Terminal Rage (9 page)

“
‘
America the crumbling empire
’
is an attractive rallying call for many jihadists. I
’
ll support Robert
’
s initial instinct and go with a hardcore Islamic whack-job who draws inspiration from Al Qaeda
’
s business model. For now at least.”

“How about the biblical reference to Cain and Abel?”

“It
’
s baffling, Alex. But there was a second and more important religious undertone you may have all missed.”

“Which one?”

“His name—Seth. Aliases are never chosen randomly. They always mean something.” Blackwell drew a blank. He glanced at the faces around the table, and everyone else seemed just as clueless.

“He
’
s the third son of Adam and Eve. The less famous brother of Cain and Abel, you could say. Seth was appointed by God as a replacement for his slain brother.”

Nishimura
’
s eyes widened and revealed an inner geek intrigued by this mythology. “So what do we know about Seth?” Before his mouth had uttered the question, Nishimura
’
s hands had started Googling it.

“Seth is revered by all three of the monotheistic religions as the father of all humanity.” There was a brief silence in the room. Blackwell tried to wrap his mind around the Seth connection.

Grove stood up and ran his hands through his hair as he walked around with a classroom gait. “We could be dealing with an apocalyptic cult, at least if he sees himself as the father of humanity in the image of Seth.”

“So what kind of crazy could we be dealing with? Waco? Heaven
’
s Gate?” Blackwell had backstopped both these cases in his early years at the Bureau.

Grove shrugged and then massaged his temples with the tips of his fingers.

“I
’
m not reading cult activity here. There may be a simpler connection. Many Muslims believe Seth was buried in the village of
Al-Nabi Shayth
in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon.”

Blackwell leaned forward and listened to Grove, as his secondary, burgeoning theory promised to be more plausible.

“The village is also the birthplace of Abbas al-Musawi, an influential Shia cleric and the cofounder of Hezbollah. The Israelis took him out in
’
ninety-two.”

Grove stopped talking and left it to everyone
’
s imagination to connect the dots between a possible Hezbollah terrorist link and the guy across the building who called himself Seth.

“A Lebanese Shiite would fit the linguistic and cultural profile I am deducing from the accent.” Shaker
’
s voice had developed a hint of excitement that Blackwell hadn
’
t expected.

Monica didn
’
t waste time and started firing tasks at the team. “Bob, check with Homeland for Lebanese nationals meeting the suspect
’
s description
who
’
ve
recently arrived on US soil. Go two months back. Eddie, I need you to get into this little shit
’
s brain and tell me what makes him tick. And Natasha—keep listening and nail him for me like I know you can.”

Blackwell got up and pushed a Nespresso pod in the machine, but before he could complete the coffee ceremony, Nishimura raised his head from behind his computer.

“M15 just sent a list of people of interest. Our first suspects. Students who
’
d interacted with the real Prince Omar Al Seraj during his time at the London School of Economics. Three guys, all card-carrying members of an outfit called
Hizb ut-Tahrir—
”

Slant interrupted Nishimura and spared Blackwell the humiliation of asking again.

“Hardcore pan-Islamists, Alex—a nasty conveyor belt for jihadist terrorists. The UK
’
s their main Western hub. Back in the late nineties, they
were
targeting university students aggressively.”

Nishimura continued. “MI5 believe all three of these guys have since gone off the grid, but they
’
ve initiated an international manhunt for them on our behalf.”

And the plot thickens. Maybe Slant had it right all along. Islamic Jihad.

“So who are these three guys?” Blackwell asked.

Nishimura skimmed through the MI5 email.

“Hasib Khan, a British national of Pakistani descent, from Birmingham. Mehmet Ozal from Turkey, who was an Erasmus exchange student at the time. And Iyad Malki, an Iraqi refugee who had just been granted asylum in the UK in
’
ninety-seven.”

Natasha Shaker stopped her feverish note-taking and peered at Blackwell. “The Iraqi option is the closest, language-wise. But I wouldn
’
t discount the Pakistani or the Turk just yet.”

