Jihad (25 page)

“Why are you laughing?”

“Beats bawlin’, don’t ya think? How was the flight?”

“Long.”

“You shoulda tried my flight. I’m on this 777, right?
Coach.
Got this seven-year-old sitting next to me doing his math homework. I helped him most of the flight.”

“Where’s Asad?”

“House outside Montreal couple of miles from here. Lia’s there. We got a pack of
federales
riding shotgun, too. FBI,” added Karr, just in case Dean didn’t pick up the slang. “And we got two Mounties who don’t know the whole score, just that we’re kinda sorta maybe interested in this guy, who maybe sorta is somebody, except we’re not sayin’ who. They’re pretty good sports about it. Rubens sent your ol’ friend Hernes Jackson up to hold their hands.”

“Good choice,” said Dean.

“Better him than me,” said Karr, and he laughed again.

As usual, Asad had said very little, but his comments seemed to indicate he wasn’t planning on staying here very long. The plan was to follow him as long as possible, hoping to get more information about whatever plans he had for an American operation. A large posse had been assembled and was waiting to swoop in when the time was right.

“The more people who know about this, the more chances something’ll go wrong,” said Dean.

“Agree with you there, partner. But it ain’t my call.”

DEAN AND KARR were just getting out of the airport parking lot when the Art Room told them that Asad had started to move. An army Super King Air electronic surveillance plane was circling nearby, so there was no need to hurry—a fact Dean emphasized as Karr mashed the gas pedal.

Dean also cinched his seatbelt. He’d driven with Karr enough to know that, whether he was rushing or not, the younger man looked at speed limits with a mathematician’s eye—he doubled them, then used the result as a minimum speed.

Asad took Highway 10 heading east, backtracked around some local roads, then got back on the highway and drove for about fifteen minutes before getting off again. Finally he stopped at a small family restaurant in Bedford, within spitting distance of the U.S. border.

“Looks like he’ll head for the border when it gets dark,” predicted their runner, Sandy Chafetz, filling them in. “Don’t get too close. Mr. Rubens doesn’t want any pressure on him.”

Karr turned to Dean and winked. “I’m kind of hungry,” he said. “What do you think about us grabbing a bite in Bedford?”

“Tommy, you can’t do that. He saw you on the plane, and even though Dean’s changed his appearance back to normal—”

“Relax, Sandy, he’s pulling your leg,” Dean told her. “We’ll keep our distance unless absolutely necessary.”

Karr really was hungry, so they got some sandwiches from a deli, gassed up, and drove around the area trying to psych out where Asad would go. For the most part, the border between the two countries was invisible, as abstract as the line between close neighbors in a suburban subdivision.

Asad took his time having dinner, and when he finally moved out, it wasn’t south as they’d expected but north, back in the direction of the highway. A series of feints across back roads followed before he got onto Route 401, the Canadian highway that ran along the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Dean admired Asad’s caution and discipline—and was glad that it did him no good.

Asad got off the highway near Belleville and headed south, driving through tiny hamlets that had rolled up their sidewalks and gone to bed as soon as the sun set. By now they had realized he must be planning on getting into a boat, and the Art Room marshaled its task force resources, ever hopeful that Asad would meet with his American compatriots and discuss what he had in mind. Once they knew the target of the attack, they could move in.

Dean hoped that was soon. He wanted the operation to be over already. He’d slept on the plane, but still he was tired, and he missed Lia, who at last report was headed for Saudi Arabia.

Asad finally got into a small open boat on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario; five minutes later he transferred to a slightly bigger but considerably faster speedboat and headed south. A Canadian police boat met Dean at a pier about a mile away. By then Asad was moving east, crossing the lake in the direction of Sackets Harbor south of Watertown, New York.

The Canadian and American police forces as well as customs and border patrols had a lot of experience with smugglers in the area, who used the lake to transport everything from marijuana to Cuban cigars to prescription drugs. Under other circumstances, the Canadian boat captain assured Dean, the small speedboat would have been stopped and inspected before it reached American waters.

