Liberty

CHAPTER TEN

Anna Modin didn’t leave Zurich on the next plane. Her business required that she stay another day and she was afraid to leave before it was concluded. Her meetings ended too late the next day for her to catch the last flight out, so she was forced to wait for the first flight the following morning.

Before she checked out of her hotel room she made her morning call to Abn Saad, as she did every day, reporting the results of her meetings with the Swiss bankers and European businessmen. She tried to keep her voice calm and businesslike, the way she normally spoke. If he became suspicious now …

When she rang off, her mouth was too dry to swallow. She sipped bottled water from the hotel room minibar, felt the pulse throbbing in her forehead.

Oh, she sounded brave when she talked to Ilin, full of courage and noble purpose, ready to charge off to save an Islamic woman she had never met who might not even be in danger. In fact, she was risking her life to attempt to rescue a woman who might refuse to leave Egypt. Nooreem Habib might be married, engaged, happy … Ilin didn’t know. All he could tell her was that Nooreem attended an English school for six years and was a brilliant pupil, a woman with a fine mind and much promise. The headmistress had believed in her, which was enough for Ilin. Enough to trust her the tiniest little bit. The risk was small: She had never heard his name, knew nothing about his operation.

And yet, Nooreem Habib was a woman of courage. That Anna Modin knew for a fact. She had risked her life to supply evidence of terrorism, and that fact outweighed all the unknowns.

They would need American visas, Ilin told her. On such short notice, he could do nothing. She knew a man in Cairo, she said …

Anna Modin felt her stomach chum. She ran to the bathroom and vomited up her breakfast.

Courage? Ha! You are a fool, Anna Modin. A complete, utter fool.

Freddy Bailey! When she got to Cairo she would call Freddy Bailey!

Fool or not, she completed her packing and called the bellboy. Soon she was on the way to the airport in a taxi.

When he found the note on his desk that Jack Yocke, the Washington Post reporter, had called, Jake Grafton felt a twinge of anxiety. This was a professional call, obviously, or Yocke would have called the house and left a message with Callie. He did that a time or two a year, dropped an invitation to dinner, occasionally an evening at a Kennedy Center concert.

Jake waited until the noon hour, then called the reporter on his cell phone while he was on his way across the CIA campus to the cafeteria.

“Hey, Jack. Jake Grafton.”

“Admiral, thanks for returning my call.”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to ask you some questions, deep background.”

“Uh-huh,” Jake said, and stopped in his tracks. He looked around for a seat. There was a wrought-iron bench nearby, so he parked his fanny on it and gave Yocke his full attention.

“I’m sorta digging into this army story. All these troops around New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami … all over, using Geiger counters to search railroad cars and trucks. Have you heard anything about that?”

“I read your paper, Jack.”

“So you know what the Pentagon and White House are saying about ‘routine precautions’?”

“I read that.”

“Is there anything you could tell me, off the record, for deep background?”

“No,” Jake said, the word rolling right off his lips. “Can’t think of a thing. Isn’t that army and national guard?”

“Well, yeah, and of course you’re navy, but I kinda thought you might know something about it.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“I heard a rumor.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That you’re involved in a search for a nuclear weapon.”

“Where did you hear this vicious slander?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Shipmate, I can’t confirm or deny anything. This conversation never happened. But I want to know where that rumor came from. This is very important, Jack.”

“Maybe you can track it down.”

“You could help me on this. Your name will never come up.”

“All I can say is that I thought the rumor credible. The person who told me was talking out of school about a matter that I thought was probably highly classified.”

“I appreciate that. Think this person will ever call you again?”

“It’s probable.”

“Have a nice day, Jack.”

“Thanks, Admiral.”

When Grafton got back to his office after lunch, he wrote a note to Tommy Carmellini. “Jack Yocke, a reporter for The Washington Post, said he has a source who told him I was hunting for a nuclear weapon. Have Zelda put someone to work finding out who his source is. He or she will probably call him again.”

Cairo is one of the world’s great cities, a sprawling urban mass split by a great, legendary river. People have lived and farmed beside it since the first farmers learned to grow grain, yet the city of Cairo was not founded until 969. Its Western name, Cairo, comes from the Arabic al-Qahira, the victorious. In Arabic, both the city and the nation are known as Misr.

