CHAPTER TWO

His carry-on bag and ThinkPad in hand, Omar left the airport security office where he had talked with Lyeforth and Beltmann and strode briskly down the corridor to the main concourse in the Smith Terminal, turned right, and headed toward the screening area.

Omar noticed a display of nations’ flags along the walls of the mezzanine level, the gleaming windows reflecting them like mirrors, reversing the designs. The Iraqi colors of red, white, and black bands with three green stars were not present.

A tall white thirty-three year old man in light grey business suit was walking in the opposite direction. He was lean, with light brown hair, pale skin, looking rather put-out – apparently having walked to the wrong gate area – was used to having his own way or liked to think that he was, and let out a dismal disaffected, "Damn," as the two passed.

Omar did not respond and walked on through the crowd.

At the screening area, Nabih was waiting in a chair along the wall next to a expectant blonde woman in red dress with long sleeves pulled back, wearing a gold neck chain, wide-rimmed glasses, with a large satchel on the floor to her side. They were chatting about the weather.

"No disagreement," Nabih said. "Here’s my colleague. Got your Baghdad Bulletin?"

"Somewhere in my briefcase," Omar said.

"This young lady," Nabih continued, "also wonders who was responsible for the fraud of the intelligence services in telling the President that Iraq was about to buy uranium from Niger."

"It’s a different story each day," the woman said. "Pass the blame."

"They’ll have to retract the war," Omar said.

"Retract the war," Nabih said laughing.

"And Saddam could launch a chemical weapons attack on the UK in less time than it takes a passenger blue line to move an inch," Omar said.

"And now we learn my brother-in-law could be over there two years," the woman said.

"Your brother-in-law is with the military?" Omar asked.

"He was there since last October."

"Someone in the White House knew that the information about uranium was not accurate," Omar said. "Someone there needs to be fired."

"It’s the story that won’t go away," Nabih said. "Well, we must prepare for the screening."

"Clean socks on?" the woman asked.

"I never travel anymore without first changing my socks," Nabih said.

"And using baby powder in my shoes," Omar said.

"And always wash the feet. No stinky feet in America anymore," Nabih said.

The TSA had created a new policy about shoes. If a person’s shoes set off a metal detector, the passenger would be taken to a second checkpoint and asked to take off their shoes. It was a voluntary policy. Not enforced.

Omar and Nabih were asked the usual routine questions for men of Arabic descent by the TSA personnel. A computer list of terrorist suspects was scanned by a forty-year old somewhat overweight husky Hispanic man with thick dark brown hair combed back in front, numerous facial scars, wearing a white jacket. He turned a dial on a console and waved Nabih through. Similarly for Omar.

"Somehow I suspected we would have no problem boarding this flight," Nabih said.

They walked on to gate eighteen, found two seats together, and sat down among the crowd. They talked about other Arab men with green cards who had been asked to step out into the jetway after a computer signaled that they were on a list, a credit watch, or from any one of the twenty-five Muslim countries whose nationals were routinely being profiled.

Nabih asked what the NSA men had wanted. "Your day to be a celebrity?" he asked.

"The meeting just now?" Omar said.

"Yes."

"I promised not to talk about it for now," Omar said.

"For now. Let’s get our boarding passes."

There were fifteen others in line facing down the hurried airline attendants. One intense forty-two year old white man in business clothes, white shirt, looking quite the body-builder with taut facial muscles focusing his look at the counter, suddenly slumped over leaning his arms on the counter as if in despair.

"Your flight to Los Angeles has been cancelled," the young woman in airline uniform said. "We can get you on another airline within two hours." She looked a bit scared of the man and also rather upset at his refusal to cooperate.

"No. No," he kept saying. He shook his head after standing back up. "Where’s my luggage? I’ll find my own flight."

Nabih and Omar exchanged knowing looks.

They got to the front counter within twelve minutes. The young woman in airline uniform blinked at Omar’s name, looked at the clock, reached under the counter, fumbling, excused herself for a moment, and then handed Omar and Nabih two boarding passes for row twenty-one, but on opposite sides of the aisle.

