Emma worked the remote, and they both started munching.
Lana called in to CyberFortress as she drove by crews still cleaning up immense piles of debris from the train wreck. Body recovery had ended yesterday. Sometime during the night, two large cranes had arrived and were now lifting the smashed freight cars onto a series of extra-wide truck trailers.
Jensen picked up on the second ring. “Do you need me?” she asked.
“They need you more out at Fort Meade than ever, so we’ll make do around here. But throw some work our way, while you’re over there,” Jensen joked.
Truth was, CyberFortress wasn’t even waiting on a contract. They were all-hands-on-deck with the Defense Department cyberteams. In times of crisis, there was no more than a photon’s width between the private and public sectors, which both the left and right ends of the political spectrum deplored.
At that moment, though, nobody was complaining — at least not loudly.
Holmes wanted to see Lana immediately. When she arrived at his office, the well-coiffed Donna Warnes took her directly to him. That entailed returning, once more, to the SCIF, the Sensitive Compartmented Information Security room. After gaining entry, Lana saw that the windowless facility was not full of colleagues, as she had expected. Only Holmes.
“Well, this is a first,” she said.
“I can’t say I’ve ever found it necessary to do this with you before, but a couple of things have come up. Go ahead, have a seat.”
Lana pulled out a chair and settled across from Holmes, who continued almost immediately:
“CyberFortress will be contacted this morning by the Lawyers’ League for the Rights of Detainees. Don’t ask how I know this. I just do. They’re going to try to hire your company to review our work on Mancur’s computers. They’re dubious, in short, about our having him held.”
“We’ll turn them down, of course.”
Holmes shook his head, shocking her.
“No, don’t. Take the work. I want your best to double-check my best. The league knows precisely what they’re doing. They know you work for us on a contract basis. They’re so sure Mancur is innocent, they’re playing the only cards they have, which is to say all of them.” Holmes paused and looked directly into Lana’s eyes. “And they’re probably right about Mancur.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. Voice analysis, polygraphs — we ran him through the lie detector regimen early this morning — everything says so, including this.” He patted his flat belly. “So feel free to do the work.”
“Is that why you wanted to talk in here?”
“No. I wanted you to know that it’s critical to get to the bottom of Mancur’s claims that the Chinese framed him in advance of the attack. There are a lot of emails on his computer from Al Qaeda, Islamists in the Pakistan military, even Anwar al-Awlaki.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, and I don’t believe any of it. But nobody I can think of, outside of our agencies, has had more ‘encounters,’ let’s say, with Chinese hackers than you have, especially in the past year. Look, we want you and Jensen to check on the work done at NSA, and go as deep as you can. You two will be doing our final vetting of Mancur.”
“Vetting? That sounds like you have plans for him.” Now she felt they were moving toward the real reason Holmes had felt it would be necessary to meet in the SCIF.
“We want to turn him.”
“Into an operative?”
Holmes nodded. “He might bite. He’s been absolutely disgraced, completely demonized in this country. If we’re ‘forced’ to release him by a federal court — which under these dire circumstances can be arranged, believe me — he could look like a hero to elements that we’re interested in. And not just for this case.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I say that because for all we know a lone wolf like Kaczynski, working away in a laboratory that’s off the grid, could have done this to us. We just don’t know yet.
“But we’re certain that Islamists have tried to attack us in the past, and at the very least they’re celebrating the fact that somebody out there managed to cripple us. In fact, so many of them are taking credit for the attack that there are quite a few insults getting traded in that crowd,” Holmes said with obvious loathing. “So if we can get them to accept Mancur with open arms, that would be a tremendous advantage — if not now, then down the road. That’s assuming he’ll play ball with us, and then conducts himself in the right way.”
“Which would be the wrong way in the view of most of the world.”
“That’s correct. The civilized portion, in any case. We think he’s smart enough to pull it off. We just don’t know if he’s tough enough.”
“To survive?”
“Well, there’s that, too,” Holmes answered dryly.
“But we have to vet him first,” Lana said, nodding. Then she looked at the ceiling, knowing that something in the ceiling was undoubtedly looking at her.
“Yes, and I want to make sure that he’s got a computer that won’t get him in trouble over there, because he’s going to be vetted by them, too, whoever ‘they’ turn out to be. We have no idea where this thing could take him. And if we’re not super careful, they will literally hand him his head and post the video on the Web.”
“You can’t possibly be optimistic about turning him, Bob. It sounds to me like he’ll have a lot of reasons to tell us where to go.”
“Plenty. But his only path to redemption will be to do what we suggest. If he survives, then he might turn out to be the greatest hero in American history. He’ll certainly rehabilitate the image of Saudis in the American mind set.”
“He’ll be a hero in the Federal Witness Protection Program forever.”
“That’s hardly a hellish existence, Lana. He and his descendants will live well. We’ll be able to assure him of that. And if wants to let us change his appearance, no one will ever be able to identify him. He’ll know more freedom than most Americans. For one thing, he’ll never have to worry about making a living or having the resources to send his children to the best schools in the country. And he’ll be protected by the best security service in the world.”
“Do you think he’ll do it?”
“We’re not banking on it, I can tell you that much. He’s just one of our approaches right now. We’re running more than a hundred major investigations. I’m giving us a one in five chance of turning him. But that’s only if you find him clean as the proverbial whistle.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Lana told Holmes.
“If you find he’s all right, you might be spending time with him, too.”
“Really?”
“If he’ll work with us, we’ll want you prepping him on encryption. He’s going to have to be perfect.”
“If he’s clean, I’ll be glad to help. Just tell me something. Was this your plan from the beginning? Is that why you picked him up so fast?”
Holmes shook his head no, which meant more than just “no”—it meant nothing at all.
CHAPTER 10
Ruhi would never be ready. Never in a million years. Not for what he saw coming. A guard, faceless through a narrow slot, ordered him to get ready to move in the next fifteen minutes, “because your vacation is over.”
Vacation? He’d just come back from a long polygraph exam. He’d barely had time to catch his breath.
“And just in case you think we’re releasing you,” the guard went on, “let me promise you that you are not leaving here. You’re not even getting lunch today.”
Just how was he supposed to “get ready”? He had nothing he could do, except gird himself for the worst — torture. What else could it be? So he began to pace, which made him feel like a caged animal.