Stabenow, Dana - Prepared For Rage

by Prepared For Rage(lit)

  "We've been talking about that ourselves."

  "Not enough," Rincon said tersely. "Not nearly enough, Patrick."

  "Forward me what you've got," Patrick said.

  "Will do." Rincon hung up.

  Melanie brought him the fax from Hugh just as Chisum was sitting back from issuing an all-agencies alert as to Isa's probable presence inside U.S. borders. The phone began ringing as he spread the pages across his desk. "Get that, will you, Melanie, thanks. And I'm not in for the rest of the afternoon."

  "Yes, Mr. Chisum." She was curious but too well-trained to ask, and he watched her walk out the door with his usual attentive wistfulness. He shook his head and pulled out his Isa file to compare the photographs. The ones in Iraq were group shots, taken from a distance. Everyone was burnoosed and bearded. Isa's head was circled, and in another print blown up. The quality of the print was atrocious, and what resemblance there was between it and the clean-shaven, smiling face in the passport photo was minimal at best. The group photo was more about personality than likeness. He was standing a pace in the rear behind Zarqawi, looking solemn, even a little studious, his hands folded, his lean figure a study in stillness.

  The two photos Rincon had been working from were only marginally better. One was a black-and-white head shot taken with a long lens, picking Isa's face out of a crowded Baghdad street. He was seated at an outdoor cafe, drinking something from a tiny cup, facing someone with his back to the camera. Isa's face was seen over the second man's shoulder, looking straight into the camera lens. The resolution was grainy and his expression couldn't be made out, but there Patrick nevertheless got a clear impression of vigilance, as if Isa were always alive to his surroundings, might even be somehow aware that his photograph was being taken at that very moment.

  The third photograph was another group shot, this time a posed shot of a Zarqawi grip-and-grin with bin Laden. The accompanying caption read "Peshawar, Pakistan?" Neither man looked overcome by joy at the encounter, but by the date on the photo, this was right after the hotel bombings in Jordan, and at that time no one in Arab leadership, legitimate government or terrorist, was pleased with Zarqawi.

  And once again, at Zarqawi's shoulder, stood Isa.

  He compared the two faces first to Bayzani's service file photo, and then to the doctored passport photo. He'd have the photos looked at by their own geeks down in tech services, but he was sure in his own mind that Rincon was right. It was Isa.

  And that meant Isa was indeed in the United States.

  He read the account of the immigration agent who had cleared Isa for entry. No useful knowledge to be gained there, except that Isa appeared to be at least superficially well versed in Coast Guard lingo. He made a note to inquire into Bayzani's past movements with care and attention. If he'd been spending time spilling his guts to Isa about his job, Patrick wanted it all down, chapter and verse.

  While he had been perusing the file he was aware of the phone ringing nonstop outside his door, Melanie's voice a soothing counterpoint. At precisely sixty minutes and one second her tap was at the door. At his response she came in, set down a large stack of pink telephone slips, and departed again.

  He thumbed through the slips. Mostly panicky demands for more information. Since he didn't have any, he shoved them to one side and assumed the position, feet crossed on the windowsill, hands folded on his stomach, frown aimed at the horizon.

  No way to catch up to Isa until he surfaced again. Isa was a very cautious man. So far as Patrick could tell he never spoke on the phone, he never emailed twice from the same address, and he never flew directly to a destination, always employing multiple segments on multiple airlines, never booking them all at once, spreading his purchases around on Orbitz, Travelocity, and the airline web sites. No, Isa didn't make mistakes often, and truly, in these two instances, Istanbul and New York, he had erred more on the side of bad luck than bad judgment. Better to be lucky than good, as the old saying went. American immigration agents by and large were trained to look more at documentation than they were at faces and behavior.

