Stolen Identity

by Michael W. Sherer

  I wasn’t sure I knew what that was anymore. I thought back to all the people I’d been. Skinny, inner city junior high geek, the kid everyone picked on. High school dropout and runaway. Proud American soldier. CIA-run assassin. Reviled Vietnam veteran. Husband and father. Factory worker and blue-collar suburbanite. Absentee father and loving husband again. Widower. Grandfather. That was the thing about life. It never stopped changing. Even if I hadn’t gone to the VA hospital a day or two before for confirmation of what I already knew, even if al-Qadir hadn’t decided to steal my identity, I still wouldn’t have been the same man I was a week earlier.

  I was the sum of all those lives, but I’d played some roles better than others. Adrenaline still coursing through my system, I realized that this one—soldier—was one I’d been good at. That was the only way I could frame the past eighteen hours that made sense. I was a soldier who’d been thrown into battle without a briefing and no orders. But lines had been drawn and combatants had grown clearer. As a soldier I knew what I had to do.

  Thinking the cops might figure I’d run for the hills, I stayed on the main highway heading north, staying under the speed limit. When I’d gotten a ways out of Ruckersville, I fished for a phone—it didn’t matter which one at that point—and called home to check for messages. There were three. I played them in order.

  “Zane. Mr. Keator. Ben Sturgis here again. Thought I’d try you one more time before I left for the day. I know you don’t want to talk to me, but this really is important. Please call me back. Anytime. Cell phone or office. Thanks.”

  I gave him credit for being persistent, but I didn’t have time for it. I erased it and listened to the next message.

  “Zane, it’s Janice. I know you have your own troubles right now, but I didn’t know who else to turn to, and it seems you’re the only one who may be able to stop this. I’m sorry, this isn’t like me. You know me, always organized and prepared. Fact is, I’m a little scared. For you. For all of us. I got a call from CIA Deputy Director Richard Swopes. Well, Douglas did, but he was in a meeting and I picked up his phone for him. Sorry, I’m rambling again. Apparently, you two know each other from Vietnam. DD Swopes and I both believe that al-Qadir, the man who stole your identity, is planning a series of attacks across the country to disguise attempts to break convicted terrorists out of jail.

  “We also believe that—”

  The machine beeped, cutting her off, signaling she’d used up the allotted time. I saved the message and played the next one.

  “Damn. I mean darn. Zane, it’s Janice again. Swopes and I believe that Preston was kidnapped to force Douglas to give al-Qadir information on when Masoud—you know, the man arrested here in Detroit—when he’ll be transported from the federal correction center in Milan to the county jail here. I don’t know if there’s anything you can do, but we think Hassan Masoud is al-Qadir’s son, so al-Qadir will probably stop at nothing to get him back. I don’t know if you can talk to Douglas, try to convince him. He didn’t listen to me, but he might believe the truth if it came from you. I just thought you should know. I believe you, Zane. I believe in you. I hope… I hope you’re well. Take care of yourself.”

  I drove in a kind of stupor for some time, not sure what to think, emotions and half-framed thoughts bouncing around inside me like BBs in a bathtub. I didn’t want to hold out hope. After Susan died, I’d resigned myself to a solitary life. Mary and I had had a good run for a while and had produced a couple of terrific kids. Susan had been the love of my life. Common sense told me that lightning couldn’t strike a third time, and I’d be a fool to stand in a field holding a metal rod hoping it might. And when Janice and I had hit it off, I was glad of her company during those social situations at Doug’s. But that other thing, that thing inside me that had sent me to Sturgis at the VA, had held me back from letting our friendship be any more than that. Now I wondered if I wasn’t a damn fool anyway. One thing had become crystal clear—soldier or not, I now had more than one reason to live.

  I was still lost in thought twenty minutes later when one of the phones rang, startling me. I nearly veered off the road digging through my pockets to figure out which one had gone off.

  “Hang on,” I answered when I found it.