Modern Cairo is a curious amalgam of East and West, old and new, the past and the future sweltering amid the dirty, foul, gridlocked present. The influence of Europe and America is plain in modern buildings and boulevards, yet not far from the urban splendor is old, Islamic Cairo, a city of narrow streets and vibrant humanity.

If, when arriving on an airliner, the flight path brings one over the city, dazzling white stone can be glimpsed on some of the larger buildings, mosques mostly. The citadel and some of the older mosques are constructed of white limestone, the facing stones of the pyramids, removed from the pharaohs’ monuments centuries ago when the Islamic civilization of Egypt’s Arab invaders approached its zenith of glory and power.

And there is the river, that ever-present moving brown highway that flows northward from the desert, carrying water and mud from the tropical heart of Africa. Somehow it seems fitting that for millennia the descendants of the ancient Egyptians who inhabited this desert city never knew the source of the river that formed the center of their civilization.

At the airport Anna Modin passed through customs and immigration and walked upstairs. In a quiet nook with some empty chairs, she dialed her cell phone.

“Freddy, this is Anna,” she said in English.

“This is a surprise,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t think I was ever going to hear from you again. What’s it been, three months?”

“Freddy, I need a favor.”

“I must have called you a dozen times. At least you could have returned my calls.”

“Freddy, you are a sweet man, but we aren’t right for each other.”

“Isn’t it amazing? I didn’t have a clue until you dumped me.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Freddy, and I apologize. An emergency has come up at the bank; a colleague and I need to go to America immediately. We need American visas.”

“Stop by the embassy during working hours, and we’ll run you through the computer and put you on the list.”

“Freddy! I have never asked you for a favor, and I wouldn’t be asking now if I had a choice. Please.”

There was a long silence, so long that Anna thought the connection had been lost. Then he said, “You broke my heart, woman.”

“I’m sorry, Freddy.”

“I’ll get in trouble, you know that.”

“Freddy, I speak to you from the heart. My colleague’s life is in danger—”

“Yeah. Right.”

“We must go to America. That is all I can tell you. The bureaucrats at the embassy may be unhappy at you, but the people in Washington will not. That I promise you.”

He sighed. “Tourist visas, two weeks.”

“That will be sufficient, thank you.”

“Meet me at the bar in the Marriott at ten tonight. Have you forgotten it?”

“You know I haven’t.”

“Sorry about the hour, but I have a date.”

He broke the connection without saying good-bye.

Anna Modin joined the queue at the Lufthansa ticket counter, pulling her valise on wheels. She purchased two tickets to Switzerland on the first flight in the morning for herself and Nooreem Habib, paid cash for them, then went out to join the mob seeking to engage a taxi. As usual, the driver of the vehicle she commandeered was not happy to hear her speaking Arabic with an Egyptian accent — he had taken her for a European tourist. He argued the fare halfheartedly, then muttered “Inshallah.” Away they went for the hour ride into the heart of Cairo.

As the taxi driver charged through traffic, Anna Modin took stock. She had money in her purse and her bra and underwear, American dollars she had withdrawn from a small bank account she had opened years ago when she worked in Switzerland. She didn’t dare touch her Cairo account at Walney’s.

She hoped Nooreem Habib had a valid passport and could get to it. If she didn’t …

The risk was that Abdul Abn Saad would send someone after them. If they managed to get out of Egypt. Nominally Egypt was a limited democracy, but in reality it was ruled by a small number of very powerful men. Saad was not one of the elite, but he was definitely in the second tier. He had money and he knew people with more money, and they knew people with even more money … and he was in bed with the religious fanatics. Underestimating his power would be fatal.

Her stomach was calm as she watched the familiar sights pass the car windows, the hordes of people, the animals, small groups of police with automatic weapons carried every which way. It was very familiar. She had not thrown up again, perhaps because she had not eaten all day. She certainly wasn’t hungry.

