Dead or Alive

  “I’ll take your word for that. Is it ready for transport?”

  “Of course. It has a relatively low output signature, so passive detection measures won’t be your worry. Active measures are a different story altogether. I assume you’ve taken steps to—”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “Then I’ll leave it in your good hands,” the engineer said, then stood up and headed toward the office at the rear of the warehouse. “I’m going to sleep now. I trust the remainder of my fee will be deposited by morning.”

  63

  THEIR CONTACT MET THEM near Al Kurnish Road on the east side of Sendebad Park, within a stone’s throw of the Australian consulate. Hendley had declined to explain to Brian and Dominic the nature of his relationship with the Aussie, nor had their boss felt it necessary to share the man’s name, but neither brother thought it a coincidence their bogus passports and visas bore Australian seals.

  “Afternoon, gents. I assume you’re Gerry’s boys, yes?”

  “I suppose we are,” Dominic said.

  “Archie.” Hands were shaken all around. “Let’s take a stroll, what say?” They waited for a break in traffic, then jogged across Al Kurnish to a dirt parking lot beside the wagon wheel-shaped Al Fatah building, then down to the water’s edge.

  “So I understand you’re on a little snipe hunt?” Archie said over the rush of the waves.

  “Guess you could call it that,” said Brian. “Guy got murdered here last week. Hung first, then decapitated and feet chopped off.”

  Archie was nodding. “Heard about that. Nasty bit of work, that. Call that the ‘naughty no-step’ around here. You think this bloke got out of line, did a little freelancing?”

  Dominic nodded.

  “The Swedish embassy, yes?”

  Another nod.

  “And you’re after the whos and whats, I take it?”

  “We’ll take anything we can get,” Brian said.

  “Well, first thing you need to know about Tripoli is that it’s a damned safe city, all things considered. Average street crime is pretty low, and neighbors watch after one another. The police don’t get overly concerned about this group killing a member of that group unless it spills over onto the streets or one of them does something to draw attention to itself. The last thing the Curly Colonel wants is bad international press, not after all the public-relations work he’s done. The truth is the URC has been rather quiet for eight or nine months. In fact, there’s some spin on the street that the Swedish embassy business wasn’t URC.”

  “Not sanctioned, at least,” Dominic said.

  “Ah, I see. A lopped head and chopped feet tends to send a strong admonishment, doesn’t it? Still, could be worse. Usually the family jewels are involved, too. Well, the apartment where your fellow got clipped is off Al Khums Road. Pretty tight-knit place. As I understand, that particular apartment was empty at the time.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I know some French ex-pats that are pretty friendly with the cops.”

  “They just used the apartment for convenience, you think?” Dominic asked. “A studio?”

  “Yeah. Poor dill was probably killed somewhere else. You saw it on a website? URC or LIFG?” Archie said, referring to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

  “URC,” Brian replied. “Anyone else the URC might have farmed the job out to?”

  “Plenty. Wouldn’t even have to be a group. There’re crims in the Medina—the Old City—that’d slit your throat for twenty U.S. Not robbery per se, but murder-for-hire, mind you. But that video . . . Seems a tad highbrow for your average ape.”

  “So why didn’t they just do the deed somewhere in the Medina?” Brian asked. “Kill him, then tape it, then dump the body on the street.”

  “Then the cops’d have to go into the Medina, see? This way everybody gets to pretend it happened somewhere else and the natural balance remains. How many sites did this video go up on?”

  “Six that we found.” This from Dominic.

  “Well, there’re plenty of Internet service outfits around, but the groups that run those sites usually do the hosting themselves, with a dedicated server so they can pick up and move—physically and electronically. If the URC farmed out the killing, then you’re probably out of luck; if they did it themselves, it means the message came from high up the ladder. The kind of job you don’t leave to chance. If that’s the case, then there’s going to be some overlap—some local URC captain in touch with one of the mobile hosts.”

  “I take it this ain’t something you look up in the yellow pages,” Brian said.