"Don’t you have two seats together?" Nabih asked.

"I’m sorry, sir. No. This is the best we can do."

A number of the men boarding were in short-sleeve knit shirts of peach, tan, light blue, white, and in loose-fitting dress shirts. Omar found his assigned seat, placed his carry-on in the upper rack, and sat down.

Before long, an unusually tall blonde man who worked out at a fitness center four times a week, wearing a white long-sleeved dress shirt, narrow black tie, and navy blue dress slacks, sat down to Omar’s left. The man was clean-shaven, had on wire-rim glasses, and had helped an elderly woman passenger to get her carry-on case into the rack over her seat.

Omar and his travelling mate Nabih said "hello," "good morning," and little else until the jet had reached cruising altitude. Then the blonde man started a conversation about the President’s apology for the disinformation about uranium.

"The President cannot dictate to the world what to do when his advisers are con artists, not geniuses," Omar said.

"You got me," said the man to Omar’s left.

"I got you? I am a naturalized citizen. I have duel citizenship. I’m from Iraq."

"I’m Phillip Frederick Goransson," he said.

"Omar Hammad Aboudi."

"I think you were too hard on the President," Goransson said.

"I think you are glossing over the seriousness of faked intelligence reports that make their clandestine way into a State of the Union address," Omar said.

Omar mentioned his travel plans, casting a professorial look at Goransson as he mentioned his plan to be in Iraq for about three weeks, nodding to reassure himself that Goransson was paying attention.

"I’m with the State Department," Goransson said. "My team sent three men to Baghdad just last week to assess the situation."

"The situation is chaos, bordering on hell for my Iraqi cousins," Omar said. "They have electricity only four hours a day to run a fan, prepare a meal, and then swelter in rooms that are ninety-eight degrees inside. Inside."

"I realize how it has deteriorated," Goransson said.

"If it deteriorates further, you will not be able to blame the CIA, Miss Rice, or the flaws in Windows XP. Just what did your team tell you? And what, if you don’t mind my asking, is a State Department official doing in Michigan?"

"The large Muslim population around Detroit," Goransson said.

"Yes?"

"Because Michigan has the largest concentration of Arabic descended," Goransson said.

Omar interrupted, "’Arabic descended’ I do not like. It sounds too like the birth canal or an inferior class."

"It’s just a manner of speaking," Goransson said. "I meant to say of Arabic descent. The largest population of people of Arabic descent outside the Middle East."

"Better," Omar said. "I know this. I am on the faculty at Ann Arbor and associated with the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University. CMENAS."

"CMENAS," Goransson said. "You’re aware of the many Arabic-speaking Americans who live in the Detroit area."

"Of course, I am. Thank you. Sorry to have interrupted."

"We interviewed several Iraqi nationals and permanent U.S. residents about their status," Goransson said.

"And you have a briefcase full of their confiscated green cards," Omar said. "A bunch of men in windowless detention cells, no phones, a one-way ticket to the third world."

"No. That’s the Immigration Service’s imprint," Goransson said. "We were looking for information about the looting of the Iraqi treasures. State is genuinely interested in retrieving as many of your homeland’s archeological artifacts as possible."

"Have any shown up for sale in Detroit galleries?" Omar asked.

"No. But there are some gallery owners from the Mideast who have been contacted, on the sly, about questionable pieces, and we’re sure these are among the items looted and missing since April."

"I wouldn’t be surprised, as there are thousands missing," Omar said.

"How well we know. Here," he said, pulling a recent edition of Time from his valise and opening it to an article on the looting of the Iraqi museums. "This is stunning."

"I know," Omar said.

"Would you like to read this?"

Omar sat quietly for a moment, looking at the back of the seat in front of him. He looked up at the light switch and air control above him, reached up, and opened the vent to let a cool breeze blow down on his face. He looked at Goransson, who had a survivalist’s toughness and a face with the terrain of forty-four years of upper-class American refinement, and said, "Yes."

