In that same second, Salim recognized the boy as Austin Cooper. They’d gone to high school together.
What the hell?
Then the terror set in. It wouldn’t go well for him if anyone realized the sick boy knew him. Those in charge would jump to conclusions, and those conclusions would be bad. Salim stood straight up—looking up as he did—and saw the guy in the HAZMAT suit beside the tidy Arab kid’s bed staring at him.
Chapter 45
Eric stopped by the conference room. Inside, Olivia Cooper and Barry Middleton shared the desk. The room was bigger than the one Eric and Olivia had occupied earlier in the day. It held an oblong table designed to seat six. In the center of the table sat a conference call phone set and a projector, which at the moment wasn’t hooked up to either computer.
Eric dropped himself into a chair and asked, “What do you have?”
Olivia pointed at Barry and said, “Barry got us the lists of passengers on all the flights for the past several days, including Salim’s flight.”
Eric took a drink of his coffee. “And?”
“I’m working on the information, but it looks like there’s been a big spike in passengers flying from Lahore to Nairobi on Western passports.”
“A big spike?” replied Eric.
“It seems to have gone up significantly compared to the day before.”
Eric shook his head. “By itself, that information is somewhat meaningless.”
“Yes,” Olivia agreed. “Barry is pulling in information from the past month so we can see how far it deviates from the trend.”
Eric shook his head. “Statistical anomalies are interesting, and they may mean something, but you know if you go into a problem with a bias toward finding a certain solution, even in random data, you’re going to find a pattern that supports your solution. All you have to do is look long enough.” Eric glanced at Barry. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
Olivia spoke up to pull the attention back to herself. “This isn’t all we’ve found. Thirteen of those Western passport holders are young men from the ages of nineteen to twenty-seven. All left the United States within the past four months.”
Eric said, “You have my attention.”
“They are all on our list.”
In the department, The List didn’t need to be named specifically. It was the list they were tasked with monitoring—US citizens who’d gone abroad under suspicious circumstances—those under suspicion of potentially joining an anti-American radical group.
Eric turned to Barry. “You confirmed this?”
Barry nodded. “It gets better.”
“How’s that?” replied Eric.
Barry pointed at Olivia. “I sent her the info just before you walked in.”
Eric turned to Olivia. She was staring wide-eyed at her screen. “Barry?” Her voice was tentative as she glanced sideways at him, then back at her screen. “Tell me I’m understanding this correctly.”
“Judging by the look on your face, I’d say you are.”
“What?” Eric asked.
Glancing between Barry and her screen, she turned to Eric. “Pass me that cord.”
Eric passed her the plug to connect her laptop to the projector. Olivia plugged it into her computer, fiddled with a few keys, and an image of her computer’s screen illuminated the wall.
The projected image on the wall contained a spreadsheet with a column of names—some highlighted in yellow—a column of amounts in some currency not relevant at the moment, a couple of date columns, and columns of flight numbers, carriers, flight times, destinations, numbers of stops, what appeared to be account numbers, and a column that seemed to randomly contain the letter W or blanks.
“Sort by column D,” Barry told Olivia, as she maneuvered the mouse across the top of the spreadsheet.
Olivia clicked a few menu options, and the information was ready for review. She said, “The rows highlighted in yellow are the thirteen I told you about a moment ago—Americans.”
Eric scanned the document, trying to see what was so obvious and important to his two subordinates. “Help me out with this.”
Olivia moused over one of the yellow-highlighted names. “This is one of our boys.”
Eric read out loud, “Salim Pitafi.”
“Look to column D,” Olivia moused down the column and highlighted six rows.”
“And that column is?” Eric asked.
“The credit card number used to pay for the ticket.” Olivia glanced at Barry.
“That’s right.” Barry was excited. “That column next to it. That’s when the purchase was made.”
Eric looked at it for a moment. “Are you telling me that all six of those tickets were purchased with the same credit card number at the same time?”
“That’s exactly what it says.” Olivia scrolled down the page and highlighted contiguous rows, in groups of six. “It happens again and again—nineteen groups of six—all for tickets purchased in a two-hour window.”
“Scroll down slowly from the top,” Eric requested.
Olivia moved the mouse to the top of the spreadsheet and scrolled.
Barry nodded emphatically after the second yellow highlighted name was passed.
When they got to the bottom, Eric said, “By my count, nine of those grouped purchases contain at least one of the guys on our lists.”
“Yes,” Olivia answered.
“Exactly.” Barry confirmed.
“You think these guys are all related somehow?”
“The accounts prove that,” Barry blurted.
Eric turned to Barry, “Yes. No doubt. But what is the relationship? That’s the important thing, right? Without a doubt this is compelling, but we don’t know if a travel agency is booking these boys on safari on behalf of some university travel abroad program, some church is sending groups of missionaries, or they’re part of some elaborate terrorist plot. Am I right?”
Olivia sank in her seat.
Barry flatly replied, “You’re right.”
“I’m not saying this is or isn’t something,” Eric told them. “As I said, I’m curious. I’m even suspicious. I’ve kicked the inquiry about your boy Salim and the other two upstairs. I’ll pass along the other ten names. But until we can get more information on what these card numbers relate to, or until we can get some information on who these others are, we can’t make an educated guess. We can make a guess, but we have to recognize that’s all it is—a guess. As I already mentioned, we’re looking for terrorists here. We expect to find them. So every bit of evidence we find is going to smell like terrorist shit. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Olivia responded.
Barry nodded.
Eric stood up, walked over to the glass door, and pulled it open. He stopped with one foot out. “Both of you—move your stuff to conference room D-3.”
Olivia looked across the floor to the line of three large conference rooms on the opposite wall.
“I’m sending Katherine to join you. She’ll liaise with our friends at the CIA and see what we can come up with on these other names. Kevin will help you get into the bank information. Christine can dig into the phone data. Save me a place at the table, ‘cause I’ll be checking up on you guys frequently. We’ll order some food in later.” Eric walked out and let the door swing closed behind him.
“Holy crap,” Barry said.
Olivia smiled, but felt anxious, “I hope I’m not sending everyone off chasing nothing.”
“You’re doing your job. Eric gets paid to make these calls.”
“And if I’m wrong?”
“You’re not wrong about anything. We collect data and we analyze it—that’s what we do. We dig further into things when they look like they might be important. This looks like it might be important. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Not every hole you dig has a diamond at the bottom. Eric knows that. We’ll just keep pushing on until the data says we have something or we don’t.” Barry raised an eyebrow and smiled.