Nishimura clicked his remote control to navigate through archival photos of the three suspects from the late nineties sent by British intelligence. “Here they are in all their radicalized glory.”

Slant scrutinized the pictures as if he may have had mint tea with one of their uncles in Kandahar or Kirkuk during an undercover op. “All three are solid leads. Each one could pass for a Gulf Arab.”

Nishimura took a deep breath. “That
’
s all we got from MI5. No voice recordings for us to compare against our perp.”

Blackwell found that odd. “Why not?”

“These guys were at the bottom of the food chain of
Hizb ut-Tahrir
. They were just on a watch list, so the Brits never bothered wire-tapping them. They just kept them under light surveillance. Where they hung out, who they spoke to, that sort of thing.”

“And the Brits know for sure all three took a shot at recruiting the Prince at one point?”

Nishimura nodded slowly.

Monica, who had been busy scrolling through her BlackBerry, snapped her finger to get everyone out of analysis mode.

“I
’
ve just received confirmation from Al Voss. The decoy extraction of the hostage rescue unit has been completed. We
’
re back online with the suspect in fifteen seconds.”

Blackwell rushed back to his seat and grabbed his headset. The phone rang for at least one minute, but Seth never picked up.

NINE

Saturday, November 5, 2011—8:32 p.m.
Manhattan, NY

S
eth ignored the ringing phone on the conference table.
He was perched over Mark Price holding the Perrier water bottle he had just used to strike him in the jaw. Price
’
s lips were bleeding, and terror was flashing in his eyes.

When Seth had commandeered the building and released the nonessential staff, he
’
d ordered the ones he kept hostage to sit on the floor of the conference room where he could see them. He divided them in three groups—men, women, and Mark Price. Then, he frisked them and seized and disabled their communication devices, before ordering them not to speak to one another.

A few minutes ago, before he had attacked Price, Seth noticed a notification on his phone from the Sniffer app. He had installed it in Los Angeles as part of the spherical “digital bomb” Bone had given him as a freebie. One of its features was the ability to jam cell phone communication. Someone in the room tried to dial out and was blocked by the device. The Sniffer logged no less than fifteen outgoing call attempts within the span of forty-five seconds.

He slid his hand under his robe and temporarily deactivated the sphere. Using the landline in the conference room, Seth dialed the offending number and scanned the hostages to determine who had the contraband phone. As he had suspected, and judging from his nervous face, it was Mark Price.

Seth reactivated the digital bomb. He then stood up and grabbed a cold Perrier from the glass-door fridge in the conference room and marched toward the CEO of Exertify.

“Stand up.”

Barely had Price gotten up on his feet before Seth swung the cold bottle of water with decisive force, straight into Price
’
s face. Something must have broken judging by the cracking sound his jaw had made. He collapsed on the floor in quiet, internalized pain, probably to retain some dignity in front of his staff.

Now, towering over Price, ready to punish him more if he had to, Seth didn
’
t blink once. He knew the spherical device would continue preventing anyone with a hidden phone from dialing out. But he couldn
’
t risk six years of tireless planning. Every detail accounted for. Every possible outcome considered. Including this one.

Seth leaned down and spoke to Mark Price with a voice stripped of any humanity or emotion. “Take it out.”

“Take what out, you fucking animal?” Price expelled under his breath. He held his face in agony and spat blood.

Seth swung the bottle again and struck him in the exact same spot. If Price
’
s jaw had survived the first blow unfractured, there was no way it could have fared as well this time.

“Take it out now and give it to me.” Seth waited a few seconds and then retracted his arm like a demolition ball.

Not able to withstand more pain, Price pulled out a microscopic phone concealed in his crotch.

Seth grabbed it and brandished it to the rest of the Exertify hostages like a trophy. They were all young and exceptionally well groomed. They reeked of wealth, professional success, and unbridled egos. But right now under his mercy, the men were mere mice and the women emotional wrecks.

