“He went on and enjoyed his cam show, of course,” Carol replied. “While the Trojan opened a gateway into his system. I have his passwords and account information for every site he’s ever accessed — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, everything.”
Social media. It had never failed to amaze him how much people willingly posted about themselves on-line. An intelligence officer’s gold mine, all of it…just there for the taking. “Seen anything actionable?”
“Of course. He updates his Twitter from his phone roughly every half hour — on a slow day. Talks about what he’s doing, where he’s going. And each tweet is embedded with his geo-tracking information.”
“Like painting a bulls-eye on his own backside,” Harry said. The naivete was darkly amusing.
When he looked back, the humor had left her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” she whispered, holding up a hand before her face. Her fingers were trembling, ever so slightly. “It’s different…being this close to it.”
“It is.”
“I keep trying to think of him as a target, but it’s not working.” She waved at the screen. “Not when he comes through as a kid in every post. Just a rich, stupid, oversexed kid.”
“Then don’t look. Not any more than you have to.”
Carol looked up into his eyes, incredulous. “Close your eyes — that’s your solution? Doesn’t it ever bother you?”
He sighed. “I told you the story of how I got into the CIA, but I never told you what I had intended to do when I left Georgetown, did I?”
“No.”
“I…believed that God had called me to be a missionary. There was a team in Beirut, working to translate Gospel tracts into Arabic. They needed another translator, and I’d met with their team leader twice stateside. Had it all sorted. Or so I thought. When I finally ended up in the Middle East I was carrying a Kalashnikov instead of a Bible.” A grim smile passed across his face. “Sounds ironic, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, silence filling the room. “Do you ever regret your choice?”
Harry shrugged. “Youth mistakes many things for the will of God. In the end, it’s always hard to say. I was in Iraq in 2004 when I received word — the leader of that translation team had been killed. He’d stepped onboard a bus in Beersheba moments before a suicide bomber triggered their vest. He was killed instantly, along with his wife and his two-month-old son. It’s true what they say. Only the good die young.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He moved behind her, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. “You ask if it ever bothers me? The answer is no — not when it’s compared with the alternative.”
His tie was straight. Of course it was. Haskel tugged at it anyway, casting one final look into the mirror. He was nervous, and the Secret Service took a dim view of visibly nervous people meeting with the President of the United States.
Delivering the daily briefing wasn’t his job, he thought, as he made his way down the hallway toward the Oval Office, flanked by agents. That came within the purview of the Director of National Intelligence, Lawrence Bell — but after the bombings he had been whisked away to an “undisclosed location.”
He and Hancock had been friends once, but there was too much water underneath that particular bridge. Too many unfulfilled promises on the path to power. Now they were just allies.
Cahill was at the end of the hallway, what passed for a smile on his face. It seemed impossible that someone could work in D.C. for such a long time and remain an unknown quantity, but that was Cahill. The President’s chief of staff was a black hole.
“It’s good to see you again, Eric,” he murmured smoothly, escorting him into the Oval Office. The President was nowhere to be seen.
“He’ll be here in five minutes,” Cahill announced, in answer to an unasked question. “Have a seat.”
Haskel took a deep breath. “I need you to look at this.”
The chief of staff looked down at the folder in Haskel’s hand as if it was poisoned. “What is it?”
“We got a FISA warrant request from a field agent of ours in Michigan a few hours ago.”
“So?”
“So it’s someone we know,” Haskel retorted, gesturing for Cahill to open the folder. “Abu Kareem al-Fileestini.”
A curse escaped Cahill’s lips. “You’re kidding me, right, Eric? Al-Fileestini was here a few months ago. He and the President sat together at the Ramadan dinner.”
“I know, I know,” the FBI director replied, holding up a hand. “That’s why I brought it to you first.”
Cahill’s eyes scanned down the page, his face purpling as he continued to read. “Listen, Eric, I lost a cousin when the World Trade Center collapsed. He was a firefighter — went back into that smoky hell to find somebody else to save. Never came back out.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Doesn’t matter — let me finish. I’m just sayin’, I get it. I understand the fears that still permeate this country…but for the love of all that’s holy, what type of people do you have working for you? This reads like some sort of Islamophobic hate rag — the type of stuff I’d expect to hear off talk radio, not coming from a federal agent.”
“Then you wouldn’t advise bringing it to the President’s attention?” Haskel asked. He leaned back in his chair, glancing at his watch.
The chief of staff snorted. “I’m wondering why you even brought it to my attention, Eric. If it weren’t for the help of moderates like al-Fileestini, we would have lost this blasted war on terror a long time ago. I don’t want to see him harassed by a glory hound.”
“I concur,” Haskel said, reaching out to take back the FISA request. “I met Abu Kareem myself when he spoke at Quantico — a finer man I’ve never had the pleasure of knowing.”
“Then we’re all playing off the same sheet music here?”
“Absolutely.”
The hardest part of survival was finding the will to do it. It was one of two primary lessons Viktor remembered from his childhood, from his years as a sex slave. The other one was, trust no one.
Korsakov. He pulled his knees tight up against his chin, curled up into a tight ball on top of the green trash dumpster. After all the years of abuse, he had idolized his rescuer.
All men were the same, in the end. They all wanted more than you were prepared to give — whether your body or your loyalty. He stared down through a haze of tears at the SIM card in his hand.
Call him.
The impulse was there, never so strong. Resist it. The leering face of the oligarch rose up before him. Just the way he remembered him.
The way he remembered everything. That feeling of helplessness. He fingered the SIM card aimlessly, replacing it at last in the pocket of his jacket.
He had to. But not yet…
He wasn’t used to driving without music. American rap, turned all the way up.
Not this unbearable quiet, just the sound of wheels against the road, the hum of a powerful engine.
“Where are we headed?” Nasir asked, glancing across the cab of the tractor-trailer at the negro.
Omar looked up from his pocket copy of the Qur’an, dark fingers paging through the flowing script. “That’s not for me to say. The shaikh will answer your questions — or not, as Allah guides him.”