Ground Zero Part 22

"Yeah. 'It's all become too much. I'm sorry. Love, Steve.' And that was it." She sighed. "Never a hint that anything was wrong."

Jack tried to imagine how he'd feel if Gia ever did something like that. He failed. At least Steve had thought enough of her to do it where she wouldn't be the one to find his body.

She sipped her beer, then said, "Anyway, as I was going through his things, I went into his laptop and found lots of bookmarks to Nine/Eleven Truther sites. We've both always been into conspiracies and apparently this one tickled him."

"Could there be any connection between his ... death and what happened to you today?"

She shook her head. "That's tempting, but no. The police traced his movements-applying for the gun permit, waiting for the background check ... apparently he'd been planning it for some time. I never had a clue. I still don't have any idea why. I don't think I ever will." She shook her head. "But that's not the story. The story is that as I skimmed a few of the sites I came across a photo of bin Laden and his top two deputies, al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef. Here. See for yourself."

She turned to her computer and began typing. Soon a black-and-white photo of three bearded guys in turbans popped up. Jack recognized bin Laden but not the others.

"I kept staring at it, feeling something was wrong. And then it hit me. I'd seen the photo before and was sure there'd been a fourth man in it. So I did an image search, but every time I found it, only the same three were in it. No sign of the fourth."

Jack feigned shock. "Don't tell me the famous Weezy Connell memory hiccupped?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Not funny. I was worried it had."

"n.o.body's perfect."

"True, but it's never let me down yet. So I went hunting through newspapers and magazines."

"Ah," Jack said, glancing at the stacks that filled the neighboring dining room. "I'm beginning to see."

"I was pretty sure I'd seen it in the Times Times, but I wasn't sure of the date."

More mock shock: "You forgot? forgot?"

"I never forget what I read, but I'm not always aware of the date when I'm reading it, so my brain doesn't form a connection. Anyway, I bought a bunch of back issues from the immediate postnine/eleven period and found it."

"Where on Earth do you buy old newspapers?"

"Google 'vintage newspapers' and you'll see." She popped up from her seat. "Here, I'll show-oh!"

Swaying, she clutched the back of the chair.

Jack leaped to his feet and grabbed her arm.

"What's wrong?"

"Just dizzy. Not ready for sudden movements yet, I guess."

"Maybe you'd better lie down."

She shook him off. "No way. But maybe a beer isn't such a good idea."

She left the bottle behind and led him on a winding course through the stacks in the living room. She stopped by one next to the stairs to the second floor, counted down to the sixth issue, and pulled out a copy of the Times Times.

Handing it to Jack, she said, "Check out page four."

Jack did just that, and immediately spotted the photo.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

The exact same configuration of bin Laden and his buds, but this one showed an extra man. The fourth was bearded and turbanned like the others but caught in profile instead of face on-as if he'd been turning away from the camera when the shutter clicked.

Weezy was tapping a finger against her temple. "Never forgets."

"Who's the fourth guy?"

"Remember I mentioned The Man Who Wasn't There? That's him. Wahid bin Aswad."

"But what's the point of taking him out of the photo?"

"That's what I'd like to know." She crooked her finger at him as she headed back toward the kitchen. "There's more."

Back at the computer she plugged in her network cable, opened the New York Times New York Times site, and found that issue. But the photo showed only three men. site, and found that issue. But the photo showed only three men.

Jack blinked. "Somebody hacked the Times Times."

"Yes. Twice. Because I contacted them-anonymously, of course-and told them the photo had been altered. I watched daily and soon the original was restored. Days later, the doctored photo was back in its place."

Baffled, Jack dropped into a chair. "But what does the hacker hope to accomplish? Copies of the real photo have to be all over the place."

"But they're not. The real, four-man photo exists in newspapers, which are disposable. They wind up either recycled or used as landfill or fish wrapping or on the bottom of birdcages. More and more, people are looking to the Internet for their reading and research. If they blog about nine/eleven and want to include this photo, they snag it from the Times Times's site or from someone else who previously borrowed from the Times Times. And later on, folks snag it from that blog for some use of their own. And on and on and on. The doctored version of that photo is everywhere on the Web. The original with Wahid bin Aswad ... is nowhere."

Jack shook his head. "But why?"

"I don't know. But it's pretty clear that since nine/eleven, someone's been trying to rewrite history. Someone's trying to erase evidence that Wahid bin Aswad was with bin Laden and company on that day, or on any day, for that matter."

"What do you mean, 'any day'?"

She started mousing around and opened a photo file.

"I did an image search for bin Laden and collected any in which he appeared to be part of a group photo. Then I traced them as best I could to their origins-almost always online news sources. I bought up a lot of old papers and searched out those photos. I found three more that had been altered. In all instances, a single figure had been removed."

"Let me guess: Wahid bin a.s.swipe."

Weezy frowned. "Oh, that's mature."

"I have a wide streak of immaturity, Weez. I nurture it. And I have a big problem showing even a flyspeck of respect toward bin Laden and his buddies."

"This is serious, Jack."

"Is it? Why?"

