The Silent Man

“But the security must be enormous.”

“Yes, but they can’t close down all of Washington. And their security, it’s designed against a truck bomb. Not one of these. If we succeed, the generals will be the only ones left. And they’ll want to strike back. Quickly. And if they think we’re telling the truth, they’ll have no choice. They’ll fire all their missiles at Russia. The Russians will fire all their missiles back. The end of the United States of America. Russia, too. Every city will be gone. The two countries that hate Muslims the most, wiped away. The Crusaders, beaten forever.”

And a hundred million people will die, Bashir didn’t say. More. Two hundred million. Three hundred million. More. A number so large it couldn’t be counted, couldn’t even be imagined.

“Sayyid,” he said. “I want the Americans to suffer. But this. will Allah smile on this?”

“Losing your nerve?”

“Not at all. But isn’t there anyone we can talk with, ask for guidance?”

“All these years, they’ve given us war. All these years, Muslims have been dying. We must destroy them, Bashir. Nothing less.”

“God willing,” Yusuf said.

“You’re right,” Bashir said. He wished he could be as sure as he sounded, as sure as Nasiji and Yusuf. “Anyway, I think you ought to have a black flag. Yusuf and I aren’t Iraqi, and Iraq isn’t their only sin. As you say.”

“I’ll redo it.”

“Then what?”

“When we’re ready, just before we go, we’ll send copies to CNN and Al Jazeera and a few other places. We’ll upload it to our own Web sites, too, in case they won’t run it. But we’ll have to time it right, so it isn’t posted until afterward.”

“And if we can’t get the beryllium in time?”

“We’ll wait. No State of the Union. But we’ll still destroy the White House, kill the president, blow up the middle of Washington. And when they see the video, they’ll know who to blame. I’m only sorry we won’t be around to see it.”

THAT NIGHT, Bashir lay beside Thalia, unable to sleep. When he closed his eyes, he saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the charred wooden houses and corpses in the streets, terrified even in death by what they’d seen. He wished he’d never looked.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” Thalia said quietly to him in Arabic. Doctor. He loved to hear her call him that. But tonight the word cut him. Doctors were meant to save lives.

“Nothing, my wife. Now sleep.”

“Bashir, tell me. And then we’ll both sleep.”

Bashir wondered if he could tell her. But why not? She was his wife, after all. “Yusuf and Sayyid, you know, this thing we’re making in the stable, it’s a bomb. A special bomb. Did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“You did?”

“Yes, my husband. I know I’m not very smart, but the things you and Sayyid were saying, I figured it out.”

“A big bomb. It will kill a lot of people.”

Thalia squeezed his hand. “How many?”

“I don’t know. But many.”

“Here? In America?”

“Yes.”

“So it would be kaffirs.” Her voice had a girlish excitement that surprised him.

“Muslims, too. It won’t discriminate. And Nasiji has a plan. He’s hoping to start a big war between the United States and Russia. If it works, there could be hundreds more bombs like this. Even thousands, maybe. Does that bother you?”

“No.” And Bashir’s surprise became astonishment as his wife slid her hand down his stomach and reached for him, something she’d never done unbidden before. Bashir couldn’t think of anything to say, and so he lay silent as she stroked him hard and then straddled his legs and guided him into her, all the while whispering, “No no no.”

PART FOUR

27

The mission could be explained in three words. Accomplishing it required a lot more effort.

Find a ship.

A ship that had departed Hamburg on New Year’s Eve, supposedly bound for West Africa, but had never arrived. A ship that was somewhere in the North Atlantic, unless it was in the Caribbean, or the Pacific, or docked, or even scuttled. A ship that was thoroughly anonymous, not a supertanker or a yacht but a midsize freighter like tens of thousands of others around the world. A ship that was called the Juno, unless its name had been changed. A ship that carried no visible weapons but still needed to be approached cautiously. Most of all, a ship that had to be found quickly, so its hold could be searched with Geiger counters, its crew questioned, and its captain put in a rubber room and subjected to every interrogation technique that the dark wizards of the CIA had ever invented.

The task was formidable, even with the National Security Agency and the navy making it their highest priority. Nonetheless, this was the kind of problem the United States knew how to solve, a technical puzzle that could be cracked with pure effort and brainpower. For once, no need to win hearts and minds in Baghdad or Kabul. Just find that damn freighter. Around NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, through the Atlantic Fleet command in Norfolk, the order went out. By yesterday, if possible.

Photographs of the Juno, along with its engineering specifications — height, length, displacement, and the shape of its superstructure — were sent to every American and British naval vessel in the Atlantic. Within twelve hours, the Atlantic Fleet had posted frigates outside the major East Coast harbors, from Miami to Portland, Maine. Meanwhile, Coast Guard cutters visited every ship that had docked in the last two weeks and that matched, or almost matched, the Juno’s specs.

At the same time, the Atlantic Fleet command ordered destroyers and cruisers to run alongside the main sea lanes that crossed the North Atlantic, in case the Juno was still somewhere en route or sailing back to Europe. The Royal Navy sent its own flotilla west. In three days, the vessels identified every ship that fit the Juno’s profile. Impressive work, especially considering the winter weather and the fact that the sun shone for barely eight hours a day on the main route between London and New York.

Impressive, but fruitless. The navy’s efforts came up empty. The Juno wasn’t on the sea lanes between Europe and the United States. And it wasn’t docked in any port anywhere in the United States, Canada, Britain, or Western Europe.

MEANWHILE, the NSA’s Advanced Keyhole satellites were searching the rest of the Atlantic. The satellites could capture ships in great detail, down to their names and the foot-square patches of rust on their hulls. They could also take photographs that covered several square miles and captured dozens of boats at once.

But they had a problem. They couldn’t do both, not at the same time. The camera capable of both super-wide and super-fine resolution hadn’t been invented yet. And from Greenland to South