  Political correctness was all very well, but at what cost to the nation's security? The men on the planes had been recruited from upper-middle-class Saudi families, well educated and for the most part well off. Therefore American security forces manning American borders ought to be looking hard at upper-middle-class, well-educated, well-off men of the Islamic faith of every nationality. Never mind that there were millions of Muslims who did not subscribe to the notion that killing was the way to revenge, redemption, and paradise. Nobody ever hijacked an El Al jet and that was because El Al knew all there was to know about profiling and then some.

  We could take lessons, Chisum thought now, and we should. As he had told Khalid nearly two years before, Kallendorf wasn't all wrong.

  But Isa's first real piece of bad luck had come in Istanbul. He had learned enough, probably from Bayzani, to know that he'd have to have a duty station on offer when asked. Alaska would have seemed sufficiently remote to be safe. What were the odds, he would think, that he'd find himself riding an elevator with a Coast Guard officer born in Alaska?

  Turns out, pretty good odds if he'd had anything but a superficial knowledge of the U.S. Coast Guard, who maintained a very large presence in Alaska, a state with 36,000 miles of coastline if you included all the islands, peninsulas, and archipelagoes.

  That was not the real question, however.

  The real question was, what was Isa doing at an IMO conference on marine safety in the first place?

  There were two possible answers to that question.

  One, he was there to learn what measures the international maritime community was putting in place to ensure the safety of vessels and crews working the high seas, for the purpose of confounding those measures and launching an attack against pick a target.

  Two, and the answer Chisum considered far more probable, Isa was there to meet someone. Someone already inside the maritime community. Someone with a solid working knowledge of the shipping industry.

  Or, or perhaps including, a working knowledge of ports. Western ports. Busy ports. Vulnerable ports.

  But then, they were all vulnerable. Less than three percent of containers coming into U.S. ports were examined for contraband. Anybody could tuck anything inside of a container, stick it on a Horizon Lines ship, and feel pretty secure that it would never be spotted.

  On the other side of his door he could hear the phone still ringing, though less frequently than before, and Melanie's voice still desolate at her inability to oblige any of the callers. She was really very good. She came in with another sheaf of phone messages. He looked at the clock. "Hey, it's after five. Go on home, Melanie."

  "I can stay, Mr. Chisum. You could use the help."

  "You have to have something better to do than babysit me, Melanie."

  She smiled. She had a dimple in her right cheek. Her skin was like ivory. He recognized the triteness of the observation at about the same time he realized he'd been staring. He could feel the color creep up over his face, and he said gruffly, "I appreciate it, Melanie, thank you."

  And again he watched her walk out of his office. Rumor had it that she'd been seen outside the office in company with Kallendorf. He hoped it wasn't true, and not just because it would mean the director had a spy too close to Patrick for comfort. He liked Melanie. He liked her a lot. She had thus far proved not only decorative but capable and efficient as well. True, he also liked the thought of her naked and stretched out on a bed, but he tried not to dwell on that. It was always a mistake to dip your pen in the company ink. Particularly this company.

  He swiveled back to his computer and got online. The IMO's web site displayed an impressively far-reaching organization, with at a rough count over 170 member nations, including ones like Bolivia, Switzerland, and Mongolia, which so far as he could recall without looking at an atlas were landlocked. The U.S. Coast Guard was the United States' representative at the IMO. He wondered who other
nations sent. Be worth finding out. He made a note.

  Then there were the government and non-government organizations affiliated with the IMO, some of which might prove productive of investigation, like the Arab Federation of Shipping, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, the International Association of Ports and Harbors. This last looked interesting so he pulled it up, and found links to countries with links to various of their ports. He clicked on Ireland in memory of Josie Ryan and on the Shannon page somewhat to his dismay found all the information he could wish for about the port, including maximum vessel dimensions and a scale map showing seven separate ship-berthing facilities.

  He sampled some of the other port pages, and while some web sites were better than others they were all very informative.

  He swiveled back to the window and reassumed the position.

  On ports at least there was all the information Isa could wish for on the Internet if he were planning an attack against one. He would have no need to attend a conference on maritime safety to learn more.