As was her habit on returning from a business trip during business hours, she went straight to the bank and took the elevator to her office. Then she went to Abdul Abn Saad’s office and greeted the male secretary. In minutes she was seated across the desk from Saad, reporting on the business that she had conducted in Zurich.

He seemed as he always was, engaged and sharp.

She concentrated fiercely on reporting the results of her trip, the discussions and decisions she had made and the commitment she had given on the bank’s behalf. Saad knew most of this from her daily telephone calls, but he liked to go over all of it again after every trip while he watched her face and listened carefully to the reasons she had made the decisions she had.

“I, too, believe the business will be profitable for us,” he said finally, his eyes still on her face. “You have done well.”

“Thank you.”

“Please attend the morning meeting with the staff. I want them fully informed.”

Tomorrow morning. He wouldn’t know she was gone until then. A great sense of relief flooded her, one she was afraid he could see. “Yes, sir,” she managed, then she was on her feet and walking out of the room, past the secretary at his desk, along the corridor to her small office.

She checked her watch. The back-office staff would be leaving soon. She must intercept Nooreem.

There was no alternative. The clerks didn’t have telephones at their desks, so the office manager, a man, would answer. He would want to know the reason for the call, then might or might not call her to the telephone, might or might not pass on the message. She had no plausible reason to ask the office manager to send the woman to her office. She never had in the past.

If Nooreem was there.

Please God, let her be there.

She walked down the stairs and went along the corridor to the new computer center.

Through the door, looking … A half dozen Egyptian women were in sight, wearing Western business clothes.

The office manager was standing there. “Nooreem Habib, please.”

If he was suspicious, it didn’t show on his face. He pointed her out to Anna Modin.

She walked that way. Nooreem was sitting at a computer terminal. She looked up as Anna approached, then stood when she saw Anna was heading straight for her. She appeared in her mid-twenties, had an intelligent face.

“Miss Habib, I am Anna Modin. May I have a moment of your time?”

Nooreem looked up at the Russian woman with large, intelligent brown eyes.

Modin spoke softly, almost inaudibly. “I am your courier. Follow me to the hallway, please.”

She turned and walked from the room, nodding respectfully to the manager, who was now seated at his desk near the door.

Habib was quick. As Anna walked from the room she heard her speaking to the man, then she followed Anna into the hallway.

Anna faced her. “I am your courier,” she said again, so low that she could barely be heard. “You must leave Cairo and come with me.”

Nooreem Habib’s eyes widened. “Because of the CD?”

“Yes. Have you put another in the drop?”

“No.”

“Do you have a passport?”

“Yes. At home. I live with my parents, of course.”

“When do you get off work?”

Habib looked at her watch. “In twenty minutes.”

The man from the computer center opened the door and looked out. “At the coffee shop around the corner,” Anna said, then said in a normal tone of voice, “Thank you for your help,” and walked away.

She would have liked to have said more, but there was no time.

No time!

When Nooreem Habib entered the coffee shop, she walked over to Anna Modin’s table and sat. The small room was rapidly filling with vociferous office workers seeking coffee and a snack before tackling the trek home.

Modin was surprised at the determined look on Habib’s face. She didn’t look like a woman facing the abandonment of home and family.

“You must come with me to America,” Modin said, watching Habib’s face intently. “You may never be able to return to Egypt.”

“I understand. Yesterday I finished loading a computer file with the names and amounts of secret contributors to the fundamentalists’ jihad. It was all there, names, dates, amounts, everything. I downloaded it onto a CD a few minutes ago.”

Modin stared at the other woman. “After I talked to you?”

“Yes.” She opened her purse, showed Anna a glimpse of a compact disk, then closed the purse again. “I didn’t realize that Ahmad was watching when I did it. Still, I don’t think he knew what I was doing.”

Modin tossed money on the table. “Come,” she said. “There is no time to waste.”

First they had to go to Habib’s home so that she could get her passport. They took a taxi, which crawled through traffic, bearing generally east. Modin and Habib sat in the back without saying anything. Anna thought about Freddy Bailey, wondered if indeed he would meet her with American tourist visas, wondered if Ahmad the records clerk was busy talking to Abdul Abn Saad.

The ride, Anna thought, was the longest of her life.

