The Ragnarök Conspiracy

1

Near the back of a seedy bar in the Bronx, in one of the deeper recesses and darkest corners, FBI agent John Savas hunched over a shot glass, a caramel-colored liquid halfway to the rim. His slumped posture and a deep-blue Mediterranean fisherman's cap obscured most of his features. Dark hair flecked with gray spilled out from under his cap and partially melded with the rough layer of stubble on his face.

The smoke in the bar created a dense fog, infiltrating every open space, staining curtains and nearly obscuring the obligatory “No Smoking” sign. Here in a rundown basement, New York City health regulations held no concern for those seated around the jazz band.

A second group of patrons displayed no interest in the music. Huddled in dark corners, their faces turned inward and away from the room, pairs of often foul-looking men spoke of matters suited to the obscurity of the location.

Savas clenched his jaw. He'd been waiting too long, and this was a dangerous game. His recent injuries tore at his concentration, and fatigue began to set in. He should not be here; he knew that. His choices had not pleased the physicians. But they don't understand.

He stared at the whiskey in front of him. Now only a prop. Once poison and self-medication. Beginning on a rain-drenched night at the Church of the Holy Trinity in 2001, he had nearly drowned in a downward spiral, skipping work, drinking himself into numbness each night. He had known it was wrong, but he couldn't find his way out. Soon he had lost more than just his job. Or his home. Or his wife. After his son's death, he had lost himself.

He hadn't touched a drop now for nearly a decade. Not since the day he'd made that life-changing trip to the FBI. Thank God for friends in high places who had believed in him. Friends who had connected him to a new and experimental division of the FBI seeking unusually motivated recruits. Friends who had brought his file to the attention of Larry Kanter, the new branch chief, a man determined to rewrite the rules of antiterrorism, beginning with unorthodox methods and staff. Kanter had seen something in Savas, his past record of achievement at NYPD and the spark in his eyes at the mention of antiterrorism. As he would do with many others, Kanter had taken a chance on John Savas, and he had been amply rewarded. Savas had been granted a new lease on life. Beyond that. He had been given a mission.

At the sound of a moaning door hinge, Savas returned sharply to the present. He glanced up discreetly, his slovenly posture belying his inner intensity.

A large man stepped inside, his appearance clashing sharply with the interior of the bar. The battered trench coat poorly concealed his expensive tailored clothes. His skin was a sandy brown, his features faintly Arabic but obscured by the fat deposited over many years of high living. His stance indicated a man of power, now unsure of his footing. As the door closed behind him, two hulking bodyguards remained posted outside. The man nodded, almost imperceptibly, toward a lone drinker near the door, a carbon copy of the two guards outside. The man had obviously sent in a scout and had brought more muscle with him.

Savas swiftly returned his gaze to his drink and smiled to himself. His contact was anxious; frightened men were far easier to manipulate. Now the trap will be set.

The Arab walked slowly toward Savas at the back of the room. His eyes darted in several directions, and he approached the booth like a hunted animal. He slid into the opposite seat, placing his hands on the table. “This place is not safe.”

Savas looked up from his whiskey and nodded, his olive skin blending subtly into the stained wood behind him. He scratched the three-day growth of beard on his face, a useful contribution to the role-playing game he undertook with his criminal contacts. Along with his dress and body language, it had become part of the dangerous act often required to infiltrate terrorist networks that were all too real and growing in America. His friend across the table was as big a fish as Savas had ever hooked.

“What place is safe?” he replied, a false Greek accent, modeled on his immigrant grandfather's, partially garbling the words. He spread out his hands on the table. “You want to be safe, sell smartphones. You want to bring in your shipments, talk to me.”

The Arab once again glanced around the room.

He is very frightened.

“Dimitri,” began the Arab, “I have my connections. We must know who we deal with. Your name doesn't show up on any shipping records. Your prints don't match anything in any database. You don't seem to exist.”

Savas mulled this turn of events. His contact was indeed becoming paranoid. He thanked his own paranoia that forced him to insist on the latex false-skin worn over his fingertips. He only hoped these guys didn't have access to DNA analysis. “Ambassador Hamid,” he began with his most crooked smile, “I have been a disservice?”

The ambassador rumbled deeply over the bar sounds. “No. But before we go further, we need to know more.”

Savas shook his head slowly. He hoped his cover had not been blown. He felt the bulge from his pistol and wondered how he could survive a firefight if the man turned his goons on him. “If you know more, it's not so good for me, katalaves?” He held up his hands. “No one knows these hands, Ambassador. My business is better with shadows. Not you, not the Americans, no one knows Dimitris.”

“Is that your real name?”

Savas only smiled. “I have boats. Good boats, also shadows. Never traced. We pay good money so they stay shadows. If you change your mind, then find other boats.” He paused dramatically. “If you can.”

The ambassador looked distinctly uncomfortable. Savas did not envy the man and the two-faced game he played at the UN. His position gave him tremendous opportunities to exploit weaknesses in US security. But he risked much to play the role of a terrorist pawn, whatever they paid him. Savas didn't fool himself that Ambassador Hamid was any kind of idealist. He was simply the greedy scum that enabled the monsters.

The ambassador whispered tensely, “We would have been less uncertain if you hadn't disappeared for a month!”

Savas had anticipated this. His injuries from the Indian Point insanity had pulled him off the street. Hamid had asked for meetings he could not honor. Dimitris the smuggler had simply disappeared. “It was, as the Americans say, too hot, Ambassador. Dimitris was in danger.”

The look of fear in the ambassador's eyes was unmistakable, and the depth of it shocked Savas. “Danger? From where? Who knows about you? Can they connect you to me?”

The fake Greek captain waved his hand up and down toward the ambassador. “No danger, no discovery. After those bombs at Indian Point, the FBI was very busy. Nuclear power plants make them very nervous, no? Everyone was quiet.”

“FBI?” the frightened man asked, almost desperately.

“Yes, FBI. Who else?”

The man visibly relaxed. Relaxed! Whatever Ambassador Hamid was afraid of, it was not the FBI or discovery by US law enforcement. On the one hand, Savas was relieved, pleased that his cover was not blown, that he still had a hook in this big fish. He was also disturbed. What would frighten this man so much that arrest, and possible life sentencing by the FBI, seemed a relief in comparison?

“Who, indeed?” said the ambassador, a false and awkward smile forced onto his wide face. Again he glanced around nervously, then checked his watch. “Then we are still good. If you do not disappear again! But we must meet in more protected locations.” Hamid seemed to have finished an internal argument of some kind. “Captain Dimitris, we will have our deal.”

Savas put on his greediest grin, but he was also smiling internally. Swallow the bait whole, Ambassador. Soon the FBI would have a catch of unprecedented visibility, but only after they had exploited Hamid to obtain all the underground contacts this octopus's tentacles reached. Then they would crash on him hard, force more information out of him to save his skin, and toss him in jail until he was too old to remember his lucrative moonlighting. Diplomatic immunity be damned.

The ambassador continued. “We will contact you when we are ready. It will be soon. You will come to a place we designate.” Savas groaned inwardly; the ambassador was introducing complications.

“Of course, Ambassador. But, after Indian Point, business is much more difficult. More expensive. You understand?”

The ambassador hardly frowned. “Yes, of course. This was anticipated.” Savas nearly laughed out loud. How predictable the criminal mind. “What are your terms?”

Savas knew he had to drive a hard bargain to cement his character. “Double, Mr. Ambassador, and a quarter in advance.”

“That's outrageous!”

“So is whatever you want to smuggle in.”

The man nodded. “We will consider it and be in contact.”

Hamid rose, having never ordered a drink, and checked again with the bodyguard by the door. He then walked with his nervous glances back across the bar to the exit. The seated goon followed him out, and Savas could see them through the window standing together, waiting for their driver.

Savas pushed his untouched drink to the side. There was much to consider, much to plan in this setup. He would return to the FBI and talk to Kanter. They would need enormous resources to bring in Hamid. After two years of tedious work, slowly bringing to life the character of Savas's Greek smuggler, luring several interested parties into the net, Savas had hit the jackpot. The monsters needed gremlins to sneak them in, and there were always greedy men like Hamid to serve in those roles. Relying on them was a weakness, a trail back to the hive. Savas intended to exploit it.

A sharp sound tore through his consciousness — a strong slap from outside. He could instantly visualize several possible weapons involved, but his mind lurched away from the details, and he stood up, looking through the window.

The music had stumbled to an awkward halt. People in the bar were screaming and backing away from the window. Like the first stages of a Jackson Pollock commission, red paint seemed to have been flung sharply across the glass, thick, languid drops tracing slow paths toward the sidewalk from a central bull's-eye. Crumbled on the ground against the glass was a figure in a trench coat, three large forms bent in panic over it, screaming into cell phones. The back of the coat had a fist-sized hole blown out of it and, like the window, was stained in bright red.

Savas was dumbfounded. Within seconds, years of work had collapsed along with that form. Important and carefully orchestrated openings into international terrorist organizations had slammed shut. As chaos erupted and patrons scrambled to exit the bar, Savas stood still, staring at the downed shape outside, knowing too well that it would not rise. The shot was perfect, through the heart, the bullet chosen and aimed by a professional.

Ambassador Hamid had been assassinated.

2

Through the window of the bistro, Savas could see an elegant woman in a gray pantsuit step out of a cab. Her highlighted hair shone a rich golden blonde in the May sunlight, and she walked with a quick and confident step across the sidewalk to the restaurant entrance. She spoke politely to the maître d', who directed her toward a table at the back. He watched as she surveyed the establishment — tables well separated, sounds absorbed by the old woods and carpets — approving of his careful choice. They were ensured a private and comfortable conversation. Savas smiled when several heads turned as she made her way to the table where he waited.

“Dr. Wilson, it looks like your medical training has paid off.”

She sat down and looked at him sardonically. “OK, John, and the punch line?”

“Well, I saw at least three men look your way. At forty-eight, you must've developed some serious antiaging formula.”

She smiled curtly. “Requisite flattery: check. Quotation of age: Uncheck. Decent digs for lunch: check. And the check?”

“Check,” nodded Savas.

“I think you owe me dinner for this one.”

“Lorrie, this case is three years, five agents, several hundred thousand dollars…”

“And one dead diplomat.”

Savas frowned. “He was plugged into terrorist networks I'd give my right arm for!”

“He was plugged, alright.”

Savas sighed. “Somebody wanted him out of the way. I don't know if it's a competitor, another government, or what. But he was taken out for a reason. I want to know who and why.”

A waiter came over to the table, and they quickly ordered, resuming their conversation when he was out of earshot. The woman pulled out a manila folder and slid it across the table. Savas put his hand on it.

“This is everything?” he asked.

“Jeez, you're one greedy bastard. My husband is alive because of you, but there have to be limits, John.”

Savas was already flipping through the pages. “How is Mike?” he asked absentmindedly.

“Fine. Look, John, everything you need is there. I've looked over it. They didn't get much from the crime scene. They recovered the bullet — high caliber — damn thing blew right through him. They traced the angle of fire to a rooftop a block away. A long-range shot. The shooter was thorough — not a print, not a shell, not so much as a hair anywhere up there. The diplomatic turbulence on this pushed them to work overtime. Top forensics team. Several people flown in from other crime labs. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought in a board-certified psychic. Nothing.”

“Mmmmm,” said Savas, reading through the file.

“But you are right about something.”

Savas glanced up from the papers. “Yes?”

“Somebody wanted him dead very seriously. The ballistics report is eyebrow raising, if you know much about guns.”

“Go on,” said Savas, irritated at her dramatic pauses. He had forgotten how she liked the stage.

“7.62 by 51 millimeter, 308-caliber hole and bullet.”

“Sniper rounds?”

“Yes, standard issue US Army and civilian law enforcement. With a twist,” she said coyly, sipping from her water, her attractive face angled slightly. Savas just stared at her. “A slight variant on the ammunition. Ballistics had to call in help. Turns out it's a limited production of the cartridges used only in the beginning stages of the Iraq War. Couldn't get much more information on it. Definitely not civilian ammo.”

Savas leaned back in his chair and squinted at the physician. “You're telling me that my contact was gunned down by a limited-edition military bullet from a high-powered rifle, fired over a block away with enough accuracy to strike the man's heart?”

She flashed him a winning smile, obviously enjoying the look of confusion and surprise on his face. “That's it, Johnny-boy. This is a weird one.”

“How the hell did that end up in New York City?”

“I don't know, John. That's your job. This CSI shit isn't what I went to med school for. Now, the rest is there for you to read at your considerable leisure.” She glanced purposefully around the restaurant. “I'm hungry — for food and for a drastic change in the topic of conversation.”

Savas nodded, still fixated on this absurd piece of information. Sniper rifles with obscure military rounds. The assassination of a dirty diplomat in the pocket of international terrorists. Blown apart outside a Bronx dive by a mysterious and highly skilled sniper. What the hell was going on?

3

CIA agent Brad Thompson squinted at the monitor, watching a large crowd gathered restlessly around the mosque on the outskirts of London. They seemed to strain to hear the words of Imam Wahid, broadcast over the loudspeakers yet drowned out by surrounding noise and distance. He didn't know what worried him more — the imam's inflammatory rhetoric or the number of people the nut could draw who were eager to hear it.

He approved of the heavy presence of British military to keep the peace. The task was underlined by the boiling unease and anger simmering beneath the surface of the youthful and mostly male crowd.

Agent Thompson cursed the faint rain that misted over the people, the streets, and the rows of cars lining the curbs, making their surveillance that much harder. At least they were hidden. He imagined how it looked from outside: a few hundred feet from the edge of the crowd, a wet and rusted white van parked roughly between two cars. Everything about the vehicle said that it was in disrepair, neglected, and of a very limited life span. Only a thick black antenna on the side of the van might give any hint as to the reality within the vehicle.

Inside, it was a very different story. Behind the deeply tinted glass, several rows of computer monitors displayed video feeds from many angles around the mosque. Members of Thompson's team sat in front of these monitors, earpieces relaying audio, microphones over their mouths.

He had been assigned only three months ago to investigate Imam Wahid. He glanced back at the monitor, shaking his head at Wahid's angry words, his youthful charm. Your charity fronts don't fool us, buddy. The man was a powder keg of Islamic radicalism. They would stop him, but not before finding out the bigger picture.

The words of the imam's speech were broadcast at a low level throughout the van. “The United States wants to control our world,” rang out a charismatic and strong voice. One video feed showed the passionate gesticulations of the imam; another, the rapt attention of the young men in the crowd. “Yes, with the dollar and the sword they seek to subdue every nation, every people, every religion. But what chance does an empire, however grand, have next to the power of God? No, God will channel His great power through each of you. Each of you becomes a soldier of Heaven against the armies of Satan. The world will be Islam!”

An agent in the van whistled softly. “The bastard is really on. How many future martyrs has he recruited today, I wonder?” Thompson leaned over one of the monitors, staring at a pan of the crowd near the speaker. “Keep an eye on those close ones — the ones he acknowledges, singles out, greets, walks with. Let's get face shots, front and side. We need to ID these people. They're possible nasties, folks.”

An agent at the back spoke up. “Hey, you all hear that they've come up with a new punishment for suicide bombers?” He paused for effect. “Death penalty.”

There were a few scattered chuckles and several rolled eyes. “Stay on task, Johnson,” Thompson barked. Chastised, the agent quickly returned his attention to the monitor in front of him.

Suddenly, a woman's scream wailed over the speaker system, and everyone in the van stiffened involuntarily. A man monitoring the speaker focused intently at his screen and nearly shouted to the others present.

“Wahid's down!”

“What?” Thompson gasped.

“Switching to stage angles.”

All the monitors lit up with images at various angles of the platform on which the speaker had stood. The podium was empty now, the crumbled body of the imam near its base. Figures leapt onto the stage and raced to the body, turning it over as panicked screams rose from the crowd.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Thompson. The video feed made it very clear that the imam was unlikely to return to the podium ever again. Figures around him were tearing at their beards, several covered in Imam Wahid's blood. One cradled the man in his arms, the body limp, a large bloodstain over the left breast visible on the video. The rain washed softly over their forms, diluting the red.

Thompson mobilized his team. “Move people! We have a hit on Wahid! It's long range, rifle shot, and from high ground, I'd put money. Sync with the Redcoats! Rooftops, exits — we need it all covered! I need agents moving now!”

The van erupted in an uproar of sound and activity, voices over the speakers in ears, commands shouting into microphones. The crowd outside was turning violent, with men grouped and chanting angrily, fists raised in the air. Several men pummeled the car next to the van, smashing its windows.

Shit. Thompson thought quickly. “People, this will get ugly. Radio British police that we have a riot brewing. Let our people out there know where the violence is and how to avoid it.”

The van began to shake, fists impacting loudly against its sides and the dark glass. Several shouts announced the arrival of the mob.

“Don't panic! The glass is stronger than the walls.” Thompson pulled out a gun, its dark metal gleaming in the lights of the computers. Except in training, he had never used it before. “The door isn't going to last. Michelson, let's try to get this piece of junk moving!”

He checked the cartridge, released the safety, and moved to the front seat of the van. Daylight spilled into the dark vehicle as several angry arms forced open the door. The CIA man aimed the weapon and fired.

4

"John, I think I might have something.”

Savas leapt over to the console next to a shy-looking man sporting an awkward grin. The man's face turned back to the screen and was partly obscured by an enormous beard and long, disheveled hair curled down below his shoulders. The sounds of keys clacking burst from underneath the hair. Savas had to suppress a laugh. What did the team call Hernandez? “Our very own Jesus.” Yeah, exactly. Except for the pornography. Savas frowned as he tried to decipher the multiple open windows, filled with database output, open web pages, photographs of crime scenes, and more.

“I don't see it, Manuel. We're looking for known hit men with MOs that might match what we have on the Hamid assassination.”

Hernandez nodded. “That's how I started. But it was a long shot, John, like we discussed. I've been in front of these databanks for three days cross-correlating materials and methods from every known killer we have in there with the forensics. Larry's got us drawing from FBI and CIA records. If there's a known assassin with any consistency in style, it would show up. Three days and nothing. Gets boring, John. I always get in trouble when I'm bored.”

“That why they tossed you out of graduate school?” Savas asked absentmindedly, still squinting at the screen, trying to see the pattern.

Hernandez sighed. “No one believes me that I quit! Honestly, John, there were weirder people there than me.”

“Yeah, but not so much trouble.”

“Can't a man just want to serve his nation in the war on terror?”

Savas smiled and waved his hand at the screen. “I give up. Don't have a computer science PhD. Explain.”

Hernandez opened several windows from online news organizations. All were dated reports, weeks to months old, from diverse locations across the globe. Each had an image of a dead body and police. The headlines in every case contained the word “assassinated.”

“Manuel, what are we looking at here…and why?” asked Savas.

“Since I wasn't getting anywhere looking for a who, I started looking for a what. What unsolved crimes in the last two years might have matched the MO we have in this case? Honestly, after drawing a big zero in the database, my feeling was that our killer, or killers, weren't in there, that we are looking for something, someone new. Our fancy intel databases were useless. Where else left to go but the papers?”

Savas nodded. “OK, what are we looking at?”

“It's thin, John, but there's something. Remember the Al Jazeera reporter killed in Atlanta, right as he exited the airport?”

“Mohammed Aref? Of course I do. Larry reassigned the case while I was in the hospital. Lighten my workload, he said. Aref was a real tap dancer. He had been implicated by the Sheikh in money laundering through some of the East Coast mosques.”

“The Sheikh?”

Savas smiled. “My little double-agent friend.”

“The one we don't mention, whose real name not even Larry knows?”

“That one.”

“So, he ratted out Aref?”

“And several others, as he collected from them, too, no doubt. The Sheikh's a real charmer.” Savas grinned. “Second-generation Syrian street punk. Broke away from his conservative parents, but not before he picked up enough Arabic to make him very valuable to certain underground elements. Kid's addicted to gold and adrenaline, and likes to feel smarter than everyone he's conned.”

“That's what you call charming?”

“Anyway, the Al Jazeera job was a cover for Aref, for his real work. He had a good scheme going. Charity dollars from many uncharitable sources. We used Aref to trace an assassination plot against a diplomat from Pakistan. We're still planning to move on the entire operation, as far as I know.” Savas glanced down at the computer scientist. “The connection?”

Hernandez gestured toward the screen. “Aref was gunned down by a high-powered sniper rifle. Single shot. Right through the heart. Sound familiar?”

Savas furrowed his brows. “Coincidence?”

“And so's this, I suppose,” said Manuel as he enlarged another window. Savas read aloud from the web page.

“Raahil Hossain, a lawyer and lobbyist for a Saudi construction conglomerate, was gunned down today in Egypt on a business trip. Known for his outspoken stance on Arab rights of ownership of oil and gas sites developed by foreign powers, he had become a controversial figure in the international community. Condemned by many Western governments for alleged ties to jihadist movements in several countries, he had found his ability to travel outside the Middle East increasingly restricted.”

“Skip to the next-to-last paragraph.”

Savas paused and scrolled the text up on the monitor. “Reports claim that Mr. Hossain was struck by a bullet as he exited his hotel in Cairo and that he died instantly, suffering a direct hit to the chest. The gunman was never found; police speculated that the killer had fired a high-powered rifle from a distance and escaped in the ensuing panic.”

