Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2) (37 page)

“I wish I knew the answer to that one,” Burrows said, stealing a look at the control room. She was eager to get back in the action. “There are about 90 congress women in the US, but lucky us, only a few are in Washington DC and we are monitoring their every move. Round the clock.”

“So what’s next for me?”

“Sorry Alice, I don’t know exactly but I’ll phone you as soon as I find out. The undercover informer we’ve got is trying to find out if Fareed Azim has told any one of his friends where he has gone. There is one man of low intelligence at the mosque. He runs errands for Azim and the other worshipers. In essence, he’s available for the odd job as long as he gets paid. He goes by the name of Idir, no other name. Just Idir. Our informer thinks he might know something because he gets jumpy when the other Muslim brothers ask him about Fareed Azim. So we’re watching him closely and we’ve succeeded in getting his phone tapped, hoping he leads us to Azim. We’re trying to work it from all angles so we’re all occupied right now. But I’ll call you, Alice, trust me. I’ve got to go now.

Alice dropped her phone after Burrows hung up, wondering if Joe could get into the undercover informer’s mind, (if he was willing), and as the informer mingled in the mosque Joe could jump into the minds of others and find out a lot more than anyone else could. Alice wanted to be there with Burrows and Campbell and get more involved, but she knew that most likely wouldn’t happen. If she ever got into the FBI control room, even only to watch things develop, everyone would know she was an outsider. She would stick out like a nudist at a winter ski resort.

Alice thought hard, her mind tried to come up with different plans concerning how to get Joe into Idir’s mind. From there, Joe could go through the errand boy, Idir’s mind, and find out whether he knew the whereabouts of Azim. She wished she could contact Joe telepathically like he could contact her, by just jumping into her mind. Alice was begging Joe to come into her mind; there was a time she had told him to get out of her dreams, now she wanted him to jump back in her mind. Ten-minutes later and her wishes were answered.”

“Is this the office of Alice Timberlake, freelance journalist?”
Joe joked, as he jumped into her mind.

Alice sighed; she had been so worried he wouldn’t show up until much later.
“Oh Joe. I’ve been freaking out over here waiting for you to reach me.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

Alice gave him an update on what Agent Burrows had told her, and then she told Joe about the private plan she had which could possibly speed things up.

“Joe, what if I was to go down to that mosque and wait until the men go to prayer, and ask one of them directions to someplace like I did before? You could then jump into his mind and when he goes into the mosque you could go with him and look for that Idir guy. After that, well you could pick Idir’s brains.”

“I don’t pick brains, Alice. I read the thoughts of the people that are awake, and I can suggest things to them through their subconscious or ask them questions and hopefully they’ll think they’re talking to their subconscious and not get spooked. It’s only when they’re dreaming that I can safely put them under hypnosis and have them do or tell me what I want.”

“Oh, sorry about the mislabeling, Joe but do you think you could do that on Idir?”

“It sounds like a good plan but first, we’ve got to cover my tracks. Frank Brubaker has more than likely been thinking along the lines of me getting into Idir’s dream but he knows it takes time. He thinks that you’ve got to make contact with this Idir first and then wait until night time for me to come to you in your dreams, then go visit Idir in his before reporting back to you. All of that takes time. I want the FBI to keep thinking that that’s the only way we talk to each other. If they knew we could talk like this…”
He left the statement hanging and Alice understood, perfectly.

She said to him, “Yeah, it takes 24 hours, more or less, but what if I tell them that you came up here because you thought you could help out quicker if you did some investigation of your own?”

“I don’t think they’d like that.”

“Screw them! They need your help and they don’t even know how much.”

“Okay, let’s say you go down there and bump into one of the worshippers and I manage to make contact with this Idir and find out something important concerning the case. How do we explain it?”

“We’ll think of something Joe, and if the FBI thinks you’ve flown or driven up and want to waste their time looking for you, then that’s their problem. Only both of us will know you’re still in your office or home or wherever you are, and not up here in person.”

There was an unnerving pause as Joe thought about it. Alice began to fidget because Joe never took this long to make up his mind.

