Liberty

CHAPTER FIVE

Ivan Fedorov pointed the sniper rifle at the small warehouse three hundred meters down the street and stared at it through the night-vision scope. That was the warehouse where Frouq al-Zuair and his friends had parked the truck that they had driven more than fifteen hundred miles from central Asia.

Fedorov had the handguard of the Dragunov sniper rifle resting on a rolled-up blanket on the crumbling brick wall atop the building he was on. He pulled the rifle in against his shoulder, made sure the rubber eyepiece of the scope was against his face, and panned the rifle up and down the street, which was lined with ramshackle warehouses, shacks, light industry, and junkyards. There were no streetlights in this district adjacent to the Karachi airport, so the street was fairly dark at this hour of the night. No one moving that he could see.

“Nothing,” he muttered to Zuair, who was sitting on the roof beside him with his back to the wall. A bundle lay beside him, something rolled up in a blanket and secured by strings.

The Egyptian was obviously worried. The warheads were still on the truck, and he couldn’t drive the truck to the dock where the Olympic Voyager was loading until tomorrow night. “We can’t load them aboard the ship until it has loaded its cargo and is ready for sea,” the man in Cairo said. “Bribes have been paid for the officials to look the other way at the last minute. If we push too hard, the authorities will be forced to take notice to protect themselves.”

Zuair hadn’t mentioned this conversation to Fedorov, of course, but he had hired him and two other Russians to guard the warehouse with sniper rifles, which he had supplied. “My men know how to fire assault rifles and throw grenades,” he had told Fedorov, “but they are not snipers. I wish to hire you and your friends to guard the warehouse.”

Naturally Fedorov had asked what was in the warehouse. “Weapons,” he was told, “in a truck.” Nothing else.

Fedorov had bargained hard. Zuair had agreed to his price, which was a hundred dollars American for each of them for four nights’ work. The Egyptian thought that Fedorov and his friends deserted the Soviet Army in Afghanistan — and Fedorov was not about to tell him he was wrong. Nor did he mention the fact that he had never been a sniper.

This evening he was working, playing the role. He had fired a Dragunov once, years ago. When handed the weapon he managed to open the battery compartment on the night-vision scope and check the battery for corrosion. It still had a charge and the sight seemed to work properly. He inserted the ten-round magazine in the rifle and chambered a round, ensured the safety was engaged. Zuair had watched. Fortunately he didn’t fumble too much or drop the rifle. Now he was earning his hundred dollars watching an empty street.

“You don’t really think anyone will assault the warehouse, do you?” he asked the Egyptian, who didn’t bother to answer.

The monotony was relieved only by the passage of an occasional vehicle. After a few minutes spent looking toward the warehouse they were guarding, Fedorov shifted position and used the scope to glass the buildings and streets right, then left, then behind. He took his time, examined everything, then started all over again.

The Russian was systematic and thorough, which were good qualities in a soldier, Zuair reflected. He also asked too many questions.

No, he did not think it likely that any of the militant Islamic groups would attempt to assault the warehouse. They knew that eight men were inside the building with the warheads. A force sufficient to kill them might also damage the weapons. What Zuair feared was an ambush when he tried to drive the truck away. He was hoping that Fedorov and his friends would spot anyone moving into position on this street and were good enough shots to kill at these distances. Better to pay a mercenary who could shoot than pray with a brother who could not.

This warehouse district was the most likely place, the Egyptian reflected. Not many witnesses, the truck would be moving slowly in the narrow streets, and after it was over, the weapons could be transferred to another truck and driven away.

A hijacking on the crowded streets leading to the docks seemed less likely, he reflected.

Perhaps he had figured it wrong.

He looked again at his watch, the hands of which were luminescent. Two-fifteen in the morning. This was the third night on this roof. Tomorrow night the truck would move.

He would have bet money that an attempt would be made. Too many people in the militant community knew of the weapons. Having four nuclear warheads would catapult any group that had them to instant credibility.