Goransson blinked, tried to control a sigh of relief, handed the magazine to Omar, leaned back in his chair – his head looming above the top of the seat – and closed his eyes a moment. He opened them to see Omar staring at the article, skimming through the pages, and folding it again and again at odd intervals.

"By the way," Goransson said. "Have you seen the Baghdad Bulletin?"

"The newspaper?"

"Yes."

"I’ve seen the first two copies at the University. We’re subscribers. It’s mailed via air, and we get an edition only one week delayed."

"You take a look at this," Goransson said, handing an English version paper to Omar.

Omar blinked. "You have this week’s edition. Your team brought this back?" Omar said.

"Yes," Goransson said.

The paper referred, in addition to reports about the heat, lack of electricity, and random shootings of American soldiers, to the Iraqi rumor mill. There was a half-paragraph mention of "pervasive stories of an Islamic savior expected later this year."

Goransson took out his laptop, began typing, and heaved a sigh of relief.

"Done," he said.

They talked a while about other places where Goransson had travelled on government business.

"I was first posted to New Zealand when I joined the foreign service," Goransson said. "I’ll never forget the sight of those mountain peaks as we passed over the North Island headed for Wellington. I immersed myself in their history, studied Mauri."

"How do you say ‘Good morning’ in Mauri?" Omar asked. "It is ‘sabaah ilkheer’ in Arabic."

"I know." Goransson offered a sample of Mauri phrases and talked about the harbor at Wellington and his accommodations his first year there. "I had an apartment just a few blocks from the Beehive," he said.

"The Beehive?" Omar asked.

"Their administrative center, looks like a beehive or a giant layer cake, stacks of floors getting smaller at the top."

"Sounds like it was modeled on one of our Sumerian ziggurats," Omar said.

"Very like, very like, as I saw several of them when I visited Iraq in nineteen eighty-eight."

"Saddam allowed you in?" Omar asked.

"It was embassy business," Goransson said, "and to visit the south with an entourage of American oil company executives."

"This is my first visit back to Iraq since I was an undergraduate during the late seventies," Omar said.

"I know."

"You do?"

"Here." He handed Omar a sealed envelope with State Department return address and insignia. "Rome."

"Rome," Omar said. "Yes, next week."

"It’s all there."

A female flight attendant, her blonde hair cut just above the neckline and curled inwards at the bottom, wearing a silken white blouse with one-inch black polka dots, a red scarf in her right breast pocket, came by with a snack tray. She wore a gold neck chain and slender black wristwatch.

"Soft drink?" she asked.

"Seven-up," Nabih said.

"Seven-up," Omar said.

"Sprite, thanks," Goransson said.

The passenger seated to Goransson’s left, in the window seat, had been resting, his eyes closed, most of the flight. He was a white man of about thirty-four years, brown hair, no glasses, in a blue-grey wool suit, light grey socks, black shoes, white dress shirt, and silk tie with a mixture of mauve and burgundy. He smiled, looked at the attendant, and said, "When’s lunch?"

"You missed breakfast," the attendant said. "Soft drinks and snacks, all we have left on this flight."

"Slice," he said.

"Slice it is," she said, and popped open another aluminum can.

They relaxed a while and within another ninety minutes were approaching Newark.

"Four thousand years ago," Omar said. He had the State Department envelope atop his valise.

"Yes?"

"Phillip, if we had met four thousand years ago, this would have been written in cuneiform, with clay envelope, and before it dried, it could be erased with the thumb."

"Now it’s on hard drives," Goransson said.

During the flight, Nabih had ventured little in way of conversation, preferring to snooze and check out the Internet on his laptop. With the flight nearing its end, he began to liven up.

"We have a confirmed car rental reservation for a Camri," Nabih said.

Goransson blinked. "Got a super deal, did you?" he asked.

Nabih appeared suspicious of the remark. "Not so bad." He asked Goransson if he knew where the agency was located in the terminal. "It would save time not to walk to the wrong end of the airport looking for our car."