Savas was quiet for a moment. Hernandez used the silence to bring up a list of names, dates, and locations. He rolled his chair backward and let Savas lean in closer, reading through the file.

“All killed by snipers,” mumbled Savas as he read silently through the list. “All taking direct hits that killed them instantly. Each a player in the underground terrorist network. There must be twenty names here, Manuel. You think that they're all linked?”

“I don't know, John. Some don't exactly fit — head shots, for example, even though in some of those cases the bullets were identified to be military grade. Not the special ordnance you discovered, but we don't know how careful the ballistics teams were, whether they did their homework like your contacts. Half these kills were in parts of the world where they likely don't even do a full workup, let alone release the data.”

Savas put on his best Larry Kanter voice. “This is really thin, Manuel.”

Hernandez nodded dejectedly. “Yeah, John, I know. But it's all I have.”

“I didn't say I thought it was wrong.” Savas sat down and breathed out slowly, lost in thought. “Do you remember those studies at Army Research focusing on soldiers in Iraq who had a high rate of survival?”

“Not really, John.”

“I do, because I found it fascinating. A large number of those soldiers were characterized by strong emotional responses to environments, having hunches and gut feelings about danger. The studies showed that these guys tended to have hyperactive attention to detail, keen sight and other senses, noticing absurd details others missed, yet they were not consciously aware of it.”

“Yeah, now I remember. Like the soldier who thought ‘the concrete slab didn't look right’ and inside was an IED waiting to blow them apart.”

“Exactly. He had processed a lot of data subconsciously about the slab — imperfections, mismatches in colors, location, and so on — and without knowing why, his brain sent an alert. All he knew was, it looked wrong.”

Hernandez shrugged his shoulders nervously. “So what's that got to do with this?”

Savas looked back at the list of names compiled by his computer systems man. “After reading that article, I started believing in intuition, Manuel, that it's often much more than simple flighty emotion. Sure, in some percentage of the population it is flighty, useless stuff, and that's why we get nut-jobs paranoid about things that aren't there, conspiracy theories, and people afraid of their own shadow. But for those with a history of survival, or of finding solutions to puzzles, let's say, with few clues, I think it's real, representing a lot of neurological processing we aren't aware of.”

Hernandez simply stared at Savas.

“What I'm trying to say, Manuel, is that I know this is thin,” he said, gesturing to the list. “I can't justify it logically, but my gut tells me there's something here. I think yours did, too. There's something in that list. Like that cement block, it doesn't look right. There's something there.”

“What?”

“I wish I knew. There are a lot of dead men on that list.”

5

Kanter stood up and leaned over the table, an exasperated expression on his face. “This is what makes sense?”

Standing up was the first sign that things were not going well for Savas. Kanter didn't usually stand unless he was upset. Once Kanter began running his fingers through his graying hair, Savas knew that he had lost him. It was only a matter of time before the lecture began.

“This is the special meeting of Intel 1 you called me in for? You do realize that I manage other groups in this division?”

“It does make sense, Larry! They're using guerilla-style methods. Removing those who are the key links in the international terrorist web! What else could unify all these attacks?”

Kanter threw up his hands. “John, that's the point — I don't see that they are unified. That's your task, to prove it to me, and, damn it, this isn't very persuasive!”

The rest of Intel 1 was very quiet. In addition to Hernandez, the group was fully assembled, torn from different tasks and assignments, interrupting their work of digging out international terrorists. All because Savas had called a special meeting with high priority. With their eyes on him and Kanter's dismissal, he felt like an idiot.

They had all listened intently to Savas as he had presented the information. A list of assassination-style killings, all of which were connected in one way or another to the international criminal underground that supported and enabled terrorist activity. Some were middlemen, some were spokesmen, and some were fundraisers. All were significant players, and all had met untimely deaths in similar ways. The MOs were very similar. It was so clear! Someone was moving systematically and ruthlessly, brutally crushing the pressure points to cripple the ability of terrorist groups to function. The silence he received was maddening.

He glanced around the room for support. Any hint of support. J. P. Rideout and Matt King had their eyes cast down. The dark-haired Rideout, trim and stylishly dressed, had been Kanter's steal from Wall Street and Bloomberg monitors. Rideout retained a residual superiority inherited from his French forbears, his style sharply counterbalanced by the analytical bookworm named Matt King. King, a former energy lawyer for big-oil firms, had turned do-gooder after witnessing the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon from his hotel window. Both Rideout and King clearly thought he was nuts.

Across from them at the round table frowned Frank Miller, the hulking ex-marine. Miller clearly wasn't onboard with him, but he held his gaze with a thoughtful expression as he parsed what he had heard from Savas.

Last of all he looked over to Rebecca Cohen. She sat on his right, her deep-brown eyes troubled and nearly lost in the thick mane of chestnut hair that swept across her face and down her shoulders. Her small stature seemed dwarfed by the solid wall of marine next to her. Cohen had moved up through FBI counterterrorism for a number of years and was snagged by Kanter because she was so bright. She had come to the states as a small child, her father immigrating after several family members were killed in a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. Her motivation was keen, and her analytical skills had made her his “right hand” at Intel 1.

“Mad John.” A voice from the back of the room.

An uncomfortable silence fell. Savas glanced toward the source of the voice. He smiled as he glimpsed a young elfin woman in her midtwenties, long, ironed-looking orange hair to her waist framing a needle-thin body as pale as undecorated china. She wore a plain dark-blue dress that looked like it came out of an Amish catalog, complemented by bright-orange sneakers with flashing lights built into the bottoms. Children's shoes. She stood apart from the group seated at the table, staring absentmindedly outside the window, seemingly caught in a trance of some kind.

“Greetings, Kemo Sabe.” The young woman spoke as if sensing his gaze, yet she never took her attention away from the glass or left her trancelike state. Angel Lightfoote. Brilliant and pulling out important connections in data no one else could see. Larry's latest find.

The awkward silence continued. “Don't everyone act so shocked,” said Savas at last. “I've heard the name. Mad John Savas. Nice ring to it.”

“Does seem you're out to earn it,” grumbled Kanter. “You might have gotten a call from POTUS for your recent heroics, John, but back here we need you to make sense.”

Miller interrupted. “A series of coordinated hits — what about organized crime?”

Savas felt his frustration boiling over. “No! Not mob! I saw my fair share of mob hits when I was on the force, Frank. They're brutal, but blunt. These hits were surgical. The methods the same: single shot, high-powered rifle, military grade, professional work—beyond mob. Assassination style.”

“John, you would be talking about an organization with enormous resources,” Cohen interjected. All eyes turned toward her. “These are not a series of isolated murders. If this is all part of some broad conspiracy, the killers have to have an international scope, finances, skilled personnel, an ability to conduct intelligence and mission planning that would rival the best government agencies of the world!”

“How do we know it isn't governmental?” asked J. P. Rideout.

“Not possible,” scoffed Matt King. “You're talking about a series of coordinated assassinations. No reputable nation would dare.”

“Maybe one not so reputable,” grumbled Miller, his broad frame tense as a result of the new direction of the conversation.

“Which of the disreputable nations do you think cares enough to undertake an effort to stop terrorism?” quipped King.

Rideout turned toward him. “What makes any nation reputable? What about us? Didn't we have a vice-presidential CIA hit squad trained for this very purpose?”

A long silence fell over the room. The weight of that statement in connection with the assassinations sank in deeply. Even Kanter sat down and looked sharply at the former Wall Streeter.

“Well, didn't we?” Rideout echoed.

Kanter looked troubled. “If you're talking about Cheney's death squads, that's all documented. So is the fact that they were never activated. That entire idea was only a hypothetical.”

J. P. Rideout laughed. “Sure! For eight years of the Bush presidency, these guys were being prepped — that much is on the record, too. Larry, that's a hell of a long training program. Eight years readying themselves to kill terrorist leaders and never once going on the job? Must have been a frustrated bunch of dudes.”

Kanter's face was stern. “You can speculate all you want, J. P., but at the FBI, in my division, we deal in facts. And let me tell you, even the speculation of such activity by the US government is a serious matter.”

“It would surely make a good framework for hanging John's linked assassinations, though, wouldn't it?” added King.

Cohen shook her head. “Come on, guys, this doesn't make sense. It would mean that the current administration had put into motion the clandestine murder of numerous US and foreign targets.”

“Bin Laden. That's all I have to say,” broke in Rideout.

Cohen rolled her eyes. “Damn it, J. P., that's completely different! Bin Laden? These are kills on US soil, some of them American citizens. CIA killing Americans in America? That's 1984 material, folks, really scary stuff.”

Rideout wasn't fazed. “2011, Defense Appropriations Bill authorized the indefinite detainment of American citizens arrested on American soil for suspicion of terrorist activities. 2012, Obama has his attorney general justify killing Americans suspected of terrorist activities. Due process be damned.”

“That authority has never been used!” said Cohen animatedly. “And now you're going from hypotheticals to documented murders? It is a crazy idea!”

“A crazy idea for which there is absolutely no evidence!” banged out Kanter. The others began to speak out of turn as the argument escalated.

Savas shouted them down. “They're right!” The eyes of Intel 1 turned to him in surprise. Savas held his palms up, trying to explain. He lowered his voice. “Larry and Rebecca are right. It's too outlandish. It doesn't feel right.”

“Feel right?” asked Rideout.

“No, it doesn't, J. P. Let's just say these death squads were still around, activated. They might make hits on foreign soil, not here. Even the craziest antiterrorist zealots would think twice about that. For God's sake, we don't have to shoot them here! Why not just pick them up, extraordinary rendition and all that? We do it all the time, whatever you think of it: grab a suspected terrorist, take him someplace far away, interrogate him. Maybe worse. A hit on someone abroad, maybe, but not like this.”

Cohen picked up his thoughts. “And not with this frequency, this thoroughness. Such a group might make a hit here or there, take out a particularly important target. But the list of possible kills John is showing is too long. It's absurdly long. It would begin to call attention to the murders. That's the last thing some covert death squad would want. Bad for the US, bad for them, bad for their long-term goals.”

Savas refused to let go. “I still think these deaths are linked, but it's not governmental. It's something else; something else is driving it forward.”

“John, what the hell are you talking about? Something else what?” asked Kanter. He seemed beyond frustrated. “How do they magically appear in the span of half a year in ten or twenty different places around the world, bringing down the target — often a highly protected target, by the way — without leaving any trace? Are these ninja snipers? Who funds this? What's the unifying motive for your imaginary marksmen with the special bullets?”

Savas was silent. He didn't know if he had the words for this intuition, the connection between his own experience and the pattern he was seeing in these murders. He wasn't even sure it made sense to him. Then the word just came to his lips.

“Vengeance.” As soon as he spoke, Savas felt his stomach drop — he could almost feel the disbelief in the room.

“Vengeance, John? Who?” asked Kanter incredulously.

“I don't know, Larry! But if I struck back for everything they've done to us, it might be something like this. Hell, it might be worse.”

The second the words left his mouth, he knew it was over. Savas knew he had blown it, shot to hell any hope of objectivity, any chance of persuading a group of analysts that he was correct. Their expressions confirmed his fears, the downward glances, no one looking him in the eye. Kanter moved quickly to resolve the issue.

“John, we appreciate that many of us here have had personal experience with international terrorism, and we use that every day to motivate us. But we can't let it cloud our judgment. I don't like to go over this in front of everyone, but too much has been said,” Kanter noted, glancing over the table, “by too many of us here. We've ended up in no man's land of speculation, serious accusations, too much emotion, and too few facts. There's the beginning of a coherent linkage between these murders, but only a beginning. I'm torn about how we proceed. Good detective work is often shot to hell if heads are clouded by emotion.”

Kanter seemed to mull something over in his mind, then he stood up abruptly. “John and Manuel will continue looking into this idea of a link between these murders, at least for the time being. But we'll hear no more of international death squads and the like. I've got to fly to Washington for another one of our interagency summits this weekend, and the last thing I want on my mind is wondering if my agents are out and about trying to prove the CIA or whoever is involved in an international assassination program. Honestly, folks, I'm too young for forced retirement.”

There were nervous smiles around the room, but Savas merely stared forward, unable to focus on Kanter's words. “Let's call this a day. I'm late for a twelve o'clock. Get back to your posts and saving the country.”

Awkwardly, the members of Intel 1 got out of their seats and headed for the door. Lightfoote brushed past Savas and whispered in his ear.

“It's OK, John. I think you're right.” She smiled blissfully at him and danced out of the meeting room. The irony was total — his main support came from the most eccentric member of this team.

He glanced up. The room was empty. Kanter entered and closed the door.

“Is there anything we should talk about?” Kanter began.

“No, Larry. Maybe I am biased on this, but you might consider that I also have an advantage.”

“Which is?”

“If I do happen to be right, I'm the one who would understand the motives better than anyone.”

“Vengeance?”

“Yes, and more. A removal of the threat and obsessive cleansing of the world.” Hunting the monsters. Showing no mercy.

“John, you're essentially telling me that if you are right, you'll be very right. That sort of tautology doesn't really give me much to base things on.”

“I know that, Larry.”

“Besides, even if you are right, I think our hands are tied.”

Savas looked up, his brows furrowed. “Why?”

“Jurisdiction. If this has the scope you think it does, it's way beyond FBI. In addition to the thirty or more US agencies involved broadly in criminal activities outside the country, there are the international ones.”

“Well, we'd have our part to play.”

“Yes, but to break this case, it will require access to and investigation of places and people we can't go to.”

“Well, we pound the beat we know, Larry.”

Kanter nodded. “OK, John. That's all I'm saying. Stay in your boundaries on this one. If there is something to this, you'll dig it up.” Savas watched his boss stand up and leave the room. The message was clear.

Savas felt exhausted. In the span of less than half a workday, he had run a roller coaster of emotions from his own elated certainty to the embarrassed rejection by his peers. He glanced at the presentation on his computer, closed the laptop, and dropped it into his bag. As he left the table and walked to the door, Rebecca Cohen entered. Her eyes told him too clearly what was on her mind.

“Is this a therapy session?” he asked sharply.

“John, please. It's not like that.”

“Isn't it? I saw all your faces. I could hear it perched on their tongues: Mad John. Useful in a pinch, but a little too wacko at times. Wasted on his own grief and anger. Unreliable when it comes to certain topics. Ready to see in others all the things churning inside himself.” He marveled that all this spilled out to her. “Doesn't that about capture it?”

Cohen sighed and looked crestfallen. “Yes, John, it does. But I didn't come here for that.”

“Then what?”

“I came to tell you that whatever they think, whatever doubts anyone might have, we've all come too far with you not to back your play. Take it slow, John, but we're behind you.”

Savas was strangely touched. “And you're speaking for the others?”

“I'm sure I am, but it wasn't put to a vote or anything. I know I speak for me.”

Her earnest eyes burned into him, and, not for the first time, he felt them pierce through so many layers of armor and anger. It was a place that couldn't be touched. Not now. Not anymore. Not after Thanos. He was shaken by it, by the goodness of that touch. It made him recoil all the more.

Cohen sensed his withdrawal, and her face tightened slightly as she watched his eyes.

“Thanks, Rebecca. It's good to know.” He turned quickly away from her and left the room.

6

Across the world in the mountains of Afghanistan, darkness had fallen, and the one called Kamir felt a chill descend. His group of mujahideen sat quietly around a small fire, several smoking, weapons at their sides. He was exhausted from a long day of drills, scrambling to keep ahead of American squads tracking them through the rough terrain. Their leader had posted guards at two positions around their camp, and three others at high and low points more distant. He grunted. They would see no Americans tonight.

His mouth formed a sneer. His group lacked any high-tech equipment — motion detectors, night vision, satellite surveillance — expensive toys used lethally by their spoiled and arrogant American hunters. Instead, they used an older set of tools: their eyes, ears, nose, and skin. Truer tools given from God, each a more finely tuned instrument than anything assembled to take their place. They learned the land; memorized its pulse, the night sounds, the scents that belonged, and those that did not. His troop remained several steps ahead of their pursuers, mocking the grand collection of technology arrayed against them.

Tonight, his senses were charged. No, they would not see the American army tonight. The last few days, a nervous tension had grown within the group. Grown within him. Normal banter had been replaced with sharp whispers, and movements were made with unusual caution. No one spoke of it. There were no reasons, no evidence of danger. Yet all felt it, a sense of encroaching violence. Kamir felt like the prey when the predator was near.

Too many training cells had disappeared. Only months ago, theirs was one of the most promising training centers, already receiving praise from terrorist groups seeking their fighters. He was proud of the demonstrations of their prowess and the respect they had earned. Suddenly, everything had changed. Groups stopped returning from missions. At first, it was explained as American interceptions, until they became too numerous, too frequent, and often occurred in locations not patrolled by United States forces. Not once had they recovered the bodies of their slain brothers. The mystery fueled a growing superstition: of dark forces, demons, spirits sent out by the Evil One to undermine the jihad.

Today, his small training cell had slipped past a second American patrol just that morning, and the sense of threat had only grown. The Americans were not the threat. His mujahideen brothers began to mutter old nonsense from grandmothers and pagan times to ward off the evil. Fools! They did not even understand the words.

Kamir signaled to a haggard man stirring the fire. “Jawad, see that there is little smoke.” Jawad grunted but showed no other sign of having heard him. Kamir stood up and quickly walked over beside the fire, crouching low.

Finally Jawad spoke. “I don't like it. We have not heard from the scouts for too long. We should wake the others. Something is wrong.”

Kamir nodded and muttered a curse. He glanced anxiously around the campsite. “Not even the insects speak.”

The men around him stirred restlessly, and several rose from their pallets and fingered their machine guns. Whatever it was, whatever had been following them like a wraith, it was here now. He felt it.

A harsh cry sounded out from one end of the camp. Kamir turned his weapon toward the sound. He jumped back as a mujahideen warrior staggered into the light of the fire, his hands covered in blood, his neck sliced open. He fell suddenly into the blaze, scattering the logs and tossing sparks into the air, his dry clothing bursting into flames.

From around the campsite, muffled shots were heard, and, one by one, the trained guerrilla fighters around him fell. Kamir spun in circles, unable to identify the attackers. Next to him, Jawad cried out, having been hit simultaneously in the chest and head, and fell backward several feet to land roughly on the ground. Kamir dropped to a prone position and scanned quickly outside the camp for a target. A blur to his right suddenly came into focus, a metallic gleam of a broad blade glinting. He turned rapidly to aim, fired wildly, but he knew he was too late. He felt an icy burn in his chest, and several gunshots thumped against his shoulders and abdomen. Momentarily, he passed out.

Opening his eyes to a fog of sound and pain, he tried to move but found himself unable to do so. He watched helplessly as several others managed to fire into the darkness, his eyes discerning only blurred shadows and motions. Each man soon fell, brought down by weapons unseen, controlled by hands unknown.

A silence fell around him, and yet he watched. A body continued to burn, now in the center of a circle of bodies, the stink of charred flesh carried on the soft breeze. His vision receding, he heard rapid shuffling sounds from the darkness, and several man-sized shapes sprinted into the camp. The fire was doused, and darkness infiltrated the area. A faint light from the stars weakly illuminated a group of active shadows that seemed to drift above the bodies, dragging the dead forms away. He felt his ankles clamped tightly.

He knew no more.

7

Savas struggled in a dream like a man drowning in water. It was the same nightmare. Dimly, a part of him recognized this, but his unconscious was in control and doomed him to walk through it again.

It was late September, 2001. He felt the storm rage over New York City. From above, he saw a depression, born in the Gulf, crouched over the Atlantic like an obscenely stretched octopus or some giant thumb of cloud-form pressed firmly on the eastern coast. Slowly rotating, its counterclockwise motion drew in the colder air of the north and built a storm system as cold winds mixed with the moist, warmer air from the sea. Savas's omniscient perspective contracted from the heavens to the streets below. He felt the pull in his stomach as he fell. Rain and thunder blanketed the concrete landscape of the city, and he came to rest near a small church in the Greek American enclave of Astoria.

A blue-and-white car was parked in front of the building. Inside, he saw the metallic finish of a handgun reflecting the orange streetlights at opposing angles, facets blinking underneath the rain-swept window where pouring water blurred the lighted icon of Christ on the church door. Worshippers trailed in, crossing themselves, dropping coins or bills to pick up candles, lighting them with short prayers, kissing the icons before entering. Inside, Savas knew, incense and chanting filled the air. Warmth and the damp smell of wet bodies and clothes mingled. Outside, only the incessant drumming of the rain, swallowing all other sound, blurring all images within the NYPD blue-and-white. No light shone from within. He followed a male figure as it stepped out of the official vehicle and entered the church.

As the doors opened, he saw an old woman inside, barely five feet tall, draped in widow's black as she hunched over candles, harvesting them, pruning those that had burned too low in the supporting sand beside the icons. She turned with arthritic slowness toward the door. Its opening brought a cold blast of moist air. Savas followed the shadowy man, the soaked and disheveled outline of his police uniform hardly recognizable.

As the dream continued, Savas felt himself approach the form, merge with it, until he felt himself striding with a mad purpose, drenched and chilled in his ruined uniform. He marched past the icons and candles, stepping through the narthex onto the red carpet that ran alongside rows of parishioners. He focused on the iconostasis and the altar, gripping a wet gun in his hand.

