At five o'clock they awoke, still cuddled together. They got up, he dressed and she fixed her hair. Blessed with naturally smooth skin, Lonnie wore very little, if any, makeup, so getting ready to go out was a fairly quick process for her most of the time. They made their way down to the lobby, where they met with Mike and Hilde. The group walked out the front of the hotel onto Fourth Avenue and made their way one block west to Simon & Seafort’s restaurant. They had not made reservations, and the hostess told them it would be a thirty-minute wait unless they were willing to dine in the bar area. The restaurant was smoke free, and at the early hour, the bar was quieter than the dining room. Most of the noise in there came from two large flat-screen TVs hanging above the bar, the sound background murmurs of a baseball game and the local news channel.
They chose a table near a window that framed Mt. Susitna across the inlet. The mountain is locally known as Sleeping Lady, due to the fact that from certain angles, it looks like a long-haired woman lying on her back. They ordered and made small talk over drinks as they waited for their food. The conversation drifted from the photo hunt to babies and the Farris's decision to try having children. Hilde was thirty-nine years old, and felt like it was now or never. Lonnie was about the same age and encouraged her to go for it; she would not get many more chances.
Dessert and coffee came. Hilde held a spoon of rich chocolate mousse in front of her mouth and smiled as she imagined cradling an infant in her arms. She knew Lonnie was right — this might be her only chance. Menopause was not far in the future, and if she waited too long, she'd be in her sixties, looking like a grandparent, when her child graduated high school. Mike had a child of his own with his first marriage, but that wife and their toddler son were both killed in a drive-by shooting two years earlier. While she never felt that she was a replacement for his former family, Hilde did feel that it would be good therapy for Mike to have another child. She leaned back against her seat and absentmindedly glanced up at one of the massive plasma TVs above the bar. The local evening news was playing, the sound barely audible above the din of the crowd which had grown significantly since they had sat down.
Video of a car accident played across the screen. As the announcer described the event, Lonnie's pregnant form suddenly came into view on the screen. Hilde tapped Mike on the arm and he looked up. Marcus and Lonnie looked as well, but Lonnie turned away once she realized what it was. She glanced toward Hilde and saw the FBI analyst’s face morph into a shocked expression as she stared at the screen.
“I know that man,” Hilde said in a harsh whisper.
Lonnie looked up just in time to see Steven Farrah flash past the edge of the screen.
“Him?” she asked.
Hilde's face colored.
“How do you know him?” Mike asked.
She leaned closer to the table, lowering her voice. The others bent toward the center and focused on what she said.
“He's on the watch list,” she whispered. “Added just a few weeks ago. Sokol Albajani.”
“You sure?” Mike asked.
“You know I never forget their faces,” she said, pursing her lips. “That is Sokol Albajani.”
“Who is he?” Marcus asked.
“A mid-ranking officer in the Sons of the Sword, an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group.”
Lonnie looked back at the screen as the video sequence played a second time. Farrah's face crossed the screen as he spoke with her. The words were not audible, but she remembered it all.
“He spoke with a British accent,” she said.
“He is British,” Hilde replied. “I don't remember if he was born there or naturalized as an infant, but he grew up there. He changed his name to Steven Farrah as a teen in school to stand out less. There was a lot of racial violence in Manchester at the time. Since he was Caucasian, the simple name change worked to relieve him of the torture a lot of immigrants kids are put through.”
“Are you sure about this guy?” Marcus asked. “Maybe it’s just someone who looks like him.”
“No. It is him.” Hilde shook her head as if expelling doubt. “It's my job to remember people like him. I look at that list every day and supervise groups that compare the images to those picked up on surveillance cameras. I know the faces of all the current top fifty most wanted terrorists out there, and that man is one of them.”
“What's he doing here?” Mike asked.
“The president,” Marcus said. “Your friend the other day said the president was coming for the pipeline opening this week.”
“I've got to get hold of Tonia and let her know.” Hilde pulled out her cell phone and thumbed through the contacts list until she found Tonia's number and pressed the dial button. It rang four times, and then went to voice mail. She tried again and got the same.
“Let's go back to the hotel,” she said. “Maybe we can find her or her partner there.”
They paid the bill and left the restaurant. At nearly nine p.m., it was still as bright as it would be at five in the rest of the country. Darkness would not return to the Alaskan nights until mid-August. As they walked the two blocks back to the hotel, Hilde's phone rang. She pulled it from her purse and answered.
“Hello?”
“It's Tonia.” Loud rock music pumped in the background. “You finally calling for that drink, girlfriend?”
“No, we've got a situation. We just saw a watch list suspect here in town.”
“You what?” Tonia shouted into the phone.
“We just saw a man I recognized from the watch list.” Hilde cupped the receiver.
“Hilde, this connection is crap. I can't make out what you're saying. You're watching a band?”
“No, a terrorist!”
The others gave her a look. Hilde remembered she was on the sidewalk and lowered her voice. The sound of a crowded night club filled the background on Tonia’s end of the line, and a burst of laughter exploded in the phone speaker.
“I'll call you when I get to the hotel,” Tonia shouted over the noise. “Or you can meet me here at Humpy's Bar. Bring your man. I've got Lurch as a date.”
“I'll come to you,” Hilde said.
“Love you too!” Tonia replied.
Hilde gave an odd look as the phone went silent. “I don’t think she heard a word I said.”
Marcus's truck was parked a few stalls into the Captain Cook's parking garage. They climbed in, and a moment later they were heading east on Sixth Avenue. The modern architecture of the Performing Arts Center loomed ahead, seeming massive amidst the scattering of building styles ranging from present state-of-the-art to post-World War I salt-box cottages that had been turned into tourist shops and fine-dining establishments. Just beyond the PAC, a small crowd milled beneath the cloth-covered awning of Humpy's Alehouse that jutted from above the sixties-style glass storefront near the corner of Sixth and F. The thump of electric jazz echoed through the canyon of tall buildings, booming into the open windows of Marcus’s truck when they stopped for the light at G Street nearly a block away. As they waited, an engine revved and a white Audi screeched around the corner just as the light changed from yellow to red.
Lonnie reached up and tapped Marcus on the shoulder. “It's Farrah,” she said. “That's the car Farrah was driving when I saw him before. Follow him!”