Jihad

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 experience 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.”

“That’s part of the goal. The extremists don’t want Muslims to integrate into Western society,” explained Jackson. “Their vision of Islam doesn’t allow it.”

“Yeah. Well, they’d have trouble anyway. I felt bad for the guy. I was going to buy something, just to help him out.”

The motel clerk remembered that someone had come in with a young man “a day or three ago,” but he didn’t recognize the picture.

“Could be, might not be. Guy kind of looked Egyptian, but you know,” said the clerk, who was an African-American. “Paid cash.” He shrugged, as if the money settled any and all questions.

“Is he still here?” asked Coombs.

“No, sir. Room’s vacant, if you’d like to look at it.”

“I would. Do I need a search warrant?”

“Nah. We’re friends, right?” The young man laughed nervously. Jackson wondered if he would have said the same thing to Coombs if the FBI agent had been white. “Besides, if you was staying the night, you wouldn’t need a piece of paper to do that, right? So where’s the harm?”

“That’s right.” said Coombs.

The room had obviously been cleaned. While Coombs debated whether it was worth calling in the forensics unit or not, Jackson asked the clerk if the motel had a computer system.

“We have a computer,” said the clerk. “Just the one. For reservations.”

“I wonder if it would be possible to look at the computer.”

“Look at it? It’s right on the desk.”

“I meant, look at what’s on it.”

“I guess so. How long will it take?”

“Are you connected to the Internet?”

“DSL,” said the man proudly, as if the high-speed connection were a status symbol.

“It won’t take very long, I suspect,” said Jackson taking out his satellite phone.