He finally spoke.
“Well, if we’re going to do this, then I’ve got to find a place where I won’t be disturbed. This is going to be some major work.”
Abel was at work on a construction site, sitting in a portable office cabin and someone could come in at any moment, forcing him to cut Alice off or break off his mind-hopping.
“I’m sure the firm can manage the rest of the day without me.”

“So you think it’s a good idea?”

“No, I never said that! I just think it’s worth a try. Could you find out what time the next prayers are being held and get yourself down to that mosque? I’ll sneak away somewhere private and contact you in about an hour.”

Without any difficulty at all, Alice found out the address and prayer times of the mosque and then sat to go over her plan in her mind a couple of times. It might not work, she had to admit, but she didn’t see any danger in trying, especially when there was practically no chance of it backfiring. She changed clothes and called a cab.

Abel told the site foreman that he had a belly bug and had to go home. If the boss called, he was to be told that Abel had gone home to bed. And that’s exactly what Abel did; he went home, lay in his bed, and closed his eyes to think of Alice. He found her sitting stiffly in a cab and he could feel her anxiety.

“Are we there yet?”
he asked, imitating an impatient child on a road trip.

“Christ, Joe!” Alice’s mind had been miles away and so she jumped yet again at Joe’s sudden entrance. “You’ve got to find a better way of contacting me or I’ll have a heart attack before I’m 30.”

“Wow, look at your face… Sure you’re not 30 yet?

“Very funny, Joe.”

“Sorry, I thought I’d cheer you up, you seemed a bit nervous.”

“To answer your question Joe, we are here.” Alice paid the cab and walked up the street looking for someone who looked like he was going to midday prayers.

“What about this old man?” Alice asked Joe telepathically.

“No, try someone younger. Some of the older men don’t like women talking to them; we need someone who can talk to everybody. Try the young man behind him.”

Alice asked the young man if there was a coffee shop nearby, and Joe was in his mind with no problem. The young man went into the mosque and Joe could see it through the young man’s eyes. The mosque was half-full and draped in multiple, beautiful colors. Joe, noticing the young man scratching his beard continually, decided to play a little joke on him.

Masquerading as the young man’s subconscious, he said to him,
“I wish I could shave this beard off.”

The young man stiffened, unsure if those were his thoughts or if someone had spoken. He looked around him and concluded that those had, in actuality, been his own thoughts. He sniggered and said, “My father would disown me if I shaved this off.” He gave his beard another scratch.

“I should just have a moustache like him over there.”
Joe to him and the young briefly looked at another brother who was sporting a sleek moustache.
“What would Fareed Azim say if I shaved it off?”
Abel continued.

The young man looked around for Fareed, and his thoughts were: “I really don’t care what Fareed Azim thinks.”

Joe had got the boy to think he was just having daft thoughts, so he carried on.
“I bet Idir is missing Fareed, or did Idir go away with him?”

The young man’s eyes searched for Idir and found him standing on his own. “No, that’s him over there.”

Joe now knew, for sure, which of the men was Idir but he wasn’t looking in the direction of the man Joe had inhabited and so it was impossible to make contact. He needed had to get the young man to look at Idir, so he played a little more with the young man’s mind.

“I wonder if Idir and Fareed are lovers.”

The young man’s jaw dropped open and he looked intently at Idir, wondering what on earth had made him think of that. “No way would Fareed Azim lower himself to fuck someone like Idir.” He shook his head violently, in an attempt to physically dislodge such vile thoughts, especially in the house of God.

Joe put another thought in his mind
. “I could go ask him if he’s heard from Fareed.”

Again the young man shook his head at the ridiculous thought, but for some strange reason, he strolled over to Idir and looked at him with a questioning frown on his forehead.

Idir looked back at him with a slight, polite smile thinking the young man was going to speak to him. The eye contact was all it took for Joe to jump from the young man’s mind into Idir’s.

Free of Joe
’s manipulation, the young man had refrained from saying a word to Idir and just stood there. Abel read Idir thoughts. They were simple: “W
ho does he think he is, looking down his nose at me like that?”

“Yeah, you’re every bit as good as him.”
Joe said to him. Idir agreed with the thought and so Joe went on.
“But he was going to ask something, more than likely he was going to ask if I know where Azim is, and if he has a woman.”