Glory. They all wanted glory.

Frouq al-Zuair hadn’t believed this plan would amount to anything when he had first heard it. Plots, conspiracies, plans that came to nothing — he had had a lifetime of those. He was not told what the leaders of the Sword of Islam planned to do with the weapons, only that they had a source and money to buy them. He had become a believer when he saw the money. Two million American dollars — it was a fortune beyond the dreams of avarice. With such a fortune a man could live like a sultan with a compound in a major city, with wives, prestige, and position. On the other hand, if a man used the money to buy warheads to wage jihad, he could earn a place in paradise for all eternity. Frouq al-Zuair was a true believer — he knew life was short and eternity was forever. The man from Cairo knew who he was, which was the reason he was selected for this mission.

To lose the weapons now would be ignominy. The brothers would think him a traitor to God. Better death than that.

To be on the safe side, he had hired Fedorov and the other two. While the Russians were infidels, they had lived here for many years and ran errands occasionally when asked. They always demanded small sums for their time and risk, which was reasonable, and they performed as promised.

If Fedorov did betray the brotherhood, Zuair would kill him. He had a knife in his belt and a loaded pistol in his pocket for that very purpose. He had never threatened the Russian, but of course the man knew.

Indeed, Ivan Fedorov did know that Zuair would execute him if he got the slightest hint that the Russian had sold him out. He knew it because he knew these fanatics. He had spent ten years getting to know them, working his way into their confidence. They would kill a nonbeliever as quickly as they would a mongrel dog, and with as much remorse. Fedorov moved his head back from the black rubber eyepiece for a moment and glanced at the Egyptian. Even in this dim light he could see that he had one hand in his coat pocket. Fedorov would have bet his life that there was a pistol or grenade in that pocket.

Fedorov was not worried. He had lived with the possibility of murder for seventeen years. He was an officer in the SVR. He had come to this part of the world when the First Chief Directorate of the KGB was the foreign intelligence arm of the Soviet state. He spoke the language, was accepted by these fanatics as an expatriate renegade, a minor dope smuggler, and he reported everything he could learn of their activities to his superiors in Moscow. If these raghead sons of bitches had an inkling of the truth, he would have been dead years ago.

Unfortunately tonight he was on thin ice. He had never served in the military and never killed a man. Zuair’s offer of a job was an opportunity to work his way deeper into this dangerous group of fanatics, who he knew had purchased weapons from a rogue general in Russia. A rare opportunity if he could act the part.

Could he kill a man with this rifle? Hold the crosshairs steady while he squeezed the trigger? If he shot and missed, Zuair would not be happy. He had no way of knowing if the rifle was properly sighted. Even with the crosshairs dead on his target, he might miss; with Zuair standing beside him with a pistol. Just thinking about that eventuality made him perspire.

He hefted the long rifle and moved to the other corner of the building, to scan the street in the other direction.

The Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova, the SVD or Dragunov rifle, was unique in that the wooden stock had a large cutout in it to keep it light, and a pistol grip that allowed him to wrap his right hand completely around it. A soft rubber cheekpiece was glued to the top of the stock. The rifle was a semiautomatic that fired a 7.62×54 cartridge with every squeeze of the trigger. Other than the fact the cartridge was rimmed, it was roughly equivalent to the 7.62 NATO round used by the West. The lengthy action and slender twenty-two-inch barrel with attached muzzle brake made the Dragunov a long, elegant weapon, yet the stock cutout helped keep it light, for a sniper rifle. No doubt Zuair and his friends had obtained these three from Afghanistan.

Ivan Fedorov wiped his palms on his trousers and scanned the street with the night-vision scope yet again. He was desperate for a cigarette, yet was afraid to light one.

Zuair got up once to relieve himself in a corner, then resumed his seat. He let Fedorov do the looking, which was wise. The fewer heads moving about on top of this building, the better.

Another hour passed.

