Hard Road (38 page)

He couldn't abide the ersatz 1970s architecture. It was like America. Soulless, empty, a monolithic creature.

A group of uniformed military with ID badges walked by, easygoing smiles, on their break from their Pentagon desk or some other subset of government.

Caan avoided eye contact as he walked on. Up ahead he saw the huge white clock outside Starbucks. But instead of stopping for a double espresso and granola bar like he sometimes did back at his local coffee shop in Frederick, he took an elevator to the eleventh floor. He stepped out of the elevator and walked past Ruth's Steakhouse and on for another fifty yards until he got to a suite of offices. He swiped a card and went in, the door locking softly behind him.

Caan looked around. Beige Axminster carpets throughout, rudimentary office furniture, no pictures on the wall. No computers, files or anything. It was the first time he'd visited the inside of the office. He had scouted out the mall and acquainted himself with the shops and the layout. But they didn't want him to go near the office in case it blew the whole operation.

They were concerned that the one-year lease could be traced to a fake travel agency in Grand Cayman. The cover was in place for a reason.

He pulled down the blinds. A few moments later, his cell phone rang.

“The GPS says you've arrived,” an unfamiliar man's voice said.

“This very minute.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel focussed. Fresh. I'm ready.”

“We know you are. But no doubt you will be looking forward to your well-deserved vacation.”

Caan felt his stomach knot. He had been given the go ahead with the operation.
Well-deserved vacation.

“We're sure it will be most memorable. Is there anything you still require?”

Caan sighed. “I have everything I need.” He felt a lump in his throat. “I'll send you a postcard.”

“That would be great. Take care. See you soon.”

The call ended.

Caan went to the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, removed the blond wig and took out the blue-coloured contact lenses, dropping them on the floor. He scrubbed his face clean and dried it with a small towel. Then he unpacked the fresh clothes from his bag. He pulled on the grey Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt, faded jeans, old Nike sneakers, and carefully placed the new brown tortoiseshell-framed glasses on the bridge of his broken nose. He reapplied some cover cream over his face and neck, concealing the redness from the Botox injections, but also lightening his skin tone. Then he brushed back his short, newly dyed brown hair.

Caan closed his eyes for a few moments to compose himself, taking long, deep breaths. He'd been practicing breathing exercises for months, inducing the calm-like state that he needed. He felt sharper and more assured than ever.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

The man staring back at him in the mirror looked a complete stranger. That was good. That was very good. He thought he looked like his father had when he had arrived in America as a young man and wondered what his father would make of what he was about to do.

Would he understand why he had to do this? The answer was: most certainly not.

The riches and accolades of America had seduced his father. Caan saw it differently. He saw what America really was. He saw the voracious monster, which polluted, corrupted and violated peoples and nations. He saw it tried to remake them in its own image. No matter the cost. It was all about spreading liberal democracy. But that was phoney. The real reason was resources. Oil, land, people. America's interests were corporate interests. The Pentagon called the shots. The countries they had defiled, the millions they had killed, be it Vietnam or Central America, had been terrorised into servitude. It wasn't about stopping Communism, but in getting access to resources and cheap labor, where American corporations could stride in and open up sweatshop factories and resell products at one thousand per cent mark-ups. They would spread the homogenous artificial world of Mickey Mouse and Hollywood to new and emerging markets. But Caan also saw, like millions of others did, the crusade to wipe out
his
people. The true believers.

His father preferred the easy cynicism and atheism of the metropolitan left. But he didn't live to see a new generation emerge.

A generation like his son. A generation that was about to throw off the shackles of the West. It was 9/11 that had been his wake-up call. He saw it for what it was. The call to arms. He began to read about the real American Dream. Turning countries to ashes. And he realised they were embarking on a crusade to wipe out as many Muslims as they could. He saw it so clearly now.

Caan was from a new generation. He was born in America, but his bloodline was Mujahedeen. His blood brothers were being slaughtered each and every day by pilotless drones. He had watched the videos again and again. He saw what American freedom really meant. He saw women and children mown down in cold blood. Screaming all around.

He would avenge. He would avenge them all. He was going to make his own history. This was their time. Their place. Their future.

Caan snapped out of his thoughts and went through to the office and into the adjacent kitchen. Inside the top cabinet was a biometric safe. He pressed his thumb against the scanner and after a couple of beeps, the safe opened. Inside was a black water-resistant travel bag. He unzipped it and saw a clear plastic box with two satin white Christmas baubles adorned by gold glitter.

This was it. This was everything he had prayed for. The time had come.

Caan zipped up the bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he checked himself in the mirror one last time. His eyes were sparkling, face impassive.

He was ready.

A short while later his cell phone rang again. This was the final call before his mission was due to commence. It was from a private residence at the foot of the Margala Hills in Islamabad.

A Pakistani man spoke in Pashto, “Can you remember that verse from your favourite book?”

Every soul shall taste of death, and you should only be paid fully your reward on the resurrection day; then whoever is removed far away from the fire and is made to enter the garden he indeed has obtained the object; and the life of this world is nothing but a provision of vanities.

Sacred words from the Quran he had been taught to memorise until it became engrained on his mind.

Caan spoke in English. “I know the words by heart. They will always be with me.”

The Pakistani man sighed. “I'm glad you enjoyed it. Until the next time…”

Then the line went dead.

Caan closed his eyes and began his breathing exercises for several minutes. When he opened his eyes he realised he was smiling.

Until the next time.

