Jihad

CHAPTER 98

Though he rose just before dawn, Marid Dabir felt as if he’d overslept. He said his prayers, then went to find some place to eat and consider his next move.

The small hotel had three dozen rooms, arranged in two stories around a parking lot. The steps down from the second story went through a small building next to the entrance to the lot. As Dabir passed through, he noticed the night clerk sleeping on a couch behind the reservation desk.

Dabir walked over to him, looking to see if he’d left his wallet anywhere nearby — the man’s credit card number would be handy for making a plane reservation. But Dabir didn’t see it and decided it wasn’t worth trying to sneak it from his pocket.

His search had disturbed the mouse for the hotel computer, waking the unit from sleep mode. The program for handling reservations flashed on the screen; as Dabir looked at it, he wondered if he might be able to get a credit card number from that. Backing through the records could be done easily with the mouse, and within seconds Dabir had not one but three different credit card accounts with their owners’ information, including the supposedly secret printed IDs on the cards.

There was a bagel shop across the street from the hotel, but the idea of having breakfast with Jews nauseated him. Dabir walked two blocks until he found a silver-walled diner. On the way in he picked up a copy of the local paper, having learned from experience that even the nosiest American tended to leave a reader in peace.

He was halfway through his tea and toast when he found the story about the murder of an unknown man in a city suburb. Barely six paragraphs long, the story said that the man seemed to have been killed by three gunmen, who were then caught in a shootout with police who responded to a 911 call.

Unsure how much if any of the story was true, Dabir turned the page.