  A few hundred yards up the road, lights of three or four buildings illuminated a side road. I slowed and made the turn, then immediately pulled into the empty parking lot of a small market that was closed for the night. I picked up the phone off the seat.

  “Who’s this?” I said.

  “How many other people have this number? It’s Dickie. You would have made a crappy spy, Zane.”

  “I’ll leave that to you professionals. There’s no loyalty in it.”

  He sighed. “You’re right there. But I made my bed a long time ago. Enough of that. Things are heating up, old friend.”

  “You’re telling me? Hell, an hour ago I killed some kid named Amir who’d been dogging me since Detroit. I’m not happy about that, Dickie, but he nearly killed my daughter and shot my son-in-law. Didn’t kill him, but no loss there if he had.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Did this Amir have ID on him?”

  “No. ‘Amir’ was all I got. Why?”

  “Cops?”

  “On their way when I got the hell out of there. What’s going on?”

  “Well, if they do identify him, maybe we can work it to our advantage. I’ll make some calls after we talk. We believe al-Qadir has two sons, Hamid Hassan Masoud, the kid going on trial in Detroit for smuggling explosives, and Amir Masoud.”

  “Oh, shit. He’s not going to be happy.”

  My heart sank at the thought of killing a man’s son, but the soldier in me slapped that notion out of my head. They’re all sons. And this one had tortured and killed my friend Dinky.

  “No, but that might make him reckless. He’s already been careless, as if this is his last hurrah, and he doesn’t care if we figure out what he’s after. That makes him dangerous. He may think he has nothing left to lose.”

  I thought of Preston. “We have to stop him.”

  “You have to stop him. I think you may be the only one who has a shot at this.”

  “You must be joking, Dickie. I’m an old man with cancer.” I hadn’t meant to say anything, but it slipped out.

  Again he was silent. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But you really are our best hope.”

  “With the might of Uncle Sam behind you, you can’t find a better way to take this guy down?”

  “He’s got your grandson as a hostage, and he’ll see law enforcement coming a mile away. Despite what he did to you, he doesn’t know you, doesn’t even know what you look like I bet. You can get close to him.”

  “Not if I don’t know who or where he is. Come on, Dickie. Get real.”

  “Ah, but we do know who he is. Joseph Darzi, head of Energon Corp.”

  “You must be shitting me. The billionaire? You mean instead of putting on his Batsuit and battling crime, he puts on Arab clothing and goes around bombing shit? Why? What’s his incentive?”

  “He’s a lot like you in some ways, Zane. Son of immigrants. Father was shot to death by a disgruntled former employee who wrote racist slurs in spray paint at the murder scene. Could have knocked a screw loose. No excuse, I know, but trust me, I’m ninety-nine percent certain this is the guy.”

  “And he’s got Preston? Where is he?”

  “Here in D.C.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. Earlier, I went to the hotel where he’s staying, and he was gone. Maybe just out to dinner, but I get a feeling he’s in the wind. Whatever’s going on, it’s all coming to a head. I think we’ve got less than twenty-four hours.”

  “So, what do you want me to do? You have the best spies in the world at your disposal. I don’t have a crystal ball here, you know.”

  “You’ll figure something out, Zane. I know you. It’s not much, but I’ve got a couple of guys on this. Off the clock. Rules,
you know. Might put the feebs’ noses out of joint.”

  “Why don’t you get them to do something then? And get them off my back, too?”

  “Wish I could.” He sighed. “I just got off the phone with Bartlett, the director. Told him what I knew. He actually laughed at me. Said they’re aware of the planned attacks and have the situation under control. I tried to warn him about Darzi, but he thought I was smoking something. They won’t listen to me. Mea culpa, I burned them too many times.”

  I let loose a string of expletives in his ear. When I finished, I heard him actually chuckling.

  “That’s about the size of it, old friend,” he said. “Good luck.”

