Just as Karr was finishing his veal, Hess received a call indicating that Dabir had boarded a train for Frankfurt am Main.
“I’d like to have a look at him,” Hess told Karr after she got off the phone. “Do you think you could pick him out at the train station if we flew up there?”
“As long as there’s Black Forest cake for dessert,” said Karr, “I can do anything.”
Dabir checked his watch, counting down the seconds as the train approached the stop just over the state border in Hesse. The man who had been trailing him had passed through the coach a few minutes before, undoubtedly to meet the detectives who would take over for him at the state line. As the train pulled to a stop, Dabir pushed the brim of his American-style baseball cap up, then slipped his hand up to prop his head and hunched against the window, feigning sleep. He was careful not to obscure too much of his face.
Having dodged secret police forces in Yemen and Egypt, he found European intelligence services laughingly easy to fool. The German tendency to be precise and punctual made them exceedingly easy to predict, and the raft of laws protecting potential suspects gave plenty of cover.
The train began moving again. Dabir caught a glimpse of two men in brown suits passing through the car — his new shadows, no doubt. He waited four or five minutes, then made a show of rousing and stretching. Precisely three minutes from the next stop, he got up and ambled slowly in the direction of the restroom in the next car. He stood in the aisle, waiting with his back to the train door for the room to clear.
Finally, the man who’d been inside came out. Dabir hesitated for a moment — just long enough for another man to slide in in front of him. Dabir quickly followed.
“The seat is next to the window, in the eighth row. A brown paper bag is in the empty space next to it,” Dabir told the man, a second-generation Palestinian who stood exactly as tall as he did. In fact, when Dabir’s cap was placed on his head and his jacket around his shoulders, he might have passed for a younger brother or even Dabir himself — exactly the idea.
“The train is entering the station,” said Dabir, pulling open the door. “Go quickly.”
Dabir untucked his shirt, then left the restroom, walking forward to the next set of doors as the train came to a halt.
When their helicopter landed in Frankfurt, Karr excused himself and checked in with the Art Room.
“German intelligence thinks Dabir is using instant messaging to pass communications to his network,” Telach told him. “They’ve detected some encrypted instant messages using PGP originating from Karlsruhe. They haven’t been to decrypt them.”
“Can we?”
“If they give them to us. We don’t have them. The problem is, they don’t know we know.”
Karr knew better than to ask how “we” knew. “PGP” stood for “Pretty Good Privacy,” a commonly available encryption system that, as its name implied, was decently secure as well as being fairly easy to use. Pretty good wasn’t good enough as far as the NSA was concerned; most European intelligence services, on the other hand, did not have a good track record with deciphering it quickly.
“So I have to be subtle, huh?” said Karr.
“Remind them that we can help in many ways,” said Telach. “We are working on getting the messages through other means.”
“They told me to remind you we’ll help in any way we can,” Karr told Hess as they drove to the train station a few minutes later. “Any sort of resources you need.”
“Are you going to send a Stealth Bomber?”
Karr, a firm believer that levity should always be encouraged, especially in a country where it was semilegal, laughed uproariously.
“If you want one,” he told her, the car still shaking with his mirth. “And if you need decoding or anything like that, just holler. We’re a one-stop service.”
Hess frowned. Karr let the matter drop.
They found a parking spot at the train station and joined two police detectives coordinating the surveillance operation from a van parked near the tracks. More than a dozen plainclothes policemen and several cars were standing by, waiting to track Dabir when he arrived. A team of state detectives had gone on board near the state border, taking over from the man who had gotten on with him at Karlsruhe.
A pair of nine-inch black-and-white television cameras sat on a small bench at the side of the van, carrying video feeds from the platform where Dabir’s train would arrive. Karr bem down and squinted, examining the pictures.
“Wanna go get some coffee?” he asked Hess, straightening.
She gave him a funny look.
“I’d prefer beer myself, but usually not on duty. We can spot him inside when he gets off the train,” Karr added. “Those screens aren’t going to give you much of an idea of what he looks like.”
“Ah. You were making a joke.”
“No, I really did want a coffee. And maybe a chocolate pig’s ear if they have any.”
Ten minutes later, Karr strolled along the platform as Dabir’s train came in, humming a song to himself and finishing the
“Gretchen, how are you?” bellowed Karr as the passengers came out. He walked toward a woman in her forties, bent down and kissed her.
The woman stumbled back, blinked her eyes, and unleashed a torrent of abuse. The rest of the passengers hurried by as Karr began to apologize for his mistake. Dabir, followed closely by his two shadows, passed along to the left.
Except it wasn’t Dabir.
Karr pulled his satphone out, pretending to use it.
“Hey, Rockman, you there?”
“Always.”
“We got a problem. Dabir lost his shadow.”
CHAPTER 52
The sound had a sharpness he knew wasn’t part of a dream, and even as he heard it Dean sprung from the bed, pistol in hand.
“It’s me, Charlie,” said Lia from across the room. “Relax.”
“Lia?”
“Asad’s head is bothering him. He thinks it’s the wound. We have to go wake up Dr. Ramil.”
Dean glanced at the clock. It was a little past three; he’d been sleeping for maybe an hour.
“Charlie?”
“I’m awake,” he told Lia, reaching for his shoes.
Asad was concerned enough to have called the number for the doctor he’d been given at the hospital. The Art Room had intercepted the call and arranged for the al-Qaeda leader to go to a clinic near the hospital.
“Dr. Ramil has to be there in an hour,” added Lia. “You, too.”
“Why didn’t the Art Room wake me up?”
“They tried. Besides,” she added, coming close and kissing him. “I promised you this.”
Dean waited while the overnight desk clerk called upstairs to Ramil’s room, his eyes soaking in the bright yellow of the reception lobby. Ramil answered immediately.
“Doctor, an emergency with a patient this morning,” said Dean.
“What?” muttered Ramil.
