Asad heard a hum in his ears, the sound of a loud motor idling. People were moving around him, but they were shadows of people, indistinct blurs. He pushed to get up but he could not.
He struggled to focus his eyes. Finally one of the blurs congealed into the face of an old man hovering above his.
“Can you hear me?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said Asad.
“You seem to have fainted. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I passed out.” Asad’s instincts said that he must escape.
“Did you have heart palpitations? Pains?”
“Pains? Maybe.”
“Are you on medication?”
“I want to leave.”
He pushed to get up. This time, someone helped him — a large man with blond hair standing next to him.
What had happened to Kenan?
“I was with a friend,” said Asad. “Is he here?”
“We can check for you.”
“I’ll check myself,” said Asad.
“You’re still too weak,” said another man, stepping forward. He was a young black man, obviously a doctor.
“No, I can go.”
“Mr. Rahman, I’m Dr. Penney,” said the man. “You may have a heart condition. There are a series of tests we can do, all quite painless, that can determine exactly what the problem is.”
He started to slide off the table. The large blond man grabbed him. Asad braced himself for a struggle, then realized that the man was helping him to his feet.
Ramil felt Jackson’s light touch on his back, a signal to stay back, to keep his face turned away and out of sight. Asad had not seen him, and there was no sense blowing it now.
The knife was out of reach, but there was a pair of scissors on the table nearby.
“Are you sure you want to leave? I can’t stress how serious this may be,” Penney said to Asad, helping him toward the hall.
Whether it was the word of God or some internal conscience, it was speaking the truth — Asad was a demon, a threat to all. He must be destroyed.
But it was too late. The al-Qaeda leader was gone.
Realizing his hand was wet, Ramil looked down at his fist. He’d squeezed the scissors so tightly that he’d cut a gash in his forefinger, and blood was dripping onto the floor. He dropped the scissors with a shudder, then went to wash his hand in the nearby sink.
CHAPTER 90
“The car is registered to a seventy-year-old in Almont, Michigan,” Rockman told Dean. “It’s not reported stolen. Ambassador Jackson will send someone over there to see what they can find out.”
“What about Kenan?”
“The FBI people are trailing him,” said Rockman. “By the way, that must be some sort of fake name. Doesn’t exist in Detroit. We’re just finished another run of his face through an ID matching program for a Michigan license. No match.”
“He said he was a student at Upper Michigan,” Dean said.
“Yeah, we’re working on that. He doesn’t exist, and neither does the program he claimed to be in. We ran first names, last names, all sorts of variations. He draws a total blank so far.”
Rockman only meant that the name was probably an alias, but for Dean, the comment summed up his take on the kid: a blank looking for something to fill him up. What a waste.
“The FBI people will stay with him,” Rockman added. “You and Tommy remain in the background from here on out.”
“When are we pulling Asad in?”
“Not my department. All right. They’re leaving the clinic. Stay with them until they settle down, all right?”
Kenan drove Asad to a motel outside the city and got a room for the night. The one-story motel’s rooms opened onto a sidewalk in front of the parking lot; Dean had no trouble placing video bugs to cover the room and building front and back. When he was done, Rockman told him that the backup surveillance team was in place, and Dean went up the road to find a place to eat. His best choice seemed to be McDonald’s; he was halfway through a quarter-pounder when Karr came in a short time later.
“About time you found a good restaurant,” said Karr. He plopped down across from him. “Real high-class place our friend is staying in. I heard it got three stars in the Terrorist
“Help yourself.”
“How long before we bring him in?”
“Maybe pretty soon. The kid who’s with Asad was on the phone confirming a flight out at the airport tomorrow morning.” Karr finished Dean’s fries. “Going to New Orleans, then on to Phoenix. They’re tracking the credit card and that stuff now. No word on the other people at the meeting.”
“How’d Ramil look?”
“The doc?” Karr laughed. “Shaved and dyed his hair. Hardly recognized him.”
“He had a panic attack in Istanbul.”
“Really? Seemed pretty cool when I saw him. You want anything? Your fries got me hungry.”
“No, thanks.” Dean got up. “I’m going to go check on the surveillance team.”
“Suit yourself,” said Karr. “But those guys got to pay for their own food.”
The two FBI agents tasked to watch the motel were parked in an unmarked car that practically shouted POLICE; it had spotlights under the mirrors, big brake lights on the rear deck, and a set of aerials off the bumper so large they’d need red warning lights if the car drove within ten miles of an airport. They were in a lot diagonally across the street from the motel. While they weren’t visible from the small window at the front of the unit, it wouldn’t take much for someone to spot them.
Dean rapped on the side window twice before the occupants lowered it.
“Guys, your car is a little too obvious,” he told them. “We have to do something about it.”
“This is the car we got,” said the man in the passenger seat.
“Yeah, I can see that. So will our friends. One of you come with me. You can take one of our rentals, and I’ll get this out of here.”
“Charlie, your friend Kenan is moving,” said Rockman.
Dean, unsure exactly how much information about Desk Three’s technology the immigration people had been given, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and started talking to the runner. “Where’s he going?”
“He’s going shopping. He said he’d be back in an hour or two. One of the FBI teams is going to stay with him. We’ll have them stay pretty far back.”
“You need these guys here for a backup?”
“Other team should be able to handle it.”
“All right.” Dean leaned back into the car and told them that Kenan was coming out. “I’ll be down the
