Jihad

CHAPTER 55

Karr had intended on going to the detectives responsible for watching Dabir and pointing out that, while they might not be able to search the places the al-Qaeda organizer had been, he could. He figured he had even odds of being escorted to Dabir’s safehouse or the local jail.

He didn’t get a chance to test them. Twenty minutes from Karlsruhe, Telach told him that one of the instant messages had been traced to a chemistry teacher in Karlsruhe. The man had come from Pakistan two years before; he had spent time at one of the religious schools there that doubled as terrorist indoctrination centers. His school computer included a satellite picture of the MiRO refinery. The computer also showed that he regularly received IMs — instant messages — from more than a hundred sources, all of which Desk Three was working furiously to track down.

Since German intelligence still had not handed over Dabir’s IMs for decrypting, the best Karr could do was call Hess with the information that the U.S. had identified another member of Dabir’s terrorist cell. Hess had gone home, and Karr’s call went to a night duty officer. By the time Hess got back to him, Karr was sitting in a late-hours bar frequented by students from the local university, listening to a debate about the best way to curb resurgent Nazism among the police.

“How did you get to Karlsruhe so quickly?” she asked.

“Took a train.” Karr held a hand over his ear so he could hear the phone better. “There’s a chemistry teacher at Karlsruhe you might want to check out. He’s sitting across from me in the ratskeller here. Keeps looking at his watch and going out to the john,” added Karr. “Which wouldn’t be unusual, except that he’s not drinking anything.”

“Do you have any reason for me to check him out?” Hess asked.

“We’ve linked him to Dabir.”

“Beyond that?”

“Superstitious hunch?” said Karr.

“I need evidence of a crime.”

The chemistry teacher got up. Karr watched for a second, making sure he was heading toward the men’s room.

“Well, hurry up and get down here, or you may have more than you want.”

Karr clicked off the connection, then pretended to redial. As he did, a good-looking blonde, twenty-one or twenty-two, plopped into the chair across from him.

“Hello,” he said.

The girt, several shades beyond drunk, smiled.

“You talking to me?” asked Rockman from the Art Room.

“Our friend’s headed to his office,” Karr told him, returning the blonde’s smile.

“Yeah, we’re looking at him through the bugs you planted. Hang on.”

“You’re very intriguing,” said the woman, half in English, half in German.

“Danke,” said Karr.

“Lass uns einen heben.”

“I think you’ve had enough heben for the night, don’t you?” answered Karr, turning down her offer to “lift one together,” slang for “have a drink.”

“All right, he called the same number he called before,” said Rockman. “He hung up as soon as the answering machine picked up. Didn’t listen to a message.”

“Well, that’s different, isn’t it? Last time he hung up after three rings. So that’s the message.”

“Could be,” said Rockman. “But the only message on that machine is ‘oops, wrong number’.”

“You track the call?”

“Pay phone in a cafe on the other end of town. Called a taxi immediately after it.”

“Talk to you outside,” said Karr.

He closed the phone and smiled at the girl. She blinked and told him in English with a drunk German accent that not only was he was very handsome but he was very strange.

“Thanks. Let me buy you a drink,” said Karr. As he got up, he stumbled and fell flat on his face — right under the table the chemistry professor had returned to. By the time Karr crawled back to his feet, the girl had turned her attentions elsewhere. Sheepishly, he headed for the door.

The taxi driver he’d paid to wait was around the comer, leaning against his cab. Karr dished out a fifty-euro note as a good will gesture, then got in the back.

“Sounds like he’s moving,” said Rockman. “What’d you do, put the fly on his shoe?”

“It was easier than getting it into his pocket.”

The chemist picked out his bicycle from a rack down near the front door and started biking in the general direction of the river. Karr, who’d put a tracking device on the bicycle earlier, directed the cab driver to follow at a safe distance, using the PDA to direct him.

Karr expected that the chemist would take him either to a rendezvous or a safehouse where Dabir was waiting. Instead, he went to a small bait and tackle shop on the waterfront, opened the lock at the gate, and left. Flummoxed, Karr followed him to a second bar.

“Hang for me here,” Karr told the driver.

His American slang may have been difficult to decipher, but another fifty-euro note made his meaning clear. Just as he had at the last bar, the chemist was sitting by himself at a table in the middle of the room, drinking a Coke.

“Ack,” said Karr, hustling back outside to the cab after he planted a video bug to watch him. “Get me back to the tackle shop — tackle shop — Rockman, how do you say that in German?”

Angelgeräte—“fishing tackle”—was the word Karr was looking for, and it was featured in very big letters on the fence Karr found had been relocked by the time he arrived.

Had the shop been used to get down to the water?

Perhaps, but there was a landing not fifty feet away.

Then Karr noticed another sign on the building near the door, right under one advertising Purglas casting rods.

OXYGEN TANKS FILLED, it said in German.

Karr went back to the cab. “I’m just about done here,” Karr told the driver. “But would you happen to have a crowbar handy?”

“Nein,” said the driver.

Karr looked back at the fence. “A really strong tire iron will do, then.” He took out another hundred euros. “Pop your trunk, close your eyes, and when I say go, take off. I don’t have enough money to pay to you be an accessory to a crime.”