  62

  Doug glanced over at his wife, heartache spreading through him like dense gray fog. Sally sat at the dining room table watching the video of Preston on his laptop for the umpteenth time. She hadn’t moved from the spot in nearly an hour, playing the video over and over, stopping it now and again to stare at the screen, hoping maybe to learn something from the nuance of their son’s expression or the background noise. Or perhaps she thought that viewing it, seeing an actual facsimile of the real boy rather than the image in her mind, would enable her to communicate with him somehow. Frankly, Doug didn’t know what the hell she was thinking because she refused to speak, to vent her bottled-up emotions. And that made him feel useless.

  Worse, he felt trapped. Even with the curtains drawn, a phalanx of lights along the curb outside brightened the windows as much as daylight. The media had gotten wind of Preston’s kidnapping, and of course, Doug’s dad was still a top news item, and they all wanted a piece of the family’s soul, a direct quote about how the day’s events made them feel, and had they seen it coming, and did they know who had taken their little boy, and was it possible that Zane had a hidden predilection for underage boys, and did they think their son was still alive, and had Zane’s wartime experience led to the PTSD that obviously caused his bloody cross-country rampage.

  Doug had run the gantlet of news crews when he’d driven home, and they’d mobbed his car like slavering hyenas, bristling microphones liked bared teeth. They’d effectively stopped him in his tracks for fear of running someone over. Not until one of the local cops directing traffic stepped in did the sea of bodies part so he could get his car into the garage unscathed. Inside the house, video clips of the trashed police cruiser and the exterior of the house of the murdered man in Canton as well as the scene outside had run on a constant loop on most of the local channels until Doug turned the TV off. He hated that Sally had spent her day listening to that crap.

  After Doug had gotten home, SAC Jensen had checked in with him personally, and a little while later a different TIA had arrived to spell the shift of the agent who’d been manning the phone since that morning. The new one sat unobtrusively in a corner of the living room reading, waiting for the phone to ring. Doug had already forgotten his name. What was the point of remembering? He would be gone in the morning, replaced by someone else, and the phone would still be silent. Doug paced, wishing he could rip his skin off and jump outside himself. He needed to do something. He needed to get their son back, prosecute Masoud and put all this behind him. He was beginning to think that his career wasn’t worth all this. Maybe he should let Kathleen take the case. Resign and go into private practice. He shook his head. Quit his job with another baby on the way? What was he thinking?

  One thing he could do was look at the brief Janice had handed him on the way out. He owed her that much. As he started reading the room faded away, and he found himself engrossed in the scenario the documents depicted. Janice had always been both intuitive in her assessments and thorough in her research and support of those assessments. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d done the same here, but the proposition, the premise, seemed so outlandish on the face of it as to be laughable. Doug wasn’t laughing. The more he read, the more concerned, even fearful, he became. The premise was farfetched, yes, but the supporting documents made it all too plausible. If true, he and Preston stood at the center of what promised to be a maelstrom of violence if someone didn’t raise the alarm.

  Janice already had.

  Doug almost smacked himself for his stupidity. Janice had come to him with this not only because of their working relationship, and not only because of his connection to the hypothesis. She’d come to him because he was on the district’s JTTF. And if any entity was in a position to do something about this, a Joint Terrorism Task Force would be the best qualified.

  What he still didn’t understand, though, was why they’d taken Preston. Janice seemed to think they’d use his son against him, but as much as he feared for Preston’s life, Doug didn’t know enough to be valuable to these people. Only the Marshals Service knew the specifics of Masoud’s transfer. Doug couldn’t give them what he didn’t have, even to save Preston. He puzzled over what role Preston’s capture played in all this.

  He called Scanlon first. Since he was head of the FBI’s Detroit office, Scanlon had the authority to make practically any law enforcement action possible in the entire state of Michigan.