"Yes, I do," Goransson said, "as I have flown into Newark from D.C." He told them the easiest route through the concourse level. Before long, the plane had landed, and the routine of finding carry-on bags and deboarding had begun. Handing Omar another packet, he said, "Can you meet me in the lounge?"

"We’re hurried," Omar said. "Couldn’t you just give me the packet? We’ll meet again in Rome, I assure you."

"Here it is then. Thank you for working with us." Goransson then quickly slipped away from the crowd, his cell phone to his ear.

Their luggage safely returned to them, the two Arabic professors found the rental agency and inquired about their car.

The young man at the desk, on learning their names, motioned to another clerk, and she came over to talk to Nabih.

"We can’t find the Camri we promised you," she said.

"Oh no," Nabih said.

"But we can offer you a Chrysler Concorde for the same price." She was a white woman with brown hair, curled on either side of her face, wearing a pink blouse, black digital sport watch, a charm bracelet, and blue slacks.

"A Concorde?" Omar sounded impressed.

"Sounds too good to be true," Nabih said.

"That’s all we have available just now," the clerk said.

"For the same price?" Nabih asked. "Can I have it for a week?"

"Yes, you can," the clerk said. "For the same price as a Camri."

"Well then," Nabih said, "we’ll travel to the Hyatt in style."

"A Concorde would be safer dodging all those suburban attack vehicles," Omar said.

"So true," the young woman said. "I didn’t use to drive an SUV, but now the road is so crowded with them I feel afraid to be in a smaller vehicle anymore."

"We’ll take the Concorde," Nabih said. He paid with a credit card, signed up for full insurance, and the two professors exited the terminal.

Soon they were leaving the airport premises, passing a fashionable area of restaurants situated behind scenic roadside grounds with a long curving stone retaining wall filled with thousands of red and variegated geraniums.

"How do they find water to keep all that in bloom in July?" Nabih said.

Omar, who was driving, shook his head and said, "And my cousins are desperate some days for just enough fresh water to drink and brush their teeth."

It was nearing eleven-thirty a.m.

"Shall we stop here for lunch or at the hotel?" Omar asked.

"The hotel. It makes no difference to me. I’m not hungry yet."

"Let’s drive on before the noon hour traffic bogs down the tunnel," Omar said.

They had to stop and open their trunk at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel.

"How long does it usually take?" Omar called to a driver to his left, whose passenger windows were down.

"Since they closed the Holland Tunnel to all but trucks, about ten minutes," the driver called back. His four-door red Corona GL sedan had black wall tires, and, as Omar had noticed on pulling to a stop at the checkpoint, a New York plate. He was an Egyptian native in his early thirties with full black hair and trim moustache, with the exposed skin on his arms shaved clean. He wore a guard’s short-sleeve uniform with lapels of gold and tan lettering of a major bank.

A woman inspector motioned to Omar to pull forward. She was white, in her early thirties, had permed short dark hair, pleasant smile, onyx earrings with black trim, tan slacks, and had on a white check blouse with a badge. She had a small official-looking satchel on a strap under her left arm.

"Have you anything that could be considered explosives or that could be used as explosives with you?" she asked Omar.

"Nada," he said.

"La," Nabih said from the driver’s seat.

"La?" she asked.

"No," Nabih said.

"La, no. I’ve heard ‘no’ in about twenty different languages since I started working here last month. ‘La’ in Arabic is one of my favorites."

"Nein," Omar said.

"Nein is not one of my favorites," she said. "Could you open the trunk?"

Omar touched the trunk control in the panel, and it popped open. He could see the guard, who had on a flowing white skirt that reached below her knees, walk to the back. She leaned over a moment and patted on the carpet in the back, lifting a pad for a moment, then quietly came back to the driver’s window and said, "You’re cleared. You have a nice day."

"You have a nice day," Omar said. They drove on.

