IBRAHIM ANSARI’S parents had moved from Pakistan on student visas thirty years earlier—Mariam was a pediatrician, Faisal a professor of political studies at the University of Maryland. They sat with Rachel in a Mount Sinai waiting room done up in calming colors. Their son, she let them know, was not under arrest, but the situation was serious. He had joined a subversive organization, “and were it not for his medical condition he would be with them now, in hiding.”
On June 18, twenty-four-year-old Ibrahim had been struck down by a brain aneurysm while riding a Greyhound from Baltimore to Richmond. He’d been in a coma for six hours, snapping out of it early Monday morning. Now it was Tuesday, and Rachel had stopped by on her way to Manhattan to confer with the field office at Federal Plaza, bringing along Ted Pierce, a young agent, to act as witness. Ibrahim had been taken out of the ICU and moved to a private room, his cranium wrapped in bandages to cover the piece of skull that had been removed by a surgeon in order to reach his brain.
“I know what you people do,” Mariam said. “You’ve got nothing on this Martin Bishop. Empty hands. So to make yourself look good you find kids who can’t defend themselves, so that when Congress asks what you’ve been spending tax dollars on you can list off kids in hospitals.”
“Mariam,” said Faisal.
“Mariam, what?” she snapped. “I’ve been through my son’s room. He didn’t even pack a bag. How was he going to vanish without a change of clothes? Tell me that, woman.”
“Lauren Harrison,” said Rachel. “Frank Sellers, Laura Nell, Soon-Yi Koh, Kyle Vanderbilt, Daniella Piotrowski. Those are six people, off the top of my head, who disappeared in exactly the same way. One was heading to the grocery. Two climbed out of their bedroom windows. The other three were on their way to work. None of them packed a change of clothes. They all left their phones behind.”
“Are you listening to her?” Mariam asked her husband. “She tells us that they showed no signs, and then they disappeared. Now our son showed no signs, so he must have been trying to become a terrorist!” To Rachel: “You need to take a logic class.”
She didn’t need their consent to talk to Ibrahim. She’d known this going in, and Pierce had even suggested they skip the step. But Rachel knew how difficult it could become for the Bureau if the parents made a stink afterward, so she called them beforehand and asked for this conversation. She reached into her briefcase, took out a slender manila folder, and said, “I understand how you feel.”
“You do not.”
“Let her speak,” said Faisal.
“Over the last forty-eight hours,” Rachel told them, “the Bureau has been deluged with missing persons reports. All young people, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-two, and a disproportionate number of them are college students like your son. They all vanished on Sunday, the same day Bishop disappeared. Of that particular group, only two have been found.”
“How many?” Mariam asked. “How many is enough for you to harass my son?”
“A hundred and twelve. From all across the country. But that number’s growing every hour.”
Conversation stalled as Ibrahim’s parents looked at each other.
“While these people showed no signs that they were going to disappear, nearly all of them were connected to Martin Bishop’s group. Emails, chat rooms, blog comments. Here.” She passed the folder to Faisal. He opened it, and Mariam, after staring hard at Rachel for the better part of a minute, looked over her husband’s shoulder and began to read with him.
“Where’d you get this?” Faisal asked without looking up.
“Does it matter?”
“You’re damned right it does,” he said, but without venom.
“NSA gave it to us.”
He went back to reading, along with his wife, an analysis of Ibrahim Ansari’s online activity over the last six months. Rachel saw the expression in Mariam’s face shift from anger to confusion.
Pierce was standing outside Ibrahim’s room, typing on his phone. He looked up at her. “Yes?”
“Let’s go.”
But then her phone vibrated, and she checked the screen: SCHUMER, SAM.
“You ever going to answer that?” Pierce asked.
“Not until I have to,” she said, and put away the phone.
Ibrahim had been awake for twenty-four hours, but the medication still kept him fuzzy. He listened to their names, and when they showed their badges he shook his head, grinning. “My luck.”
“How do you mean?” Rachel asked as she pulled up a chair to sit close to him.
“What you think? I go from free to this.” He looked down his arm, where a tube supplied him with a steady drip. “And now you.”
“Where were you going, Ibrahim?”
“Richmond.”
“And then?”
“Just Richmond.”
“Who were you going to meet?”
“A friend.”
“Who?”
He sighed, then looked across to the door; through its window his mother was peering in, expressionless. He shook his head again. “You can’t find them. You know that, right?”
“Can’t find who?”
“There’s thousands of us. Millions, probably. We’re everywhere.”
Rachel shook her head. “There are maybe a hundred and fifty of you, Ibrahim. Not a thousand, and certainly not a million. We know this because we’re the FBI and we know a lot of things. More than you do. More than Martin Bishop knows. So don’t play the ominous card with me. Just tell me who you were going to meet.”
Ibrahim frowned. “Pass me that water.”
Rachel took the plastic cup from the side table and watched him sip from the straw. Behind her, Pierce’s phone hummed and he put it to his ear, turning to face the corner and whisper. Finally, Ibrahim said, “George. I was going to meet a guy named George at the bus station.”
“And then?”
“And then I’m gone.”
Once they were in the corridor again, Pierce said, “When we get to the city we might want to make a stop before Federal Plaza.”
“Why?”
“David Parker’s wife has disappeared.”