Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber Page A

that he was becoming Salafi. At home, she wore the veil. Increasingly, though, he spoke of purdah. Hijab for him, okay. Draping herself in a damned shroud, no way.
    The phone rang. She did not want to despise her brother, but she did despise the strictures on women—the rejection of half the human species—that had grown up in Islam over the years, spreading like some sort of soul cancer.
    It rang again. Her heart began beating harder. It was almost sickening to ask him for help—but she loved him; she did. He was her little brother, who had clung to her in fear when they went to the seaside and he saw the waves.
    The female members of Mohammed’s family had never been in purdah. If Mohammed and Jesus were to return and see what had become of their faiths, she thought—no, knew—that they would be sickened.
    Rashid picked up.
    “Rashid,” she said, “good afternoon.”
    “Hello,” he answered, sounding as if he had forced the word out through a sphincter.
    “Brother, I need a lookdown-backed-up twenty-four hours of all the physicals at a Finnish university. I need it, specifically, around a coffee bar called Origo, which is on the top floor of the library. You’ll see the building on your map. Entries and exits.”
    People in intelligence knew not to ask why. But that was not what mattered. “Who wants this?”
    “It’s for the briefer,” she said smoothly.
    Now the silence became as sharp as a blade. But facts were facts: he was male but not as senior, largely because his language skills weren’t as important in the technical post he held. So his advancement was even more constrained than hers. He did not report to somebody who could propose for the briefer. Rashid’s work might end up there on occasion, but it would be background.
    “I am looking at the location,” he said. “I’ll do a run now.”
    “I’ll find comparables.” She then went into the university’s database, which proved to be a relatively easy process, and found three names that matched the CIA’s internal watchlists. She e-mailed him the photos off their dossiers.
    “One,” he said.
    She was so stunned she could hardly speak.
    “Which?”
    “The Indonesian.”
    “Thank you, Rashid.”
    “Your husband also telephoned.”
    “I thought he was in Afghanistan.”
    “Where he called from is not known to me. But I provided him, also.”
    “With related information? Why are you telling me?”
    “Because he is your husband. I am telling you to let you know he is alive.”
    She could think of nothing more than to thank him and hang up. Jimwas not her husband; Rashid had to face that. They had divorced in American law. But Jim had not divorced her in Šar’ah, because, as he put it, “I’m not Muslim.” Anyway, she didn’t want it, either.
    She looked at this Indonesian. He had entered the coffee bar six days ago, at three in the afternoon, local time. The site had gone up six minutes later. With only the single page, that would have been easy even for a complete amateur. Because it was so small, it had taken the ’bots all this time to find it. It had not been pushed to her, after all.
    She telephoned Marge. “I have an Indonesian male, Wijaya, means ‘victorious.’ Patronymic is Setiawan. Thus, Sumatran. And matronymic Padang. Thus, also, a Minangkabau. This group is a center of Islamist reaction. He has been at university for two years. His police record is clean. Driving violation, wrong side of road, forgiven due to recent arrival. Bank account in order, no strange activity. He has traveled a lot. His results at the university in civil engineering are average.”
    “So, why is he on our list?”
    “There is an access level on the file. You’ll need to run it by Counter-terrorism.”
    “Thank you, Nabila.”
    Nabila hung up. For a moment, she rested her head against the edge of the desk. This man was a known terrorist; she was certain of it. That would be what was behind the “no access” part of the file.
    She