  “You take it correctly. I may know a man. Let me make some calls. Where are you staying?”

  “The Al Mehari.”

  Archie checked his watch. “I’ll meet you there by five; we’ll have a drink.”

  He was an hour early and came with his own car, a mid-’80s forest-green Opel; as was almost everything else in Tripoli, the car was covered in a fine layer of red-brown dust.

  “You have a rental car?” Archie asked as they pulled west onto Al Fat’h Street amid a cacophony of horns and squealing of brakes.

  “Whoa!” Brian shouted from the backseat.

  “Traffic laws here are nonexistent. Call it Darwinism at its most basic. Driver survival of the fittest. So: the rental car?”

  “No, we don’t have one.”

  “Once we’re done, you can drop me back at the embassy and use this. Mind that second gear, though. It’s wonky.”

  “Just as long as you don’t expect it back in one piece.”

  “This is rush hour. It’ll quiet down in another couple hours.”

  Tripoli’s modern-day walled and labyrinthian Medina was born during Ottoman occupation and had served for centuries as much as a deterrent to invaders as it did a center of commerce. Situated beside the harbor and bordered on four sides by Al Kurnish Road, Al Fat’h Street, Sidi Omran Street, and Al Ma’arri Street, the Medina was a warren of narrow streets, blind, winding alleys, arched walkways, and small courtyards.

  Archie found a parking spot near the Bab Hawara gate, along the southeastern wall, and they got out and walked two blocks south to a café. A man in black slacks and a tan short-sleeved shirt stood up from his table as Archie approached. They shook hands, embraced, and Archie introduced Brian and Dominic as “old friends.”

  “This is Ghazi,” Archie said. “You can trust him.”

  “Sit, please,” Ghazi said, and they settled at the table beneath the umbrella. A waiter appeared, and Ghazi fired off something in Arabic. The waiter left and reappeared a minute later with a pot, four small glasses, and a bowl of mints. Once tea was poured, Ghazi said, “Archie tells me you have an interest in websites.”

  “Among other things,” Dominic said.

  “There are many men who provide the services Archie mentioned, but one in particular might be worth your time. His name is Rafiq Bari. The day after that Web video went up and a day before that man’s body was discovered, he moved his business—quite suddenly and during the night.”

  “Is that all?” Brian said.

  “No. There are rumors that he’s done work for certain people. Websites that appear and disappear—proxy servers, redirects, rotating domain names, all of that. That’s Bari’s specialty.”

  “How about ISPs?” Dominic said, referring to Internet service providers. “Any chance these people are creating their own rather than using commercial companies?”

  Archie answered this one. “Too much hassle, I expect. There’s not a lot of oversight with that sort of thing here. A name and a credit card number is all it takes. Domain names can be registered in bulk and changed at the drop of a hat. No, the way this Bari fella does it is the way to go, at least here.”

  Dominic said to Ghazi, “Who’s he living with? Any family?”

  “Not here. A wife and daughter in Benghazi.”

  “What’re the chances he’s going to be armed?”

  “Bari himself? Very
unlikely, I would think. When he moves about, he sometimes has protection.”

  “URC?”

  “No, no, not directly, I do not believe. Perhaps hired by them, perhaps, but these are just Medina people. Thugs.”

  “How many?” This from Brian.

  “The times I have seen him . . . Two or three.”

  “Where do we find him?” said Brian.

  By the time they dropped Archie back at the consulate, the sun’s lower rim was nearly touching the sea’s surface to the west. All across the city, streetlamps, car headlights, and neon signs were flickering to life. They’d decided that Dominic, who’d undergone the FBI’s defensive driving course, would be behind the Opel’s wheel. True to Archie’s prediction, the traffic had slackened somewhat, but the roads still bore more of a resemblance to racetracks than to urban thoroughfares.

  Archie climbed out from the backseat and leaned his arms against the passenger door. “That map of the Medina you’ve got is a fairly good one but not perfect, so keep your heads about you. Sure this can’t wait till morning?”

  “Probably not,” Brian said.

