by Bart Kosko
“The state will argue that there is a pattern here that goes beyond politics and a student’s thirst for reform.”
The screen showed a more recent image of John at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. He stood at a podium and denounced the Libertarians first for not cutting defense and energy subsidies and then for not abolishing the FBI and CIA. Crackling sound came with the image as John said “The CIA must die!”
The screen froze on the image.
“I bet you spooks liked that one.”
“The pattern is that of a sociopath,” Catton said. “You were an antigovernment zealot at school. Then you went to work for a foreign intelligence agency on crucial energy technologies.”
“You guys could too if you had real college degrees.”
“You have even inquired about how to surrender your citizenship.”
“That’s legal.”
“It’s legal but extreme. It also fits your profile of a traitor-for-pay.”
“Is that what this is about? A goddamn profile?”
“No. You made a mistake. You murdered someone. Now the house caves in and we sort through the rubble.”
“This is no murder investigation.”
“This is evidence. And we agree with your friend’s epistemology. We too proportion our beliefs to the evidence.”
“You guys are civil service at its best. Give me my raisin and let’s cut to the deal.”
“Deal?” Catton said.
Catton nodded to Rittenhouse.
Agent Rittenhouse set down his taser and picked up the brown raisin in front of him and dropped it on the white tile floor. Then he ground it under the heel of his black shoe. John could see the raisin in the agent’s own ear when he turned his head.
“That’s your deal,” Catton said.
John felt a wave of relief. There was a good chance that they had not even tried to decrypt the raisin even if they had intercepted some of its transmissions. He had other Jism raisins but they did not.
“That will look just as cute in court,” John said. “Tell me what you want.”
“I already told you. We want to know about the Israelis. We want to know about the Texas firms Green O and Energon. We want to know what you have passed to the Israelis from the staff and computers of the Hoover Dam. What were you and Dr. Ramachandra discussing on the Hoover Dam yesterday? You promised him a position in your company. We want to know about that. Most of all we want to know why your partner says you are a spy.”
“Richard said that? Bullshit.”
“He said it under oath and has just signed the transcript.”
“Show me the transcript. Not that I would believe it was authentic. Look. Enough. I have allowed you pricks to question me without a lawyer. No longer. Go ahead and taser me some more if you want. Nothing happens from here on unless I see a lawyer.”
“We have something else to show you first.”
Chapter 29
Baku
Azerbaijan
Keiko Yamaguchi kneeled next to the dark red teakwood table. She poured Turkish coffee into the two small white porcelain cups. Keiko was 23 years old and wore a red silk kimono and long brown wooden pins through her knotted hair.
General Atef Mosarian sat cross-legged on the floor across from Iranian ambassador Mossan Esfahani. The president of Kodo Electronics had given Mosarian the teakwood table and Keiko when Azerbaijan had bought 25 mobile missile-defense platforms.
Mosarian watched the man’s eyes as Keiko left the room. He would let the Iranian in the tall white turban have her for the night if he wanted her.
The Iranian showed no interest.
“I admire your office,” Esfahani said.
“Thank you. I fell in love with Japan when I first went to Kyoto University to visit my oldest son. Very peaceful.”
“Yes. General. Let us be frank. Tell me how can I help you.”
“My country is in chaos. Thieves walk down the streets of Baku with shopping carts. The oil spill grows worse and the Armenians steal more of our land each day. Parliament has lost control. The people demand order and justice. Parliament just bickers like a washroom full of wives. It worries only about the media. Half the members still worry about what the Americans think. The other half worry about the Russians. I confess I too worry about the Russians. I fear the Russians will take advantage of our troubles. I grew up under their boot and do not want to die under their boot.”
“And if Iran can protect your people from the Russian boot?”
“Then Azerbaijan can punish those who need punishment.”
“How can you be sure what your Parliament will do?”
“All disbanded parliaments act the same.”
Mosarian heard himself say it and knew he had crossed the line.
He did not trust the Iranians and now they had him. Somehow the wily ambassador would record or transmit this meeting. The Iranians could expose him or lead him into a trap. They could even replace him with one of his own Shiite commanders.
“That is true,” Mossan Esfahani said. “Coalitions are fragile. But what of the oil that lies on the ground? Who will put it back in the barrel?”
“I hope Iran can help us repair the damage and build a new pipeline. Of course Iran would have a right to some of the oil.”
“Of course. Or Iran could simply invade and have it all.”
Mosarian laughed with the ambassador and both men drank the bitter Turkish coffee.
Chapter 30
Riyadh
Saudi Arabia
“Commander Haddad,” King Fahd said. “The Jews killed over 3,000 of our people in Dhahran. They left an entire oil field radioactive! Now the Jews refuse to pay us for the damage. The Iranians and Egyptians laugh at us and so does much of the world. Your missile retaliation was not enough.”
“Your excellency,” Commander Haddad said. “We took a reasonable risk with the attack on Eilat. A larger attack might risk war. It would surely draw the censure of the United Nations and the Americans.”