A priest was bent over the altar, hands cupped before him. He spoke the prayers before the Eucharist in a soft drone.

John Savas, dripping from the pouring rain, walked past the Royal Doors into the nave of the church. He looked neither left nor right; instead he focused intently straight ahead toward the altar and the figure of Father Timothy bent in prayer.

Several heads turned in Savas's direction as he moved toward the altar. Eyes glanced up from prayer books like the wake of a boat, a flowing distraction from the climax of the liturgical service.

Savas passed three-quarters of the pews, walking underneath the high dome painted with the icon of Christ Pantocrator, Christ Almighty. The low prayers of the priest were increasingly disturbed by a surge of murmurs from the faithful, a slowly cresting wave of chaos drowned by the thunder rumbling outside.

By the time shouts rose to warn the priest, John Savas had scaled the four steps to stand within the Sanctuary itself. Chanters and front-row worshippers who had moved forward to take action froze and slowly backed away. A gun was raised, aimed at the back of Father Timothy. The priest paused, perhaps sensing something or perhaps confused by the sudden swell and fall of noise in his church. Hands still raised in supplication, he turned slowly, his eyes at first unfocused over the many faces in the pews. Then they sharply pinpointed on the barrel of the gun not five feet in front of him.

The inside of the church was utterly still, silent, rocked softly by the receding thunder outside, lit brightly in slaps of lightning over the soft candle flames. Water dripped from the policeman's cap and began to form small pools on the white marble in front of him. Savas spoke.

“He can't have my son.”

The priest stared down into the dark tunnel of the weapon, water beading around the slick metal. His eyes began to glow a deep red, and a demonic grin spread across his face. Savas screamed, pulling the trigger repeatedly as the robed figure laughed manically before him.

Savas awoke suddenly, shaken from sleep by a crack of lightning and a deep roll of thunder.

Where am I?

A loud knock accompanied the noises from outside. His watch displayed 10 p.m. He was in his office. He had fallen asleep at his desk, the fatigue of nearly constant late evenings catching up with him. The pounding on the door continued.

He rubbed his temples as he stood up from his desk, walked over to his office door and opened it. An extremely agitated Larry Kanter burst into the room and sat down in the chair beside the desk. He was dressed in his travel clothes — gray suit and briefcase, computer bag in hand. His thinning hair was in disarray, and he sighed loudly, slightly out of breath.

“Sit down, John, please.”

Savas cautiously complied, wondering what emergency Kanter would drop on him.

“I'm off to DC a little earlier than I expected,” he said. “You want to know why, John?”

Savas merely waited for him to continue.

“Because I was foolish enough to take you seriously. Crazy enough to call up my good friends at Langley and ever so subtly raise the issue of a connection between these seemingly disparate assassinations.”

Savas felt his pulse quicken. “Yes? And they said?”

Kanter laughed. “First, they said they'd get back to me. Then my friend called back and told me to get a good lawyer. The next thing I knew, there was the head of the CTD oversight committee telling me to get my ass up to DC on a special flight chartered out of LaGuardia. Before the JTTF meeting this weekend, I'm going to get a special one-on-one with the entire Counterterrorism Task Division overlords. All because I speculated on your cracked idea.”

“Did you mention anything about internal hit squads?”

“Hell, no, John! I'm not suicidal. But I don't really need to raise the issue, anymore, do I?” Kanter paused ominously.

“What do you mean?”

“Isn't it obvious? A few minutes on the phone linking these attacks gets me hauled up for questioning. What on earth could have them that jumpy?”

“You can't believe this is a possibility, Larry,” said Savas, his smile fading quickly as Kanter remained serious. “But it's crazy!”

“I don't know what to think. But if there were assassination teams behind these killings, this is exactly the kind of response I would expect. That, and my upcoming reassignment to the Alaska division office.”

“Calm down, Larry. We all know this doesn't make sense. There has to be another explanation.”

“There sure as hell better be another explanation, John, or we've just opened a can of Texas-sized worms.”

8

The door closed behind Kanter, leaving him alone in the room with six other people. He was already fatigued from his last-minute sprint to the airport, flight, and subsequent rush to the late meeting. They couldn't wait until morning? Who has meetings at midnight?

Now he had to face this table of officials overseeing the antiterrorism activities of the United States. The setup was inquisition-style with a single, lonely seat for him facing an array of questioners around the semicircular polished wooden slab.

Kanter felt his knees buckle as he scanned the faces around the table. Even the phone conversations and summons had not prepared him for this. One next to the other, he saw high-ranking representatives from critical US agencies, many exclusively counterterrorism. He ticked off the offices associated with the faces: the CIA Counterterrorist Center, the Office of National Security, Homeland Security, and his own superiors at the National Joint Terrorism Task Force. He was surprised to see a representative of the National Security Agency — he couldn't imagine why they'd need a communications angle on this story. If he was perplexed to see an NSA representative, he was stunned at the final face present — the deputy secretary of state. That she was here raised the stakes to feverish levels.

“Please sit down, Mr. Kanter,” began his FBI superior.

Kanter noticed that he had been standing in front of the chair, nearly at attention. He smiled and sat down. He was too damn old to be acting like a freshman.

The FBI representative continued. “We apologize for calling you out here on such short notice, but we understand that you would be attending the Task Force meeting this weekend anyway.”

“That's correct.”

“As you are probably aware, Mr. Kanter, you are here to answer some of our questions about your comments to CIA counterterrorism personnel and, if possible, to aid us in solving some frankly disturbing mysteries.”

Kanter suppressed an urge to sigh. “I'll help in any way I can.”

The NSA man cut in. “We have printouts and digital samples of your conversations earlier today. However, as I understand it, the CIA wishes to proceed without an in-depth analysis.”

“Not necessary; there's nothing complicated,” said the director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, her voice strained. She turned from the NSA officer toward Kanter. “Your special-ops division has come to a startling conclusion, Agent Kanter.”

“No conclusions — nowhere near that level. Purely speculation. Some of our agents had stumbled on what they believed are connections linking a set of crimes, assassination-style murders of a number of pro-Islamic extremists in the US and abroad.”

“Yes, we've seen the transcripts,” cut in the CIA woman. “Why did you feel it necessary to contact CIA agents if these connections, as you call them, were purely at the speculative stage?”

Kanter frowned. “That seems the best time to me.”

“Wouldn't you have preferred to have obtained some more firm evidence before making such accusations?”

“Accusations?” asked Kanter.

The FBI man swooped in quickly. “I don't think Mr. Kanter is making any accusations, Susan, only asking questions.”

There was a very uncomfortable silence around the table. Kanter had a bad feeling about where this was headed, and he wished they would just open up the black hole and get it over with. The deputy director of state obliged him.

“Look, everyone, there's no point in tap dancing. Before we go any further, Agent Kanter, these members of your staff — how would you characterize their relationship to this hypothesis?”

Kanter gave her a knowing look. “Extremely committed, perhaps emotionally so. That's why I called this in, frankly. One of my best agents, John Savas, strongly believes in this connection. Many others do not. Frankly, I've been skeptical myself, but Agent Savas has a track record that is anomalously productive. I felt I should follow up on his hunch.”

The deputy director smiled. “You say you've been skeptical. Has this changed?”

Kanter looked her in the eye. “The moment you all jerked me up here.”

Several faces at the table appeared irritated, but the woman from the state department laughed. “After all the doublespeak I hear every day, Agent Kanter, your lack of diplomacy is welcomed. John Savas has been well-known to many over the years, and the recent events at Indian Point have refreshed any poor memories. Your division — as unorthodox as it has been — is unmatched in its contributions to counterterrorism efforts. The White House has decided to make you aware of some highly classified information.”

Wonderful. “I don't suppose I might have the opportunity to decline?”

The FBI man laughed. “Wise man.”

“Legally you can, of course,” continued the deputy secretary of state. “But then we would have to make sure that in your ignorance, you did not make this classified information known — you or your group at the FBI.”

Kanter felt his stomach drop. There was no misinterpreting those words. Either he was in, or he and his “unorthodox” group, including Intel 1, were toast.

“You can be persuasive.”

“I have to be; this is too important,” she said. “Susan, this belongs to you for the next few minutes. Your mess.”

Kanter turned his attention to the Counterterrorist Center director. She had the look of someone who had recently learned of a relative's death.

“While it is well-known that the CIA, along with numerous US agencies, undertook extraordinary antiterrorist measures in the years following 9/11, it was only recently appreciated that some of these efforts took on the form of targeted elimination teams.”

“Assassins,” corrected Kanter. Here it came.

“Yes. I'm not here to examine the ethics or policy wisdom of such actions, but they have been a part of covert operations for decades. They have been vetted by several agencies, congressional oversight, and therefore have been answerable to the American public.”

“Until Cheney,” whispered Kanter.

“Yes, I can see that you know where this is going. During his tenure as vice president, Dick Cheney instructed the CIA to form an elite core of assassins, specifically designed to go after high-level targets in al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups threatening US interests. He took the unusual step of concealing this plan not only from Congress but also from nearly every other agency and governmental branch. These men and women were highly trained for years, awaiting orders that never came.”

“Never?” asked Kanter.

“The records have been made public, Agent Kanter. Not a single kill was ordered. The program was terminated.” She paused and removed her glasses. “Or so we believed.”

She sighed and continued. “This connection you make between the killings of Islamic radicals has come to the attention of the CIA and other agencies as well. We are particularly concerned, because the methods used are right out of the training program of these assassination teams.”

“Certainly other assassins could employ similar methods?” asked Kanter.

“Yes, of course. However, there is more, beyond the killings you know about. While the growing success in Pakistan and Afghanistan against terrorist training camps has been ascribed to many things — including tactics changes, troop buildup, and most recently, improved design of Predator Drone robotic combat units — these factors are not sufficient. We now know from Army Intelligence work that there have been substantial, at times crippling, attacks on terrorist camps in these regions that are not due to any known military or covert activity. We are talking about major professional strikes against groups that have eluded our capture for years and that yet, in a matter of barely a year, have been erased from the area.”

“I don't understand,” said Kanter. “If not us…”

“Then who?” said the state department woman. “Haven't you guessed?”

Kanter shook his head in disbelief. “I'm sorry, but you're trying to tell me that you have a group of essentially rogue CIA hit squads that are not only bringing down Islamic radicals around the world but are also out-gunning our best marines in the mountains of Asia? That they are doing this using former US training and resources, under our noses?”

The woman from the state department spoke. “Currently, we have no proof of this, but all analysis from the CIA and other agencies places this scenario as the most probable.”

“Any other scenarios?” Kanter asked.

“Several, including foreign involvement and, of course, the null hypothesis that these are indeed not related. However, the potential political and geopolitical ramifications of our working hypothesis are so dire; we must focus on this possibility.”

“Don't you know where these people are? Haven't you kept track of them?”

The CIA woman raised her voice. “Of course we know where they are! But many had gone in and out of the program over the years, and there has not been any clear need for constant surveillance of these trainees. Until now. You can rest assured that we are ascertaining the whereabouts of as many of these personnel as we can.”

Kanter shook his head. “We'll help however we can, but let me be frank here — this is above our heads.”

“That is exactly what I hoped to hear from you, Agent Kanter,” stated the deputy secretary of state. “I want you to make it clear to your people that this is a matter best left to other agencies. We do not want an obscure branch of the FBI stirring this up accidentally so that the public stumbles on this disaster. We will therefore assign liaisons from the CIA to coordinate any investigative work you perform in this area. We debated asking you to drop it altogether but concluded that the success rate of your group warranted your continued efforts.”

“Along those lines, we have a request,” the NSA man spoke up. He pulled out a memory stick and tossed it across the table to Kanter. “That drive stores a series of audio files recorded by US Marines in Afghanistan several weeks ago. They were tracking a terrorist training cell, not having too much luck, as it was. One night, their communications team picked up an encoded series of transmissions. Definitely not hostiles — they were using modifications of US military codes.”

He let this sink in. To hammer the point home, the CIA woman spoke. “This only further convinced us that we had rogue US forces involved.”

“The modifications were clever, but we have enough computer firepower to break down just about any code. We did that, with enormous confidence statistically, and generated the audio file I've given you. Drop it in your favorite MP3 player.”

“I don't understand,” said Kanter. “How can we help?”

“This is a bit embarrassing. The audio file contains a series of sharp command-like phrases spoken by a male voice. The problem is that we can't make heads or tails out of what is being said. We have a formidable army of linguists at our disposal, Agent Kanter. We have translators covering hundreds of known tongues. We've gotten nowhere. A brick wall. It's definitely not a common Arabic, Semitic, European, or Asian language. Whatever is being said over those coded transmissions is in a language no one speaks on this earth. It might as well be from Mars.”

“This doesn't make sense,” said Kanter.

“Not one damn bit,” said the NSA man. “You have a reputation for solving puzzles, Agent Kanter. You're not linguists, but frankly, the linguists have failed. I believe there's a puzzle here, something we aren't seeing. Not a code, not a trick, something else. Have your go at it.”

The meeting ended sharply on that note. Kanter was thanked, charged with maintaining confidentiality, and dismissed. He stumbled out of the building into the bright and warm moonlight of June, dizzy and exhausted from the last hour. More than anything, Larry Kanter was very troubled about all that he had heard. Rogue agents on the loose, assassinations, commando raids on terrorist centers, alien languages, and a political ball of radioactive waste. This was a mountain of a mess.

He was going to kill Savas.

9

Disturbed, Savas watched as the uproar of chatter erupted from the members of Intel 1. Only Angel Lightfoote sat apart from the heated discussion, staring out the window, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil.

Larry Kanter threw up his arms in surrender and thundered over the rest. “That's all I have!”

Savas glanced around at the group, at the frustration evident in their faces. He couldn't blame them. Larry was holding back key information, and everyone knew it. Kanter hadn't said a word about the CIA death squads except to stonewall that all the information was classified. Classified! Of course it was classified. What were they, preschoolers? They had obtained classified information before. That Kanter was implying it was anything except an obstacle spoke volumes. After everything they had all been through, it felt a little like betrayal.

“Larry,” said Frank Miller after some moments, “this smells of cover-up. What is the threat level in this hunt?”

Kanter sighed. “The threat level is very high, and we're hunting for the very dangerous perpetrators of these crimes. We've made connections that are potentially very real, and we need to start from there and work our way out. We have a definite lead. There are these audio recordings, which the NSA believes are communications among our bad guys. The language is not known to any translators in the agency. They're likely farming this out to several places. One of those is Intel 1.”

Rideout just shook his head. “This is a weird one, Larry. I mean, what the hell?”

“Look, J. P., this is real. It's also complicated, more than I can, am allowed to, explain. But it's real. We need to put to the side everything else except this case, which we have been asked to solve — however absurd the pieces handed to us appear to be.”

A harsh vibration sounded on the table. Savas reached over and grabbed his cell phone as it slowly rotated on the smooth surface. He glanced at the display, and his eyes widened. He held up a hand and took the call. Kanter and the others waited.

“Rasheed? This better be an emergency.” Savas was silent for a moment, then he exclaimed into the phone, “What? Tonight? That was not part of the deal, Rasheed! You break that deal, and three felony counts will suddenly reappear and net you half a lifetime in jail!” A voice yelled over the speaker, and Savas responded firmly. “You bet your ass I can! And it will be your ass. What? You don't care? Rasheed, this is crazy!”

Savas swiveled his chair and bent over the phone. “Where are you?” The voice could be heard barking out strained words. “We'll meet there. In an hour — I'll be there! If you value your freedom, you'll give me that hour and talk.”

Savas closed the phone and cursed.

“Mother-in-law?” asked Rideout.

“The Sheikh. I don't believe this. He's rabbiting. Spooked to high heaven. I've got to stop him. He's crucial to several operations.”

Kanter studied Savas for a moment. “What's gotten into him?”

“Seen a ghost,” said Lightfoote, staring seriously at the group.

Savas ignored her. “I don't know. Even the threat of jail wasn't touching him. I've got to get up to East Harlem before he changes his mind and decides to skip our little chat.”

Kanter nodded. “Go, John.”

Savas stood up quickly and headed to the door. On his way out, he passed Lightfoote, who continued to stare intensely at everyone around the table, her long red hair offset by the growing darkness outside. Rain began to pellet the window behind her, and deep rumblings of thunder could be felt through the walls.

She muttered. “Seen his own ghost.”

Her words sat uncomfortably in Savas's mind as he walked out the door.

Water pounded the New York streets as Savas slammed the door of the cab and sprinted into the park. Mothers with strollers dashed madly searching for shelter, and large puddles began to form on street corners with failing drainage. Savas dodged several strollers and seemingly unperturbed jogging fanatics as he aimed for the center of the park. He spotted the pedestrian bridge as he rose over a small hill and danced down the steps along its side, finding himself in a circular garden, complete with vacated benches and a central flower bed morphed into a pond by the rain. To the side, a short tunnel ran under the bridge. He headed for it and the dark shape waiting inside.

The Sheikh had looked better. He normally sported a strange combination of tailored clothes that clashed with the reversed baseball cap and multiple earring studs. Today the hat and clothes were soaked, the heavy gold necklace and wrist chains spotted with water yet still bright, even in the dim light against his dark Arabic skin. The white shirt he wore was nearly transparent, soaked through, and Savas could see the blurred shape of a tattoo on his right forearm. What worried Savas the most was the disarray in his face. The Sheikh was always a cool customer, arrogant in his confidence, his ability to play all sides to his advantage. Today, he looked like a frightened punk.

“You'll have me in my grave, G-man.”

“You've been watching too many Capone films, Rasheed.” Savas shook the water from his face. “You're too important to be disappearing on me. I need to know what's going on.”

“You need to know. You always need to know,” said the Sheikh. “What's going on is that the network's gone rabid, man. There's a purge on.”

“It's not us, Rasheed. You're tagged as mine. No one will touch you as long as you're working with us.”

The Sheikh laughed. “Damn, man, no one's scared of you. You Feds are always three steps behind.”

“Caught you, didn't I?”

The Sheikh smiled. “You got lucky. But I mean going down. That ain't jail, man. They're dead. Bodies just piling up, and no one's fingered, everybody's denying. Likely true, too — everybody's getting hit. If you in the business, you get marked, a price is on your head. No one wants to talk about it. Like the fucking boogeyman.”

Savas felt his heart rate increase. More killings? Purgings in the terrorist underground? This was potentially even bigger than he thought. He needed the Sheikh to stay where he was! “Rasheed, you don't have to run. We've got protection teams. We can watch your back, undercover. If it gets too hot, we can take you into protective custody.”

The Sheikh just shook his head. “This ain't the usual. Boys aren't scared for nothing. Someone's coming after us, G-man, and they ain't interested in business. They interested in dead men. Networks are wrecked. There ain't no credit, no trail, nothing we can see.”

He looked around anxiously, water dripping from his cap. The rain continued its downpour, periodic flashes following rolls of thunder echoing against the concrete and stone walls of the tunnel. A small river began to flow through the tunnel under the bridge, soaking through their shoes.

The Sheikh grinned diabolically. “Doing your job for you.”

“This is important, damn it!” Savas had to convince him to work from within. “We know this is happening. We've got to figure out who is behind this!”

“That ain't no interest to me. I done well in this business, and no one's wise to me. But money ain't no good if you're six feet under.”

Savas used the only tool he had left: fear. “Do you really think you can hide from them, Rasheed?” The Sheikh's widening eyes betrayed his concern. Savas continued. “Whoever is behind this, they've taken out imams in England and diplomats in New York. They're all over the globe, invisible, professional. Like you said, they don't seem to be familiar with the word ‘mercy,’ or to have an interest in money or negotiation. You're a player, Rasheed. For both sides, we know too well, but a player who makes the network hum. You're one of those important links. It's not a question of whether you have a price on your head — it's how much, and when they will cash in.”

“Fuck you, man!” he shouted, and started to back away.

“You run, and you'll be completely on your own, unprotected and no closer to knowing who is after you. If we can figure this out, we can come down hard on these people, and that will go a lot farther toward saving your ass than trying to hide in a hole. They'll dig you out, Rasheed. Then they'll pull the trigger.”

The Sheikh looked like he was near panic; the truth of Savas's words burrowed inside him. He would either break in alarm from the fear or see that the FBI was throwing him a lifeline — a tenuous one, perhaps, but without it, he was helpless in the water as the sharks circled.

The man inched back toward Savas. He grasped the line.

“What do you want? I don't have much time. They're on to me. Too many small things; can't explain it. But I know.”

Instinct. Savas exhaled softly. “You're to keep your eyes open. We'll assign a team of undercover agents to shadow you. If what you say is true, you'll be the trap.”

“I'll be the fucking bait, man.”

Savas leveled his gaze at the man. Honesty was essential. “Yes, Rasheed. You will be.”

10

Pants Henry lay in an alcohol-induced daze on a hard park bench.

A cool breeze stirred through the darkness surrounding him, rustling leaves and pieces of litter along the sidewalk, searching for morning. The boiling New York summer had not yet triumphed over the spring, and the city had still to warm to its deep tissue of concrete and metal. A rare and soft stillness rested over Manhattan. A good time to sleep it off.

A beige moon hung over the East River, and a winking handful of stars forced their way through the moonlight and the orange haze of streetlamps. Pants breathed slowly on his bench in Dag Hammarskjold Park in Midtown, a brown paper bag on the ground next to him, a pushcart and several bags of cans and sundry objects to the side. After so many years frequenting this park, he was nearly a decoration. The locals tolerated him, and his one intact pants leg, as best they could.

