Brad Thor - Foreign Influence

On a hunch, Vaughan cross-referenced the pickups with Muslim prayer times and his hunch paid off. Nasiri was picking up fares after he had gone to pray. The only problem was that there were no official mosques within the entire eight-block radius they were looking at. The keyword, though, was official.

With one phone call, Davidson was able to learn that there were unofficial, makeshift mosques and prayer rooms all across the city. Normally they were hiding right in plain sight. People just didn’t know what to look for, such as an abundance of taxicabs in front, papered-over windows, Arabic writing, or the word Masjid written somewhere on the facade.

Once Vaughan and Davidson found out, it took them several hours, but they finally located what they believed to be Mohammed Nasiri’s mosque.

Unlike American places of worship, Vaughan knew that it wasn’t unusual for mosques, especially those frequented by fundamentalists, to be used to plot attacks, store weapons, and give sanctuary to terrorists.

“Anything else happen while I was gone?” he asked.

Davidson pretended to consult his notebook. “Muammar Gaddafi dropped bin Laden and Zawahiri off for Sunday school, Jimmy Hoffa pulled up with a stack of union ballots in Arabic, and Amelia Earhart has been circling overhead with this really cool banner that says Islam is the bomb.”

Vaughan shook his head. “Hey, don’t take it out on me. My wife’s not happy either and I’m sure it goes double for my kids. I normally cook pancakes on Sunday.”

“How old are they?”

“My wife would tell you her age is none of your business, but the kids are five and seven. How about you? Do you have children?”

“No. Just two extremely high-strung miniature Dobermans who piss the carpet if I shut the refrigerator too loud.”

“I hate tiny dogs.”

“Do you mind?” asked Davidson, his head pulled back. “You’re talking about my kids here.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget about it. I don’t like tiny dogs either. Can you picture what I look like walking those little apartment rats when the wife is under the weather?”

Vaughan chuckled.

“How about you?” continued Davidson. “Do you have any animals?”

“We’ve got a lab mix.”

“Mixed with what?”

“Pit bull.”

“Now that’s a man’s dog.”

“That’s what Mrs. Vaughan tells me,” he said as he opened up a bag and offered Davidson a doughnut. “Sorry. They didn’t have any turkey or tofu sausage.”

“I’ll let my wife know to add you to the wrongful death suit as well,” he said, reaching into the bag. “Which one has the Crestor sprinkles?”

Vaughan was about to laud the health benefits of doughnuts when his eye caught movement across the street. “I don’t believe it.”

“Me neither. They’re all glazed. There’s not a single chocolate one in the whole bag. Who goes for doughnuts and doesn’t bring back at least one chocolate?”

“I’m not talking doughnuts. Check out the guy who just got out of that car across the street.”

Davidson looked up as a fat man with a long gray beard and dark sunglasses was helped out of a car by two younger men. He looked to be in his late sixties and was dressed in traditional Muslim clothing with a length of fabric wrapped around his prayer cap.

“Look at his hands,” said Vaughan.

“Holy hand job, Batman. Where’d he get those back-scratchers?” exclaimed Davidson as he saw the man’s two stainless steel hooks.

“Probably not from baking cupcakes.”

“You can say that again. Don’t they cut off hands for stealing over there?”

“The Saudis do, and sometimes the Taliban. It’s definitely an Islamic thing, but I’ve got a feeling this guy’s a different story,” said Vaughan.

“Lose a hand and you end up becoming an instructor. Isn’t that what you said?”

Vaughan nodded.

“Judging by this guy’s qualifications, he must be teaching a Ph.D. course.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said the Organized Crime officer as he put the lid back on his coffee cup.

“Maybe we should hand this over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force now.”

“And tell them what? While looking for our hit-and-run cabbie we saw a man with hooks for hands? Everything from Nasiri’s apartment is poisonous tree.”

Davidson knew he was right. “But if what we think is going on, actually is going on, we can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

“I agree. We need to do something, but the last thing we can afford to do is to be spotted. If that happens, everyone will scatter and this thing will go deeper underground. We’ve got one thread we’re hanging on by and if we lose it, there’s no telling how badly this will end.”

The Public Vehicles officer shook his head. “I wonder if this was why 9/11 didn’t get stopped.”

“We’re not going to let another 9/11 happen. I don’t care what we have to do. But the one thing we can’t do is continue to sit here in your Bronco. We need a better surveillance vehicle.”

“The PI company I moonlight for has one,” said Davidson as he pulled out his cell phone.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Because I don’t like using it.”

“Why not?”

“It has a certain feature that’s a real pain in the ass.”

“It gets hot and stuffy and begins to stink like every other surveillance vehicle?” asked Vaughan.

“No, not at all. This thing is wall-to-wall luxury. It’s like riding in a limo.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

Davidson turned on the ignition and put the Bronco in gear. “You’ll see.”

GENEVA

Harvath didn’t like flying blind. They should have had much more information before moving on Tsui. They didn’t even have a description. All Nicholas could tell him was that Tsui was Asian, possibly Taiwanese. That was it. He didn’t even have any idea how old he was, though based on their interactions, he believed he was young; mid to late twenties, tops.

He had tracked Tsui’s signature to the servers at the University of Geneva. Once through the university’s security protections, he narrowed the location down to a lab in the Computer Sciences department.

Tsui had been very careful in covering his tracks. If it wasn’t for the Trojan horse Nicholas had planted in his system, they never would have even gotten this close. There remained, though, one problem. “I can’t find a student or a faculty member anywhere in Geneva with the name Tsui,” said the Troll.

“First things first,” replied Harvath as Peio drove the van across the river toward the university. “Are you sure everything terminates in this lab? It doesn’t get routed out again to Taipei, or Shanghai, or something like that, does it?”

“No. That’s as far as it goes. Unless.”

The Troll’s voice trailed off. “Unless what?” asked Harvath.

“Unless it’s a digital dead drop.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning his traffic gets dumped onto a drive of some sort that gets physically collected and then rebroadcast from another location.”

Harvath thought about that. “Either way there has to be a human being involved and that human being has to have access to this lab.”

“Yes, as far as I can tell.”

“Then that’s where we’ll start.”

Many of the university’s buildings were southwest of Geneva’s old town. Once they had located the building that housed the lab, Peio found a place to park. Harvath watched the foot traffic come and go and then exited the van and walked off campus. A couple of blocks away, he found what he was looking for.