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“Are you all right?” She glanced at the phone and put a hand on his shoulder. “You must have expected this.”
“Yeah.”
He concentrated on Wilson as the man held a tablet up to one of the interior security cameras. He recognized the wallpaper picture as one taken of him playing with Anna and Claudia in front of her house in South Africa. Now the man had a current picture of all of them as well as a shot of Claudia’s home.
“Who is he, Mitch?”
“An old enemy that I didn’t deal with when I had a chance.”
“CIA?”
“FBI.”
“So now Nassar’s solicited the help of the American government. I hate to bring this up again, but is it time for you to contact Irene?”
He didn’t respond, instead freezing the image and continuing to stare down at it.
“Mitch?”
“How hard will it be for them to get into your tablet?”
“Hard. It would take even Marcus at least a week. There’s nothing on it, though. I use it mostly for reading magazines.”
“Can you access it remotely?”
“No. It’s not set up that way. Why?”
“What about the computer at your house in Cape Town? Could you access that remotely?”
“Sure. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that, with that picture, it’s not going to take them long to show up on your doorstep.”
She shrugged. “We’re not there, and accessing the information on my computer would be extraordinarily difficult, Mitch. I have confidential files on it from my time working with Louis. It would take years, even with the help of the NSA.”
“But you could get in remotely and make it easy, right? Wipe the sensitive information and change the password to Anna’s birthday or something.”
“Sure. But why?”
He ignored the question. “Would it be possible to create some fictitious emails between you and me and backdate them?”
“Not too difficult, but they wouldn’t be entirely convincing, particularly combined with the simplistic password. If someone looked closely, I’m not sure the scenario you’re talking about would hold up.”
Rapp nodded slowly, only partially hearing her. Nassar had to be dealt with whether it blew back against him or not—that was a decision Rapp had already made. But if he could lead Nassar into a trap and get someone else to do the wet work, his life would be a lot simpler. And probably a lot longer.
He tossed his phone onto the table in front of him. “It doesn’t need to hold up. I know Joel Wilson, and I can guarantee you that he only sees what he wants to see.”
CHAPTER 43
Langley
Virginia
U.S.A.
IRENE Kennedy closed the thick file on Aali Nassar’s life and considered what she’d read. His early schooling had come from the Saudi madrassa system, but he’d moved on to an English university after that—an educational background that could create both radical Islamists and secular moderates. He was extraordinarily competent and ambitious, traits that defined both great men and evil ones. Which was he?
In the world of intelligence, nothing was black-and-white. This situation, though, was more murky than most. Unfortunately, if she pieced it together in the most logical way, the picture that emerged was as ugly as any she’d ever seen.
