Jihad db-5

by Stephen Coonts

  “How soon can you get the tape to us?”

  “My flight leaves in two hours.”

  “I will have Mr. Farlekas see if he can arrange a courier to take the tape,” Rubens told him. “I’d prefer you to stay and help the task force. Mr. Dean is investigating another lead.”

  “I did have a commitment back home.”

  “Meals On Wheels,” said Rubens, remembering Jackson’s weekly charity, delivering food to shut-ins. “We’ll arrange for someone to cover that for you. Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you,” said Jackson. He sounded disappointed.

  “If Dabir is in Detroit,” Rubens continued, “it’s possible he helped set up the mission. He met Asad bin Taysr in Istanbul and was involved in the German operation.”

  “I seem to recall from the background paper that they didn’t get along. Even in the transcript of their meeting, they seemed restrained.”

  “Yes.” Rubens knew from personal experience that it wasn’t necessary for people who worked together to get along. Besides, the information on the inner workings of the al-Qaeda leadership was so thin that any account of friction had to be regarded skeptically.

  “The reason I brought it up,” continued Jackson, “is that maybe he was involved in the murder. Maybe he thinks Asad set him up in Germany, and he wanted revenge.”

  A possibility, agreed Rubens, though it was more likely that Marid Dabir was some sort of accomplice.

  “Whatever his motivations,” said Rubens, “finding him will be a priority, if this does turn out to be him.”

  “Understood.”

  “I was wondering, Mr. Ambassador,” added Rubens, “what you thought of Dr. Ramil’s performance in Detroit.”

  “He was very good,” said Jackson. “I sensed he bristled at being forced to stay in the background, however. The other doctor was somewhat aggressive, and I believe they clashed. Doctors, in my experience, never like to play second fiddle, especially to other doctors.”

  “Very well,” said Rubens. “I’m going to hand you over to Mr. Farlekas. Please stay on the line.”

  CHAPTER 115

  Kenan got to the Mexico City bus station with only ten minutes to spare. But that was enough — he already had a ticket and remembered the way to the boarding area quite clearly. He joined the queue and got a seat about halfway down the aisle.

  Kenan still held the paperback he’d found at the St. Louis airport in his hand. He was convinced that the book was a sign that God was watching him.

  Just as the bus driver started to close the door, another passenger ran up. The man boarded the bus; though there were plenty of empty seats, he sat next to Kenan.

  For a moment, Kenan bristled. Then the man took a small Koran from his pocket.

  With trembling fingers, Kenan took out his own and showed it to his guide.

  CHAPTER 116

  By the time Dean landed in Mexico City Sunday morning, the Art Room had found the alias Kenan Conkel had used during his September visit and connected it with a pair of stolen credit cards used for a cash advance and meal in Mexico City, as well as an airline ticket to Veracruz, a city on Mexico’s Gulf Coast.

  “I doubt he was there on vacation,” said Telach sarcastically as she briefed Dean, “but we haven’t figured out what he was doing. If he was setting up a safe house or some sort of network, that may be why he’s there.”

  The fact that it might be part of whatever attack Asad was planning was left unsaid. The Mexican police had been told that Kenan was wanted in connection with the murder in Detroit; Dean was to talk to them first thing Monday. He would also check in with the CIA, which had an extensive file on al-Qaeda dealings in Mexico.

  “First, get some sleep,” Telach told him. “I know you haven’t had much the last week.”

  Dean grunted. He took a cab to the hotel the Art Room had booked, then went out again to check the area where the cash advance had been made, a business district largely deserted on Sunday. The restaurant, by contrast, was in a bustling neighborhood, the street choked with locals and a smattering of tourists. Dean wandered through the nearby streets as if he were a jet-lagged, awestruck tourist, sizing up the area. After about five minutes he realized it was useless to look for Kenan here, but he kept walking anyway, hoping for a lucky break that would snag the kid. When he finally gave up, he had an impossible time getting a taxi and ended up walking nearly three miles back to the hotel.