Fedorov was beginning to hope that nothing would happen, when he spotted a truck creeping without headlights slowly down the side street opposite the building, heading this way.

He spoke to the Egyptian, motioned to him to come look.

Zuair was beside him when the truck stopped short of the intersection. In the scope Fedorov could see the glow of the engine’s heat. The range was only about fifty meters; as he aimed the rifle his head and shoulders must extend well above this wall and be silhouetted against the night sky — easily visible — if the bad guys just bothered to look.

“This may be it,” he murmured. God, he hoped it wasn’t! At that location, he was the only Russian who would have a shot. If he left any of these men alive, they might hunt him. He remembered in exquisite detail the dark stairway that he had climbed to the roof, the wooden doors leading off the three landings. He had to go down that stairway to get off this roof.

A man got out of the passenger door of the truck cab, walked slowly to the corner, looking around. Fedorov could see him plainly in the scope. “One man, no uniform. No visible weapon.” The man flattened against the building, eased his head around the corner to look down the street at the warehouse.

This corner fronted on the only street out of this district. This idiot Zuair had a hideout on a dead-end street! Terrorists were like that, Fedorov well knew — cunning and murderous and sometimes amazingly stupid.

“He’s going back to the truck,” he whispered, his eye glued to the rubber eyepiece. The soft rubber atop the stock felt hard against his face. Behind him he could hear Zuair doing something. He looked back. The Egyptian was unwrapping the bundle.

Fedorov concentrated on the picture through the scope. His hands shook and his breath came quickly, as if he were running. The entire picture in the scope quivered. He rested the handguard of the rifle on the wall before him to steady it.

“He’s reaching into the truck … other men getting out. They are armed! Four of them.”

“This is it!” Zuair hissed.

“Watch this! This is pretty neat,” the technician said. He used a trackball to zoom the camera in on a couple walking out of Union Station. The images were displayed on a giant vertical monitor mounted against the wall. The zoom continued until the faces of the man and woman filled the monitor. They paused and embraced, and she said something to him.

“I don’t read lips,” the technician said wistfully, “but, boy, if I did!”

Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington were standing in the command center on the fifth floor of the District of Columbia police headquarters. The technician was showing them the camera system that monitored public places throughout Washington. “We have over two hundred cameras installed and more going up every day. The new ones are digital, merely broadcast a signal, so there are no wires. The cameras are expensive, but the installation is cheap. We just install them on light poles or rooftops or cornices, wherever we can get electrical power to them, and control them from here.”

The video feed from the cameras was displayed on dozens of monitors stacked like boxes against the wall. Then there were the large, thin plasma monitors, a wallful of movie screens — Jake stood mesmerized as he watched the intimate moment outside Union Station.

The couple kissed tenderly, then the woman walked toward the cab stand. The man watched her go. The camera followed the woman.

Jake turned and surveyed the command center. He counted — there were forty video stations angled around the wall of floor-to-ceiling screens. The FBI and CIA both had command stations here. The officer in charge sat in a soft armchair on a raised platform beside a teleconferencing screen.

“We are set up to do crowd control from here,” the technician said. “Dozens of cameras monitor public places. We are installing two hundred cameras in the school system, over two hundred in the Metro stations, and a hundred more to monitor traffic. The merchants in Georgetown are installing cameras at their own expense. It won’t be long before there are cameras in every public place in the city.”

“And you can monitor them all from here?” Toad asked.

“Right. Of course, we have a computer setup ordered, a big project that will allow us to process digital images and search for that person in the database, see if he or she is on a wanted list. It’ll cost a bundle and take a while to procure and install.”

“What about all those cameras in hotels, elevators, and stores?” Jake asked. “Can you access their video from here?”

“Not yet. One of these days. The Supreme Court says that people don’t have a right to privacy in public places, and in this day and age, people don’t want to be mugged or robbed. Of course, the civil libertarians are squalling, but that’s inevitable.”

“Can you record the feeds you do get?”

