Gage’s encrypted cell phone rang as he drove from the MIT campus toward the western edge of Boston. It was Alex Z calling from San Francisco. “I checked Ibrahim for friends and associates,” Alex Z said. “And there weren’t many outside of a Muslim men’s group that met at his house. A member has a blog and mentioned Ibrahim’s first name and MIT, so it was easy to ID him.”
“Find out if the U.S. Attorney up here filed tax fraud cases against any of them. I need to know who was involved. Ibrahim’s was the only name I found in the news articles.”
Gage heard the rapping of Alex Z’s fingers on his keyboard.
“Ibrahim sounds like a real multitasker,” Alex Z said, “Terrorist financing, abstract financial theories, and tax evasion.”
“I’m starting to think they’re all part of the same package,” Gage said, “or maybe different passages in the same maze.”
“I just entered one of the names in the Federal Case Index,” Alex Z said. “Hold on… nothing.”
“Try the rest and call me back.”
The snowfall let up as Gage headed back across the Harvard Bridge and down Massachusetts Avenue. He cut right at Symphony Hall and drove into the multistory garage, then up the circular floors until he located a dry space between two vans. He climbed out and knelt down next to the car to check for a GPS tracking device. He worked his way around the perimeter and the wheel wells, then checked the engine compartment from below and above.
Nothing.
Whoever had been hired to replace Gilbert hadn’t gotten on to him yet. He knew they would, and could, anytime they felt like it. All they had to do was wait for him to show up at the few places connected with Ibrahim, Abrams, or Hennessy—assuming they were following him because he’d met with Abrams, and assuming that they were following Abrams because of Hennessy.
Gage walked the circumference of the garage, scanning the cars parked around the sculpture garden next to the street below and along the front of the Whole Foods Market. His phone rang again as he surveyed the parking places that had a view of the garage exit. If someone was set up to follow him when he left, that’s where they would’ve parked to be ready.
“Bugs everywhere, boss,” Viz said.
It was Hector McBride, Gage’s surveillance chief. Gage had nicknamed him Viz, for the same reason fat people were named Slim and slim people were named Fats. Despite being six-four and two hundred and thirty pounds, he was invisible to his targets. Even after a decade of working together, Gage still didn’t understand his magic.
“Where are you now?” Gage asked.
“I’m freezing my ass off in Central Park by the reservoir, and Abrams is at his office at the Fed. He doesn’t know yet.”
“How bad is it?”
“It doesn’t get much worse than this. There were multiple devices in every room, but not for fail-safe reasons. I think they were installed by different groups.”
“That means that whoever got there second has got to know about whoever got there first, and left the bugs installed.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. But they may not know who installed them.”
“And the second group couldn’t disable the original ones without giving themselves away or provoking the first group to come back and reinstall other devices.”
Viz laughed. “It’s game theory in practice. I should’ve paid more attention in college.”
Gage turned away from the street and walked back toward his car. There were too many possibilities for who’d installed the bugs. Foreign governments. Hedge funds looking for inside information. Those looking for Ibrahim. Maybe even Abrams’s estranged wife—and he didn’t yet know enough to exclude any of them.
“Interesting thing,” Viz said. “One set of devices are modified cell phones. The other set is hooked into his cable system. Both are connected into the electrical system and use lithium ion batteries. That means they’re always powered on and can be accessed from anywhere in the world, either by calling into the phones or through the Internet.”
“Any way to follow the signals to whoever is listening?”
“I could probably abstract some information out of the SIM cards—at least the numbers that have been called—and maybe Alex Z could backtrack the Internet traffic.”
Gage paused next to his rental car and scanned the rest of the vehicles on the floor, then climbed in.
“Call Abrams,” Gage said. “Tell him you need him at the apartment. Be cryptic in case they’ve also got his phones bugged. Meet him out front. Let’s assume they’ve broken into his computer, too. Have him give you access so you can get whatever information you need. DNS. Gateway. IP address. Then go with him to check his office and pass on whatever you learn there to Alex Z. Once he’s done with whatever tracing he can do, go back into the apartment and make a show of switching him from cable to satellite and set up something to interfere with cell service in the apartment. Once we figure out who they are, we can switch everything back on and feed them bum leads.”