Contrast that with a very different burg, a small town outside Washington, DC, where thousands labor constantly in a massive complex of buildings, day and night, no holidays, no weekends off.

It was to one of those workers, a young man named Daniel Garrison, that Charlotte McKenzie had placed a call a half hour before, at Dante Spiro’s coy suggestion.

Garrison had some fancy title within the National Security Agency, which was located in that never-sleeping town: Fort Meade, Maryland. But his informal job description was simple: hacker.

McKenzie had sent Garrison the information about the coffeehouse whose pay phone Ibrahim had probably used to communicate with Gianni about the terrorist plans. Now, with the okay from bigwigs in Washington, Garrison was overseeing the effort of a very earnest, hardworking bot, as “she” (the NSA officer’s pronoun) prowled at lightning speed through the records of Libya Hatif w Alaittisalat, or “Telephone and Telecom.” Theirs was not, Garrison had reported, a difficult “switch to run an exploit on. Stone easy. I’m embarrassed for them. Well, not really.”

Soon Garrison’s bot was plucking records of calls between the pay phone in the Yawm Saeid—Happy Day—coffeehouse in Tripoli, where Ibrahim hung out, and mobiles in the Naples area: scores in the past day, many hundreds over the past week. Apparently—and unfortunately—the landline was a popular means of communicating with those in southern Italy.

Ercole Benelli was printing out the lists and taping them to the wall. If there were not too many numbers the Postal Police could trace them. With some luck, one might turn out to be Gianni’s new phone.

As he looked over the number, Rhyme was startled to hear a pronounced gasp from beside him.

He looked at Charlotte, actually thinking she was ill, the sound from her throat was so choked.

“No,” she said. “My God.”

“What is it?” Rossi asked, seeing her alarmed face.

“Look.” She was pointing to the chart. “That outgoing call there—from the coffeehouse in Tripoli to Gianni’s old phone. A few days ago.”

“Yes. We can see.” Spiro was staring at McKenzie, clearly as confused as Rhyme.

“The number above it? The call made from the coffeehouse just before he called Gianni?”

Rhyme noted it was to a U.S. line. “What about it?”

“It’s my phone,” she whispered. “My encrypted mobile. And I remember the call. It was from our asset on the ground in Libya. We were talking about Maziq’s abduction.”

“Cristo,” Spiro whispered.

Sachs said, “So your asset, the one who gave you the intel about the attacks in Austria and Milan, is Ibrahim, the man who recruited the terrorists in the first place.”

Chapter 59

Mi dispiace,” Dante Spiro snapped. “Forgive me for being blunt. But do you not vet these people?”

“Our asset—” McKenzie began.

Rhyme, his voice as testy as the Italian’s, said, “Not your asset. The man who pretended to be your asset, the man who sold you out. Not to put too fine a point on it.”