‘But how could someone make any money by kicking out Muslim students?’ Neil said.
‘I just said I don’t know, Neil! Will you put that damn game down and pay attention? What I do know is that we need to look for a money motive, particularly among anyone backing Broderick.’
‘There’s something else we should look for,’ Emma said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Expertise. If these events were not orchestrated by al-Qaeda, you need to look for somebody or some group who has the ability to acquire C-Four and fabricate a plastic gun. Somebody who has the experience, the contacts, and the organizational ability to plan these ops.’
‘Good point,’ DeMarco said. Then, sounding like the man in charge, knowing that no one was ever in charge of Neil or Emma, he added, ‘So Neil finds out who’s supporting Broderick financially, and sees if any of these people could have a hate or a money motive and if they have the expertise to pull this stuff off. He also pulls the financial records for Rollie and this air marshal who shot the hijacker to see if there’s anything squirrelly there. I wanna know how Rollie paid for his RV. I’m going to get the autopsy results for Rollie and Donny Cray, and I want to check out this air marshal some more.’
‘And what do you want me to do?’ Emma said.
32
The problem, DeMarco had told Emma, was that he didn’t know any Muslims. Not one. He hadn’t been able to talk to Youseff’s wife, in part because she didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak whatever language people from Somalia spoke. Not even knowing the name of the language they spoke in Somalia showed how ignorant he was. But the other reason he hadn’t been successful questioning her was because he was a white guy and looked just like all the white FBI guys who had already questioned her.
The biggest weakness in DeMarco’s conspiracy theory was that he could find no evidence that either Mustafa Ahmed or Youseff Khalid had been coerced to do what they did. He suspected in Reza Zarif’s case that somebody — possibly the late and unlamented Donny Cray — had held a gun to the heads of Reza’s children, but he couldn’t find anyone who had been killed or kidnapped or tortured to make Youseff and Mustafa do what they did. And one of the reasons he couldn’t do this was because he couldn’t get people to talk to him.
But Emma did know Muslims. And she wasn’t a white man. DeMarco wanted Emma to see if she could find someone close to Mustafa Ahmed who might have been used to force him to strap on a bomb. They decided to focus on Mustafa because he had lived in D.C., whereas Youseff’s family was in New York.
The first thing Emma did was call a man who knew a number of languages spoken in Muslim countries. He was an interpreter who worked at the DIA, his parents were from Pakistan, and he was a Muslim. His name was Zafarullah Nazimuddin, a name almost impossible for most of his coworkers to pronounce or remember. His American friends all called him Zafa.
Emma paid a gypsy cabdriver to borrow his cab for the day and then told Zafa she wanted him to pretend to be a cabbie, park at some of the stands where Mustafa used to wait, and talk to drivers who knew him. She wanted Zafa to find out as much as he could about Mustafa and identify the people closest to him. Zafa, being very bright, took less than three hours to accomplish his mission.
‘Emma,’ he said, ‘everybody all says the same thing. Mustafa was a soccer nut, and the person closest to him was one of his nieces. The girl’s an Olympic-caliber player, and she was given a scholarship to UVA. The guy kept a picture of her on the sun visor of his cab, a shot he took of her heading the ball into the goal, and he was always showing it to his pals.’ Four hours later Emma was in Charlottesville, Virginia, lying to a sweet woman in student housing to find out where Mustafa’s niece resided.
Anisa Aziz wasn’t so much pretty as striking. She had an angular face, high cheekbones, a strong nose, and heavy eyebrows over intense black eyes. Her eyes radiated intelligence. She was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and maybe it was the athletic wear, but Emma had the impression that this girl just
‘May I help you?’ she said to Emma.
‘I’d like to talk to you about your uncle,’ Emma said.
‘Are you with the police? The FBI?’
‘No,’ Emma said, ‘but I’m working with somebody in the government who doesn’t believe that your uncle was a terrorist, somebody who believes he was forced to do what he did.’
‘My uncle was the kindest man I ever knew.’
‘I’m sure he was, Anisa, but then why did he do it? Why did he try to blow up the Capitol?’
Anisa hesitated before she spoke, but when she did, all she said was, ‘I don’t know.’ She didn’t look at Emma when she said this.
‘Were you threatened in some way? Did someone tell your uncle that you’d be harmed if he didn’t do what he was told?’
The girl shook her head. ‘No. Nobody did anything to me. And I don’t know why he did it. Now I have to go. I have a test to study for,’ she added lamely.
Anisa started to close the door and, when she did, Emma saw a bruise on the inside of the girl’s upper right arm; then she noticed a mark on her neck. The bruise on her arm could have been caused by someone grasping her arm, but the girl was an athlete and there could be other explanations for the bruise. The mark on her neck, though, didn’t look like something you’d get from running into another player. It was an ugly red line, and it looked to Emma like a ligature mark made by something thin, not a rope or a cord, maybe a wire. Emma stopped Anisa from shutting the door.
‘How did you get that mark on your neck?’
‘Mark?’ the girl said, as if confused, but her hand had moved unconsciously in the direction of her neck. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Anisa, don’t you want people to know the truth about your uncle?’
‘The truth! It wouldn’t matter what I said. You people think we’re all terrorists, even people like me who were born here. I’m as American as you are,’ she added, her dark eyes flashing, daring Emma to say that she wasn’t.
‘I know you are,’ Emma said. ‘And if you need help, if someone’s threatening you …’
‘I have to study,’ Anisa said, and began to push the door closed. ‘You have to go.’
‘Okay, I will,’ Emma said. ‘But I want you to take this.’ She handed the girl a card. ‘On the front of that card is my name and my cell phone number. On the back is the name and phone number of a Muslim woman, a woman from Afghanistan who now lives in Maryland. All I’m asking is that you call that woman and ask her about me. She’s expecting your call. After you speak to her, and if you feel you can trust me, call me. Please.’
Emma found a motel near the campus and checked in. She wasn’t sure if Anisa would call her, but she wanted to be close by in case she did. She flopped down on the bed and lay there looking up at the ceiling — and her mind drifted back to Afghanistan, to a village on the slopes of the Hindu Kush, to the woman she had told Anisa to call.
Emma, four U.S. Army Rangers, and an interpreter had been choppered into the village. She and the men were all dressed like the villagers, Emma wearing a loose-fitting robe, a veil covering her face. Their mission was to talk to the village chieftain: a ruthless thug, an opium trader, and a man who had gained control of his small fiefdom by shooting his predecessor in the back but who, for the moment, was an American ally. This was in the days when Osama bin Laden was an American ally as well, helping the Afghanis fight the Russians.
They explained to the chieftain that the Russians were building an airfield in a valley approximately fifty miles from the chieftain’s village — fifty