The Habib residence was an imposing single-family dwelling in a fashionable neighborhood. It stood directly across the street from the City of the Dead, a huge, sprawling cemetery that had been used to bury people since at least the ninth century. The cemetery was huge beyond belief, a sea of stones and monuments and crypts that stretched away as far as the eye could see in the haze and smog. Around the cemetery were walls, with guard towers every few hundred yards. Atop the towers were troops with machine guns, yet the guns were pointed at the cemetery. The walls and troops were designed to keep the living residents of the cemetery inside. Some of the poorest people in Cairo lived there, tomb squatters, criminals, army deserters, the homeless, and so on. They had even built their own mosques in the cemetery, where the imams preached Islamic fundamentalism and jihad.

Anna got out of the taxi to caution Nooreem. “You mustn’t tell them you are leaving,” she said. “Gossip has wings. If Saad hears from any source that we are leaving, he will send men to the airport to find us.”

“I understand,” Nooreem Habib said noncommittally, glancing at the house.

“I suggest you say you are going out to dinner with friends, get the passport, and leave everything else. I have enough money for both of us on my person.”

The taxi driver wanted to be paid. Habib entered the house while he and Anna haggled. She gave him some money, promised more, then sat in the back of the vehicle so he couldn’t leave.

She glanced past the cemetery wall at the nearby sepulchers, crypts, and waist-high walls around family burial plots. Because of the masonry mazes, the place was nearly impossible to police. At night the authorities didn’t even try, apparently on the theory that anyone there after dark deserved whatever he got.

The cab radio blared popular Egyptian music. Traffic and people walking filled the crowded street in front of the Habib house as the shadows disappeared and dusk settled over the city.

Time passed glacially. Finally, the cab driver turned to Anna, asked for more money. She looked again at her watch. They had been here for twenty minutes. She passed the driver more bills. The realization congealed in Anna’s mind that Nooreem hadn’t done as she asked. She must have told her family that she was leaving, perhaps permanently, and now the family was having a scene.

A car pulled to the curb and stopped fifty feet beyond the cab. Two men were in the car. They looked back this way, then adjusted the mirrors of their car, a newer sedan.

Ten minutes and another payment to the taxi driver later the Habib door finally opened … a man in his fifties stood in the door looking across the street at her, then closed it again. Uh-oh.

The waiting car with the two men didn’t move. The men were still there, sitting calmly.

Forty minutes passed, then forty-five. The last of the light faded from the sky.

Headlights and lights from windows and open doors illuminated the street. Puny streetlights were mounted on street corners, but they didn’t seem to help much.

Finally, an hour and a half after Nooreem went into the house, the front door opened again and a horde of people came out. She was apparently surrounded by her family, the father, mother, a sister or two, and several younger brothers. A woman that might be an aunt. The whole procession crossed the street toward the taxi. One of the boys carried a valise.

The two men in the car ahead opened their car doors and got out. Each had a pistol in his hand.

Anna stifled a scream. The taxi driver took one look, started the car’s engine, and engaged the clutch. The taxi lurched, then shot forward.

One of the gunmen was on Anna’s side. She grabbed the door latch and pushed it open with all her strength.

The door hit the man with a sickening thunk.

“Stop the car,” Anna Modin shrieked in Arabic at the taxi driver, who had braked when he felt the impact. Anna reached across the back of the seat and twisted the ignition key, then jerked it out. The car coasted to a stop as the taxi driver swore lustily in Arabic. With a firm grip on her purse, Anna bailed out.

She sprinted back toward the gunman lying in the street. Beyond him the Habib family was scattering, all except Nooreem, who stood rooted, staring at the lone standing gunman. He, too, stood transfixed, mesmerized at the sight of his partner crumpled in the street.

Anna Modin slowed to a walk, bent over, picked up the wounded man’s pistol. She pointed it at the standing gunman, who took a step backward, then glanced at the car he had arrived in.

She knew nothing of firearms, had never handled one in her life. She pointed the pistol at the standing man and squeezed the trigger … and nothing happened.