  “Well, then loosen up and smile. Act like tourists. Window-shop; haggle a bit; pick up some swag. Don’t march through the place like diggers—”

  “‘Diggers’?”

  “Soldiers. You can park on one of the side streets near the Corinthia—that monstrosity of a hotel we passed on the way here.”

  “Got it.”

  “It’s visible from pretty much everywhere in the Medina. If you get lost, head for it.”

  Brian said, “Damn, man, you make it sound like we’re walking into the lion’s den.”

  “Not a bad analogy. All in all, the Medina’s safe at night, but word’ll spread if you stand out. Two more things: Dump the car if you have to. I’ll report it stolen. Second, there’s a brown paper bag under the tire in the boot with some goodies inside.”

  Dominic said, “I assume you’re not talking about snacks.”

  “That I’m not, mate.”

  64

  NAYOAN LEFT THE EMBASSY at five p.m., took the bus to a park-and-ride lot off Columbus, and got into a blue Toyota Camry. With Clark at the wheel, they followed him to a first-floor apartment on the southwestern edge of San Francisco’s famous Tenderloin district, between the City Hall and Market Street. It was arguably the city’s worst neighborhood, with more than its fair share of poverty, crime, homelessness, ethnic restaurants, dive hotels, and fringe clubs and art galleries. There could be only one reason Nayoan had chosen this area in which to live, Clark and the others decided: The Tenderloin had a fairly healthy Asian-American population, which would allow him to move about in relative anonymity.

  After a couple of hours at home, Nayoan emerged from the apartment in a somber black suit and got back in the Camry. This time with Jack in the driver’s seat, they followed him back downtown to the Holiday Inn. They watched him enter the lobby, waited ten minutes, and headed back to the Tenderloin.

  “Why’s it called the Tenderloin?” Chavez asked as Clark turned off Hayes Street and started looking for a parking spot. The car’s headlights skimmed over tipped-over garbage cans and shadowed figures sitting on front stoops.

  “Nobody knows for sure,” Jack said. “Sort of an urban legend. Stories range from it being the soft underbelly of the city to it once being a hazardous-pay neighborhood for cops, who could buy better cuts of meat with the extra money.”

  “Been reading the Frommer’s, Jack?”

  “That and a little Sun Tzu. Know thine enemy, right?”

  “The place has got character, that’s for damned sure.”

  Clark found a spot under a tree between two streetlamps and pulled in. He doused the headlights and shut off the engine. Nayoan’s apartment building was one block down and across the street.

  Clark checked his watch. “Eight o’clock. Nayoan should be at the reception. Change,” Clark said.

  They traded their downtown garb—khaki pants, sweaters, windbreakers—for the Tenderloin attire they’d picked up earlier at a secondhand shop: sweatshirts, flannel shirts, ball caps, and knit beanies.

  “Twenty minutes, then back here,” Clark said. “Three-block radius. Same drill as before. It’s a shitty neighborhood, so look the part.”

  “Which is?” Jack said.

  Chavez answered, “You don’t fuck with me, I don’t fuck with you.”

  They met back at the car, then walked south half a block and stood together beside an empty stoop. Chavez started: “Only saw one police cruiser. Looked like a mandatory drive-through. Didn’t do a lot of looking around.”

  “Jack?”

  “Didn’t see any lights on in the apartment. There’s an alley on the back side and a crappy wooden fence with an unlocked gate leading to a concrete patio. Dogs two yards down on either side. They barked as I walked by, but I didn’t see any faces come to the windows.”

  “Back porch light?” Clark asked.

  Jack nodded. “Bare bulb. And no screen door.”

  “Why’s that important?”

  Jack shrugged. “Screen doors squeak; they rattle.”

  “Man gets a gold star.”

  Thirty seconds apart, they circled the block, then met in the alley. Chavez went through the gate first, up the steps, then unscrewed the lightbulb and stepped down. Clark and Jack came through. Clark went up the steps and spent ninety seconds crouched by the door, working the knob lock, then the deadbolt. He gave them the wait signal, then slipped through the door. He was back sixty seconds later and waved them in.

