“Why the shit eatin’ grin, Joe?”
“B amp;R played a hunch that this Rashani guy had his own jet. Bingo! He did. According to the flight plan, he went to Madinah for the Hajj. There’s a filed flight plan for his return from Mecca to France next week. But here’s the thing — in between, the plane is making a quick trip to New York. How’s that figure?”
“That’s easy; he either ducked out of the Hajj, came here, picked up some White Castles and got back fast before anybody noticed, or he gave someone a free ride?” Bill said as he closed the folder with the draft of his speech in it.
“Pretty sweet $32,000 trip even without the murder burgers.”
“Anyone ask the pilots?”
“Saudi Air Force interviewed the crew. They say it was a friend of Rashani who they were ordered to fly to New York.”
“And…”
“No name, and here’s why: in addition to be being the biggest producer of film in Iran, Rashani is also, and wow what a surprise this is, the Minister of Film for Iran.”
“So he’s got DPL disease!”
“And, unfortunately, so does his aircraft.”
“So no documentation of who came in?”
“No. I think this is a probably a screw up, because the only record is that it was Rashani.”
“Wait. I’m confused. He did come here for belly bombs?”
“Someone says it was Rashani. Even though the pilots say it wasn’t him.”
“Okay, Mr. FBI, what’s your working theory?”
“As far as I can tell, some guy walks into the U.S. off Rashani’s plane; some rent-a-cop at private aviation says, ‘Welcome Mr. Rashani,’ and the passenger says, ‘Thank you,’ and he is out of there.”
“Find that guard and find the new Mr. Rashani.”
“That’s what B amp;R are doing. They’re two hours out of New York now. They’ll talk to the security hack, pick up the trail, and track whoever this was down in a manner that would take us, minimum, a few days, if you know what I mean?”
“You know, too bad I just thought of this, but I wonder if those guys are cleared for domestic work.
“Good point. Find out quick!”
“Let me check with someone,” Bill said as he looked down at something Joey had slid across his desk. “What’s this?”
“You like it?”
“I don’t know… a football?”
“Catchy, don’t you think?”
Bill was looking at the familiar blue and yellow seal of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, which was just like the large OSTP one above his desk, but modified with the words “Quarterback Operations Group” in the lower arc that usually read “Office of Science and Technology Policy.” Right under the eagle’s tail was a little football! “Joey, where did this come from?”
“I had Dara the new kid in communications do it up. She’s a whiz with Photoshop.”
“First of all, the Office of Protocol is going to have a shit fit if they see this.”
“Why?”
“Numb-nuts, it’s the government. I’m sure there are no less than 55 people who have sign off on shit like this.”
Joey reluctantly retrieved the glossy print-out from Bill’s desk. “You know, sometimes you can be a real joy killer.”
Bill sighed and took it back from Joey. “Okay, let me look into this, but no promises.” He placed it under the speech folder and laughed under his breath. “Football.”
Half the ‘boiler room’ was now full, Dariush thought as he started his shift. A few years back, there were three translators at the Farsi Desk. Now half of the 108 listening stations here in the giant room in West Virginia were staffed 24/7 with more translators coming on line all the time. The output from NSA listening posts of phone, e-mail, military, and commercial traffic in Farsi and other Middle East languages was a booming business. Cable and satellite networks like Al Jazeera and others weren’t even covered in this room and probably had four times the numbers of translators and monitors. His review list was set by his supervisor. The loose suitcase nuke had everyone working overtime and tonight would be another 14-hour shift.
The first audio file he opened, earmarked OF#3DF23, was a tap of an optical fiber and from the hexadecimal code, 3DF23. He calculated in his head that it was the 253,731st capture from optical fiber this calendar year. His real knack, aside from languages, was his ability to detangle stuff like hexadecimal code in his head, which is why he was the chief decoder in the Farsi section. He played the file and understood it to be a chirp warble of an encoded data string. He patched it through a digital analyzer and rotated the step knob. At modulo, 13 he got a hit — the output stopped being random and started having repeating, intentional patterns. What followed was a cryptogram of sorts, a grouping of letters that meant something to a key index. What the key was, was the hard part to figure out and this prevented him from identifying the meaning of the data string.
He looked at the arrangement and pattern of the letters and something caught his eye. It was t-y-y-f-q-r-q- b-s. Seemingly meaningless except that if the modulo held for the length of the word, then it was a letter followed by two of the same letters followed by a letter followed by the same letter that was following the next letter, then two other letters. It wasn’t a word but the “footprint” of a word, as he liked to think of it. Also, it was probably a word in Farsi that had to be translated to English. But it could also be any language translated into any language, or not a word at all but a number. He called his superior and asked for some Cray time.
The House Oversight Committee on Intelligence is a tough crowd, but they control the purse strings for all the spook houses of the U.S. Therefore, you have to play nice with them if you need something done, like grant unprecedented powers — a.k.a. license to kill — to two grunts in hot pursuit. So it was with cautious trepidation that Ray Reynolds sat beside Hiccock in a top secret, hastily called, closed door meeting of the committee. Being populated by politicians, the members spent a half hour peppering Ray with criticisms of administration policy. Hiccock remained patient and took his cues from Ray. The Chief of Staff knew how the game was played, and Bill wasn’t going to start worrying unless he saw sweat on Ray’s forehead. Hiccock was under strict orders not to speak unless specifically addressed. If he answered anything, it was not to be a syllable more than the bare minimum.
Things didn’t seem to be going well at all, what with the Congressmen lining up to take their punches at Ray and the rest of the administration. At last, the chairman called for a voice vote: there were seven yeas and nine nays. The committee then adjourned.
Hiccock was stunned. “That’s it?”
Ray swallowed but kept a poker face. “That’s it, Bill.”
“They can’t…”
“They just did. Let’s get back to the House.”
“Wait…”
“It’s over, Bill. Live to fight another day.”
Bill looked at the committee members collecting their stuff and preparing to leave, then at Ray. He then broke the first commandment of his office and spoke aloud.
“Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman.”
“Bill, don’t,” Ray snapped as he grabbed his arm.
“Mr. Chairman, right now there is a group of men, terrorists to be sure. They may be here in Washington, New York, or your home state of Iowa. They need no permission from any committee, they are bound by no U.S. law, and they have no constituents. But more importantly, they have no reservations about killing millions of Americans. You have just played into their hands. You have just hog-tied us, while amazingly not encumbering them in the least. We are not talking about probability here. It is a fact that they have a nuclear device and they will, they will, they will… detonate it on American soil. Maybe right in this very building. I implore you: do not let politics as usual or some political hard-on you may be carrying for the President be a death sentence for millions of Americans.
