“They can’t be much higher than DC, can they?”
“You’d be surprised.”
At the front of the room, the imam walked over to Khan and bowed slightly before addressing him. That was odd, Connor thought. The imam was the highest-ranking member of the religious order. Why would Shareef show such deference to Khan?
“I’m confused,” Connor said, nodding toward the two men. “Isn’t Shareef the imam here? Yet he just bowed before speaking to Khan.”
Hamid waved dismissively. “Don’t trouble yourself over such a thing. They are old friends.”
That didn’t exactly clear it up for Connor. In the Islamic faith, the imam of the mosque was considered the leader of the people, and showing any form of disrespect to him was considered extremely rude. In stricter mosques, it wasn’t unheard of for men—or women, for that matter—to receive beatings, or worse, for disrespect shown to the leaders of the faith.
Yet no one here took any note of the odd interaction between the two men. Either that, or they were willfully ignoring it.
Over the next two days, Connor integrated himself into daily life at the mosque. He happily volunteered to do whatever odd jobs needed doing: general maintenance work, cleaning, washing. He kept his head down and listened. And he made a point to try and capture every face he could and send the images back to the Outfit’s servers. He had to physically stop himself from adjusting his glasses after realizing he’d been touching them every few seconds, making sure they were positioned correctly on his face.
So far, everyone he’d scanned had returned with clean records. The members included US citizens—either born here or naturalized—people here on work visas like Connor’s cover, and a few simply visiting on a passport. Only one had popped up on a watch list, and after some digging, Thomson and Richards found that he’d actually been put on the list by mistake.
But one thing became abundantly clear: Sheikh Adbullah Khan was almost certainly running a not-so-small drug operation out of his office. Unless of course the white packets of powdered substance Connor had spotted being handed from one to another was something other than illegal drugs. He’d also picked up bits of conversation referencing money and product, and had seen more than a few visitors enter Khan’s second-floor office with suitcases and leave empty-handed.
The idea that a sheikh would violate the Koran in such a way was infuriating to him. Without even understanding why, the words of a passage from the Koran played in Connor’s head. O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, sacrificing on stone altars to other than Allah, and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful. God absolutely despised and forbade alcohol and drugs.
Yet here was Khan, preaching his anti-American sentiment and rallying people to his cause through the front door, then pushing them out the back with drugs in their pockets and a mission to sell to the masses. The entire operation was so obvious, Connor wondered why the NYPD hadn’t picked up on it. The only thing the police had on Khan was a parking ticket from Madison Square Garden, and Connor knew no one was ever going to bother an Islamic religious icon over a parking ticket.
His stomach growled as he finished sweeping the courtyard on his second day. Time for lunch, he thought. He’d found a small halal Indian restaurant the night before that made excellent biryani, and whose owner had seemed accommodating enough.
As he put the broom away and angled around a row of potted trees, he almost ran into a woman walking in the opposite direction.
“Oh, excuse me,” she said, hand covering her mouth. She wore a lavender abaya, the traditional Muslim woman’s gown, with gold trim along the collar, cuffs, and bottom hem. Her plain navy-blue hijab framed her face perfectly. When she smiled, her brown eyes almost sparkled.
Connor backed up a step and bowed his head. “My apologies, ma’am, I didn’t see you there.”
“No apologies needed, Mister…” The inflection in her voice suggested she was interested in his name.
“My name is Bashir,” Connor said.
She bowed her head slightly, mirroring Connor’s gesture of respect. “It is nice to meet you, Bashir. I am Aliyah.”
“It’s nice meeting you.”
She was beautiful. Smooth skin, thin lips, just a hint of eyeliner. As he looked into her deep brown eyes, they called to him, inviting him in. She exuded a natural beauty and confidence.
Aliyah cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you around here before, Bashir.”
“I just arrived here a couple days ago. I’ve come to serve Allah, and here seemed like a good place.”
“I see. And how is your service going so far? Have we made you feel comfortable here?”
Connor chuckled. “Yes. Everyone has been fantastic.”
“That’s good. We have a reputation to uphold.”
“Oh?”
“We help many migrants on their paths,” Aliyah explained. She motioned around the courtyard with a finger. “This is a place of transition for the souls of our brothers and sisters, who follow all walks of life. Everyone is on their own path with Allah. I’m glad your path has brought you here.”
Her voice had a beautiful tone that Connor found attractive. “So am I,” he said.
“Are you done serving today?”
“Well, I hadn’t really thought about it,” Connor said honestly. Since he wasn’t actually employed by the mosque, he was serving on his own schedule. A smile grew on his lips as he realized that, for just a moment, he’d forgotten that his mission wasn’t about cleaning the mosque, but stopping a terrorist. What the hell was he thinking?
“What’s so funny?” she said, canting her head to the side, returning his smile.
“I just finished,” Connor said, his smile broadening. “In fact, I was about to get some biryani at the halal place down the street. Are you interested in joining me?”
Her smile broadened as she stared wordlessly at him for nearly five seconds before saying, “Okay, let’s go. I know the place. It’s one of my favorites.”
