“Maybe arresting him will stop the operation altogether,” she said.
“Arresting al-Qaeda’s number three man last year didn’t stop the attack on our embassy in Pakistan. I doubt it would work now.”
“These points were discussed during the planning stage,” said Blanders. “I seriously doubt any interrogation will be as effective as the implanted bug. And if we want to put him on trial—”
“We can’t put him on trial,” said Bing. “If it comes out that we implanted a bug in him, we’re finished.”
Rubens didn’t particularly relish the idea of a trial; too much could go wrong, and inevitably some information about the operation would slip out. Still, he resented Bing’s implication that Desk Three was operating illegally, and her insistence on revisiting decisions that had been made before she was appointed.
He resented Bing, period.
“The legal issues were thoroughly researched beforehand,” said Rubens. “This is just another instance of electronic information gathering.”
“I’ve read the background legal papers, thank you, Mr. Rubens,” said Bing. “And in no case do they mention what would happen in a U.S. court. The idea was
“We’ll have the lawyers work this bullshit out,” said the president angrily. “I want the bastard to pay for what he’s done, and I want him to do it here. I want a trial — I want to show the world exactly what kind of slime advocates killing innocent women and children. Bitty — have your people stay on him until they know exactly what the target is, then I want him in custody. The bug won’t be used to make the case. The attorney general assures me we’ll have plenty of evidence without it.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” said Rubens as Marcke rose and abruptly left the room.
CHAPTER 83
Friday afternoon prayers were held in a storefront mosque, a humble, shabby building at the outer edge of Detroit. The brothers, about two dozen in all, were mostly young men whose fathers had immigrated; to a man they were struggling to find their way in their ancestors’ faith.
Asad, who had passed through a similar challenge himself, noted how carefully the imam answered their questions. The man was not the most eloquent — he rambled and at times lost the thread of his thoughts — but he had studied with the right teachers and lived in Afghanistan for a time, before the triumph of 9/11 had brought the struggle to the next phase. His message to the small congregation was a strong one, even if his sentences were not: the Followers of God must do all that they could to survive the Devil’s onslaught.
A call to arms, yet one that could not be faulted by the most severe police spy.
“This way, sheik,” Kenan told Asad as the others began filing out.
Asad followed him to a back room and then down a set of creaking steps to a dank basement populated with cobwebs. For a moment his faith deserted him. Asad worried that he had been betrayed, brought here to die. He tensed, waiting for the inevitable blow even as he followed Kenan into a pitch-black room.
The young man retrieved a small flashlight from his pocket. Its dim beacon fluttered across a floor of bare dirt, picking its way across cement blocks and an assortment of dilapidated pieces of wood.
I am walking through the outer precincts of hell, Asad thought. The devil will tempt me and test my courage, but I will not fail.
Kenan stopped before a large metal door. He held up his hand to Asad, gesturing that he should be silent. Then he knocked twice. The door swung open; light flooded into Asad’s eyes. When he blinked, a man with an M16 stood in front of him.
“Muhammad’s Lion is here to join us,” Kenan told the man with the gun, his hushed voice full of reverence.
The man stepped back.
The room looked like the inside of an expensive coffee-house in Egypt. It smelled of sweet tobacco, though none of the dozen occupants were smoking. As Asad entered, all of the men rose quickly, bowing their heads and even closing their eyes in respect. Asad had personally chosen only Kenan and Nathan Green; the others had been selected by the imam, with some additional vetting by another al-Qaeda operative.
“Sheik, we have waited night and day for your return!” thundered Nathan. A short and stocky man whose light-skinned face had the look of a jester, Nathan was given to overblown rhetoric and superlatives. But he was dependable, and as far as Asad could tell from their encounters, sincere though emotional.
They embraced.
“We are safe here,” said Nathan. “Let me show you.”
He gestured at one of the brothers nearby, who produced a small radiolike device and began waving it around the air. “For bugs,” added Nathan.
Asad, appreciating that his host was attempting to be discreet, smiled and held out his hands. “You must check me like you check everyone. There should be no margin for error.”
CHAPTER 84
“Checking him for bugs,” Karr told Dean. “Think they’ll find any?”
Dean ignored his partner’s laugh, studying the satellite locator map on the PDA. The meeting was being held two blocks away in the subbasement of a building across from the mosque Asad had gone into for services earlier.
The Art Room was feeding the intercepted conversations back to them; it played like a low, slightly off-tune radio station in the background.
“Ranting about oil again,” said Karr. “At least it’s in English.”
“Tell me if he explains why he murdered people.”
“You think he’s got a good explanation?”
“It’s not something to joke about, Tommy.”
“I’m not joking,” said Karr — but he laughed anyway, a habit he couldn’t avoid, Dean realized. “He’s a psycho. He doesn’t have an explanation. Not one that makes sense.”
“I guess,” said Dean. “The problem is he feels compelled to share his insanity with the rest of the world.”
CHAPTER 85
The message on Rubens’ secure BlackBerry consisted of two words: “Call me.”
Not unusual in the least, except that it had come from Debra Collins at the CIA. Collins almost never used the secure instant messaging system to contact Rubens.
Rubens went to one of the consoles at the back of the Art Room with a secure phone. To his surprise, Collins picked up right away.
“That was quick.” she said.
“I gathered it was important.”
“Lahore Two says the network’s target is Houston. Al-Qaeda has purchased somewhere over a hundred tons of commercial-grade explosives and can use them in the operation.”
Lahore Two was a CIA source in Pakistan who had an en-viable track record predicting al-Qaeda moves. While his identity was a secret to Rubens, the pattern of his revelations made it obvious he was a triple agent in the Pakistan intelligence service — probably a Pak “turned” by al-Qaeda and then turned again by the CIA. Rubens did not concern himself with the details; the source’s true allegiance would be to himself in any event.
