morning?'
THE REAL WORK was being done at Fort Meade. The video had traveled from one monitoring station on the Kuwait-Iraq border and another in Saudi Arabia, known as PALM BOWL and STORM TRACK, respectively, the latter set up to record all signals out of Baghdad, and the former watching the southeastern part of the country, around Basra. From both places the information traveled by fiberoptic cable to the National Security Agency's deceptively small building in King Khalid Military City (KKMC) and uplinked to a communications satellite, which then shot it back to NSA headquarters. There in the watch room, ten people summoned by one of the junior watch officers huddled around a TV monitor to catch the tape, while the more senior troops, in a separate glass-walled office, sipped their coffee soberly.
'Yes!' an Air Force sergeant observed on seeing the shot, 'Nothin' but net!' Several high fives were exchanged. The senior watch officer, who'd already called White House Signals, nodded his more restrained approval and relayed the original signal along the way, and ordered a digital enhancement, which would take a few minutes—only a few frames were all that important, and they had a massive Cray supercomputer to handle that.
RYAN REMARKED QUIETLY that while Cathy was getting the kids ready for school, and herself ready to operate on people's eyes, here he was in Signals watching the instant replay of a murder. His designated national intelligence officer was still at CIA, finishing his morning intake of information, which he would then regurgitate to the President by way of the morning intelligence briefing. The post of National Security Advisor was currently vacant— one more thing to address today.
'Whoa!' Major Canon breathed.
The President nodded, then reverted to his former life as an intelligence officer. 'Okay, tell me what we know.'
'Sir, we know that somebody got killed, probably the Iraqi President.'
'Double?'
Canon nodded, 'Could be, but STORM TRACK is now reporting a lot of VHP signals that started all of a sudden, police and military nets, and the activity is radiating out from Baghdad.' The Marine officer pointed to his computer monitor, which displayed real-time «take» from the NSA's many outposts. 'Translations will take a little time, but I do traffic analysis for a living. It looks pretty real, sir. I suppose it could be faked, but I wouldn't— there!'
A translation was coming up, identified as emanating from a military command net. He's dead, he's dead, stsnd your regiment to and be prepared to move into the city ime-diately—recipient is Replican Gurds Special Operations regiment at Salmon Pak—reply is: Yes I will yes I will, who is giving the oders, what are my orders—
'Typos and all,' Ryan noted.
'Sir, it's hard for our people to translate and type it at the same time. Usually we clean it up before— '
'Relax, Major. I only use three fingers myself. Tell me what you think.'
'Sir, I'm only a junior officer here, that's why I draw the midwatch and—'
'If you were stupid, you wouldn't be here.'
Canon nodded. 'He's deader 'n hell, sir. Iraq needs a new dictator. We have the imagery, we have unusual signal traffic that fits the pattern of an unusual event. That's my estimate.' He paused and went on to cover himself, like a good spook. 'Unless it's a deliberate exercise to smoke out disloyal people inside his government. That's possible, but unlikely. Not in public like this.'
'Kamikaze play?'
'Yes, Mr. President. Something you can only do once, and dangerous the first time.'
'Agreed.' Ryan walked to the coffee urn—the White House Office of Signals was mainly a military operation, and they made their own. Jack got two cups and came back, handing one to Major Canon, rather to the horror of everyone else in the room. 'Fast work. Send a 'thanks' to the guys working this, okay?'
'Aye aye, sir.'
'Who do I talk to to get things happening around here?'
'We got the phones right here, Mr. President.'
'I want Adler in here ASAP, the DCI… who else? State and CIA desks for Iraq. DIA estimate of the state of their military. Find out if Prince Ali is still in town. If he is, ask him to please stand by. I want to talk to him this morning if possible. I wonder what else…?' Ryan's voice trailed off.
'CENTCOM, sir. He'll have the best military-intelligence troops down at Tampa, most familiar with the area, I mean.'
'Get him up here—no, we'll do that by landline, and we give him time to get briefed in.'
'We'll get it all going for you, sir.' Ryan patted the officer on the shoulder and headed out of the room. The heavy door closed behind him before Major Charles Canon spoke again. 'Hey, NCA knows his shit.'
'Is it what I heard?' Price asked, coming up the corridor.
'Do you ever sleep?' Then he thought about it. 'I want you in on this.'
'Why me, sir, I'm not—'
'You're supposed to know about assassinations, right?'
'Yes, Mr. President.'
'Then right now you're more valuable to me than a spook.'
THE TIMING COULD have been better. Daryaei had been surprised by the information just delivered. Not in the least bit displeased by it—except maybe the timing. He paused for a moment, whispering a prayer first of thanks to Allah, then for the soul of the unknown assassin—assassin? he asked himself. Perhaps «judge» would be a better term for the man, one of many who'd been infiltrated into Iraq ages ago, while the war had still been going on. Most had merely disappeared, probably shot one way or another. The overall mission had been his idea, not nearly dramatic enough for the «professionals» working in his intelligence service. Largely leftovers from the Shah's Savak—trained by the Israelis in the 1960s and 1970s— they were effective, but they were mercenaries at heart however much they might protest their religious fervor and their loyalty to the new regime. They'd proceeded along «conventional» lines for the unconventional mission, trying bribes of various sorts or testing the waters for dissidents, only to fail at every turn, and for years Daryaei had wondered if the target of all that attention might have Allah's perverse blessings somehow or other—but that had been the counsel of despair, not of reason and faith, and even Daryaei was subject to human weakness. Surely the Americans had tried for him also, and probably in the same way, trying to identify military commanders who might like to try out the seat of power, trying to initiate a coup d'etat such as they had done often enough in other parts of the world. But, no, this target was too skilled for that, and at every turn he'd become more skilled, and so the Americans had failed, and the Israelis, and all the others. All but me.
It was tradition, after all, all the way back to antiquity. One man, operating alone, one faithful man who would do whatever was necessary to accomplish his mission. Eleven such men had been dispatched into Iraq for this specific purpose, told to go deep under cover, trained to forget everything they had ever been, entirely without contact or control officers, and all records of their existence destroyed so that even an Iraqi spy in his own agencies could not discover the mission without a name. Within an hour, some of his own cronies would come into this office, praising God and lauding their leader for his wisdom. Perhaps so, but even they didn't know all the things he had done, or all the people he'd dispatched.
THE DIGITIZED RENDITION of the event didn't change much, though now he had a more professional opinion of the options:
'Mr. President, a guy with a Silicon Graphics workstation could fake this,' the NIO told him. 'You've seen movies, and movie film has much higher resolution than a TV set. You can fake almost anything now.'
'Fine, but your job is to tell me what did happen,' Ryan pointed out. He'd seen the same few seconds of tape eight times now, and was growing tired of instant replay.
'We can't say with absolute certainty.'
Maybe it was the week's sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the stress of the job. Maybe it was the stress of having to face his second crisis. Maybe it was the fact that Ryan was himself still a carded national intelligence officer. 'Look, I'm going to say this once: Your job isn't to cover your ass. Your job is to cover mine!'
'I know that, Mr. President. That's why I'm giving you all the information I have….' Ryan didn't have to listen to the rest of the speech. He'd heard it all before, a couple of hundred times. There had even been cases when he'd