The moonlight darted through the metal grid of a park sculpture that rose from the middle of the plaza. Six spidery pillars of black iron climbed toward the heavens from foot-tall concrete blocks, and six filigreed arches curved upward, intersecting at a small ring to create a netted dome. The moonlight danced through this meshwork, alighting on Pants's haggard face, beard, and the thin wire transmitter/receiver running from ear to mouth. Soft static bursts escaped from the device as he quietly responded.

“Eagle 7, this is Alpha center.” The language was guttural, vaguely Germanic, uninterpretable to anyone who might have overheard.

“Copy,” Pants whispered in the same tongue, his eyes cracked open imperceptibly.

“Report.”

“Plaza is clean.”

“Remain in position. Delta team has exited the target zone. Surveillance has been redirected. The gardeners are planting. Estimate less than ten minutes. Situation is nominal but critical. Execute extreme caution. This is it, Eagle 7.”

“Roger, Alpha center.”

Pants knew that ten minutes was more than enough. The city block at Second Avenue had been re-created in the deserts of the Southwest, the operation rehearsed more times than he wished to remember, with too many different scenarios, too many failures and unexpected events encountered. Nothing could go wrong tonight.

That was why, when he saw motion at the far end of the park, training took over, and the outcome was never in doubt.

He watched as two young men stepped into the plaza. Their voices were loud for the hour, alcohol a likely culprit. They appeared to be fair-skinned blacks or Latinos, with loose-fitting jeans, sharply cut shirts revealing strong muscles, and not a few thin-edged scars. Unmoving on the park bench, Pants was not surprised to see the black-and-gold tattoos. Latin Kings. Fallen from their heyday, broken by police and changing times, their members were still feared. He would need to be focused.

“Alpha center, two unidentifieds, moving toward the garden. Latin Kings. Moving to intercept.”

“Roger that, Eagle 7. Mission critical. Sanitize the plaza.”

“Roger, Alpha Center. In progress.”

He rose slowly from the bench, an old bum seemingly both drunk and hungover. He reached down for his paper bag and shuffled toward the middle of the plaza, walking slowly beneath the iron dome, grasping bars to steady himself. The two Kings slowed, still laughing, but many nights living near death's edge had sharpened intuitions that preserved life. There was nothing unusual about the wino in front of them — Pants had made sure of that — but still they slowed. Pants understood: that place of unreason that awakens in the face of danger whispered deep within them.

He made himself appear oblivious to their motions, stumbling forward and talking to himself and to the brown stone-tiled walkway at his feet. Approaching within ten yards, he raised his head, babbling nonsense and quickening his gait. The young men slowed and stared at each other. They seemed amused, an initial sense of caution replaced with a smirking mischief. Pants watched as the man on the right reached into his pocket and pulled out a short knife, grinning.

The youth's smile faded. Can't hide the eyes. Pants knew the young man did not see the clouded eyes of a drunk; he saw those of a hunter.

With surprising speed, Pants spun into action. From underneath his shabby coat, he removed a handgun, a silencer protruding from the barrel. Without hesitation, he aimed and squeezed the trigger twice. Two soft spits melted into the soft June wind blowing through the park, followed by the wet impact of a human form dropping to the ground. Even as the first figure began its descent to the hard pavement, Pants rotated his arm a few degrees and fired again. The head of the other man arched backward as the second shot exploded near his heart. Both bodies lay crumbled on the ground.

Pants paused, listening, the gun still and upright, his body tense, his head cocked at an angle. From one of the bodies came a soft moaning. The first target placed his hands on the ground in front of him as he tried vainly to rise. Blood covered his chest and hands; his face looked pale. Posture erect, motions sure and controlled, Pants stepped toward the prone man and aimed the weapon.

“No…” the young man whispered, seeing the barrel pointed at his head. He dropped straight down as a shot blew apart the upper right corner of his forehead, spraying blood and bone across the cobbled walkway. Pants knelt down and checked the other body. Satisfied, he glanced around the plaza carefully, also scanning the windows of surrounding buildings, then spoke into his microphone.

“Alpha center, this is Eagle 7. Plaza is sanitized. Repeat, plaza is sanitized.”

“Roger that, Eagle 7. Gardeners have seeded the area. Exit plaza and proceed to rendezvous with flock.”

“Any disposal, Alpha center?”

“Negative, Eagle 7. Unnecessary, and there's no time. After tomorrow, your little mess will be the least of their worries.”

“Roger that. Eagle 7, out.” Pants resumed a stumbling gait and slowly made his way down the plaza walkway toward First Avenue. There, he turned left, uptown, glancing back only momentarily at the dancing currents of the East River. Somewhere, he knew, those currents were carrying the body of the real Pants Henry, who was finally at rest.

Far more intently, he followed the lights alongside the river, staring up at the towering form of the United Nations building at the river's edge.

11

Traffic rushed like swarms of locusts across Second Avenue. Swarms of large, cheap, ugly metallic locusts, thought Fahd Shobokshi, aide to the Saudi Counselor, as he stepped over a fresh pile of dog excrement left by some undoubtedly charming member of this filthy city of infidels. Fahd Shobokshi hated his job. He hated being away from his homeland. He hated having to fawn over the pompous and idiotic head of the Saudi Consulate in Manhattan. He hated the small and poorly furnished hole they called an apartment in this city. He hated living in this nation of sinners and in this chief city of Satan, where a righteous man could not walk two blocks without having to turn away from pornography. He hated the dinners overflowing with Western dishes, the long hours of tedious paperwork. Most of all, he hated the mornings when he knew he would be dressed down by the counselor for being late. Today, he was late again.

The street sign blinked to “walk,” and Fahd dodged the rushing cab as he stepped across the street. There was one thing he did like about the city, and that was the — what did they call it in Urdu? The kulfi wala. Yes, he liked the kulfi wala, he thought pleasantly, as a stinking and sweating American jogger bumped into him. If it made him even later, then he would gain much and lose little. His dressing down was already assured. At the corner of the plaza, the cart was there, as it was every working summer day. The short little Pakistani would be there, too, with his terrible but wonderful kulfi. Fahd had come to love the mornings and his kulfi — so superior to the dripping and too-thick ice cream these Americans preferred. A day felt incomplete without it.

He stepped up to the cart and smiled at the man. These Pakistanis were good people, but they were barely Muslims. An inferior race still tainted by their roots in paganism. But Allah is merciful, and he offers his mercy to all people who follow his precepts. He paid and took his plastic bowl and spoon and began to eat, tasting the cool of the ice milk in the warming June sun, pausing long enough outside of 866 Second Avenue for a final moment of peace before the day began. He glanced over toward the plaza. Police. There were several, and they had begun to fence off a region of the park. More crime in this murderous city.

He glanced up at the tall building, its black-glass windows filled with floor after floor of United Nations’ representatives. It was a rather imposing building, sucking the light out of the nice little corner between the tree-lined plaza and the small park across the street. He'd rather wait outside, especially on a nice day like today. But he could not. He took a deep breath. He was late already, and pausing outside would not benefit his situation.

A moment later, he watched the door to hell open in front of his feet.

He felt turned inside-out in the middle of a fire, pummeled by stones and bathed in rushing air. His ears ached from an assault by a multitude of sounds, as if submerged in water. He reached up to touch them, then pulled his hands down. With blurred vision, he saw that they were covered in blood. Suddenly, his back erupted in a spasm of pain, and his eyes focused. He was lying on the street surrounded by broken glass, nearly underneath a large truck parked on the west side of Second Avenue.

I am across the street. How? Through the wetness of the blood in his injured ears, he began to filter sounds. Alarms, many of them. Building alarms, car alarms; he could not tell. Voices screaming — commands, exclamations. Cries for help. His eyes could see only a brown haze, a thick cloud of dust like a choking fog surrounding the block. Cars were overturned or crushed by what seemed like enormous slabs of concrete. Glass was everywhere, and flakes like confetti rained down from above.

He tried to stand. The pain in his back was paralyzing. He tried again, groaning from the effort, and finally made it to his feet. His left arm was not working; it hung limply at his side. I cannot feel it. He looked down to realize that he was covered in bloody ash. One shoe was missing. Merciful God, what has happened?

He limped forward over what had been the busy street. No cars drove there now. Thousands of shards of glass covered the roadway. He heard sirens, choruses of sirens blaring, it seemed, from all directions. Glancing forward, across the street, he gasped. The cloud of dust was still amazingly thick, a sharp rain descending like sand. It had cleared enough, however, to leave no doubt. A gaping hole was carved out of the earth. Fires ranged along the crater, in nearby vehicles, in the trees of Dag Hammarskjold Park. The corner of Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street was a giant hole, a black pit of nothingness opening its maw to drink the dust above it. The building, his building, a tower of polished black glass and steel, filled with workers from twenty different nations, was simply gone. Blown and dispersed into the air of New York.

For several seconds, he could not move. Police cars and fire trucks arrived at the scene, and the sounds of chaos flowed over his shattered ears like water in a sea cave. A hulking fireman in a mask rushed toward Fahd, shouting at him and pointing across the road, telling him something he could not understand. Fahd nodded dumbly, turning left to retreat back across the street. He glimpsed the pushcart he had visited this morning, in a place and time far from this one, in another world. Next to the overturned cart lay a body unmoving. A small dark form. His Pakistani friend.

Fahd stumbled over debris in the road. He looked down to right himself and noticed an irregular object. He stared in horror. He began to shake. Below him was the face of a woman. Not her head, dear Allah, not her head. Three-quarters of her face was removed from the rest of her body, an eye along with distorted and grotesque lips and cartilage from the nose, tattered bits of a forehead, all soaked in blood. He heard it now, crashing against his bleeding eardrums. Screams and screams and screams of terror. He looked around, turning in every direction, edging away from the demonic mask of death near his feet. The screams grew louder and louder in his head, and he turned to look but could not find the source of the voices. Only as he began to limp maniacally across the road, no longer caring what he stepped on, glass or flesh, did he realize that the screams were his own.

12

John Savas stepped up the curb onto the sidewalk in front of 26 Federal Plaza. He wore a dark suit and sunglasses, and carried a coffee in one hand and the New York Times and his briefcase in the other. As was clear to anyone who knew him, the tension of the last few weeks had begun to extract a toll. His shoulders sagged slightly, and behind the sunglasses, his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

He swung into the main entrance of the FBI building, keeping his coffee level while dodging exiting and entering figures, rarely taking his eyes of the page he was reading. He glanced up at security, nodded toward the well-known faces, handed off his items, went through the required checks, grabbed his items, and found his place back in the article as he approached the elevators.

Several figures were waiting in line. He smiled, glimpsing a young woman with waist-length red hair. Today she wore a bright-green dress complemented by red sneakers, and stood apart from the crowd waiting for the elevators, staring straight up at the wall to her left and seemingly caught in another trance of some kind. Savas glanced back down at his article and slowed to a stop behind her.

“Greetings, Kemo Sabe,” the young woman spoke.

“Someday I'm going to learn how to sneak up on you, Angel.”

“I doubt that, John.”

“Yeah, so do I.”

“You look like shit.”

Savas laughed. “Thanks, doll. I'm looking forward to the weekend and a little rest.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Lightfoote, moving toward the elevator. Before Savas could process her words, the bell rang and the doors opened.

As soon as Savas stepped out of the elevator onto his floor, he knew something was wrong. The normal rhythms of work were completely out-of-whack as agents darted from place to place among a din of rising voices. Already he could see Kanter in the back pointing and shouting commands; then, spotting Savas, he called him over with an imperious wave of his hand.

“See you soon, Captain Overlord, sir,” Lightfoote said sweetly.

“What?” asked Savas distractedly, but by the time he turned to look, she was already flitting across the room. Savas spilled his coffee over his New York Times, cursed, and marched forward after dropping both in the trash.

Kanter was in prime form. Already his tie was askew and his receding gray hair hung in growing disarray. A fire burned in his eyes, and his jaw jutted forward, signaling that he was in the crazed problem-solving mode that made him so skilled as an administrator, as well as such a pain in the ass. Kanter didn't waste any time getting to the point.

“This is it, John!” he said, grabbing the ex-cop's arm in a vicelike grip and dragging him across the room. “No drill. We have a bona fide event right now in New York City.”

“What?” sputtered Savas. “An attack? Today?”

“That's right. Looks like it's down by the UN — not the UN proper, thank goodness. We have some confirmation on that, at least. But in the immediate area. Set your team up now, John. I want everything you can get on this pouring in ASAP.” Kanter left his side and stormed off toward another team.

Savas headed toward the Operations Room for Intel 1. On his way he banged on the office doors of his group members. “Let's go! We need to move right now to the OR!” Of his six team members, only the angular form of Matt King emerged.

“I supposed from all this chaos that we must—”

“Shut it, Matt. Mail me the essay. This is real. Let's move.” Savas turned and nearly crashed into the hairy form of Hernandez.

“Manuel, please, to the Operations Room. This one looks real, and we might just burn through all the wires you duct-taped together. I need you in there making sure we fly straight; you got it?”

“I'm on it.”

“Please don't tell me we're running any beta versions of anything.”

“I live by a don't-ask-don't-tell policy for software, John.”

Savas stared harshly at the ceiling for a moment. “The system better not crash.” He pushed past Hernandez and felt him following behind as they headed to the Operations Room. Along the way, they were joined by J. P. Rideout and Frank Miller. The four strode into the OR.

“OK, where's Rebecca?” asked Savas, glancing around the room with some anxiety. Over the last few years, he'd come to count more on Rebecca Cohen than on anyone in the group. Her sharp mind, grounded personality, and holistic way of thinking kept the team focused with the right perspective. She was also a whiz with the crises system Hernandez had set up. Today would be a bad day for her to call in sick.

“I'm here, John,” she said, whisking into the OR. He breathed easier.

“All right, now if we can only get Angel in here, we can start to break this thing down.”

Hernandez tugged on his arm and pointed across the room. Savas followed his hand to the end of the half-moon desk. Lightfoote sat there; somehow she had entered before they had come in, or perhaps she had floated in like some ghost without anyone noticing. As he looked at her, she paused her furious typing to raise a hand, eyes still on the screen, giving Savas the thumbs-up.

Aside from Savas and Hernandez, the remaining members of Intel 1 were busy logging in and bringing up the system. Awaiting commands from Savas, some were already running the analysis software.

“OK, folks, all I've got for the present is that there was an attack Midtown East by the UN. Rebecca, let's bring up the police and fire data. Angel, can you get a live satellite view up?”

An enormous projection screen was draped over the far wall, some ten feet in front of the table. It flashed to life, showing five smaller sub-divisions superimposed over a larger background. One screen, corresponding to Lightfoote's terminal, blinked and came to life, displaying a view from space. It quickly zoomed into the island of Manhattan just south of the Queensboro Bridge. Smoke obscured a region of several blocks near the United Nations building. Other screens flashed and showed a stream of text — emergency bulletins from several New York City agencies.

“Excellent. Rebecca, why don't you run the link to Larry's office and dump the live feed. OK, what do we have folks?”

In the time it took him to say these things, several of the other screens flashed on, revealing varied scenes. One was cutting between local and national coverage of the event on television. Another was funneling information from Internet search engines through one of Manuel's algorithms.

“Explosive device, John,” Cohen called out, processing the information and integrating it faster than anyone. Lightfoote cut in, “Second Avenue, near the plaza. Can't see through the smoke.”

An altered image of the scene displayed in false color revealed no obscuring smoke but rather illuminated solid structures — buildings, cars, and rubble — in an eerie green.

“Filtering it through the IATIA satellite, looks like a hole…there!” King called out. Several intakes of breath were heard over the clacking of keyboards.

“Damn,” said Savas. “Something was blown to hell and back.”

Immediately, another image of the area occupied the screen controlled by Rideout. It showed the same region, in real color and without the hole.

“SAT photo before the bombing, sometime last week,” Rideout chimed in. “It's the corner of Second and Forty-Sixth Street.”

“OK, people, what is it? Let's find out what was in that hole.”

Cohen leaned back. “John, fire department chatter confirms what we're seeing. There was a massive explosion. There is some severe damage, and there are reports of many injuries and secondary carnage from car fires and falling debris.”

“Well, they've come back to visit again, folks, that much is clear. Anyone know what the hell they hit yet?”

“Got it! It's a UN office building. 866 Second Avenue,” said Rideout. An image flashed, showing a tall, black-glass building. “Damn. I'm getting one international office located there after another: representatives from Ecuador, Greece, Guyana, Honduras, even the Saudi General Consulate…they're spread out on different floors and offices.”

Miller muttered, “I don't think it's gonna matter what floor those poor bastards were on.”

“No, indeed,” echoed Savas. “OK, so, what we have is an attack on UN personnel, a UN building for all practical purposes, with enough shit to take the entire building down.”

“Structural damage to neighboring buildings is minimal from both the SAT and chatter, John,” said Cohen.

“OK. Your point?”

“Well, they didn't use airplanes this time, that's for sure,” said Miller.

Cohen nodded. “This was a surgical strike, John. Whoever did this managed to obliterate an entire building in midtown Manhattan without much collateral damage. Unless they got supremely lucky, we're looking at some very highly skilled munitions work.”

“I guess they've been busy in those caves all these years,” said Savas, turning toward the screen. “Manuel, what do we have in terms of munitions analysis?”

“Ah, John, that isn't exactly anything I know much about or that can be done easily with software. We'll need to farm this out to forensics.”

“Yeah, figured. But that means we're waiting as usual to sift through the aftermath. This is in real-time, folks. OK, what else can we pull out of this?”

“CNN, Fearless Leader,” said Lightfoote.

Her terminal cut to a live broadcast from the news organization. A reporter stood before a mob of people kept at a distance by police and fire department personnel, who themselves were partially obscured by pouring smoke. The reporter's words were barely audible over the sound of sirens and voices.

“…about half an hour ago, Brian. This is as close as our crew was able to get. As you can see, there is simply an incredible amount of smoke, and the building lies in complete ruins. Onlookers report an enormous explosion, or series of explosions. One elderly woman said the ground shook and she nearly fell.”

“Doesn't look like Second Avenue to me…” started King.

“It's not,” said Savas. “It's not even New York. Go to full screen, Rebecca.”

The image grew to fill the entire projection screen. People were running in all directions while the reporter continued speaking. Savas grabbed a chair, flipped it around so that its back faced him, and sat down as he listened to the footage. His hands gripped the chair back tightly.

“I'm sorry, Brian, it's just chaos here; I can't hear you. Let me repeat, there has been a major explosion at the Saudi Arabian Embassy here in Washington, DC. None of us can get close enough to see what's going on, but from what we can see, it seems that the embassy has been severely damaged…of considerable power.…Police and fire crews…uncertain…injuries…” The transmission was breaking up slightly. King used this moment to speak.

“John, I've got this on the SAT.”

“Put it up.”

The green-colored image occluded a portion of the news feed. Next to it, King superimposed a photograph of the Saudi Embassy from space. In the false-color image that cut through the smoke and clouds, the results of the explosion were obvious to all.

“My God, the whole thing's gone,” said Rideout. “Just like here. This is like some 9/11 replay. They're hitting us in New York and Washington at the same time.”

Rideout's words were like blows to the stomach. Savas felt himself become unhinged in time. Towers like sand crumbling in the wind. Falling, falling slowly, a million tons of concrete and metal…and flesh and bone. Police beneath, young officers, daughters…sons. Beneath a mountain falling…

Cohen's voice became a lifeline.

“John, you're not going to believe this.”

Savas's eyes, unfocused and in another time, turned toward her and became completely alert. She was holding a cell phone.

“One of the agents guarding the Sheikh is on the phone. They lost him. Two of them are down. Somebody took them out, and the Sheikh bolted. Our man is wounded. He doesn't know if the Sheikh is alive or dead.”

13

The group sat still in the dim lighting and bright screens of the Intel 1 crisis center, listening silently to a cell phone message play over the speaker in the room. They heard a strained voice, winded, the man obviously hurt and struggling to speak.

“They knew we were there,” he panted. “Shots came — Jones and Richards went down. I think they're dead.” He coughed, a harsh and grating sound. “I'm hit, but I can move. The rat ran. I tried to follow,” he paused, out of breath, requiring several seconds to speak again. “Couldn't keep up. Trace my cell. I need help. Losing blood.”

Cohen stopped the playback. Her voice was soft and flat. “We have an ambulance on the way.”

All eyes in Intel 1 turned to Savas. On the screens were the continuing images of the terror attacks: flashing lights of emergency vehicles, smoke, and statements to the press from US and foreign government officials. A voice called out that Kanter was on his way down.

“All right, people, we literally have the world blowing up around us. Let's think carefully but quickly.” Savas paced around the room, talking as much toward the floor and ceiling as to the members of his team. “We have major attacks in New York and Washington, coordinated attacks, unlike anything since 9/11. The FBI, the White House, the nation will demand that the majority of our resources be focused on these attacks — and they're right. So, unless Larry countermands me on this, I want most of you busting your asses to get everything you can on these bombings. However, if anything, this ambush on our protection squad convinces me that we are onto something. It may be too late — the Sheikh may be dead. But we don't know that. I'll work with Frank to try to locate him, intercept him, and bring him in if he's not already flower food. Any objections?”

