The man was more than a little full of himself and somewhat contemptuous of his students. He had had Kenan Conkel in two classes: Comparative Religion, an introductory class where “he didn’t rise above the herd,” and Christianity and Western History this semester.
“How’s he doing?” Dean asked.
“Not particularly well, I don’t think. I can’t recall the specifics, which leads to my conclusion.”
“Does he attend class regularly?” asked Williams.
“I don’t bother taking attendance. I’d rather that someone not interested in learning stay away.”
“Does he ever argue with you in class?” Dean asked.
“How so?”
“He’s a Muslim. He must have disagreed with some of what you said.”
“This is a history class and my approach is neutral,” snapped the professor. But then, in a less confrontational voice, he added, “Why do you think he’s Muslim?”
“He is.”
“He never identified himself as one. I do have Muslims in my class,” the professor added.
“Can you tell me who they are?” Dean asked.
“Really, I can’t believe you’re asking me to discuss my students’ private religious beliefs like this.”
“Who did he hang out with?” Williams asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Kareem Muhammad,” said Rockman from the Art Room. “There were only twenty kids in the class. That’s got to be one of the Muslims.”
“What about Kareem Muhammad?” asked Dean.
The professor made a face. “An African-American Muslim with, I must say, many misconceptions.”
“Adam Binte,” said Rockman.
“What about Adam Binte?”
“I’m not going to discuss my students’ religions with you,” said the professor. “I really must be going.”
“Binte was a friend of his?” Williams asked.
“For your information, Mr. Binte is a Syrian Christian,” said the teacher.
“Mr. Dean, please ask the professor if he ever arranged for Asad bin Taysr to talk to a class,” said Rubens, suddenly popping onto the line.
When Dean did, the teacher frowned, though Dean couldn’t tell if it was because he recognized the name or not.
“Three years ago,” said Rubens. “When Mr. Conkel was a freshman.”
“Asad bin Taysr was on campus three years ago, wasn’t he?” said Dean.
“I often have guest speakers, and I encourage students to seek out other points of view”
“Even al-Qaeda’s?”
“I won’t dignify that with an answer,” said the man. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” said Rubens. “Most likely the professor is just an idiot, but we’ll look into it further.”
“How’d you do that?” asked Williams as they walked back to her car.
“Do what?” said Dean.
“The friends’ names. Did you come here with them?”
Dean shrugged.
“Why didn’t you tell me about them before? We could’ve checked on them in the dorms.”
“It just kind of came to me,” said Dean.
“The speaker he had here — he was from al-Qaeda?”
“Yeah.”
“What a jackass.”
“You think we can track down some of the kids in his classes? College hangout or something?”
“Sure. But first, we eat,” said Williams. “My stomach’s startin’ to rumble. And you don’t want to be in the car with me while that’s happening.”
CHAPTER 108
“Somebody who’s spending that much money subscribing to sports websites is probably betting online,” said Robert Gallo, squatting next to Angela DiGiacomo as the Desk Three analyst double-checked the charges on Kenan’s roommate’s credit card.
“He may have another card to bet,” said DiGiacomo. “Check for other accounts while I finish going through these.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Gallo got up and went to the computer station next to her, bringing up a tool that allowed the NSA to access credit reports with similar characteristics to any known account. The results were presented on tabbed pages behind the main screen, with different tiers of matches represented by each tab. The top tab showed all accounts tied to the same social security number; the next one down matched addresses, then came names. The matches quickly became esoteric and the results more extensive. Gallo could see, for example, the account numbers of every card used to subscribe to MLB.TV the same day that Kenan’s roommate did.
He didn’t have to go that far, however.
“Look at this — same social number, different spelling of the last name,” Kenan said over his shoulder to DiGiacomo.
“Good.”
“And ten bucks says that address isn’t his, either.”
It wasn’t, but finding the phony credit card turned out to be only the first step. The card had been used only once, to buy an unrestricted round-trip ticket to Los Angeles a month before. The ticket had never been used — instead it had been exchanged for two other flights, with the difference made up in cash.
Gallo and DiGiacomo discovered that both of those plane tickets had also been exchanged, this time for round-trip tickets between Chicago and Houston. One of these had been used two weeks before.
Tracking down the user was more detective work than computer hacking, and Gallo let his workmate handle that part of the job. Intrigued by the pattern of ticket exchanges, he sifted through airline records to see if he could find other flights that had resulted from a similar series of exchanges. He found several, and once more handed off the information for DiGiacomo to develop while he examined the transactions that had started the trains, trying to find a pattern that he could use to develop more information.
An hour later, Gallo got up from his computer station and lay down on the floor, flooding his bloodshot eyes with eye-wash. The only thing the transactions had in common was that they were made with someone else’s money.
“We think this is Kenan Conkel,” Marie Telach told Rubens, pointing at the monitor. “The computer matched it against the feeds from Detroit and the parents’ photo.”
Rubens leaned close to the machine, studying the slightly blurred video. It had come from a security network used at an airport in St. Louis. The researchers had taken Gallo’s information about airplane tickets, coordinating the flights with their arrival times and accessing the airport records, trying to match the flights with information about Asad, al-Qaeda, and other known terrorists. Not all of the airports had computerized video surveillance available, but for those that did, a face recognition tool was used to try to find matches. The tool had found Keenan near the gate where the plane landed four hours ago.
Or maybe not. The face had been caught at an extreme angle, and even the computer had its doubts.
“The computer says it has only a seventy-six percent confidence that this is Kenan Conkel’s face,” said Rubens.
Johnny Bib began bouncing behind him. “Seventy-six percent confidence is a
