to the United States had been canceled. For some reason, he had been eager to get home, so he’d jumped airlines to get back to the United States — a flight up to Moscow and then another one to Juneau, then down to Los Angeles. It had been a crazy and uncomfortable jaunt, but it had gotten him into Los Angeles sooner than any other combination of flights.
“So the first thing I know about you, Mr. Abdul Ali, is that you really, really wanted to get home,” she said to the humming computers.
She knew there was nothing to be learned by his contacts in Los Angeles. All had been dead ends. If he was part of some plot, he’d been chosen well. But Pakistan was a very interesting country for a cipher to visit. Nina switched from the FAA’s logs to her list of intelligence reports — a collection of reports from the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, and NSA. Someday, she hoped, someone would come along and gather all these reports into one official album. It was ridiculously inefficient to have to cull through so many different reports. She did searches on “Pakistan” and “terrorism,” which did almost nothing to narrow the field. Limiting the reports to a window of one week prior to the Alaska flight — which would have been about five weeks prior — helped somewhat, and Nina began skimming the articles.
The list was still long, and Nina couldn’t do much more than spot check the more likely sources. This was ten minutes of boring, frustrating work at that late hour, but it was the kind of work that got the job done. Nina had gotten into fieldwork for the excitement, and there was plenty of that, but every moment in the field was backed up by hours of research. She remembered something Victor had told her:
She was just about to give up when a string of words caught her eye. It was a report on a meeting in Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, close to the tribal regions that bordered Afghanistan. That area was a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, and was an unusual place for an American to visit. The meeting itself was a bit dubious: it had been billed as a Sunni-Shiite detente, which was itself unusual. Not malignant, but unusual. And why would an American with no apparent ties to Islamic fundamentalism be in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the same time as an Islamic conference?
Whoever had done the reporting on the Peshawar conference had been thorough. The report included a complete list of registered attendees. Nina felt herself in the groove now, like a bloodhound latching on to the scent, nose to the ground. She knew his name would be there even before her eyes settled on “Abdul Ali.”
Nina could have gotten an analyst to help her, even woken one up if need be, but her own computer skills were nothing to sneeze at. In seconds she had the computer running a match between her list of “persons of interest” in Los Angeles and the guest list from Peshawar. Aside from Abdul Ali, there was one match: Sheik Abdul al-Hassan.
Nina sat back and stared at the name as it burned a mark into her screen and into her brain. This was interesting. Al-Hassan was already on her list. She had questioned him briefly. If he was a terrorist, he was so deep under cover, even he had forgotten who he was. According to a very thorough background check, al-Hassan was an avid promoter of Islamic causes, but an equally avid promoter of peace. The Imam al-Hassan had proven himself to be an outspoken critic of Western intrusion into the Middle East… but an even more outspoken critic of Islamists who used violence to achieve their ends. According to the report, the conference had been a small part of a global religious peace effort. Even if Peshawar was an unusual place for the conference, the meeting’s purpose fit with al-Hassan’s file. From what Nina could tell, Ryan Chappelle was more likely to attack the United States than Sheik Abdul al-Hassan. And yet the Imam hadn’t mentioned that trip during his interview. That bothered her. Bothered her enough, in fact, that she was going to go wake Mr. al-Hassan up.
Jack had no intention of letting Don Biehn kill anyone. He didn’t care at all if Biehn never served a day in prison for killing a child molester, but Jack wasn’t an accomplice to murder. But letting Biehn confront his son’s molester in private, away from the public eye, was a small price to pay for information that might save hundreds of lives.
He was still thinking of Abdul Rahman Yasin as they turned off Sunset into a West Hollywood neighborhood. Yasin, the Blind Sheik, and others had tried to bring down the World Trade Center about seven years earlier. Their plan had been simple: they’d parked a vehicle filled with homemade explosives in the parking structure beneath Tower One. They had hoped to blast loose the support foundations on one side, causing that building to fall into its twin. They had also included cyanide gas, hoping the gas would expand through the ventilation system and cause additional deaths.
The explosion had injured more than one thousand people and killed six. But considering its potential, the plan had been a failure. Tower One’s foundations stood, and the heat from the explosion had burned the cyanide away.
None of this made Jack feel any better. Yasin and whoever he was working with now had had years to learn from their mistakes. It was the grandeur of their schemes that worried him. Had the WTC bombing been even a moderate success, thousands of people would have died. If that was the scale on which they still operated, Jack had to find out what they were planning and stop it. And he had only a few hours left in which to do it. Until Carlos and the NSA plucked any information out of Farrigian’s communications, Biehn was Jack’s best lead. He had to follow it, and Harry Driscoll’s righteous indignation be damned.
Father Dortmund’s bungalow was a holdout against the redevelopment of West Hollywood, a one-story cottage holding its ground against the six- and eight-story condominium complexes on either side. It was not unkempt, but it was plain — a square lawn with no flower bed, a small white porch front, and white paint. The porch light was the kind of tolerable but unimaginative light sold at big box hardware stores across the country. Jack had the distinct impression that Father Dortmund wanted his residence to be livable without investing too much time or affection, as though he might need to move at any moment.
Jack parked a few houses down and used a second pair of handcuffs to hobble Biehn’s feet. “I’m not in running condition,” the detective protested.
“Now you’re not,” Jack agreed. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jack got out, moved toward Dortmund’s house, and performed a quick reconnoiter. One car in the detached garage, which sounded right for a priest living alone. A light went on in back when Jack hopped the fence, but it was one of those motion-sensor lights so it meant nothing. Jack checked for the alarm certification that was required by the city for any residence that contained a burglar alarm, and found none. Just to be sure, he checked one or two windows, searching for telltale wires or tabs that indicated an alarm circuit. Nothing. Apparently Father Dortmund trusted his safety to God.
Jack hurried back to his car and uncuffed Biehn’s legs. “I’ll get us in,” he said firmly. “I’ll take control of the situation. You talk to him when I say so.” He didn’t ask if Biehn understood. If there was a problem, he would make Biehn understand.
Jack led Biehn over to the porch and left him there, then walked around to one of the side windows. The bungalow was decently maintained, but it was almost all original. The old-style casement window was easy to jimmy, and Jack slid it open in a few seconds. He hopped up and slid himself through the window into what appeared to be the living room. No alarm had sounded, and there was no noise inside the house. Jack stood and walked carefully and quietly to the door. He unbolted the door with only the faintest of clicks, and opened it. Biehn was standing there, his bruised face ghastly in the porch light. The man looked eager, perhaps manic, and it occurred to Jack that he might be collecting information from a madman. Still, Biehn had known the time and place of Yasin’s arrival. There was bound to be more.
The two men, one cuffed and the other guiding him, entered the house, and Jack closed and relocked the door. Together they moved down the hallway and easily found the one bedroom. Jack’s heart started to pound as a rush of adrenaline hit him. Now was the time for both speed and stealth. He moved forward quickly.
Dortmund was a light sleeper. He was sitting up, drowsy and startled, as Jack reached him and clamped a hand hard over the priest’s mouth, shoving him back down into the pillow. He put a knee across the priest’s sternum, robbing him of breath. Dortmund panicked, thrashing ineffectually under his blankets. Behind Jack, Biehn hopped onto the bed, straddling Dortmund’s legs and pinning them down. Madman or not, he knew how to gain control of a suspect.
“Stop. Listen,” Jack commanded.
Dortmund, realizing he was trapped, went limp.
“Good. Don’t give me any trouble and you won’t get hurt. Don’t change positions. Don’t move at all. Don’t