Caan walked out of the suite of offices, which automatically locked behind him and headed towards the elevator. He rode it alone to the arcade level, his heart rate quickening as he descended.

The world was going about its business oblivious to what he was about to unleash. He afforded himself a self-satisfied smile and headed straight for the Metro.

THIRTY-FIVE

The tension in the crammed investigation room within the Strategic Information Operations Center on the fifth
floor of the FBI's HQ was palpable as Meyerstein walked in. Stamper was on the phone hunched at a paper-strewn desk. She noticed all available workspace was used up by analysts and special agents seconded to the investigation. Six plasma screens were showing
real-time
feeds. The largest showed the White House Situation Room as another two screens relayed live pictures from the platform at Crystal City Metro. She caught sight of Reznick and the Red team mingling with the commuters and wondered if she would come to rue the decision. Two other screens were showing Fox News and CNN. But Meyerstein's gaze was drawn to the sixth
real-time
feed showing a fresh-faced white kid with foppish brown hair staring out of the screen.

The kid was a computer genius the FBI had recruited from Brown University after the head of the computer science department – a former military man himself – let his old bosses at the NSA know about the research fellow's ability. A short while later he was leased out to the FBI.

His name was Brandon Lally and he was on the real-time feed from the second floor office of Congressman Lance Drake in the nearby Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.

Stamper put down a phone and looked across at her. “Need a couple of minutes, Martha.”

She walked up to his desk. “Real quick, Roy.”

“You asked us to look into Scott Caan's life.”

“So, what've you got?”

“This Scott Caan is something.”

“How so?”

“Martha, he has concocted a fantastic cover story.”

“Cover story?” Her gaze was drawn again to the real-time feeds.

“You gotta listen to this. He was born in Syracuse. That's all been verified. He's an American. His father registered his name four days later. On the surface, all well and good.”

“I don't see where this is going, Roy.”

“I've not finished. Then we started digging into his father's past. The records we have show his father was also born in Syracuse. But I did some more digging. Turns out his father's name was changed forty-six years ago.”

Meyerstein's interest was piqued. “What do you mean changed? Changed by whom?”

“The father himself. Here's the kicker. You wanna know where he was born?”

“Is he a foreign national?”

“You're gonna love this. Caan's father became a naturalised American, although our records show that he was born here. We don't know how the system shows this, but it is incorrect. The guy was born in Karachi. You believe that?”

“Bullshit.”

“I kid you not. You wanna know the father's real name?”

“Spit it out, Roy.”

“The real name of Scott Caan's father is Mohammed Khan. Spelled K-H-A-N. How cute is that?”

“How did we miss this?”

Stamper lifted up a copy of the original document from his desk and handed it to Meyerstein. “The father's story reads like something out of the American dream. He was an immigrant. Came to the country in 1955. He used to work as a political cartoonist. Hence the reason he left. Moved to a small town in upstate New York and became a successful syndicated cartoonist. Winner of the National Press Foundation's 1994 Ravelston Award. Also scooped the 1995 Best American Political Cartoon Competition. Truly bought into the American Dream. So much so that he changed his name. He Americanised it. And he became Caan. We're still checking, but I'm being told by Freddie that from what they've seen so far, the computer records of Caan's father have been altered by a third party. We're still trying to verify if and when and by whom.”

Meyerstein's brain was racing. There were so many strands to the story. But the link to Karachi had opened up what country was likely to be behind this. “OK, this is top priority. Circulate this immediately to the team, all intelligence agencies, and the White House.”

“You got it.”

She clapped her hands and looked up at the screens. “Brandon, can you hear me?”

“Sure, coming in loud and clear.”

“Look, there are a lot of people waiting to hear about a breakthrough. I want to find out if there was anything on Congressman's Drake's computer or the Wesley recording. Any progress?”

He nodded. “We're still piecing this together, but we have finally got something.”

“Gimme what you've got.”

“The guy that decrypted the original conversation – Thomas Wesley – is either a genius or a lunatic. He stripped this down to the real voices, but I don't know if he knew who the two guys were.”

“Brandon, cut to the chase.”

“We've run this through numerous voice analysis tests, checked and rechecked with the NSA – who're freaking out that they seem to have missed this. The problem was that the voice in the conversation Wesley intercepted had been voice morphed. They wanted us to think, if this was uncovered, that it was the Israelis. But it wasn't. We are now one hundred per cent certain of the voice. A perfect match.”

“Tell me for Christ's sake,” she snapped.

Brandon pressed a button on the laptop in front of him and a grainy colour picture came up on one of the huge plasma screens. The pictures showed a handsome Asian man in his late fifties with short hair wearing a military uniform adorned with medals.

Meyerstein's blood ran cold as a ripple of excitement ran through members of her team. She knew the man. They all knew the man. “Major General Muhammad Kashal. Are you sure? This is the number two in the ISI.”

“One hundred per cent, ma'am. No doubt about it.”

“What about the other guy?”

“No question about it, this is retired senior CIA officer, Vince Brewling. He works at Norton & Weiss in Miami.”

Meyerstein was speechless for a few moments as she absorbed the information. She couldn't believe how this was playing out, the various strands concealing the true motive; a terrorist attack on America. “Brandon, stay on the line.”

Meyerstein took a few moments to compose herself before she turned to face the senior military men and women staring back at her from the feeds from the White House situation room and the FBI's National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein, FBI. I've got a critical update you all need to be aware of.”

Richard Blake in the White House situation room cleared his throat. “Assistant Director, we're all ears.”