were literally billions of random digital numbers. Each letter he typed was randomly transformed into something else and transmitted to the M ERCURY room at Langley. Here the incoming signal was recorded. A communications technician selected the proper description disc from the secure library, slid it into his own machine, and pressed a button. Within seconds, a laser printer generated two pages of cleartext message. This was sealed in an envelope and handed to a messenger, who made for the seventh-floor office of the Deputy Director.
“Dr. Ryan, the dispatch you were waiting for.”
“Thank you.” Jack signed for it. “Dr. Goodley, you're going to have to excuse me for a moment.”
“No problem.” Ben went back to his pile of papers.
Ryan pulled the dispatch out and read it slowly and carefully twice. Then he picked up the phone and asked for a secure line to Camp David.
“Command center,” a voice answered.
“This is Dr. Ryan at Langley. I need to talk to the Boss.”
“Wait one, sir,” the Navy chief petty officer replied. Ryan lit a cigarette.
This is the President,' a new voice said.
“Mr. President, this is Ryan. I have a fragment of conversation off the 747.”
“So soon?”
“It was made before engine startup, sir. We have an unidentified voice — we think it's the PM — saying that he made the deal.” Jack read off three lines verbatim.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” Fowler breathed. “You know, with evidence like that I could prosecute a guy.”
“I thought you'd want this fast, sir. I can fax you the initial transcript. The full one will take until twenty-one hundred or so.”
“It'll be nice to have something to read after the game. Okay, send it up.” The line went dead.
“You're welcome, sir,” Jack said into the phone.
“It is time,” Ghosn said.
“Okay.” Russell stood up and got into his heavy coat. It would be a really cold one outside. The predicted high temperature was six above, and they were not there yet. A bitter northeast wind was sweeping down out of Nebraska, where it was even colder. The only good thing about that was the clear sky it brought. Denver is also a city with a smog problem, made all the worse by winter-temperature inversions. But today the sky was literally cloudless, and to the west Marvin could see streams of snow being blown off the Front Range peaks like white banners. Surely it was auspicious, and the clear weather meant that the flight out of Stapleton would not be delayed as he had feared a few days before. He started the engine of the van, rehearsing his lines and going over the plan as he allowed the vehicle to heat. Marvin turned to look at the cargo. Almost a ton of super-high explosives, Ibrahim had said. That would really piss people off. Next he got into the rental car and started that one, too, flipping the heater all the way on. Shame that Commander Qati felt so bad. Maybe it was nerves, Russell thought.
A few minutes later, they came out. Ghosn got in next to Marvin. He was nervous, too.
“Ready, man?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Russell dropped the van into reverse and backed out of the parking place. He pulled forward, checking that the rental car was following, then headed off the parking lot onto the highway.
The drive to the stadium required only a few uneventful minutes. The police were out in force, and he saw that Ghosn was eyeing them very carefully. Marvin was not concerned. The cops were only there for traffic control, after all, and they were just standing around, since the traffic had scarcely begun. It was almost six hours till game time. He turned off the road onto the parking lot at the media entrance, and there was a cop he had to talk to. Qati had already broken off, and was now circling a few blocks away. Marvin stopped the van and rolled his window down.
“Howdy,” he said to the cop.
Officer Pete Dawkins of the Denver City Police was already cold, despite the fact that he was a native Coloradan. He was supposed to guard the media and VIP gate, a post he'd been stuck with only because he was a very junior officer. The senior guys were in warmer spots.
“Who are you?” Dawkins asked.
“Tech staff,” Russell replied. This is the media gate, right?'
“Yeah, but you're not on my list.” There was a limited number of available spaces in the VIP lot, and Dawkins couldn't just let anyone in.
“Tape machine broke in the ”A“ unit over there,” Russell explained with a wave. “We had to bring down a backup.”
“Nobody told me,” the police officer observed.
“Nobody told me either until six last night. We had to bring the goddamned thing down from Omaha.” Russell waved his clipboard rather vaguely. Out of sight in the back, Ghosn was scarcely breathing.
“Why didn't they fly it down?”
“'Cause FedEx don't work on Sunday, man, and the damned thing's too big to get through the door of a Lear. I ain't complaining, man. I'm Chicago tech staff, okay? I'm Network. I get triple-time-and-a-half for this shit, away from home, special event, weekend overtime.”
“That sounds pretty decent,” Dawkins observed.
“Better'n a week's normal pay, man. Keep talking, officer.” Russell grinned. “This is a buck and a quarter a minute, y'know?”
“You must have a hell of a union.”
“We sure do.” Marvin laughed.
“You know where to take it?”
“No problem, sir.” Russell pulled off. Ghosn let out a long breath as the van started moving again. He'd listened to every word, sure that something would go disastrously wrong.
Dawkins watched the van pull away. He checked his watch and made a notation of his own on his own clipboard. For some reason, the captain wanted him to keep track of who arrived when. It didn't make sense to Dawkins, but the captain's ideas didn't always make sense, did they? It took a moment for him to realize that the ABC van had Colorado tags. That was odd, he thought, as a Lincoln town car pulled up. This one was on his list. It was the commissioner of the NFL's American Conference. The VIPs were supposed to be pretty early, probably, Dawkins thought, so they could settle into their sky boxes and start their drinking early. He'd also drawn security at the Commissioner's party the night before and watched every rich clown in Colorado get sloppy drunk, along with various politicians and other Very Important People — mostly assholes, the young cop thought, having watched them — from all over America. He supposed that Hemingway was right after all: the rich just have more money.
Two hundred yards away, Russell parked the van, set the brake, and left the engine on. Ghosn went in back. The game was scheduled to start at 4:20 local time. Major affairs always ran late, Ibrahim judged. He'd assumed a start time of 4:30. To that he added another half hour, setting T-Zero at 5:00, Rocky Mountain Standard Time. Arbitrary numbers always had zeros in them, after all, and the actual time of the detonation had been set weeks before: precisely on the first hour after game start.
The device did not have a very sophisticated antitamper device. There was a crude one set on each access door, but there hadn't been time to do anything complicated, and that, Ghosn thought, was a good thing. The gusting northeast wind was rocking the van, and a delicate tumbler switch might not have been a good idea after all.
For that matter, he realized rather belatedly, just slamming the door closed on the van might have… What else have you failed to consider? he wondered. Ghosn reminded himself that all such moments brought up the most frightening of thoughts. He swiftly ran over everything he had done to this point. Everything had been checked a hundred times and more. It was ready. Of course it was ready. Hadn't he spent months of careful preparation for this?
The engineer made a last check of his test circuits. All were fine. The cold had not affected the batteries that badly. He connected the wires to the timer — or tried to. His hands were stiff from the cold, and quivered from the emotion of the moment. Ghosn stopped. He took a moment to get control of himself and attached them on the