“Damn inconvenient timing!” barked Kanter, who was standing in the doorway listening. “Your contact surely excels in planning, orchestrating his near murder right as we scramble to cover this nightmare!”

“Someone may indeed have a sense of timing, Larry, but I don't think it's the Sheikh.”

Kanter waved off Savas's anger. “You and Miller go, and try like hell not to get yourselves killed if you find him — these boys out there are not playing around. Meanwhile, Intel 1 will be a little short-staffed but will sacrifice increasing amounts of their lives, or at least sleep, to make up the difference.” Kanter turned toward the group, focusing on Rebecca. “Agent Cohen, I assume that you have no objections if I elevate you to temporary group leader in John's absence?”

“No, Larry, of course—”

“Good. Because I've got more calls than I have call-waiting circuits, and I don't have time to babysit you people. Your job is to figure out what the hell happened, who's responsible, and, if possible, have them in custody this evening.”

“We'll do our best…sir,” said Cohen.

Kanter frowned and stormed out of the room.

Savas looked at the ex-marine and sighed. “OK, Frank, you and I will carve out a little corner of the OR. The rest of you — Rebecca has the wheel.”

Cohen nodded but instead walked over toward Savas and pulled him aside. He blinked. She almost looked angry.

“John, you were unconscious after Indian Point for two days. You suffered radiation sickness and a broken rib. Do you think you need to be chasing this street punk and those assassins down while all the rest of this is going on? Is this mission really that critical?”

“Yes, I think so. Something important is tied into this.” He tried to calm her. “Look, we'll be careful, like Larry said. We know there are some nasties buzzing around this one.”

She just stared at him disbelievingly. “Sure, zero to sixty in 5.4 seconds, crashing explosives with a forklift in a radioactive death cell. Was your monster truck trick careful, too?”

Savas was taken aback. “Rebecca, I did what I had to there! Those explosives were rigged to blow. The cooling rods were completely exposed!”

Cohen nodded but with a frown on her face, her eyes distant. “John, it's not the details. It's the pattern. This is becoming a habit, don't you think?”

“What is?”

“You nearly getting yourself killed on every case.”

Savas looked away. This was a direction he didn't want any conversation to go. Not now, with buildings coming down and contacts on the run. Not with Rebecca.

Miller delivered him. The muscled agent strode up to the pair. “John, let's move. Manuel let me have the keys to the car, and I'm bringing up the tracking system. Let's see where he's running.”

Savas avoided Cohen's gaze and followed the ex-marine. Maybe the Sheikh wasn't the only one running.

There was a counterpoint of activity in the room as the majority of Intel 1 continued to focus on the unfolding terrorist attacks. Savas and Miller commandeered a terminal and went to work tracking down his contact.

“Manuel has transferred control of our communications software, John,” Miller announced, typing furiously on the keyboard. “I think I know what I'm doing with it. Look—here! His phone has a GPS, and we can track him. He's in Queens, apparently not moving — assuming, of course, that it's him alive with the phone.”

“Try the cell. If he's stopped running, he might answer.”

“Punching it, using your number as the caller,” said Miller. “I'll run a general scan on the phone as well.”

The digital tones of the dialed number played over the small computer speakers. There was a click, and a voice answered.

“Fuck you, G-man!” came the welcome. “A lot of good your muscle did me.”

“Shut up, Rasheed!” yelled Savas into the computer microphone. “We've got agents dead who were covering your ass! We need to come in and get you.”

“You'd better!”

“We will!”

“They know; it all started after I talked to you.”

“What started? Who's they, Rasheed?”

“Fuck that! No time! I need protection! Your men are down, useless. I need to come in!”

“OK, Rasheed, we know where you are.”

Miller covered the microphone and whispered to Savas “John, so does someone else. His cell's being tracked.”

Savas felt a surge of adrenaline. “Who?”

“Checking…no one legit!”

Christ! “Rasheed, you've got to hang up and call me from another cell, a new cell, prepaid, or a pay phone. Your cell is tagged. They're tracking you.”

“Fuck!” The phone went dead.

Miller turned to Savas. “He'll move from there; he's smart. He'll call us when he's got another phone.”

Savas nodded. “I hope so. Meanwhile, we know where he is, so let's get there.”

“Yeah,” said Miller, “before someone else does.”

14

The drive to Queens became an exercise in patience in the face of panic. Law enforcement had locked down all of Manhattan — bridges, tunnels, airports. Getting on or off the island required long waits through the stalled traffic and repeated discussions with police and national guard personnel to achieve clearance. Miller drove, and Savas could only boil inside as he played through multiple scenarios — most ending up with the Sheikh dead before they could get to him. He also did not forget that they were heading into a covert war zone, where unknown ciphers were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse. He had two dead agents, and a growing list of downed assassination targets, to remind him.

He reached over and removed his pistol, placing it on his lap. In a quick series of motions, he lifted the weapon, pressed the magazine catch, and let the cartridge drop onto his legs. He pulled the slide back and inspected the chamber to ensure it was empty, then allowed the slide to spring forward. He pointed the gun toward the right side of the car and pulled the trigger. The click was clear, smart, and drowned by the sound of tires over the Queensboro Bridge.

“You planning on breaking it down on the way over?” asked Miller wryly, his eyes on the road, the speedometer approaching sixty.

Savas shook his head. “Figured we may be reloading today, Frank. Wanted to have a peek at things inside.”

Miller nodded. “Shot placement is everything. I've seen guys unload and hit an assailant with more than ten rounds in the wrong places. The man just kept firing. Even without drugs, a determined man can take a lot of incidental damage and fight through the pain. Got to unplug the battery — heart, lungs, major organs.”

“I know, Frank,” said Savas, but the ex-marine continued.

“In the war, in Afghanistan, I saw shit you wouldn't believe. I've seen a two-twenty-pound pile of Special Forces muscle drop dead from a piece a shrapnel no bigger than a needle. I've seen men drag themselves with half a leg blown off, still firing, screaming obscenities, until they dropped from blood loss. The worst are the religious nuts, the jihadists who believe every dead American is another virgin in paradise. I've seen those bastards filled with ammo, and they keep coming. Human, of course — just got to hit them in the right place.” He shook his head sharply, as if trying to shake the visions out of his mind. “Seen the opposite, of course — young Arab kids who take a shot in the leg and learn the hard way that their faith was abstract. Those fall fast. Bunch of bawling kids on the side while you deal with the maniacs.”

“Sounds like hell, Frank.”

Miller smiled sharply. “I've heard it called so. When you're there, it just is what it is.”

Savas's cell rang out, and he picked up.

“Rasheed? Where are you?”

Miller concentrated, trying to hear the words spoken on the other end. Savas continued. “OK, we're almost there. We're going to pull up near the Astoria line. You'll see a black town car, FBI written all over it. Yes, I know! But it's all we had access to! In case you didn't realize, all hell's broken out in the city today!”

Savas continued after the voice spoke for several seconds. “If you are being followed, we'll have you covered. Come up Thirtieth Avenue toward the subway line. We'll be hidden close to the station, near the car, but we'll see down the street for a long way. Anything suspicious and we'll move on it.”

Savas closed the phone.

“One of the subway stations, John? Kinda public for this.”

Savas paused a moment, deep in thought. “I know, but I needed a place he could identify and get to fast, without confusion. Also, it will be harder to pull anything off in a crowded place.”

Miller raised his eyebrows. “If they do, we could get some collateral damage.”

Savas nodded, his face troubled. He had accepted the risk but was burdened by it anyway. The location — so close to the church. Why did I choose to meet him there?

“He was clean?”

“Said he was using a pay phone.” He turned toward Miller. “I can't believe his cell was being tracked! Who has that kind of access, Frank?”

“Phone companies and select government agencies, John. You know that.”

“The CIA hit squads? Damn it, I don't believe that, Frank!”

Miller shrugged. “No one else could have that access, John. No one.”

“To pull off all these kills, they'd need worldwide access. It doesn't make sense.”

“Well, someone's tapped into US communication networks, all to track down this one guy. Either they really want him, or they have a kind of casual access that is frightening.”

“He's not that important.”

“Then we ought to be worried about who we are dealing with, John.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

The Sheikh was due to be on foot, moving up the street toward the station from the west. After checking the platform, Savas and Miller quickly descended from the elevated tracks above Thirty-First Street. Miller sat down at an outdoor café and was the perfect model of a relaxed two-hundred-and-thirty-pound marine enjoying the fine June weather. Savas took a more awkward position, slowly gazing over the newspaper stand in front of a deli. Soon, he had run out of papers to stare at and began to examine the produce out on display when he noticed a movement from Miller's direction.

The marine had spotted their quarry first and rose from his seat, heading toward the street crossing. Savas's cell vibrated as Miller sent an alert to his phone. Across the street and halfway down the block, weaving erratically, was the harried figure of the Sheikh. Oh, Christ! Savas tensed instinctively as he realized that the man was nearly running. He and Miller locked eyes for a moment, the communication enough, then both began to cross the street in the direction of their informant. Savas reached down and felt for his gun in his side holster, hidden behind the side of his suit jacket. He continued to zero in on the Sheikh, while scanning the sea of people behind him.

The hunter was hard to miss. A tallish man rounded the corner at the far end of the block, and, like the Sheikh, he moved too fast, counter to the normal flow of pedestrians. Savas heard Miller shout from the right. Both men pulled their guns and began sprinting toward the Sheikh, who had nearly reached the corner. Several people began to scream, and Savas waved them out of their way.

“FBI! Everyone clear the way! Clear the way!”

The pedestrian traffic parted like the Red Sea, some people dropping to the ground, some rushing into buildings, most running either right or left of Savas. Savas saw the Sheikh and waved him down.

“Drop! Drop down!”

The Sheikh dropped. His action, and the parting crowd, exposed the figure pursuing him. A gun was in the assassin's hand. As the killer sprinted, he steadied the weapon, aiming it at the Sheikh.

Savas braced himself against a lamppost and fired. Gunshots exploded from his and Miller's weapons. People screamed. Bullets whizzed past him, sending shards of shattered concrete into the air.

The battle was brief, the assassin caught in an unexpected crossfire. Savas watched him stumble and fall backward. His weapon arm struck the sidewalk, sending the gun rattling behind him.

“Frank, the Sheikh!” screamed Savas. Miller dashed forward to the prone figure of their contact. Savas approached the downed killer, gun steadied in his hands and aimed forward. Four shots had found their mark: two in the chest, one to the gun shoulder, and the last either a graze or partial-penetration head wound. Savas knew the wounds were life threatening. But the man was alive! Miller came up to his side with the Sheikh in tow, who spat out curses.

“Shut it!” yelled Savas, as he pulled out his cell, mashing several buttons. “Getting medical help here as soon as possible. We aren't losing this bastard! He's our key, Frank. I promise you, one way or the other, he'll lead us to the truth.”

The man mumbled several words, then suddenly came to consciousness. For a moment he looked confused; then he seemed to place himself and his situation. Even seriously wounded, he managed to attempt an attack. Savas, uninjured, was more than ready, and he forced the man back down. The killer relaxed, having spent most of his available energy. Savas grabbed him by the shirt collar.

“Nice try, asshole. While you're awake, you should know that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?” The man whispered something Savas could not understand. “I'll take that as a ‘yes.’”

Suddenly, before Savas had even released his grip on the man, an impact blew open the man's forehead, showering the three of them with blood. Stunned momentarily, they didn't move. Then Savas turned quickly toward Miller.

“Get him down! Get him—” But it was too late. As Miller reached over to grab the Sheikh, a loud slap sounded, and their contact arched his neck, a shot blasting through his spine and brainstem. He dropped instantly to the ground, his vital processes immediately halted. He was dead.

“No, damn it!” shouted Savas, as he drew his fists up sharply and pounded the hard concrete. The trap had been reversed! Another assassin had been waiting or in pursuit. He finished the job on the wounded killer, then turned his sights on the Sheikh.

Guns drawn, Miller and Savas scanned the general direction from which the bullet had originated. No further shots followed. The second assassin was gone.

“He shot him first.” It was Miller's voice. The ex-marine was staring at the body of the dead assassin. “As much as they wanted your contact dead, they wanted more to make sure we didn't take that killer.”

Savas nodded, the implications dawning on him. He slowly stood up, his palms numb and clenched, one feeling strangely pricked. He turned his hand over and opened his palm. Gleaming yellow in the sunlight was a golden necklace, torn unintentionally from the dead assassin's neck. Fresh blood stained the gold links. At the bottom hung a golden pendant. It was a strange object, shaped like an anchor, and unlike anything Savas had ever seen.

The harsh face of a bird was carved in its side.

15

In the fading light of the June evening, John Savas watched the old women file out of the church in Astoria. A sea of black with gray caps, they walked or shuffled, some limping down the steps toward the streets. In the midst of the black tide, there were the more nimble steps of the young, small islands lit with bright colors in the midst of the older generation. Vespers was over, the last prayers of the day having been read. Soon, the cantor himself walked out into the falling night. Gazing up at the gold-painted dome and the neon-white cross, he lit a cigarette, crossed himself, and stepped down into the night. In seconds he was lost in the swirling currents of New Yorkers flowing across the busy streets.

After several minutes, when it was clear that the church had emptied, Savas stepped out of a black Lincoln Continental. His polished shoes slapped the pavement as he made his way toward the steps. He wore a black suit, formal yet unimpressive in its make. Functional. His shoes clacked up the stairs to bring him before the entrance, where he crossed himself and pushed one of the doors open slowly, peering inside. Satisfied, he stepped through completely and let the door close softly behind him.

Inside the church, a palpable stillness hung in the air along with the remaining incense. It was always like this, he thought, taking comfort from the fact. That period after the service when no other human being was around seemed to him the most holy, devoid of the voices and noises of men and women, yet still full with what he could only think of as the spirits of the worshippers, or the angels themselves still lingering. The space held a thoughtful, prayerful silence more pregnant than the chanting itself. He dropped several coins into the slot underneath the rows of beeswax candles, rows of varying lengths and thicknesses beside the icons at the front of the narthex. He took two candles and lit them from those already placed in the sand, thinking first of his son, then of his ex-wife. He crossed himself again, kissed the icon of Christ, and stepped into the nave.

The lights were very low, and the candles around the body of the church shone brightly. He could smell the incense now. Father Timothy was stowing away his vestments. He looked up, squinting at the visitor in the pews.

“John?” his voice echoed in the dim air between them. “John Savas?”

“Hello, Father.”

The priest smiled. “John! It's good to see you after all these years.”

“I wasn't sure that it would be,” he replied.

The priest frowned. “Of course it is! Let's not have any such nonsense from you about this.” The priest came forward. John Savas took his hand, kissed it, and crossed himself. The priest tried vainly to pull his hand back and wave the traditional gesture away, but he submitted to it in the end.

“Father Timothy, I've come for confession. That is, if you have the time tonight.”

The priest stood suddenly, still and serious. He gave Savas a long look. “OK, John, give me a second. I was just putting everything away. Please, wait for me in the corner, by the icon of Saint Nicholas.”

Savas nodded and walked over to the left side of the nave. There, from just above the floor to more than fifteen feet up the side of the wall, was the icon of the great ascetic from Anatolia, now western Turkey, his brown robes flowing from sandaled feet to the receding hairline at the top of his head. Savas always found it amusing how Western Christians had taken this harsh monk and dressed him up in a red suit, strapped him to a sleigh with reindeer out of the pagan Northern myths, and made him so fat it was hard to imagine him ever fasting. This was the man who had slapped a heretical bishop at the First Council of Nicea, after all! As a child, Savas never quite felt like telling his friends that underneath the icon in his church, in a golden case about the size of a breadbox, were the bones of Santa Claus himself. It was likely that any explanations of the veneration of relics would have failed to bridge this cultural divide.

Father Timothy bustled over and laid a prayer book on a marble handrail. He gestured to a chair, but Savas shook his head. He'd been sitting too much, analyzing too much, until his eyes were blurry. He'd stand for this.

“Behold, my child, Christ stands here invisibly receiving your confession. Do not be ashamed and do not fear, and do not withhold anything from me; but without doubt, tell all you have done and receive forgiveness from the Lord Jesus Christ. Lo, He is before us, and I am only a witness, bearing testimony before Him of all things which you say to me. But if you conceal anything from me, you shall have the greater sin. Take heed, therefore, lest having come to the physician, you depart unhealed.”

It was a routine Savas had known since his days as an altar boy. Yet now it was alien, because he was alien, because he had come and gone through a place that had changed him. He did not know anymore who he was, or who God was. The priest sat down in the chair. He had aged significantly since John Savas was a boy, and it showed in his movements and in his stamina.

“I'll make this short, Father. Not that I'm happy with myself or anything. But there are things that are real and important, and I need to say them. Most important, I suppose, is that I don't know anymore if I believe in God.”

The priest showed no outward sign of surprise or dismay at this admission. He merely replied after Savas's long pause, “Go on, John.”

John Savas looked up at the icon of Saint Nicholas. Who was he? Who am I?

“I'm serious about that, Father. I don't disbelieve. But I realized that the idea of God I had in my mind couldn't be real. I mean, the idea from my parents, priests, Sunday school teachers, friends, and family — the myth we were all accepting, I just can't believe in that anymore. Whatever God is, it's not this simple, orderly, Father Christmas idea so many have. I really don't know if there is a God. I certainly don't know the nature of God. I don't know how to trust any man to tell me what the truth is.”

Father Timothy gazed at him in silence, impassively. After a few more moments went by, during which time Savas had not spoken, the priest nodded slowly, as if to himself.

“John, I'm not going to tell you to make a pilgrimage to the island of Tinos and crawl up the hill on your knees to the Church of the Megalohari. I will say that you are at a most dangerous, and yet promising place. Dangerous, because your soul stands on the edge of nothingness into which it might fall, forever to be lost. Promising because only there can you truly reach out to the Mystery that is God.”

“Father, I don't feel like I'm reaching out to anything. I can't see anything leading me anywhere. If there's a cliff, I won't know it.”

“John, you are reaching out, or you would not be here tonight. I would ask you not to turn away from prayer, if you can do that. That is your link to God.”

“OK, Father. I'll try. But I don't know who or what I'm praying to.”

The old priest smiled. “None of us truly do. When we do, we are either entering sainthood or staring at a false idol.”

The priest stood up from the chair and opened the small leather-bound book he had brought. Savas was surprised, as he had not expected the priest to accept his confession. But habit was long in him, and he knelt down before Father Timothy, who placed the stole over his head.

“O God, our Savior, Who by Thy prophet Nathan granted unto repented David pardon of his transgressions, and has accepted the Manasses’ prayer of penitence, do Thou, in Thy love toward mankind, accept also Thy servant John who repents of his sins which he has committed, overlooking all that he has done, pardoning his offenses and passing by his iniquities. Unto Thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

The priest finished reading the prayers. John Savas stood and crossed himself. Father Timothy walked him to the door of the church.

“This week's events have brought you here, haven't they?” he asked.

John Savas stared up into the night sky, hearing the rushing sounds of the subway line behind them. “They were the trigger. My life has brought me here, Father. I just don't know where it's taking me next.”

16

"Special Forces, served in Afghanistan and Iraq for a number of years,” said Rebecca Cohen, reading off the screen. “And get this: discharge code: 28B/HKA — Discreditable Incidents — Civilian or Military. What does that mean?”

Savas turned to Miller. “Frank, any idea?”

Miller shook his head. “It's not good, but it can cover a lot of ground. You could sweep almost anything under that. One thing is sure; he was out of control in some way.”

“So, we have an out-of-control former special-ops soldier functioning as an assassin who was chasing down a player in the underground terrorist network. Doesn't sound like a trained CIA operative.”

“Not sure he was the assassin,” said J. P. Rideout. “Sure, he was muscle hired to kill the guy, but he was sloppy. Looks like they needed someone fast and had to settle for poor quality control. When the Sheikh caused them problems, they brought in a second, an expert, who got the job done seriously.”

Savas sighed. They were back to the death squad idea. The growing mystique behind these kills was becoming almost superstitious. “Look, he was part of something. If these are CIA death squads running around the world murdering people, why hire a flaky ex-SEAL who could blow the entire thing? There aren't enough super-assassins in the world to cover all the territory these guys are covering. It's like a little army. Some soldiers perform better than others.”

“Army?” asked Matt King, his eyebrows raised.

“Honestly, people! These aren't superheroes! For the kind of impact they've had—”

“If you're right that they are all linked,” interrupted King.

“Yes, if I'm right, that kind of impact on several continents has to be associated with a large personnel base. There's no other way. When your operation gets too big, you always make recruitment mistakes. I think this is one of them. Besides, rogue CIA assassin teams don't suddenly get all organized and vengeful! This is a group, a large group, with a purpose behind it.”

There was silence in the room. Savas decided not to press the argument further.

“What else do we have?” he asked sullenly.

Cohen swiveled away from the computer screen and sighed. “That's it, John. Hardly any background. He was discharged four years ago, disappeared off the map, and showed up two thousand miles away from home brandishing a weapon in Queens.”

“There's got to be more. This is our only link!” he said in frustration. “Anything on that pendant?”

“No. Why?”