"Because the Internet is becoming the source of record for all but the most serious and dedicated researchers." She clicked on an icon and the doctored three-shot popped onto the screen. "This is a lie. And it's a lie that's being told again and again all over the Web every time it's copied and posted somewhere else. Tell a lie often enough and it can become the truth. Someone is expunging all photographic evidence of Wahid bin Aswad from the Web. Not mentions of his name-those have remained untouched-just the images."

She wiggled and clicked her mouse again and started a slide show of photos.

"Look," she said, tapping the screen over a figure in a group photo. "Here he is at a meeting in Kandahar-I scanned this from a newspaper." A click and the photo changed. "Here's the version that's all over the Web."

Sure enough, one of the bearded wonders was missing from the second photo. The same was true for the next two pairings.

Jack leaned back. "Now that's weird. Why just the photos? Why not erase all trace?"

"Obviously he doesn't want anyone to know what he looks like."

"Sounds to me like a guy who's planning to reinvent himself as a regular, everyday guy."

"Maybe not a regular everyday guy. Maybe someone a lot of people are going to see, someone who doesn't want anyone making the connection."

"I don't know," Jack said. "These photos aren't the best quality, and one bearded guy looks a lot like another." He ran a hand over his own short beard. "See what I mean?"

She laughed, then hunched her shoulders and grabbed her head. "Oh!"

"What's wrong?"

"Need to remember not to laugh." Whatever it was pa.s.sed quickly and she looked back at him. "You'll never pa.s.s for an Arab. You're-" Her computer dinged and she clicked around until ... "E-mail from Kevin."

"Harris? You trust him?"

She nodded. "As far as being someone genuinely searching for the truth about this, yes. As for his past, whatever he says about that is a lie-unless he tells you he's ex-NSA."

Alarm buzzed down Jack's spine. "What?"

"Strictly low level, and I believe he was let go because of his nine/eleven beliefs."

"Swell."

"You say that a lot."

"I've had lots of cause today. How do you know?"

She pointed at the monitor. "With a little know-how and a lot of patience, you'd be amazed what you can find on the Web. I even found you, the Man Who Isn't Isn't There." There."

Jack didn't like that. If Weezy could find him, so could others. Getting harder and harder to stay under the radar. Why couldn't people shut up? These G.o.dd.a.m.n bloggers with their incessant nattering, feeling they have to be saying something all the time just to fill the empty s.p.a.ce on their blog page, and so they talk about some guy they heard about from a friend of a friend of a cousin of an uncle who met this guy named Jack once who might be real or maybe just an urban legend.

Yeah. Urban legend. Go with that.

And. Then. Shut. Up.

Weezy leaned closer to the screen. "It's got a jpeg attached. He must have scanned his photo of Bashar Sheikh."

"That photo kind of bothers me," he said as she downloaded it. "How did he get it?"

Weezy shrugged. "He still has friends in NSA. Probably got a little help." She glanced at Jack. "His heart's in the right place." She hit a few more b.u.t.tons. "Now to decrypt it."

Jack said nothing. Maybe she was right. He'd seemed genuinely relieved to find her alive in the hospital.

"Okay," Weezy said. "Let's open the photo."

A head shot of-surprise!-a bearded guy in some sort of Muslim skullcap popped into view.

"Harris told me he looked familiar but-"

"He does. Let me pop him up in another photo."

He shouldn't have been surprised that she recognized him right off, but her perfect memory never ceased to amaze him. One of the undoctored photos she'd run through before appeared and she tapped the screen.

"There he is, standing right next to bin Aswad. He's never been identified, but was obviously one of the nine/eleven planners. Now we have a name for him."

She typed out a response, telling Harris where to look, and sent it off.

"So, you've identified Sheikh," Jack said. "You think he's going to lead you to bin a.s.swi-" Weezy shot him a look. "Okay, okay-bin Aswad?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But it's one more piece of the puzzle. I-" The computer gave out another ding! ding! "Kevin again." "Kevin again."

Jack watched as the decrypted e-mail appeared on the screen.

OMFG!!! I recognize him now! That's the guy in the torture video I told you about. We need to talk!

"Torture video?" Jack said as Weezy rapid-fired a response.

Not tonight. Save it for tomorrow.

She straightened and faced Jack. "Years ago someone sent Kevin-via his blog-the URL to a specific video on a site that specialized in torture p.o.r.n. The sender said he'd find it 'interesting.' Kevin told me he'd tried to watch but lasted only a minute or so. Said it was sickening."

"Why would someone send him that?"

Weezy shrugged. "He has a nine/eleven site and blog-maybe someone thought he'd like to see an al Qaeda suspect being tortured. He said the whole site was devoted to torture videos."

"A YouTube for s.a.d.i.s.ts." Jack added that to the long list of things he didn't understand about his species-before pierced nostrils but after Lou Reed. "You think this Bashar Sheikh might have been the torturee?"

"If I'm reading Kevin right, he was." She shook her head. "I don't think I could handle a torture video on a good day. But tonight, with my stomach already rocky ... no way."

Jack quaffed the rest of his beer and was reaching for another when he spotted hers, barely touched.

"You're sure you don't want it?"

"I'd love it but I'd better not. Don't let it go to waste."