Jihad

CHAPTER 113

Jackson knew as soon as he saw the video from the Detroit area convenience store that it wasn’t Asad bin Taysr. He zoomed in on the side of his head, where he’d been bandaged in Istanbul; there was neither a bandage nor a healing wound there.

But his profile was very familiar, and not simply because his close-cropped grayish beard and sideburns mimicked Asad’s. In height, build, and approximate age, he looked very much like the subject of the German operation: Marid Dabir.

Jackson was tired, and the video, shot by a convenience store security camera, was hardly the best quality. Most likely it wasn’t Marid — the Germans had concluded he was dead — but it was something that should be checked out. Very possibly it was another member of Asad’s circle who had not been previously identified.

“Are there other images?” Jackson asked the city detective who’d shown him and Dallas Coombs the tape.

“Not from this store. There are other cameras in the area. We haven’t checked them yet. We just weren’t sure it was worth it. I mean, the clerk in the store gave us almost nothing. The guy seemed suspicious, that’s all.”

“I’d like to take these to a lab that can analyze them.” said Jackson. “And we should look at other cameras in the area, especially around the same time. Ten in the morning?”

“No. A.M. and P.M. are flipped on the tape. That was shot at night. You can see the darkness at the very edge of the frame there, from outside. It’s nighttime.”

“There’s someone standing watching from outside,” said the FBI agent who’d accompanied Jackson.

“Face is too fuzzy to see,” said the policeman.

“My lab may be able to check that as well. I’d need the original.”

“Not a problem.”

Jackson looked at his watch. “Do you think the clerk at the store would be working tonight?”

Yasif Ramadan was a thirty-year-old father of two who lived on Detroit’s south side. The nightshift gig was his night job; during the day he was a plumber’s helper for a small company in the city. He volunteered his background without prompting as soon as Jackson and Coombs showed him the print from the surveillance tape. Ramadan remembered the man not because he was Arab but because he had stared accusingly at Ramadan through the whole transaction.

“Like I was a bug,” said Ramadan. “I could tell he was a slime.”

“Did you think he was trying to steal from you?” asked the FBI agent.

“No. I watched him — I watch everyone at night. Of course I watch them.” He pointed to the side below the counter, where a split television screen carried feeds from four video cameras stationed in the store. “I saw that he was not stealing. You could tell he wasn’t from around here, because of the way he looked at things in the store. He couldn’t read English very well, if at all.”

Jackson surveyed the store. The surveillance cameras were so well hidden that he couldn’t spot them, even though he knew from the screen where they must be stationed.

“Was he with anyone?” Coombs asked.

“Guy stood in the door the whole time,” Ramadan told the FBI agent. “That was creepy. Was he the victim?”

“We’re not sure,” said the FBI agent.

“Why did you think he was?” asked Jackson.

“I heard that it was an Arab,” said Ramadan. “There are rumors he was a terrorist.”

Word spreads quickly, Jackson thought.

“We really don’t know,” said Coombs.

“We should hang all of them,” said the clerk.

“Where did you hear the rumors?” Jackson asked.

The clerk shrugged. “Everyone is saying it. Maybe because he’s a Muslim.”

Jackson saw the pain on Ramadan’s face, as if the accusation against someone who used the same words to pray as he did implicated him as well.

“If you think of anything else,” Jackson told him, “please call Agent Coombs.”