"Nothing much to that," Nabih said. He opened up his laptop and began typing. Omar could make out most of the lines on the XGA TFT display.

"You think not?" Omar asked.

"Not like the NSA men this morning who harassed you."

"Yes, they did harass me, didn’t they?" Omar said.

"You should file a complaint."

"A complaint? With whom? Allah?"

"Yes, you can always turn to Him," Nabih said. "Friend Omar, I have not asked you as yet what those men wanted."

"I noticed that," Omar said.

"I thought you would confide in me."

"Friend Nabih," Omar said. "Thank you for asking. They had a matter for which I was recruited, to help with the recovery of the looted treasures."

"They want you to help? When?"

"After I get back to Iraq," Omar said. "I promised I would keep it confidential."

"Understood."

In an office in the Federal Building in downtown Detroit, agents Beltmann and Lyeforth tuned a dial on a PC and continued listening to the conversation in the Concorde driven by Omar, now in Manhattan and approaching the Hyatt.

"Wonderful reception," Timothy "Ward" Shepherd, the third man sitting in the room, said. He was with the CIA, an agent with over twenty-one years experience. Age about fifty-five, brown hair, receding hairline, big ears, very trim blonde moustache, double-chin, healthy physique, almost imperceptible eyebrows that he shaved occasionally, light brown eyes, rather broad nose, the sort of white man with a peach complexion that turns terra cotta after a summer vacation at a resort, water skiing, playing golf, as was the case with agent Shepherd the previous four days.

Unlike Beltmann and Lyeforth who were in shirt sleeves, Shepherd had on a grey tweed summer weight suit jacket, unbuttoned. He wore a white dress shirt with black tie with white stripes spaced every two inches.

"And he kept his word not to tell his colleague about our plan," Lyeforth said.

"So far, he hasn’t," Shepherd said. "I’ll look forward to learning more. You’ll send me a copy of all the tapes?"

"Yes, sir," Lyeforth said.

"Thank you. Anything more about the uranium-plated sixteen-words heard round the world?" Shepherd asked.

"No," Beltmann said.

"They’re not owning up in the White House to what they knew," Shepherd said.

"They’re not?" Lyeforth asked.

"They’re trying to burn the director," Shepherd said. "To maneuver George into taking the heat."

"George?" Lyeforth asked. "George who?"

"Mr. Tenent," Shepherd said and cleared his throat. "Claims, evidence, it’s a shame."

"It almost made a shambles of the President’s Africa trip," Lyeforth said.

"The correctness, the British, oh that British correctness," Shepherd said.

"It’s not closed," Beltmann said.

"Miss Rice had to know," Shepherd said.

"Now you’re talking about one of our higher-ups," Beltmann said, sitting up. "She had no reason to know the documents were forged."

"Check your web-site," Lyeforth said.

"All right," Shepherd said. "May I use your PC?"

"Yes."

Shepherd logged onto cia.gov. "It’s beyond my credulity that the White House didn’t know this. The White House had to know this. George Tenent is a good soldier, but the White House had to know this themselves, and they’re not owning up to their own responsibility."

"It sends the wrong message to the intelligence community," Beltmann said.

"The IAEC could have told them before the State of the Union message," Lyeforth said.

"The statement by the President was technically correct," Shepherd said. "Just one small statement. And the British will not release the info so to prove us right. It’s top secret."

"Then why hasn’t Blair owned up publicly?" Lyeforth asked. "Where are the forged documents?"

"At the root of all this, accountability," Shepherd said. "It’s dishonorable for Miss Rice to point the finger at George Tenent and tell him to take the fall."

"Dishonorable?" Beltmann said, standing up.

"She has behaved in an exemplary manner," Lyeforth said, also standing up. "George signed off on the speech. Miss Rice is blameless in this. Come on, Beltmann, to my office."

"Is that a hint for me to leave?" Shepherd asked.

"You call that a hint?" Lyeforth said.

"Nothing on the CIA web-site about the sixteen-word uranium incantation," Shepherd said.

"Does George like being abused?" Beltmann asked.