The specter of the pistol pointing at him caused the lone assassin to duck, then hurriedly retreat toward the car. When Modin didn’t shoot, his steps slowed. He glanced about to see who was watching, then lifted his own weapon.

Oh, my God!

Anna Modin turned and fled toward Nooreem. “Run,” she shouted.

Nooreem took off like a rabbit through a gate by the nearest guard tower, with Anna Modin right behind. Atop the tower the soldiers watched … and did nothing.

The two women ran into the darkness along a path that led directly away from the lit street. Once Modin glanced over her shoulder and glimpsed the running gunman following.

Something smashed into the dark wall on her right, then Anna Modin heard the shot. And another, although she didn’t know where the second slug went.

The path turned hard to the right, Anna hit the wall and bounced, then ran after Nooreem, who was just a darker figure in the darkness ahead. The stones were uneven under her feet; several times she almost fell. She realized with a start that she still held the pistol. It was useless to her — she didn’t know how to use it — so she threw it into the darkness.

Seconds later they passed a shadowy someone who tore at Anna’s purse, which was slapping against her shoulder.

Seizing it with a death grip, Anna ran on, panting fiercely, her heart threatening to leap out of her chest. She caught up to Nooreem, who was slowing down.

Behind her she could hear running feet. Coming closer and closer.

“Run faster,” she urged, “don’t quit.”

“I can’t,” the younger woman panted. She pushed her purse at Anna. “Take it — the disk is in it.”

Anna grabbed Nooreem’s arm. “Over this wall,” she urged. “Let’s hide.”

They scrambled over the wall beside them as the running footsteps approached. They were crouched there as the footsteps passed.

They crossed the small plot and tackled the wall on the other side. The next plot contained a monument of some type that Anna hit unexpectedly. She fell, then rose and scrambled after Nooreem.

The exertion required to climb wall after wall was tremendous. Skinning knees, ripping hose, they were crawling over wall after wall when a flashlight beam illuminated them. Shots followed.

They fell on the far side of the wall, listened for several seconds to the gunman coming after them, cursing all the while, then as one they rose and started on.

The grave they were crossing collapsed. They tumbled into the hole. Despite herself, Anna Modin screamed.

Dirt, cobwebs, something slimy … Nooreem was first out of the hole, and she reached back for Anna, who clawed at the earth and fought her way out. As Anna rose, Nooreem again thrust the purse at her and shoved her down at the base of a wall, then she threw herself on top and scrambled across.

A spear of light shot out, caught the fleeing girl two walls over, struggling to get a leg up. A shot … two … three, and Nooreem Habib collapsed.

The shooter crossed the walls to Anna’s right. She heard him, saw the beam from his flashlight as he crossed a wall.

He would be looking for the purse, and Nooreem didn’t have it on her. Anna knew he would search the area quickly with his flashlight, then come after her.

Keeping low, she felt her way in the darkness along the wall around the open grave. Once on the other side she crossed the wall as silently as she could, determined to try for the path that they had used to enter the cemetery.

From behind her she heard a scream, then a single shot.

The odyssey took twenty minutes, all the while the gunman was flashing his light into family plots, crawling over fences, cursing mightily. Breathing heavily, sobbing, fiercely biting her lip, Anna Modin refused to give up.

When she once again stood on the path, she staggered toward the distant streetlights. Clutching both purses, she wiped her face on the hem of her dress. She stopped for a few seconds, collected herself, and squared her shoulders. Grimly determined, she walked on as briskly as she could. When she reached the wall she walked toward the nearest guard tower and the gate. The troops saw her but pretended not to notice.

She called Freddy Bailey on his cell phone. Her voice was shaking, even though she tried to speak calmly. “You must come get me in your car.” She described where she was, in a small restaurant near the City of the Dead.

The tone of her voice convinced Freddy, who didn’t argue. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

“I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know when you get here. I need your help, Freddy.”

“I’m coming. Wait for me.”

“Yes,” she said, and pushed the button to end the call.

In the rest room she looked at her face in the mirror. She was scraped and cut — her legs bleeding in several places.

At least she was still alive. Her face was filthy, streaked with sweat and dirt. She used the hem of her skirt to swab off the worst of it.