“Oh, sure. We record them all, but no one ever looks at them. We need a computer program that digitizes the data and allows us to search the data for one person, follow them through the city. That’s coming, too.”

“Check an alibi,” Toad suggested.

“The possibilities are staggering,” the technician admitted. “1984 is almost here. And people want it.”

He got a telephone call then. As he talked into a lip mike, he manipulated the controls on the screen.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Toad whispered to Jake.

“The INS already has the software,” Jake said. “If someone cobbled it together with the video feeds we could glue all this together right now. Hack into the system in hotels and stores … we could track anyone in this town in real time.”

“Or see what they did yesterday or last week,” Toad murmured. “Here and in New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. This system could put the dopers out of business.”

“Dopers, armed robbers, drive-by shooters …” Jake mused. “And terrorists.”

“And terrorists,” Toad said firmly.

Jake slowly walked the length of the room, looking at everything. When he returned to Toad’s side, he said, “We’re going to need serious help. What do you think of getting Zelda Hudson and Zip Vance out of prison and turning them loose with some computers?” Hudson and Vance had been convicted a few months ago of helping steal USS America. They hacked into U.S. government computers, defense contractors’ computers, everyone’s computers. They were probably the best two hackers alive.

Toad whistled. “Jesus, Admiral. You must be desperate.”

“I passed desperate last week.”

“If the press ever finds out those two aren’t in the can, you’re toast, sir,” Toad said as he carefully examined his boss’s face. He had known Jake a long time and thought he knew him pretty well. Grafton was a high-stakes gambler if ever there were one, but he never took foolish risks.

“Can they help find those bombs?” Jake demanded. “If there is a decent chance, I’ll take the risk. If not, give me some better ideas.”

“They can get into databases that no one else can get into,” Toad mused. “Even terrorists and mad bombers leave computer tracks.”

“People use credit cards, they fly on airplanes, they make telephone calls, they rent cars, they stay in motels.” Jake made a gesture of frustration. “We don’t have time to build a case the old-fashioned way, even if we had the entire manpower of the FBI and CIA to help. We’re going to have to take serious shortcuts.”

“How much time do we have?” Toad asked, tugging at his lower lip.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“So how do we go about springing Hudson and Vance?”

“Damned if I know,” Jake muttered. He got out his wallet, removed the card bearing the telephone numbers that the president had given him, and reached for the officer-in-charge’s secure telephone.

Four men, Ivan Fedorov thought. This was insane! He couldn’t shoot all of them before one escaped! Yet if he didn’t, he would have to shoot Zuair.

He flicked off the safety of the Dragunov and settled the sight on the chest of the first man, the man who had gotten out of the passenger seat. He was probably the leader. The man was checking his weapon.

Fedorov looked behind him at the Egyptian, trying to decide. If he shot at those men and didn’t get all of them, they might trap him in the stairwell. Shoot him in the street below.

He had the weapon off his shoulder, ready to turn, when Zuair rushed to the wall beside him carrying a long tube. He lifted it to his shoulder. “Shoot after me,” he hissed. He steadied the tube on his shoulder.

A ball of fire leaped from the weapon, shot across the space toward the truck as the deafening report walloped Fedorov in the face. The truck exploded.

A grenade launcher! Zuair had fired a rocket-propelled grenade!

The men lay on the ground, thrown there by the blast.

“Shoot them,” the Egyptian ordered. “Shoot them now!”

The order jolted Fedorov from his paralysis. He put the crosshairs on the man in front of the truck, the leader he had aimed at before. The reticle danced. He forced himself to exhale, gripped the rifle tighter, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bellowed and jumped slightly.

He brought the crosshairs down on the man again. Fired a second time.

“Shoot them all!” Zuair urged, hissing in his ear. “Ensure they are dead.”

Fedorov forced himself to pan the scope. The truck was on fire, creating a heat source that threatened to overwhelm the scope. There, a man crawling …

He shot him. Once, twice, then searched for another target.

