun.
There must be something there. The Canadian who’d been killed — at some point he must have gotten money from Daesh, maybe years ago.
The algorithms were using an arbitrary time limit: the original program had a cutoff because its processing power and memory were limited. So the search would, by necessity, only go back so far.
The parameter was set by the initial assessment, which in this case probably went to the original attack, and whatever Socrates decided was a reasonable planning period. Or it could go back to Syria — yes, that would seem reasonable, since that was the original request.
But it was too limiting. It was the way a human thought, not the way Socrates should.
I can change that.
“I have to go,” she told Johnny, pushing away from the table.
“Your burger.”
“I’m not really hungry. Bring it home.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work.”
91
Johansen had anticipated Colby’s question even before boarding the flight back, but he still hadn’t come up with an answer.
“If Ghadab is in the U.S.,” asked the Director as they sat in the basement secure room, “why hasn’t he contacted Persia?”
“Maybe he has” was the best Johansen could offer. “Maybe Persia just hasn’t contacted us.”
“He told us last time,” said Marcus Winston. Winston was the former head of the terror desk, brought in for consultation. Johansen surmised that he’d had a hand in recruiting or running Persia, though no one had said that.
Persia was a deep-planted double agent who had worked for the CIA for years, having managed to infiltrate the terror network around al-Qaeda. As he wasn’t Johansen’s asset — until this assignment, most of Johansen’s work involved Russia and Eastern Europe directly — Johansen knew almost nothing about him. With the exception of Winston, it didn’t appear any of the others knew all that much about him either.
“He told us about the contact relatively late,” said Blitz, the DDO. “Too late to do any good. I don’t think we can even be sure that he’s on our side.”
“Playing devil’s advocate for a moment,” said Colby, “if Ghadab was planning an attack here, why would he come? He generally works through his people.”
“We killed most of his people,” suggested Johansen. “He wants revenge.”
“I agree with that,” said Blitz. “So he targets D.C. Us.”
“Possibly,” agreed Johansen.
“Persia,” said Blitz, looking at Winston. “He’s our best bet. We have to contact him.”
“I can arrange it,” said Winston.
“No.” Colby turned to Johansen. “Find someone to tell him to come in.”
“He’s not my guy.”
“I realize that. I want someone neutral, that he doesn’t know. I want to see what he does. It’s the only way to test him.”
“Or spook him,” said Winston. “It’ll be much better if he’s dealing with someone he knows.”
“No. I don’t trust him. And we have to test him somehow. Yuri, do it quickly.”
An hour and a seven-shot latte later, Johansen had read the entire file on Persia.
Most of that time had been spent dealing with the security protocols using the secure “library.” It wasn’t a very big file.
He lived in New Hampshire — not all that far from where the Canadian terrorist had been found. He had gone to Afghanistan as a young man. He had been contacted and turned by a third party, who answered to Winston.
Two days before the attack on Boston, he had sent a message to Winston, warning that something was imminent. There were no other details; apparently the warning had not been specific.
Impression — the Director felt Winston had screwed up somehow. But he wasn’t sharing.
In any event, that wasn’t his concern. He needed to find someone to get a message to him.
Who do I trust who owes me a favor?
92
Ghadab grabbed a college ID off a table in the campus café before going to the library, scratching the photo image just in case anyone bothered to ask. He memorized the name — Mitchel Cutter — and his graduating class, repeating the information to himself as he walked across to the library. He needn’t have bothered: there was no security or even a clerk at the door.
The internet computers were all taken. He sat down nearby, joining an informal queue.
He glanced around, effecting a bored look while watching the students and gathering information on how the process worked. It was simple, really: scan your ID, get an hour on the machine.
There was a girl at the far kiosk with long black hair. She reminded him of Shadaa.
He imagined Shadaa in a T-shirt and jeans, with sneakers half-off her feet. He imagined Shadaa pounding the keyboard as the girl did, then stopping to push the strands of her hair back.
It was almost a reincarnation.
The girl rose, her session over. Ghadab forgot his task. He rose, following her down and then out the door, along the walkway that led to the street.
Work to do, he reminded himself. But he kept following as she walked down the street.
She’s not Shadaa.
