shrugged. “After that it disappears.” His eyes were wild. “But bin Laden has the number, so we know where it showed up.”
“Okay, who are these friends of yours in Amsterdam?” It was the news he’d been expecting, and yet it was none the less frightening.
“Just kids,” Rencke said. “Their parents were the ones who hacked the system over at Lawrence Livermore in the eighties. Only way we found out about it was because they’d screwed up the payroll section. Wouldn’t balance.”
“Think they can get back into the FSB system?”
“The Russians aren’t spending much on security, but their encryption programs are still pretty good. What do you want them to look for?”
“I want to know what the FSB is doing about this. They sure as hell wouldn’t tell me if I picked up the phone and called Kuznetsov.” Anatoli Kuznetsov was the director of the Federal Security Service, which was the new KGB.
“They got in that far, they could take the next step.” Otto grinned again, which he did whenever he was contemplating doing something illegal. “I can give them a little incentive.”
McGarvey gave him a hard look. “I brought you back to help out, not to give away the store.”
“Mac, this is worth it, if we can stop the bastard. The next time out ain’t gonna be so pretty. All I’m giving them is an encryption buster. An old one we don’t use anymore.”
“Okay, so what about the guy with bin Laden that Alien told us about?”
“I came up with a dozen possibilities, but I’ve gone as far with them as I can without more hard information. A description from another source, something in his handwriting, maybe a strand of hair, or a recording of his voice. Anything.”
“Maybe I can help with that.”
Otto’s eyes went wide. “Come on, Mac, you’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me now, are you? Bzz, wrong answer, recruit. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
McGarvey smiled sadly for his friend. Candide once said that optimism is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly. He’d never been guilty of that frame of mind, or of its opposite, though both were common maladies in Washington. He was going to drop a bombshell in the President’s lap, and he hoped the man was up to the decisions he was going to have to start making. A lot of lives depended on it. But Otto was as naive as he was brilliant. One of his failings was trying to keep his friends out of harm’s way. Maybe it was a failing they all should have.
The DDO’s conference room was a long, windowless space that was mechanically and electronically isolated from the rest of the building, and from the outside world. Anything said or done in the room was completely safe from any kind of eavesdropping. The weakest links were the people who gathered here, and McGarvey knew and trusted all of them. It was all he’d ever had, all he’d ever wanted and worked for — trust. Now that he had it he was afraid of letting his friends down.
When he arrived at 1:25 a.m. all nine of his staff members were seated and waiting for him. They included Dick Adkins, his assistant deputy director of operations; Randy
Bock, chief of Foreign Intelligence which was in charge of espionage activities; Jared Kraus, Technical Services; Scott Graves, Counterintelligence; Arthur Hendrickson, in charge of the Covert Action section, which was responsible for propaganda and disinformation; Raife Melloch, Missions and Programs; David Whittaker, the area divisions chief in charge of the CIA’s bases, stations and missions worldwide; Brenda Jordan, Operational Services, which came up with cover stories and legends for field agents; and Otto Rencke.
“Good morning,” McGarvey said, taking his place at the head of the long table. “Thanks for coming in, but it’s going to be a long night, so take your coffee strong and black.”
Everyone around the table was angry and pumped up. One of their own had been murdered. But worse than that, his family had been killed too. They would have no trouble staying awake this night.
“As you know by now, our Riyadh chief of station Alien Trumble, his wife and two children, and two other innocent bystanders were shot to death seven and a half hours ago in the parking lot of Disney’s EPCOT in Orlando. This was not a simple drive-by shooting, it was a carefully planned operation carried out by professionals. Our first tasks are to find out who ordered the hit and why.”
“I don’t think there’s any question about that,” Adkins said. His eyes were on fire, he looked like an angry pit bull ready to attack.
“I don’t agree,” McGarvey replied sharply. “So I want all of you to go into this with open minds. There are no foregone conclusions. Clear?”
Heads nodded, but he could see their skepticism and reluctance.
“We’re going to generate a SNIE this morning, which I want on my desk no later than 0800.” National Intelligence Estimates, which listed targets for the entire U.S. intelligence community, estimates of future international events and enemy strengths, a technical intelligence review, and decisions on which product was to be shared with which
U.S. allies, were usually generated once a week. They came from the U.S. Intelligence Board made up of the director of Central Intelligence, the heads of the military intelligence branches, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, FBI, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Treasury Department. Special National Intelligence Estimates were done by any of the agencies on an incident basis. The purpose of the documents was to brief the President and the nation’s top policy makers on whatever crisis the U.S. was faced with. “If it’s a fact, state it. But if it’s a wild-ass guess, make that clear too.”
“Where are you taking this, Mac?” Adkins asked. “Because from where we’re sitting it looks pretty clear. Alien met with bin Laden and a week later he was assassinated. At least one of the shooters had a connection.”
“Okay, that goes in the SNIE as your guess, or as a consensus estimate. The Bureau thinks there’s a strong possibility that the other three shooters took a commercial flight out of Orlando to Havana. I want our resources there to see what they can come up with. But I don’t want anyone burned trying to get to the air crews in Havana this morning. They’ll be back in Miami or Orlando later this morning.
“Fred Rudolph is handling the Bureau’s investigation, so it’ll be a good one. But I’m telling you now that he thinks the Jersey City trucking company where Yousef was apparently employed hasn’t been a bin Laden operation for five years. I want you to keep that in mind.
“I want you to keep a number of other things in mind too. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, something bin Laden’s followers always do, even if he doesn’t take any of the blame personally. Alien met with him in Khartoum, so why’d they wait for him to come home to kill him? And bin Laden told Alien that he wanted to meet with someone else. Someone with more authority, which means he might have something on his mind that he wants to talk about.”
“Maybe he just wants to burn a bigger fish,” Whittaker said. Trumble’s murder had devastated him. His chiefs of stations were family.
“That’s a possibility too,” McGarvey said. “And I want it in the SNIE. But we’ve been waiting for bin Laden to pull off something big. I believe he’s made his plans, and now he’s having second thoughts. He really does want to talk to someone.”
“Bullshit, Mac,” Adkins exploded, “He’s setting up a trap and someone’s supposed to walk into it?”
McGarvey didn’t mind the outburst. He expected nothing less than complete honesty from his staff, and they gave it to him. “Maybe, maybe not. But if he wanted to lure someone else close enough to take the shot, why kill Alien and his family?” McGarvey shook his head. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well then, who did it?” Adkins asked, frustrated.
“One of bin Laden’s people who might be afraid that his boss is getting cold feet.”
“It’s a warning?” Whittaker asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“It could be that they don’t want bin Laden talking to us.”
“If we lay that on his doorstep, whoever’s behind this has to know he’d be risking another missile attack on their camps,” Jared Kraus said. “Makes him either very stupid, or a man who knows something that we don’t.”
“Or thinks he does,” McGarvey said. “Bin Laden gave Alien a serial number that Otto has found a match for.”
Rencke had loaded his briefing into the large-screen rear projection television monitor built into the wall at