"No, he does not," Shepherd said.

"No, I mean the President," Beltmann said.

"No, he does not," Shepherd said.

"Have you heard the clip of the President repeating those sixteen words over and over, like one of those first-graders going through his Weekly Reader, with names like Wally?" Beltmann said.

"You shouldn’t mock the President’s Texas twang like that," Shepherd said.

"Look, we’re exempt," Lyeforth said. "He can’t touch us. I don’t know about you."

"I’m also above politics," Shepherd said.

"Well, the White House is not, and they knew the uranium question was radioactive and burned themselves. So what?" Lyeforth said.

"Gentlemen, gentleman," Shepherd said, "we’ve just missed what our friends headed for the Hyatt were saying."

"So play back the tape," Beltmann said. "We do need to go down to the other office."

"All right," Shepherd said. "I know when I’m not wanted. I’ll go back my cubicle and read up on Sumerian antiquities."

"You do that," Lyeforth said.

"We’re saving thousands of Iraqi lives every day," Shepherd said, "and look at the gratitude we get."

The three men were now standing alone in a lavishly furnished reception area outside their offices. There was no one else around whom they could see.

"Lightning quick response from you at NSA," Shepherd said, "when we informed you of the recovery by that imam in Tikrit of a chest filled with three of the most famous treasures."

"Do you think someone really just left it in his backyard?" Lyeforth asked.

"Actually," Shepherd said, "yes, I do. Far stranger matters are reported to us each day from Baghdad and the environs, even something about Ali Baba on his flying carpet."

"You’ve got to be kidding," Beltmann said.

"A stroke of genius to recruit Iraqi nationals returning home to lead the way to the lost and found," Lyeforth said. "But the Iraqis will be furious if they learn that our manufactured heroes were being duped, that we had the treasure stashed in vaults at the Bank of Iraq."

"Yes," Shepherd said. "It’s dangerous to wait this long, to lead three men by the nose to the gold and silver. But we have simply got to give the Iraqi people something to feel proud about, something heroic, rather a hybrid of Survivor and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The imam gave the U.S. commander in Tikrit the idea."

"Will he keep quiet about this?" Lyeforth asked.

"He has so far. He wants to work with us," Shepherd said. "See you later."

"Yes, later," Beltmann said. After Shepherd was out of hearing range, Beltmann turned to Lyeforth, both men standing in front of an ornate gold-finished looking glass, with hat and coat stand of walnut to one side, and said, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most secretive of us all?"

"We are."

"You see what I meant about suspended animation?" Beltmann said.

"I think so. With Tenent and Miss Rice squaring off, and Bush looking the fool," Lyeforth said.

"As usual," Beltmann said.

"We don’t dare let CIA know of our plan, funding pre-approved," Lyeforth said.

"Right out of the director’s secret account, and even the President doesn’t ask her how she spends it," Beltmann said.

"And no one ever asks for more than an annual bookkeeping entry, rounded off to six-figures," Lyeforth said.

"And no restaurant or hotel receipts required, no proof we flew coach or first class, and it will be a seven-figure entry this time," Beltmann said.

"Assured," Lyeforth.

"Assurances," Beltmann said. "The imam’s concept of building up the people with a local hero was brilliant."

"But this breaks the sound barrier," Lyeforth said. "To create in the media and the minds of the Arab world the illusion that an Islamic immigrant to the U.S. has returned imbued, a spiritual leader."

"An Islamic Messiah," Beltmann said. "Inspired."

"Ordained by Allah to revive the entire Mideast, to bring peace, a lasting peace, the miracle of peace," Lyeforth said.

"Just a few hand-made miracles along the way to ensure a credulous audience."

"But the danger," Lyeforth said. "I was rather taken by Aboudi’s decency and integrity. He’ll never thank us for staging a highway accident complete with bullet-hole in his left rear tire."

"Just enough of a jolt to scare him into working with us once he reaches Iraq," Beltmann said. "Besides, he need never know who set it up. And plenty of video."

