With the CIA man gone, he used the concierge to reserve himself passage on the Etihad evening departure for Qatar, connecting via British Airways for London.
The car was there the next morning when he settled up and emerged with his single bag. It was the usual nondescript car but with CD plates so it could not be entered or its inhabitants harassed.
At the wheel was a middle-aged white American with gray hair—a veteran embassy servant who had been driving this city long enough to know it intimately. With him was a young and junior State Department staffer who, at a language course back home, had chosen and mastered Pashto as his specialty. The Tracker climbed in the back and gave the address. They came down the ramp from the Serena, and their ISI tail slid in behind them.
At the end of the street containing Col. Ali Shah’s house they parked and waited until every male in the road had left for the mosque and Friday prayers. Only then did the Tracker order that he be dropped at the door.
It was again Mrs. Shah who answered. She at once appeared flustered and explained that her husband was not there. He would return in an hour, maybe more. She spoke in Pashto. The embassy man replied that the colonel had bade them wait for him. Uncertain that she had had no such instructions, she nevertheless let them in and took them to the sitting room. She hovered, embarrassed, but did not sit. Nor did she leave. The Tracker gestured to the armchair opposite his own.
“Please, Mrs. Shah, do not be alarmed to see me again. I came to apologize for yesterday. I did not mean to upset your husband. I brought a little gift to express my regrets.”
He placed the bottle of Black Label on the coffee table. It, too, had been in the car, as requested. She gave a nervous smile, as the translator interpreted, and sat down.
“I had no idea there had been a rift between father and son,” said the Tracker. “Such a tragedy. I had been told your lad—Zulfiqar, is it not?—was so talented, speaking English as well as Urdu and Pashto—which, of course, he must have learned from you.”
She nodded, and again tears welled in her eyes.
“Tell me, do you not somewhere have a picture of Zulfiqar, even when he was your little boy?”
A large drop emerged from each eye and ran down the cheek. No mother of a son quite forgets the once beautiful little boy she held on her lap. She nodded slowly.
“May I see it . . . please?”
She rose and left the room. Somewhere she had a secret hiding place and there she defied her husband by keeping a photo of her long-lost boy. When she came back, she was holding a single photo in a leather frame.
It was a graduation-day picture. There were two teenage boys in the frame, grinning happily at the camera. It was from the days before the conversion to Jihad, the carefree school-end days, a rolled baccalaureate scroll and harmless friendship. There was no need to ask which boy was which. The one on the left had luminous amber eyes. He handed back the photo.
“Joe,” said the Tracker quietly, “use your mobile to ask our driver to come knock on the door.”
“But he’ll be waiting outside.”
“Do as I ask, please.”
The junior staffer made the call. Mrs. Shah did not understand a word. A few seconds later, there was a sharp rap on the front door. Mrs. Shah looked alarmed. Not her husband; too early, and he would simply enter. No other visitors were expected. She rose, looked helplessly around, pulled open a drawer in the credenza by the wall and pushed the photo into it. The door knocker rapped again. She left the room.
The Tracker was across it in two strides. He removed the photo and snapped it twice with his iPhone. By the time Mrs. Shah returned with their puzzled driver, her older visitor was back in his chair, the younger one standing bewildered by him. The Tracker rose with a warm smile.
“Ah, time to go, I see. I have a plane to catch. I am so sorry to have missed your husband. Please give him my best regards and my apologies for upsetting him.”
This was all translated, and they saw themselves out. When they were gone, Mrs. Shah retrieved her precious photo and returned it to her secret place.
In the car to the airport, the Tracker expanded the picture and stared at it. He was not a cruel man and did not want to deceive the once-beautiful woman with the jade green eyes. But how, he mused, do you tell a mother still crying for her lost baby boy that you are going to hunt him down and kill him for the monster he has become?
Twenty hours later, he touched down at Washington Dulles.
• • •
The Tracker crouched in the tiny space available to him in the attic of the small house in Centerville and stared at the screen. Beside him, Ariel sat in front of his keyboard, as a pianist before his concert grand. He was in total control; through the equipment TOSA had donated him, the whole world was his.
His fingers flickered over the keys, and images came and went as he explained what he had done.
“Troll’s Internet traffic is coming out of here,” he said.
The images were from Google Earth, but he had
somehow enhanced them. From space, the watcher plunged downward like aerial daredevil Felix Baumgartner diving to Earth. The Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa filled the screen, then seemed to rush past his ears as the camera roared down and down. Eventually, it halted its insane dive, and he was staring at a roof; square, pale gray. There seemed to be a courtyard and a gate. Two vans were parked in the yard.
“He’s not in Yemen, as you might have thought, he’s in Somalia. This is Kismayo, on the coast at the southern end of the country,” said Ariel.