Killers of women and children — no wonder Nooreem had hated them.

She had courage, Anna thought. You had to say that for her. In a world where many people are afraid to board an airliner, Nooreem Habib was ready to wrestle with the devil himself.

Anna well knew who the devil was — Abdul Abn Saad.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” she whispered fiercely.

“Got a minute, Admiral?”

The head sticking through Jake Grafton’s door belonged to Harry Estep, the FBI liaison officer. “Come in, Harry, please.”

“What I’ve got, sir, is the results of the polygraph examinations you requested on everyone who knew about the Ilin/Doyle connection.”

“Okay.”

“First, though, an explanation. Do you recall when you took the polygraph, all the leads that were connected, including EEG leads on your head?”

“I remember the leads. I didn’t know they were EEG leads.”

“The EEG leads were the important ones. The other stuff we use to make the session look like a conventional polygraph examination, but it wasn’t. Polygraphs look at blood pressure, respiration rate, pulse rate and so on, trying to detect involuntary emotional responses to lying. Skillful or chronic liars can and do defeat the system. The new technology ignores emotional responses to lying — we now look for something called the P300 bump in the EEG trace. This is a characteristic bump in the trace which happens about a third of a second after you notice something significant. It’s like a mental click of recognition, automatic and utterly predictable. In effect, we are looking for ‘guilty knowledge,’ which is specific knowledge that only a guilty person would have. The difficulty with the technique is constructing the questions.”

“Never heard of it,” Jake muttered.

“The theory is that the perpetrators of crimes have details stored in their brains that innocent people won’t have, even people trying to confess falsely. People with secret knowledge show a P300 response to otherwise innocent-looking pictures or phrases. Our success rate is about ninety percent with no false positives.”

“So you are saying that the guilty devil may not show up as a hit, but if you get a hit, he’s the guy?”

“Precisely. The beauty of this technology is that the person being examined doesn’t have to say a word. We’re looking straight into the cognitive processes of the brain. The right to remain silent is now irrelevant.”

Jake Grafton smiled. “I’m sure the ACLU will love to hear that.”

The FBI agent continued, “When you and Commander Tarkington took the test, both of you recognized Janos Ilin’s picture. Neither of you recognized Richard Doyle.”

“Never met him.”

“One of the people we questioned also recognized Ilin — the national security adviser, Butch Lanham. He didn’t name him, but the P300 bump said he recognized the photo.”

“Okay.”

“Two persons recognized Doyle. Twilley recognized him and pronounced his name. Tran didn’t say his name, just laid the photo down and picked up the next one.”

“Did you ask if he ever met Doyle?”

“He denied knowing him.”

Jake looked thoughtful. “He could have seen him in the cafeteria, parked beside him a time or two, something like that.”

“That’s true,” Estep acknowledged. “All we know is that there was that flash of recognition.”

“Okay.”

“Butch Lanham was really pissed that he had to take this test — so were Coke Twilley and Sonny Tran.”

Jake Grafton said nothing.

“There’s more, Admiral,” Harry Estep said. “Under questioning, while they were hooked up, both Twilley and Tran admitted telling unauthorized persons about Doyle.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“Nope.” Estep scratched his face. “Could be quite innocent, of course, but admitting a small crime to hide a big one is a common technique for foiling polygraph exams.”

Jake Grafton played with his pencil for a moment, then said distractedly, “Thanks, Harry.”

Arch Foster’s house was in a quiet subdivision in Silver Spring, Maryland, just south of New Hampshire Avenue and about a mile from the old Naval Surface Weapons Center. The neighborhood consisted of endless rows of little brick houses, with mature maples shading quiet yards. Foster’s home had a sharp drop-off behind it, so from the street it looked as if it might have a walk-out basement. No garage. The lights were off, no car in the drive.

Tommy Carmellini parked the Mercedes a block away. He snagged the backpack containing his burglary tools from the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, then locked the Mercedes. He consciously placed the car keys in his right trouser pocket. He strolled back through the neighborhood, taking everything in. At 11 P.M. there were still lights on, and through the windows one could catch an occasional glimpse of a television screen. A dog barked one street over, but otherwise the neighborhood was quiet, lit only by streetlights.

