White-tailed deer. Some two hundred yards off. A doe and two spotted fawns stepping from the forb and dogwood. Snouts to the ground, they browsed around the lone U.S. flag affixed to a pole of pine dowelling. Quite a sight against the grand sky. Nothing out there but the deer and the flag, flapping in the open range at a height of precisely five feet. The flag had been erected by the deer watcher, Ali Bakarat, a specialist in chemical engineering. Using an alias, Bakarat was identified as a professor from England. He was visiting the U.S. to attend an international symposium in Portland, Oregon. It had ended a week ago. He’d told American authorities that he was taking a holiday and driving across America to New York, before his return to London. Previously, he’d flown from Addis Ababa, to Algiers, Six Seconds 319 to Cairo, to Istanbul, Paris then London. None of which was known because he’d used counterfeit documents. His fingerprints and eye scan did not raise any red flags. He didn’t exist on any no-fly or Interpol watch lists.
