Teeth of the Tiger

'Just let me wear my utilities again, buddy. I like being a Marine. You always know where you stand.'

'Yeah, in the middle of the shit,' Dominic observed.

'Maybe so, but you work with a better class of guys there.' And, he didn't add, they were all on your side, and they all carried automatic weapons. It made for a feeling of security rarely found in civilian life.

'Going out to lunch, eh?' Alexander said.

'Tomorrow, maybe,' Dominic answered. 'Then we need to arrange a proper burial for Aldo's running shoes. We got a can of Lysol around here, Pete?'

Alexander had himself a good laugh. 'I thought you'd never ask.'

'You know, Dominic,' Brian said, looking up from his eggs, 'if you weren't my brother, I wouldn't take this crap off of you.'

'Really?' The FBI Caruso tossed him an English muffin. 'I swear, you Marines are all talk. I always used to whip him when we were kids,' he added for Pete's benefit.

Brian's eyes nearly popped out of his head: 'My ass!'

And another training day got started.

* * *

An hour later, Jack was back on his workstation. Uda bin Sali had enjoyed another athletic night, with Rosalie Parker again. He must like her a lot. Ryan wondered how the Saudi would react if he knew that after every session she gave a play-by-play to the British Security Service. But for her, business was business, which would have deflated a lot of male egos in the British capital. Sali surely had one of those, Junior thought. Wills came in at quarter to nine with a bag of Dunkin' Donuts.

'Hey, Anthony. What's shakin'?'

'You tell me,' Wills shot back. 'Doughnut?'

'Thanks, buddy. Well, Uda had some more exercise last night.'

'Ah, youth, a wonderful thing, but wasted on the young.'

'George Bernard Shaw, right?'

'I knew you were literate. Sali discovered a new toy a few years back, and I guess he's going to play with it till it breaks — or falls off. Must be tough duty for his shadow team, standing out in the cold rain and knowing he's getting his weasel greased upstairs.' It was a line from the Sopranos on HBO, which Wills admired.

'You suppose they're the ones who debrief her?'

'No, that's a job for the guys over at Thames House. Must get old after a while. Pity they don't send us all the transcripts, though,' he added with a chuckle. 'Might be good for getting the blood flowing in the morning.'

'Thanks, I can always buy a Hustler at the magazine store if I feel scuzzy some night.'

'It's not a clean business we're in, Jack. The kind of people we look at, they aren't the kind you invite over for dinner.'

'Hey, White House, remember? Half the people we hosted for a State Dinner — Dad could hardly shake hands with them. But Secretary Adler told him it was business, and so Dad had to be nice to the sunzabitches. Politics attracts some really scummy people, too.'

'Amen. So, anything else new on Sali?'

'I haven't gone over yesterday's money moves yet. Hey, if Cunningham stumbles over anything significant, what happens next?'

'That's up to Gerry and the senior staff.' You're way too junior to get your panties in a wad about that, he didn't add, though the young Ryan got the message anyway.

* * *

'Well, Dave?' Gerry Hendley was asking upstairs.

'He's laundering money and sending some of it off to persons unknown. Liechtenstein bank. If I had to guess, it's to cover credit card accounts. You can get a Visa or MasterCard through that particular bank, and so it could well be to cover credit card accounts for persons unknown. Could be a mistress or a close friend, or somebody in whom we might have direct interest.'

'Any way to find out?' Tom Davis asked.

'They use the same accounting program most banks do,' Cunningham answered, meaning that with a little patience, The Campus could crack their way inside and learn more. There were firewalls in the way, of course. It was a job better left to the National Security Agency, and so the trick was to get NSA to task one of its computer weenies to do the cracking. That would mean faking a request by CIA to do the job, and that, the accountant figured, was a little harder to accomplish than just typing a note into a computer terminal. He also suspected that The Campus had someone inside both intelligence agencies who could do the faking so that no discernible paper trail would be left behind.

'Is it strictly necessary?'

'Maybe in a week or so, I can find more data. This Sali guy might just be a rich kid playing stickball out in the traffic, but… but my nose tells me he's a player of some sort,' Cunningham admitted. He'd developed good instincts over the years, as a result of which two former Mafia kingpins were now living in solitary cells at Marion, Illinois. But he didn't trust his own instincts as well as his former and current superiors did. A career accountant with a foxhound's nose, he was also very conservative in talking about it.

'A week, you think?'

Dave nodded. 'About that.'

'How's the Ryan kid?'

'Good instincts. He found something most people would have missed. Maybe his youth works for him. Young target, young bloodhound. Usually, it doesn't work. This time… looks like maybe it did. You know, when his dad appointed Pat Martin to be Attorney General, I heard some things about Big Jack. Pat really liked him, and I worked with Mr. Martin enough to respect him a lot. This kid may be going places. It'll take about ten years to be sure of that, of course.'

'We're not supposed to believe in breeding over here, Dave,' Tom Davis observed.

'Numbers is numbers, Mr. Davis. Some people have a good nose, some don't. He doesn't yet, not really, but he's sure heading that way.' Cunningham had helped start the Justice Department's Special Accounting Unit, which specialized in tracking terrorist money. Everyone needed money to operate, and money always left a trail somewhere, but it was often found after the fact more easily than before. Good for investigations, but not as good for active defense.

'Thanks, Dave,' Hendley said in dismissal. 'Keep us posted, if you would.'

'Yes, sir.' Cunningham gathered his papers and made his way out.

'You know, he'd be a little more effective if he had a personality,' Davis said fifteen seconds after the door closed.

'Nobody's perfect, Tom. He's the best guy they ever had at Justice for this sort of thing. I bet when he fishes, there's nothing left in the lake after he leaves.'

'No argument here, Gerry.'

'So, this Sali gent might be a banker for the bad guys?'

'It looks like a possibility. Langley and Fort Meade are still in a dither over the current situation,' Hendley went on.

'I've seen the paperwork. It's a whole lot of paper for not much hard data.' In the business of intelligence analysis, you got into the speculation phase too rapidly, the point when experienced analysts started applying fear to existing data, following it to God knew where, trying to read the minds of people who didn't speak all that much, even to each other. Might there be people out there with anthrax or smallpox in little bottles in their shaving kits? How the hell could you tell? That had been done once to America, but when you got down to it everything had been done once to America, and while it had given the country the confidence that her people could deal with damned near anything, it had also given Americans the realization that bad things could indeed happen here and that those responsible might not always be identifiable. The new President did not convey any assurance that we'd be able to stop or punish such people. That was a major problem in and of itself.