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was assigned to the Bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, an organization of agents, investigators, analysts, and various specialists from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies who, alongside FBI agents in field offices all over the country, combated terrorism. Weir wore a dark suit and tie—the G’s all did—but looked out of place in anything but sweats.
    Waving Fisk into the vacant chair at the foot of the table, he said, “Glad you could join us.”
    Fisk took this as grudging inclusion; the Bureau wanted something from Intel, probably the contents of a secret dossier or the use of an informant. In any other city, the police would already have provided Weir whatever he wanted. New York was different, not just because of its eight million residents or the stock exchange or 9/11, but because of its singular Intelligence Division, created by a CIA deputy director of operations—David Cohen—and backed by the most potent police department in the world. Intel’s resulting autonomyoften created a competition with the Bureau, bruising more than its share of FBI egos and sometimes even impeding investigations.
    More often, the relationship was like a strained marriage. Federal law prohibited FBI agents from constitutionally protected arenas like religion and political speech. Forget sending plainclothes agents into mosques to gather intelligence, they weren’t even permitted to grab a bite at a place like New Persia Diner in Astoria. New Persia served a devout clientele, including two men currently suspected of administering the Jihad Joe website whose content included exhortations to join al-Qaeda in its fight against “infidels” in none other than Queens. Intel knew this because one of the rakers had secured a gig redesigning the New Persia Diner takeout menu and parleyed it into a job administering the Jihad Joe site. Two days later, at a nearby mosque, a Staten Island resident named Abdel Hameed Shehadeh told a friend about his plan to wage violent jihad and die a martyr. Fortunately the friend was an informant, recruited by another NYPD Intel raker.
    Weir rattled off introductions. To Fisk’s left and right were an FBI computer forensics guy Fisk didn’t know, and FBI special agent Dan Evans, whom he did. Evans had earned quite the badass reputation while serving in the Bureau’s Las Vegas field office, cemented after successfully going toe-to-toe with a heavyweight-boxer-turned-goon. You wouldn’t guess it to look at him, though: slight of frame, clean-cut white-blond hair, the innocent face of a Mormon missionary. Together, Evans and the boxy Weir were a sight gag. They were a natural good-cop-bad-cop team, though in Fisk’s experience, they amounted to two bad cops. In fairness, their intentions were good; they just suffered from overexposure to red tape.
    Also at the table were the editor of the Times ’s online edition, the paper’s director of security, four representatives of the legal team, and, in the seat across from Fisk’s, Chay Maryland, who wore a no-nonsense black business suit that somehow accentuated her steely good looks. Unlike the others, who greeted him with a nod born of the exigency of getting down to business, she smiled.
    It wasn’t a particularly welcoming or friendly smile, Fisk noted. More of an I’m-going-to-enjoy-this-more-than-you-are smile.
    “Thanks to all for coming,” said Evans. “This is an unusual situation, so listen up. This is Harun Ahmed, thirty-three years old, who was shot and killed while he was jogging yesterday in Central Park, on a path through the woods approximately two hundred feet south of the reservoir gatehouse.”
    He held up a photograph of the bloodied victim lying between trees beside the heavily wooded path.
    “Our ballistic tests suggest that two shots were fired from a high-powered rifle. We haven’t determined the shooter’s location yet, but it was at a point of considerable elevation—one of the low-caliber rounds entered