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

hoped that an unfamiliar woman in the booth would be less likely to raise suspicion, but this part of the plan was working too well: The doctors and male nurses arriving for the 2 p.m. shift were stopping to chat Amal up, creating a small traffic jam at the garage entrance. Some of the other agents began teasing Amal about her “new boyfriends”; then Abd al Rasheed, an older agent who’d re-embraced Islam in a big way after 11/9, came on air to berate them for the crudeness of their comments.
    “Enough!” Mustafa said, breaking into the transmission. “Peace be unto all of you, and knock it off! It’s almost two. Does anyone see our target?”
    “Mustafa?” a voice answered almost immediately. “This is Hamdan. I think we may have him. You said Costello drives a white motorcycle?”
    Mustafa glanced at Sinbad. “That’s our information, yes.” He recited a license plate number.
    “That’s the one. He’s here.”
    “Is he headed for the parking garage?”
    “He was. He just pulled over to the curb and checked his pager. Now he’s making a cell phone call . . .”
    Mustafa looked at Sinbad again and nodded hopefully towards the radio scanner. Sinbad shook his head.
    “Mustafa?” Hamdan said. “Do you want us to grab him?”
    Before Mustafa could answer, Abdullah clicked in from the hospital switchboard: “Mustafa, Costello’s on the line right now . . . He says he’s going to be late to work.”
    “Does he say why?”
    “Family emergency.”
    Mustafa took his finger off the transmit button. “Did I miss something in Costello’s file about relatives in Baghdad?”
    “No,” Sinbad said. “He’s got no family here. Nearest thing is a fiancée who got killed in Gaza City a few years back.”
    “So who paged him?”
    “Two guesses,” Samir said from the back seat.
    Hamdan: “Mustafa? The guy is on the move again. What do you want us to do?”
    “Follow him,” Mustafa said, making a decision. “Keep him in sight but don’t take him yet. He may be on his way to meet with the Hoffmans . . . Hamdan, do you copy?”
    An oath accompanied by the blare of a car horn erupted from the radio.
    “Hamdan?”
    “Ah, we’re stuck behind some idiot who won’t move . . . Costello was able to squeeze around. He’s turning south onto Union Boulevard.”
    Sinbad already had the car in motion. Thirty seconds later they too were on the boulevard, the white motorcycle visible a block ahead of them.
    “Everyone please pay attention,” Mustafa said into the radio. “Costello is southbound, approaching the July 14th Bridge. We want to see where he’s going, so I’d ask my friends in the Baghdad PD to please stay back with your sirens off. Anyone not driving a marked car, we could use your help with the pursuit. And can I get a helicopter overhead in case we lose him?”
    Costello didn’t appear to be aware that he was being followed, but he was a naturally impatient driver willing to take chances, and Sinbad, whose car could not slip through the same gaps as the motorcycle, had to work hard to keep up with him. The bridge, where six lanes became four, proved a special challenge, but Sinbad managed to keep Costello in sight by means of several death-defying swerves into oncoming traffic.
    They crossed the river, coming onto the narrow peninsula formed by the sharp bend the Tigris made as it flowed south out of midtown. Baghdad University’s main campus occupied the peninsula’s western tip, and Costello headed that way. “Abdullah,” Mustafa said into the radio, “can you get BU campus security on the phone and have them stand by?”
    “Wait,” Samir said. “He’s pulling over.”
    They were on a commercial strip near the eastern edge of the campus. In the middle of the block was an Ali Baba supermarket with a Forty Thieves coffee shop tucked in beside it. Costello parked his motorcycle in front of the coffee shop. Two blond men sitting at a table on the sidewalk stood up to greet