“I don't know,” began Savas hesitantly. “Not many men wear jewelry. If they do, it's usually a cross, Star of David, St. Christopher's medal, dog tags. Men tend to wear pendants that have meaning rather than as decoration. That pendant is unusual. Anything unusual can potentially tell us something.”

“All we have is an anchor with a bird's face,” said Rideout. “Not sure where we go with that.”

Savas was ready to call the meeting to an end when Hernandez came bursting into the room.

“John, you're going to love this,” he said, dropping a printout on the countertop beside the computer.

The other members of the group drew closer and strained to see the page. Savas picked it up. His brows furrowed as he stared at the strange collection of figures running across the page. After a few moments, he looked toward Hernandez expectantly.

“OK, Manuel, I'm stumped. What is this?”

Hernandez shrugged. “No idea. It was encoded in the big mysterious audiotapes you gave me.”

“They're runes.” It was Lightfoote. She had wiggled her way in between several bodies, her head almost on Savas's forearm, orange hair spilling everywhere, her gaze full on the page.

“Runes?” asked Hernandez, perplexed.

Lightfoote cocked her head at him. “Yeah, roooones,” she dragged out the vowel, mocking his question. “Letters. Old. Magical.”

“Oh, brother,” said Rideout under his breath.

“She's right,” said Cohen, staring closely at the paper. “Not sure of the writing system, but look — clearly letters of some kind, with broad strokes and simple forms. Old ones designed not for pen and paper but for carving, wood, or stone.”

Savas turned toward the former programmer. “Manuel, where did these letters come from?”

“Runes,” piped Lightfoote. Savas ignored her.

“That's the craziest part, John. The audio transmission, with the weird language no one understands, it was double-coded.”

“Meaning?”

“There was a second message overlaid at high frequencies. I found it by running the message through a Fourier analysis. In general, you would need to know to look for it, or you'd never extract it. The second message is coded, but it's clearly bitmapped imaging. I had to try a few permutations, but once I got the encoding right, out popped this. It's like a page worth of text and a diagram of what looks like a geographical region. These are instructions for the receiver.”

He handed Savas another printout, diagrams of a site.

“Looks like an assault plan,” said Miller.

“How can you be sure?” asked Savas.

“Style, points of entry, defense lines, observation points — here, and here. I've seen a thousand such drawings. Military style is easy to spot, once you know what to look for. I'd wager this is a plan of attack.”

“This is crazy,” said Savas. “I mean, hidden messages within messages, written in letters no one can read? Seems a bit extreme.”

“What about this doesn't, John?” asked Hernandez. “These guys are totally FUBAR. Secret language, layered codes — they set things up so that no one could possibly figure out what they were talking about. Now Frank says they are commando hit teams?” He looked at Miller, who merely shrugged. “Really out there, man.”

“John,” Cohen began, “just why are we looking into this audio? It must be related to the assassinations, but how?”

Savas frowned. “Larry's mum on that. Super spy, top-secret decoder ring material, I assume. I don't think we can find that out.”

“Think again,” said Hernandez. All eyes were riveted on him. “The map is laid out in precise detail, down to the friggin' coordinates. Convert to longitude and latitude, and bang, instant top-secret information.”

“And, so where is it?” asked Savas with irritation.

“Afghan-Paki border, dudes. Deep in the mountains. No-man's-land of terrorists and drug lords. Nice spot for a military assault plan.”

There was a pregnant silence. Savas whistled. “Larry, that bastard. He should have told us.”

“Told us what?” asked Matt King in confusion.

“Larry was called up to DC once we raised the lid on a connection between these murders. He came back with instructions relating to those killings, and this mysterious audiotape.” A dawning awareness spread across King's face. Hernandez nodded and looked back at Savas, who continued. “That's right. We have a connection not only to isolated hits but to larger, military-style missions in hostile territory. Secretive missions, not using any known military codes. Somebody is very serious about their pursuit of Islamic baddies.”

He checked his watch. “That's great work, Manuel, even if I don't know where the hell this is all leading.” Savas turned to the group. “Folks, this has been fun, but it's been assigned to Miller and me, if you remember. In ten minutes, we're all due in Larry's office for a breakdown on the much bigger story going on around us. Maybe these guys are purging their ranks, but we still have some serious terrorist activity going on, right on our front lawn. Let's minimally prepare, get me and Frank up to speed on the latest that you have, and head on up there.”

The members of Intel 1 scrambled. Savas stared at the screen, hardly seeing the ex-soldier's file. In his right hand was a page of archaic runes and an attack map, and running through his mind, the face and pendant of a dead assassin. Did it all fit together? He was sure it did. Somewhere was the key to link these strange bits of evidence and the progression of killings across the globe. In the chaos surrounding them, he hoped they could find it.

17

Savas's mind raced as he listened to Cohen's animated words. Their FBI vehicle crossed over the George Washington Bridge, en route to the New Jersey distribution offices of a military weapons manufacturer. The company representatives had sounded shell-shocked when he explained the reasons the FBI wanted to speak with them. They were also in full denial mode. Their explosives? Impossible. Well, the analysis had shown it was all too possible. These guys had some serious explaining to do, and Savas was going to be there to hear it.

“John, are you listening?”

He refocused. “Yes, Rebecca, sorry. I'm thinking ahead to the meeting today.”

“So then, what do we have?”

Savas sighed. “Two massive bombings targeting foreign embassies in separate cities. We've got the UN screaming their lungs out at the United States, and half of their reps booking flights out of the country. We've got the president on TV trying to calm the nation down, trying to calm the whole world down, while offering our jobs to the meat grinder if we don't find out what in the name of God is going on here. That's what we've got.”

The Hudson streamed by two hundred feet below them. Savas could sense their driver trying to listen in on the conversation. He couldn't blame the man. The world seemed to be burning down. “Still no group has claimed responsibility.”

“It's crazy,” said Cohen, shaking her head. “There was nothing, nothing on any of the watches for terrorist chatter, which makes no sense! Since when does a terrorist organization plan and execute coordinated multicity attacks of this magnitude, pull them off, and all without a sound? In 2001, we had NSA and even German intelligence intercepts of al-Qaeda chatter on the attacks. This time, it was as quiet as the vacuum of space.”

“They're also not some bunch of fanatics who learned how to fly planes into buildings or how to rig IEDs,” said Savas. “Surgical strikes, surgical bombings that were carried out under our noses, under security, and set up to take out single buildings and no more.”

Cohen nodded and completed his thought. “It takes professional expertise with munitions to do something like this. Put that together with the skill in how they pulled it off, and you have a group of terrorists with a talent base we've never seen before.”

The vehicle rattled roughly as they transitioned from the bridge to the New Jersey Turnpike. Savas felt his stomach lurch.

“You brought the forensics report?” he asked as the car exited quickly onto the Palisades Parkway. The monotonous gray of the turnpike transitioned suddenly, jarringly into the greens of the New Jersey forests.

“The FBI–CIA teams fast-tracked some results to us, and my initial analysis of the report indicates that it fits very well with the preliminary assessment.”

“Mira got them to turn it over so fast?”

“Who else? She sent PDF files to all our secure accounts this morning.”

Mirjana Vujanac. Vujanac came from Serbian grandparents. Savas's own Balkan ancestry provided a connection between them, and he also liked her for her basic decency. Ironically, her job as head of the Joint Offices group was to help de-Balkanize the intelligence organizations in the US government, serving as a focal point for interactions between the FBI and the CIA. It was a highly sensitive position, unpopular with both agencies, but Mira was the perfect person to balance the mutual paranoia and ego with her patient and winning personality. This case looked like it would require extended work with the CIA and other organizations. They were going to need Vujanac on this one.

“The initial analysis is solid?”

“Definitely.” Cohen had put on her sharp-edged, Euro-style eyeglasses, the kind that always increased a woman's sex appeal in an elegant way. Her expression was serious as she looked over the report, giving her the appearance of a graduate student presenting a paper.

“Looks like a recent derivative of the explosive Semtex was used,” she said. “Mass-spectroscopy analysis of numerous samples now confirms this. Same as the prelim report: judging from the molecular weight of the compounds, it's almost certainly homegrown. There are only two plants in the world that make this stuff, both run by the Heward Corporation. This stuff is made in the USA all the way.”

Savas glanced out the window as the vehicle slowed and headed off the ramp. The green of the parkway surrendered to the landscaped parking lot that boxed in a six-floor office building.

“Well, we're here. Let's see what they have to say about that.”

It was a frustrating half-hour before they sat down in the stale-smelling office. The two had run an obstacle course of security checkpoints for the vehicle and at the front door, temporary ID badges, metal detectors, and finally a walk down a long corridor to the office of a local divisions manager. It was a tranquil space, softly lit and shadowed by tall trees covering the window at one end of a rectangular room. A quiet space for the distributors of the world's most advanced explosives.

As they entered and shook hands, Savas noted the presence of two other men, open briefcases at their sides. The lawyers had arrived. Savas smiled. One lawyer meant denial. Two, limited accountability. The company must have gotten the new report from Vujanac this morning as well.

“Agent Savas, Fred Reynolds,” began the manager, the firmness of his handshake doing little to conceal the perspiration on his palm. “Welcome. Please, won't you sit down?”

“This is my colleague, Rebecca Cohen, also from the NYC branch.”

The man shook Cohen's hand as well. “This is Michael Ivy and Brian Colbert,” introduced Reynolds as the two lawyers stood up. “They are here to help advise me in any legal ramifications of our discussions.”

Savas and Cohen exchanged greetings with the men.

“I'm sorry you two found it necessary to come all the way out here,” said Reynolds, as they all sat around the conference table. “As we said over the phone, we were happy to come into the city tomorrow.”

And give your legal eagles twenty-four more hours to coach you into admitting even less than you will today. “Couldn't wait, Mr. Reynolds. This is as red alert as it gets. National security priority.”

The man's face seemed to tighten. “Yes, of course.”

Savas nodded to Cohen, who stepped up to the plate. She opened her briefcase across from the lawyers and placed several documents on the table. “Mr. Reynolds, I assume you have had a chance to examine our forensics reports.”

“Yes,” he began stiffly. “Yes, we have.” He glanced at the other two men. “We are prepared to acknowledge that the material used in the bombings came from our nearby factory.”

Cohen glanced briefly at Savas. At least they wouldn't have to fight that battle. She made sure. “To confirm our results, this is your newest high-tech explosive, S-47, that matches the chemical analysis?”

“That's correct.”

“And, to make sure I understand correctly, you consistently ID each batch of explosive?”

Reynolds nodded. “There are records for every ounce we produce. Each lot is infused with a chemical called DMDNB for identification, and various ion ratios can essentially ID a given lot. We have completed an emergency review of all S-47 produced in the last year. There is not one gram unaccounted for. Everything we've made is either onsite or shipped to reputable governmental sources.”

Savas interrupted. “Then how did S-47 residue end up dusting the New York landscape last month?”

Reynolds glanced at the lawyers again. “Agent Savas, we really cannot speculate.”

“What about material produced further back?” asked Cohen.

“We are continuing to review our records,” said Reynolds. “However, I can assure you, we have exacting standards. We've never lost material, and our customers are limited to United States military and allied governments.”

“Could this be an inside job?” Savas pressed. “I mean, could we be looking at American terrorists?”

“Again, Agent Savas, I think it is imprudent to speculate at this time.”

Savas felt his temper rising. “Imprudent? You fellows do realize that we've just had two terrorist bombings on US soil, one of them right across the river from here? Your explosives were involved in both of those attacks. Your high-tech, military-only S-47 leveled one New York City building and the entire Saudi Embassy in DC.”

“Yes, Agent Savas, but, as I stated—”

“You don't see navy mines being used to sink US ships, or army surplus surface-to-air missiles shooting down aircraft in this nation.”

“If you will just—”

“If you don't know how your explosives got there, then I think it's high time you started speculating and testing some hypotheses! At the very least, you're going to need some good cover stories for when the press gets hold of this.”

Reynolds's face turned white. “If you are trying to threaten me, Agent Savas, I can assure you, we will respond strongly to such harassment.”

Savas laughed. “Please, Mr. Reynolds. If you think the fact that an American company is the supplier for the bombs that hit us last month is something the FBI, the CIA, or G.O.D. could keep secret for long, you're more naive than I could have imagined.”

“We have supplied no terrorists!” Reynolds practically shrieked. “All our material is accounted for. All sales were legitimate, to verified US government sources!”

Savas leaned forward and locked eyes with the company man. “Then why don't you go explain that to the families of the victims vaporized by your product, Mr. Reynolds.”

There was an icy silence as the man broke eye contact with Savas. The lawyer beside Reynolds leaned over and whispered into his ear. Reynolds seemed to make an effort to control himself, and his face drained of emotion. Screw this tap dance, thought Savas. He'd had enough. He apologized to Cohen, rose, and walked out of the room without another word.

Cohen's voice echoed strangely as he stormed down the hallway. “As you can see, Mr. Reynolds, my role is good cop. We'll need to set up some very open channels between your company and the FBI for the next few weeks as we work through this.”

The sounds inside the building faded as Savas stepped out into the bright sunlight. He exhaled slowly. He knew his fuse was too short. He knew he had to rein in his emotions, even as the events around him pushed every button. He knew these company men were just following orders.

And he knew he wanted to deck one of them.

Arriving back at FBI offices, Savas stepped into the Operations Room of Intel 1. He tossed his briefcase roughly onto a chair and removed his jacket. Perspiration stained his shirt. He sighed and loosened his tie.

“Bad day at the office?” came the words of Hernandez, whose fingers clacked across a keyboard nearby. J. P. Rideout, Mark King, and Frank Miller stood around the computer geek in a semicircle, staring at the screen.

“I'm at the office now, Manuel.”

“Suits stiff you?”

“Of course. But they seem to sink to new levels of corporate cowardice on a yearly basis.” Savas stared at the small gathering across from him. “So, what's the party about?”

“Well, we've got something interesting you might want to see.”

Savas walked over to the group. At that moment, Kanter stepped into the room as well.

“John, you're back. I need—”

“Hang on, Larry,” said Savas. “Manuel's reeling in some new fish.”

Interested, Kanter joined the group. Savas stared down at the screen; numerous time- and date-stamped video images of buildings flitted across his field of view.

“We've had a look at the security cams in a large radius around the site,” began Manuel.

“How did you get those?” asked Savas.

“We don't have to go to the sites for the newer ones. Patriot Act II — we're already plugged in, 24/7. We just need to access the relevant minutes from DTO…”

“Domestic Terrorism Operations,” Rideout whispered to Savas, who rolled his eyes. The acronyms never seemed to end.

“…and within hours we can get the footage from thirty local cameras downloaded.”

Miller turned toward Savas and Kanter, a serious expression on his face. “Every camera with a clear shot at 866 Second Avenue showed static from the hours of three to four a.m. the night before the bombing.”

“What?” said Kanter incredulously.

“I want to make this clear, Larry,” said Miller. “Every camera that could possibly have had a shot at recording what happened around the building that early morning had a similar malfunction for the same duration. Every one of them.”

“Some serious hacking, dudes,” noted Hernandez.

“Wait, no security firm noticed this? No one looked into it?” asked Kanter.

Rideout shook his head. “Most of the cameras don't have flesh and blood babysitting them. We get the feeds, but they are automatically routed and stored. Our analysis probably wasn't the first time they had been viewed, but when each individual firm saw the static for their equipment, they likely assumed their cameras were malfunctioning. Happens all the time. Only when you pool together all the local cameras can you see the pattern. No way that's coincidence.”

Miller finished. “We're talking about some real pros here, Larry, and some really careful ones, at that.”

“So, what do they want?” asked Matt King in frustration. “This doesn't seem to be some 9/11 replay.”

“Exactly, and it's these differences we need to focus more on,” cut in Savas. “In 2001, American targets, American symbols were attacked by mostly Saudi suicide bombers. This time, the cities may be the same, but it looks like foreign targets, and, as far as I can tell, primarily Saudi targets were hit. I don't know about you, but this seems to put a different spin on the whole thing.”

Kanter cast a harsh look toward Savas and responded quickly. “OK, we have, as usual, more questions than answers. Who are these people? How and where were they trained? What motivates them?”

Savas turned angrily to Kanter, his simmering frustrations from the day boiling over. “I'll tell you what is motivating them, Larry. Hatred. Feelings that cross beyond Islamophobic into Islamopathic. You're tap dancing around the real issue because of warnings from above, but we know about the mystery commando raids in Afghanistan.”

Kanter sat up stiffly. “How do you know?”

“Thanks for confirming it.” Savas was not done. He looked around at the eyes focused on him. “Isn't it obvious? We're sitting here acting like we have two cases — a string of assassinations of Islamic radicals, and now a major terrorist attack on Islamic targets. It's the same group, Larry! They're just upping the ante!”

“Hold on a minute!” shouted Kanter. “John, you're completely going wild here. These attacks are on American soil, terrorist attacks in New York, in the capital, for God's sake! Your vengeful furies wouldn't strike here, would they?”

“Why not? To them, the enemy is as much here as there.”

Kanter stared coldly at Savas. “To them, John? Or to you?”

Savas felt anger surge through him, but he held his temper. They had to listen!

“Larry, I haven't done myself any favors for this argument by my actions over the last few years; I know that. But think! If you saw the Islamic nations as the enemy, as a threat, their presence here might be one of the first places to strike! Purge America of them. If they are homegrown, well, hitting here would be a hell of a lot easier than doing a job like this overseas, especially in Islamic nations where they would stick out like sore thumbs.”

“We haven't even established that there is a definite connection between the assassinations, John. It's all circumstantial. Now you want to throw this into the mix? How big a conspiracy?” Kanter waved his hands back and forth. “This isn't Dr. No. At least the murder conspiracy had a consistency in targets. These bombings aren't of Islamic radicals. They're the damn official government representatives.”

“To some, it might be hard to tell the difference.”

“Jesus, John.” Kanter threw up his hands in frustration.

“Damn it, Larry, I'm not justifying this. I'm saying it's a nasty but understandable motive.”

“Perhaps you understand this better than I do.”

Savas clenched his jaw. He was going to come off as some sort of crazed man no matter what he said. Kanter was right about one thing — they had absolutely no hard evidence to link any of this. His hypothesis was emotional, not fact based.

Frank Miller glanced at Savas as if in sympathy, swept his gaze around the room, and cleared his throat. “I'd like to speak freely on something.”

Kanter nearly laughed. “Frank, you aren't in the marines anymore. Shoot. Take a cue from John.”

“OK, as John notes, even if it's not connected to the murders he and I are investigating, evidence is pointing toward a homegrown terrorist group, one that might be targeting Islamic sites.”

“Yes?” said Kanter.

“I mean, we're mobilizing all the forces of the US government to help protect a bunch of nations that have been quietly, under the table, supporting the bastards who bombed us in the first place.” He looked around the room. “I've had friends die at my side in Afghan caves looking for that son of a bitch who was financed by Saudi money, and whose organization was run by Saudi personnel. I'm not sure my heart's in the right place on this one.”

A silence fell across the room. Savas looked over at Miller and saw the anger in his eyes. John Savas also felt that anger. It was what had brought him to the FBI in the first place. He felt it every time he looked at a picture of his son.

“Frank,” said Kanter thoughtfully but firmly, “these attacks are going to test all of us in some way. I think we need to try to focus on what we're about, and that's law and order. We shouldn't forget that Americans also died in these attacks. But I don't think any of us believe that all the Saudis and other workers in those buildings are necessarily hostile to us, or were involved in anything that had to do with supporting terrorist causes. Now, I'm not saying all of them are clean, but I've been around in this world long enough to know that good and evil are found in every corner. That's my belief, and if I didn't believe that, I don't think I'd care much for law or order. On top of all that, we've got an international incident here, and the repercussions are international. So, folks, this is some serious stuff.”

Kanter looked directly at Miller, but Savas knew he was speaking as much or more to him. “Frank, I hear where you're coming from, but around here, we work to enforce the laws of this nation. You understand that, I hope?”

Miller pursed his lips and looked down at his hands. “Yeah, Larry,” he said glancing back up, “I do. It's just that things are a bit mixed up inside, is all.”

Kanter shook his head. “Ain't that the truth of it.”

John Savas closed his notebook as he walked down the hallway from the Operations Room. He and Kanter had stayed for another hour after dismissing the others. Savas was tired and at the stage of fatigue when he knew his thoughts were slow, his logic weak, and his emotions unstable. These last few weeks had drained him — and it was much more than just the work and long hours. Terror attacks on American soil were too raw, too personal.

Cohen was waiting for him outside his office. She was sitting at a desk next to a phone, looking like she had just caught something very interesting after casting her line out to the deep sea. He saw how tired she looked as well. Her long hair was disheveled, and she leaned back in the chair. A fire burned in her eyes.

Still so attractive. Savas thrust such thoughts from his mind as he often had over the last few years. He was damaged goods and too confused to think in those directions. Tonight he was especially not ready to face anything so complicated as feelings.

“John, about damn time,” she said.

“Glad to see you, too, Rebecca,” he responded, noting her briefest of smiles, mainly in the eyes.

“I've been waiting to tell you this for over an hour. While you were undoubtedly figuring all this out with Larry, we got a call in about those symbols.”

“Runes,” corrected Savas.

“Runes. Yes, exactly. That's exactly right.”

He raised his eyebrows at her tone. “What call?”

“A professor from the English Department at Columbia.”

