Ground Zero

3

Maybe Harris is all right, Jack thought after studying his expression during Weezy’s recounting of the night’s events. He’d seemed genuinely horrified.

They’d awakened him by ringing his buzzer in the downstairs lobby until he’d answered. Even though he was a long way from senior status, he lived in a senior citizen high-rise in Coney Island. Jack didn’t care enough to ask how. In sharp contrast to Weezy’s place, his two-bedroom apartment was small, neat, and uncluttered.

The three of them clustered now in the spare bedroom that functioned as an office.

“What do we do now?” Harris said.

Weezy took a breath. “I’d like to just sit and cry, but we need to watch the Sheikh video.”

He made a face. “You sure? I lasted maybe a minute before cutting it off.”

She seated herself before the computer, hands poised over the keyboard.

“It was sent to you for a reason. Now that we know he had prior knowledge of nine/eleven, we have to see it. What’s the URL?”

“It’s gone. The URL is a no go. The Web site’s still up, but that video is gone.”

Weezy leaned back and closed her eyes. “Aw, no.”

“But!” Harris gri

He turned to a cylindrical organizer atop a bookshelf, popped the top, and pulled out a disk.

“Here you go,” he said, handing it to her.

Weezy dropped it into a slot and the three of them waited, Jack and Harris leaning forward, flanking Weezy in the chair.

What followed was ugly. A bearded guy who could have been Bashar Sheikh—Weezy seemed confident he was—had been stripped naked and strapped on his back to a table. He was bloody, especially in his genital area, and screaming in a foreign language. Jack noticed a date in the lower right corner of the frame: 13/3/04.

Weezy quickly minimized the screen, removing the video from view but leaving the audio.

“What language is that?” Jack asked.

“Some of it’s Spanish,” Weezy said, leaning closer to the speaker. “But some of it’s Urdu.”

Jack looked at her. “You know Urdu?”

She nodded. “And Arabic. I decided I’d need to know them if I was going to get serious about this.”

“So you just learned them?”

She glanced up at him and shrugged. “I bought some Rosetta Stone programs and learned in no time. It—wait.” She turned back to the computer. “Did you hear that? He just mentioned bin Aswad. Oh, God, this could be important.”

She grabbed a pen and a yellow pad from a corner of Harris’s desktop, then returned to the video and restarted it. She wrote furiously as she listened to the audio.

After three passes, she swiveled her chair toward them and studied her notes.

“Well?” Jack said. “Anything coherent?”

She nodded. “A lot of it’s pleas for mercy. He seems to be the prisoner of some CNI operatives—sort of Spain’s CIA—because all the questions are in Spanish. The March 13, 2004, date on the video is two days after al Qaeda bombed the Madrid commuter trains. Sheikh was involved in obtaining the explosives.”

“You’re sure?” Harris said.

“Well, he admits it, although he seems ready to confess to anything as long as they stop doing whatever they’re doing to him.”

“And bin Aswad?”

“He says bin Aswad—and there’s no mistaking who he means because he calls him by his full name: Wahid bin Aswad al Somar. He says it was on bin Aswad’s insistence that the trains were targeted during rush hour—for maximum terror, maximum body count. He claims bin Aswad was at his house for the final pla

“You believe that?” Harris said.

Weezy shook her head. “Not from a guy who shorted all those stocks, but it’s possible. He says bin Aswad insisted on a midweek strike for, again, maximum terror and maximum body count.”

Maximum terror . . . maximum body count . . . he got his wish.

Jack said, “This is the guy who’s been disappearing from the online photos, right?”

“One and the same.”

The same big question remained: Why? Jack still could think of only one reason.

“It’s got to mean he intends to go legit, where his face is going to be out in public. Maybe he’s going to run for office somewhere in the Middle East, or become a UN ambassador or whatever.” Jack scratched his beard. “But then again, all he’d have to do was shave off his beard and no one would recognize him.”

Harris shook his head. “In that world a beard is important. Growing it fist length or longer shows a devotion to Islam. He must plan on keeping the beard.”

Jack looked at Weezy. “Anything else about this bin Aswad or what you’re looking for?”

“Nothing specific, but it convinces me more than ever that he’s a member of the larger conspiracy, the group that manipulated al Qaeda into striking the Trade Towers.”

“But again: Why?”

“That’s what we need to find out.”

“Maybe the fourth man can tell us,” Harris said.

Fourth man?

Weezy shrugged. “If he’s even alive, and if we can find him.”

Harris gri

Weezy straightened in her seat. “He’s alive? Where?”

“L.A. Looks like I’ve got another trip ahead of me.”

Jack said, “Anyone care to clue me in on what you’re talking about?”

“Long story,” Weezy said. “I’ll tell you later.”

“No offense to Jack,” Harris said, “but don’t you think we should keep this close?”

Weezy pushed herself from the seat and faced him. “He’s saved my life twice in the past twelve hours. I think we can trust him.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just saying.”

Jack could wait to hear. He already had too much unassimilated data drifting through his brain.

He pulled out his Tracfone. “I’m going to call Eddie.”

Weezy frowned. “Why?”

“You need someplace to stay and—”

“She can stay here,” Harris said, pointing to the couch against the far wall. “That folds out into a bed.”

Jack looked at Weezy. “Your call.”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “I might as well. I can work things out with Eddie during the day.”

Jack wondered if she and Harris had ever “snuggled.”

“Okay. Got a phone?”

She shook her head. “It’s back at the house.”

He handed her his.

“Take it. I’ve got others at home. I’ll call you later. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

“What?”

“It’s a surprise.”

If anyone could make sense out of the Compendium of Srem, it was Weezy.

4

Ernst Drexler paced his apartment’s front room. He could not believe what he’d just heard.

“How does this happen? How does this happen?”

A few minutes ago the ringing of his phone had ripped him from sleep. The doorman apologized for waking him, but the visitor in the foyer insisted that this was an emergency. Szeto had entered a few minutes later. As soon as Ernst had seen his expression he’d known the news would be bad, but not this bad.

The man stood stiff and straight a few feet inside the door while Ernst ranged the room.

“She is some kind of ninja.”

Ernst stopped and stared at him. “You’re joking, right? Tell me you are joking.”

“That is only explanation. These were three skilled men. They firebombed her house as directed. A perfect job. The house and everything in it is now ash. But all three are dead. Shot dead just like Max and Josef. Max’s gun was missing. She must have taken it and used it against them. Max would not give up gun easily. She is ninja.”

Had the Order bitten off more than it could chew? Five men killed while trying—unsuccessfully—to corral this one woman. What was she?