"Then he's been killed or captured. I think it's time to reallocate some of our intelligence-gathering capabilities to more worthy targets. Convince me otherwise."

Chisum took a deep breath. "Sir, Isa was Zarqawi's right-hand man and his closest confidant. He is widely believed to have pioneered Zarqawi's use of the Internet for banking, communications, and recruiting. I can definitely place him in Diisseldorf in June."

"Sez who?"

"I-acquired the information through a third party," Chisum said carefully.

"You trust this source?"

"Absolutely, sir."

Kallendorf grunted. "Which means we paid for it. I don't like buying intelligence, Patrick."

"I don't think anyone's going to give it to us for love, sir," Chisum said before he could stop himself.

There was a moment of silence, followed by a booming laugh. "What was Isa doing in Dusseldorf?" Kallendorf said, still chuckling.

"Recruiting," Chisum said baldly.

"Identify anyone?"

"Two, before Isa made our informant."

"Made him, did he? What'd he do to him?"

"Started a riot, and then threw him into the advancing line of riot police."

"No shit. Guy's got style, gotta give him that."

Chisum said nothing.

"Our snitch must have survived," Kallendorf said.

"Must have," Chisum said dryly. He sat back down. "According to him, the two recruits were young Muslim men, both German-born of immigrant Lebanese parents, both with degrees in engineering."

"What the hell is it with al Qaeda and engineering degrees? You'd think they wouldn't let you into the gang without one."

Chisum shrugged. "It's probably a lot like anything else. It's not what you know, it's who."

"What did they say about Isa?"

"Everyone we spoke to described Isa as a quiet man who socialized primarily in the coffeehouses with men his own age or younger."

"He gay?"

"Hasn't been any rumor of that so far. His boss says he was a reliable and competent if undistinguished employee."

"No proselytizing in the workplace, eh?"

"No, sir."

"We got any idea of what he's planning?"

"We know he's been bouncing money from bank accounts in Switzerland to all over Europe, both the Americas, and the Caribbean. I think Hong Kong, too, although the Chinese are even cagier than the Swiss about giving up information."

"Okay, mostly Western banks, then probably a Western target."

"Considering that, and considering also that we know Isa went to school in the West, and that both of his German recruits are fluent in English, yes, sir."

"So either us or the Brits."

"Yes."

"You talked to them?"

"MI5? Frequentiy."

"Talk to 'em some more. Any line on these recruits?"

"Yussuf al-Dagma and Yaqub Sadiq. They vanished from Dusseldorf the same day Isa did. We talked to their families, their friends, their coworkers. Only Yussuf al-Dagma's family had met Isa, who was at that time using the name Dandin Gandhi."

"Gandhi," Kallendorf said. "First Jesus, and now Gandhi. This guy got a martyr complex or what?"

"Yes, sir. Their description matches the few eyewitness descriptions we have."

"They were cooperative?"

"I'm told they are very worried about their son. The family has become pretty acculturated, and reasonably secular. They said that al-Dagma has been obsessing over Israel and Iraq, and that two years ago he started going to the mosque. We talked to the local imam, who was very cagey, but our people on the ground say he's been doing a little inciting to riot on the side."

"What was this riot about?"

"Nothing to do with the imam, not this time. Someone tipped off the local cops that there was a terrorist cell meeting regularly at a coffee shop frequented by young Muslim men. The informant who was trying to get close to Isa, once he was up and moving around again, did a little investigating and found out that Yaqub Sadiq had been sleeping with a married woman, also Muslim. As I'm sure you know, that's a beheading offense under Islamic law. The agent thinks the husband made an anonymous call."

" 'Hello, 911? This guy is banging my wife, so come on down and arrest all these bin Ladenites hanging out at the local Starbucks where my wife's lover buys his cappuccino'?"

"Uh, essentially, yes, sir."

"And they bought that?"

"I don't believe he mentioned his wife's lover, sir," Patrick said in a wooden voice. "We are at present speculating as to the exact occurrence of events."

"Holy shit," the director said, unheeding. "The Germans must hire their cops from the lowest common denominator up."

"Yes, sir," Patrick said. He was determined to cling to his point, no matter how difficult Kallendorf made it. "This could be good news for us, however."

"What, that German cops are simpletons?"

"No, sir. If Sadiq joined Isa's group as a means of escaping the consequences of sleeping with someone else's wife, it means that he may not be a true believer, he may just have wanted to get out of Dodge. If that's so, and if I can find him, we may have a way in."

"Any luck with that?"

"We canvassed the airport and the train stations with photos of the two. Nothing yet. They must have driven out of town, flown out of somewhere else. We're working with Interpol on that, but…" Chisum shrugged. "It was six months ago, and most airport rentacops can't remember who they screened in the last five minutes. And Isa never leaves much of a trail. He's patient, and he's cunning. I've got head shots of the recruits and I've distributed them to the heads of security in every American, Canadian, and Mexican airport, FBI, Interpol, and of course agency-wide. We're looking. It's only a matter of time before we find them."

"And when we find them, we find Isa?"

Chisum battled with temptation, and won. "That's not a given, sir. He communicates almost exclusively by email, at least after the initial recruitment. If he continues operating the way he operated in Baghdad, he will recruit them, work out a plan for them, and then he'll cut them loose except for email contact." He diverted from a lifelong self-imposed tact and discretion for a moment to say bitterly, "Son of a bitch won't even use a cell phone."

"I don't blame him," Kallendorf said, "have you looked at the sigint center lately? You could lock yourself into a safe with four-foot-thick walls and drop the safe into a thousand feet of water and they could still hear you whisper sweet nothings into that cute little blond secretary's ears. What's her name? Melissa?"

"Melanie."

"Melanie, that's right. Always smells so good. Love that in a woman." Silence. "Will he stop at two recruits?"

"No, sir. The average al Qaeda cell isn't large, but it's usually around ten or twelve people."

"Looking for more of the same?"

"Yes, sir. Young disaffected Muslim men, middle or even upper middle class, well-educated, often unemployed but not always. The preference is for unmarried but it's not a requirement. Most of them are pretty homely, too, which I think is deliberate."

"Can't get a girl, so give them a bomb instead?"

"Freud would be proud of you, sir."

Fortunately for Patrick, Kallendorf didn't hear that last remark. "And this Isa is the only al Qaeda contact the others will meet."

"Yes, sir."

"Cut off the head, the snake dies."

"With al Qaeda it's more like a hydra than a snake, sir."

"Huh. Hydra. Good one. I'll have to remember that. Yeah. All right, Patrick, carry on. But I want some hard data on this asshole soonest, and I want his ass in the bag sooner than that." Click.

Chisum replaced the receiver carefully back in its cradle.

The door opened and he looked up. "Everything all right with the director?" Melanie said.

"Everything's just fine," Chisum said.

"Anything you need to run up to his office, you just ask."