“You cast a wide net.”

“Yes. I'm thorough, remember? The poor old man was very excited, and I had a heck of a time calming him down enough to understand what he was talking about.”

“OK, so what was he talking about?” asked Savas.

“Well, he says he knows what the symbols, the runes mean. Get ready for this, OK? He says they're Norse.”

“Norse? As in Valhalla and pretentious Wagnerian opera?”

“Precisely. Better still, I sent him everything that we had, including images of the pendant you are so interested in. That's when we hit the jackpot, John.” She smiled and tilted her head at a slight angle, triumphant.

“Go on.”

“It's also from Norse mythology, an artifact central to much of those beliefs: the hammer of the Norse god of thunder, Thor. The symbol and the runes match, John. You've been right all along — there is a connection! Not only between the killings but also to the Afghan strikes.”

John Savas blinked. “Thor's hammer?”

“Yes. The professor sounds really anxious to talk with you.” Cohen smiled at his disbelief, her tongue touching the bottom edge of her front teeth. “I think I want to come along.”

18

Fernando Martinez, just twelve years old, weaved and dodged his way through traffic on his small bicycle. The front and back of the bike were weighed down with large wire-caged baskets, loaded with foods from the restaurant that were wrapped carefully in bags for protection. The boy was well tanned from countless journeys through the streets of Caracas; the Venezuelan sun was strong enough even in the winter months to deeply brown anyone spending their hours under its rays. The skies were partly cloudy, the streets full of water and mud splashing against Fernando's legs from recent rainstorms. He could hear the chatter of street vendors and haggling customers as he rode past. He smiled. It was hard work, but it was good to be out, away from a troubled home, feeling the wind on his face and glimpsing the sun through the clouds.

His mother would not approve, but he rode against traffic to cut his trip time, dodging cars and trucks with pitch-changing horns blaring behind him. Señor Moreno would not pay him if he was late. He might not even pay him if he was on time, Fernando reminded himself. His family needed the money; since his father had died, Fernando was the man of the house. So he pedaled fast and did not think about dangers.

He climbed a hill, panting, sweat glistening on his face, arms, and legs. The road leveled off as he crossed through a nice strip of Caracas. Fancier shops, cars, and people lined the sides of the street. Taller buildings, skyscrapers of glass and metal rose around him. This was a place of importance and power. A place of money and oil. Fernando did not know much about the world, but he knew his country was powerful. It had oil, and the sheikh princes from across the seas visited often. His country could talk back to the United States like an equal. He was proud of this, proud of his country's strength to look the bully in the eye.

Ahead were the embassies and banks of the foreign nations that did business with Venezuela and its oil. Fernando liked riding by their protected gates, seeing their guards and security cameras. It was like an American movie. There were embassies and banks from Europe and Asia and the Middle East. He had ridden past them countless times. China and India, and up ahead, the other oil countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Fernando screamed. The explosions were enormous.

A blast of heated air picked him up together with his bike and sent them sprawling on the sidewalk next to an upscale clothing store. The store's glass-front window was shattered inward. Screams and wailing car alarms filled the air around him. The boy lay for several moments on the sidewalk, stunned, his left arm and leg badly skinned and bleeding from being dragged across the asphalt. He felt a small trickle of blood from his scalp. He shook his head, trying to focus and clear the blood from his eyes. Slowly, he raised himself to his feet. Swiping again at the blood, he stared down the road. Smoke and dust billowed toward him. Fires burned in several places. Ahead, he thought he could make out the remains of two buildings, now wreckages on either side of the road.

Sirens grew louder from several directions. Police. Frightened, he found his bike several feet from him. It was damaged — the handlebars bent awkwardly, the baskets with the food wrecked. He did not care. He was going home. Señor Moreno could keep his money today. As he turned and rode down the street toward the growing sounds of police and fire sirens, he heard voices behind him. Screams and cries for help.

19

It was a long ride to Philosophy Hall at the corner of 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Traffic was snarled along the West Side Highway from a seven-car pileup, and the driver was forced to cut through Midtown. John Savas glanced outside his tinted windows at the shoppers crowding and crossing the streets at Fifty-Seventh and Madison. The crowds were definitely thinner than normal this time of year, ruining summer tourism and sending more than one business under — one of many repercussions of an urban bombing.

The car lurched forward and shook him out of his reverie. It was challenging to keep his eyes focused outside the car, thanks to the mid-thigh-length skirt Rebecca Cohen was wearing. He knew that if he let himself look for even a moment, he would certainly linger too long to pass anything off as a casual glance.

Her hair was pulled up and fastened Japanese style with two things that actually looked like chopsticks. Do women use chopsticks in their hair? he wondered to himself. She wore a white shirt that looked to be standard 1950s FBI, and, sure enough, as if to prevent him from getting any useful thinking done during the ride, she had left the first two buttons open. Well, it's a hot day. One hundred and two degrees. She was writing in her characteristically broad script, large, flowing letters that would have taken him hours to form and that she spat out like a typewriter. Savas preferred typing.

He turned his mind back to the case. Rideout and King had compiled information on the professor at Columbia. Fred Styer, PhD in Philology from Harvard, expert in proto-Germanic languages and Germanic literature, Alfred L. Hutchinson Chair of Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University — the titles ran on. A prolific scholar in the 1970s with more than two hundred journal articles and ten books, he was now “mostly” retired, serving as professor emeritus and haunting the hallways of Philosophy Hall at Columbia. He was once considered the greatest scholar on the East Coast in the ancient languages and literature of the Germanic family. Savas just hoped he had a key to unlock this mystery.

After what seemed like an eternity slogging through traffic, the driver finally pulled them up to the building at Columbia University. The entrance to Philosophy Hall was shaded by a plaza built directly over Amsterdam Avenue. Above was a small green park; below, it seemed that the street plunged into a short, dim tunnel right after 116th Street, to emerge in light again half a block later at 117th, right in front of the university's Casa Italiana. Instead of pulling up to the entrance of the building, they followed the old professor's instructions to avoid the construction at the main door and turned the corner in front of the Kent building. They were not sure how they would recognize the old man (photos they had on file were certainly outdated), but it became clear that both he and they were easy marks.

The professor did indeed resemble the photo they had in their files, only older and slightly wider in the waist. He still possessed an enormous beard that spilled over his chest, now much whiter than in the photograph, and, if Savas could bring himself to believe it, perhaps even longer. His bald head and thick glasses were also the same, but today he sported a pipe that gave him the air of an awkward Oxford don. To prove the point, when they stepped out of the car, he waved to them like he was trying to flag down a 737 at Kennedy Airport. Savas waved back, and Cohen stifled a laugh, looking radiant in her amusement. At that point, Savas realized that they looked as ridiculous as the professor did. In the middle of this casual and unconstrained academic campus, their appearance had FEDS written all over it.

“Hello, hello, Agent Savas. Welcome, welcome!” Styer repeated, almost gleefully, shaking Savas's hand in a hyper fashion. The old man looked over to Cohen, and his eyes grew large. He smiled and motioned toward her with his head. “Please, and you must be that lovely young woman I spoke with on the phone yesterday…Agent Cohen?”

Cohen seemed positively taken. “Rebecca, please, Professor Styer.” Savas suppressed an initial desire to not like the man.

“Please, both of you, we'll go to my office. Not straightaway, mind you. They're tearing up the Hall these days, and it's easier to come in through this other building. Follow me.”

He led them into Kent, through that building and into a charming green garden abutting Kent and Philosophy Hall. Using a back entrance to the Hall, he took them up a flight of stairs and down a corridor to his office in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. By the time they had all sat down, the old professor was winded and coughing.

“Excuse me,” he apologized. “Age shows no mercy.”

John Savas looked around the office. It was small, dusty, and filled nearly from side to side with stacks of papers, journals, and books. Behind the stacks were either more stacks, or, if one could make it that far, wall-to-wall bookshelves with yet more books. The professor's desk was old and chipped from years of use. It also was littered with books and papers, a magnifying glass, and a computer that was likely the dustiest thing in the room. Professor Styer was clearly a man of another age. Among the papers, Savas noticed quite a few that showed runes like those decoded from the mysterious communications.

The professor held his thick glasses in one hand and a cloth to wipe them clean in the other. This close, Savas saw how old the man was — clearly in his seventies, perhaps late seventies. His skin was sagging and marked with many age spots. His hands trembled as he wiped the lenses of his glasses. An ancient man to tell them about ancient runes. Savas hoped Styer would last long enough to help them with this case.

Glasses back on, the professor looked out at them, gravitated toward Cohen, smiled delightedly, and asked, “So, my Federal friends, how can I help you?”

Savas flashed a look of concern toward Cohen. Had he gone senile? “Professor Styer, we came here at your request to discuss some runes and symbols that were found in a criminal case, perhaps linked to a series of murders here and abroad.”

“I'm not that far gone, young man!” he barked. “I was merely opening conversation. I think society has forgotten how to be polite,” he said, smiling.

Savas chuckled. “Yes, Professor Styer. My apologies.” He pulled out a piece of paper and passed it to the professor. “This is a reproduction of the coded messages we obtained, and this,” he said, placing the necklace and pendant in front of him, “is what we found on one of the killers.”

Professor Styer glanced briefly at the paper and set it down. “Yes, yes. I've seen it. Agent Cohen sent me all this, you know.” He smiled impishly at Cohen. “I told your assistant here what I thought.” Cohen smiled.

Savas continued. “So, these symbols we have — you say they are pagan, about pagan gods?”

“Norse gods, to be precise.” He reached into his desk drawer and drew out a pouch of tobacco. He dumped the ash from his pipe and filled it while speaking. “The runes — they are very old, predating the Christianization of northern Europe, some of the earliest artifacts dating from a hundred years after the death of Christ. The writing systems are almost certainly older than that. They were used by the Germanic tribes before the Latin alphabet replaced them. This printout, identical, I think, to the one faxed to me, is written in the runic alphabet called the Elder Futhark. This is the oldest version of this alphabet, used for early forms of the Norse language and other dialects from the second to the eighth centuries. It can be found on jewelry, amulets, tools, weapons, rune stones, you name it.”

Styer placed his pipe between his teeth and lit it, puffing several times to ignite the tobacco. “Horrible habit, I know,” he apologized toward Cohen. “But, to paraphrase George Burns, no one under seventy is allowed to smoke in here.” He turned back toward Savas and continued.

“The pendant — one might say ‘amulet’ in ancient times — is probably the most widespread and best-known symbol of all Norse mythology. Curiously, it also appears in the writings you sent — see, here,” he noted, indicating a section of the page with several letters unintelligible to Savas. “It would be pronounced ‘mee-YOLL-neer’, spelled m-j-o-l-n-i-r. This is the Norse name for the thunder god Thor's hammer, the greatest weapon of all the gods in Asgaard. It was made for Thor by the dwarves underground — one of their greatest creations. Its name means ‘crusher,’ and Thor would use the hammer in all his battles against the enemies of the gods, the monsters and giants that sought to throw down the ordered reign of Thor's father, Odin, and return the world to chaos.”

Savas looked over at Cohen as if to say, OK, we've definitely come to the right place. The old man picked up the necklace Savas had handed him and pointed to the pendant with the bird face.

“Mjolnir, my friends. The hammer of Thor. It was often rendered by the Norse artisans in a shape like this, decorated with the face of a raven.”

“Are you able to decipher the rest of the writing, or the audio?” asked Cohen.

“I've made partial transcripts,” Styer said, passing them a sheet of paper, “but I don't know how much use it will be to you. The audio is Old Norse, a valiant attempt to speak it, I must say. One could quibble with the pronunciations and some of the grammar, but it is quite impressive. College level, you might say, which, it would seem to me, is strange coming from the sources you mention. There was much I could not make out, vocabulary that is modern in origin, I believe, adapted to Norse. There seems little doubt, however, that these are military instructions of some kind.”

The knowing look passed between the two FBI agents was not lost on the professor. “I see that I am not too far off the mark.”

Savas shifted the conversation. “So, what does this mean, Professor? We have some sort of cult of assassins like the Hashshashin?”

“The Arabic drug-fueled killers from the Middle Ages?”

Savas nodded in response.

“No, Agent Savas, I wouldn't suspect that. These are, if anything you told me is true, anti-Muslim assassins.”

Savas continued to press the point. “But perhaps still some modern cult based on Norse religion? Fueled by a fanatical devotion?”

The professor shook his head. “Most modern pagans — unlike ancient pagans, by the way — are fairly Gaian, Mother Earth, peace-loving aftershocks of the nineteen sixties. This group you are hypothesizing — well, they would be something else entirely. Something, in fact, perhaps much more loyal to the character of the Norse legends.”

“Could you explain that?” asked Savas.

The professor looked thoughtful. “The Northern peoples developed near the poles, Agent Savas, where for half the year, even light was scarce. The ground was often ice. Life was hard. Their mythology reflected that in many ways. This group you are hunting seems an efficient and terrible organization. I will suggest that these killers were attracted to the Norse culture for two reasons. First, and most obvious, is the contrast to the Middle Eastern monotheistic religion of Islam. Their targets are Muslims. What better contrast to Arabic monotheists than Germanic pagans? The second reason, and perhaps the more significant one, might be the character of the Northern myths themselves.”

The professor leaned back in his chair and chewed on his pipe. His eyes closed momentarily. He opened them, glancing toward the ceiling. “The Norse mythos shares many common aspects with the Indo-European mythologies. There are a pantheon of gods and goddesses, many representing similar themes — the sun and moon, of course, the underworld or death, beauty and fertility, strength, the sea, and so forth. They all share a common basis in the creation of order out of chaos, with the gods descending from more primitive elemental forces of nature, the monsters and giants, which seemed chaotic to societies bereft of the miracles of our modern scientific mythos.” He smiled mischievously. “The gods seize power and bring order to the world, vanquishing the Titans, or giants, or whatever embodies the forces of chaos in a given mythology. But, of course, as every fragile human being knows, the forces of chaos still strike; our world is swept by powerful events beyond us. In such mythologies, this is explained as a constant battle between the gods and the elemental, chaotic forces. For the Northern myths, all this reaches a climax at Ragnarök, the Armageddon of the Norse legends, a final battle between good and evil to settle the stewardship of the world.”

Savas nodded. “But where does that lead us with this group?”

“Where? Honestly, Agent Savas, I couldn't tell you that. But it might be telling you something about who these people are.”

“How?”

“Ragnarök, my friends, is the end of the world, as I told you. But it has a special Norse quality that makes it contrast sharply with your typical end-of-the-world religious event. In short, all the Norse gods, including Thor and his allies, the heroes waiting in Valhalla for the final battle, what you might call the “good guys” in our Western lexicon — they lose. They all die. They are annihilated.” He took his pipe out of his mouth and leaned forward for emphasis. “In the Norse mythos, the gods lose, civilization is destroyed, and chaos reigns supreme. From the broth of chaos, it is prophesized that a new creation will arise. But to be enjoyed by others! This organization, whatever they are planning, has chosen a most curious mythology as a symbol. If they take the mythology seriously, and everything you've shown me convinces me that they do, they don't believe their side is necessarily going to triumph and be welcomed into Heaven. No virgins, no pearly gates and harps. Nothing.”

“I don't understand,” said Savas. “Why do all this, go through all this, without a final expectation of victory?”

“Because they should,” said Cohen, looking thoughtful. “It's like Frodo going into Mordor. There was little hope that he had the strength to finish the quest. But it was right that he tried.”

“Exactly, young lady. Top of the class,” Styer said and winked at her. He then leaned back and stared out the window, looking over the small garden they had recently passed. “They do this because they believe it's the right thing to do. The gods and heroes of the Northern legends did not despair or, following a more modern sentiment, switch sides, even though through prophecy they knew they were going to be destroyed, that chaos would triumph. No, they fought anyway, not to win, but because fighting for good even in the face of defeat was the right thing.”

Cohen raised a question. “Even if this is true for this mythology, Professor, how can we be so sure it applies to this organization?”

The old man leaned back toward the desk and looked shrewdly at Cohen. “A good question, and, of course, the answer is that we cannot be sure. But someone with this level of sophistication, to organize in this way and then choose these symbols, down to correctly using the writing system and language of an ancient people, is someone extremely invested in this symbolism, Agent Cohen. Anyone with that level of knowledge of Norse mythology would likely understand its curious nature. This theme of Northern courage, a hard courage, grounded not in any hope of victory but only in standing for what is right, has been a powerful force in Western culture, for good and evil. This character influenced generations who knew the Norse legends, from Tolkien's archetypal Lord of the Rings heroes you just mentioned to Adolf Hitler's perversion of those ideals during the Third Reich.” Professor Styer focused sharply on the FBI agents. “Courage to fight no matter what, requiring no hope of reward, only conviction. My friends, that makes them a group of a most dangerous kind.”

Professor Styer insisted on walking them back to their car. He walked with even more difficulty than when he had first greeted them; the efforts of the day clearly draining him. When they reached the car, Cohen thanked him with a smile and got into the backseat. As Savas moved to follow, the old man grasped his arm.

“Agent Savas, I do hope you know what you have there,” he said in a low voice, motioning with his eyes toward the car. “I would keep her close to you.”

Taken aback, Savas started stammering something unintelligible. The professor interrupted him. “Oh, I don't mean that! Although, let me tell you, at seventy-eight, there are many more things I regret not doing in life than I regret doing. A lady like that doesn't come around often. But that is not what I meant. She's smarter than you are, in case you didn't notice. Don't take that personally. I've taught generations of students, and I know a good mind when I see it. She's got one. You will need her in this. Keep her close.” The professor smiled, winked at Savas, then bent toward the car and waved once more at Cohen before turning back toward the building.

Savas gazed forward at the intersection for a moment. I knew I didn't like that guy.

20

"Rebecca, do you buy all that?” asked Savas distractedly, his gaze outside the car window as the vehicle began its trek downtown, his mind wrapped in the words of the last half-hour. Cohen was thoughtful as well, but she answered confidently.

“I'm sure everything we heard about the language and writing was accurate. What you're really asking me concerns the speculative portions, the extrapolation of the symbolism to the psychology of the group.”

“Yes.”

She sighed. “It sounded very reasonable. John, you called it a cult at first, and that is unlikely to be right — who would believe in Norse gods in the twenty-first century? Especially a group as sophisticated and practical as the one you are proposing — a group that has orchestrated the assassinations of more than ten radical Islamic leaders in the last six to nine months.”

“And the bombings.”

Cohen paused. “The evidence is weaker on that, John; you know it. You only have your intuition, based on your own painful experience and response to 9/11. That's a strength and a weakness — I think you know that. Let's just limit it to the assassinations for the moment.”

Savas nodded. “Thanks.”

“For what?” she looked at him curiously.

“You're the first person who has taken what I feel seriously, even when you don't feel it. You're at least giving me the benefit of the doubt.”

She pursed her lips. “John, I've watched you struggle with this for many years now. Everyone knows your anger, Mad John. Some of us also see the struggle. And the pain.”

He looked outside the car again, not daring to engage her eyes.

She coughed. “Anyway, what I was saying is that we have ruthless professionals, not religious fanatics. These guys way outclass al-Qaeda operatives. So, if they aren't religiously invested in this Norse stuff, then they must be invested in another way to have gone to all this trouble. Who learns a dead language and appropriates its culture's symbols? Someone who sees something in it, has extracted something from it, and needs that symbolism in their lives.”

“Northern courage?”

“It's the noblest idea of pagan Europe. But I think he's spot-on with the other thing — the contrast to Islam. Whoever started this, there is something driving them. I think you are right about it, John. There's a deep hatred of Islam in all this.”

“Then who? People of western European descent, almost certainly, or why all Norse stuff? The killer we encountered was American, so I assume many others are as well. But not the crazy idea of death squads from the CIA.”

“Not crazy, John, they existed,” noted Cohen. “But you're right. This symbolism, this crusade almost, doesn't smell of a government plan that spun out of control. But it does smell of money.”

“Sorry?”

“How on earth do you get the skilled personnel, equip them, train them, send them out all over the world for orchestrated assassination work, without enormous capital resources?

Savas nodded. “You can't.”

“No, you can't. If you aren't government, you have to be someone with access to just amazing resources, both monetary and, frankly, military.”

“Yes, the commando training, the coded messages — it's military.”

Cohen turned to Savas, her gaze intense, her mind working quickly. “You have to be well placed financially and logistically. I don't think we're looking for a cult leader, John, not in the normal sense, anyway. I just wish I knew what we were looking for.”

Savas nodded. He understood her frustration. It was the sense when the puzzle had started to take on some kind of pattern, definition, and yet its overall shape still eluded the mind. As he processed these thoughts, his phone rang, and he reached into his pocket and answered it. The adrenaline flowed back into his body almost instantly. Cohen turned quickly to stare at him. The voice from the speaker was shouting.

“John, this is Larry! Where the hell have you been?”

“Larry, sorry, switched off for this interview. What is it?”

“Get back here now! There's been a second attack.”

Even with the sirens on, it was more than half an hour before they reached the FBI offices. People and equipment filled the buzzing Operations Room. Images flowed across giant monitors. Low-level staff darted from office to office with urgent messages. By the time Savas reached the floor, the main story had been fleshed out. He called a meeting of his staff. They convened in a conference room adjacent to the OR.

