Payback

I suspect a great deal, Rubens thought to himself. I suspect that the CIA messed up in a very big way and then covered up that possibility. They also covered up the fact that they had bankrolled an arms dealer responsible, indirectly, for the deaths of dozens of civilians around the world, including several Americans. And then assassinated him.

But it was best to hold his criticism of the CIA, until the immediate crisis in Peru passed. Especially under the circumstances.

“We’re talking about Iron Heart?” asked Marcke.

“Yes,” said Rubens, surprised that the president knew of the operation.

“Ms. Collins informed me that there were questions about it earlier this evening,” Marcke said.

Rubens balled his fingers into a fist. She’d gone to the president ahead of him with the information to make herself look good. She had outmaneuvered him at every turn.

“Please keep me updated if anything else develops,” said the president. “We’ll have a conference call update tomorrow at six. I guess that’s today at six now, actually.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ted will let you know if there’s anything else.”

Ted was Ted Cohen, who’d replaced Art Blanders as chief of staff when Blanders became secretary of defense the year before.

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

The line snapped clear.

61

Fifteen hundred cell phone calls had been made from the region where the guerrillas operated in the twelve hours before their communique was released, much more than Robert Gallo would have thought. A first pass through showed that the calls were made almost exclusively by phones registered to businesses in the area, with the remainder apparently ecotourists. Gallo tried coordinating call times with the length of the data set in the communique but couldn’t get a match. Or rather, he could match just about anything by adding or subtracting different encryptions and compression schemes.

Up against a brick wall, Gallo took a break. When the team was working on a project like this, a page was set up in a network file as a kind of journal to allow the members to post different results, hints, and frustrations. It was very much like a Web log or “blog,” randomly organized, with large sections of references to data files rather than Web addresses. The idea was to make it a common, open notebook to share information and provoke new ideas and directions — though in practice it often degenerated into a log of rants and complaints: this didn’t work; this was dumb; can you believe how easy (or hard) it was to get this?

Gallo added some comments about his efforts and then began paging through what others had written. Certain members of the team could be counted on for off-the-wall notes, and Johnny Bib often put in mathematical dissertations of little apparent relevance. But today the blog was extremely businesslike and to the point, the notes terse.

Not a good sign, Gallo thought.

Intercepts of electronic signals was the NSA’s raison d’etre. There were several minor gathering programs active in Peru, and between them, regional listening posts, and a dedicated satellite network focusing on the Southern Hemisphere, there were plenty of electronic signals to sift through. As Gallo cursored through some of the lists, a single entry jumped out, simply because it was surrounded by white space.

RUSSIAN MILITARY SATS?

“Sats” meant satellites, and the question was a suggestion by one of the analysts that someone check and see if any Russian observation satellites passed over the region and might have gotten optical data. But the suggestion reminded Gallo that he had been looking only at wireless cells rather than satellite communications networks — a much more likely source, and yet one he hadn’t even thought about.

But maybe Johnny Bib had given it to someone else. Rather than calling around or instant messaging to find out, Gallo typed the term into the search engine slot on the page. The search engine came up empty as it scanned the blog. Then, a few seconds later, it spit out a list of results from SpyNet and two NSA-only databases tracking intercepts. (The two-part search was a default “simple” search procedure, designed to save time when the analysts were helping on a mission.) The entries included a few lines summarizing the reference. The first one stuck out immediately: the Russian embassy in Peru had been queried a week before about the continuing unauthorized use of a Russian military communications network.

Gallo had to get help from one of the librarians, but within twenty minutes he knew everything that mattered about the Russian system, and a half hour after that he was looking at intercepted cables saying that the Russian embassy had been working with two military specialists trying to track the satellite phones down.

They were roughly forty miles from the village where the bomb had been found.

Johnny Bib greeted the news of this with his highest praise:

“Ha!”

Shouted twice, at the top of his lungs.

“The Chinese record all of the Russian transmissions,” Johnny told Gallo. “Break into their system and get a copy Go.”

“Not a problem,” said Gallo. “But, like, the Russians were complaining that they couldn’t figure out the encryptions that were being used on the messages.”

“Fortunately, we’re not the Russians.”

62

Dean and Karr traveled downriver to a village where an international drilling company had set up a base camp. There they “borrowed” a larger boat, a rigid-hulled inflatable with a conventional engine. The engine propelled the little boat at a healthy clip. Dean sat in the bow, keeping an eye out for logs and shallow drafts. About two miles after setting out, they came to an area of rapids; the boat tipped slightly as they wormed through, but they made it past intact.

“That was a pretty wild ride,” yelled Karr. “There’s more about two miles ahead. Keep bird-dogging for me.”

Dean leaned forward against the gunwale, staring into the darkness. He spotted a thick log ahead, lurking like an alligator in the shadows. Karr made it around it, but as he steered back toward the channel, the river dropped through a jagged set of rock outcroppings.

“Left,” shouted Dean as the shadows metamorphosed into rocks. “Left!”

The next thing he knew he was flying over the gunwale as the boat pitched wildly beneath him. He managed to get his right hand hooked into the rope that ran along the top of the side of the hull; he hung about two-thirds out of the boat, water furling over him as the boat charged through the obstacle course, dragged along by the current despite Karr’s efforts to stop it. As he struggled to get his feet back in, the boat struck something and Dean found himself underwater. Waves twisted around him and the current grabbed him again, pulling him downstream into a pool of calmer water.

Karr bobbed to the surface nearby, cursing a red streak to heaven.

“I just lost it. I just lost it,” Karr complained. “You OK, Charlie?”

“Yeah, I’m OK.”

“I can’t believe I lost it.”

They struggled to shore. Dean lay on his stomach, coughing the water from his lungs.

“Stay here. I’m going to try and get our gear,” said Karr.