Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

‘And now we have contestant number three,’ Clark said, and all the men in the room leaned forward to look closely at the picture.

The third man was wearing an open-necked shirt and khaki shorts or trousers, the photograph only showing him from about the waist up. Physically, in terms of height, body shape and skin colour the unidentified male resembled the target, but unlike him this man had no mask and was obviously clean-shaven, while the person they had been following had had a black beard. He was wearing large framed tinted glasses and a black beanie cap that covered his entire scalp.

‘I don’t want to sound like a cracked record,’ Clark said, ‘but you can’t easily go from a full beard to clean-shaven in under five minutes. And, in any case, I checked the lavatory when I got in there and there was no sign of any hair on the floor or in the sinks and there wasn’t enough time for him to shave and flush away the hairs.’ He stepped across the briefing room and pointed at the image on the screen for emphasis. ‘So that has to be the target that we’re looking at, but I’ve no idea how he did it.’

For a few moments nobody said a word, and then Rogers started to ask the question that every other agent had already formulated in his head.

‘So it was probably a fake—’

But Clark immediately shook his head.

‘I had eyes on him for over an hour at the cafe and as far as I could tell his beard was the real thing. Fake beards move differently to the real thing when people are talking. And don’t forget that all four of the targets have beards. In a lot of countries in the Middle East it’s a kind of cultural necessity.’

‘Leave the picture on the screen,’ Grant said as Clark reached for his mobile phone. He stepped right in front of the screen and stared in silence at the photograph in front of him.

‘A couple of questions,’ he said, glancing at Clark. ‘First, was he carrying anything when he left the cafe?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Second, was this man—’ Rogers pointed at the screen ‘—carrying anything when you saw him? And were there any discarded clothes in the lavatory?’

Clark shook its head.

‘That’s three questions, not two,’ he pointed out. ‘There were no clothes in the lavatory, but he could have had a carrier bag or something in his hand that I wouldn’t have seen from where I was standing.’

‘Okay. Despite appearances, we have to be looking at the third man, so we’ll put this image in the database as well. The change of clothes is fairly obvious. He was probably wearing those shorts or trousers under his jeans, and he’s just taken off his jacket, so my guess is when he walked out of the crapper he was carrying a bag with his jacket and jeans in it. How he lost the beard I don’t know, but I’ll get our photo analysts to take a closer look at this picture and see if they can come up with anything.’

‘There’s one other thing as well,’ Clark added, ‘but it’s not something definite, more a kind of impression. There were four people sitting at that table in the cafe. We obviously already knew about Karim Ganem, though we still don’t know what he’s doing over here. So this afternoon we’ve seen three new faces.’

‘Agreed. And your point is?’ Rogers asked.

‘As I said, it’s just my impression, but I noticed that almost every time the more heavily built unsub said anything, the other three seemed to listen very carefully. And none of the other three ever interrupted him. I might be wrong, but that suggests to me that this man, whoever he is, could be the leader of the group. Maybe he’s had Ganem and the others working on something for the past year or so and now he’s come over to check on what they’re doing.’

Rogers shrugged. ‘I didn’t notice that myself, Bill, but you were better placed to watch them than I was. I don’t dispute what you’ve said and you’ve been around long enough that your impressions are usually on the money. And that’s not necessarily good news.’

‘It isn’t? Why not?’ Dave Nicholls asked.

‘Because if Bill’s right and this new player is the leader of the cell or whatever, that could mean that whatever they’re planning is imminent. Maybe this guy isn’t just here to check on their progress. Maybe he’s here to kickstart the endgame. And in that case, the clock could already be running.’

A couple of minutes after Rogers had wrapped up the briefing an email arrived from Clarksburg, West Virginia, from the Criminal Justice Information Services Division with the results of the analysis by FACE.

The junior FBI agent sitting at the machine where it arrived glanced at it and immediately sent it to the high-speed laser printer on the console on one side of the room.

Rogers heard the laser starting to spool up and glanced across at the agent.

‘That’s the stuff from Clarksburg,’ the man confirmed. He stood up, collected four sheets of paper from the output tray, handed them to Rogers and resumed his seat.

The senior agent looked at each sheet very briefly, then held up his hand for silence in the room.

‘Okay, listen up, all of you,’ he said. ‘FACE has given us three new names and confirmed the identity of the guy we already knew about, Karim Ganem. The three new players are named Mahdi Sadir – he’s the big guy – and the other men are named Talat Wasem and Jamal Halabi. Their photo IDs come from their driving licence applications. Get them and their pictures on the board and start running the usual background checks. I want to know everything about them, from their mobile numbers and addresses to the size of their dicks, by close of business today.’

Chapter 32

Washington D.C. and Damascus, Maryland, United States of America

Damascus is a