“I
’
ve been civil so far. I haven
’
t tied your hands, gagged or blindfolded you. One last time, in case you missed what just happened to your boss.” Even before he could fully articulate his threat, a handful of iPhones and BlackBerries magically emerged from the crotches and cleavages of the other hostages.

Seth returned to his seat with his bounty and scrutinized Mark Price lying on the floor, damaged, humiliated. The things he
had to do to get to this man and break into his castle. It had taken him months to build a credible front to schedule today
’
s meeting.

Mark Price ran his company with notorious paranoia. Exertify didn’t transact with unknown clients, but handpicked its partners after long and exhaustive research. Not out of any ethical imperative to avoid working with shady characters like terrorists, criminals, and drug lords. But purely out of self-preservation. Just like his older brother who had built a dependable political brand name, Mark Price seemed to operate with the edict that the company you keep can make or break you.

Exertify
’
s main clients were the Pentagon, US law-enforcement and federal agencies, and other foreign governments. It maintained only a tiny roster of private clients handpicked by Mark Price and top management, either for public relations mileage or as a shortcut to potential big business. Which made Exertify an impenetrable fortress, and Mark Price its mythical gatekeeper. That is, until now.

Seth had laid down a simple but ingenious trap. When you want an audience with the devil, you can
’
t just go knocking on the gates of hell. You have to first convince Satan you had something he desperately wanted, which you were unwilling to part with. Only then would he come begging.

Many years before Seth had transformed into what he had become today, he had spent nine months as a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics. He dropped out before graduating, but while he was there, he had met and befriended the man whose identity enabled his penetration of Exertify—Prince Omar Al Seraj.

The son of a Gulf princess and a Syrian oil tycoon, Omar, like Seth, was in his mid-twenties when they first met. But the prince had already been married to his first wife for six years and fathered three children. He had shipped his family back home and was partying hard in London under the pretense of academia. His multimillion-dollar penthouse in the heart of Knightsbridge was command center for his brand of decadence. Omar had taken a shining to Seth and adopted him in his inner circle of friends.

Fifteen years later, the prince had not amounted to much in the business world or in the royal circuits. Multiple Sclerosis had ravaged both his appetite for excess and his ability to travel. But the prince
’
s Knightsbridge penthouse had remained operational throughout. The rich don
’
t sell properties just because they don
’
t use them much. They keep them running, just in case.

The idea first came to Seth late one night in Berlin when he was watching a documentary on the Gulf War. Images of the US First Marine Division crossing into Kuwait, and the voice of George Bush Senior declaring the country liberated, had pried open a part of his brain holding the memories of his Gulf Arab friend of royal lineage.

Seth researched his friend and read on the alumni website of the LSE about Omar
’
s illness and how he rarely travelled out of his country, but was dedicating his life to funding Multiple Sclerosis research. The contrast of how the prince had fared and the life they
’
d shared in London reminded Seth of the Knightsbridge penthouse. And it was these thoughts that jolted him out of bed to book a flight to London the next morning.

For years Seth had agonized over how he could bring the devil to him without getting burned in the process. But in that moment of late-night inspiration, he had hatched a plan to ensnare Mark Price. And it involved a decaying prince and his London pad. And nine digits Seth had never forgotten.

He flew to London and caught a taxi from Heathrow’s Terminal Five straight to a traditional Gulf Arabian garments store on Cromwell Road to purchase what he needed. Seth then walked to a nearby private hospital, used a public washroom to change into his new outfit, and transformed himself from a civilian into a wealthy Arab.

Outside the penthouse on Belgrave Square, a gush of memories flooded his mind. He walked up with feigned confidence to the door and slid open a key pad. He punched in the numbers 327021991 followed by the hash key and waited as he held his breath. A green light flashed twice and the door unlocked.

Inside the penthouse, floor-level pilot lights came on to welcome him and to indicate the alarm system was deactivated. He crept into his old friend
’
s luxury home and shut the door behind him, relieved his far-fetched gamble had paid off. His old friend Omar hadn
’
t bothered to change the entry code in fifteen years.