  No, he would attend a conference on marine safety to meet someone there. Patrick was now certain of it. Someone who had either information he needed, or expertise. Or both.

  But Patrick wasn't going to catch him to ask him, at least not today. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after that, but that was then. He'd put everyone on the alert. All he could do now, maddening as it was, was sit back and wait for Isa to be spotted.

  Maybe, he thought, just maybe he was looking at this from the wrong direction. Isa was in the wind. Someone might stumble across his path again, but the odds weren't in their favor. They'd been incredibly lucky in the two contacts they'd had, both by conscientious, practicing professionals, but it was fatal to depend on lightning striking that way a third time.

  And besides, Patrick was tired of being a step and a half behind this guy. It was time to do a little backtracking, find out what made the guy tick so they'd have some idea of what he might do next, and where.

  Chisum turned back to his desk and picked up the phone. This time he got the nation code right and Hugh Rincon's voice mail came on. He realized that it was after ten o'clock in London. "This is Patrick Chisum again. Who else attended that conference in Istanbul? I want a breakdown by names, professional organizations, and nationalities."

  He hung up and frowned at the clock on his desk. The minute hand swept inexorably around, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours.

  Like he needed reminding.

  12

  HAITI, DECEMBER 2007

  It took him a pitifully short time to find what he was looking for in Haiti, which cost him in U.S. dollars the equivalent of a used car, which he found even more pitiful. While he was conducting his business he stayed in a modest room at a resort hotel, renting a girl for the weekend so as to maintain his cover as a car salesman on holiday. She was a straightforward businesswoman, with a refreshing lack of curiosity even that first night when he gently refused her sexual services and insisted she sleep in the second bed. "Arm candy only, then," she said, as if it wasn't an unusual request, and didn't offer a discount. Time paid for was time paid for. On a professional basis, he had to respect that. She insisted on half up front. He respected that, too.

  After he concluded his business, he maintained his cover by spending the weekend at the hotel lounging poolside with his paid companion, taking an hour off to find a cybercafé and check in. Yussuf and Yaqub were in Canada, one in Toronto and the other in Vancouver. They reported all cell members accounted for and settling in to their various temporary lives.

  On Monday morning he paid the girl the other half of her fee and checked out of the hotel. He took a cab to the airport, a flight to Mexico City, a second to Cartagena, and a third to Miami. It took two days for him to arrive at his destination, but he had never lacked for patience.

  In Miami, he took an airport shuttle into town to one of the big box hotels on Miami Beach, took a bus back to the airport, and picked up a

  nondescript sedan reserved in the name of Daoud Sadat. He drove south to an anonymous suburb bisected by a major arterial lined with big box stores, did a little shopping at Target, and then consulted a street map purchased at a gas station. He turned right out of the Target parking lot, turned left at the next light, drove down a series of quiet side streets, and parked in front of a shabby, ranch-style home on a large lot festooned with palm trees and a prowling bougainvillea barely restrained by a chain-link fence. The house two doors down had had its trim renewed, and across the street someone had just replanted their yard, brave in poinsettia plants and new grass, but the neighborhood had the air of fighting a hopeless battle, as if a wrecking ball and upscale condominium high-rises were just one developer with a vision and a city councilman in his pocket away.

  His knock was answered by a young woman with a grave face. "Yes?"

  "Daoud Sadat. I believe I am expected."

  She nodded. "You are. Please come in, Mr. Sadat." She reached for his suitcase.

  He waved her off. "Thank you. I'll carry it."

  "It's no bother." Her eyes were anxious.

  "For me, either." He gave her a reassuring smile, and was rewarded by one in return. The change it made in her face was extraordinary, lighting her eyes, lending color to her skin, dimples to her cheeks. Her teeth were white and even.

  She looked, he thought with a faint sense of shock, like Adara.

  "Please follow me," she said.