  The apartment’s interior was a mirror image of the architecture: long and narrow, with cramped hallways, narrow-plank hardwood floors covered in worn carpet runners, and dark baseboards and crown molding. Nayoan wasn’t much on interior decoration, Jack saw: a utilitarian kitchen and bathroom done in checkerboard porcelain tile, and a front room with a sectional sofa, a coffee table, and a thirteen-inch television. Probably didn’t expect to be here for long, Jack thought. Why bother with anything but the necessities? Could that mean something? Might be worth checking how long Nayoan had left on his tour at the embassy.

  “Okay, let’s toss it,” Clark ordered. “Everything back in its place when we’re done.”

  They clicked on their flashlights and went to work.

  Almost immediately Chavez found a Dell laptop on a card-table desk in Nayoan’s bedroom. Jack powered it up and started sifting through the folders and files, the Web browser history, and the e-mail backlog. Clark and Chavez let him work, spending thirty minutes dissecting the apartment room by room, checking the obvious hiding spots first.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “No password protection, no key logging software . . . Aside from a standard firewall and an antivirus program, this thing is wide open. Lot of stuff here, but nothing that jumps out. Mostly unclassified embassy business and e-mails—some of it personal. Family and friends back home.”

  “Address book?” Clark asked.

  “Same there, too. Nothing we’ve seen from URC distribution lists. He cleans his Web browser history almost daily, right down to the temporary files and cookies.”

  “‘Cookies’?” Chavez asked.

  “Little bits of data websites leave on your computer every time you visit. Pretty standard practice, for the most part.”

  “How deep can you dig?” Clark asked.

  “Here? Not very. I can copy all his files and folders and mailboxes, but to duplicate his hard drive would take too long.”

  “Okay, grab what you can.”

  Jack plugged a Western Digital Passport hard drive into the Dell’s FireWire port and started copying files while Clark and Chavez kept hunting. After another forty minutes, Chavez whispered from the kitchen, “Gotcha.”

  He came into the bedroom carrying a zip-top sandwich baggie. “False bottom in his utensil drawer.”

  Jack took the baggie, looked at it. “Read-write DVD.” He popped open the Dell’s drive bay and slipped the DVD inside. He
clicked on the appropriate drive letter, and the window popped up on the screen. “Lotta data here, John. About sixty gigabytes. A lot of them are image files.”

  “Pull some up.”

  Jack double-clicked a folder open and brought up the pics in thumbnail sizes. “Look familiar?”

  “They do indeed,” Clark said.

  Jack tapped his index fingernail on three pictures in turn. “For sure those are from URC websites.”

  “Where’s there’s smoke ...” Chavez said.

  Clark checked his watch. “Copy it. Ding, let’s police it up. Time to get out of here.”

  They were back at their hotel, a La Quinta Inn near the airport, an hour later. Jack used a secure FTP—file transfer protocol—to upload some of the images to The Campus’s server, then called Gavin Biery, their info-tech wunderkind, and put him on speakerphone.

  “We’ve seen these before,” Biery said. “From the Tripoli flash drive?”

  “Right,” Jack said. “We need to know if they’ve got stego embedded.”

  “I’m putting the finishing touches on the decryption algorithm; part of the problem is we don’t know what kind of program they used for the encryption—commercial or homemade. According to the Steganography Analysis and Research Center—”

  “There’s such a place?” asked Chavez.

  “—to date there’s seven hundred twenty-five stego applications out there, and that’s just the commercial stuff. Anybody with halfway decent programming skills could make one up and fit it on a flash drive. Just carry it around, plug it into a computer, and you’re in stego mode.”

  “So how do you break it?” This from Clark.

  “I put together a two-part process: First check for discrepancies in the file—be it video, or image, or audio. If that finds an anomaly, then the second part of the program starts running the file through the most common encryption methods. It’s a brute-force process, but chances are the URC has its favorite methods. Find that and we can start speeding up the dissection.”