As Aliyah walked ahead of him, he was transfixed by her movement. Even her traditional, loose-fitting Muslim garb couldn’t hide the girl’s beautiful figure.
She was almost certainly a member of the mosque, and knew the people here. She might prove to be useful in many ways.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Moving kind of fast, aren’t we?” Richards asked. “You’ve only been there two days and you already have a girlfriend? And here I thought we were paying you to spy on a terrorist.”
“Haven’t seen a paycheck yet,” Connor retorted. He stopped at the center of the Brooklyn Bridge and leaned against the railing, looking out over the East River, his cell phone to his ear. “Anyway, she’s not my girlfriend. We had Indian food together, that’s it.”
“And would you like to know more about your new girlfriend?”
Connor frowned. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
Richards laughed. “You’re damn right I am. That pretty girl is none other than Aliyah… Khan.”
“Khan? As in related to Abdullah Khan?”
“None other than the sheikh’s daughter. You certainly know how to pick them, my friend. Her father is public enemy number one.”
Connor clenched his jaw and breathed deeply through his nose. “I thought the sheikh had no relatives in-country.”
“She just came into the country a couple days ago. We didn’t have her name flagged because we never expected her to leave Cairo. She’s been attending the Al-Azhar University for the past two years. She’s on track to get a medical degree.”
“Yes, she told me. She said she dropped out to follow a different path. She wants to become an artist. Her father paid for her to come over and intern at NYU’s Studio for the Arts. I’m surprised she wasn’t part of the intelligence briefing I got on this guy.”
“I told you, we figured she was a normal with a legit path that didn’t involve any crazy stu
ff. On the surface, she’s very clean. But we’re working through her history now, going through her connections in Cairo and tracking those back.”
“So much for the all-knowing, all-seeing eye of the world.”
“I told you, sometimes we miss things.”
“Apparently. But honestly, I didn’t get the ‘I hate America’ vibe from her. She seemed pretty normal and open with me.”
“Well, isn’t that sweet.”
“It’s nothing like that.” Connor felt his face flush. But isn’t it?
“Listen, this asshole is allergic to technology. Nothing wired up in that mosque. Hell, he uses a dial-up for Christ’s sake. You’re our only eyes and ears in there. Just stay focused on what you’re supposed to be doing there: identifying who’s working with Khan and what his targets will be.”
Connor shook his head. “Well, so far I haven’t heard him say anything even close to advocating violence, but I definitely got the vibe that some of the members of the mosque feel he’s a little too radical for their tastes. He advocates for the removal of our justice system and the widespread implementation of sharia.”
Richards laughed again. “Yeah, that’ll happen. It’s surprising that he hasn’t bound his baby girl to some jihadi and is instead actually letting her go to school. Or at least, he was.”
“Well, inconsistency when it comes to your own kid isn’t a shock. As to the sharia thing, don’t count these crazies out. It’s happening in Europe, and it’s happening pretty quietly. This guy is charismatic as hell, and people love him. I can’t believe the FBI isn’t all over him.”
“Don’t forget, we’re not allowed to profile people,” Richards said in a mocking tone. “We might hurt someone’s feelings.”
“Yeah. Feelings don’t mean crap when buildings are blowing up and people are dying.”
“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir. Tell it to the people in charge. This is specifically why we operate outside that sphere of bureaucracy.”
Connor shook his head. He knew it was true. People only cried foul when bad things happened. When people died. Then it was okay to act, but not before. It wasn’t just the federal government, either—he’d seen it in law enforcement for years. People stood up against aggressive police tactics, demeaned cops for doing their jobs… and then when the shit hit the fan, blame those same cops for not doing enough. That was when the endless stream of “they should have done” or “I would have done” posts started racing through social media and the news, and everyone had something to say about subjects they had no standing to speak about.
“Everyone loves the police when they need them,” Connor said. “Otherwise they’re oppressive pigs.”
“Exactly. So don’t bust my balls about missing the daughter coming into the country, all right?”
Connor laughed. “Deal.”
“You know the greatest thing about our job?”
“What’s that?”
“No one sees our successes, and we can blame everyone else for our failures.”
“Ha. Now that’s messed up.”
“But it’s true,” Richards said. “It’s what allows us to keep operating on the level we do. It’s why we don’t need to justify looking into the mosque, or Khan for that matter. We know he’s bad, and we don’t need to convince anyone else of that. We can just do what we need to do.”
“For what it’s worth, I can see why it’s so hard for anyone to actually get anything on him. The man hardly ever leaves the mosque, and when he does, he takes an entire entourage with him.”
“You think you’ll be able to slide in with his crew?”
“In the time we need it by? I highly doubt it. There’s a big First Rule, Second Rule thing going on here. And I haven’t even been asked to join the club.”
There was a pause. “I don’t get it.”
“Fight Club?” Connor said. “The First Rule is you don’t talk about Fight Club. The Second Rule is you don’t—”
“Got it. So what can we do about it?”
Connor shook his head. “I need to get into his office. There’s been a lot of people in and out over the last few days, people who don’t regularly attend prayer. They meet in his office for several hours, then they leave.”
“Can you get into the office?”
