Ground Zero

Jack leaned back. “So . . . according to Veilleur, the Order was originally charged with completing Opus Omega. Since the Dormentalist Church didn’t exist in sixty-five, Ernst the First was sent in to keep the PA from interfering with their pillar placement.”

“But he failed. The PA broke ground on the project in sixty-six.” She swiveled to face Jack. “You can see why they were concerned. The plan was to dig down to bedrock, some seventy feet below. A huge hole. They removed a million cubic yards and dumped it in the Hudson. It pushed the river far enough back to create Battery Park City.”

Jack gave a low whistle. All this was news to him. He hadn’t moved to the city till the nineties, long after all this had happened.

“A thirteen-square-block hole, seventy feet down. A lot of dirt—and a lot of new real estate.”

Weezy smiled. “Can you imagine how frantic the Order must have been? They’d probably pla

“But they got their way in the end, didn’t they.”

Weezy’s smile disappeared. “All that destruction, all that loss of life, just to bury one of their obscene pillars. It seems too . . . too evil, even for them.”

“But they’re working for the Otherness, which, I’ll bet, has another definition of evil.”

“But—”

“Too evil for the Order but not too evil for a bunch of crazy Arabs?” “

“ ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ ”

“Hey, I like that.”

“Not mine—thank Voltaire. But history’s proven that a religion can justify pretty much anything in the name of its god.”

“Well, think of the Otherness as the Order’s god. And since Opus Omega is crucial to bringing their god into this world, they consider themselves to be doing the lord’s work.”

She shook her head. “Al Qaeda was committing a terrorist act. Attacking the Towers was an end as much as a means. Their lord’s work or not, I think the Order could have found another way to bury their pillar. During the excavation phase, or during the very early pouring of the foundation, they could have found a way to sneak in and get their job done.”

“A thirteen-foot concrete pillar weighing tons?” Jack shrugged. “Maybe they could have, maybe they tried. whatever, they didn’t succeed, so they had to find another way. Ernest Goren and his fellow workers had the misfortune of catching them in the act.”

Weezy kept shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“One way to know is to learn all there is to know about Opus Omega.” He pointed to the Compendium lying on the desk. “How’s it going? Able to make sense out of those pages?”

She shrugged. “Some. The picture is piecing together, but it’s slow going.”

“Well, then, the other option is to identify bin Aswad. If we can co

Weezy shook her head. “No. The nose is different. Plus he had blue eyes and bin Aswad’s are dark.”

“Ever hear of tinted contacts?”

She was still shaking her head. “From what we see above the beard, I say no. As for the rest of his face, who knows?”

“Is there a computer program that’ll remove a beard?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Computers were Kevin’s department.”

Jack thought of Russell Tuit.

“I know a guy who did time for hacking.”

Weezy smiled. “You know a criminal? What a surprise.”

“Some of my best friends . . . well, anyway, he’s a guru of sorts. Why don’t you print me out—”

“Printing’s no good. They’ll lose resolution, especially using Eddie’s inkjet, and your guy will sacrifice even more sca

“Do it. And then I’m out of here. We both need some sleep.”

SATURDAY

1

After some obligatory small talk, Russ said, “So, what brings you to my humble abode?”

Humble it was, a tiny one-bedroom over a Tex-Mex restaurant on Second Avenue in the East Nineties. The place tended to smell better when the kitchen below was going full blast, but they didn’t do breakfast. Russell Tuit—he pronounced it like bird talk—didn’t have a pocket protector or taped horn-rimmed glasses, but had the mouse-potato pallor and flabby look of someone whose fingers did all the walking. A certifiable geek; and it seemed a while since he’d had a shower.

Jack pulled out Weezy’s disk. “Wondering if you might take a look at this.”

Russ took the disk and headed for his computer in the corner of the sparsely furnished front room. Barely furnished was more like it, and what he had looked fourth hand.

Following him, Jack said, “You still stealing Internet?”

A federal judge had ba

“It’s not stealing, it’s sharing. It’s my compensation.”

Russ had helped the guy in the neighboring apartment install a Wi-Fi system. He’d made sure to place the access point on the wall they shared.

He thought of Alice Laverty.

“Just met a lady whose life was complicated by someone hacking into her Wi-Fi system.”

He slid the disk into a slot in his computer. “Unsecured, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hardly anyone secures their home network. But no worry here. I insisted that Bill create a password-protected gateway and firewall—for his protection, of course.”

“And yours too, maybe?”

“Of course.”

“And you know the password?”

“Of course.”

“What if he changes it?”

“He already has—twice.”

“So . . . aren’t you locked out?”

He gave Jack a sheepish look over his shoulder. “I installed a keystroke logger when I set up his Wi-Fi.”

Again? Jack wondered how many computers were bugged with those things.

“Swell.”

“Hey, I don’t abuse it, man. I respect his privacy. It just sends me a signal whenever he opens the password manager. That’s the only time I peek.”

Russ hit a few keys and an array of pictures of bin Aswad’s face popped onto the screen. He stared at them a moment, scratching his red hair, then swiveled his chair and faced Jack.

“Who’s this—a terrorist?”

The question jolted Jack. Then he realized that any bearded, turba

“Uh-huh. I’ve joined the CIA.”

Russ laughed. “That’ll be the day. No, seriously.”

“Just a guy I need to find, except there’s a good chance he doesn’t have a beard anymore. Any way you can use some computer magic to remove those whiskers?”

“Remove?” He shook his head. “Not that I know of—at least not that I’ve heard of.”

“I was counting on you having heard of everything.”

“Well, there’s facial-recognition software, but that’s used for comparison—you know, does this face match that one? This is something different.”

“Come on. They’ve got these police identi-kit programs that can put a beard on a face; there’s got to be some program that’ll take it off.”

“It’s not that simple. If you have the underlying facial structure, it’s nothing to add some facial hair to see what he looks like with a beard. But beards, especially these long, raggedy Muslim types, they hide the underlying facial structure—lots of times they hide the lips, f’Christ sake.”

Jack pointed to the screen. “Look, you’ve got multiple angles here, and you can see his lips. Do something.”

“I’ll try, man. That’s all I can say. I’ll check around, see if someone’s come up with an algorithm that’ll work. Can’t promise anything, though.”