So the tit-for-tat had taken its toll, especially on the Iranians. But would that have prompted them to launch an all-out attack on the U.S.?
Holmes had no love for the Iranians, but he didn’t think they were responsible for the devastation of the past few days. The mullahs running the show in Tehran were too calculating for that, in his view. And those religious leaders knew their country’s cyberwarriors were still too inept to avoid leaving identifying clues in their viruses. That was clearly evident in Shamoon, which had been quickly traced to the Persian Gulf power. Even the most fanatical Shiites in Iran had to know that their country would be demolished if a wholesale attack on the U.S. were ever traced to them.
Though Holmes was operationally dubious of agents in situ — preferring intercepted communication from the source — those on the ground in Tehran felt certain that the Iranians “weren’t that crazy,” as the CIA’s most highly prized asset put it.
But that didn’t stop the punditocracy from going berserk. Last night, as Holmes tried to relax with a nightcap by watching a late-night Fox broadcast, one of the network’s dimmest bulbs started humming an old Beach Boys song.
“Oh, Christ,” Holmes mumbled, knowing what was coming.
Sure enough, the anchor, who couldn’t find his way out of a hallway with an exit sign at both ends, started reprising John McCain’s take on the classic, “Barbara Ann”: “Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran…”
What was it about the drumbeat for war? Holmes wondered as Donna gathered up her computer and retreated to her office, sensing, as she often did, when her boss needed time to think.
Holmes had earned his stripes, and then some, in Vietnam. There was nothing romantic about that war. It was all mud and blood and gore, and though he kept his political preferences to himself, he loathed, to his very core, the non-vets who called for war, even when they were right. He could never say so publicly, given the string of non-vets for whom he’d served — Clinton, Bush/Cheney, Obama — but that’s how he felt. The hell with political correctness.
His phone brightened; Donna was alerting him that two of his top cyberforensic specialists were outside his office. Holmes said to send them in.
He thought of them as twins because they were both dark-haired, mustached, and in their early thirties. They also spent a lot of time with each other outside Fort Meade. Not that Holmes cared. He was glad that people could no longer be blackmailed for their sexual orientation. Made for better national security.
The two stood stiffly in front of his desk, which was par for the course.
“Sit down,” he told them.
Jason, the taller one, settled first. He tugged on his lab partner’s sleeve, startling Jacob. The shorter man might have been in a daze.
Holmes watched Jacob Rena sit, wondering if he’d fallen asleep on his feet. Nobody was getting much shut-eye with the cyberattacker’s Damocles’s sword hanging over the nation’s head.
“What have you found?” Holmes asked Jason Barnes. With their given names both beginning with J, Holmes had often thought it was as if they’d been coordinating their lives since birth. At least Jason was taller and generally more dominant. It helped to keep them separate in Holmes’s mind.
Predictably, Jason delivered the news: “We’ve recovered another cache of emails that Mancur sent to Anwar al-Awlaki,” the U.S.-born Muslim cleric who was killed by an American drone attack. “It turns out that Mancur was a big fan of the guy’s videos.”
Awlaki, a leading Al Qaeda figure in Yemen, had made scores of pro-Islamist videos extolling terrorism against the U.S. And he’d had his macabre successes, most prominently Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist at Fort Hood, Texas, who shot and killed thirteen people at the base, wounding thirty-two others. The massacre took place after Hasan exchanged inflammatory emails with the radical cleric.
“Looks like Awlaki really did inspire the biggest killer ever from the grave,” Jason added.
“How many emails to Awlaki?” asked Holmes.
“Twenty-three in the latest batch. We’re still working on it,” Jason replied. “We thought you’d want to know right away.”
“I do. What’s Mancur saying in his emails?”
“You could safely put them in the category of more fan mail,” Jason answered.
“In some of them, to Islamists in Pakistan,” Jacob added, “Mancur sounds incensed that a drone killed Awlaki’s son.”
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen like his father, was sixteen when he was killed with others by a U.S. drone a month after his father died. Like father, like son was the consensus in the intelligence community, but the killing of the kid had raised a ruckus among human rights activists that had yet to settle down. National security, Holmes reminded himself, was not for the faint of heart.
“Do you want this released to the media?” Jason asked, sitting up straight, which made him tower over his lab partner.
Holmes thought Jason was clearly energized by the prospect of his investigation finding a larger audience. Which immediately placed him in Holmes’s mental suspect file, in the event there were ever any leaks from the man’s department.
“Let me think about that,” Holmes said and dismissed them.
He watched them file out, not the least bit satisfied with their findings. It was a little too pat, wasn’t it? he asked himself. Finding more of them? It made Holmes think that the Chinese might, in fact, be setting up Mancur. It was just like them to manufacture every last bit of possible evidence. The Chinese had a penchant for larding on the “evidence,” as if they had little faith in their most straightforward lies. Tossing in al-Awlaki was like throwing in the Islamist kitchen sink.
He brought up the interrogation video and watched it for a few more minutes.
Would prosecutors ever get a jury to convict Mancur? Holmes shook his head. Not if the Donna Warnes of the world were sitting in judgment.
What about you? he asked himself. Would you vote to convict?
Jury’s still out.
Ruhi forced himself to sit down in his cell. Every horrific photo he’d ever seen of Abu Ghraib came back to him now. Dogs snarling at the faces of bound prisoners, naked men stacked on top of one another like cordwood, and always, always that pathetic Army grunt, Lynndie England, standing with a leash around the neck of a Muslim man lying on the floor of a cell block. Ghastly. And that’s what he might be in for now. Probably worse. They thought he’d been party to the worst attack on the U.S. ever. They wanted to know whom he’d been working with. What was he supposed to say? The truth? He’d tried telling them the truth. They didn’t want to hear the truth. Soon they’d subject him to sleep deprivation, hallucinations, earsplitting rap music 24/7. Waterboarding.
Fear made his stomach so tight that he could have been swallowing boulders all afternoon, instead of the bile that even now seeped into his mouth.
At least his story had been consistent. And why wouldn’t it be? The truth was simple to keep track of. But the truth wouldn’t be good enough. He could tell by the way they questioned him that soon his adopted country would torture him, and he knew — had no doubt — that he wouldn’t last two seconds once they put pliers near his fingernails. He’d tell them anything they wanted to hear, for all the good it would do, but then his story would be inconsistent and they’d accuse him of lying. And that would be all the excuse they’d need to use the worst torture on him. That’s probably exactly what happened to everyone who found himself in one of these cells, guilty or not.