One man was staggering away, on the other side of the truck, back along the street they had driven down. Fedorov shot him in the back, and he went forward on his face.

The other man … he couldn’t find the other man! The scope was being overwhelmed with heat.

“He’s under the truck,” the Egyptian said.

Fedorov looked around the scope at the scene. The truck was burning fiercely, lighting the scene. Now he saw the fourth man. He went back to the scope, searched the brightness …

There! Two more shots.

“Let’s go,” Zuair said hoarsely. “Before the police come.”

“The rine — here, you want it?”

“Leave it,” Zuair said over his shoulder. He had already thrown down the RPG launcher and was striding for the stairs.

Fedorov dropped the rifle and followed the Egyptian. They hustled down the dark stairs, making enough noise to wake the dead. The truck was still burning when they exited the building.

He tried to follow Zuair, who turned toward the warehouse. “No,” the man said roughly. “Go away. I will meet you this evening at the usual place.”

Ivan Fedorov walked quickly away from the truck. He forced himself to walk, not run. He heard a siren moaning blocks away. When he came to a dark alley between the buildings, he turned and went down it. There in the darkness the realization of what he had done hit him like a hammer. He stood in the darkness on shaky legs, retching. It took several minutes to get his stomach completely under control.

No one came into the alley. The siren went in the direction of the burning truck and finally ceased its moan.

He would get off a report to Moscow as soon as possible, he decided. Maybe the men there could figure out whom he had just killed.

Tommy Carmellini was in his office, making telephone calls for Jake Grafton, when a fellow he knew from another department, Archie Foster, stuck his head in the door. “Ah, Carmellini, I wonder if you might have a minute?”

Tommy looked at his watch. “I’m pretty busy.”

“Later this morning in my office? This is important.”

“Ah, you want to tell me what—?”

“Not here. My office. I’ve cleared your visit with security.”

“Sure. In a half hour.”

Archie Foster gave him his room and building number, smiled his thanks, and disappeared. Carmellini checked his watch again, then went back to work.

He had done something for Foster once … what was it? Something in Colombia. Several years ago. He probably wants me to go back there.

Only five minutes late, Carmellini gave his name and showed his badge to the guard at Foster’s building. The badge, of course, was worn on a chain around the neck, where it was visible to anyone who looked, and to electronic devices. He took the elevator, then did the security thing again with the guard on the corridor that led to Foster’s office. As he walked down the hallway an electronic device on the ceiling read his badge again. He knocked on the door, which wasn’t locked, then entered. Another man was sitting in one of the guest chairs, a man Carmellini had met on several occasions through the years and knew by sight, Norv Lalouette.

“You know Norv, don’t you, Tommy?”

“Sure.” Carmellini shook hands and dropped into an empty chair.

“Thanks for taking the time to drop by. We have a videotape — actually a copy of a videotape — that we wanted you to look at. See if anything in there is familiar.” He used a remote to fire up a small portable television with a built-in VCR in the corner.

“Wow, how did you rate a TV in your office?” Carmellini asked as the VCR clicked and whirred.

“Brought it from home.”

“Nice little unit,” Carmellini said as the tape began running.

“There’s sound, too,” Foster said, and put on his glasses so he could see the buttons better.

The tape was obviously shot by an amateur on a bright sunny day. The girl in the picture was college age, not bad-looking; the cameraperson — apparently a male — was talking to her. Between them they were giving the viewer a tour of the campus. Yes, it was a college campus, with buildings of red stone and trees without leaves — obvious late autumn or winter — but a nice day.

“It’s sorta strange how we got this tape,” Archie Foster said, speaking over the narrator. “The FBI is working on an old murder, three years old now, of a college professor at the University of Colorado. Name of Olaf Svenson. Guy was a microbiologist or something like that. Bugs and germs. Anyway, someone popped him in his office with a twenty-two on a weekday, about three years ago. No one saw anything, no one heard anything. Someone pumped two bullets into Svenson’s brain, apparently while he sat at his desk, one in the forehead, the other over his left ear. No bleeding, so death was pretty much instantaneous.”

