Jihad

As Lia returned to her cart, a middle-aged woman wearing a dark blue business suit and a touch too much makeup walked up and waved her hand in Lia’s face.

“Yo, Miss. Miss?”

“Yeah?”

“That little brat over there spilled his soda all over the floor.” The woman pointed in the direction of the food concessions, where a three-year-old was using the tables as a jungle gym.

“And?”

“You’re going to clean it up, aren’t you?”

“What do I look like? A janitor?” asked Lia, pushing the cart down the aisle.

CHAPTER 125

Even though he had performed well in Detroit, Rubens would have preferred giving Dr. Ramil a few days off. But his other doctor was still sick, and it made more sense to have Ramil standing by for the operation than to bring in an unvetted replacement. Still, Rubens reserved the option and his decision until Dr. Ramil reported to his office that afternoon.

“I have another assignment for you, if you’re up to it,” he told Ramil.

“Of course.”

“Rather easier than the others. I’d like you to stand by in Newburgh during an operation there. On the off chance that something goes wrong.”

“Another bugging operation?”

“No,” said Rubens. He would not give Ramil any more information than necessary, which meant it was unlikely Ramil would get any information.

“Marie Telach will pick out a place for you to stay that’s convenient. You’ll want a car. The usual arrangements will be made.”

“Sure.”

“I’m assuming that you don’t have any prior connections to Newburgh?”

“Never even heard of it,” said Ramil.

“Good.” He started to dismiss him, then thought better of it. “Doctor — now that you’ve had some time to reflect—”

“I was just tired in Istanbul.”

“You threw up at the morgue in Detroit.”

“Morgues.” Ramil looked down, embarrassed. “It’s been a while. Morgues are a certain specialty.”

“If there comes a time when things are overwhelming, you will let me know,” said Rubens.

“Yes.”

* * *

“Someone with a Dutch passport took a flight to Turkey connecting from Detroit last year,” Mark Nemo told Rubens, briefing him in one of the analysis section’s conference rooms on the floor above the Art Room. “They landed in Istanbul and then flew to Karachi a few hours later. They stayed for two months.”

“Why do you think that’s significant?” asked Rubens.

“Kenan was absent from class during that period. And we have this photo from Pakistani intelligence on the students at the Lahore Madrasah at roughly that time.”

Nemo clicked the scroll button on his laptop. A fuzzy picture of a young man with pale skin and reddish facial hair appeared on the screen next to a recent picture of Kenan. Beneath it, the computer declared it was a match “with some certainty”—sixty percent on its one-hundred-point scale.

“The Dutch passport?” Rubens asked.

“Probably a fake. We’re still waiting for definitive word.”

“But the real significance,” said Johnny Bib.

“After the person using the passport returned to the U.S.,” continued Nemo, “he went from New York to Houston. He rented a car for three days. The same credit card was used at a motel in Galveston.”

So was Lahore Two right, then? Was the Galveston chemical plant really the target?

Rubens closed his eyes. It was the classic intelligence conundrum, with evidence supporting mutually exclusive conclusions.

The interesting thing was that neither Johnny Bib nor Nemo seemed to appreciate the fact that they were contradicting their earlier information.

“Has the card been used anywhere else?” Rubens asked, opening his eyes.

“No. No links or parallels that I can find,” said Nemo.

Was he resisting because he didn’t want Bing to be right? If so, that was a very childish reason, far beneath him.

“Very well,” said Rubens. “Johnny, what about the claims that al-Qaeda was trying to obtain a ship?”

“CIA.”

“Yes, I know where the claims came from,” said Rubens, struggling to remain patient. “What about them?”

“No intercepts.”

“Nothing to back it up at all?”

Johnny Bib shrugged.

“Would it be possible to check ship registrations and somehow coordinate them with legitimate companies?” Rubens asked.

“Many gaps.”

“Try it anyway.”

Johnny Bib’s face contorted in a way that warned Rubens he was about to launch into a whining speech about not having enough people, the people he had were doing jobs far out of their classifications, were working insane hours, and on and on.

All legitimate points, but Rubens had no time to deal with them.

“Keep me informed,” he said, cutting off the tirade by getting up. Sometimes strategic retreat was the only way to handle a bad situation. “If you’ll excuse me, I have business upstairs.”

CHAPTER 126

Dean got the same shrugs in Veracruz that he’d gotten in Mexico City. The police in the port city on Mexico’s eastern coast were considerably more concerned with sailors from the local navy school than possible al-Qaeda terrorists. A few thousand tourists stopped in the city’s hotels every week, but the vast majority of them were middle American gringos and their families—“People like you,” the police chief told him, “looking for bargains.”

Dean figured it was supposed to be a compliment and nodded.

The chief gave Dean a few recommendations for dinner.

“Mention my name,” he explained, “they take care of you, no charge. You see.”

“Thanks,” said Dean, making it a point not to remember the restaurants’ names.

Dean took a walk through the city, trying to imagine what he would do if he were Kenan. But that was a lost cause; it had been a long time since he was in his early twenties. He fell back on the obvious, stopping into hotels too small and cheap to have computer reservation systems; no one recognized the photos he showed.

He worked his way down toward the sea. Ships lined up in the distance, heading toward the port; it reminded him of Istanbul’s procession of tankers up the Bosporus.

“You think there’s any possibility that Kenan Conkel hooked up with a ship out of here?” Dean asked Sandy Chafetz when he checked in with her a half hour later.

“I can’t rule it out,” she told him. “But we can’t rule it in, either. Boats and ships leave there all the