  She led him through the house to the kitchen, a large room at the back with appliances of varying ages against the walls, the center of the room dominated by a large wooden trestle table with benches on both sides and a captain's chair at either end. "Mama, this is Mr. Sadat."

  The kitchen may have been as shabby as the exterior of the house but it was scrupulously clean. The woman at the stove was her daughter again in face and form, with twenty years and twenty pounds added on. Her dark hair was knotted at the back of her head, her dress was buttoned firmly to her throat and wrists with a hem that brushed her ankles. She wiped her hands on the dish towel knotted around her waist and bowed her head in his direction. "Mr. Sadat. I am Mrs. Mansour. This is my daughter, Zahirah."

  He nodded to both of them. "Daoud Sadat. I wrote about a room?"

  "Of course. I will show you. Peel the eggplants, Zahirah."

  "Yes, Mama."

  Mrs. Mansour led him to a room past the kitchen. It was clean and pleasant enough, containing a full-sized bed with a firm mattress plentifully supplied with pillows, a small writing table with a straight chair in one corner, in another an easy chair facing a television, and its own bathroom. "There is no tub, only a shower," Mrs. Mansour said.

  "It is no matter," AMI said.

  "I'm sorry that there is no telephone, Mr. Sadat, but I have the number of the telephone company. The connection is here." She pointed at the box low on the wall. "All you have to do is call them and have it hooked up. It may take a few days." She straightened. "And as you can see, your room has its own entrance," she said, opening the door. It had a window curtained only in white nylon sheers, but the encroaching bougainvillea obscured the neighbor's house. He looked outside. A cement walkway led to the front of the house. "You can be as private as you wish here, Mr. Sadat."

  He shut the door and smiled at her. "I can see that, Mrs. Mansour, thank you."

  "The breakfast things will be on the table in the morning: cereal, rolls, fruit, coffee. I rise very early to go to work."

  "Ah. Where do you work?"

  "At a dry cleaner's. My daughter, also, will be gone very early, so you will have the house to yourself."

  He smiled. "I will be at work early, too."

  "You already have a job?"

  "I do," he said gravely. "I am a software engineer."

  She nodded. "For Lockheed, probably."

  "Yes," he said, raising his eyebrows in well-simulated surprise.

  She took it as an implied rebuke for curiosity into his affairs and
apologized. "It's just that their headquarters are so near, I assumed"

  He patted the air. "It is no matter, Mrs. Mansour, I quite understand. Your daughter works as well?"

  "My daughter goes to university," Mrs. Mansour said.

  "You must be very proud."

  "It is why we moved here. It has been ... difficult, but it was her father's dearest wish."

  He steered her off further confidences by inquiring as to how she would like the rent, suggesting cash since he had not had time to open an account in a local bank. He paid for a full month in advance, including the deposit, over her protests, and escorted her to the door.

  He barely had time to unpack the meager belongings in his suitcase when a soft knock sounded. He opened it to find Zahirah standing behind it with an armful of fresh towels and two bars of Ivory soap still in their wrappers. "For your bathroom," she said.

  She hung the towels and the washcloths and unwrapped the soaps, putting one in the dish next to the sink and one in the dish in the shower. "Dinner is at eight, Mr. Sadat," she said. "Is there anything else you need?"

  "Nothing, I thank you."

  Her eyes went past him to his open suitcase. "ButI thought my mother said you were a software engineer." I am.

  "You have no computer?"

  He did not. He would never be so imprudent. He carried a flash drive in his left-hand pocket at all times. It was an indulgence, to carry that much information around with him, but it was necessary, and it was small enough to be easily disposed of at need. The information on it, mostly names and contact information, was encrypted and he backed it up to an online server in a name he never used for anything else.

  But she was still wondering about his lack of computer, so he said, "I left it at work."

  "Oh." She was doubtful but accepting. "Most engineers bring their work home with them." She met his eyes and a delicate flush stained her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sadat. It's none of my business."