The slippery little bastard still had his ways of dropping off the radar every now and again – an hour here, a couple hours there. Never could track him to a hotel, a base. But that’s how you got to the top of the game. If radical Islam had an MVP badass right now, al Din was it.

Munroe’s phone peeped. He looked at the screen. Guy at the NSA that was riding herd on the electronic intel for him.

“Yeah?”

“The Chicago PD just ran some prints against the DoD database. An ex-Marine, Michael Xavier Griffin. Two tours, made Scout/Sniper. He mustered out in 1994. This will not be in anything the Chicago police see, but during Gulf War I, he was detailed to Mossad to help on anti-SCUD efforts.”

“So he might have a Mossad tie? Might know Stein?”

“Yes. And he is from the Chicago area. He left the Marine Corps after being involved in an altercation with a local drug dealer and two of his enforcers. He killed all three of them. One of them was Jamie Hernandez’s younger brother.”

“Hernandez as in Mexican cartel Hernandez?”

“Yes. Hernandez put out a contract on him and Griffin left to join the Foreign Legion. He did a hitch there, and has been working as logistics and security support for TV news crews in Africa ever since, using the French ID he received coming out of the Legion, Nicholas Hardin. According to a source with FRANCE 24, he tried to pitch them a story on the evolution of the blood diamond trade a few months ago, but they were not interested.”

Munroe closed his eyes a minute, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You telling me this Hardin has the stones? This whole thing is just a straight-up robbery? Only reason al Din’s still in town to run him down?”

“Best theory based on the evidence.”

A pause, then Munroe again. “Wait, you said prints. Why was Chicago PD running this guy’s prints?”

“Found them on a murder weapon. Two Chicago mafia soldiers were killed at an abandoned industrial site. It appears that Hardin killed one of them.”

“One of them?”

“Al Din killed the other.”

“What the fuck? Could they be working together?”

“Evidence shows al Din arrived after Hardin left.”

Munroe stopped for a minute, trying to decide what to ask next. “OK, so what’s the mob’s interest in this? Stein got popped and Hardin had to shop for a new buyer, tried them, maybe they got greedy?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who’s playing godfather around here these days?”

“Anthony Corsco. He controls most of the Midwest.”

“OK, get me Corsco’s info. Me and him need to chat. See if we can get a line on this Hardin guy, too. Play the Legion angle; see who he’s in touch with.” Munroe paused for a minute, something eating at him. “One more thing. Hardin get hit during this cluster fuck? Did al Din grab him up maybe?”

“No evidence to suggest that. Why do you ask?”

“Trying to figure out why he’d leave a piece behind with his prints on it.”

“Wasn’t a piece.”

“You said murder weapon. What did they find his prints on?”

“An Air France ballpoint pen.”

A long pause, Munroe shaking his head. “Sure,” Munroe said finally. “Why not?”

CHAPTER 20

Hardin headed east from the Aurora train station, walking through the neighborhood just past the tracks. The area had been pretty Hispanic when he left town and was more so now. That meant there would be enough illegals around that folks here wouldn’t be that big on paper checking.

Three blocks in, Hardin found what he was looking for. Ten year-old Honda Civic, pretty beat up, sitting at the curb with a For Sale sign on the dash. Half an hour later, Hardin drove off. The guy had been a little suspicious about an Anglo at his door, but Hardin spoke Spanish (hell, Spanish, French, bits of half a dozen African dialects, enough Italian to get by), so that helped. And paying the ridiculous asking price in cash helped more. The info he gave the guy would never fly with the Secretary of State’s office whenever they got around to processing the title transfer, but that was weeks out. If Hardin was still driving the Honda around Chicago by then, he would have way bigger problems.

Hardin cruised through his old neighborhood, taking Spring Street east, cutting down Union to Galena. A decent-sized shopping area had sprung up at Union and New York – bakery, music shop, clothing store, grocery. Hardin remembered when he was a kid, the whites who could afford to all moving out, the Mexicans moving in, all the bad talk about spics and drugs and gangs. It was the same shit his great-grandparents had heard about the Irish back in the day. But the houses were looking better, the shops were going up. It was the way it always had gone. A new wave of immigrants moves in, figures out the game, and joins in on it just like everybody else. On the Honda’s radio, some blowhard was going on about immigration and sealing the borders and all the jobs these people were stealing from hard-working Americans. Hardin spun the dial, found a Cubs spring training game on WGN.

Hardin checked into the Motel 6 at 59 and 88.Told the teenager at the counter he didn’t have a credit card, so the kid told him he had to leave a $100 deposit against expenses. The kid didn’t even look at the expired license he flashed as ID. Anonymous as he could get. He got a room on the ground floor near the back, put his clothes away, and called Fouche.

“Hope you got something for me, mon ami,” Hardin said.

“I do. The Russians want to play, and they’ve got a middleman in your area who’ll make the buy. Guy named Bahram Lafitpour in some town called Oak Brook. That work for you?”

“Oak Brook’s close enough, that’s good. Lafitpour, though, that’s Iranian. Makes me a little nervous.”

“Not that kind of Iranian. Guy went to the US just after the Shah went down. Used to be SAVAK. He’s not a Koran thumper, that’s for sure.”

“OK. How do I get in touch?”

Fouche gave Hardin a number.

CHAPTER 21

Bobby Lee and Courtney Schilst were waiting for a table at BD’s Mongolian Grill in Naperville, across Washington from the Barnes & Noble. Twenty minutes on her Facebook, he had all he needed to make his play – the chick was big into poetry, modern guys, liked this Bukowski or whatever his name was. He followed her Twitter for a bit, found out she’d just got dumped, that her birthday was today, and that she was going to spend it “at B&N, with CB, the only man worth loving.” So Bobby had done some quick research, found out Bukowski was the poet laureate of American low life and so forth. He got to the Barnes & Noble early, grabbed one of the two Bukowski books they had in stock, slouched into the chair closest to that shelf, and waited.

He was careful not to look when she walked in. Watched out of the corner of his eye while she checked out the shelf. Saw a little frown – she must have wanted the book he had. She grabbed the other one. Bobby had piled his shit on the chair across from him. People liked to sit in the easy chairs along the windows, but one thing he’d learned in Naperville was none of the white folk were going to ask a black guy to move his stuff, not so long as he was wearing his intense Malcolm X face. He’d pulled his backpack and coat off the chair when he saw Courtney grab her book.

She looked at the line of chairs, saw that the one across from him was available, and sat down.

It was like fishing. You couldn’t force it. You had to wait for it. Finally, he could feel it, could feel her seeing the book, looking at him. Still he gave it a second. Finally, he lowered the book a little, looked over the top.

She held up her book, the other Bukowski. “I’ve never seen anyone else reading him in here before,” she said.

He shrugged, gave a little half smile, just being polite. Made her make another move.