Dead or Alive

gone radio-silent, and that thought gave Jack a chill. There were three options: Either they’d switched communication protocols as a general security measure, or they’d somehow figured out someone was reading their mail, or this was an OpSec change, a zipping of the electronic lips prior to a high-level operation. The first two options were possible but unlikely. The URC had changed its procedures little in the last nine months, and The Campus had been careful not to tip its hand. So option three. There was precedent, of course. Just before 9/11, Al-Qaeda standard electronic chatter level dropped like a stone; so, too, with the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. Part of Jack wanted his hypothesis to be proven out; another part hoped to hell he was wrong.

How, then, would the Emir get his messages out? Couriers were the most secure method, if not the quickest: Write up the messages, burn the disk, and have someone take it for a handoff rendezvous. With modern air travel, a man could get from Chicago to Calcutta in less than a day, so long as he didn’t mind airline food. Hell, international air travel was designed with that idea in mind, wasn’t it? It might have been designed with the “black” community in mind, not just the sales force of Frederick’s of Hollywood or Dow Chemical.

Chicago to Calcutta. What if the Emir was in Chicago, or New York, or Miami? What was to stop him from living there? Not a goddamned thing. The CIA and everyone else assumed he was somewhere in the Stans-why? Because that was the last place they’d known him to be. Not because of any evidence that would place him anywhere. And there was a good half of the United States government’s Special Forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan beating the bushes and looking into every hole in the rocks, asking endless questions, tossing money around, looking for the one man-or woman-who might know his face and might know where he might be. And still nothing. What were the odds of that? Jack wondered.

A man like the Emir could never feel secure enough, not with every intelligence agency in the world looking for him-even dedicated, patriotic intelligence officers could look at the public reward America had placed on his head and think of a nice house on the Riviera and a comfortable retirement, just for one phone call and a little bit of information…

The Emir would know all of that. He’d limit the number of people who knew his location. He’d limit that number to people whom he could absolutely trust, and he’d take good care of them. The best of care. Money, comfort, such luxuries as circumstances permitted. He’d reinforce their desire to earn his trust. He’d reinforce their faith in Allah and in himself, be solicitous as hell to them. But he would also maintain his aura of command, because the source of that authority was always on a man-to-man basis, as with all the really important things in life, a thing of the mind.

So what would it take for the Emir to relocate beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan? How does one go about moving the most wanted man on the face of the earth?

The CIA’s master file on the Emir had mediocre photos, some of them raw and some digitally enhanced, all of which had been distributed to virtually every intelligence and police agency in the world. Same with the general public. If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can’t go out to Sunday brunch without being mobbed, the Emir would certainly find it difficult to travel beyond his regular stomping grounds.

The Emir couldn’t change his height, though it was technically possible, but it involved major and somewhat painful surgery, followed by a lengthy recovery period, which would necessitate being immobile for several weeks-bad joss for a guy on the run. He could change his face, his skin color, his hair. He could wear colored contact lenses to change his eye color and maybe improve his eyesight, which, the file said, was about average. He walked erectly, not slumped over, and the talk about how he suffered from Marfan syndrome had been shot down by a doc at Johns Hopkins who was an expert in the disorder, rather to Langley’s surprise, as that had become gospel to the intelligence community. So he did not need a dialysis machine in constant proximity.

Wait a second, Jack. The intel community had been assuming a lot about the Emir. They’d gotten, what, one opinion on the Marfan angle? Was that enough to discount the theory? As far as Jack could tell, no one had ever laid hands on someone close enough to the Emir to know one way or another. Something to think about.

“Hey, Jack,” said a familiar voice. He turned to see Dominic and Brian standing in the doorway.

“Hey, guys, come on in. What’s happening?”

Each brother took a chair. Dominic said, “Reading a computer all morning gives me a headache, so I came up to harass you. Whatcha reading? Application to the Treasury Department?”

It took a moment for Jack to get it. Treasury oversaw the Secret Service. These kind of jokes had been coming since the Georgetown thing. While the press was giving the incident heavy coverage, his name had so far remained out of it, which suited him just fine. Hendley knew the whole story, of course, which didn’t bother Jack at all. More ammunition when it came to pitch his boss.

“Smart-ass,” Jack shot back.

“They know anything about the mutt?” Brian asked.

“Not that I’ve heard. The press is saying no accomplices, but in something like this they only get what the Secret Service wants them to get.” In a town where leaks were more the rule than the exception, the Secret Service knew how to run a tight ship. Jack changed the subject. “You heard about the Marfan theory, right? About the Emir?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Dominic replied. “Didn’t pan out, right?”

Jack shrugged. “Trying to think outside the box. His location, for example: My gut tells me he’s not in Afghanistan, but we’ve never thought beyond there or Pakistan. What if we should be? He’s got all kinds of money, and money buys you a lot of flexibility.”

Brian shrugged. “Still, kinda hard to imagine a guy like that getting even fifty miles away from his bolt-hole without being spotted.”

“Assumptions and intel analysis are dangerous bedfellows,” Jack observed.

“True. If he’s moved on, I bet that fucker’s laughing his ass off watching everybody hump those mountains looking for him. How would he do it, though? Sure as hell couldn’t just walk into the Islamabad airport and ask for a ticket.”

Dominic said, “Money can buy you a lot of knowledge, too.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“There’s an expert for every problem, Jack. The trick is knowing where to look.”

The day passed quickly. At five, Jack poked his head into Dominic’s office. Brian was sitting in the chair across from his brother’s desk. “Hey, guys,” Jack called.

“Yo,” Brian responded. “How’s the computer maven?”

“Chipping away.”

“What’s for dinner?” Dominic wondered.

“Open for ideas.”

“His love life must be like mine,” Brian muttered.

“Found a new place in Baltimore. Wanna give it a try?”

“Sure.” What the hell, Jack thought. Eating alone was never fun.

The three-car convoy headed north on U.S. 29, then turned east on U.S. 40 for the trip into Baltimore’s Little Italy-nearly every American city has one-off Eastern Avenue. The trip was almost identical to Jack’s normal drive home, a few blocks from the baseball stadium at Camden Yards. But that season had ended, again without a trip into the playoffs.

Baltimore’s Little Italy is a rabbit warren of narrow streets and few parking lots, and for Jack, parking his Hummer was not unlike bringing an ocean liner alongside. But in due course he found a spot in a small parking lot and then walked the two blocks to the restaurant on High Street, which specialized in Northern Italian food. On walking in, he saw that his cousins were camped out in a corner booth, with nobody else close by.

“How’s the food here?” he asked, taking a seat.

“The head chef is as good as our grandfather, and that’s high praise, Jack. The veal is really first-class. They say he buys it himself every day at Lexington Market.”

“Must be tough, being a cow,” Jack observed, scanning the menu.

“Never asked,” Brian noted. “Never heard any complaints, though.”

“Talk to my sister. She’s turning into a vegan, except for the shoes.” Jack chuckled. “How’s the wine list?”