F. Paul Wilson - Ground Zero

Jack leaped to his feet and grabbed her arm.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just dizzy. Not ready for sudden movements yet, I guess.”

“Maybe you’d better lie down.”

She shook him off. “No way. But maybe a beer isn’t such a good idea.”

She left the bottle behind and led him on a winding course through the stacks in the living room. She stopped by one next to the stairs to the second floor, counted down to the sixth issue, and pulled out a copy of the Times .

Handing it to Jack, she said, “Check out page four.”

Jack did just that, and immediately spotted the photo.

“I’ll be damned.”

The exact same configuration of bin Laden and his buds, but this one showed an extra man. The fourth was bearded and turbanned like the others but caught in profile instead of face on—as if he’d been turning away from the camera when the shutter clicked.

Weezy was tapping a finger against her temple. “Never forgets.”

“Who’s the fourth guy?”

“Remember I mentioned The Man Who Wasn’t There? That’s him. Wahid bin Aswad.”

“But what’s the point of taking him out of the photo?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” She crooked her finger at him as she headed back toward the kitchen. “There’s more.”

Back at the computer she plugged in her network cable, opened the New York Times site, and found that issue. But the photo showed only three men.

Jack blinked. “Somebody hacked the Times .”

“Yes. Twice. Because I contacted them—anonymously, of course—and told them the photo had been altered. I watched daily and soon the original was restored. Days later, the doctored photo was back in its place.”

Baffled, Jack dropped into a chair. “But what does the hacker hope to accomplish? Copies of the real photo have to be all over the place.”

“But they’re not. The real, four-man photo exists in newspapers, which are disposable. They wind up either recycled or used as landfill or fish wrapping or on the bottom of birdcages. More and more, people are looking to the Internet for their reading and research. If they blog about nine/eleven and want to include this photo, they snag it from the Times ’s site or from someone else who previously borrowed from the Times . And later on, folks snag it from that blog for some use of their own. And on and on and on. The doctored version of that photo is everywhere on the Web. The original with Wahid bin Aswad . . . is nowhere.”

Jack shook his head. “But why?”

“I don’t know. But it’s pretty clear that since nine/eleven, someone’s been trying to rewrite history. Someone’s trying to erase evidence that Wahid bin Aswad was with bin Laden and company on that day, or on any day, for that matter.”

“What do you mean, ‘any day’?”

She started mousing around and opened a photo file.

“I did an image search for bin Laden and collected any in which he appeared to be part of a group photo. Then I traced them as best I could to their origins—almost always online news sources. I bought up a lot of old papers and searched out those photos. I found three more that had been altered. In all instances, a single figure had been removed.”

“Let me guess: Wahid bin Asswipe.”

Weezy frowned. “Oh, that’s mature.”

“I have a wide streak of immaturity, Weez. I nurture it. And I have a big problem showing even a flyspeck of respect toward bin Laden and his buddies.”

“This is serious, Jack.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because the Internet is becoming the source of record for all but the most serious and dedicated researchers.” She clicked on an icon and the doctored three-shot popped onto the screen. “This is a lie. And it’s a lie that’s being told again and again all over the Web every time it’s copied and posted somewhere else. Tell a lie often enough and it can become the truth. Someone is expunging all photographic evidence of Wahid bin Aswad from the Web. Not mentions of his name—those have remained untouched—just the images.”

She wiggled and clicked her mouse again and started a slide show of photos.

“Look,” she said, tapping the screen over a figure in a group photo. “Here he is at a meeting in Kandahar—I scanned this from a newspaper.” A click and the photo changed. “Here’s the version that’s all over the Web.”

Sure enough, one of the bearded wonders was missing from the second photo. The same was true for the next two pairings.

Jack leaned back. “Now that’s weird. Why just the photos? Why not erase all trace?”

“Obviously he doesn’t want anyone to know what he looks like.”

“Sounds to me like a guy who’s planning to reinvent himself as a regular, everyday guy.”

“Maybe not a regular everyday guy. Maybe someone a lot of people are going to see, someone who doesn’t want anyone making the connection.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “These photos aren’t the best quality, and one bearded guy looks a lot like another.” He ran a hand over his own short beard. “See what I mean?”

She laughed, then hunched her shoulders and grabbed her head. “Oh!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Need to remember not to laugh.” Whatever it was passed quickly and she looked back at him. “You’ll never pass for an Arab. You’re—” Her computer dinged and she clicked around until . . . “E-mail from Kevin.”

“Harris? You trust him?”

She nodded. “As far as being someone genuinely searching for the truth about this, yes. As for his past, whatever he says about that is a lie—unless he tells you he’s ex-NSA.”

Alarm buzzed down Jack’s spine. “What?”

“Strictly low level, and I believe he was let go because of his nine/eleven beliefs.”

“Swell.”

“You say that a lot.”

“I’ve had lots of cause today. How do you know?”

She pointed at the monitor. “With a little know-how and a lot of patience, you’d be amazed what you can find on the Web. I even found you, the Man Who Isn’t There.”

Jack didn’t like that. If Weezy could find him, so could others. Getting harder and harder to stay under the radar. Why couldn’t people shut up? These goddamn bloggers with their incessant nattering, feeling they have to be saying something all the time just to fill the empty space on their blog page, and so they talk about some guy they heard about from a friend of a friend of a cousin of an uncle who met this guy named Jack once who might be real or maybe just an urban legend.

Yeah. Urban legend. Go with that.

And. Then. Shut. Up.

Weezy leaned closer to the screen. “It’s got a jpeg attached. He must have scanned his photo of Bashar Sheikh.”

“That photo kind of bothers me,” he said as she downloaded it. “How did he get it?”

Weezy shrugged. “He still has friends in NSA. Probably got a little help.” She glanced at Jack. “His heart’s in the right place.” She hit a few more buttons. “Now to decrypt it.”

Jack said nothing. Maybe she was right. He’d seemed genuinely relieved to find her alive in the hospital.

“Okay,” Weezy said. “Let’s open the photo.”

A head shot of—surprise!—a bearded guy in some sort of Muslim skullcap popped into view.

“Harris told me he looked familiar but—”

“He does. Let me pop him up in another photo.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised that she recognized him right off, but her perfect memory never ceased to amaze him. One of the undoctored photos she’d run through before appeared and she tapped the screen.

“There he is, standing right next to bin Aswad. He’s never been identified, but was obviously one of the nine/eleven planners. Now we have a name for him.”