Ghadab kept thinking she would turn up the walk of one of the houses lining the street. When she did, he told himself, he would keep walking, turn back.
But she didn’t turn on the first block or the second or even the third. When she came to the fourth corner, she crossed against the light — there was no traffic, and she didn’t even have to pause. Ghadab continued on the opposite side, watching out of the corner of his eye as she went down the block, turning onto a side street.
I’ve come this far. Why not?
He waited a moment, then crossed. He remembered the feel of Shadaa’s hips.
God sent her as an angel, to give me a glimpse of what waits.
Small stores, cafés, and bars clustered on the next block. Picking up his pace, Ghadab saw her go up the steps to a bar that called itself Angels Hideout.
Surely that was a sign, he thought. Ordinarily he would never go into a bar, but surely that was a sign.
His hand trembled as he put it on the rail going up the steps. He was more nervous than he’d been at the airport.
The noise hit him like a physical thing, pounding at his head. He’d been in places like this before, in Europe, in Argentina, yet this felt completely new, unknown. The interior was divided in half, with tables on the right and a long bar on the left. It was a college hangout; undoubtedly many of the patrons were underage, though clearly no one cared.
The place smelled sweet. Ghadab walked to the far end of the bar before turning and scanning the crowd. She’d sat at a booth alone close to the front of the room. He’d taken a step in her direction, debating how he might introduce himself, when a young man about her age came up from the back and sat across from her.
Ghadab stepped back to the bar, watching. The girl put her hand on the man’s hand; he didn’t remove it.
“Whatcha gettin’?” the bartender asked.
It took Ghadab a moment to realize the question was meant for him.
“Seltzer,” he said.
“Somethin’ in it?”
“No.”
“Lime?”
Ghadab shook his head. The man stepped away. Ghadab looked back at the table but his view was blocked by a waitress.
“Two bucks,” said the bartender, sliding a tumbler toward him.
Ghadab reached into his pocket and fished out a five-dollar bill.
So this is what we must have looked like, he thought, watching across the room as the couple talked. The girl seemed reserved, formal — as Shadaa was. She sat with her back straight against the bench. He liked that; she had virtue.
The boy — they were all alike, Westerners. He was trying to get her into bed, clearly: Look how he pets her hand.
Ghadab couldn’t blame him. But she wasn’t having it.
She laughed, and the laugh stung Ghadab.
His thoughts turned dark. He would kill her in the worst way possible.
Ghadab missed something. In the moment he’d blinked, the girl had gotten out of her seat and begun to walk away. She was upset. The boy didn’t follow.
She walked like Shadaa.
Ghadab left the drink and money on the bar and started outside, dodging a group of men as they entered. One of the men didn’t like something about the way he looked or moved and put his hand out as if to stop him; Ghadab tightened his eyes into a glare. He had a folding knife in his pocket, but it wasn’t necessary: the young man moved out of the way with a sneer. Ghadab brushed past.
You’ll be dead soon anyway.
The girl turned to the right when she reached the sidewalk. Ghadab started to follow, his pace gradually increasing.
His heart began to pound. He needed her now. He would have her now.
He quickened his pace. She was a half block ahead, ten yards, five. Ghadab glanced left and right. They were alone.
She crossed the street, angling toward a set of porch steps. Ghadab slipped his hand into his pocket, grabbing the knife as he stepped off the curb.
A horn blared. He jerked back as a car swept up behind him. A college-aged student was leaning out the driver’s side window, cursing at him.
“Hey, asshole!” shouted the kid.
Before Ghadab could react, the night erupted with a blue strobe light. A police car was just down the street.
Run!
Ghadab took a step back to the sidewalk, unsure what to do. He slid the knife back into his pocket. The car that had nearly hit him stopped abruptly. The police car pulled up behind his left bumper, blocking traffic in both directions.
“You all right?” asked the policeman as he got out.
“Yes,” said Ghadab.
The cop motioned with his hand, thumbing back in the direction of the bar. Then he walked toward the car he’d just stopped.
Go! Go!
Ghadab put his head down and walked swiftly away.
This was a warning. I need to focus on only my mission. I must move quickly, before I make another mistake.