“Fearless Leader, we have been lost without you,” chirped Lightfoote as he and Cohen filed into the room.

“Damn it, Angel.” This was all he needed.

“I am a celestial being, and I will forgive your profane words.”

I'm going to have to have a talk with that girl. Savas took off his jacket, his shirt soaked in sweat from both the heat outside and the stress within. Miller and Hernandez were the last to file in. Rambo and Jesus, thought Savas, and a nutcase named Angel.

“All right, Larry's called a meeting in an hour. Fill me in, people.”

Matt King donned his glasses and read from notes. After Rebecca, he was the de facto information center for the team. His legal training always showed in his attention to detail.

“At 2:35 p.m. today, two explosions occurred in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. The explosions occurred at the Saudi and Iranian embassies, apparently completely destroying both buildings. Initial reports have the death toll in the high hundreds, and it is expected to go even higher. Injuries are worse, and the hospitals are overflowing with wounded. Caracas fire and police responders have the secondary blazes under control. The Venezuelan president has already gone on television to calm the populace. The Islamic nations have not failed to notice that there is a connection between the attacks here and in Washington and today's in Caracas.”

Miller clarified. “Basically, they're screaming bloody murder about it.”

Savas looked around the concerned faces at the table. Only Lightfoote seemed unfazed, drawing odd sketches on her notepad. “All right, in the span of less than a month, we have a new terrorist organization appear from nowhere that has blown up buildings in three different cities, and has begun to upset the global balance.”

Rideout chimed in. “Sure has, John. The UN Security Council has called a special meeting. The Arab nations are blaming the United States and allies. Stocks are plunging in all the world markets.”

“Well, we've got to keep our heads and not get sucked into this mind job they've worked on everyone else. Terrorism is most powerful when it creates fear. That's its point. Fear is death to the thinking mind. So let's take a deep breath and start looking at what we know.”

“Not much. That's the problem,” said Miller.

“OK, let's see what information we can glean from the bomb site itself. This is on foreign soil, so at best it's going to be CIA, and that will be slow. The Venezuelans aren't going to be too keen on letting us get our hands dirty down there. The explosives — those are our only lead, and we'll need to make sure we get samples for analysis. You can bet I'll take this up with Larry first thing, although he'll be on it already, I'm sure.”

“J. P., I want you and Matt all-nighting this one and monitoring every channel for information from Caracas. Tomorrow morning you get to hand me a report and then find a cot. Angel, I want you…Angel?” Savas looked over at Lightfoote staring at the door behind him.

“Leaving on a jet plane, O Captain, my Captain,” she said.

“Christ, Angel, what…” he turned around and stopped. Just inside the door stood Larry Kanter, along with three other people. One was Mira Vujanac, and where Mira was, so usually was the CIA. Standing next to her was a tall man, thin and bespectacled, stiff and awkward in his formality. He had “bureaucrat spook” written all over him. Next to him stood a man John Savas would never have expected to see and couldn't believe he was seeing.

“John, I'm sorry to interrupt. Could you please step outside for a minute?” Kanter asked, motioning with his eyes that Savas should follow.

Rising slowly from his chair, Savas apologized to his team, who watched with considerable interest as he walked outside. Kanter closed the door behind him, leading him halfway down the hall away from the conference room door and out of earshot.

Kanter stood not five feet from a black man dressed in white robes with a long and thick beard trimmed Islamic style. On his head was a white kufi; the overall impression was of some African imam touring the offices of the FBI. He had a stern face, scarred on one side from what could only have been a knife wound, and yet a strange cheerfulness seemed to imbue his every expression. He was stocky, and a thick musculature without a hint of fat gave him the look of a boxer. He nodded toward Savas.

Savas looked between Kanter and Vujanac. “What the hell is this?”

21

This is Agent Husaam Jordan, John,” said Kanter, motioning toward the white-robed man. “CIA. Mira has been in high-level coordination with Langley concerning the recent attacks.” Kanter gestured toward the tall, formal-looking man next to Agent Jordan. “Our analysis and identification of the bomb residue picked up an important connection. Husaam has been tracking a series of arms dealers and the shell games they play with foreign governments and commercial US military goods sold overseas. There's an entire black market for military goods that we sell legitimately to other nations, which then turn around illegitimately and resell them for a substantial profit to centralized mafia, weapons dealers who themselves sell the goods to the highest bidder.”

Savas looked unimpressed. He could hardly take his eyes off Agent Jordan. “Yeah, Larry, I've heard all this. What does this have to do with these bombings?”

Kanter drew a breath, clearly impatient with his subordinate's tone yet cutting him unusual slack. “Agent Jordan has infiltrated one of the largest of these groups, formerly run by Viktor Bout — you probably have already heard his name, too.”

He had. Viktor Bout was a legendary arms dealer, former KGB agent, who had run one of the largest and most profitable organizations in the world. His arrest in 2008 had slowed the trade only momentarily, as others rushed into the void, including new leadership in the organization he founded. Savas was quite aware of all this and was also attentive enough to pick up the warning from Kanter that he had better rein in his anger.

Kanter continued. “Among the many items they offer on the black market — weapons, body armor, even vehicles — are several forms of plastic explosives, including some of the newer, and extremely expensive, derivatives. Explosives with several times the power of previous forms of Semtex or C-4, and with a very high velocity of detonation.”

“Perfect for demolitions work,” rumbled the deep baritone of Agent Jordan, speaking for the first time.

Kanter nodded. “These items are very hard to get, and it is highly likely that, unless this group stole the material from the plant that made it, which would have been reported, they went through these dealers.”

This was very interesting; a potentially important link to the terrorists. If Kanter was right. If there was a way to discover the buyers for these materials.

“Agent Jordan and his superior, Richard Michelson, here from the CIA Crime and Narcotics Center, have agreed to work directly with the FBI on this. I've assigned him to your team, John. Husaam will work independently of our chain of command, reporting directly to Agent Michelson, but day-to-day he will be an additional member of Intel 1.”

Just great, thought Savas. Kanter looked Savas in the eye and spoke gravely. “I don't have to tell you how important it is that we make some headway on this one, John. We'll need all the help we can get from all agencies. We all need to make this work.”

“Larry, can I speak to you privately?” asked Savas, needing an outlet soon lest he jettison all professionalism.

Kanter seemed to suppress a sigh. “Of course, John. Why don't you introduce Husaam to your group and then meet me in my office.”

Savas held his emotions in check. “Sure, Larry. Agent Jordan, come this way, please.”

He led the CIA man back to the conference room. As he grabbed the doorknob to open it, the baritone spoke. “When we are greeted with a salutation, the person should offer a better welcome, or at least return the same, for God taketh an account of all things.” Jordan smiled and extended his hand.

Ah, hell. Savas grasped the offered hand and shook it very firmly.

“Nice words,” said Savas, turning back to the door.

“From the Holy Koran,” replied Jordan.

Savas, doorknob clasped tightly in his hand, stopped and turned slowly toward the CIA agent. “Agent Jordan, let's get something clear, so that we both know where we stand. I don't like the CIA meddling with my group, and no disrespect, but I don't know a damn thing about you. My group works well, and we're one of the best in the business. We've been together a while, and we work like a well-oiled machine. Your coming here, it's like grit thrown in the engine.” Savas let go of the doorknob for a second time and pulled up to face Agent Jordan. “You don't know me well, but I don't take it lightly when someone quotes from a book that inspired men to fly airplanes into buildings in my city. Finally, in case the intelligence is fading from the CIA, you might also know that those bastards took the life of my son. So, do we understand each other, Agent Jordan?”

The joyful buoyancy had left the face of Husaam Jordan, but he did not flinch. “No, Agent Savas, not completely. Because you need to know two things about me. The first is that I will always do my best to respect every man I meet, but I will never hide or be ashamed of my religion. Second, I ask you not to judge how much I am grit until you give me a little time to integrate into your team. One thing about me that you will learn — I am a man of justice, as well as a Muslim. For me, they go together. Those who died in September of 2001 were victims of murder, led by extremists that I work every day to bring to justice. It is also said in the Holy Koran, ‘Justice is an unassailable fortress, built on the brow of a mountain which cannot be overthrown by the violence of torrents, nor demolished by the force of armies.’ I believe that, John Savas. I will work to see that it is so.”

For several moments, they stood staring at each other, eye-to-eye, nearly toe-to-toe. Savas clenched his jaw but said nothing. Finally he turned and opened the door to the conference room.

22

"Damn it, Larry, you can't do this!”

Savas had officially reached the stage of throwing a fit. He had felt it coming, building up, and had decided to just get out of its way. There were a lot of things you had to put up with in life. A lot of them you didn't. And some you had to yell about.

“John, calm down. This isn't going to help the situation,” said Kanter as calmly as he could. Standing next to Kanter behind his desk, Mira Vujanac appeared uneasy as she watched the emotional outburst.

“I'm not going to calm down! Do you know what this guy was doing? Quoting me proverbs from the Koran! Do you think I need to hear anything from that book? You told me when I came here, Larry, that you hired me because I'd be motivated for this job. What gives me that motivation is the same thing that makes it unacceptable that this representative of that religion be forced on me and my team! I'm not going to allow it!”

“John, that's the last time I want to hear about what you will and won't allow, or, I swear, you'll be finding yourself another place to work!” The veins stood out on Kanter's forehead, and he anchored his hands on his desk, standing and leaning forward. He brought one hand to his face and rubbed his temples. “John, please, sit down a moment.”

Savas looked between the two of them and reluctantly took the closest seat. Vujanac sighed softly and adjusted her blouse. She sat on the side of the desk farthest from Savas.

Kanter continued. “This guy comes with amazing recommendations. He's single-handedly begun what has turned into an enormous operation against these international arms dealers. He's used his religion as a screen to work the entire thing, to pose as a radicalized leader of a group seeking to purchase weapons for terrorist activity in the United States. He's just a few steps from setting up a sting operation, and these events have compromised all his efforts. He's willing to work for less than that original goal, to instead try and infiltrate the network to trace the path of the explosives used in these attacks. He is willing to work with us on that to coordinate domestic and international efforts.”

“I don't like it.” Savas knew he was being obstinate, but it didn't matter.

“Damn it, John, I'm not asking you to like it. I'm asking you to make it work.”

“John,” said Vujanac softly, “Agent Jordan is an extraordinary man. He's taken a hard route to come to where he is.”

“He sure as hell has,” fired back Kanter. He picked up a large folder filled with papers and tossed it on his desk in front of Savas. “His file. Read it if you want. The guy grew up on the streets of LA. His mother was a crack addict, his father was gone before he was potty-trained. He joined a gang before he could likely write, rose in the ranks to a high position as an adolescent. Got tossed in jail at one point, found an imam and religion in prison.”

Savas rolled his eyes. The last thing he wanted was a feel-good Hollywood story. “So the CIA's recruiting ex-cons now? They that desperate?”

“He was a juvenile.”

“Larry, the CIA doesn't hire convicts!”

“Somebody made an exception!”

“They sure did.” Savas shook his head. “He doesn't sound like some ex-gang member to me. Speaks like he's Ivy League.”

“He is,” Mira interjected. “Columbia. His spiritual father was highly educated and insisted Jordan be as well. He was bright enough to master that culture, too.”

“Great, now a Muslim elitist spook.”

Kanter pressed on. “Lots of these young black kids find Islam in jail. They either get radicalized, or they join social movements for the poor or push civil rights agendas. Well, Jordan felt a call to serve justice, something you don't see too many ex-gang members lean toward. Can you imagine how hard it must have been to get even a single serious look at a job like this? Can you imagine the interviews? He worked hard to erase his past. Some imam funded his college education. He prettied up his speech. He cut all ties with his old life. He knocked on every door until one opened. It looks like nothing stops this guy. He's on a mission, and he's made a serious mark at the CIA.”

“John, please,” said Vujanac. “We need you to put aside your personal issues. It's hard enough trying to get the FBI and the CIA to play nice. I know this is painful, but we need you to rise to this.”

Savas looked out the window at the city. Inside, he felt a war of emotions. Outside, through the glass in Kanter's office, it was utterly still, row upon row of buildings stretching until he could not see beyond them. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He knew they were right. He knew he was being childish, unprofessional. But they did not understand how hard this was. It was something he had never expected. The son of a bitch even dressed like an Arab! He shook his head and laughed bitterly.

“OK, you two. I can give you this. I have one goal, and that is to bring justice to murderers of innocents, those terrorists that kill our children and hope to see Heaven for it. I'll work with anyone who shares that goal. If he does, I'll make it work.”

“Thank you, John,” Kanter said with evident relief.

Savas rose from his chair and walked to the door. He stopped and turned around. “Just don't expect me to be friends with the man. He does his job, I'll do mine.” With that, he walked through the door and shut it behind him.

23

The next morning, Husaam Jordan briefed the team on his long-standing operation. Savas was stunned at how quickly the CIA man had integrated into the group, his extreme professionalism notwithstanding. Muslim or Tibetan monk, he was serious and knowledgeable, and held an intense focus for his work that reminded Savas of the pursuit of a predator of its prey. He also had a strangely winning side to his personality, which seemed to work best with the women in his group. It was clear that the ex-marine Miller was not going to warm easily to the man, and Matt King never warmed easily to anyone.

Cohen was a supporter early on and often came to his side when some of the more hostile members of the group were expressing that hostility. Savas had to admit he was one of those. Lightfoote was positively stuck to the man, showing specific and real interest in another human for the first time in her tenure at Intel 1. She hadn't called Savas “Ruthless Overlord” once today.

Savas, despite his very mixed feelings, was fascinated with what this man had done at the CIA. In the span of three short years, he had built up an undercover operation to infiltrate some of the most powerful and profitable arms dealerships in the world. For each of them, he used the front of an African American radical Muslim who was arming his organization for terrorist attacks in the United States. Whether or not the arms dealers knew or cared anything about this, or believed his intent, was likely irrelevant. They believed that the man wanted to buy, and did buy, and paid promptly in a way that established him and his false group with a strong reputation. It didn't hurt that several major arrests, including that of Viktor Bout himself, had been made in the last few years, disrupting organizations and forcing them to lower standards in chaotic rushes to claim client bases when they restructured. Jordan had taken advantage of this and promised his clients much larger buys in the near future.

For more than two hours, he detailed the organization, its members, foreign bases of operation and contacts, and difficult-to-trace money transfers. It was impressive, Savas had to admit. Impressive and frightening. A black Muslim seeking to become a domestic terrorist through international arms acquisition. The ruse was too plausible for comfort.

The presentation finished, Jordan turned on the lights and sat down. He appeared a bit drained and drank from a glass of water at his side. The room was quiet for a moment.

“Why do you think that this is the source of the explosives?” asked Cohen.

Jordan drank down the remainder of the glass and spoke. “Well, of course, we can't know, but there are not many ways to obtain that grade of explosive. The US government will not sell this stuff to just anyone. It stays with military or, in some cases, is sold to other nations. As you know, that's where the real black market in these things starts, and how our weapons mafia gets its sources. So there may be other ways, but I'm willing to bet that our new terrorist organization used one of these groups as its supplier. Bout's old organization is the biggest and still the best. It's a good place to start poking around.”

He looked around the table, studying the faces of Intel 1. “I'm actually curious to know who these people are that went to all the trouble to go for such top-of-the-line materials — really overkill for what they wanted to do.”

Savas had known this would come. Jordan had shown his hand from the CIA, down to the last PowerPoint slide. He expected a full briefing in return. Savas wanted to send him back to Langley with a thank you very much! and use this potential new lead. But the FBI needed the international reach of the CIA on this, and they specifically needed Jordan and his operation to have any hope of getting close to these dealers. Besides, it was the professional thing to do, and if he didn't, Kanter would cart someone else in to do the job.

“Rebecca Cohen will give you a briefing on what we know.”

Cohen stood up, dimmed the lights, and spent the next hour going over everything they had gleaned from the events to date. The forensics reports and details on the bombings seemed familiar to Jordan, likely from previous briefings given by Vujanac or even Kanter. She concluded with the speculation that it might be an internal, American group but was careful to note that there was little solid evidence for that conjecture.

“There are also other, wilder theories,” said Savas. He felt the eyes of the group bore in on him. That was a hell of a thing to open up now. Why he had done it; he didn't know. Perhaps to seek some form of acceptance, or, less charitably, perhaps to shake this Muslim up a little.

“Yes? What other theories?” asked Jordan after several moments of silence.

“His rogue Valkyries,” said Lightfoote cryptically. Savas stared at her in wonderment. Had she spoken to Rebecca?

“It's a possible connection between two cases we've been working on.” Savas summarized the worldwide string of assassinations, the use of the Sheikh as bait in a plan gone horribly wrong, and the connection between the attacks in the Afghan mountains and the murders. When he came to the subject of Norse mythology, and the speculation about the group's motivations, Jordan sat upright and still. The information on the more obscure point of the group's unusual name and symbolism seemed to interest him deeply, and he asked a number of intense questions on this matter.

“This Columbia professor,” Jordan said, “I think he may be right, and his analysis makes for a very dark view of what we are up against.” Jordan nodded thoughtfully toward Savas. “Now I see where you are headed, Agent Savas. You believe that this group is responsible for both the assassinations and these bombings, and that the motivation is the same — a hatred of Islam. Beyond that, a desire perhaps to wage a war against Muslims the world over. By this symbolism, an unending war until Judgment Day.”

Rideout cut in. “Come on, people! Look, you've got a terrorist group that is playing to fears in a very effective way. You have a set of assassinations. The only thing connecting them? Scary mythology and some strange occult symbols.”

“Pagan,” interrupted Lightfoote.

Rideout flashed her an annoyed look.

“Well, trader-man, they are pagan, not occult,” she countered. “There's, like, a huge difference.”

“Fine. Pagan symbols,” said Rideout. “This is all Wizard of Oz, if you want my opinion. Some real bombs and guns, and a lot of some ivory tower magician's hocus-pocus to rattle all the cages.”

“Rattling the cages is only scary when you're in a cage,” said Lightfoote.

Rideout rolled his eyes, his fatigue showing through. “This is what I left seven figures for? What the hell does that mean?”

“Look, enough!” said Miller, steering things back to the topic at hand. “From my vantage point, we have a string of murders and bombings that, even if not related, require our concerted efforts. The question is, what do we do now?”

Matt King answered in his nasal twang. “We track down all the shipments of this material, try to ID the lot used. Mira told us that each lot gets a different ratio of the additives that tag the explosives; we just need to get this material more thoroughly analyzed and figure out where this stuff went.”

“Forensics is on that, Matt,” said Savas. “But we don't have the equipment for that here. We need some really top-flight mass spectroscopy to ID these batches, and that's got to be farmed out. That takes time.”

Rideout sighed and threw his pen onto the notepad before him. “Look, what's the pattern here? I know it's embassies and Middle Eastern oil countries but specifically New York, Washington — I get that. That's front-page material. But Venezuela? I mean, what's that all about? Why not Europe, or China, or the Middle East itself? What's the pattern in these attacks?”

“Well, with only these three bombings, that may be a hard thing to identify,” rumbled Jordan.

“Yeah, maybe,” said Rideout, “but I think we need to spend some time looking at this. The embassies, the people. Do they share something that we are missing? They must have chosen these targets for a reason.”

“OK, J. P., why don't you work with Manuel on that? Let's compile all the data we can on these places, cross-referencing everything.”

“We're missing the point here, my friends,” boomed Jordan. He looked tired, frustrated, and deadly serious. “We have a good lead that could bring us to contacts that could be one or two steps away from the men we are looking for. This should be our priority.”

Savas suppressed an urge to tell the man that, as group leader, he would decide what Intel 1 should and shouldn't be doing. “So, what would you do, Agent Jordan?” he said somewhat tensely.

“This is where my position in the CIA allows me freedoms you do not have. I have reached a decision, Agent Savas. It is a hard one and will ruin years of work, as well as cost tax payers millions of dollars and perhaps some agents their lives. I am going back to Sharjah.”

“Sharjah?” asked Savas over the silence. “Why?”

Jordan stared forward, as if glimpsing something in the distance. “You can remember from my presentation — we have established inroads into two of Viktor Bout's primary centers of operation: Belgium and the United Arab Emirates. Bout was pressured out of Belgium in the late 1990s as the press uncovered his shady dealings. His organization never closed up shop there. But the heart of it moved with him to Sharjah in the UAE. There he was coddled by many members of the royal family and developed deep connections to international companies playing with money laundering and terrorism, civil war, and murder. He left behind a well-organized machine.”

Cohen took her glasses off and stared at the CIA operative. “Husaam, what do you plan on doing there?”

Jordan paused a moment and took a deep breath. “I may be in the minority, but I take quite seriously the intentions of this terrorist organization and the hypothesis put forward by Agent Savas. Perhaps I have to — after all, it could be a declaration of war against my faith. I believe we must take whatever action we can in order to find out who these people are and how to get to them. I'm going to take my team undercover into Sharjah, as we have before, but this time to set up a major arms purchase and use that opportunity to break into their organization and seize any records they have on the sale and distribution of Semtex-like explosives.”

A heavy silence fell over the group. Rebecca's eyes flashed upward toward Savas. Rideout whistled, adding, “You're likely to end up buried in the sands out there. That's either really damn brave or really damn stupid.”

Jordan smiled grimly. “It is written, ‘What God writes on your forehead, you will become.’”