“Haddad. We risk war if we look weak to the Egyptians and the Iraqis. The Iranians are spreading lies to the people of Dhahran so that they will challenge the monarchy. Our kingdom could fall because of this internet creature of the Americans!”
The king paused but did not blink his watery eyes.
Haddad wondered if the old man had his arm-IV needle in him now. He also wondered what the king put in his IV.
“Your excellency. I recommend that we wait at least 24 hours to see if either Iran or Azerbaijan takes action against Israel.”
“Wait? This is the strength of your counsel? The kingdom is at risk! You said you would cut off the hand of a shepherd if the thieves believed the shepherd was a thief. You called that deterrence.”
“Yes. I did.”
“Then plan to cut off the hand! I have discussed this with my cabinet. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Good. We would indeed risk war if we struck after the Shiites did. The United Nations will tolerate only one strike. I want you to plan it. Now.”
“As you command.”
Chapter 31
Sa’ad
Israel
Michael Riesman lit a fresh cigarette as the old black Mercedes cab parked in the garage of the small Mossad building in Sa’ad.
Colonel Hurwicz watched the cab on a screen in his war room. He did not have the time for this but catching Tabriz was something he had to see for himself. Then he would report it to the Prime Minister.
Riesman knew the value of his find. Tabriz could help them prune some of the scenario branches on their decision tree. Tabriz might even be the mastermind behind the Dhahran bombing as Eytan Baum and his team believed. Riesman had also caught an unknown man he claimed was a senior Hamas terrorist. The man might help them prune even more branches and maybe grow a few new ones.
The two commandos opened the trunk and pulled out the bound men.
The trunk had banged them as the old car d
rove through fields and a fence and over poorly paved roads. The Hamas man had fierce brown eyes and gray streaks in his short wiry black hair. Tabriz had red welts on his pale face but no expression in his eyes.
Riesman thought Tabriz was shorter and thinner than he would be. He searched both men himself. They had no weapons or ID. Each man had a blue WNN credit card and the Hamas man had a thick wad of Swiss francs in his pants pocket.
The commandos untied their feet and held small black short-stock Galil III submachine guns to the backs of their heads to prod them to walk. More Mossad and IDF agents joined the men as they walked upstairs.
Riesman led them to the chairs in the white makeshift interrogation room. His bald head had started to sweat from the stare of the cameras and the heat that the crowd of men and women gave off.
Riesman pointed to the young analyst Ariella who stood behind the Hamas man and Tabriz. She had trained in mechanical engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev when she left the Israeli Army and now spent most of her time reading stolen e-mail messages that other analysts had judged suspicious. She ran the messages through text processors and pattern matchers and wrote reports on which messages other analysts should try to answer or steal.
This was a new experience. Ariella had never seen her work produce a concrete act of intelligence. She sometimes felt guilty about how much the state paid her for her work but still laughed about it with her girlfriends and her programmer husband. Riesman’s pointing finger was the first field assignment of her career.
She reached around Tabriz and ripped the duct tape off his mouth.
The tape came off with small pink strips of the dry lip skin. Tabriz did not flinch or change his forward gaze. Then Ariella reached around the Hamas man and did the same thing.
It was her second concrete act of intelligence.
“Little bitch!” the Hamas man said in the Queen’s English.
One of the commandos slapped the back of the Hamas man’s neck with his Galil barrel.
Ariella felt guilty about that and stepped back to stand along the wall with the rest of the staff. She had heard that Colonel Hurwicz was watching them from one of the security cameras. She did not know how best to reply to the man’s insult and the gun slapping in front of someone of Hurwicz’s stature. So she just stood at attention as she had in the army and hoped they had caught the right men.
“Palm prints,” Riesman said. “Quick!”
Ariella helped them force the Hamas man’s right hand down onto the glowing red pad. The man still fought them and tried to shake his hand slightly to confuse the laser-based matching software. The commando slapped him again in the back of the neck. This time the man kept his hand still.
“No match,” Riesman said to one of the cameras.
They could all read the same thing from the wall monitor and Hurwicz could see it as well. Riesman did not care. He had stumbled on this intelligence find and he would stay in charge of it. He thought that by now even the Prime Minister might be watching him.
“You have no match and I have committed no crime,” the Hamas man said. “I demand that you let me go.”
Riesman ignored him and looked at Tabriz.
It took only one staffer to move Tabriz’s limp hand to the red pad. Riesman thought Tabriz was trying to show them some sort of false Sufi calm. Riesman was not even sure he knew what Sufism was in practice. He had once studied kabbalah with his old uncle but viewed it now as no more than numerology and spiritual double-talk.
Riesman looked hard at Tabriz’s dead eyes and tried to break his Sufi mask. Tabriz had to know that his mask could not last. The stakes were too high. They would make him talk.
“Match,” Riesman said. “Hamid Saleh Tabriz. Age 38. Confirm with retina scan.”
Two staffers wheeled the large white machine before Tabriz’s chair. It was an old device and they had to adjust its height to Tabriz’s eye level.