The girl in the video was walking along, the cameraman trailing her, as she pointed out various buildings on the campus. Students could be seen in the background coming and going, but they paid her and the camera no notice.

“There were just no clues,” Archie Foster continued. “No fingerprints in Svenson’s office that couldn’t be accounted for, no spent cartridges, no matchbook covers or glasses with lipstick, none of that crap. Oh, the doorknob in and out had been wiped — no prints except for the janitor who found Svenson. The local police were pretty sure he wasn’t the shooter. It looked like a professional hit to them, so they called in the FBI.”

Now the girl on the screen was standing in front of the main library. Archie Foster pointed the remote at the television and waited. In seconds someone passed behind the girl. When he did Archie froze the picture.

The man on the screen was Tommy Carmellini.

“Anyway,” Archie said, facing Carmellini, “Norv occasionally liaises with the FBI … and a month or so ago they asked him to look at this tape, which the Boulder PD acquired during their investigation, to see if he could pick out any professional hitters. So ol’ Norv is busy watching this thing, stopping the tape on every face and making digital records and doing computer studies and all of that, and bingo! It’s good buddy Tommy Carmellini, all the way from the fourth floor at Langley.”

“Looks like me,” Tommy Carmellini agreed.

Archie Foster chuckled. “Oh, it’s you, all right. Norv and I did some checking. You were down in Cuba with Bill Chance when he got killed. You were both armed with Ruger twenty-twos with silencers and neither weapon came home. The FBI tried to put together a case against Olaf Svenson for helping the Cubans develop a biological warfare agent, but they could never get enough to satisfy the U.S. attorneys. You know how those friggin’ lawyers are, proof beyond a reasonable doubt and all that crap. They finally gave up on Svenson, decided not to take him to a grand jury. Then a month later he gets popped in his office while you were on leave, somewhere out there in the big wide world vacationing all to hell. That’s the way it stood for years.

“Then voila! There you are on videotape, big as life, walking across the campus of the University of Colorado within minutes of the time that Svenson went to meet the devil. See those little red numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen? Date and time.”

Tommy Carmellini glanced at his watch. “Why are you two wasting my time with this? You’re not FBI.”

“No, but we could tell them what they have. We haven’t yet. We wanted to talk to you first, hear what you have to say.”

“Golly, gee, that’s sweet of you guys,” Tommy said. “I didn’t know we were that kind of friends. Be that as it may, let me tell you the sad truth. There’s no case here, amigo. What you got is shit. Even if it is me on that tape — and I’m not admitting that it is — the FBI and U.S. attorney will be delighted to tell you that you gotta put me in the building with a gun in my hand before you have a shot at an indictment. We’re not talking conviction, we’re talking indictment.”

Carmellini rose from his chair and headed for the door. “You two tell the FBI anything you want,” he said as he reached for the doorknob. “And have a nice life, fellows.” He closed the door behind him.

“So what do you think?” Norv Lalouette asked Archie Foster when Carmellini’s steps had faded.

“He’s good, damn good. No question about that.”

“I watched his face. He didn’t turn a hair.”

Archie Foster studied the image on the television screen. “He’s one damn cool customer,” Archie muttered finally, and used the remote to kill the television.

“If he really killed Svenson, he might come after us,” Lalouette pointed out.

Foster snorted. “He’s smarter than that.”

Patsy Smoot ran a motel on a road in Broward County, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. Like hundreds of others, hers was built in the 1950s, before the age of interstates, to serve an increasing tide of motor tourists who were venturing south in the fall and looking for a place to spend a few days, or a few weeks, or the whole winter. The air conditioners were in the windows of the units, each of which had one double bed, a small bath with a shower, and a twenty-something-year-old television wired to an antenna on top of the motel office, which contained the tiny apartment where Patsy and her husband, Fred, lived.

