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By Root 449 0

man inside had a splendid cowboy hat, Abdullah thought. Like every human being on the planet, he'd seen his share of American movies, including the cowboy sort, men on horseback herding cattle, or just shooting it out with handguns in their drinking saloons, settling issues of honor. The imagery appealed to him-but that was what it was supposed to do, he reminded himself. One more attempt by the infidel to seduce the Faithful. To be fair, though, American movies were made mainly for the American audience. How many Arab movies had he seen showing the forces of Salah ad-Din-a Kurd, of all things-crushing the invading Christian Crusaders? They were there to teach history, and to encourage manhood in Arab men, the better to crush the Israelis, which, alas, had not yet happened. So it was, probably, with American Westerns. Their concept of manhood was not all that different from the Arabs', except that they used revolvers instead of the manlier sword. The pistol did, of course, have superior reach, and so Americans were practical fighters, in addition to being very clever at it. No braver than Arabs, of course, just cleverer.

He'd have to be careful of Americans and their handguns, Abdullah told himself. If any of them shot like movie cowboys, their mission could come to a premature end, and that wouldn't do.

He wondered what the policeman in the passing white car carried on his belt-and was he a proficient shot? They could find out, of course, but there was only one way to do that and it would endanger their mission. So, Abdullah watched the police car pull ahead until it faded from view, and he settled down to watching tractor-trailers whiz past while he cruised eastward at a steady sixty-five miles and three cigarettes per hour, plus a grumbling stomach. SMALL STONE 30 MILES.

"They're getting excited over at Langley again," Davis told Hendley.

"What did you hear?" Gerry asked.

"A field officer got something strange from a source-agent over in Saudi. Something about how some suspected players were out of town, so to speak, location unknown, but he thinks Western Hemisphere, like ten or so of them."

"How solid is that?" Hendley asked.

"A 'three' in terms of reliability, though the source is ordinarily well regarded. Some headquarters puke decided to downgrade it, reason unknown." That was one of the problems at The Campus. They were dependent on others for most of their analysis. Though they had some particularly fine people in their own analysis offices, the real work was done on the other side of the Potomac River, and CIA had blown its share of calls in the past few years-make that decades, Gerry reminded himself. Nobody hit 1,000 in this league, and a lot of CIA bureaucrats were overpaid even with meager government salaries. But as long as their filing was properly done, nobody really cared or even noticed. What was significant was that the Saudis had a way of deporting their own potential troublemakers by allowing them to go elsewhere and do their crimes, and if they suffered for it, the Saudi government would be cooperative as hell, thus covering all of its bases quite easily.

"What do you think?" he asked Tom Davis.

"Hell, Gerry, I'm not a gypsy. No crystal ball, no Delphic Oracle." Davis let out a frustrated breath. "Homeland Security has been notified, and so that means FBI and the rest of their analytical team, but this is 'soft' intelligence, y'know? Nothing to hang a hat on. Three names, but no photos, and any bonehead can get ID in a new name." Even popular novels told people how to do it. You didn't even need all that much patience, because no state in the union cross-referenced birth and death certificates, which would have been an easy thing, even for government bureaucrats to accomplish.

"So, what happens?"

Davis shrugged. "The usual. Airport security people will get another notice to stay awake; and so, they'll hassle more innocent people to make sure nobody tries to hijack an airliner. Cops all over will look for suspicious cars, but that'll mostly mean that people driving erratically get pulled