disk’s directory, ignoring standard listings for off-the-shelf commercial word processing, communications, and accounting programs. If he didn’t find anything else more intriguing, he could always go back through those hunting for signs someone had buried other, less innocent pieces of code inside them.
As he had expected, a few of the disk’s sectors were damaged rendered unreadable when the bullet clipped its casing but most were fine.
Paige stopped scrolling when he reached a program whose name he did not recognise: BABEL.EXE. He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, well, well… how very cute.”
Someone the FBI was interested in had a very dry sense of humor.
He probed deeper into the program, summoning up its inner workings. Line after line appeared on the screen an intricate interweaving of complex algorithms clearly intended to turn plain text into meaningless gibberish and back again. Paige smiled. Pay dirt.
To make absolutely sure he was right, he fed one of the pieces of E-mail intercepted from CompuNet into the suspected program. Seconds later, a complete, plain-text message flashed onto his screen.
Paige read through the translated E-mail once in surprise and then a second time in growing horror. Still staring at his monitor, he reached out for the phone on his desk and punched in an internal number. “This is Greg Paige with Group T. I need to speak to the deputy director. Right away!”
The Pentagon Rossini poked his head into Peter Thorn’s office.. “Pete? I think you’d better come see this.” The Maestro sounded strained.
Thorn looked up from the investigative reports Flynn had faxed over from the terrorist safe house, slowly realising that he had been staring at them for minutes without really seeing them. His brain still seemed to be functioning at half-speed. Despite his determination to throw himself into his work, he was finding it difficult to focus on anything beyond Helen Gray. So far his hourly phone calls to Walter Reed had yielded little more than the news that she was still in critical condition and still in intensive care.
He made an effort to gather his scattered thoughts. “See what?”
“The NSA found the encryption program they were looking for on that computer Helen captured. They’re downloading the complete set of decoded E-mail from our terrorist friends into our database now.” Rossini looked almost ill. “It contains a damned ugly surprise.”
Thorn was on his feet instantly, following the older man next door into his cramped office.. “Show me.”
Rossini handed him a printout without comment. A time/date stamp at the top showed that it had been transmitted from London on October 12.
Special Operations Order MAGI Prime via MACI Link to LION Prime:
1. Activate Phase 11 of SCIMITAR.
2. Your field operations will commence on 5 November. Target selection BRAVO TWO is approved.
3. Go with God.
Message Authentication: TALEH, MAGI Prime, VXE115
Thorn stared down at the printout in his hands in shock. Taleh? Amir Taleh had organised this terror campaign? The terrorists posing as American extremists were Taleh’s creatures? His friend was the man responsible for these atrocities against innocent civilians? The man ultimately responsible for Helen’s terrible injuries? The man whose actions might cost him the one person who meant more to him than anyone else in the world?
It was insane utterly unbelievable. How could the man who had been like a brother to him all those years ago be capable of such evil? How could Taleh have changed so much?
Thorn’s face darkened. Maybe Taleh had not changed after all. Perhaps the evil had always been inside him a core of malice hidden behind a mask of honor and friendship.
He crushed the sheet in his hands without thinking, caught up in cascading images of the past months. The Iranian had conducted a brilliant and cunning masquerade to conceal his true intentions. Taleh’s attacks on the HizbAllah, his push for renewed U.S.-lranian diplomatic relations, and even his offer to help track down the missing Bosnian terrorists all had been nothing more than a gigantic deception, a blindfold pulled over American eyes while he readied his organised butchery.
Thorn tossed the crumpled printout aside in sudden, blind fury. Clearly, he had been one of the Iranian’s favorite dupes a trusting conduit of disinformation to the highest reaches of America’s counterterrorist forces. His hands curled into fists. The bastard had used him. Taleh had asked him to come to Iran to renew their friendship and to seek new ties with America all the while plotting to use his old friend’s trust as a shield for this murderous campaign.
Brought face-to-face with the magnitude of the Iranian’s treachery, Thorn’s whole view of the world wavered. He was accustomed to making fast, accurate judgments about people and then trusting those judgments with his life. Taleh’s betrayal struck at the heart of his confidence, weakening his own faith in himself.
His breathing slowed as reason returned. The anger remained, but it was now an icy, calculating enmity.
Amir Taleh was obviously a man of hidden malice, but he was not a fool. The Iranian must have realized that the United States would eventually discover his nation’s responsibility for this terrorist offensive. No sane man could hope to keep so large an operation secret forever. He had to know the kind of awful vengeance that would descend on Iran’s head once his duplicity became clear.
Peter Thorn stood motionless in Rossini’s office, staring at nothing while his mind grappled with questions that seemed to have no rational answer. Why would Taleh involve himself and his country in this slaughter? What could he possibly gain that would make the inevitable price worth paying?
It was well past midnight.
Thorn and Rossini sat on opposite sides of a desk piled high with maps, satellite photos, transcripts of intercepted Iranian military communications, and reports published by a dozen different U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies. Some of the data came from the files pulled together earlier that year by the Maestro’s tiny team trying to track down those first rumors of Bosnian Muslim terrorists. More had been scraped up by JSOC–ILU researchers held long after normal hours and sent out to scour the Pentagon’s voluminous databases. After reading through Taleh’s E-mail to his terrorist teams, Thorn had put the entire unit on a de facto war footing.
Both men were exhausted, but neither of them was willing to break for sleep. Their growing certainty that Taleh had something else up his sleeve something even worse than the terrorist campaign drove them onward.
Thorn put down the fragmentary telecommunications intercept he’d been studying, pulled a map of Iran closer to him, and scrawled a hasty note on the map next to one of the Iranian Army’s garrison cities.
Rossini looked up from his own pile of papers. “Another one?”
“Yeah.” Thorn slid the intercept across to the older man. “One of our VORTEX satellites picked up part of a conversation between the commander of the 25th Parachute Brigade and one of his battalion COs. They’re going to full readiness all leaves canceled, extra practice jumps, full equipment draw. The works.”
“Jesus.” Rossini scanned the sheet quickly and then eyeballed the map Thorn had been working on. “There’s a hell of a lot of movement going on over there, Pete.”
Thorn nodded. Although the picture of recent Iranian military activity they’d been putting together was by no means complete, it was increasingly ominous. Significant portions of more than six elite Iranian divisions were either in motion or preparing to move somewhere. Air and naval units scattered across the Islamic Republic were also being brought to higher states of alert.
So far, no one else in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities had spotted the full scope of the Iranian maneuvers. That was understandable. Viewed in isolation, the various clues and bits of evidence meant very little. Few analysts were in a position to see all of the information gathered by America’s satellites, signals intercept stations, and spies. Lulled by Taleh’s phony U.S.-lran detente and immobilised by the terrorist attacks at home, nobody in authority had paid much attention to the tiny warning bells going off.
“Colonel? Maestro? You got a minute?” Mike McFadden came bustling in, clearly excited.
“What’ve you got, Mike?” Thorn asked.
“This just came down the wire from Langley. It’s a summary of the latest Satcom transmission from that
