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porcelains what carbon dating is to fossils. What matters is that Teddy and his Beijing partners developed a technique to scam the test so they could sell fake Chinese blue and white as the real thing. It gave me enough leverage to talk Teddy into running ops for us during his frequent trips to China. He never took the assignment gracefully, though.
    â€œYour phone,” I said, nodding at the sleek cordless Siemens on his desk.
    Phone in hand, I headed down the long side hallway to a bathroom marked
Employees Only,
locked myself inside, and phoned the Special Agent in charge of the FBI’s National Security Division. If the Bureau’s gumshoes were on me, John O’Neill would know it.
    His secretary answered the phone.
    I was two sentences into whatever lie I had concocted when O’Neill himself burst onto the line in all his larger-than-life glory.
    â€œMax, you asshole, what are you doing on my turf? If you’re up here operating, I’m gonna make sure you spend a cozy night at Rikers.”
    â€œMe? You’re the one running the op.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œI got surveillance.”
    â€œOh, bullshit.”
    â€œThey’re like flies at a shit roast.”
    â€œCome on.”
    â€œTrust me. You can’t miss these guys.”
    â€œAll right. I’ll play. Hold on.”
    He was back in two minutes. “It’s not DEA or Customs or One Police Plaza.”
    It was my turn. With DEA, Customs, and the locals out of the mix, the list of candidates was becoming disturbingly thin. “Are you sure?”
    â€œWell, I could ask again and say ‘pretty please’ this time.”
    Point taken.
    O’Neill hated silence. “You been drinking?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œWell, how about I send a car up and bring you in?”
    â€œNope, but I might need you later.”
    â€œWhat have you got into now?”
    Damned if I knew, but I didn’t want to disappoint. O’Neill had once noted that I had a habit of burning my bridges before I got to them, and history was on his side.
    â€œHey, John, remember that Black Panther, the one who became a Muslim?”
    â€œIt still hurts where he took a bite out of my ass.”
    â€œI’m going to go see him.”
    â€œThe fuck you are. If you so much as—”
    I hung up, splashed a little tap water on my face, and ran a quick check on the medicine cabinet. Viagra and crystal meth.
    â€œI was never here, Theodore,” I said, buzzing myself out his door.
    â€œIf only. Where’s my phone?”
    â€œI left it on the back of the crapper.”
    â€œYou fuck.”
    â€œWhy don’t you run it through the thermoluminescencer. That should take care of the germs.”

CHAPTER 4
    â€œAll mobile units proceed uptown immediately. Stay close. Oxford has eye.”
    J OHN O’N EILL AND I WENT BACK to 1993, to the World Trade Center bombing. Our employers were famously antagonistic, and we had done our best at first to keep the cats-and-dogs skit alive. O’Neill never stopped reminding me that he caught bank robbers for his living, while I robbed banks for mine. But sometimes our interests intersected—he put the bad guys behind bars, I turned them—and Ramzi Yousef and his fellow truck bombers eventually brought us together.
    I think I might have been the one to come up with the idea of pitching Jamal Mohammad. It doesn’t matter now. O’Neill agreed to run it as a joint op and even got things started by digging up some dirt on Jamal from his Black Panther days, back when he had been simply Earl Price. The dirt wouldn’t put Jamal behind bars, but it was enough for a gang-plank recruitment à la the Great Hew-Chatworth. And it wasn’t like we were asking for the moon. We just wanted Jamal to travel to Tehran every once in a while. He certainly had the revolutionary Islamic credentials to get in and out without a problem, no