Dean wasn’t so sure. The radar aboard the Canadian vessel lost the speedboat within a few minutes and Dean had to guide them using information from the aircraft above.

THE YOUNG MAN who met Asad on the pier looked as if he’d been constructed of paper and wood. The strings of tiny white lights strung across the dock made his skin seem nearly translucent. It would not take much to knock him over.

Asad had not been told who would meet him, and it was not until he was only a few feet from the young man that he saw who it was. He had met Kenan Conkel three years before on his first trip to Detroit and immediately recognized his value as a “clearskin”: a dedicated Muslim who could pass through any screening without attracting attention. Recruits such as Kenan were rare jewels, to be hoarded until the proper moment. The boy had been given a progression of tasks to prove his loyalty, and yet at the same time great pains had been taken to keep him unknown, not only to law enforcement agencies, but to the sort of databases that the American CIA could tap for information. He had no credit card, no bank account; his license was supplied by the network. He was a ghost—almost literally, Asad thought, looking at the boy’s thin frame. Asad had met him a total of four times, and each time he seemed more frail than before. But God’s will would make him strong.

Kenan had been chosen for this mission not for his strength, or even his appearance, but for his intelligence. He had done well in the training, both at the holy school in Pakistan and with the seamen, who had no reason to be easy on him. A mujahideen need not be big in stature, so long as he was strong in spirit.

“Sheik?”

“So good to see you again,” said Asad.

The young man bowed his head as if he were a servant, then reached to take Asad’s bag with his change of clothes and Koran. Asad turned and signaled to the boatman who had taken him here that he could go.

“I am tired and would like to rest before we set out,” Asad told Kenan. “My head aches. Is there a place we can rest?”

“I could find a motel.”

“Please.”

BY THE TIME Dean and Karr landed on shore, Asad had been taken to a motel several miles up the highway, apparently for the night. The Art Room directed them to a car rental place about a mile up the highway, where a grumpy night clerk rented them the largest car on the lot—a two-door Ford Focus. The car seemed to shudder as Karr got into the driver’s seat—not that Dean would have blamed it if it did. They drove in a circle around the lot of the motel where Asad was staying, planting two video bugs before heading to a nearby Red Roof Inn. There they flipped a coin to see who got to sleep first; Karr won and was snoring in less than ten minutes.

CHAPTER 77

THE SAUDI customs officer flipped through Lia’s official passport briskly, his face tight with disapproval. Lia kept her mouth shut; the subjects she was trailing had arrived more than four hours earlier, and she didn’t want to give the man any excuse to turn his dislike for Americans into active though unknowing obstruction.

Finally the man handed her passport back, waving her through with a frown.

Terrence Pinchon waited for her in a white Mercedes just outside the airport building. Lia pulled open the car door and slid in without saying a word.

“How you doing, soldier?” said Pinchon.

“Been a long time since I was a soldier.”

“Time just flies when you’re having fun, huh?”

“I guess.”

“What do you think of the NSA, anyway? All that high-tech geewhiz crap get in the way of what’s real?”

“What’s real?”

Pinchon thought her remark was a joke and laughed. Lia, not in the mood to make small talk—or, more importantly, to press him on Kyrgyzstan—changed the subject.

“Where are the Saudis?”

“Al and Amin are five miles out of town, in a fancy compound with all the forbidden amenities of the West,” said Pinchon. “You sure these guys are al-Qaeda?”

“I’m sure they met with Asad.”

“Saudi intelligence claims they’re not on any watch list. And they watch everybody.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You ever been in Saudi Arabia before? Interesting place. A lot of fanatics. And half of them are in the government. Everybody’s got—what’s the old expression? bucoo bucks?”

“Money interest you?”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t think it did.”

While Pinchon laughed, Lia thought back to their days together. He wasn’t one of the people who groused about how much more “contractors” were being paid for doing next to nothing, or who talked about tripling his pay when his enlistment ended. Nor had he seemed interested in expensive things.

