“Traffic cameras, security feeds, cell phone records. ”
She shook her head. “The power you have is terrifying.”
“You won’t think so if it helps find your father. His cell phone placed a call here. Check your message machine.”
Nazila went back to the living room. A silver cordless telephone stood upright on a stand that also contained the message system. She pressed play, the machine beeped at her, and her father’s voice chimed in. “Nazi, I will be home a little late. Someone wants to see me about a research project for a movie. It’s late for an old man, but if it is something, we could use the money. The name of the company is on a card on my nightstand. That’s where I’ll be if you worry.”
“Movies?” Jack asked.
“He consulted on a movie once before, when they needed an expert on Islam in the Middle Ages. A movie about the Crusades.”
He followed her back to her father’s room and scanned the room as soon as she turned on the lights. This was the room of a scholar — every flat surface piled high with books, magazines, and pages of notes. The nightstand was no different — Jack counted a stack of five books by the bed, plus two more that lay facedown and open, as though Rafizadeh had been reading both at the same time. On top of the stack was a precariously balanced pile of papers— brochures, business cards, junk mail, and letters. Nazila lifted a business card off the top, and the rest of the pile fell to the floor. She handed it to Jack, then hurriedly gathered up the papers that had fallen. He dialed CTU again, but his eyes were on her furtive movements.
“Bandison, Bauer again. Run a check on this company—” he glanced at the business card—“Minute Man Films. Based here in Los Angeles. I’m guessing it doesn’t exist.”
“Right back,” Jessi Bandison said in shorthand, and put Jack on hold.
Nazila stacked the papers neatly and quickly — so quickly, in fact, that Jack almost missed her sleightof-hand as she slipped one piece of paper into the pocket of her robe.
When Jack was taken off hold, Jessi Bandison was on the line. “Jack, there’s no Minute Man Films.”
“I figured. Thanks.”
He snapped his phone shut. “Nazila, I’m sorry. I think your father’s been taken by the Greater Nation. This company he was meeting doesn’t exist.”
Her faced paled. “Can you help him?”
“I’ll do my best. I owe it to you,” he said. “But first show me what you just slipped into your pocket.”
Her hand covered her robes. “Nothing. It’s personal.”
“Show me anyway.”
Reluctantly, defeated, she pulled the slip of paper from her pocket. It was a four-by-six generic greeting card with pictures of a watercolor of flowers on the front. Inside, spidery handwriting crawled from side to side. Jack didn’t read what it said, because his eyes were drawn to two facts immediately.
First, the card was dated two months ago.
Second, it was signed by Nazila’s dead brother.
3. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 A.M. AND 6 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
At five in the morning, the streets of San Francisco lost all their romance. In another hour or two, the sun would rise across the bay, and anyone with a good view and a penchant for rising early could sit with a cup of Peet’s Coffee and watch the fog roll back out the Golden Gate like a retreating army. But at this hour, San Francisco was simply another dark and quiet city, except with very steep hills.
The hour was, however, a convenient running time for a U.S. senator whose circadian rhythms were still set to East Coast Time and whose biological clock kept sending all her weight into her hips. Debrah Drexler, consummate feminist and liberal though she was, was not above a little vanity. Her one self-indulgence in a hectic schedule was her three-mile jog every morning. She had been what was called a looker in her day, and while in her head she knew that the days had passed when she’d turn a man’s head, in her heart she felt that one ought to at least make an effort.
She slipped out of her apartment in those first minutes after five onto the dark street spotted with street lamps. She started up the road at a slow pace, and a young man in an Adidas track suit fell in beside her.
“Bobby,” she greeted.
“Senator,” the young man said. She never said the word
She kept silent for the first mile, running the streets that led to Golden Gate Park, trying to wrap her mind around Quincy’s phone call. What had been the point of it? He knew which way she was going to vote, and it wasn’t like the AG was going to twist her arm. Barnes might try — she could at least imagine him getting on the phone and using his President voice to intimidate her. That would have failed, too, of course. Barnes’ party might have succeeded in cowing a lot of other members of her party, but not her. So if the President himself would have failed, why had the AG even bothered?
It had all started with the Patriot Act. Drexler had voted for it, too. Like everyone else, she’d been caught up in the emotions of 9/11 and her judgment had been clouded by the smoke of the burning towers. But Congress had possessed the sense, at least, to make the act temporary. She’d been appalled when the government had expanded it, and now she was furious that the Administration was attempting to replace it with an even more intrusive bill. The New American Privacy Act — the name itself was so Orwellian it sent shivers down her spine — granted the FBI and other investigative bodies powers that were tantamount to dropping the Bill of Rights into a paper shredder. Every time the politicians on her side of the aisle tried to sound the alarm, Quincy and the administration simply wrapped themselves in the flag and talked about the hordes of terrorists lurking in the shadows.
Of course, it didn’t help that there actually were terrorists out there.
They reached Golden Gate Park, which wasn’t nearly as big as Central Park in New York but had a beauty all its own, and started down the jogging path.
“Bobby, do you follow politics?”
The young man said, “I follow you, Senator.”
She laughed. He was quick. “Seriously, I talk with the rest of my staff, I ask their opinions, I’m interested in their views.” She was beginning her second mile. Her breath and her sentences were getting shorter. “I want yours.”
“I’m not much on having opinions on the job, Senator.”
“You’d make a good politician, then.”
“There’s no need to get nasty, Senator.”
She laughed again. “So you’re in security, or law enforcement, or something like that. I want to know what you think of the NAP Act.”
He paused. She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m not really an investigator, ma’am. I mean, I only had a little training in investigation at FLETC.”
She repeated it the way he pronounced it. “Fletsee?”
“Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. You get a little of everything there, but I focused mostly on the protective services area. I’m not really qualified to know what investigators need. This NAP Act stuff is over my head.”
“No, it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not over anyone’s head. The bottom line is, do you want the government to be able to ignore all your rights if they think you’re a terrorist?”
He considered. “I don’t mind them ignoring the terrorists’ rights when they catch them.”
“But what if they catch the wrong people? What if they step on the rights of a hundred people to find one
