1
Their eyes locked for only a moment, but in that moment FBI Agent Marcus Santini knew something was terribly wrong.
He had seen that face. He knew that face. But how?
Santini’s cab swerved violently to avoid hitting the man who had suddenly stepped into the flow of Washington, D.C., traffic. The man’s eyes flashed with fear, but not of dying. He seemed oblivious to the danger of standing in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, busy even on a Saturday. Instead, for that brief instant, he seemed rattled only by the look of recognition in Santini’s eyes.
And then he bolted.
The cab started moving again, but Santini couldn’t take his eyes off the man as he raced toward Union Station, clad in a thick winter coat and clutching a large backpack.
Santini had been trained to trust his instincts, but he had been with the bureau’s Counterterrorism Division for less than a year. And this was his day off. What were the chances this guy was actually on a watch list? Two blocks from the Capitol? Less than a mile from the White House?
Then again, what if he was? What if something happened, and he had done nothing to stop it? Santini knew he would never be able to live with himself.
“Stop here,” he ordered the driver.
“But, sir, we’re almost there,” the man replied.
“Now,” Santini insisted, tossing a twenty through the small opening in the Plexiglas divider and jumping out the back door, even as the taxi was still slowing to a stop.
He had less than a minute, if that. If the man made it onto one of the trains, Santini would never find him until it was too late.
Sprinting like he had in college — like he had during training at the FBI Academy in Quantico for eight lonely months away from his wife and two-year-old son — Santini raced for the Red Line. Down the escalator. Through the turnstiles. Onto the platform.
The chimes began ringing. The doors were closing. The train was about to leave. Santini boarded the last car just in time, scanning the crowd to his left and right. The man was not there.
Santini’s heart was pounding, and his doubts were rising. Was he overreacting? Was he in danger of winding up as a gossip item in the Post—“Junior Agent Mistakes Area Student for Suicide Bomber”?
The train began moving, heading west.
Santini glanced at his watch. It was 12:42. He knew the station at Judiciary Square was closed on Saturdays. That meant their first stop was Gallery Place-Chinatown. From there, nearly the entire D.C. Metro system was accessible — the Green Line to the Navy Yard, the Yellow Line to the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport, and only one Red Line stop away from FBI headquarters and the White House itself.
And they would be there in exactly three minutes.
Santini pulled out his phone and called a friend in the Directorate of Intelligence.
“Bobby, it’s Marcus. I need a favor, fast.”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, big guy. You sound terrible.”
“I need every watch-list photo you have of priority-one targets — males, European or North African, eighteen to thirty. Can you e-mail those to my cell phone?”
“That’s a lot of photos, but I… ”
Santini’s phone chirped. His battery was dying.
“Can you do it?” he pressed.
“I guess so, but why?”
“Just send them—now. I’ll call you back.”
Santini hung up and glanced at his watch again.
12:44.
He had less than a minute to the next stop.
George Murray was late, and he was never late.
Overworked, absolutely. Underpaid, it went without saying. But though the chief archeologist for the Smithsonian Institution was not one who typically tolerated a lack of discipline in his staff, much less himself, today it simply couldn’t be helped.
Uncharacteristically disheveled and out of breath, Murray burst through the revolving doors of the Willard InterContinental, arguably Washington’s grandest five-star luxury hotel, beautifully situated around the corner from the Treasury Building and the White House.
“I’m so sorry — I should have taken a cab,” Murray confessed, wiping the sweat off his brow with one hand and shaking the hand of a literary agent from New York a bit too vigorously with the other.
“No, no, please, Dr. Murray. It is an honor to finally meet you in person. I’ve heard so much about you. You were very kind to call me.”
“Well, I just wish I had more time, Mr. Catrell,” Murray apologized. “I’m leaving for Israel tomorrow. I haven’t even started to pack. My youngest is in bed with a fever. We can’t figure out what he has. I’ve got to get my oldest to a basketball game in Annandale by four… .”
“Then let’s have a seat,” the agent insisted, guiding Murray over to some couches in a quiet corner of the lobby, where they could talk in private. “And please, call me Gene. Believe me, I would’ve happily waited longer. It’s not every day a proposal as intriguing as yours comes along.”
The train began to slow.
Marcus Santini stepped to the door. His right hand moved to the sidearm holstered under his overcoat. His left hand reached for his badge.
A voice came over the loudspeakers, announcing their location. The doors opened. Santini waited a moment, then looked out. Only a handful of passengers stepped off the train and onto the platform. The man with the backpack wasn’t among them.
Santini drew his weapon and, keeping it low and at his side, moved quickly to the next car. He ducked his head in but saw no one he recognized. He did the same for the next car, but again, Backpack wasn’t there.
His doubts were rising again. Was this guy even on the Metro? There was only one train he could have gotten on, and this was it. But what if he had headed into Union Station instead, toward the shops or the movie theaters or perhaps the Amtrak trains? Which was worse: chasing a ghost or losing one?
Santini was about to call the whole thing off when he suddenly spotted Backpack. He was standing in the next car, nearly hidden by a group of giggling teenage girls. Santini’s heart began racing again. If he was going to move, it had to be now. But was he really going to pull his weapon on this guy on a crowded D.C. subway car?
He still had no idea who the man was. He had no proof he was actually a threat. The backpack could be filled with schoolbooks or gym clothes or a ham sandwich and a six-pack of Coke, for all he knew.
Santini remembered an incident in London, shortly after the bombings there, when police had mistakenly shot and killed an innocent, unarmed man, thinking he was another suicide bomber. And yet, for all his doubts, Santini knew he had to move now, even at the risk of embarrassing himself and the bureau.
The chimes sounded again. The train doors began to close. Angry with himself for hesitating too long, Santini stuffed his sidearm into his coat pocket and quickly slipped into the train car behind Backpack’s — just in time. The train began to move again.
Santini took a seat behind a large African-American woman carrying an armful of shopping bags, then noticed that the phone in his pocket was vibrating. He pulled it out and found that the e-mail had arrived. Actually, eight had arrived, the master file having been too large to send all at once. He scrolled through the photos as quickly as he could.
“Come on, come on,” he whispered under his breath.
There were too many faces, and none of them matched.
He glanced up at Backpack. But with so many people around him, Santini couldn’t get a better look at his face. He would have to go by memory. His phone chirped again. His battery was almost dead.