The Defense Department’s sole advisor on Islamic Law and Islamic extremism had been recently terminated because a high-ranking Pentagon official, who also happened to be Muslim, found his opinions too critical of Islam. It was like firing the government’s only advisor on Nazism right in the middle of World War II, or sacking its lone Communism advisor in the middle of the Cold War, just because a German or Russian staff member was upset that the advisor wouldn’t tone down his opinions of the enemy and what drove them.

Ozbek had seen FAIR’s chairman photographed with the Muslim Pentagon official, Imad Ramadan, too many times not to believe that the pink-slipping of the Islamic law expert didn’t in some dark way bear FAIR’s fingerprints.

The entire event was insane, even for the PC quagmire that was Washington politics.

But be that as it may, Ozbek didn’t see what FAIR or a murder at the Jefferson Memorial had to do with the Special Activities Division. “What’s all this got to do with the CIA and the Transept program?” he asked.

“This is where it gets complicated,” replied Rasmussen. “First of all, the suspect arrested at the scene, an Andrew Salam, claims he didn’t do it. He says he was framed.”

Ozbek rolled his eyes.

Rasmussen set the puzzle down and raised his palms. “I know. I know. But listen to this. He claims he’s a NOC for the FBI.”

NOC, pronounced knock, was an espionage term largely used by the CIA that stood for non official cover. It designated a covert operative who had no official ties to the government he or she served. The problem was that the FBI didn’t use NOCs.

“Let me guess,” said Ozbek. “The FBI disavows any knowledge of this guy?”

“According to them, Andrew Salam has never had any connection to the Bureau whatsoever.”

“Maybe he’s making it all up. He wouldn’t be the first law enforcement impersonator who got caught. Maybe the guy’s delusional.”

“I don’t know,” said Rasmussen. “He interned in the Near Eastern section of the Library of Congress and graduated top of his class at the Georgetown Center for Arabic Studies.”

Ozbek knew Georgetown ’s Arabic Studies Program. It was a prime recruiting pool for many of the intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, but that didn’t mean this guy wasn’t unbalanced. “Fast-forward to where Transept plays into this,” he said.

“Salam claims he has been running an FBI-sanctioned operation to infiltrate and develop intelligence assets in radical mosques and Islamist groups across the country.

“One of the groups he infiltrated was the Foundation on American Islamic Relations. He had turned an employee inside the organization and was meeting with her at the Jefferson Memorial.”

“Where she wound up dead,” said Ozbek.

“He claims he and his ‘asset’ were attacked,” replied Rasmussen.

“And he survived.”

“He says that when the attackers saw Park Police approaching, they bolted before they could finish him off.”

“Lucky for him. Did he get a look at them?”

Rasmussen shook his head. “They were supposedly wearing masks.”

“What about CCTV footage? The Park Police have cameras at the Jefferson Memorial.”

“They were down at the time the crime occurred. They’ve been ‘looking into it.’”

Ozbek was getting more interested. “Any romantic history between him and the victim?”

“Investigators are looking into that too.”

“What else do you have?”

“Park Police are confident that they caught him in flagrante delicto-blood on his hands, clothes, everywhere,” said Rasmussen. “Salam says he was trying to save the victim’s life.”

“Was there a weapon?”

“A knife, but it was wiped clean. No prints. The D.C. cops have been sweating him since he was brought in. He’s been shut up tighter than a clam and just when they thought he was about to break, that’s when the NOC story surfaced.”

“What was his alleged asset meeting with him to discuss?” asked Ozbek.

“According to Salam, she had stumbled across something pretty substantial. Supposedly, FAIR had hired an assassin.”

“And this assassin graduated from the Transept program?”

Rasmussen nodded. “Whether this guy is full of shit or not, he did mention Transept, and you know as well as I do what a closely guarded secret that program is. He couldn’t have made that up.”

“No, he couldn’t. Obviously somebody has been talking about things that they shouldn’t.”

“I’ll tell you something else. The D.C. cops might not be overly impressed with this guy, but he really talks like an intelligence operative.”

Ozbek looked at his colleague. “Maybe he actually thought he was working for the FBI.”

Rasmussen nodded again. “I spoke with our liaisons at the Bureau and a contact I have with D.C. Metro police who are heading the investigation. Because the Agency has come up in the interrogation and they can’t make heads or tails out of this guy, they’re prepared to let us have access to him.”

“When?”

“As soon as we want.”

“All right,” replied Ozbek. “Let’s pull everything we have on the Foundation on American Islamic Relations, Andrew Salam, and especially the Transept program.”

Rasmussen picked up the folder. “That’s fine, but as far as the FBI, D.C. Metro, and this Salam guy are concerned, we’ve never heard of the Transept program. That’s the word from on high.”

PARIS

A ghost in his mid-forties wearing tan corduroys and a navy blue cashmere sweater sat on a narrow green bench admiring the medieval ruins of the Parc Monceau. He hadn’t been seen by anyone from his past life in over five years.

His brown hair was medium in length and his wire-rimmed glasses framed a rather unremarkable face punctuated by two sharp green eyes. When standing in his brown leather shoes he came to just over five feet nine inches tall. He had the trim frame of an endurance athlete.

In a discreet pocket inside the man’s Barbour jacket was a passport that bore a false name. It was as good a name as any-no better or worse than any of the names he had assumed throughout his career. Distinctly Anglo-Saxon, like the name he had used for his assignment in Rome, it suited him, as had his true Christian name, Matthew Dodd.

He had renounced that name when he embraced Islam. It wasn’t hard to let go. With all of the different aliases he had assumed over his career, it was difficult to remember who he really was anyway.

The only things that had ever grounded him and given him a true sense of purpose were his beautiful wife and his little boy, but they had been gone from his life for almost ten years now; killed in a car accident by a spoiled, drunken teenaged girl in her brand-new BMW while he had been away on an assignment.

His handlers hadn’t even had the decency to tell him when it happened. They had waited until the operation was complete and then informed him-a full month after his wife and son had been buried. One week later, the teenaged girl who took his family from him walked out of the substance abuse program her well-connected family’s slick lawyer had arranged with the court and picked her life back up where it had left off. The girl had never spent a single day in jail. It was not only wrong, it was immoral.

When he found out, the assassin had felt as if hooks on long chains had been sunk into his skin, tearing the flesh from his body in sheets. After the pain had come a disturbing numbness. In a culture of gray where anything could be justified, rationalized, or spun to mean just the opposite, he longed for a line to be drawn between black and white. More than that, he longed for someone to explain how all of this could have been allowed to happen. Some placed the blame on the driver’s parents, some on her peers, and others still on society in general. Dodd just slipped deeper into depression.