31
Johnny Bibleria paced around the conference room, walking the perimeter at a rapid pace. Every so often he glanced up at the numbers on the white board at the front of the room.
“Nothing is related,” he repeated. “Nothing.”
They were missing something basic.
“What information would make a murder worthwhile?” Rubens had asked him. It was an excellent question, Johnny thought — but not the sort that a cryptologist should ask. It wasn’t even something for a mathematician to contemplate. The answer involved morality or at least judgments separate from numbers. A mathematician needed a sequence.
Johnny stopped his pacing. He thought he saw part of a Fibonacci sequence in the updates of the weather site.
No.
Johnny Bib took one of the pens from the table and stepped toward the board. The key must be the change out of sequence, but the numbers were merely a digit or two off. He made a grid based on the days of the week, ran the numbers in a line, put them backward…
Maybe it was like a pointer in a codebook. Use this page…
If it was a pointer, then they could see who had accessed the site and follow that person to the relevant Web page.
Except that they didn’t have a record of the visits to the sites.
Johnny went back to the board. They were watching for another change on the weather site, hoping to see who accessed it and where the computer went from there. But that meant they were reacting, waiting. And there was no guarantee that they would be able to find anything useful if it did change.
There had to be a pattern somewhere that he could detect, surely.
32
It sounded absurdly easy when Rubens outlined it — walk into the restroom, remove the old package, put in a new one.
But in real life, the fifty feet down the hall to the steps that led to the lavatory were treacherously long. Lia’s legs trembled beneath her long, African-style skirt. The muscles in her thighs and calves felt weak and her mouth horri bly dry.
There were soldiers posted along the walls and at the steps. Each man had a French-made FAMAS assault rifle, a smallish, odd-looking weapon nicknamed the bugle (or le clarion). Lia pulled the scarf a little farther down around her face but found herself staring at the weapons as she walked by, wondering if the guns were safed or ready to fire. It took all of her self-control to wrest her gaze back toward the carpet on the floor.
She started to slip on one of the steps as she descended. She grabbed the railing, just barely keeping herself from falling off the step.
I can do this, she told herself. I’m just going to the bathroom.
Two more soldiers stood outside the women’s room near the bottom of the steps. She put her hands on her scarf, hooking her thumbs beneath the fabric — it wasn’t an attempt to feign modesty or even hide her identity but rather to keep her hands from jerking wildly out of control.
I can do this. It’s the easiest thing in the world.
An attendant sat inside, an old woman in a black chador who jumped as Lia opened the door.
The old woman began speaking in Arabic. Lia didn’t wait for the translator to explain, nor did she attempt one of the rudimentary phrases she’d memorized on the plane. She walked directly to the last stall and closed the door.
“You were supposed to give her change,” said Sandy Chafetz, her runner. “You get towels.”
Lia didn’t answer. She had no intention of leaving the stall now that she was inside. She knelt next to the commode. There wasn’t enough room to see what she was doing, and so she slid her fingers along the floor until they found the bolt cover. Sure of where it was, she withdrew her hand and reached to the pocket of her dress, removing what looked like a small lipstick holder. She twisted the two halves, then pushed them together. The device was designed to provoke a response from the bug beneath the bolt cover. If she got a beep from the device, she would know that it had not been tampered with.
That, of course, was how it was supposed to work in theory. Lia thought that a really clever engineer could come up with a way to defeat it — the Desk Three people did that all the time. She felt herself leaning her head back as she reached in.
Nothing.
Run. Run now!
She put her hand back in the space behind the toilet, reaching farther.
Still nothing.
Get out!
Her hand trembled. A tiny beep sounded as she pulled it back.
“You’re good to proceed,” said Chafetz.
Lia took out a small medicine bottle with an eyedropper and placed it down on the floor, where she carefully unscrewed the top. The bottle held a strong solvent, which she needed to loosen the bolt cover. The scent was somewhere between rubber cement and ammonia; Lia coughed so hard she nearly lost the dropper.
The compact. She could use the mirror to see what she was doing.
As Lia reached into her pocket, her knee brushed against the bottle of solvent. Its contents spewed on the floor in front of the toilet.
Her hand trembled as she tried refilling the dropper from the nearly empty bottle, but she got no more than a half of the plastic tube filled. During the mission briefing they’d told her it would take at least four full eyedroppers of the solvent to remove the glue holding the bolt cover in place.
Lia applied what she could, trying to work the few drops around the base as if the dropper were a paintbrush. She got a little more from the floor, but most of the liquid had burned into the grouting around the mosaiclike floor tile. Panic surged in her chest, turning her esophagus to fire.
Almost too late she realized she was going to retch.
She got the top of the commode up just in time. Tears ran from her eyes; she gripped the porcelain lip with her hands, wanting to die.
