“Just a partial, ma’am. But we have an area trace on the originating signal. It looks like it came from right here in the D.C. area. But it was masked, so that’s about the best we can do.”
“I want to hear this myself. I’m on my way.” Ritter unplugged her headset and went back to Morgan’s console. At thirty-two Ritter was the single mother of twin eight-year old girls. She’d joined the navy right out of college, and because she was overweight, and in her own estimation not all that pretty, she had decided to make the navy a career. It was a good choice because she was very intelligent, yet good with detail, and she was very dedicated, in part because she figured she’d never get married and she needed to support her girls and her mother, who was their nanny. The world was tough, but as she imagined her movie star hero Kathy Bates would say: A woman’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.
Morgan’s console was the third from the end. He was temporarily offline, his monitor showing the signal and content processing programs at work chewing on it.
“What do we have, Mark?” Ritter plugged her headset in. Morgan looked up and gave her a smile. Although he was eight years younger than her, she thought that he was devastatingly handsome. The problem was he knew it.
“Vorep gives it a ninety-seven percent bin Laden.” Morgan hit the replay button. “What we have so far from the machine translation will come up in the box.”
There was silence at first, then a series of tones as the signal made its way through the telephone exchange in Rome. “Ahlan, wa sahlan,” a young man’s voice came over her headset. “Hello,” the single word came up in the box on the monitor.
Ritter pressed her headset a little tighter, and listened to the rest of the conversation, which lasted just one minute and three seconds. Both men sounded as if they were under extreme stress, she read that part easily.
“Okay, it looks as if we’ve bagged bin Laden, but who is Bahmad? And what happened to the translation program near the end?”
“Vorep has nothing on Bahmad, and it’d be my guess that they switched to a local dialect that we don’t have.” Besides being good looking, Morgan was brilliant. His father was a special agent with the FBI, and with less than six months to go on his enlistment a number of companies were beginning to make him offers. As his release date got closer the NSA would offer him a deal as well. Like a lot of civilians working for the agency, he would be doing the same job only making four or five times as much money as the navy paid him. Ritter was afraid, however, that if she quit the navy hoping for better pay, which she needed, no one would make the offer.
“Replay the second half,” she said.
Morgan ran the last part of the telephone conversation again, and this time Ritter could hear the change in dialects, though the translation program was still running a blank. “Try Russian,” she said.
Morgan switched languages with a couple of keystrokes. This time the computer came up with a number of words; some like water buffalo and barn animals that didn’t seem to make any sense in the context, but others, like daughter, package, enroute and timetable, that did.
“Okay, this looks like what the CIA wanted,” Ritter announced, straightening up. “I’ll take it from here and get it over to Langley. In the meantime I want you to clear your board and stick with the Rome exchange.” She gave him a warm smile. “Good job, Mark, but keep your eyes open, I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Morgan replied. He said it like Ritter had told him something so obvious it was stupid.
Ritter caught the inflection. He was a little shit, and one of these days someone was going to bring him down a notch for his own good. But that didn’t change the fact he was cute.
“Do you think that bin Laden will accept the President’s apology?” Kathleen asked after breakfast.
“He might,” McGarvey said, putting on his jacket. He came over and kissed her on the cheek. “What would you think about getting out of Washington for a while?”
“Would you come with me?” She looked up at him, knowing full well what his answer would be. He shook his head. “Do you think that he’ll send someone to harm Elizabeth because of what we did to his daughter?”
“It’s possible.”
“Fine.” Her old attitude of disgust showed on her face, but then she softened. She was working at it. “In that case she’s right where she belongs, by her father’s side. And me leaving town wouldn’t do a thing to help.”
“It won’t always be like this—”
Kathleen laughed softly. “You’ve said that before. Tell me something new.”
“I love you.”
“That’s better.” She reached up and kissed him. “Maybe we can do something this weekend.”
“Check the movies, see what’s playing,” McGarvey said. He got his car keys and left the house. It was a few minutes after eight and the morning was warm and muggy, it was going to be a hot day. He waved at the security officer in the van across the street and was about to get into his car when Elizabeth pulled up in her bright yellow VW, a big smile on her round, pretty face.
She jumped out of her car, came over and gave her father a kiss. “Morning, daddy. How’s Mother?”
“Fine. Are you just getting off work?”
She nodded. “But I got Otto to promise to get a couple of hours of rest, and I came over to pick up a few of my things.”
“Anything new?”
Her face darkened. “Nothing yet, but Otto won’t give up. I think he’d work himself to death if somebody wasn’t there to watch out for him.”
“I’ll make sure he gets some sleep this morning. Why don’t you go home and do the same yourself, you look as though you could use it. If something comes up I’ll give you a call.”
She suddenly looked embarrassed. “I won’t be there,” she said.
“Are you staying here?”
“I’ve moved in with Todd.” She girded herself for a storm, but McGarvey just gave his daughter a smile.
“He’s a good man. Don’t give him a hard time, he doesn’t deserve it.”
Elizabeth’s jaw dropped open. “Dad?”
McGarvey laughed. “Good luck breaking the news to your mother though.”
Rencke was lying on top of his conference table, which was strewn with notes, computer printouts, files and photographs. He’d managed to catch only a half-hour of rest when the call to his office number rolled over to the cell phone in his pocket. He had his computer tied to his phone as well. If one of his search engines came up with something it would automatically notify him. But this was a human call, the ring was different.
He answered it without sitting up or opening his eyes. “Yes?” He hadn’t slept in four days, and he felt gritty.
“Otto, this is Johanna at Fort Meade. I have something for you. A call from a man named Bahmad to Osama bin Laden through what looks like a relay service provider in Rome.”
Rencke sat straight up as if his tailbone had been plugged into a light socket. “When?” “Just a few minutes ago. We don’t know where bin Laden is located, but the originating call came from somewhere in the D.C. area.”
Rencke held the phone in the crook of his neck, pulled his laptop over and brought up the NSA’s mainframe. “What were they speaking, Johanna? Arabic, English, Russian? What?”
“Egyptian Arabic at first, but then they switched to another dialect, probably northern Afghani. The Russian translator program picked out a few words. But when I tried using a blend — Russian and Arabic — the program just locked up.”
“I’ve got your console, do you have a password?”
“Just a sec, I’ll download the file.”
The screen split in three. On the left the Arabic text came up. In the middle the same text came up in the Western alphabet. And on the right the incomplete translation came up.
Rencke was having trouble focusing, having a hard time accepting what he was seeing on the screen. Almost never did the thing they were looking for drop out of the sky into their laps. Most of the time it was a guessing game. But not this time. Daughter, enroute, package, timetable. The message could not have been plainer.