He had no idea where Arch was tonight or when he might return. If Arch came home while he was in there, things were going to get interesting.

From his left trouser pocket Carmellini removed a set of latex surgical gloves and pulled them on. He had already dusted the inside of them with talcum powder, so they slid right on. He pulled them tight.

Still strolling, glancing around yet not obviously turning his head, he walked up the block to Foster’s house, then angled across the lawn and down the hill to the back of the house. Now he looked carefully around. There was a creek back Here full of weeds and brush, not a place for joggers or walkers. No one in the adjoining yards.

It was dark back here. No, there wasn’t a walk-out basement. The house must be fifty years old, built long before anyone ever thought of walk-out basements. The basement door was under a deck off the kitchen. Using a small, shielded penlight, he checked the door and looked through the single pane of glass. No visible alarms. There was a little sign from a security company, faded from the sun. It had obviously been on the glass pane of the basement door for many a year.

The smart thing to do would be to cut the telephone wire, just in case ol’ Arch did have an alarm on the door, or motion detectors or infrared sensors inside the house. The power service came in from a pole near the creek. Carmellini walked over, found the telephone wire running down the brick to a hole in the foundation.

Well, if Arch had spent some bucks on a good burglar alarm, the technician who installed it would have insisted he do something about this telephone wire, which any thief could cut.

The lock on the back door was a Yale. It took Carmellini about a minute to open it with his picks. The door opened inward into an unfinished basement. He stepped in, closed the door behind him, then examined the frame with his penlight. No alarms. He scanned the room. A hot water heater, a furnace, shovels and tools on a bench, and stacks of cardboard boxes, but no sensors.

There was a light switch on the bottom of the basement stairs. He flipped it on. Better to have lights in the house than for the neighbors to see someone using a flashlight inside. The stairs creaked under his weight. He tried the door at the top. Unlocked. It opened in his hand.

He walked through the house taking inventory. Arch obviously was a bachelor. The house was neat enough, but there were no women’s things, no feminine decorations or women’s clothes in the closets.

It would be impossible to search a house and rearrange everything so no one knew it had been searched, so Tommy Carmellini didn’t try. He quickly went through the collection of mail and brochures in the kitchen, then went straight to the spare bedroom that Arch Foster apparently used as a home office. A computer sat on the desk. Tommy flipped on the desk lamp, checked the room for sensors, then began quickly searching the desk. A bank statement … Arch was single and made a good salary. He had $27,000 in savings and about two grand in checking. He also had a brokerage account worth $137,000 at the end of the previous month. Files of bills paid and unpaid …. It all looked pretty normal. He made a conscious effort to put everything back the way he found it, as near as possible, yet he could feel time pressing on him. Breaking in without knowing when Arch was coming back was dumb, he told himself.

From the study Carmellini went to Arch’s bedroom. He checked the nightstands first. Arch was obviously a connoisseur on fine fuck books. He abandoned that collection and quickly pawed through the stuff in his closets and dresser, trying to disturb things as little as possible. And found a 9-mm Walther automatic. Loaded. He left it there.

Under the bed, under the furniture … he was looking for something out of the ordinary.

He glanced at his watch. Almost 11:30. He had been here long enough. Well, he could always come back some fine day when Arch was at work and take this house apart.

Carmellini turned off the bedroom light and went back through the house, snapping lights on as required, looking at everything. Nothing attracted his curiosity.

He was in the basement, reaching for the light switch, when the cardboard boxes caught his eye. Old paperbacks? Stuff from Arch’s mother’s estate? He looked at the stack. No dust on it.

A layer of dust all over this basement, and none on the boxes?

Working swiftly, he opened the top box, which turned out to be full of old pots and pans. He restacked the boxes to get to the bottom one. Opened it. Wadded-up newspaper on top. He dug down.

Currency. In bundles.

Well, what do you know! He counted bundles. Over a hundred grand.

Time to go. Carmellini restacked the boxes, turned off the lights, and headed for the basement door. He looked through the pane, then eased the door open and checked left and right. The yard was empty, no one about. He checked the door lock to ensure it would latch behind him, then stepped outside and pulled the door shut. It locked.