Ariella watched them fiddle with the height knob and felt the alarm grow in her. She had heard many stories of the Sufi cleric and had never been so close to such a potential enemy. Riesman had just told them that the thin man was a fiery Islamic radical. He said Tabriz had killed Arabs and Persians since he was a teenager.
Riesman had also said that Tabriz might have helped kill Joel Davis. Riesman had not said why he thought that. He had just volunteered it when they watched the WNN broadcasts of Davis’s death. The whole office had watched the footage in silent horror. They were part of an international event.
Ariella had met Joel Davis once in this same room when he briefed them on the location of Turkish missile sites. She had drunk coffee with him and laughed at his coarse jokes about the intelligence bureaucracy. Davis was muscular and confident and acted the way she thought a real spy and killer should act. Ariella could not see how the pale quiet man before her could have beat him.
Then she turned to look at the back of the man’s head and saw it in the light. It took all her strength to stand still.
“Sir,” she said.
“What?” Riesman said in his command voice.
“I suggest we do an MRI scan at once.”
“One step at a time. First we get the retina ID.”
“Sir. He has scars on his scalp.”
The staff and commandos leaned over to see. Even the Hamas man squinted and turned to stare at Tabriz’s thick short black hair.
Colonel Hurwicz walked closer to his screen and so did the staff in the war room.
Riesman pushed the retina scanner aside and moved next to Tabriz to see his forehead and white scalp under the black hair. He wished Eytan Baum could be here to watch. Maybe Tabriz was not faking a Sufi trance. Maybe he did have a chip in his brain and not just a mood implant.
This was truly the find of his career.
“Bring an MRI scanner,” he said. “Quick!”
One of the staff had already gone to get the oblong black gun. He turned it on and pointed it at the wireless port on the main wall monitor and then handed it to Riesman. Riesman held the MRI gun with both hands and pushed it to Tabriz’s forehead.
The monitor showed a normal skull case and brain.
Riesman waved the MRI gun back and forth in front of Tabriz’s forehead and turned to watch the wall monitor. Red and green lines of energy streamed from inside the brain and swirled into the butterflies of chaotic attractors.
“What the hell is that?” Riesman said. “Ariella. Check his scalp.”
It was the last thing she wanted to do but she did it.
She moved her fingers through the man’s coarse hair. She felt the plastic scab lines and saw the pink scars like thin worms on his scalp.
Tabriz still did not move or change his gaze.
“They look like scars,” Ariella said.
“Stand back.”
Riesman moved closer and held the MRI gun straight down at Tabriz’s crown. The monitor showed a solid sphere the size of an orange at the center of the brain. It was the source of the swirling red and green lines.
“Someone get me a pattern match on this!” Riesman said.
“I can tell you what it is,” Tabriz said in a soft voice.
Riesman jumped back and so did the staff. Ariella felt her heart race.
“What?”
“It is a superdense variant of what you call C-4 explosive.”
Riesman looked at the security camera in panic but could not move his feet.
Tabriz smiled and looked up at the ceiling camera.
“Allahu Akhbar,” he said slowly and calmly.
The explosion leveled the small Mossad compound and the office suites on each side of it.
Chapter 32
Southern California
John Grant thought of cool green honeydew melons.
He had not slept in a day or eaten in half a day. The stress had at first kept him alert and taken the place of food. Now he was stiff and sore and tired and felt the first dizziness of fever. John closed his eyes to take fast microsleeps
even as agent Carsten Catton spoke to him. He tried not to think of his son or Denise or their last moments.
Mr. Pierre Rittenhouse typed something on his palmtop. The sounds of the key strokes soothed him. John loved the fresh melons of SoCal and tried to think only of their sweet green flesh.
“Let me show you an advance copy of the L.A. Times,” Catton said.
The white wall screen showed John on page three of the electronic version of the newspaper. He wore an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs and walked next to a sheriff’s deputy with a thick brown mustache.
The headline read “Boyfriend Arrested in Brutal Slaying.”
The orange jumpsuit kept him from having more microsleeps.
They had him at last. There would be no million-dollar buyout from the bastards. There would be no Water Dragon or Black Sun companies and no royalty stream from the Israelis and no more green melons in his desert home near the cool blue Colorado River. They would put him in prison for murder and maybe for this trumped-up treason charge. They would strip him of what little freedom he had and feed him to the race gangs in the cage. He tried not to think of that or whether they would give him the death penalty. The fever was working on him and he needed to hear the sound advice of the English gentleman in his ear.
“What do you think?” Catton said.
“I told you what I think. I will kill you someday. The same goes for your fat-assed friend there with the taser.”
“Tough talk for a man who will surely face lethal injection. This is interracial murder. Let me show you a different version of the same issue of the L.A. Times.”
The screen split.
The left window showed the image of John in the orange jumpsuit. The right window showed an excerpt from page 55 of the Times. It was one of the obituary pages. There was text but no images. A short paragraph said that Denise Ann Cheng had died at home of a brain aneurysm and gave details of the cremation.