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He wouldn’t trust the agency to only use legal means to monitor Freya Lange any more than he’d expect a lion to be vegetarian. His gaze darted around the room. “I’m guessing you scan this place for bugs regularly?”
The former spy grinned. “Often enough to know exactly when they started trying to hack our systems—four days after Diana was abducted. But don’t worry. We have the most secure system possible.” She nodded toward Amira. “Amira is our in-house tech wizard, and we have other specialists we trust completely. And this room is completely shielded from any electronic signals in or out.”
Chris nodded, not surprised to find he was sitting in a vault. It wasn’t a conference room set up with a large monitor at the end of a long table. No, it was a series of comfortable love seats and low tables. Like one might find at a coffee shop or wine bar. This was a room for conversations, not computer demonstrations.
“So why am I here?”
“We believe you can help us identify someone.” Freya flipped open a file folder and pulled out a stack of small, thick papers.
“Not another deck of cards?”
She shook her head. “No. We want to know if you can identify Jamal from a lineup.”
“Jamal? One of the two brothers who were Diana’s guards? Why?”
“You were the only operator to see his face. And you saw him twice.”
“The first time, he was backlit. My camera couldn’t even get his face. Kramer might have gotten a better look. He was in the slot canyon too.”
“He didn’t. Rand put us in touch. We interviewed him and Albrecht this morning.”
He’d known Albrecht never saw the kid’s face in the stairwell. Even Chris only got a glimpse before he turned and ran up the stairs.
“The camera didn’t get him either time, but you saw him, right?”
He closed his eyes and remembered crawling through the low tunnel that opened up and became a slot canyon. He’d gone from shimmying in a belly crawl, to hands and knees, to a stooped walk—the full March of Progress—before the slot opened wide enough for a vehicle to be hidden among the sandstone walls. He’d seen Diana, lit in green through his NVGs, as the boy she later identified as Bassam held a knife to her throat.
Then headlights had flared on, and he’d flipped up his goggles as she was backlit by the bright beams. The light hit her at a faint oblique angle. She and Bassam were lit slightly from the side, and the wash of light reached him, so Diana could see his face too.
Her position then shifted, and she cast a shadow that shielded his eyes from the bright beam, allowing him to see her better. He remembered glancing toward the light source, trying to determine if there was any way Kramer, who was still in the tunnel, could slip out and to the side, and take out the tango who’d turned on the headlights.
The man—more a boy—stood in the wash of light for a moment, but moved back in the shadows as soon as Chris shifted so his body camera could capture him.
Jamal was thin and wiry. His keffiyeh had slipped off, probably when he’d crawled through the tunnel, and Chris saw short dark hair, a pointed chin and nose. He guessed the boy sported wisps of facial hair, but it wasn’t visible given the distance between them.
He’d been a handsome kid. Thick brows and sharp cheekbones.
Chris opened his eyes and faced the three women. “I might recognize him. Maybe.”
Freya nodded and picked up the file folder and opened it, standing it up on the coffee table between them. “I’m going to lay out nine photos. I want you to tell me which ones are of Jamal.”
“You have photos of him? How did you manage that?”
Freya gave a faint smile. “It’s classified.”
He rolled his eyes, but he hadn’t really expected an answer.
After the images were arranged, she reached for the folder. He held up a hand, “Wait. How many photos are of Jamal?”
“That’s for you to tell me, Lieutenant.”
She then lifted the folder, and he studied the images laid out in a three-by-three grid. Nine young men. All Middle Eastern, with skin tones that varied from yellow-brown to a deep dark mahogany. None had skin quite as dark as Chris’s own dark brown, but one was close.
“Take your time,” Morgan said.
Assuming these photos—some of which appeared to have been taken on city streets with the subject unaware of the camera—didn’t show boys attempting to change their appearance, he focused on the faces with the skin tone closest to what he’d seen in the canyon. Medium brown with reddish undertones.
His eyes kept coming back to one image. A slight profile, a similar angle to what he’d glimpsed before the boy shifted into the darkness. He studied it for a long moment, trying to decide if the angle of the shot was influencing his thoughts. This boy was younger, maybe thirteen or fourteen. According to Diana, Jamal had been fifteen.
