Nina’s posture tensed. “Then we’re too late to stop it.”
“Yet there’s no measurable effect that we can see,” Jamey pointed out. “I secured a warrant to monitor the big studio computers with CTU surveillance software. There’s no reported problem, no delays, no data dumps or anything to indicate the virus was destructive.”
Doris nodded. “The target specificity explains why this virus hasn’t done major damage hours after its release. It’s just too narrowly focused to worry 99.9 percent of computer users, even if someone downloads the movie
“Only the major studios and their computers are in jeopardy,” Jamey said, relief audible in her voice. “But so far, nothing’s happened, even to the studio’s mainframes. Richard Lesser might be an evil genius when it comes to cracking secure systems, but it looks like his Trojan horse is a bust.”
Architect Nawaf Sanjore lived on the top five floors of a thirty-five-floor apartment building of his own design on the cusp of Century City.
Formerly the back lot of 20th Century Fox Studios, Century City had been transformed in the 1980s into a compact and crowded high-rise area of banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, blue chip corporations, shops and cinemas, all tucked between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. The Sanjore-designed Rossum Tower, with its sleek, sterile appearance and glass-enclosed exterior elevators, perfectly fit the ultramodern aesthetics of this Los Angeles community.
Jack Bauer steered the black CTU motor pool SUV along the boulevard, toward the entrance to the building’s underground parking garage. In the passenger seat beside him, Nina Myers pulled out her PDA and began reviewing the information she’d stored on the famous architect.
“Born in Pakistan, Nawaf Sanjore immigrated to Great Britain in 1981. He attended the London School of Design, then graduate school at MIT. He went to work for Ito Masumoto in 1988, left to form his own architectural firm in 1992.”
“Is he a Muslim? Devout?” Jack asked.
“He was born a Muslim, and he designed a mosque in Saudi Arabia, but he seems to lead a secular lifestyle. The FBI report cites several long- and short-term affairs with various American and British women.”
“Is he political?”
“Not very. He’s involved with several charities and nonprofits, including the Red Crescent, the Russia East Europe Trade Alliance, and Abigail Heyer’s organization, Orphan Rescue. He’s donated to the campaigns of the current mayor and governor.”
Jack frowned. “Ibn al Farad was secular, until he met Hasan. What other project has Sanjore worked on?”
Nina called up a new page on the PDA. “Nawaf Sanjore has personally designed sixteen skyscrapers— five here in the United States, the rest scattered across the globe in places like Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Sydney. There are three buildings here in Los Angeles. The Rossum Tower, the Russia East Europe Trade Pavilion in Santa Monica—”
“I’ve seen it,” said Jack.
“Look at this,” said Nina. “The Trade Pavilion was mentioned in today’s CIA/CTU security alert. The Vice President’s wife was there, along with the wife of the Russian President. The event went off without a hitch. The Secret Service didn’t even request CTU assistance.”
“Where are the dignitaries now?”
Nina called up the official itinerary. “The wives are having an early dinner at Spago’s. Then they’re going to attend the Silver Screen Awards.”
Nina fell unusually silent and Jack glanced in her direction. Her slender form appeared tense. One hand held the PDA, the other moved to massage her forehead in thought.
“Nina? What you have found?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
“Tell me.”
“The Trade Pavilion event began at the same moment the time code in Lesser’s Trojan Horse activated the virus.”
Jack chewed on that fact. “But we still don’t know what it does, correct?”
“That’s right.” Nina went back to squinting at the tiny text on her PDA screen. “The biggest project Sanjore worked on was the Summit Studio complex, which was built to revitalize a large section of downtown.”
She looked up. “By the way, Summit is the studio that is releasing
“Interesting, although it proves nothing.”
Jack entered the parking garage and grabbed the paper tag spit out by the automatic dispenser. The gate rose and Jack drove deeper into the bowels of Rossum Tower.
“There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence here,” said Nina. “But all of it could be discounted as simple coincidence.”
“Ibn al Farad whispered Nawaf Sanjore’s name to me seconds before he died. It has to mean something.”
“Do you think Sanjore could be Hasan?” Nina’s tone was skeptical.
Jack guided the SUV into a space and cut the engine. “We’ll know soon enough.”
An ebony silhouette in Giorgio Armani, Nawaf Sanjore glided through his thirty-fifth-floor office on Bruno Magli shoes. Outside, the skyscrapers of Century City rose around him, the glass walls of his penthouse apartment affording the architect a magnificent view.
But Nawaf Sanjore ignored the vista as he moved from computer to computer, dumping megabytes’ worth of data onto micro drives or zip disks. As each storage device became full, Sanjore yanked it out of its drive, its USB port and slipped the item into a fawn-brown attache case. His intelligent, alert eyes scanned the monitors, checking the contents of each data file before preserving it. He moved with calm, deliberate precision, even white teeth chewing his lower lip in concentration.
Behind the architect, two assistants burned papers, plans and memos in the crackling flames of his central fireplace — a raised circle of gray slate capped by a horn-shaped steel exhaust vent.
On an HDTV monitor at a large workstation, Nawaf Sanjore called up the crucial schematics he’d just loaded onto a micro disk — the blueprints for the Chamberlain Auditorium. He had provided Hasan with these plans while the facility was being built. Under Hasan’s orders he’d made secret alterations to the original blueprints, adding a secret land line accessible only by the terrorists once they took control of the auditorium. Now the day had come. Three years of planning and preparation were coming to fruition, yet still Nawaf Sanjore harbored secret doubts.
The architect bowed his head, shamed by his lack of faith. Hasan was wiser than he, Sanjore knew, and to lose faith in the man who had brought him enlightenment was worse than a betrayal — it was madness. Before he met Hasan, Nawaf Sanjore did not believe that Paradise was real. Hasan had showed him the light and the way and now he was a believer. All Hasan asked in return was absolute obedience, unquestioning faith.
“When the hard copies and paper files are destroyed, I want you to purge the mainframe’s memory — all of it,” Nawaf commanded. “I don’t want the authorities to recover anything.”
“Yes sir—”
A chime sounded, interrupting them. The architect turned back to the monitor, switched it off. “Sanjore here…”
The voice recognition program built into the apartment’s elaborate intercom system identified the speaker’s location and piped the message through.
“This is Lobby Security, sir. Two CTU agents are here. They wish to speak with you. They say it’s an urgent matter of national security.”
A large man with a substantial black beard emerged from the living room, his expression alarmed. “What do they want?” he whispered.
Sanjore shot the man a silencing look. “I will meet with these agents,” he told the voice on the intercom.
