The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [174]
Downstairs, Ryan and Wills did not know anything about it, of course. Jack was going through his routine tasks of scanning message traffic within the American intelligence services-which took over an hour-and after that, a scan of Internet traffic to and from known or suspected terrorist addresses. The overwhelming majority of it was so routine it was like e-mails between a husband and wife over what to pick up at the Safeway on the way home from work. Some of those e-mails could easily be coded messages of significant import, but there was no telling that without a program or crib sheet. At least one terrorist had used "hot weather" to mean heavy security at a location of interest to his colleagues, but the message had been sent in July, when the weather was, indeed, warmer than was comfortable. And that message had been copied down by the FBI, and the Bureau hadn't taken particular notice of it at first. But one new message positively leaped off the screen at him this morning.
"Hey, Tony, you want to look at this one, buddy."
The addressee was their old friend 56MoHa@eurocom.net, and the content reconfirmed his identity as a nexus for bad-guy message traffic:
ATEF IS DEAD. HE DIED RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES HERE IN MUNICH. AN AMBULANCE WAS SUMMONED AND THEY TREATED HIM ON THE SIDEWALK BUT HE DIED IN THE HOSPITAL OF A HEART ATTACK. REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. FA'AD. And his address was Honeybear@ostercom.net, which was new to Jack's computer index.
"Honeybear?" Wills observed with a chuckle. "This guy must surf for women on the 'Net."
"So, he does cybersex, fine. Tony, if we just whacked a guy named Atef over in Germany, here's confirmation of the event, plus a new target for us to track." Ryan turned back to his workstation and used his mouse to check sources. "Here, NSA picked up on it, too. Maybe they think he's a possible player."
"You sure like making leaps of imagination," Wills observed tersely.
"My ass!" Jack was actually angry for once. He was beginning to understand why his father had often been so pissed off at intelligence information that arrived in the Oval Office. "God damn it, Tony, how much clearer do things have to be?"
Wills took a deep breath and spoke as calmly as usual. "Settle down, Jack. This is single-source, a single report on something that might or might not have taken place. You don't throw your hat over the barn about something until it's confirmed by a known source. This Honeybear identity could be a lot of things, few of which we can certify as a good guy or a bad guy."
For his part, Jack Jr. wondered if he was being tested-again!-by his training officer. "Okay, let's walk through it. MoHa Fifty-six is a source that we're highly confident is a player, probably an operations officer for the bad guys. We've been sweeping the 'Net for him since I've been here, okay? So, we sweep the ether and this letter turns up in his mailbox at the same time we believe we-us-have a kill team in the field. Unless you're going to tell me that Uda bin Sali really did have a myocardial infarction while he was daydreaming about his favorite whore in downtown London. And that the Brit Security Service found the event highly interesting only because it's not every day that a suspected terrorist banker drops dead on the street. Have I missed anything?"
Wills smiled. "Not a bad presentation. A little thin on the evidence, but your proposition was well organized. So, you think I should walk it upstairs?"
"No, Tony, I think you should run it upstairs," Ryan said, easing back on the obvious anger. Take a deep breath and count to ten.
"Then I guess I'll do it."
Five minutes later, Wills walked into Rick Bell's office. He handed over two sheets of paper.
"Rick, do we have a team at work in Germany?" Wills asked. The response was not the least bit surprising.
"Why do you ask?" Bell had a poker face that would have impressed a marble statue.
"Read," Wills suggested.
"Damn," the chief of analysis reacted. "Who pulled this fish out of the