The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [110]
Jack clicked his mouse. "That's all?"
Wills nodded. "That's all, but the thinking at Meade is that such a dull message is likely to denote something else-something important. Spooks tend to use a lot of reverse English when they hit the cue ball."
"Well, duh! You're telling me that because it appears to have no importance to it, it may be important? Hell, Tony, you can make that observation about anything! What else do they know? The network, where the guy logged on from, that sort of thing?"
"It's a European network, privately owned, with 800 numbers all over the world, and we know some bad guys have used it. You can't tell where the members log in from."
"Okay, so, first, we do not know if the message has any significance. Second, we do not know where the message originated. Third, we do not have any way of knowing who's read it or where the hell they are. The short version is that we don't know shit, but everybody's getting in a flutter about it. What else? The originator, what do we know about him?"
"He-or she, for all we know-is thought to be a possible player."
"What team?"
"Guess. The NSA profilers say that this guy's syntax seems to indicate Arabic as a first language-based on previous traffic. The shrinks at CIA agree. They've copied messages from this bird before. He says nasty things to nasty people on occasion, and they're time-linked with some other very bad things."
"Is it possible that he's making some signal related to the bomber the Israeli police bagged earlier today?"
"Possible, yes, but not terribly likely. The originator isn't linked to Hamas, as far as we know."
"But we don't really know, do we?"
"With these guys you can't be totally sure about anything."
"So, we're back to where we started. Some people are running around over something they don't really know shit about."
"That's the problem. In these bureaucracies it's better to cry wolf and be wrong than to have your mouth shut when the big gray critter runs off with a sheep in his mouth."
Ryan sat back in his chair. "Tony, how many years were you at Langley?"
"A few," Wills answered.
"How the hell did you stand it?"
The senior analyst shrugged. "Sometimes I wonder."
Jack turned back to his computer to scan the rest of the morning's message traffic. He decided to see if Sali had been doing anything unusual over the last few days, just to cover his own ass, and in thinking that, John Patrick Ryan, Jr., started thinking like a bureaucrat, without even knowing it.
"Tomorrow it's going to be a little different," Pete told the twins. "Michelle is your target, but this time she'll be disguised. Your mission is to ID her and track her to her destination. Oh, did I tell you, she's really good at disguises."
"She's going to take an invisible pill, right?" Brian asked.
"That's her mission," Alexander elucidated.
"You going to issue us magic glasses to see through the makeup?"
"Not even if we had any-which we don't."
"Some pal you are," Dominic observed coldly.
By eleven that morning, it was time to scout the objective. Conveniently located just a quarter mile north on U.S. Route 29, the Charlottesville Fashion Square Mall was a medium-sized shopping mall that catered to a largely upscale clientele of local gentry and students at the nearby University of Virginia. It was anchored by a JC Penney at one end and a Sears at the other, with Belk's men's and women's stores in the middle. Unexpectedly, there was no food court per se-whoever had done the reconnaissance had been sloppy. A disappointment, but not all that uncommon. The advance teams the organization employed were often mere stringers, for whom missions of this sort were something of a lark. But, Mustafa saw on going in, it would do little harm.
A central courtyard opened into all four of the mall's main corridors. An information stand even supplied diagrams of the mall, showing store locations. Mustafa looked one over. A