Granger took that one: “Nothing useful, Gerry. They’re in a logic trap. If they do anything at all, like upgrading the color on the threat rainbow, they’re sounding the alarm, and they’ve done that so much that it’s become counterproductive. Unless they disclose the text and the source, nobody’ll take it seriously. If they do disclose anything, we burn the source for fair.”
“And if they don’t sound the alarm, Congress will shove whatever ends up happening right up their ass.” Elected officials were much more comfortable being the problem rather than the solution. There was political hay to be made from nonproductive screaming. So, CIA and other services would continue to work at identifying the people with the distant cell phones. That was unglamorous, slow police work, and it ran at a speed that grossly impatient politicians could not dictate—and throwing money at the problem didn’t make it any better, which was doubly frustrating to people who didn’t know how to do anything else.
“So, they straddle the issue, and do something they know won’t work—”
“—and hope for a miracle,” Granger agreed with his boss.
Police departments all across America would be alerted, of course—but for what purpose, and against what threat, nobody knew. And cops were always looking for Middle Eastern faces to pull over and question anyway, to the point that cops were bored with what was almost always a nonproductive exercise in doing something the ACLU was already raising hell about. There were six Driving While Arab cases pending in various federal district courts, four involving physicians, and two with demonstrably innocent students whom the local police had hassled a little too vigorously. Whatever case law resulted from those incidents would do far more harm than good. It was just what Sam Granger called it, a logic trap.
Hendley’s frown got a little deeper. It was echoed, he was sure, at a half-dozen government agencies which, for all their funding and personnel, were about as useful as tits on a boar hog. “Anything we can do?” he asked.
“Stay alert and call the cops if we see anything unusual,” Granger answered. “Unless you have a gun handy.”
“To shoot some innocent clown who’s probably taking citizenship classes,” Bell added. “Not worth the trouble.”
I should have stayed in the Senate, Hendley thought. At least being part of the problem had its satisfactions. It was good for the spleen to vent it once in a while. Screaming here was totally counterproductive, and bad for the morale of his people.
“Okay, then, we pretend we’re ordinary citizens,” the boss said at last. The senior staff nodded agreement, and went on to the remaining routine business of the day. Toward the end, Hendley asked Rounds how the new boy was doing.
“He’s smart enough to ask a lot of questions. I have him reviewing known or suspected stringers for unaccountable money transfers.”
“If he can stand doing that, God bless him,” Bell observed. “That can drive a man crazy.”
“Patience is a virtue,” Gerry noted. “It’s just a son of a bitch to acquire.”
“We alert all of our people to this intercept?”
“Might as well,” Bell responded.
“Done,” Granger told them all.
“SHIT,” Jack observed fifteen minutes later. “What’s it mean?”
“We might know tomorrow, next week—or never,” Will answered.
“Fa’ad . . . I know that name . . .” Jack turned back to his computer and keyed up some files. “Yeah! He’s the guy in Bahrain. How come the local cops haven’t sweated him some?”
“They don’t know about him yet. Tracking him’s an NSA gig so far, but maybe Langley will see if they can learn some more about him.”
“Are they as good as the FBI for police work?”
“Actually, no, they’re not. Different training, but it’s not that removed from what a normal person can do—”
Ryan the Younger cut him off. “Bullshit. Reading people is something cops are good at. It’s an acquired skill, and you also have to learn how to ask questions.”
“Says who?” Wills demanded.
“Mike Brennan. He was my bodyguard. He taught me a lot.”
“Well, a good spook has to read people, too. Their asses depend on it.”
“Maybe, but if you want your eyes fixed, you talk to my mom. For ears, you talk to somebody else.”
“Okay, maybe so. For now, check out our friend Fa’ad.”
Jack turned back to his computer. He scrolled back to the first interesting conversation they’d intercepted. Then he thought better of it and went back to the very beginning, the first time he’d attracted notice. “Why doesn’t he change phones?”
“Maybe he’s lazy. These guys are smart, but they have blind spots, too. They fall into habits. They’re clever, but they do not have formal training, like a trained spook, KGB or like that.”
NSA had a large but covert listening post in Bahrain, covered in the American Embassy, and supplemented by U.S. Navy warships that called there on a regular basis, but were not seen as an electronic threat in that environment. The NSA teams that regularly sailed on them even intercepted people walking the waterfront with their cell phones.
“This guy is dirty,” he observed a minute later. “This guy’s a bad guy, sure as hell.”
“He’s been a good barometer, too. He says a lot of things we find interesting.”
“So, somebody ought to pick him up.”
“They’re thinking about that at Langley.”
“How big’s the station in Bahrain?”
“Six people. Station Chief, two field spooks, and three sundry employees, signals and stuff.”
“That’s all? There? Just a handful?”
“That’s right,” Wills confirmed.
“Damn. I used to ask Dad about this. He usually shrugged and grumbled.”
“He tried pretty hard to get CIA more funding and more employees. Congress wasn’t always accommodating.”
“Have we ever taken a guy up and, you know, “talked’ to him?”
“Not lately.”
“Why not?”
“Manpower,” Wills answered simply. “Funny thing about employees, they all expect to be paid. We’re not that big.”
“So why doesn’t CIA ask the local cops to pick him up? Bahrain’s a friendly country.”
“Friendly, but not a vassal. They have their ideas about civil rights, too, just not the same as ours. Also, you can’t pick a guy up for what he knows and what he thinks. Only for what he’s done. As you can see, we don’t know that he’s actually done anything.”
“So, put a tail on his ass.”
“And how can CIA do that with only two field spooks?” Wills asked.
“Jesus!”
“Welcome to the real world, junior.” The Agency ought to have recruited some agents, maybe cops in Bahrain, to help out with such tasks, but that hadn’t happened yet. The Station Chief could also have requested more people, of course, but Arabic-speaking and -looking field officers were a little thin over at Langley, and those they had went to more obviously troublesome postings.
THE RENDEZVOUS took place as planned. There were three vehicles, each with a driver who spoke scarcely a word, and that in Spanish. The drive was pleasant, and distantly reminiscent of home. The driver was cautious; he didn’t speed or do anything else to attract attention, but they moved right along in any case. Nearly all of the Arabs smoked cigarettes, and exclusively American brands, like Marlboro. Mustafa did as well, and wondered—as had Mohammed before him—what the Prophet would have said about cigarettes. Probably nothing good, but he hadn’t said anything, had he? And so, Mustafa could smoke as much as he wished. The issue of dangers to his health was a distant concern now, after all. He expected to live another four or five days, but little more than that, if things went according to plan.
He’d expected some excited chattering from his people, but there was none. Hardly anyone spoke a word. They just looked blankly out at the passing countryside, speeding past a culture about which they knew little, and they would not learn more.
“OKAY, BRIAN, here’s your carry permit.” Pete Alexander handed it over.
It might as well have been a second driver’s license, and it went into his wallet. “So, I’m street-legal now?”
“As a practical matter, no cop is going to hassle a Marine officer for carrying a pistol, concealed or not, but better to dot the I’s and cross the T’s. You going to carry the Beretta?”
“It’s what I’m used to, and the fifteen rounds make for security. What am I supposed to carry it in?”
“Use one of these, Aldo,” Dominic said, holding up his fanny pack. It looked like a money belt, or the kind of pouch used more often by women than by men. A pull on the string ripped it open, and revealed the pistol and two extra magazines. “A lot of agents use this. More comfortable than a hip holster. Those can dig into your kidneys on a long car ride.”
For the moment, Brian would tuck his into his belt. “Where to today, Pete?”