"Is it strictly necessary?"
"Maybe in a week or so, I can find more data. This Sali guy might just be a rich kid playing stickball out in the traffic, but… but my nose tells me he's a player of some sort," Cunningham admitted. He'd developed good instincts over the years, as a result of which two former Mafia kingpins were now living in solitary cells at Marion, Illinois. But he didn't trust his own instincts as well as his former and current superiors did. A career accountant with a foxhound's nose, he was also very conservative in talking about it.
"A week, you think?"
Dave nodded. "About that."
"How's the Ryan kid?"
"Good instincts. He found something most people would have missed. Maybe his youth works for him. Young target, young bloodhound. Usually, it doesn't work. This time… looks like maybe it did. You know, when his dad appointed Pat Martin to be Attorney General, I heard some things about Big Jack. Pat really liked him, and I worked with Mr. Martin enough to respect him a lot. This kid may be going places. It'll take about ten years to be sure of that, of course."
"We're not supposed to believe in breeding over here, Dave," Tom Davis observed.
"Numbers is numbers, Mr. Davis. Some people have a good nose, some don't. He doesn't yet, not really, but he's sure heading that way." Cunningham had helped start the Justice Department's Special Accounting Unit, which specialized in tracking terrorist money. Everyone needed money to operate, and money always left a trail somewhere, but it was often found after the fact more easily than before. Good for investigations, but not as good for active defense.
"Thanks, Dave," Hendley said in dismissal. "Keep us posted, if you would."
"Yes, sir." Cunningham gathered his papers and made his way out.
"You know, he'd be a little more effective if he had a personality," Davis said fifteen seconds after the door closed.
"Nobody's perfect, Tom. He's the best guy they ever had at Justice for this sort of thing. I bet when he fishes, there's nothing left in the lake after he leaves."
"No argument here, Gerry."
"So, this Sali gent might be a banker for the bad guys?"
"It looks like a possibility. Langley and Fort Meade are still in a dither over the current situation," Hendley went on.
"I've seen the paperwork. It's a whole lot of paper for not much hard data." In the business of intelligence analysis, you got into the speculation phase too rapidly, the point when experienced analysts started applying fear to existing data, following it to God knew where, trying to read the minds of people who didn't speak all that much, even to each other. Might there be people out there with anthrax or smallpox in little bottles in their shaving kits? How the hell could you tell? That had been done once to America, but when you got down to it everything had been done once to America, and while it had given the country the confidence that her people could deal with damned near anything, it had also given Americans the realization that bad things could indeed happen here and that those responsible might not always be identifiable. The new President did not convey any assurance that we'd be able to stop or punish such people. That was a major problem in and of itself.
"You know, we're a victim of our own success," the former senator said quietly. "We've managed to handle every nation-state that ever crossed us, but these invisible bastards who work for their vision of God are harder to identify and track. God is omnipresent. So are His perverted agents."
"Gerry, my boy, if it was easy, we wouldn't be here."
"Tom, thank God I can always count on you for moral support."
"We live in an imperfect world, you know. There isn't always enough rain to make the corn grow, and, if there is, sometimes the rivers flood. My father taught me that."
"I always meant to ask you — how the hell did your family ever end up in goddamned Nebraska?"
"My great-grandfather was a soldier — cavalryman, Ninth Cavalry, black regiment. He didn't feel like moving back to Georgia when his hitch ran out. He'd spent some time at Fort Crook outside of Omaha, and the dumbass didn't mind the winters. So, he bought a spread near Seneca and farmed corn. That's how history started for us Davises."
"Wasn't any Ku Klux Klan in Nebraska?"
"No, they stayed in Indiana. Smaller farms there, anyway. My great-grandfather shot himself some buffalo when he got started. There's the biggest damned head over the fireplace at home. Damned thing still smells. Dad and my brother mainly hunt longhorn antelope now, the 'speed-goat,' they call it at home. Never got to like the taste."
"What's your nose say on this new intel, Tom?" Hendley asked.
"I'm not planning to go to New York anytime soon, buddy."
East of Knoxville, the road divided. I-40 went east. I- 81 went north, and the rented Ford took the latter through the mountains explored by Daniel Boone when the western frontier of America had scarcely stretched out of sight of the Atlantic Ocean. A road sign showed the exit for the home of someone named Davy Crockett. Whoever that was, Abdullah thought, driving downhill through a pretty mountain pass. Finally, at a town named Bristol, they were in Virginia, their final major territorial boundary. About six more hours, he calculated. The land here, in the sunlight, was lush in its greenness, with horse and dairy farms on both sides of the road. Even churches, usually white-painted wooden buildings with crosses atop the steeples. Christians. The country was clearly dominated by them.
Unbelievers.
Enemies.
Targets.
They had their guns in the trunk to deal with them. First, I-81 north to I-64. They'd long since memorized their routing. The other three teams were surely in place now. Des Moines, Colorado Springs, and Sacramento. Each a city large enough to have at least one good shopping mall. Two were provincial capitals. None were major cities, however. All were what they called "Middle America," where the "good" people lived, where the "ordinary," "hardworking" Americans made their homes, where they felt safe, far from the great centers of power — and corruption. Few, if any, Jews to be found in those cities. Oh, maybe a few. Jews like to run jewelry stores. Maybe even in the shopping malls. That would be an added bonus, but only something to be scooped up if it accidentally offered itself. Their real objective was to kill ordinary Americans, the ones who considered themselves safe in the womb of ordinary America. They would soon learn that safety in this world was an illusion. They'd learn that the thunderbolt of Allah reached everywhere.
"So, this is it?" Tom Davis asked.
"Yes, it is," Dr. Pasternak replied. "Be careful. It's fully loaded. The red tag, you see. The blue one is not charged."
"What does it deliver?"
"Succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant, essentially a synthetic and more potent form of curare. It shuts down all the muscles, including the diaphragm. You can't breath, speak, or move. You're fully awake. It'll be a miserable death," the physician added in a cold, distant voice.
"Why is that?" Hendley asked.
"You can't breathe. Your heart rapidly goes into anoxia, essentially a massive induced heart attack. It won't feel very good at all."