  Worn out, Dean collapsed on his bed as soon he got into the room. Within moments, he was sound asleep.

  He woke at three A.M. the next day. Dim yellow light filled the room, as if it were encased in amber. Smog had descended on the city, filtering the bright lights of the hotel and nearby buildings. Outside, the city was cast in a sinister sepia, the color something stolen from a 1930s gangster movie. It would be the scene right before the good guy was shot, thought Dean, the setup for the big tearjerker at the end.

  He closed the curtains and went back to the bed, but couldn’t sleep. He thought of Kenan Conkel and then his parents, clueless and confused back home.

  Dean thought of his own father, stubborn — twenty times more stubborn than Kenan’s for sure — and ornery. He’d have come after Dean if he heard he’d been mixed up in something like this.

  Or maybe not. Maybe he’d been in denial as well. Dean had expected him to make trouble with the marines, but he hadn’t. He’d just treated Dean as if he didn’t exist, which at the time was all right with Dean.

  If he saw Conkel now, Dean wasn’t going to bother shadowing him. He’d grab the kid and get him locked up. It was the best thing for him, and his family, to say nothing of the innocent people he might end up helping to murder.

  Assuming Dean caught up with him.

  Dean closed his eyes, but he couldn’t turn off his brain. After an hour more of fitful tossing and turning, he got up and took a shower, then went to look for something to eat.

  CHAPTER 117

  “It’s a chemical plant in Galveston, not Houston,” said Johnny Bib, pointing at the diagram. “Not Houston. Close, but no banana.”

  Rubens ignored the non sequitur, looking over to the analyst he’d brought along with him, Mark Nemo.

  “So it’s legitimate?” Rubens asked.

  “Yes, but.” Nemo opened the folder on his lap and slipped out a piece of paper with a photo on it; it was an exterior shot of the site. “This file is based on the company’s own website. Someone cut and pasted a few bits into the file.”

  Lahore Two, the CIA source purporting to know al-Qaeda’s U.S. target, had finally delivered his promised information. The file consisted of several bills of sale concerning the purchase of explosives from a Chinese company, supposedly for resale, by a commercial supplier in Turkey. Normally used in construction, the explosives totaled several tons. The Turkish company did exist, but the computer geeks working for Desk Three could find no trace of the purchases in the company’s records — which might or might not prove that they were diverted to al-Qaeda. The Chinese company’s records were in such disorder that anything was possible.

  The file also contained a diagram of a chemical plant, along with a crude map of the area showing the nearby Houston Ship Canal, which connected the two cities. The diagram didn’t show where a bomb would be detonated, but any reasonably intelligent psychopath would be able to pick out half a dozen places where the explosion would do decent damage.

  Rubens put the printouts of the file and the website side by side on his desk. The similarities were obvious; whoever had put the file together had used the website to gather data.

  “What’s the ‘but’?” asked Rubens.

  “Well, the thing is — someone from Pakistani intelligence accessed that website the same day this file was created,” said Nemo. “They have a pretty good system for checking page downloads and hits. And, this is a chemical company. They go weeks without anyone looking at their pages.”

  The file could be a preliminary mission brief, rough instructions del
ivered to a field commander, who would then conduct an on-site reconnaissance before formulating the real plan. Or it could be something someone put together to justify a decent payday from the CIA.

  Rubens leafed through the web pages of the real plant. According to the information, Galveston PC was the biggest maker of plastics on the Gulf Coast.

  A decent target, but big enough? Asad’s other targets had been larger.

  If it were one of several targets, it would certainly be big enough. Disrupt the plastics industry, and the effects would be far reaching. Asad had made it clear that the aim of his campaign was economic damage.

  Even so…

  “You did good work,” said Rubens, handing back the files. “Keep at it.”

  * * *

  “So you think Lahore Two’s information is bad?” said Collins when Rubens told her what they had found. She had only the slightest defensiveness in her voice, and Rubens couldn’t decide whether she was sincere or had simply become better at hiding her animosity.

