"Is that short for Isaiah or something?"
"No, sir, we believe it is the Arabic name for Jesus."
Kallendorf looked at him. "You are fucking kidding me."
"No, sir," Patrick said. "Jesus was a prophet for Islam. There is also a suspicion among our analysts that the name was adopted to play on the evangelical Christian belief of the Second Coming."
Kallendorf digested this. "So by adopting the name, this Isa is saying he's the second coming of Christ?"
"With the prophesied worldwide death and destruction attendant on that, er, coming, we think so, yes, sir."
Kallendorf leaned back in his chair. "Guy's got balls, I'll say that for him. And maybe even a sense of humor. Jesus." He shook his head, became aware of what he'd said, and laughed. The half of those present who got the joke laughed, too.
"It also means that he has some education, we believe some of it possibly in the West," Omar Khalid said, speaking for the first time. He was of medium height, with dark hair and eyes. Arabian-born and a naturalized American citizen, Khalid was one of the few agents the CIA had who were fluent in Arabic and Farsi. Recruited out of grad school where he'd been majoring in Islamic studies, he'd spent fourteen years in the field in the Middle East, shadowing, eavesdropping on, and infiltrating mainstream and splinter terrorist groups from Beirut to Libya. When at last his cover was blown, his masters in Langley had pulled him out of the field one step ahead of his executioners and parked him behind a desk. He had predicted 9/11, or something very like it, and had been laughed at for his pains. Afterward, he had been thoroughly investigated, just to be sure he himself hadn't been part of the conspiracy. He bore it all philosophically, because like most immigrants whose families had sacrificed a great deal in pursuit of the American dream, he was a true believer in truth, justice, and the American way. Lately, however, Patrick had noticed that Khalid had begun to show signs of restlessness, even of anger. It's hard to be a prophet in one's own time and to have one's prophecies at first ridiculed and then suspect.
Kallendorf shrugged, his massive shoulders throwing menacing shadows against the screen. "Most of the guys on the planes had degrees in engineering. That nowadays the terrorists are fielding intellectual ideologues is not news, gentlemen."
"No, sir," Patrick said, and squeezed Khalid's arm before he spoke again. The slide show became a series of more blurry photographs of groups of men in jellabas and kaffiyehs, succeeded by a series of more head shots with the numbers across the bottom cropped off. "We believe Isa was the only non-Jordanian in Zarqawi's cell. We believe he may be
Irani, or possibly Yemeni, although some sources have him Indian-born, which"-Patrick allowed himself a small, disbelieving smile-"we believe is reaching. We believe him to be in his late thirties or early forties."
"We believe a hell of a lot," Kallendorf said. "Do we know anything?"
"We are still gathering information, sir."
"Which, freely translated, means we don't know shit."
Patrick refused to be rushed. "I'd rather not assume too much in advance of hard data, sir. Our original intelligence on Zarqawi was wrong. Osama bin Laden and al-Zarqawi hate each other, and that hatred only increases as time goes on. Bin Laden wants to kill Americans. Zarqawi is killing mostly Shiites. Bin Laden's mother is a Shiite."
He nodded at Khalid, who leapt to life like a yappy poodle kept too long on a leash. "If Isa isn't Jordanian, it may explain why he has decided to strike out on his own. We're closing in on Zarqawi. When he's gone, we believe this Isa has no chance of being named to take his place as the leader of the Iraqi insurgency. There is an Egyptian, a protégé of Ayman al-Zawahiri, who we believe will be named as the next leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Zawahiri is bin Laden's right-hand man, and any protégé of his is certain to be seen as more trustworthy than a protégé of Zarqawi's."
"Wait a minute, wasn't Zawahiri the guy who ran the op that killed all those tourists in Luxor in 1997? I thought the Russians had him locked up."
"They detained him for six months in 1996," Khalid said. "He was carrying four different passports under four different names from four different countries. None of the countries would own him, so the Russians cut him loose on the Azerbaijani border. Where we lost him." It probably came out a little harsher than Khalid meant it, but it was only the truth, after all.
"Ah." Kallendorf stroked his chin. He'd had a beard when he had been named director. Patrick thought he must be missing it. "So you think this Isa blew up a bus in Baghdad, killing-"
"Thirteen," Khalid said.
"-and wounding-"
"Fifty," Khalid said, adding helpfully, "including bystanders, some of
whom staggered off home before help arrived. So we don't have a hard number on wounded."
"-and this is Isa's, what, his calling card? His debutante ball? His curtsey to the queen?"
"We believe Isa did it to demonstrate his independence, yes, sir, his determination to distinguish himself from his master."
"It also signals Zarqawi's determination to hand off operations to Isa when the time comes," Patrick said. "No matter what al Qaeda thinks about it."
" 'Watch me, Dad, see what I can do'?"
"Essentially, sir, yes. From both men."
"Lights." The lights came up and Kallendorf swiveled around to face them. "This a one-off, or are we looking forward to more love letters from this asshole?"
Patrick and Khalid exchanged a look. "We believe the bus bombing was Isa testing his wings, sir," Patrick said.
"And what the fuck does that mean when it's at home?"
"He was flying solo," Khalid said. "Seeing if he could operate on his own."
"Maybe even a test," Patrick said. "To prove to Zarqawi he was worthy."
Kallendorf got to his feet, moving with the ponderous authority of sheer physical size that reminded them all of the linebacker he used to be. Deliberately, Patrick thought. Kallendorf's was a carefully cultivated presence that had intimidated employees, superiors, and congressmen alike for twenty years, culminating in the top job at a federal agency less inured to the mood swings in the White House than everyone would like to think. New to the job, he wasn't new to the Beltway.
But he wasn't a career bureaucrat, either, and he did not lack either intelligence or humor. He achieved his full six feet nine inches and said with deliberation, measuring and weighing each word as it was produced, "Gentlemen, I'm the FNG around here and I know it. You all think I'm just some candy-ass with enough money to buy myself the job the last guy screwed up, and I know that, too. I've shot my mouth off some in front of Schuyler's oversight committee down on the Hill, you've heard about it on O'Reilly and watched it on YouTube, and my guess is right about now