“If Azim had a woman,” Idir thought, “it would be Abbar he would tell, not me.”

“Where is Abbar?”

Idir gave Abbar a stern look as if Abbar had rudely called him, but he heard nothing. In any case, Abbar always ignored him.

Joe took advantage of the look to jump minds again and he whispered delicately to Abbar.
“Idir is lost without Fareed Azim; he thinks he’s got another woman on the side?”

“Haha,” Abbar laughed at his crazy thoughts, “the only woman Azim has looked at lately is Anna Edmar because she’s got a nice ass. And he knows she wouldn’t even look at him.”

Joe didn’t have a chance to ask any more as they were called to prayer at that moment. He could have stayed but and Joe, with his Jewish upbringing, thought it was best to leave them to their prayers in private. From his little mind travels, he didn’t think Abbar knew anything, and it was Idir he wanted to find more about. Joe popped back into Alice’s mind and was surprised to find her riding in a cab back to her hotel.

“Oh yeah, send me in there with all those smelly feet, and then hightail it home.”

“What a mouth Joe, how did it go?”

“I’ve managed to make contact with Idir, and I’ll see what I can find out when he’s done praying.”

“Well that’s a good start. I’ve got to get back to the hotel just in case Campbell and Burrows come calling, although I doubt that. They’ll be helping to look for Yasmina, Jamil and Azim. I bet you’ll find him before the FBI does.”

“I don’t know about that, this Idir guy is a bit dense. I can’t see Azim telling him anything he would want kept quiet.”

“He might know somebody that knows where Azim is,” Alice said, a little despondent.

“Let’s hope so, and if not, I might come back here tonight with that first young man and try someone else.”

“That sounds like a good idea, Joe. Someone must know where Azim is, he is one of the respected men in this community.”

“We’ll see what I can find out from Idir first.”

Joe stayed chatting to Alice until he thought Idir would have finished his prayers, and then he popped back into Idir’s mind. Idir had just come out of the mosque and was walking down the street on his way home.

Joe picked a moment when Idir’s mind was in between thoughts and whispered,
“It’s not the same in the prayer meeting without Fareed.”

Idir stopped dead in his tracks and looked around. Seeing no one, he assumed it was his mind speaking so he shrugged and moved along. “Yeah, it’s not the same,” he agreed

“They all want to know where Fareed Azim has gone, as if I am his keeper,”
Abel whispered, hoping for some response.

“Not all of them, just two of them.” Idir answered.

“Why can’t they leave Fareed alone to go visit his friend for a couple of days, if that’s what he wants?”

“It’s for a week,” Idir corrected his thoughts. “His friend told me it would be for a week.”

“Yeah that’s right, he said a week.”
Abel didn’t know what to make out of what he was reading in Idir’s thoughts or what to do, so he asked randomly,
“How come he told his friend he was going for a week, and told the others he’d only be gone for a couple of days to visit a friend. What friend?”

“It’s to do with business really, not to visit a friend.”

“Yes, only you and his friends know that it’s business but Fareed wants them in the mosque to think he is visiting a friend.”
Abel was playing with his thoughts, not wanting to frighten him off.
“Huh, they think I’m daft in the head but I know more than them.”

“Yes Idir is no idiot,” he replied, tapping his head with his knuckles. “I know he hasn’t gone far for his business.”

“It may not be business, maybe Fareed has a mistress?”

Idir stopped again. Such a thought upset him. “No, Fareed’s a good man, a loving man with good wife and devoted children.” He shook the thought from his head and hurried on.

“Yes, yes, Fareed is too old to have a mistress, but why tell people he’s going to visit a friend, and not tell us who and where his friend lives, unless he’s got a mistress and he could be keeping her a secret.”

The planted thought bothered Idir and he began to run it over in his mind. “So maybe that’s why his friend said to tell Fareed to leave the apartment as clean as he had found it.”

Abel nearly flew into a frenzy with excitement. Fareed was in an apartment somewhere! He just had to probe more.
“You don’t borrow a friend’s apartment to do business, but you do if you’re seeing a lady friend.”