"But he could be killed!"

"We could all have been killed if Saddam had used his nuclear arsenal," Beltmann said.

"What nuclear arsenal?"

"The nuclear arsenal he would have had if we hadn’t invaded in March," Beltmann said.

"But there was no arsenal, no WMD’s."

"But there would have been, if we hadn’t invaded."

"How could there be?" Lyeforth asked.

"If you had WMD’s, would you leave them around for busy-bodies and snoops like us to find?" Beltmann asked.

"Of course not. You’re saying Saddam had the WMD’s, and destroyed them to get rid of any evidence, in case he were caught."

"Just so, mon ami," Beltmann said.

"But none of this justifies in my mind shooting out a man’s tire while he’s driving sixty-five miles an hour on a New York City freeway," Lyeforth said.

"We’ll have an ambulance there within minutes if it backfires, buddy," Beltmann said.

"I hate to think of anything like that being required," Lyeforth said.

"So do I, but it’s a risk we have to take. And afterall, this is a religious war," Beltmann said. He coughed, blinking his eyes.

"You think this is a religious war?" Lyeforth asked.

"A war on terrorism."

"That’s not the same thing," Lyeforth said.

"These are Muslims we’re dealing with, amigo."

"I know that."

"Muslims are terrorists," Beltmann said.

"No, not at all."

"These are Islamic terrorists we’re dealing with, committed to destroying Christianity, and if we have to blow out one of their car tires to get them to do what we want, and bring peace instead of suicide bombings to the world, it’s a risk we have to take. And the director has approved this."

"Miss Rice knows we plan to shoot out a man’s car tire?" Lyeforth asked.

"Well, sort of."

"There is no ‘sort of’ when it comes to approving using violence on an American citizen to convince him he needs our protection," Lyeforth said.

"Don’t tell her, okay?" Beltmann said.

"She doesn’t know."

"Did Reagan know about the Iran-Contra funds?" Beltmann asked.

"He’s got Alzheimer’s, Ollie’s a fruitcake, and the former CIA director died of a brain tumor. Of course Reagan didn’t know."

"Shepherd has no idea we plan to give the Iraqis far more than a trio of Hercules Poirot style detectives tracking down loot from the museum," Beltmann said.

"Far more indeed, and what if Omar figures out how we’re using him, before we’re ready to tell him?" Lyeforth asked.

"Find an analogy. Find a case. The police have to shoot out car tires during chases all the time, and rarely is anyone hurt," Beltmann said. "Now, follow that dream."

They headed to another office. It was nearing four p.m. Friday, July 11^th, 2003.

It was after six that evening before the two men got to the conference center in the Hyatt Regency at Park Avenue and Grand Central Station to register. There was to be a welcoming hour around seven for the attendees who had arrived a day early.

"You’ve got to try the Sky Bar," was the oft-repeated phrase from guests.

Familiar faces and forgotten names came into view, name tags on lapels, and the talk in the conference room of over one hundred twenty guests and officials ran the gamut from the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing limited use of racial considerations in admissions at universities to the plight of the detainees in Guantanamo.

"What frightens my daughter Talia," Professor Sabri from Boston told Omar and Nabih, "is that after Jamal was taken into custody and deported, the phone calls suddenly stopped. She brought the kids to us for the summer and has flown to Jordan to try to track him down."

"You must be beside yourself," Nabih said.

"It helps to have the support of the Arab-American community in Cambridge," Sabri said. He was a tall man, about sixty years old, from Saudi Arabia, and wore a dark suit, white shirt with tan pinstripes, and dark tie with red stripes.

"Your daughter is travelling alone?" Omar asked.

"Yes."

"To Jordan?"

"She went through endless legal wranglings and delays with the State Department before getting her visa," Sabri said. "Now, with all the secrecy and refusal by the Jordanian embassy to discuss the matter, even with our attorney, Talia is getting angry."

It was nine p.m. before Omar and Nabih returned to their rooms for a good night’s rest.