Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [25]
A former IBM employee, he’d lost two brothers in Vietnam, and thereafter had come to work for the federal government, then to be talent-scouted and cherry-picked to the Fort Meade headquarters of the National Security Agency, the government’s premier center for communications and electronic security. His government salary had long since topped him out as a Senior Executive Service genius, and indeed he still collected his reasonably generous government pension. But he loved the action and had snapped up the offer to join The Campus within seconds of its being made. He was, professionally, a mathematician, with a doctorate from Harvard, where he’d studied under Benoit Mandelbrot himself, and he occasionally lectured at MIT and Caltech as well in his area of expertise.
Biery was a geek through and through, right down to the heavy black-rimmed glasses and doughy complexion, but he kept The Campus’s electronic gears oiled and the machines purring.
“Compartmentalization?” Brian said. “Don’t gimme that cloak-and-dagger shit.”
Jack held up his hands and shrugged. “Sorry.” Like his dad, Jack Ryan Jr. wasn’t one to break the rules. Cousin or not, Brian didn’t have the need to know. Period.
“You ever wonder about the name?” Dominic asked. “The URC? You know how much these guys love double meanings.”
Interesting idea, Jack thought.
The Umayyad Revolutionary Council had been the Emir’s own invention, they’d always guessed. Was it what it seemed—just another oblique reference to the tried-and-true Islamic symbol of jihad; namely, Saladin—or something more?
Born Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub in about 1138 in Tikrit—current-day Iraq—Saladin had quickly risen to figurehead status during the Crusades, first as the defender of Baalbek, then as the sultan of Egypt and Syria. The fact that Saladin’s battlefield record was by some accounts spotty at best was of little consequence in Muslim history, but as was the case with many historical figures, East and West alike, it was what Saladin came to represent that mattered. To Muslims he was the avenging sword of Allah standing against the flood of infidel crusaders.
If there was any insight to be gained from the URC’s name, it probably lay in the first word, Umayyad, after the Damascus mosque that housed Saladin’s final resting place, a mausoleum containing both a marble sarcophagus donated by Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and a plain wooden coffin, in which Saladin’s body still remained. The fact that the Emir had chosen Umayyad as his organization’s operational word suggested to Jack that the Emir saw his jihad as a turning point, just as Saladin’s death had been a transition from this life of struggle and suffering to everlasting paradise.
“I’ll give it some thought,” Jack said. “Not a bad hunch, though.”
“It ain’t all sand up here, cuz,” Brian said, smiling, as he tapped his temple with his index finger. “So what’s your dad doing with all his spare time now?”
“Don’t know.” Jack didn’t spend much time at home. That would mean talking to his parents, and the more he talked about his “job,” the more likely his dad would be to get curious, and if his father found out what he was doing here, he might blow a gasket somewhere in his head. And how Mom would react didn’t bear contemplation. The thought grated on Jack. He wasn’t a mama’s boy, that was for sure, but did anyone ever really get past trying to impress their parents or seek their approval? What was that saying? A man isn’t truly a man until he kills his father—metaphorically, of course. He was an adult, on his own, doing some serious shit at The Campus. Time to step out from under Dad’s shadow, Jack reminded himself for the umpteenth time. And a damned big shadow it was.
Brian said, “Bet you he gets fed up and—”
“Runs?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I’ve lived in the White House, remember? I had my fill. I’ll gladly take my cubicle here, hunting bad guys.”
Mostly on the computer