Jihad

CHAPTER 76

A chartered Gulfstream took Dean from Istanbul to Canada, crossing Europe and the Atlantic in roughly twelve hours. Tommy Karr met him at Montréal- Trudeau airport, laughing and grabbing his luggage to lead him to the small customs area where he had to show his diplomatic passport.

“What’s up?” asked Dean.

“Nothin’.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Beats bawlin’, don’t ya think? How was the flight?”

“Long.”

“You shoulda tried my flight. I’m on this 777, right? Coach. Got this seven-year-old sitting next to me doing his math homework. I helped him most of the flight.”

“Where’s Asad?”

“House outside Montreal couple of miles from here. Lia’s there. We got a pack of federales riding shotgun, too. FBI,” added Karr, just in case Dean didn’t pick up the slang. “And we got two Mounties who don’t know the whole score, just that we’re kinda sorta maybe interested in this guy, who maybe sorta is somebody, except we’re not sayin’ who. They’re pretty good sports about it. Rubens sent your ol’ friend Hernes Jackson up to hold their hands.”

“Good choice,” said Dean.

“Better him than me,” said Karr, and he laughed again.

As usual, Asad had said very little, but his comments seemed to indicate he wasn’t planning on staying here very long. The plan was to follow him as long as possible, hoping to get more information about whatever plans he had for an American operation. A large posse had been assembled and was waiting to swoop in when the time was right.

“The more people who know about this, the more chances something’ll go wrong,” said Dean.

“Agree with you there, partner. But it ain’t my call.”

Dean and Karr were just getting out of the airport parking lot when the Art Room told them that Asad had started to move. An army Super King Air electronic surveillance plane was circling nearby, so there was no need to hurry — a fact Dean emphasized as Karr mashed the gas pedal.

Dean also cinched his seatbelt. He’d driven with Karr enough to know that, whether he was rushing or not, the younger man looked at speed limits with a mathematician’s eye — he doubled them, then used the result as a minimum speed.

Asad took Highway 10 heading east, backtracked around some local roads, then got back on the highway and drove for about fifteen minutes before getting off again. Finally he stopped at a small family restaurant in Bedford, within spitting distance of the U.S. border.

“Looks like he’ll head for the border when it gets dark,” predicted their runner, Sandy Chafetz, filling them in. “Don’t get too close. Mr. Rubens doesn’t want any pressure on him.”

Karr turned to Dean and winked. “I’m kind of hungry,” he said. “What do you think about us grabbing a bite in Bedford?”

“Tommy, you can’t do that. He saw you on the plane, and even though Dean’s changed his appearance back to normal—”

“Relax, Sandy, he’s pulling your leg,” Dean told her. “We’ll keep our distance unless absolutely necessary.”

Karr really was hungry, so they got some sandwiches from a deli, gassed up, and drove around the area trying to psych out where Asad would go. For the most part, the border between the two countries was invisible, as abstract as the line between close neighbors in a suburban subdivision.

Asad took his time having dinner, and when he finally moved out, it wasn’t south as they’d expected but north, back in the direction of the highway. A series of feints across back roads followed before he got onto Route 401, the Canadian highway that ran along the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Dean admired Asad’s caution and discipline — and was glad that it did him no good.

Asad got off the highway near Belleville and headed south, driving through tiny hamlets that had rolled up their sidewalks and gone to bed as soon as the sun set. By now they had realized he must be planning on getting into a boat, and the Art Room marshaled its task force resources, ever hopeful that Asad would meet with his American compatriots and discuss what he had in mind. Once they knew the target of the attack, they could move in.

Dean hoped that was soon. He wanted the operation to be over already. He’d slept on the plane, but still he was tired, and he missed Lia, who at last report was headed for Saudi Arabia.

Asad finally got into a small open boat on the Canadian shore of Lake Ontario; five minutes later he transferred to a slightly bigger but considerably faster speedboat and headed south. A Canadian police boat met Dean at a pier about a mile away. By then Asad was moving east, crossing the lake in the direction of Sackets Harbor south of Watertown, New York.

The Canadian and American police forces as well as customs and border patrols had a lot of experience with smugglers in the area, who used the lake to transport everything from marijuana to Cuban cigars to prescription drugs. Under other circumstances, the Canadian boat captain assured Dean, the small speedboat would have been stopped and inspected before it reached American waters.

Dean wasn’t so sure. The radar aboard the Canadian vessel lost the speedboat within a few minutes and Dean had to guide them using information from the aircraft above.

The young man who met Asad on the pier looked as if he’d been constructed of paper and wood. The strings of tiny white lights strung across the dock made his skin seem nearly translucent. It would not take much to knock him over.

Asad had not been told who would meet him, and it was not until he was only a few feet from the young man that he saw who it was. He had met Kenan Conkel three years before on his first trip to Detroit and immediately recognized his value as a “clearskin”: a dedicated Muslim who could pass through any screening without attracting attention. Recruits such as Kenan were rare jewels, to be hoarded until the proper moment. The boy had been given a progression of tasks to prove his loyalty, and yet at the same time great pains had been taken to keep him unknown, not only to law enforcement agencies, but to the sort of databases that the American CIA could tap for information. He had no credit card, no bank account; his license was supplied by the network. He was a ghost — almost literally, Asad thought, looking at the boy’s thin frame. Asad had met him a total of four times, and each time he seemed more frail than before. But God’s will would make him strong.

Kenan had been chosen for this mission not for his strength, or even his appearance, but for his intelligence. He had done well in the training, both at the holy school in Pakistan and with the seamen, who had no reason to be easy on him. A mujahideen need not be big in stature, so long as he was strong in spirit.

“Sheik?”

“So good to see you again,” said Asad.

The young man bowed his head as if he were a servant, then reached to take Asad’s bag with his change of clothes and Koran. Asad turned and signaled to the boatman who had taken him here that he could go.

“I am tired and would like to rest before we set out,” Asad told Kenan. “My head aches. Is there a place we can rest?”

“I could find a motel.”

“Please.”

By the time Dean and Karr landed on shore, Asad had been taken to a motel several miles up the highway, apparently for the night. The Art Room directed them to a car rental place about a mile up the highway, where a grumpy night clerk rented them the largest car on the lot — a two-door Ford Focus. The car seemed to shudder as Karr got into the driver’s seat — not that Dean would have blamed it if it did. They drove in a circle around the lot of the motel where Asad was staying, planting two video bugs before heading to a nearby Red Roof Inn. There they flipped a coin to see who got to sleep first; Karr won and was snoring in less than ten minutes.