“I’m not sure. They’ve shown me the other offices, and I’ve volunteered to take out the trash and whatnot, so I’m sure I can play it off as a simple mistake if anyone asks any questions. Whether they take me out back and put a bullet in the back of my head afterward, that’s anyone’s guess.”
Richards chuckled. “Eh, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Maybe your new girlfriend can help you out.”
“I told you, she’s not my girlfriend.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sergeant Anthony DeMarco felt his heartburn kicking in as he stepped out the door of the pizzeria. He grimaced, put a fist to his chest, and let out a long burp. He caught several disgusted glances from the pedestrians walking by.
“What?” he said, holding out his arms to either side. “A cop can’t love spicy food? Come on!”
“Still can’t handle your pizza, eh?” said Detective Brent Smith, following DeMarco out onto the sidewalk.
DeMarco shook his head, holding his breath against another belch. He adjusted the volume on his radio and straightened his shirt, while checking that he hadn’t gotten any pizza sauce on his uniform. NYPD might be lax about many things, but a dirty uniform wasn’t one of them. Besides, he’d gotten after several rookies for the exact same thing two shifts before, so they’d give him hell if he walked into the precinct with a bright red smudge on his shirt.
After he’d suppressed yet another burp, he said, “Damn Tums aren’t cuttin’ it no more.”
“You need to take your ass to the doctor,” Smith said, sliding on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses. “That’s what you need to do.”
DeMarco chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like Alice.”
“Well, she’s right. That shit ain’t no joke. You remember Marty Sibowitz, from the Twenty-Second, the guy that went into the gang unit last summer?”
DeMarco stopped at the corner and scanned up and down the cross street, trying to get a feeling for how the rest of the shift was going to go. “Vaguely.”
Smith slapped his hands together. “Fell over dead. Right there in the middle of morning roll call. Fell over dead, wasn’t anything anyone could do. I’m telling you, man, you need to hit the gym.”
Smith was right—DeMarco wasn’t going to be able to ignore the extra weight much longer. He was already having trouble with his knees. And he’d had back issues for years. If he didn’t make a change, he was heading for a crippled retirement, and neither he nor his wife wanted that. But DeMarco wasn’t about to give up so easily.
“Easy for you to say.” He motioned to his friend’s navy-blue suit. Smith had lost twenty pounds over the last year, after Smith’s wife had forced him to go on a diet. “A paper jockey like you can hit the weights right down the hall from the office, but I gotta battle these jack-wagons all day. Maybe you don’t remember that real police work’s tough.”
Smith laughed. “My job’s a lot more work than you think.”
DeMarco rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on now, don’t give me that crap. You forget I did my time downtown. I remember what it was like. What you need to do is test for sergeant and come back out on the street where the real action is. Not to mention the fresh air.”
“Yeah, fresh air and car accidents and bullshit larcenies that no one cares about, and domestics that never solve themselves, and assholes who just want to make your day by showing their buddies how much of a badass they are by stepping up to a cop. You’re forgetting, that’s what I hated about the streets in the first place. No thanks.”
“Watching stupid people is half the fun of this job,” DeMarco said.
“Yeah, but—”
Brakes
squealed and a car horn blared, and a cab skidded to a stop halfway into the intersection. “What the hell, I could have killed you, you moron!” the driver shouted through the open passenger window.
DeMarco followed the cabbie’s line of sight to a messenger on a bike, cutting through traffic, heading the wrong direction up Prince Street. Several more cars honked at the biker, throwing up hands and shouting.
“That’s the job I want,” Smith said, pointing at the bike messenger.
The cabbie caught sight of DeMarco and threw his hands up. “So you finally get a cop around when you need one and he just stands there? Go fucking do something!”
DeMarco bent over to look through the open window. “What do you want me to do, go chase some guy down on a bike? Give ’em a ticket? Come on, while I’m killing myself trying to get some idiot bicyclist, there’ll be ten other real crimes being ignored. Give me a break.”
The driver shook his head. “Damn lazy-ass cops. I know you’d give me a ticket if it was me, I know that.”
DeMarco looked up at the light and pointed to the green. “You’re holding up traffic, my friend. Keep on moving before I do give you a ticket.”
“Yeah, go ahead, I ain’t done nothing wrong!”
But the driver shook his head and turned away, accelerating down Lafayette.
Smith laughed. “I see you haven’t lost your touch.”
DeMarco watched the biker continue up Prince, a cascade of angry shouts and car horns following him. “What do you mean, that’s the job you want?” DeMarco said. “You crazy?”
“Get to ride across the city all day, get some fresh air and exercise, make decent bank for just keeping in shape. Hell, sounds like a win-win to me.”
“You’ve changed.”
Smith laughed. “Speak for yourself, tubs!”
“Hey there, in my prime I would have been all over that—”
A deep, chest-rattling boom ripped through the air like a crack of thunder. A block north of where the two officers stood, several cars were flipped right off the road and thrown into the facades of the buildings. A ball of flame curled across Prince Street in less time than it took DeMarco to realize his hat had been knocked from his head. A cloud of smoke and soot rose above the red brick buildings, and a cacophony of squealing brakes, cars slamming together, horns blasting, and people screaming filled the air.
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