  “It’s really something you will have to make the call on,” Rubens said. “The file with the diagram could have been put together in about ten minutes by anyone with access to a computer. And if your source is in Pakistani intelligence, the timing seems provocative at best.”

  Collins would not identify her source, and Rubens didn’t expect her to. But her silence tended to confirm that he was, in fact, with Pakistani intelligence.

  “Are you going to bring this up at the conference call this morning?”

  “I thought it would be proper for you to do so,” said Rubens. “Unless you want me to.”

  “Thanks.” Collin’s relief was obvious. “I’ll do it.”

  CHAPTER 118

  On his way over to interview the owner of the Mexico City restaurant where Kenan had apparently eaten during his first visit, a thug sidled up next to Charlie Dean and tried to steal his wallet. The would-be thief made the mistake of grabbing Dean’s arm and twisting it behind him; Dean promptly threw the man to the ground, then swung back in time to land a hay-maker on the jaw of an accomplice. The plainclothes Mexican detective accompanying Dean grabbed both, offering Dean a chance at “instant justice” as he called it: five minutes in the alley with each of them, and they’d call it even. Dean passed.

  It was the highlight of his day. The restaurant owner didn’t remember Kenan, nor did any of the staff; they seemed so harried that Dean didn’t doubt they wouldn’t remember his face in five minutes. Everything the Mexican police knew about al-Qaeda came from reports Dean had read on the way down. Though the deputy chief in charge of terrorism matters was exceedingly polite, Dean could tell that looking for Kenan would have about the same priority for the overworked department as rescuing a cat stuck in a tree.

  As for the CIA — the officer who was supposed to pick up Dean at the hotel got stuck in traffic and never showed up. Dean finally found his own ride to the embassy, where he got a half-hour lecture on the problems of dealing with the Mexican authorities from the deputy station chief.

  The FBI agents assigned to the city to assist in terrorism investigations were more receptive — not to mention punctual — but they didn’t have much useful information either. Most of what they knew about related to guerilla groups and drug smugglers far outside the city; Kenan’s name and face drew shrugs. But at least they offered to take him to dinner.

  “Try Veracruz tomorrow,” Telach told Dean when he checked in. “If we come up with anything for you to check out in the meantime, we’ll let you know.”

  CHAPTER 119

  A new Detroit was rising from the ruins of the old near the river and the old downtown; one could look through the shell of the abandoned 1250 Fort Street Building and see the luxurious Riverfront Apartments in the background, or view the Renaissance Tower above the pockmarked hulk of the Highland Park Ford Plant, where the assembly line had changed America and the world forever. The juxtaposition of old and new reminded Hernes Jackson of Kosovo and Bosnia, war zones he’d toured while in the State Department. But here ruin and rebirth were on a larger scale, the decay more widespread, the optimism more promising. If every boarded-up window and gleaming new brick represented a family, millions must be scrambling.

  Ambassadors looked at the world from the macro level — whole cities or nations on the move. Now that he was retired, Jackson thought of the individuals. What did the gross national product measure if you lost your home, or just bought a new one?

  “Penny for your thoughts,” said Dallas Coombs as he and Jackson drove to a raid on a house where one of the suspects might have stayed. Coombs had been assigned by the clearly skeptical head of the task force to work with Jackson on “the Dabir angle,” trying to locate the al-Qaeda terrorist in the Detroit area. Neither he nor Jackson believed that Marid Dabir was still in the city, but finding traces of him might prove useful in unraveling whatever the terrorists had planned.

  “I doubt my thoughts are worth even a farthing,” Jackson told Coombs.

  “How much is a farthing?”

  “A quarter of a penny.”

  Coombs laughed, but only for a second. They turned the comer and saw a Detroit patrol car ahead, blocking off traffic for the raid. Coombs got out his ID and showed it to one of the officers, who had to move his vehicle to let them through.

