But Nimmerich was still talking, oblivious to the security people eyeing each other. “Well, you’re not going to do much interpreting on this. But like I said, somebody back in D.C. might have some magic wand they can wave over it. If I could take this copy with me, fly it back, we might get them to take a look at it…. Want to give it a try?”
“I don’t think so,” Yousif said. He got up. “In fact, it’s time to wrap this effort up.”
“Why not?” she asked him. “We might find something interesting.”
“I don’t think there’s anything interesting here.”
Aisha ignored him. “Mr. Nimmerich. You said you needed the key?”
Nimmerich said, still eyeing the screen, still oblivious, “Hey, if you got any brainstorms, now’s the time to try ’em.”
“Then get ready to copy what comes up. Because I think I might know the … the god key you need.”
From his right she leaned, eyeing the screen. He was still in the Arabic character set. She began to key in the characters, carefully, one at a time, making absolutely sure she hit the right keys.
Remembering a crushed bicycle, the smells of blood and feces.
How she herself always had to write down her password, so she wouldn’t forget it.
A smear of ballpoint on a dead man’s wrist.
As she was halfway through entering it, Yousif reached across to block the keyboard. But Nimmerich must have had a brother and grown up playing computer games; he caught the motion from the corner of his eye and blocked it so fast with his shoulder it must have been reflex. She’d never seen him move as fast and sure as that before. “What’s that say?” he snapped.
“It says …
“Is that a word? What’s it mean?”
From behind them Yousif said, “It means … ruling over someone. We would say, The emir has
“What is it? A code name?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Yousif said. “Shut it down now. That’s enough.”
Aisha took a stretch, looking back casually as she did so. The SIS officer returned her glance with an angry scowl.
He’d never forwarded her the autopsy report on the dead man outside the base gate, though he’d promised to. Now the word scrawled on his wrist that had unlocked a secret file didn’t mean anything?
When she looked back, the screen had changed. To a list of files and documents and graphics. They were only on the screen for seconds, the three of them staring at them, before Yousif reached again, taking Nimmerich by surprise, and stabbed the power button on the computer. The screen wavered, faded, went to black. “Hey!” Nimmerich yelled.
“Don’t turn it back on again.”
“What’d you do that for?”
“Miss Ar-Rahim, Mr. Nimmerich. I’ll call a car to take you both back to the base.”
He reached behind them, pulled the plug out of the wall, and left. Hastily, as if, she thought, he had to report to someone. Leaving them alone with the computer, at least for the moment. The hard drive still whined inside the case, slowing, powering down toward silence.
Nimmerich looked astonished. “What’s with him? Did I say something wrong?”
“I think we saw something we weren’t supposed to see.”
“Like what?”
“Like the plans for the Doctor’s next attack.”
He blinked at the blank screen. “Is that what it was? Say, what’s going on here?”
“They don’t want us to read this drive. The e-mails. The addressees. The messages.”
“Course they didn’t. That’s why the perp erased them.”
“I mean someone here, Agent Nimmerich,” Aisha told him. “And we’re not going to see this data again. It’s going to disappear.”
“Uh-huh. Well.” Nimmerich cleared his throat. “Is that right? One of those local sensitivity things. So, I guess that’s it, huh?”
Aisha took a deep breath then. Knowing that what she was about to do would go against host country orders. Would make her persona non grata in Bahrain, and maybe other places, too. Might even be seen as betrayal by other Muslims.
But what someone was protecting here wasn’t the way. No one had the right to take innocent life, women and children and the aged and ill. The Prophet,
She put her head down next to Nimmerich’s. Watched his ears redden as she breathed into them. Whispering, in case the upstairs conference room of the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs happened to be wired: “Pull the hard drive. Right now. No arguments. Hand it to me. Turn around, don’t look.”
They hurried down the stairs. The hard corners of the copied drive poked into her belly under the abaya. Her heart was hammering. The main corridor. The door. The big clumsy Suburban seemed to take forever to start, to get backed out of the parking space, to get lined up for the gate.
