in the chair did not look up from his newspaper. He wore a blue silk suit with pinstripes so thin Kasim had not seem them from a distance. His tie was light green and knotted into a perfect triangle. In that opulent hotel, sitting across from the man in the expensive suit, Kasim felt uncomfortably under-dressed, but Nurmamet had assured him that in Los Angeles it was sometimes fashionable to dress poorly. Attitude, he said, counted almost as much as appearance.
Kasim watched Nurmamet, who for the first time seemed the slightest bit nervous as he recited awkwardly: “Is this your first time at the Four Seasons?”
The well-dressed man let the newspaper fall flat and looked up at the two newcomers. His eyes bulged slightly, his lids were heavy, and there were small bags of skin beneath each one that gave him the look of someone who had recently been crying. “Enough of the code words,” he said dryly. “It’s not necessary.”
Nurmamet looked flustered. “But Mr. al-Libbi made it clear that we needed to identify ourselves.”
“You are not the FBI,” the man said with a smile. “I know this because you have not arrested me.”
“We could be agents,” Kasim blurted. “We could be trying to get to your employer through you.”
The well-dressed man turned his sad eyes toward Kasim. “Are you?”
Kasim fidgeted and the man laughed again. “I did not think so. If you were the FBI, I would already be somewhere very unpleasant being asked questions in a very unpleasant way.” He held out his hand lazily and when, after a moment, Nurmamet and Kasim each shook it, he said casually, “I am Muhammad Abbas. If you have the rest of the money, then I can take you to Mr. al-Libbi.”
Kasim was baffled. This wasn’t right. He looked at Nurmamet, who appeared equally confused. “This is not right. I understood that we were to meet Mr. al-Libbi here, not his assistant.”
“Yes, but you are amateurs. Ayman al-Libbi does not take chances with amateurs.”
“We are not—!”
“Don’t deny it,” Abbas said calmly. “You are rank amateurs. You tell me that you might be agents. What about me? I could be an agent trying to trick you.”
Kasim stared at him, willing his heart to stop pounding. “Are you?” he said, his voice almost steady.
This amused Abbas. “Not bad! This one is good, Nurmamet. He is a leader where you come from, eh?” Nurmamet nodded. “Well,” he said to Kasim, “don’t be insulted. Mr. al-Libbi had urgent business to attend to, something that will make all this go more smoothly.”
Jack woke, feeling as though he had overslept and urgently needed to be somewhere. A moment later he remembered a glimpse of a red pickup truck hurtling toward him, the spine-shivering sound of metal contorting metal, followed instantaneously by the pop of his air bag and then white blindness.
He opened his eyes, or thought he did. He was in complete darkness. He was lying down on a hard, cool surface, rough with pebbles and coarse dirt — a concrete floor. He sat up, carefully reaching his hands outward, upward, backward into the blackness. Wherever the ceiling was, it seemed high enough, so he stood. His knees wobbled a little beneath him. Jack used his hands to give himself a cursory search — he didn’t seem to be bleeding, although his face felt tender, probably from the air bag. His left shoulder and his abdomen ached, most likely having been pressed into the seat belt during the crash. He felt another pain, this time on his left arm, but this was different. It was extremely localized and sharp, like a dime-sized bruise at the crook of his elbow.
“Your weapon will be returned to you before we are done, Agent Bauer,” said a firm but polite voice.
He heard a short grunt — somewhere above him — a sound of approval. “Right to the point. I like that. The truth is, Agent Bauer, I want nothing. I mean that literally, I want nothing. To be more specific, I want
“So I guess I’m staying here for a while?” Jack stared up, although he could see nothing. He was trying to gauge the height from which the voice originated.
“No,” his captor replied. “No, although I confess I considered it. It was tempting, but not really workable. I suspect that if you go missing, people will come looking for you. So I’m going to have to release you in the next few minutes.”
“Good,” Jack said.
Who was this guy? Unconsciously Jack recorded information gathered from the man’s speech: he was educated, confident, forward-thinking; his English was perfect, but there was a slight cadence to it, as though he was accustomed to speaking a different language.
Holding his hands outstretched, Jack took a step forward, trying to stay light on his feet. The room did not echo, which meant it wasn’t very large. If he could find a wall, then he could find a way out.
“Before I release you, though, I’m going need a guarantee that you do absolutely nothing for the next day.”
“Okay. I promise.”
The man laughed. “In a better world, that would mean something, wouldn’t it? But I’m afraid we live in this one, so I’m going to need some more assurance. Your reputation with the Counter Terrorism Unit is that you are tenacious. And I suspect you are not the kind of man who can be intentionally assaulted and kidnapped, and then simply forgive and forget.”
Jack allowed himself to laugh. “It does put a crimp in our relationship,” he quipped. His captor was urbane and seemed to appreciate dry wit. Jack would have preferred to put a bullet in his brain, but that could come later. He took another step, then another. His shoes crunched lightly on the dirt-sprinkled concrete.
“We are not destined to be friends,” his captor agreed. “To explain how I am going to extract a guarantee from you, I need to tell you about a virus.”
Jack froze. At the word
“This virus comes in several strains. One of them, when injected into the bloodstream, begins to replicate within twelve to twenty-four hours but doesn’t show any symptoms until then. After that, it is infectious and all but incurable and it is decidedly fatal.”
Jack became conscious of the small, unique bruise on his left arm. “You injected me with the virus,” he growled.
The man, wherever he was, laughed. “No. From what I understand, you are not the kind of man to be blackmailed by a threat to your person. I injected your daughter.”
Chris Henderson sat at the end of the conference table, staring down the row of faces on either side. He’d gotten to know most of the team members well during his stint as Director of Field Operations. They were a good team. He’d watched them perform well under severe strain in the months since he’d come on board, and he’d read case files on some of their activities before his assignment. They were an impressive bunch.
“Tony,” he said to the speaker box squatting on the center of the table like a miniature spaceship. “Can you brief us on current activities at the Federal Building?”
Tony Almeida’s voice resonated from the box. “We’re approximately one hour into the demonstration, and so far so good as far as riots go. LAPD estimates the crowd at over ten thousand, but they figure on twice that before noon. It’s going to start getting hotter then, too, so we may see tempers flare.”
Tony Almeida was a sharp one, Chris thought. Even though the higher-ups in CTU continued to pressure him for budget cuts, he couldn’t imagine letting Almeida go. The guy had Agent in Charge written all over him.
“How about your lead on Muhammad Abbas?” Chris asked. “Has Jack finished beating up cops?”
Almeida laughed. “We lost Abbas. Jack is on his way into the office to do follow-up.”
Nina Myers, another first-class agent, spoke up. “If that was Abbas, and if he is still doing gruntwork for al- Libbi, then Jack’s right and al-Libbi is in town. His target has to be the G8, right?”