He did like cars and having a good time—those things were expensive. They’d spent a few days together in a nice hotel in Puerto Rico ... a very nice hotel.

Where had he gotten the money for that?

Maybe he hadn’t changed—maybe he’d been a slime and a jerk all along and she’d missed it, fooled by lust into seeing what she wanted to see.

“Here we go,” Pinchon said, pulling off the road. The headlights reflected off painted stones; if it weren’t for them, the driveway would have been impossible to see, since it was nearly the same color as the surrounding desert in the dark. An Arab-looking man stood in front of large iron gates that barred the way into a walled compound. Pinchon had to show his credentials before the man would open the gates.

“Locals. Very suspicious,” he said as he pulled up in front of the low-slung house.

“How close are we?” Lia asked.

“We can see the house from the roof,” said Pinchon. “Embassy rents the place, just happened to be close by. One of the deputy secretaries in charge of serving tea or some such BS lives here. Nice spread, huh? Wait until you see the pool.”

Lia followed him inside. There were three Saudi intelligence agents and four CIA people sitting in the living room. The TV had been pulled away from the wall; wires snaked from it to a control box on the coffee table, and from there down the hall. An infrared video of the compound they were watching was on the television screen, the green shadows casting an eerie hue around the room.

“How do I get on the roof?” Lia asked.

“Down the hall, hang a right, go out the door. There’s a ladder outside. If Reisler’s snoring, give him a kick in the ribs. It always makes him turn over.”

Lia found Reisler at the eyepiece of a 1200mm Zhumell-Kepher telescope, panning it slowly across the compound where the two Saudis had gone.

“Hello,” he said, not looking over.

“What are they doing?”

“Looks like they’re in the second room from the right in the back. Can’t really tell what they’re doing. At least two other people are in there with them.” He pointed to a parabolic microphone mounted on a large stand nearby. The microphone picked up vibrations from surfaces such as windows. “Haven’t gotten much.”

“Why don’t we get closer?”

“Saudis won’t let us.”

“They’re in charge?”

“Yes and no. It’s their country.” Reisler finally looked up. “Want a peek?”

Lia bent over the eyepiece. She could see the window of the room clearly; the shades were drawn but two heads were near the bottom of the frame, bobbing every so often.

“Why can’t we hear anything?” Lia asked. “Are we too far?”

“I think they may have something against the windows, muffling any possible vibrations. And between you and me, these mikes never work as good as they do in the movies, you know?”

Lia swung the telescope down and started examining the house. In order to bug it, she’d have to get inside.

The old deliveryman ruse?

Too obvious. And she couldn’t do it; they’d seen her in Turkey.

Maybe Desk Three could cause a blackout, or mess up their phone.

Lia stood up. She pulled the satphone from her pocket with one hand and turned the com system on with the other. As she did, a pair of helicopters passed overhead from the south. They were only about fifty feet off the ground, still descending ; the vibrations shook the roof. Lia turned and saw them descending toward the compound. Meanwhile, several white and light blue Saudi police cars were charging up the road in the other direction.

“The Saudis are raiding the compound,” yelled Lia as she ran to the ladder. Pinchon, cursing, met her in the backyard; they ran to the car, trailed by two of the other agents.

They were just pulling up to the roadblock when the rear of the house burst into flames. Lia stared at the red ribbon of light encircling the roof; a moment later a tremendous boom shook the air.

CHAPTER 78

ASAD BIN TAYSR and his driver got up before dawn to say their prayers and were on the road a short time later. Dean and Karr followed along, their distance varying from a quarter mile to nearly two, depending on the road. The driver had not been identified; his picture and voice patterns had been compared to files of known operatives, but there were no matches. Working on the premise that he would be from the state where the car was registered, the NSA had used an administrative subpoena to access New York State driver’s license images, but the image captured on the video bugs matched more than five thousand drivers, and winnowing the list had failed to produce a solid ID. It wasn’t clear whether the car had been stolen or its plates simply switched from a similar vehicle in Long Island; that lead was being followed up gingerly, so as not to tip off whoever was helping Asad that they were on to him.