“Not necessarily,” said Tischler. “Damascus would not be ideal, because of the Syrian government’s presence. Somewhere in the east, perhaps.”
While that would sound logical to someone uninitiated in the intrigues of Iraq, the sparsely populated desert areas of Syria were much worse than the capital of Syria. Strangers there tended to stick out, and there were many competing interests — Kurds, informants, smugglers, drug dealers — who would have much to gain by supplying information to the Syrians or to the Iraqi spies and operatives in the area. A meeting outside of a city would be visible to spy planes or satellites. Though in reality the coverage over the area was spotty at best, the resistance people tended to think American coverage was twenty-four/seven.
So why had Tischler even suggested it, Corrine wondered. “Could you make an educated guess?”
“Syria is a place where educated guesses can often get one in trouble,” said Tischler. “I wouldn’t try.”
Corrine let the matter drop temporarily, asking if the Mossad required assistance on any other projects and receiving the bland answers she expected. Finally she glanced at her watch.
“I’m afraid I’m running a little late,” she said, rising. “I’m due at the embassy.”
“Of course.” Tischler rose. “If we can be of further assistance while you’re in Tel Aviv, please tell us.”
“Thank you. The Khazaal meeting—”
The Mossad officer looked at her expectantly as she paused. He was well practiced at keeping his face expressionless, and Corrine simply couldn’t tell now whether he knew more about it than he had shared.
“You would suppose that would be more likely in the west than in the east,” she suggested.
“I’ve learned not to suppose.”
An answer there could be no arguing with, Corrine thought. “If we get any additional information,” she said, extending her hand. “We’ll share it.”
“As we will with you,” said Tischler, walking out with them.
2
Thomas Ciello could not believe his good fortune. The CIA analyst had stopped at the post office on his way to work and found, completely unexpectedly, a new manuscript on UFOs by Carmine P. Ragguzi. Professor Ragguzi, a true genius who had devoted nearly forty years of his life to the problem of extraterrestrial communication, had sent a select group of devotees an advanced copy of a mammoth work on UFO sightings he hoped to publish next year. A letter that accompanied the book urged Ciello to “make whatever suggestions you feel are warranted.” Of course, given that Ragguzi was a genius, Ciello doubted that he could do much more than cheer. Nonetheless, the opportunity to read a Ragguzi work before it was released to the rest of the world was truly an honor. He took it inside with him, hoping to steal a glance at lunch or on his morning break.
The security person at the entrance to the CIA building didn’t bother hiding her skepticism when Thomas told her what it was. He was used to that sort of reaction and waited patiently while she applied a blacklight stamp to several of the pages and made random photocopies of a few more so the work could be checked on the way out. Security at the CIA in general was tight, but Building 24-442 had even more elaborate precautions. Even though it had been logged and inspected, it was possible that the manuscript would be confiscated when he tried to take it home and held until it had been thoroughly checked for classified information. The process could take days — there were no preset limits — but Thomas was so eager to start reading the book inside that he didn’t mind the hassle. Besides, he’d spent just about every waking hour here since joining the First Team as what Corrigan called its resident “geek freak.” If he was going to find any spare time at all, it would be here.
Thomas thought “geek freak” was a compliment, though sometimes the people on the action side of the agency were too eccentric to decipher.
Cleared down to his office, Thomas immediately went to work, signing into his network and “checking the traps” as he called it: reviewing overnight alerts, briefs, and regular news developments. Thomas’s position at the Agency was unique: he was assigned to facilitate intelligence gathering for a specific group and had access to nearly every area of the Agency to do so. Still, it mostly came down to reading. Making sense of what you read was important, surely, but you had to read it first.
Three days before, he had asked the National Security Agency to “harvest” possible communications in Syria related to Nisieen Khazaal. The request had yielded two phone conversations which included an alias Khazaal was believed to use: Snake. Translated by computer from Arabic, the conversations were both brief and frustrating:
1.
man’s voice 1: The Snake is not here.
man’s voice 2: Yes.
man’s voice 1: Yes.
[Disconnect]
2.
man’s voice 1: When?
man’s voice 2: The day after tomorrow.
man’s voice 1: Difficult.
man’s voice 2: The snake will be in the East. It must be then.
[Disconnect]
Did they pertain to Khazaal? The NSA didn’t pretend to know. That wasn’t their job; they just gathered conversations and passed them on.
Thomas set the intercepts aside in one of his note files on the secure computer and continued trolling through the information and notes that bad accumulated while he slept. He had a memo from the desk — from Corrigan, actually, who usually personally supported the First Team during a critical mission — about the desert snatch operation, and a brief on the preliminary interrogation of the men they’d stopped in Syria. Two of the men who’d been in the last car stopped, a Ford, had been positively identified, and Thomas recognized one of the names right away, Sadeghi Saed, a Palestinian who had helped fund a Shiite resistance group in Iraq. Thomas set that aside as well.
Were there a lot of Fords in Syria? He hadn’t thought so. He punched into a database, trying to see if it was significant.
There were in fact many thousands. But perhaps some additional information about it would allow him to trace it. He accessed another database compiling foreign registrations and found that VIN or vehicle identification numbers were sometimes used to show where sales were; different series indicated different regions. It was a tenuous link, but he could at least differentiate between vehicles brought into Syria and Iraq; and, after he looked through some customs records poached by an NSA computer program from Lebanon, that country as well.
Thomas wrote a quick “action note” for Corrigan, asking for the VIN attached to the various components; the brief on the vehicle had already indicated there was no visible registration.
Two hours and many notes later, the UFO manuscript beckoned at the corner of his desk. Deciding he was ready for a break, Thomas dragged it over and opened to a page at random.
The 1950s Turkey sightings and landings were the most phenomenal event in the history of mankind, and a key extraterrestrial moment.
Thomas gasped. That was a serious error. The sighting he was referring to had actually been U.S. Air Force spy flights, with the UFO story floated out as a cover when the Soviets became suspicious.
“Ah, there you are,” said Debra Wu, peeking in the doorway. Wu was Corrigan’s assistant.
Thomas practically jumped out of his chair, grabbing the manuscript and holding it to his chest. Unfortunately, the papers weren’t bound, and they flew all over the office.
Wu rolled her eyes. Ciello was eccentric, even for an analyst.
“Corrigan wants to see you. He’s downstairs.”
“I’m going.” Thomas grabbed the papers and took them to one of the lockable file cabinets at the side of his room. Technically, the cabinet was only supposed to be used to temporarily store classified information. But he had no other place to put the manuscript, and besides, his cabinets were all empty.
