We followed the blue icons on our phone without seeing the target again, winding through the narrow alleys of the old town, until both of the icons ended up together, outside of a building.
I said, “What’s happening?”
“He went inside a hotel called Kindli. Knuckles is inside keeping eyes on.”
We raced to the location, found Brett, and I said, “What’s he doing?”
He said, “No idea. Why’s it matter? All we have to do is keep him in sight to let the Israelis do their thing.”
I glanced at Jennifer, thinking about what she’d said earlier, then at the door, and said, “Because I think he’s bad. We need to get on him.” I went to the net and said, “Knuckles, Knuckles, where are you?”
“In the lobby. Target went deeper. He can’t leave without passing me. What’s up?”
I said, “Did he go to a room?”
“No. The elevators are in my sight. He went down a hallway. No idea what’s there, but he didn’t go to a room.”
I said, “He’s doing something here. This is no longer tag and trace. It’s penetration.”
“You want me to approach?”
“No. I’m clean. You’re not. Stay where you are to pick him up again. I’m doing an intrusion. I’ll go by you and stay until he’s gone.”
I turned to Jennifer and Brett and said, “I don’t know what that guy’s doing, but it’s not good. You guys have the box out here. Knuckles is the trigger. You follow when he leaves.”
Brett nodded, glanced at the street, and said, “I’ll take north; Koko, you’ve got south.”
It was happening so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to address Jennifer directly. She looked at me and said, “Yeah, I got south. I told you.”
I grinned and said, “Yeah, you did.” I pecked her lips and said, “Don’t screw up the follow. Aaron and Carrie are still inside.”
Brett rolled his eyes, saying, “When do I get a kiss on the lips?”
I rotated to him, leaning into his face, and he batted me away, saying, “Get that shit out of here.”
Jennifer laughed and I turned to the hotel entrance, saying over my shoulder, “You had your chance.”
I entered a long hallway leading to a lobby. I reached the front desk and saw Knuckles sitting on a small chair eating peanuts out of a bowl. The area was regal, in a shabby sort of way, meaning it was probably the heat in 1980, but was now living on borrowed time. It was much smaller than I’d envisioned, the lobby no larger than a kitchen. I’d expected to be able to find Knuckles, do a quick data dump away from everyone else, then continue, but that was impossible in the small space.
I stopped at the front desk, saw the elevators, but didn’t know where to go.
The receptionist said, “Can I help you?”
Caught off guard at the cloistered size of the lobby, I said, “Bathroom?”
She smiled and pointed, saying, “Right down that hallway.”
In my earpiece I heard, “Did you not think to ask me where to go before you entered? Seriously?”
I started walking, knowing Knuckles was absolutely correct. Out of earshot of the receptionist I said, “Okay, big surveillance detective, where do I go?”
“Go to the bathroom just like you asked. He went that way.”
I walked down the hallway lined with pictures and artifacts from when the hotel was a player and saw our target standing next to an ancient computer. And I mean standing. They had a computer fastened to a wall at chest level on a shelf with a cheap inkjet printer to the right, which I guess was their version of a business center, and he was typing something. I went behind him and saw that he had a thumb drive loaded into a USB port. He was pounding on the keys furiously, but stopped when I approached, hunching over the screen to block it.
I continued on to the bathroom, seeing only that he was using ProtonMail, an end-to-end encrypted email system with servers located here, in Switzerland. Nobody used that as an individual contact method, because it required everyone you emailed to have the same application. It was analogous to everyone you wanted to call being required to have a special phone that would only work with the one you had. The people who used Proton were journalists transmitting the next blockbuster investigation, dissidents trying to coordinate activities against an authoritarian state, paranoids afraid of the black helicopter coming to get them—or terrorists.
I found the men’s room and entered. I clicked on the net, saying, “I’m stuck in the bathroom. Let me know when he leaves.”
Jennifer said, “What’s he doing?”
I said, “He’s Doctor Evil. Shoshana is right.”
Chapter 17
Sitting on a wicker chair that had seen better days, Salim Kalibani waited for the Proton encryption to load, then downloaded the two pictures that had been sent, watching the computer bar take forever due to the spotty Wi-Fi.
Unlike the upper end of Manama, Bahrain, which had excellent broadband Wi-Fi like any other developed nation, the close-packed concrete jungle of the slum he was in, called Sanibis, had to rely on a derelict system the cinder-block apartment provided. While other sections of Bahrain had generous government infrastructure, there was no such thing for this section of the city. As the location for repeated uprisings against the monarchy, the punishment was an oxymoron: you’ll continue living in the slums for your transgressions, which only increased the outrage for the very people that lived there. A perfect hiding spot for Salim and his men.
A slight man with a whisp of a beard that made him look vaguely Asian, he smiled when the small clock finally showed the pictures had downloaded to his laptop. He booted up the steganography application, loaded the picture from Qassim into the program, and like magic, the application extracted the text message, displaying it below the picture. He didn’t like what it revealed. He needed money, not a new compatriot for the cause.
Three other men in the room were waiting on him to finish the task, two sprawled on a dilapidated couch and one sitting in an overstuffed La-Z-Boy, the stuffing starting to seep out through the cracked vinyl. The ones on the couch were playing a Call of Duty video game, acting like they were interested in what Salim was diligently working on while continuing to slay on the small HDTV Salim owned. The one on the La-Z-Boy waited with more interest. When Salim remained silent, staring at the screen, he said, “What’s up? Did we get the money?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The contact says a man is going to deliver the money personally. A specialist. A killer. He wants to make sure our attack is solid. They don’t trust us.”
Bahrain was an island nation just off the coast of Saudi Arabia, with a single causeway leading from one country to the other. Its biggest claim to fame was as the host of the United States Fifth Fleet, the naval behemoth that was responsible for patrolling the Hormuz Straight, where the majority of oil exports passed—a headquarters that guaranteed Bahrain’s survival whenever any dissident organization raised its ugly head. Because of the strategic nature of the location, Bahrain could count on the United States to turn a blind eye to any transgressions from the ruling monarchy.