to tap a cable, they'd still have all the problems of sorting through the dreck. A technician told me once that so much data went through fiber-optics lines that to tap into it was like getting sprayed in the face by a high-pressure hose.' She had been told a cable as narrow as her wrist could carry an astronomical forty thousand phone conversations all at once, comparable to the entire trans-Atlantic voice traffic handled by satellites back in Cold War days. The way fiber-optics worked was to translate phone calls, faxes, e-mail messages, and data files into beams of light that traveled through a single strand of glass as thin as a human hair. Most undersea cables contained eight such strands, or fibers. But extracting the data required gaining access to the minute light beams in the ocean's black, high-pressure depths a dangerous, almost impossible task.
Peter grumbled agreement: 'Even if they had the time and technology to tap a cable, would they waste their time listening in to a million long-distance phone calls, give or take, discussing in detail Aunt Sarah's bunions and the Queen Mum's shocking gin intake? I doubt it.'
'Exactly,' Randi agreed.
As soon as the threesome reached the bare-bones office, Jon tapped his calling card number into the telephone on the desk. Then he entered the number he wanted in Washington. As he waited for it to ring, he pulled out the desk chair and sat. Peter leaned on a nearby desk, and Randi fell into an old, padded rocker.
A brisk female voice answered. 'Colonel Hakkim's office.'
'It's Jon Smith, Debbie. I need to talk to Newton. It's urgent.'
'Hold on.'
The strange vacuum of hold, and a man's concerned voice: 'Jon? What's up?'
'I'm in Madrid, and I need a favor. Could you send someone over to E block to the Leased Facilities Division and office 2E377, and have him tell the woman there to tell her boss to call Zapata at this number?' He read the number of the safe house phone. 'Make sure whoever you send uses that name Zapata. Can you do it?'
'Should I ask what this is all about or who's really in that office?'
'No.'
'Then I'll go myself.'
'Thanks, Newton.'
Newton's voice was cool and calm, but Jon heard anxiety, too. 'You'll have to tell me the whole story when you get back.'
'Count on it.' Jon hung up and checked his watch. 'It should take him about ten minutes. E block's a long way from his office. Figure another two minutes for contingencies. Twelve minutes, tops.'
Randi said, 'Leased Facilities Division? A cover for army intelligence, no doubt?'
'No doubt,' Jon said noncommittally.
Peter pressed a finger to his lips and padded to the shuttered front window, which was next to the shuttered door that opened onto the balcony. He angled the slats open a fraction wider and looked down at the dark street. He stood there motionless as the pulsing night sounds of the city drifted up from below the rumble of heavy traffic on the Gran Via, voices calling from windows down to the street, the slam of a car door, a drunk's serenade, a guitar's liquid chords.
Peter left the window and sank onto the sofa, relieved. 'False alarm I think.'
'What's wrong?' Randi asked.
'I thought I heard an odd sound from the street. It's something I've run across a few times before and learned rather quickly to heed.'
'I didn't hear anything unusual,' Jon said.
'You're not meant to, my boy. It's a blowing sound, with a tiny whistle at the center. It seems to be far away, the call of a weak whippoorwill, that simply fades away. In reality, it's a muted whistle no one actually hears. Resembles a random night sound the wind, an animal turning in sleep, the earth itself creaking as if it really were set in a three-pronged nest. I heard it more than once in northern Iran on the border of the old Soviet Union's central Asian republics, and in the 1980s I heard it in Afghanistan during that barbarous blowup. It's a signal used by the central Asian Muslim tribes. Rather close to night signals your Iroquois and Apache used.'
'The Crescent Shield?' Jon asked.
'Could be. But there was no answer to the call. Since I didn't hear it a second time, I was probably mistaken.'
'How often have you been wrong on a matter like that, Peter?' Jon said.
The ring of the telephone made them jump. Jon grabbed the receiver.
Fred Klein's voice said, 'We got everything back online, but the computer warfare specialists tell us that all the electronic encryption codes may have been cracked, so no one's to use any electronic communication until further notice. Nothing that goes through the air either, because that would be easy for them to tap into. Meanwhile, they're changing all the codes and developing emergency measures to protect them better. We've told them we think there's a DNA computer out there, and they've got to do more than try. Why Madrid? What did you find in Toledo?'
Without preamble, Jon reported, 'The Black Flame was a hired front. The Crescent Shield seems to be the real power behind everything. And Emile Chambord is alive. Unfortunately, the Crescent Shield has both him and his daughter and the DNA computer.'
There was a stunned silence. Klein said, 'You saw Chambord? How do you know about the computer?'
'I saw and talked to both Chambord and his daughter. The computer wasn't at that site.'
'Chambord alive explains how quickly they got the machine working, and makes the worldwide danger a hell of a lot worse. Especially if they have the daughter, too. They'll use her to control him.'
'Yeah,' Jon said.
Another silence. Klein said, 'You should've killed Chambord, Colonel.'
'The DNA computer wasn't there, Fred. I tried for the save, to get him out of there alive so he could build one for us to fight back. How do we know what they've forced Chambord to tell them? Maybe enough for another scientist to duplicate his work.'
'What if you don't get a second chance, Jon? What if we don't find him or the machine in time?'
'We will.'
'That's what I tell the president. But we both know there are no miracles, and the next time will be harder.'
It was Jon's turn to be silent. Then, 'I made a judgment call. That's what you pay me for. If in my judgment I can't pull Chambord out, or destroy the computer, I'll kill him. That make you happy?'
Klein's voice was as flat and hard as poured concrete. 'Can I count on you, Colonel? Or do I have to send someone else?'
'There's no one else who knows what I know. Not in the beginning, and especially not now.'
If the phone had been a television phone, they would have been staring each other down. Finally there was a slow outlet of breath in the far-off Pentagon. 'Tell me about this Crescent Shield. Never heard of them.'
'That's because they're newer and have stayed out of sight,' Jon told him, repeating what Randi had said. 'They're pan-Islamic, apparently pulled together for this specific attack by a man named Mauritania. He's'
'I know who he is, Jon. Only too well. Part Arab, part Berber, and with rage over the fate of his poor country and its starving people to add to his endemic Muslim and Third World rage about corporate globalization.'
'Which, in truth, motivates these terrorists more than their religion.'
'Yeah,' Klein said. 'What's your next step?'
'I'm with Randi Russell and Peter Howell now.' He filled Klein in on how Randi and Peter had shown up at the farmhouse of the Crescent Shield.
There was another surprised hesitation. 'Howell and Russell? CIA and MI6? What have you told them?'
'They're right here,' Jon said, letting him know he could say no more.
'You haven't told them about Covert-One?' Klein demanded.
'Of course not.' Jon kept the irritation from his voice.
'All right. Cooperate, but keep the confidence. Understood?'
Jon decided to let the admonition pass. 'We need anything and everything you can dig up about Mauritania's personal history. Any patterns he's shown. Where he's most likely to hole up, where we should look for him.'
Klein regrouped and said, 'I can tell you one thing. He'll have chosen a secure hole to hide in and a carefully planned target we won't like one bit.'