  “Jim, it’s Doug Keator,” he said when the SAC answered. “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I have a situation here I could use your help on.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your son. Jensen’s a good man. He’ll do everything possible to get your son back.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it, but that’s not why I called. You know Janice Foster, one of our IAs. She stopped in my office before I left for home and gave me a briefing she’d prepared. I’ve been reading it, and it paints a frightening picture. Based on the information she’s reviewed, she believes al-Qadir is planning a series of attacks across the country. Worse—”

  “I know what’s worse,” Scanlon interrupted. “I read the brief.”

  He paused, but put off by his outburst, Doug waited.

  Scanlon sighed into the phone. “One of our analysts handed it to me on the way out of the office. We have more than a situation, Doug. This is bad. I might be able to convince Ross Perkins to put more marshals on his detail tomorrow and call audibles on the route to stave off an attack. Maybe even get him to postpone the transfer. But I sure as hell don’t know how I’m going to convince the NJTTF, let alone the other JTTFs that appear to be in target zones.”

  “Then you believe this scenario is plausible, too.”

  “Extremely. I have a call into the head of NCTC, but he’s at the theater. His staff is trying to reach him. And I sent the brief I have to JCAT in the hope someone there will shake things loose at HQ and Homeland Security.”

  Doug knew that Scanlon had taken the threat seriously if he was trying to roust the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from an evening out. And the analysts at the Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team would quickly be able to assess the hypothesis presented in the briefs he and Scanlon had been given. In truth, he was surprised that this kind of evaluation hadn’t come from JCAT in the first place. Once again, Janice had proved her worth in her ability to connect unnumbered dots and form a cohesive picture.

  “We don’t have much time, Jim. Perkins’s team plans to move Masoud tomorrow.”

  “I know. I’ll talk to Ross. What worries me are all the targets I can’t protect. I’ll do what I can to sound the alarm—I’ve been calling my counterparts in all those cities—but I won’t make believers out of all of them.”

  “It’s a start. Thank you. I didn’t think you’d be one of them.”

  “I wasn’t at first. But after Carol gave me this, I thought about it. I figured Terry Hunt wouldn’t spend fifteen years of his life chasing a ghost. He must know something we don’t.”

  Doug hesitated, but Scanlon had given him the perfect opening. “Speaking of Hunt, do you have a way to contact him?”

  “Only the usual channels. Sorry. Why?”

  “If he knows al-Qadir that well, he might know how to find out where he’s holding Preston.”

  S
canlon was silent. Eventually, he said, “It’s a long shot. Use my name when you call HQ to track him down.”

  “Thanks, Jim.”

  Doug disconnected and was about to call the FBI’s D.C. headquarters when the house phone rang, jerking his head up in surprise. For the first time since she’d greeted him when he got home, Sally turned her head away from the onscreen image of Preston and looked at him. He’d never seen such a mixture of hope and fear in anyone’s expression before, and it nearly broke his heart. He strode across the room to the phone as the tech agent started a voice recorder and a trace on the call. At a nod from the agent, Doug snatched up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Doug?”

  Doug wasn’t prepared to recognize the caller’s voice, but the brief pause gave him enough time for it to register.

  “It’s—”

  “Jesus!” Doug interjected. “Are you crazy? We have to keep this line clear. Call me back on my cell phone.”

  He slammed the receiver into the cradle before the caller could reply. The tech agent fiddled with his equipment, shook his head, and looked up at Doug.

  “If I didn’t know any better, sir,” he said, “I’d say you just committed felony obstruction.”

  63

  “We’re listening,” Roberts said as Hunt swung the car around in a U-turn.

  “Okay, here’s what we’ve got,” Machowski said. “That TIA—Davis, bless his little heart—did some follow-up legwork since he’d already put out feelers. They found the limo, abandoned. No surprise there. Front interior wiped clean. The rear so full of prints it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since it was new. And when they threw some UV light in the back, the whole limo lit up. No blood, but a whole lot of other bodily fluids. How the hell you get semen on the headliner of a car I’ll never know. Guess it could be fun finding out, though, huh?”