  The target of the raid was a small bungalow on the south-western side of the city. Built in the early 1900s, the two-room cottage stood alone in a sea of empty lots, its faded asbestos siding and ripped fabric awning rising above waves of weeds and crumbled concrete. Jackson followed Coombs through the side door into the kitchen, where a confused young man in his underwear stood next to the table, his hands outstretched as if begging for an explanation. With none to offer, Jackson continued into the front room, whose floor was covered with mattresses. A pair of detectives were standing to one side while a forensics team surveyed the room.

  “We’re checking on the rest of the occupants now,” one of the detectives told Coombs. “We’ll have them picked up for questioning by four, no later.”

  Plastic boxes sat next to most of the beds; shirts and underwear were neatly folded inside, with a few personal items like radios and books.

  It was obvious that Marid Dabir would not hide in this sort of place unless he was truly desperate, and Jackson had no reason to suspect he was. The men who had committed the murder might be a different story. All three had phony drivers’ licenses and so far had not been identified.

  Jackson went back to the young man in the kitchen. Two plainclothes officers were asking him questions about the others who lived here.

  “So everybody here works at the same place?” asked one of the policemen.

  “Two different restaurants, during the day. At night, some as watchmen,” said the young man. He had a pronounced accent; Jackson, no expert, guessed it was Egyptian.

  “Everyone works?” asked Jackson. The policeman who had been asking the questions deferred to Jackson — a benefit, one of the very few, of thinning silver hair.

  The young man nodded.

  “And how long has each one lived here?”

  The youth began calculating.

  None of the occupants had been in the house more than ten months, according to the young man, nor less than three. He himself had been there the longest and had, it appeared, the best-paying jobs; most of the others worked three to his two.

  “I wonder if this man looked familiar,” said Jackson, taking two pictures of Dabir from his pocket. The man studied it, then shook his head.

  “Thank you.” Jackson extended his hand; the young man hesitated, then pumped it profusely.

  “He recognized him. I’d bet my life on it,” said Coombs outside. “You see how he hesitated?”

  “On the contrary,” said Jackson. “He was tempted to lie because he thought it might help him, but decided against it.”

  “Nah.”

  “Perhaps I am wrong,” admitted Jackson. “But I have a great deal of exp
erience with lies.”

  * * *

  Jackson and Coombs had spent Sunday giving pictures of Marid Dabir to mosques and stores in the ethnic areas of Detroit and its suburbs, saying that the man was possibly involved in Asad bin Taysr’s murder. The fliers produced a number of calls to a toll-free number set up by the task force; the majority accused the police of stereotyping Arab-Americans and appeared to have been made by a woman calling from one of the well-to-do — and predominantly white — suburbs outside the city. But several appeared to be legitimate and worth checking into. About halfway down the list was a call from an imam at a mosque near Dearborn who said one of the mosque’s members thought he recognized the picture of Dabir and had helped him find a hotel a few hours after the murder.

  “That would be the one we should check first,” said Jackson.

  Located about two miles from the towering Islamic Center of America, the mosque was modest in size; the house Coombs had just been in was only slightly smaller. A group of children were lined up on the sidewalk outside when they arrived, waiting to go to an after-school day care program. The imam, a tall man with a booming voice and a jutting chin, met them as they walked toward the entrance, undoubtedly tipped off to their identity by the large aerial antennas on the rear of Coombs’ car. He gave them directions to a small store in Detroit and promised that he would call ahead.

  “Terror is the enemy of us all,” he said as they left.

  His tone was the sort a preacher might use; Jackson discounted it. The man at the convenience store, however, was as sincere as he was taciturn, identifying the man as someone who had appeared in his shop and asked for an inexpensive hotel. His son had taken him to a motel three blocks away.

  “See, those are the guys these people hurt,” said Coombs as they drove to the motel. “Guy struggling to make a living. Turn a lot of people against Muslims.”