Not much had changed since the old days. A cleaning company still serviced the apartment weekly. A chauffeured luxury limousine was one speed dial away. As was a concierge company, a business support office, a travel agency, a masseuse, and an escort service. It was a plug-and-play lifestyle on pause still waiting for the prince if he ever returned.

Back when they were students, the prince had invited Seth and two young women they had picked up at a nightclub for a late-night drink at the penthouse. Omar had been too intoxicated to conceal his hand when he punched in the entry code. Seth had caught himself memorizing the digits, and later felt guilty doing it. But the hacker in him became fixated with the relevance of the numbers, rather than the access they enabled. He wanted to understand their significance to Omar.

The number three at the beginning of the sequence was what had thrown him off for a while, but in the end he cracked that too. Without the 3, the code was 27021991. Or 27-02-1991. February 27, 1991. The day Kuwait was liberated from the Iraqi invasion. Once he had cracked that, it didn
’
t take too long for him to figure out what the three meant—the number of children the prince had at the time.

After breaching the penthouse and taking control of it, assuming the identity of the prince in London proved as simple as punching in those digits. All the expenses to enable the prince to function in London were debited from a bottomless account at the nearby Barclays bank. He didn
’
t need to interact with anybody or sign anything. All the service providers were anonymous, ever-changing faces. Polish maids, Brazilian delivery boys, and Asian chauffeurs. No one ever glanced at his face let alone questioned his identity. All he had to do to avoid raising suspicion was keep tipping well. Unless
the real prince came back one day, or he ran into someone who knew him, a long time would have to pass before anyone challenged Seth.

Living a duplicitous luxury life on another person
’
s tab was a risky but necessary part of his plan—one upon which the entire mission rested. And his task in London was simple. The US Defense Attaché Office was holding a reception a few weeks after Seth first arrived in London. An invitation to this event was imperative as it would allow him to meet Jennifer Willis, the London representative of Exertify, who he knew would be attending the reception.

Seth had access to the prince
’
s concierge service that could get him on the guest list of the hottest events in town. But attending a Prada opening or the premiere of a Harry Potter film was one thing, and squeezing your way into a high-level defense reception under a fake identity was another.

The inspiration for his way into the reception had come to him at the same time he hatched the plan to take over the prince
’
s identity. Michael Emery, a former professor of his at LSE, was now also the head of a security think tank in London, and well-connected to the international defense community. Back when they were students at LSE, the real prince rarely attended classes. Seth was certain Emery would have no recollection of what the real Omar looked like. And because he had also attended Emery
’
s class, his own face would be familiar enough to allay any minor suspicions his former professor may have.

Seth called Emery
’
s office and left a brief, tantalizing message with his former professor
’
s secretary. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was sitting across from Emery, having lunch in a private room of the Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester.

Emery hadn
’
t preserved well with unflattering wrinkles spider-webbing across his bookish face. But he was as lucid and shrewd as Seth remembered him. He seemed accustomed to meeting successful former students and pretending to recognize them.

“I remember how inquisitive you were,” Emery said with contrived affection. It must have been a line he had perfected to appeal to the vanity of his former students, especially the rich and powerful ones who sought to be signaled out as memorable.

“Thank you, Professor Emery.”

“Call me Michael, please.”

When they had finished strutting back and forth the short and fictitious memory lane they shared, Seth stopped and toiled with his fig and almond tart before he peered up at the beady-eyed professor waiting for the punch line.

“Michael, I need your kind assistance with two separate matters, the first being the simpler of the two.”

“Then let
’
s start with that.”

“My family seeks to establish an endowment for five annual postgraduate scholarships at LSE, which would benefit brilliant young Arabs from countries with recent violent revolts. Tunisia. Egypt. Yemen.” He spoke as if the millions of pounds this benevolence entailed could be stacked in a few suitcases back at the penthouse.