Patsy ran the desk and filled out the forms that it took to stay in business these days. Fred was the handyman and groundskeeper. An illegal Mexican woman named Maria cleaned the units and made beds seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Smoot’s Motel stood between a Burger King and a sleazy beer joint, and across the highway from a used car lot. Similar businesses lined the highway — now a fourlane — in both directions as far as the eye could see. The most prosperous of the businesses, like Burger King, had asphalt parking lots, but Smoot’s and the used car lot and the beer joint made do with crushed seashells, which a local contractor delivered, spread, and rolled every third or fourth year when the inevitable potholes developed or grass and weeds got too much of a start.

“We need to do the parking lot again,” Fred told his wife this morning as she looked out the office window at the cars in front of the units.

“We did it two years ago,” she replied curtly.

“I know, but the guy didn’t put all that much on, and the weeds are growing through again. And we got a soft place where the RVs go around the building.”

Ten years ago the Smoots had installed hookups for ten recreation vehicles behind the motel in a patch that had been weeds and trash. More and more people are out on the road these days in those things, Patsy Smoot thought distractedly. She focused again on the car in front of Unit Six. It was a good-looking new car, apparently a rental. She didn’t see many of those at Smoot’s. People who rented from the big agencies rarely stayed at $24.99-a-night motels; they stayed at a major chain’s facility near the interstate.

“I think we should call the FBI on that bunch in Six,” she told Fred now.

“What for? They ain’t done nothin’ and their money’s good. They’re paid ahead, ain’t they?”

“Yes. Renting by the week. Four single men in that unit with one double bed. Been here almost four weeks now. And driving that rental.”

“Hell, we’re half-empty. They leave and Six will sit empty most of the summer. You know that.”

“They’re Arabs,” Patsy Smoot said, almost as if she were merely thinking aloud. “Or Palestinians or Iranians or some such. Can’t tell’em apart.”

“Lebanese, one of them told me. Working at one of those food warehouses.”

“Seems like we ought to call somebody.”

Fred snorted. “Think they sneaked a whore in there?”

“No. If that was it, I’d have done called.” She was a little peeved at Fred. She ran a decent place, and he damn well knew it.

“Hell,” Fred said hotly, “what about that guy from Ohio in One? Claims that girl is his daughter, but for all I know he’s some schoolteacher who ran off with one of the students. She oughta be in school. He’s probably porkin’ her. Maybe we oughta report him for traveling with a minor female. Don’t think that’s a crime, but what the hell.”

His wife didn’t reply.

Fred reached his peroration without further ado. “We go calling the law on our quiet customers and we might as well put the Going Out of Business sign up right now,” he declared. “We aren’t the morals police or the INS. Half our customers are from some Third World cesspool. Came here to make it in America, so they did. Work hard and send money home every month, just like Maria. Goddamn, Patsy, we’ve had’em packed in four to a unit many a time.”

Patsy shot back, “So you think they’re poor working slobs staying in a cheap motel because it’s all they can afford and driving a rent car that must cost them two hundred, maybe two-fifty a week?”

Fred had argued enough. He drained the last of his coffee and slapped the cup down on the counter. “You do what you damn well want, woman. You always do. I don’t know why you even talk to me about stuff, anyway. But I’ll tell you this: Just because these people don’t look like us don’t mean they’re fuckin’ terrorists out to blow something up. I don’t like siccin’ the law on people minding their own damn business. Goes against my grain, so it does.” He stomped out to fix the leaky faucet in Unit Two, muttering, “Maybe we need a damn Gestapo to arrest all these little warts we don’t like.”

The window drapes in Unit Six were drawn, as they were every morning. Job or no job, those four never went out before noon, then they stayed out until midnight. Patsy Smoot waited until she could hear Fred mowing the grass around back, then she looked up the FBI’s telephone number in the phone book and dialed it.