33
Dean turned the comer behind the building, walking down the narrow alley toward a neighboring street. Two- and three-story brick apartment buildings nudged against one another on the left, crowding out much older structures that seemed as if they’d been made entirely of sand and glued into place. The charity building dated from just after World War II and was one of two nearly identical buildings lining the short avenue. The offices the terrorists used were on the second story at the corner, two floors over the restroom where Lia was.
The bug Lia was “servicing” was in principle a sophisticated electroacoustic receiver, sometimes called a concrete microphone. It worked by picking up minute vibrations in the building’s concrete and metal structure; those vibrations were transmitted to a larger pickup unit outside, which then transmitted them back to the NSA for interpretation. Plumbers in the United States sometimes used a less sophisticated version to listen for leaking pipes in concrete foundations and structures. Theirs couldn’t filter out various conversations or be tuned to pick up certain areas of the building’s skeleton — but then again, Deep Black’s couldn’t have found a leaking faucet a few feet away, much less heard a conversation there. The device had been placed in the women’s room not because it was difficult to detect there, but because the steel grid in the concrete carried the vibration from the room down in that direction. The bug could be easily defeated by heavy vibration devices — a simple vibrating sander against the wall would do the trick — but only if the targets knew to do so. And these didn’t.
In fact, thought Dean, the people in the office were extremely confident that they were safe here; they had the windows wide open. Dean watched from across the street as two shadows flitted across the space. He crossed the street, listening to the voice above. There were at least two people inside and so there was no question of going in, but he put a small audio fly below the window. The fly was low-powered; its battery would last only a few hours, transmitting voice information to a small unit he tucked into a wall around the corner, and from there back to the Art Room.
“Good,” said his runner as Dean crossed back. “They’re talking about food or something.”
“Maybe they’ll go to
dinner soon. Let me know if they leave,” Dean answered.
“Will do.”
Dean walked down one of the connecting alleys past the apartments, crossed near some smaller row houses — they were more like shacks — and then around to the street across from the charity building, pretending to look at the wares spread out on the sidewalk and in general playing the interested but distracted tourist.
A man dressed in traditional white desert garb stood nearby, a microphone in hand, talking rapidly. The translator back in the Art Room told Dean he was a native entertainer, telling what were supposed to be humorous stories, though judging from the bored expressions of the few people watching him the stories weren’t very funny.
“The real entertainment is inside the medina,” added the translator. “And not until much later.”
Dean glanced at his watch. Lia should have been out by now.
“How we doing?” he asked the runner under his breath.
“She’s working on it, Charlie,” said Chafetz.
Dean walked down the street to a vendor who sold small morsels of charcoal-broiled fish. The translator told him how to ask for it, but Dean found it easier now simply to point, holding out a five-dirham note — a bit less than fifty cents at the current exchange rate. The man worked silently, scooping up a bit of the fish and placing it on a piece of bread. Dean took his change — two dirhams and fifty centimes — and nibbled at the food, walking slowly back toward the building.
“How is she doing?” he asked when he reached the corner across the street from the building.
“Everything’s fine,” said Telach. “Relax, Charlie.”
“I’m going inside,” he told the Art Room supervisor.
“There are still two people in the office. We can hear them very clearly.”
“I’m not going into the office. I want to check on Lia.”
“It’s not necessary. She planted a video bug in the hallway. We can see all the way to the top of the stairs. Just relax.”
“I’m going inside,” he insisted, crossing the street.
34
“Lia?” said Chafetz.
Go away, Lia thought. Leave me.
The attendant said something in Arabic, harsh words, as if she were yelling at Lia for messing the stall.
“She’s asking if you’re all right,” the translator told Lia. “Tell her this.”
Lia had to listen to the phrase three times before she could attempt it; her voice stuttered as she spoke. The attendant asked if she was sure.
“Pregnant,” whispered Lia under her breath. She wanted the words to tell the woman — it was the perfect excuse, wasn’t it?
The translator, however, either didn’t understand or couldn’t hear.
“Pregnant,” Lia tried again, slightly louder and coughing.
The attendant came to the door and knocked.
“I’m pregnant,” Lia said in English. And the translator finally caught on, supplying a line about how Lia was expecting.
Men.
The woman began clucking sympathetically, offering a stream of advice. Lia moaned in agreement. She was ready with a cover story about her English: her identity was supposed to be Chinese, but she usually spoke English because most of the people she worked with did. But the woman didn’t ask.
The woman also didn’t move away from the door. While the metal stalls went all the way to the floor, there was enough of a crack at the opening for the woman to see through.
Lia couldn’t think of anything to say to get her to go away. With her brain seeming to move only in slow motion, she wiped her face, hoping the woman would eventually run out of steam.
“A cloth for my face,” said Lia finally, this time in Chinese. The translator relayed the Arabic words back and she repeated them. Lia waited until the woman went back to the washbasin, then rose and went to the stall. She opened the door just a bit.
