1

After some obligatory small talk, Russ said, “So, what brings you to my humble abode?”

Humble it was, a tiny one-bedroom over a Tex-Mex restaurant on Second Avenue in the East Nineties. The place tended to smell better when the kitchen below was going full blast, but they didn’t do breakfast. Russell Tuit—he pronounced it like bird talk—didn’t have a pocket protector or taped horn-rimmed glasses, but had the mouse-potato pallor and flabby look of someone whose fingers did all the walking. A certifiable geek; and it seemed a while since he’d had a shower.

Jack pulled out Weezy’s disk. “Wondering if you might take a look at this.”

Russ took the disk and headed for his computer in the corner of the sparsely furnished front room. Barely furnished was more like it, and what he had looked fourth hand.

Following him, Jack said, “You still stealing Internet?”

A federal judge had banned Russ from all online activities for twenty-five years. His crime: hacking into a bank and siphoning a fraction of a cent off each transaction. He’d accumulated a seven-figure haul before he was caught.

“It’s not stealing, it’s sharing. It’s my compensation.”

Russ had helped the guy in the neighboring apartment install a Wi-Fi system. He’d made sure to place the access point on the wall they shared.

He thought of Alice Laverty.

“Just met a lady whose life was complicated by someone hacking into her Wi-Fi system.”

He slid the disk into a slot in his computer. “Unsecured, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hardly anyone secures their home network. But no worry here. I insisted that Bill create a password-protected gateway and firewall—for his protection, of course.”

“And yours too, maybe?”

“Of course.”

“And you know the password?”

“Of course.”

“What if he changes it?”

“He already has—twice.”

“So . . . aren’t you locked out?”

He gave Jack a sheepish look over his shoulder. “I installed a keystroke logger when I set up his Wi-Fi.”

Again? Jack wondered how many computers were bugged with those things.

“Swell.”

“Hey, I don’t abuse it, man. I respect his privacy. It just sends me a signal whenever he opens the password manager. That’s the only time I peek.”

Russ hit a few keys and an array of pictures of bin Aswad’s face popped onto the screen. He stared at them a moment, scratching his red hair, then swiveled his chair and faced Jack.

“Who’s this—a terrorist?”

The question jolted Jack. Then he realized that any bearded, turbanned Islamic could look like a terrorist.

“Uh-huh. I’ve joined the CIA.”

Russ laughed. “That’ll be the day. No, seriously.”

“Just a guy I need to find, except there’s a good chance he doesn’t have a beard anymore. Any way you can use some computer magic to remove those whiskers?”

“Remove?” He shook his head. “Not that I know of—at least not that I’ve heard of.”

“I was counting on you having heard of everything.”

“Well, there’s facial-recognition software, but that’s used for comparison—you know, does this face match that one? This is something different.”

“Come on. They’ve got these police identi-kit programs that can put a beard on a face; there’s got to be some program that’ll take it off.”

“It’s not that simple. If you have the underlying facial structure, it’s nothing to add some facial hair to see what he looks like with a beard. But beards, especially these long, raggedy Muslim types, they hide the underlying facial structure—lots of times they hide the lips, f’Christ sake.”

Jack pointed to the screen. “Look, you’ve got multiple angles here, and you can see his lips. Do something.”

“I’ll try, man. That’s all I can say. I’ll check around, see if someone’s come up with an algorithm that’ll work. Can’t promise anything, though.”

“Can’t you write one yourself?”

He laughed as he shook his head. “Oh, man, that’s way above me.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll need something for my time, even if I come up empty.”

Jack was okay with that. Time was life.

He wondered how much of either anyone had left.