The call wound up being taken by a female FBI agent in the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force. She wrote down all the information on a form — including the name and driver’s license information of the man who rented the unit — thanked Patsy for calling, and promised to follow up. Then she sent the form to one of the bureau teams that was tracking possible terrorist cells.

The form was on a clipboard the next day when Hob Tulik, down from Washington for an inspection, flipped through the forms on the board and saw it. “This cell, Number Eleven, you’ve had what, seven calls on them?”

“Yessir. Four male suspects in their twenties, from Arabia we think, all here on student visas. Two were at the University of Illinois, one at Stanford, one at the University of Missouri. They’re packed in one little room at Smoot’s Motel on Route One, north of Fort Lauderdale.”

“Studying hard, are they?”

“No, sir,” said the agent, ignoring the sarcasm. He pulled a file on Cell Eleven and opened it. “We’ve been working this cell for three weeks. Two suspects are working at a food warehouse, one is a laborer at a tire store, and another is a part-time convenience store clerk. Strange thing is that they drive a rental car from an airport agency. Displayed a California driver’s license for a man named Safraz Hassoun and used a credit card in that name. Los Angeles address on the license. We’re having the records pulled on the driver’s license and have requested a copy of the credit card app.”

Hob Tulik leafed through the file, which contained four photos, all candid snaps with the subjects unaware of the photographer. “Which one is Hassoun?”

“None of them. There was a Kuwaiti student named Hassoun at UCLA last year, but as far as we know he’s left the country.”

“Terrific. What are we doing in the way of surveillance?”

“We think one of them has a cell phone, sir. We’re trying to find out the number and get court authorization for an intercept and the records. Their motel room contains no telephone. Smoot’s Motel does have a pay phone on a car window mount in front of the place, and we have an authorization to tap that. We’ll get it done in three or four days, whenever the technicians can process it. We don’t have the people to stay on the suspects around the clock, so we have a man in the motel and follow them to and from their jobs. If they leave their jobs before their shifts end, we won’t know it.”

“That the best we can do?”

“We’re working seventeen possible cells.”

“I understand.”

Jake Grafton was watching the news on television when his daughter Amy came in that evening. She had lived in a dorm for her first year of college, then shared an apartment with two other girls for three semesters — now she was bunking at home. The move home was Amy’s idea. Jake resisted the return to the nest at first, until Callie noted that in a year or two Amy would be gone for good. “Better enjoy her company while you can.” Now Jake looked forward to Amy’s evening arrivals home from the library where she studied and worked part-time.

Amy kissed his cheek, then dropped onto the sofa beside Jake and kicked off her shoes. “I’ve got to write a paper,” she said, “and I don’t know what I want to say.”

“Been there myself,” her father muttered.

“The question is: Can constitutional democracy survive in the age of terror?”

“That’s a good one.”

“I don’t know the answer. I’m really worried, Dad. The news is scary. There seem to be many people in the world who don’t have a stake in civilization — they don’t want civilization.”

Jake used the remote to turn off the television.

“Rome fell to the barbarians,” Amy continued, “because it could no longer defend itself. Are we like the Romans?”

“There’s the format for your paper. Compare America today to ancient Rome.”

Amy thought about it. “That’s a good approach. Thanks. But it doesn’t answer the question: Can we survive?”

“I don’t know the answer, Amy. No one does. Civilizations have been rising and falling since the first farmers built huts close together for protection.”

Amy wasn’t in a philosophical mood. She picked up her books and stood. As she did, she said, “I don’t want my grandchildren growing up in a new dark age, ignorant and starving and dictated to by illiterate holy men ranting about evil and preaching holy war against the infidels.”

“Nor do I,” Jake agreed.

“I’d rather see all those sons of bitches dead,” she added grimly. “That isn’t politically correct, but I’m getting sick of political correctness, too.”

Jake smiled as she went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk and a snack. A chip off the old block, he thought. He didn’t know if that was good or bad.