“You can tell her you’re sorry,” said the translator, offering words. But Lia didn’t need any; the woman nodded and handed her a wet towel, calling her daughter and telling her about her own trials. Lia listened for a bit, offering a weak smile and finally handing back the towel. She retreated back into the stall, closing the door. The woman went back to her post by the door.
Her stomach still queasy, Lia pushed herself to the floor. She clawed at the bolt cover; it broke from the floor with a loud snap. Lia coughed several times and then reached down to retrieve the old bug. It was two inches long but only three-eighths of an inch thick, a slightly misshapen pen top. She pulled out the replacement and slid it in, then reached for the transponder device to activate it.
It was gone.
Lia locked her mouth against the bile rising in her chest. She was going to do this.
As she slid her head down to get a breather, she saw the device sitting near her knee. She snatched it up, thankful that she hadn’t crushed it by accident. She twisted it, then put her hand over the bug.
It beeped softly.
“Very good,” said Chafetz. “We’re getting data. Go.”
Lia stood up, the old bug in her hand. She felt calmer now, not in control but calmer: she’d had a crisis but gotten over it.
This wasn’t her, the nausea, the fear. Maybe she was pregnant.
The idea literally shook her. The old bug slipped from her hand into the toilet. She was supposed to bring it out with her — it was worth several hundred thousand dollars and would be good as new once the battery was replaced — but there was no way, just no way…
She flushed the toilet. The water rolled up the sides of the bowl so quickly she thought to herself that it was going to go over the lip of the toilet.
But it didn’t. As it receded, she saw that the bug didn’t go down. It spun around in the water, mocking her.
Lia closed her eyes and flushed again. This time the water barely stirred in the bowl; the tank hadn’t had enough time to refill.
She forced a slow breath from her lungs, pushing the air out from the bottom of her diaphragm, exhaling as carefully as she could, forcing herself to calm down or at least be patient, be more patient.
The third time, the water seemed to explode downward, and the bug went with it.
Lia fixed her skirt and took a breath. It was all downhill from here. Lia pulled open the door and stepped out, only to find one of the guards pointing his gun six inches from her face.
35
Dean trotted up the steps, glancing at his watch as if he were impatient — not exactly a difficult act, under the circumstances. He strode to the door of the charity office, feigning surprise when he found it locked.
“Ms. Yen?” he said, using Lia’s cover name. “Ms. Yen?”
He turned around in the hall.
“Where is she really?” he said under his breath to the runner.
“Down the stairs on the left, past the guards,” said Chafetz. “Charlie, Marie’s having a fit. You shouldn’t be in there. Really, Charlie. Lia’s on her way out.”
Dean carried two small Glocks as hideaway weapons. He reached for the one under his shirt, pulling it out and palming it against his stomach. He called again for Lia, using English and then a phrase supplied by a translator in the Art Room who he guessed was Norwegian, since according to his cover story that was his nationality.
Dean went down the steps and turned, sliding his hand and the small gun into his pocket. There was only one guard there, and though he looked at Dean suspiciously he did not challenge him. Dean went to the man and asked in English — he broke it up, trying to duplicate what he imagined a Norwegian would make it sound like — if the man had seen a young Chinese woman. The guard did not understand his English but began speaking French; as the Art Room scrambled to get the proper translator into the circuit Dean figured out that the man was saying she was downstairs. He played the grateful companion, pointing at his watch and complaining in English and very poor French about how late the girl was. He thought this might be a universal male complaint, but it fai
led to elicit any sympathy from the Moroccan. Dean thanked him and then started down the steps. As he did, the guard yelled at him.
“He’s telling you to stop,” said the translator, finally on the line.
“Faites attention!” yelled the man.
“He’s yelling at you to watch out, to stop!”
Behind him, Dean heard the soldier fumbling with his gun.
* * *
Lia felt as if her face had been shorn from her body, as if she were just the small bit of flesh and bone around her eyes and nose and mouth — no skull, no body, no stomach. She neither thought nor felt anything for a moment, and then an idea occurred to her:
This is what death feels like.
The lessons of her Chinese teacher when she was five came back to her. The sound, more primitive than the writing of the words: mmmm goi.
Excuse me. The first phrase she had learned.
“Excuse me. This is a ladies’ room,” she said in Chinese, and then she turned to English. “Why are you here?”
The translator started to tell her how to ask who he was in Arabic.
“Why are you here?” she said in English.
The man lowered his gun a few inches until it pointed toward her breast.
Lia’s left hand moved without her directing it to, jerking up to slam the top of the bugle-shaped rifle away. The rest of her body flew forward and the man landed against the floor, the gun clattering away and a strange sound shrieking from his lips.
To Lia, it seemed as if she were still standing back by the stall, watching it all unfold, watching her fist slam hard three times against the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it with the first blow, watching her knee as it punctured his rib. She watched as her body jumped back, saw herself scan the bathroom — the old woman had fled.
Lia scooped up the assault rifle and started for the door.
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