Coyle jumped abruptly to his feet and shouted, "It's not Caliph!"
Townsend stopped in mid-sentence. The room fell still, except for the two Secret Service men by the door whose hands were unexpectedly poised at the fronts of their jackets. Coyle relaxed.
"I beg your pardon?" the president said.
"It's not Caliph behind this. At least, not in the way we think."
The president walked across the room, slowly and deliberately, until he stood directly in front of Coyle. He was a good head taller. "Then who should we be looking for?" he asked.
Coyle drew a blank. He had proven one solution wrong, yet not come up with an alternative. "I'm not sure, sir. But I think I can find out.
The president of the United States stared at him hard, like he might divine more detail by some kind of telepathy.
"I'll need a lot of help," Coyle said. "FBI, Secret Service—"
"Secret Service?" Darlene Graham interjected.
"Maybe the SEC. I need full access, everything, and the highest priority. We have to be fast."
Townsend s eyes became slits. "Fast? Why?"
"Because we have less than twenty-four hours."
"Twenty-four hours until what?" the president queried impatiently.
"I don't know. But look at the pattern. On each of the last three days there has been a strike of some sort. It might not be further suicide attacks — but if something else occurs it will likely be on the same schedule. You see, I fear we've totally misread the motivation for these attacks. And if I'm right, I might be able to reverse engineer to discover who is really responsible."
The president kept staring. Then, very slowly, his head began a series of nods that gradually increased in amplitude. On the fifth, he said, "All right, Coyle. Whatever you need, you've got it."
Chapter THIRTY
Smoke swirled around Ibrahim Jaber as he worked on his laptop, a thin blue haze that drifted by the room's subtle currents. An empty soup can served as his ashtray, and next to that a cup of hot cereal gone cold stood waiting. As he pecked at the keyboard, Jaber thought the apartment seemed cool. He had already turned up the heat twice, but wind whistled through cracks at the fourth-floor window. It was an urban breeze, the air outside having accelerated to squeeze through the narrow passage between buildings. Bernoulli's Principle, he mused. The same concept that gave his airplanes flight.
When Jaber finished his work, he began composing an e-mail to his wife. Contemplating the words, he sampled the cereal. It was decidedly bland, but he kept spooning it to his mouth, knowing it was one of the few things he could keep down. The medicine was helping less now. It no longer touched the pain. Yet Jaber resisted the urge to up his dosage. To do so would dull his mind at a time when he needed all his wits about him. Just a little longer.
Jaber stared at the flashing cursor as he arranged his thoughts, the hard reality setting in that these could be his last words to his wife. He began:
Dearest Yasmin, I am about to begin my final journey home. I cannot say when, or even if I will complete this voyage, so it is time for you to know more. My work for the last two years has been the most challenging of my career, and also the most rewarding. Soon, you will be told many things regarding what I have done. You may be confronted by many people. Some of what they will say is true. Other parts, less so. I ask only that you trust in this — all I have done is for the benefit of you and our sons.
My condition has not improved, and thus you shall soon be alone to care for Asim and Malik. Others may intervene, offer to help you. From them, take what you will, but always trust in the arrangements we have already discussed. Above all, tell no one of the existence of this account.
As for you, Yasmin…
Jaber's fingers hovered over the keyboard, motionless, like a concert pianist about to address a demanding passage. So much came to mind he did not know where to start. A knock on the door startled him.
Jaber instantly looked at the window. He had pulled the curtains back to allow the rising sun to enter, hoping for a little added warmth. It had been a mistake. He could be seen from outside, and so now he had no option of ignoring the caller. Jaber quickly tabled the cereal and folded his computer without even shutting it down. He went to the curtains and closed them. With no time to stow the laptop under the hidden floor panel in his bedroom, he shoved it into a bookcase behind a tall row of scientific reference books.
He went to the door and opened it cautiously. His gaze sharpened when he saw her. "What are you doing here?" Jaber asked in a harsh whisper.
She tromped in without invitation, wheezing as she passed. "That's a lot of stairs you got out there."
Jaber shut the door and watched her collapse into his best chair, the springs pinging under her weight. He went over and drew the curtains shut. "Why are you here? We cannot jeopardize things now. Less than a day remains." Jaber had more to say, but his words were interrupted by a coughing spell. Retching and struggling for air, he dropped to the couch for support.
"You don't sound so good," Fatima said. "You taking your medicine?"
Jaber nodded as he recovered.
She pointed to an old television. "You been watching the news? Caliph's martyrs, they doing a good job."
"Yes, I know." It had long perplexed Jaber that so many young men and women could throw their lives under the bus that was militant Islam. But then he considered the economy of Egypt and her neighbors. A man who was well fed, prosperous enough to care for his family, would never consider martyrdom. But a man who was hungry and desperate — he might go to any extreme. This Jaber knew only too well.
"What about you?" she asked, disturbing his thought. "You finish that update thing, huh? Caliph, he wanted me to ask."
"Of course, yesterday." Jaber looked at his watch — it was now seven in the morning. "Seventeen hours remain."
"So how you do that? By computer or something?"
"Yes, my personal laptop has the software codes. But as I warned, we are now at the point of no return. The navigation updates are uploaded every two weeks. By the time the next one comes—"Jaber's voice trailed off. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped until one showed. Feigning hospitality, he turned it toward Fatima.
She cackled. "No. Those things will kill you."
He found some amusement in the fact that Fatima's answer had come in a raspy voice. Jaber recognized it as the kind of resonance a woman acquired, one cured by a lifetime of harsh tobacco and shot-grade whiskey. He lit up, then tensed as she reached for the framed photograph next to his chair.
"Pretty wife," Fatima said. "Good looking boys, too." She held it up high in one hand, like a lawyer displaying evidence to a jury. "Caliph, he's gonna take good care of them."
Jaber said nothing. He willed her to put it back down. "What about this bothersome American, Mr. Davis?" he asked. "Caliph was supposed to do something about him."
"Yeah, I know. He got some guys to do that, but they screwed it up. That's Algerians for you." Fatima chortled again.
Jaber was left to wonder if she was speaking of the same men who had been at his own side three days ago. If so, the fact that they failed did not surprise him.
Fatima got up and went to the window. She pulled aside one of the curtains Jaber had just closed and studied the street outside. "This a pretty good view," she said.
Jaber wanted to tell her to keep it closed, but he clenched his teeth tightly. Again he felt the cold, and he could not stop his thoughts from drifting a thousand miles away to the resilient warmth of Egypt.