The Mirage: A Novel by Matt Ruff Read Free Book Online

as warmly as Samir had, and Mustafa felt his vertigo flaring again. But he felt better once he was seated with a steaming glass of tea in front of him, listening to Sinbad explain that Samir had been right—the two blond men in the photograph were German.
    “Peter and Martin Hoffman, of the Lutheran National Socialist Brotherhood,” Sinbad said, producing two Interpol files from his attaché. “Both alumni of the Munich Polytechnic. Peter is a chemist, Martin an engineer—but their main occupation, since graduating, has been organizing attacks on Jewish settlements in the Rhineland. Last year Peter was captured at a car-bomb assembly site in Koblenz. He killed a soldier and escaped. We think he and his brother fled to Turkey on forged guest-worker visas. From there . . .”
    From there, sneaking into the UAS would have been a relatively trivial exercise. Despite millions of riyals spent to secure the Turkish-Syrian border, it remained a popular route for undocumented European immigrants.
    “This is helpful,” Mustafa said. “But if they are in the country illegally, finding them won’t be easy.”
    “Ah, but there’s more,” Sinbad said. “I also ran a check on your dead suicide bomber, James Travis . . .”
    “Interpol has nothing on him.”
    “No, but Mossad does. Two summers ago, Travis was part of a humanitarian mission in the Rhineland that was detained, briefly, on suspicion of providing aid and comfort to terrorists.”
    “What sort of humanitarian mission?” Amal said.
    “Medical,” Mustafa guessed. “He was a student doctor, remember?”
    “Yes,” Sinbad said. “And one of the other doctors detained with Travis was an American named Gabriel Costello.” He opened up his attaché again. “I think you’ll recognize him.”
    The photo attached to the new file he handed them was full-face rather than profile, and the subject looked somber rather than angry, but there was no mistaking the red hair.
    “This is an ICE file,” Mustafa noted. “How did you get—”
    “It’s not important,” Sinbad said. “What matters is, Dr. Costello has a green card . . . and a Baghdad address. I looked it up, it’s an apartment in the western suburbs, near the airport.”
    Directly beneath Costello’s home address, the file listed his current occupation and place of employment. “I don’t believe this,” Mustafa said. “He’s a trauma surgeon at Karkh General Hospital.” He explained to Sinbad: “That’s where I got patched up the other night. It’s just minutes from here. We should go over, see if Costello is working now . . .”
    “He’s not,” Sinbad said. “I checked that too. The receptionist I spoke with said Dr. Costello’s next shift starts at two p.m. So you have time to finish your tea.”
    Samir was beaming again.
    “You know, David,” Mustafa said, “if you wanted to skip that flight to Berlin tonight, I’m sure we have some other cases you could solve.”
    “Let’s see how this goes, first. I’m not interested in Costello, but if we can find the Hoffman brothers, maybe I’ll stick around.”
    By quarter to two they had plainclothes agents in place inside and outside the hospital. Half a dozen Baghdad police units, a bomb-disposal team, and a Hazmat crew were all on standby.
    Mustafa, Samir, and Sinbad were parked across the street from the hospital’s ambulance bay. Sinbad had offered the use of his embassy car as a mobile command post and Mustafa had accepted, thinking it would be more comfortable than the black van. Also—and this was somewhat embarrassing—the Israeli diplomatic corps, at least that part of it that was actually Mossad, had better communications gear than Arab Homeland Security did. Instead of juggling two sets of radios, Mustafa could use Sinbad’s dash-mounted system to monitor and transmit on both the AHS and local police frequencies.
    Amal was in the parking structure adjacent to the hospital, posing as a booth attendant. Mustafa had