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briefing came to order as soon as Director Burns arrived, trailing half a dozen harried-looking ADs and addressing the room even as he came in the side door at the front of the theater.
    “Okay, I want a rundown from section heads right now,” he said. “Have we got Counterterrorism here yet? Ops Two?”
    “Over here, sir.” Terry Marshall, the deputy section chief from that branch, held up her hand and hurried to the front. When she pointed a small remote at the wall of screens, Mahoney was surprised to see two grisly morgue photos come up. They were from the double suicide at Dulles.
    “Farouk and Rahma Al Zahrani,” Marshall said. “Both Saudi citizens, educated at UCLA. He taught in the physics department at King Saud University; she worked for a small import-export house in Riyadh. No criminal records, no known criminal or terrorist associations, no known aliases.
    “We’ve double-checked all threat lists, repeat, all , and they’re not on any of them. Same goes for every other passenger on their flight.”
    “Yes, and?” Burns said. Thirty seconds in the room, and already he was impatient and demanding of his staff. Burns was infamous around the Bureau for the line “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother to come in on Sunday.”
    “On paper, these are still separate incidents,” Marshall reported. “But the timing is suspect, to say the least. The Al Zahranis flew in Thursday afternoon, approximately eighteen hours before Zoe and Ethan disappeared. Given that nobody’s claimed responsibility for the abduction, or for the Al Zahranis, for that matter, we can’t afford to rule out a connection between the two.”
    The room went quiet for several seconds. This was exactly the problem — since the twenty-four-hour mark had come and gone, the silence was killing them.
    “Okay, what else?” Burns demanded. “Where are we with the driver of that van?”
    Matt Salvorsen from the DC field office took Marshall’s place at the front of the room.
    “So far, his story checks out,” Salvorsen said. He brought up an image of a Maryland driver’s license. The name on it was Ray Pinkney. The picture was of the driver.
    “We’ve been over his home computer, and he did in fact receive a private IM from this ‘NE1NE1’ character. Contact was made four days before the abduction.”
    “Which my ten-year-old granddaughter could have faked,” Burns said.
    “Yes, sir,” Salvorsen answered. “Even so, we don’t believe that Pinkney had the means to pull off the larger operation. He’s kind of …”
    “Thick?”
    “Something like that, sir. In any case, we’re sitting on him twenty-four/seven at the hospital. He knows he’s up a creek now, and we’re fairly confident he’s giving us everything he’s got.”
    “Who else talked to him?” Burns said. “Besides EMTs and hospital staff.”
    “Secret Service Agent Findlay,” Salvorsen said. “He’s been temporarily decommissioned. And then Detective Cross, from MPD ’s Major Case Squad. He managed to interview Pinkney before the Bureau took jurisdiction.”
    Mahoney looked up from his notes when he heard Cross’s name. He was surprised to find Director Burns looking right back at him.
    “Ned, you know Alex Cross pretty well?”
    “Sure,” Mahoney said.
    “Get him in on this, but light duty. We don’t need any more chiefs. Just close enough to keep an eye on him. Don’t tell him anything you don’t need to. I don’t want MPD in our way . Understood?”
    Mahoney nodded several times, trying not to say what he was thinking — that Alex deserved better than this. “Sir, Cross was instrumental in the Soneji case —”
    “Not looking for your opinion right now. I respect Cross. Just get it done, please. We don’t want MPD involved in this, and Cross is MPD!” Burns said briskly.
    Mahoney gave the only answer there was to give at that point. “Yes, sir. Will do.”
    Freeze out Alex .

ALREADY, THE HIGH-ENERGY director was onto