A minute later he was walking down the street with his latex gloves in his pocket, the backpack dangling from one shoulder.

Mohammed Mohammed was having his troubles keeping his troops in line. After two years in America, Ali, Yousef, and Naguib liked certain aspects of American culture, such as pizza, video games, and television. Products of a closed, male-dominated society in which the traditional way of life was believed to be required by God, their first impression of America had been horror, then wonder.

The brazen display by women of their faces and figures — and bare arms, legs, and stomachs — had led to the immediate assumption that they were all sluts or prostitutes. A few regrettable incidents had clarified that error, but still, the singing, dancing, and role that women played in all aspects of public life shocked them profoundly. Magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse were horrifying … and titillating, something to be perused in secret.

Ali had acquired a taste for pornography that was catholic and insatiable. He liked all of it, and he liked it a lot. These days he made little secret of it. His job as a convenience store clerk allowed him to steal adult magazines, which he perused in the bathroom of the Smoot’s Motel unit he shared with the others, with the door locked.

Mohammed braced him on it — no fool, he knew what was going on — and was told that since Ali was going to Paradise as a jihad martyr, why not sample a few forbidden pleasures before the day of glory?

Yousef’s sin was more benign. He found music videos fascinating and watched them by the hour on MTV when he had the chance. Unfortunately they weren’t available on the Smoot’s television, which received only the local broadcast stations from an antenna atop the motel office, so he watched at work or in bars, video parlors, and bowling alleys, which he liked to patronize when he wasn’t actually working. The sight of women crooning suggestive words and moving in sexy ways mesmerized him.

Naguib liked beer and women. He thought beer a heavenly drink. He had also managed to pick up a half dozen women in bars during the last two years; these adventures had been the high points of his life. He was fascinated by the fact that certain American women found him attractive. He attributed that extraordinary fact to his looks and his ability to say witty things in a delightful accent, even though Mohammed told him that having plenty of money in his pockets and buying drinks for any woman in sight might have something to do with it. He practiced oozing charm whenever there was a female within fifty yards. His bedroom triumphs, such as they were, had given him a fierce self-confidence that made him a poor military order-taker.

All of them, even Mohammed, liked video games. Driving games and shooting enemy space fighters for a quarter a pop kept all four amused for hours.

Still, Mohammed worried that the resolve of his troops was being subverted by the temptations of the devil’s culture. He questioned them occasionally, tried to limit their participation in sinful pastimes, and fretted. “The authorities may be watching our every move,” he told them. “We are engaged in a holy mission. It would be a sin to fail.”

“We will succeed,” Ali assured him, “Inshallah.” If God wills it.

“He will not will it if we are incompetent and wicked,” Mohammed snapped.

Obviously they didn’t believe there was any danger. They knew no one was watching. They had lived in America for two years. No one watched, no one cared what they did. America was not Arabia.

Mohammed had a sinking feeling that this was an argument he could not win. The sooner the better, he thought. Before they ruin everything.

This evening he awoke to answer a call of nature and found that Naguib was missing. He wasn’t in the bathroom either. It wasn’t the first time. Mohammed dressed in the dark and closed the door to the unit behind him. He walked to the nearby beer joint and went in. Naguib was seated at the bar nursing a draft, talking animatedly to the woman beside him, a trashy sort in tight jeans and a short shirt that displayed her belly button. Frowning in disapproval, Mohammed saw as he approached that she had painted lips and short blond hair and an upthrust bosom that Naguib was openly admiring.

“Come,” Mohammed said when he reached him.

Naguib gave him a guilty look and shoved the beer away with one hand.

“Come,” Mohammed repeated in Arabic. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You know that. Allah is watching.”

“There is no harm,” Naguib argued halfheartedly as he climbed down from the barstool. He pulled money from his pocket and left it on the bar for the drinks.

Mohammed laid a hand on Naguib’s arm and led him away. He missed the wink the blond woman gave Naguib and the smile she got in return.

When the two Arabs had left the room, the blonde reached for her purse. She removed a notebook, glanced at her watch, and wrote something in it.