“Understood, sir,” Thorn said, hoping he could pull that off. Diplomacy had never been his strong suit. “I’ll do my level best.”
General Amir Taleh listened with satisfaction to the brief assembled by his staff. Despite a natural caution that had served him so well for so long, he had to admit to himself that his intricately designed plan was working perfectly holding precisely to its preset schedule. The short video montage his officers had assembled from American news broadcasts summed up the situation in a few dramatic pictures.
Shots of burning buildings, troops moving in armored vehicles down city streets, and rows of bodies in makeshift morgues were telling evidence of his special operatives’ efficiency. In effect, the pictures of soldiers moving through civilian neighborhoods told the whole story. America’s police were no longer able to keep order without help from their National Guard. Soon, he thought coldly, even they would not be enough.
His gaze turned from the television screen to the small staff grouped in front of his desk. These men were his closest intimates the only men in Iran he trusted with full knowledge of his plans.
“Are you satisfied that we are ready to begin Phase IV of SCIMITAR?” Taleh asked quietly.
His question was largely a formality. The tight movement schedules needed to bring his forces into place at the proper moment required an intricate juggling of Iran’s transportation resources its trucks, trains, and ships. Unnecessary delay at this point might throw the whole operation out of kilter. Nonetheless, nothing could begin without Taleh’s express authorization. He had taken great pains to ensure that all the strands of military power ran through his hands and his hands alone.
His senior operations officer, an elderly, precise man, now deaf. “We are ready. Our meteorological reports also indicate a patch of bad weather coming in, which we may be able to use to our advantage.”
“Excellent,” Taleh replied. Their troop movements had all been timed to avoid American reconnaissance satellites as much as possible, but cloud cover would simplify matters. Truly, God was showing his favor to the Faithful.
His eyes sought out Farhad Kazemi in the back row and moved on. He knew that the young captain was increasingly worried about his personal security, but he was sure the internal opposition to his policies would fade once the full magnitude of his plan became clear to all. Victory always had a thousand fathers.
He made his decision.
“We are very close, brothers,” Taleh said firmly. “In a very short time the West will understand just how badly they have misjudged us.”
Gray, gloomy light seeped in through the windows in Special Agent Mike Flynn’s office. It was just after dawn.
The FBI agent stood silently, watching Thorn spread printouts of the still-encrypted messages across a long conference table filling one corner of the room. Without offering any comments of his own, he listened intently as the soldier described the suspicious pattern he discerned in the E-mail transmitted between London and users in the United States. Short messages from this mysterious “Magi” to a given user were usually followed within a day or two by a new terrorist outrage. And in every case, the same user sent a much longer post to Magi within twenty-four to thirty-six hours after each attack. To Thorn, the messages all slotted neatly into an identifiable chain of orders and after-action reports.
“I believe what we’re looking at are communications between a higher headquarters and a group of operational terrorist cells. I think that’s how they’ve been coordinating this campaign right under our noses. Basically, these bastards have been using our own high-technology and computer networks to run rings around us,” Thorn finished quietly.
Flynn stayed silent for several moments more. Finally, he looked up.
“Let me get this straight, Colonel. The NSA still can’t make heads or tails out of this stuff?” “No, sir,” Thorn admitted. “But they’ve only had the material for about eight hours. I understand their experts believe the program used to encrypt these messages is extraordinarily sophisticated far beyond anything available commercially. Like the Midwest Telephone virus, it appears to be purpose-built. That’s another reason I believe these intercepted communications are significant.”
“Maybe.” Flynn sounded dubious. “But for the moment, Colonel, your theory of a grand terrorist conspiracy hatched overseas basically rests on an operational pattern you claim to see in messages none of us can read.”
“Not entirely,” Thorn said stiffly. “What about the Bulgarian virus? Where would a bunch of racist fanatics get the kind of money and connections they’d need to buy something like that? And what about the practically identical language all these supposedly separate terrorist groups are using to claim responsibility for their attacks? Is that just a coincidence?”
Flynn heard him out impassively, just standing there with his arms crossed. “I’ve already talked to Agent Gray about that, Colonel. You’ve raised some intriguing points. But I’ve spent too many years in this business to dive headfirst at the first plausible theory I hear.”
Thorn gritted his teeth, biting down an angry retort.
In the absent, he could understand the agent’s skepticism. He HAS making a lot of assumptions about the contents of that intercepted electronic mail. More important, both of Flynn’s superiors, the FBI Director and the Attorney General, had already invested a lot of their political prestige backing the notion that American neo-Nazis and radical black extremists were the driving forces behind the wave of terror. Convincing them that they had been wrong would certainly take a lot more evidence than a few indecipherable computer messages.
Appearing more curious than anything else, Flynn watched him struggle to hold his temper in check.
“So you’re not interested in pursuing this angle further unless the NSA can crack those messages?” Thorn asked finally, instantly aware of the bitterness apparent in his voice.
The FBI agent snorted and shook his head. “That is not what I said.” He smiled wryly at the surprise on Thorn’s face. “I may be a skeptic, Colonel. But I’m not an idiot. And I’ve never turned my back on a promising lead in my life.”
He nodded toward the E-mail intercepts spread out across his conference table. “We’ll check with CompuNet’s managers to see what they can tell us about this stuff.” He looked up at Thorn. “In the meantime, Colonel, I suggest you try to light a fire under those folks at the NSA. See if you can get ‘em to crank those supercomputers along a little faster.”
Flynn smiled humorlessly. “I’d feel a lot safer telling the Attorney General she’s been a Grade A idiot if I had a few more aces up my sleeve.”
Thorn felt his spirits lift. Helen had been right. He had been misjudging the head of the FBI task force. Mike Flynn was one of the good guys after all.
The telephone call Thorn had been expecting came shortly after noon.
“Any more luck on those codes, Colonel?” Flynn asked.
“Not yet, sir,” Thorn admitted. “The NSA is still stumped. They say the system used to encrypt these messages is definitely better than anything they’ve ever seen in private use. It’s more sophisticated than many of the data encryption systems used by other governments.”
“I see,” the FBI agent said quietly. “Then we may have to do this the hard way.”
“You mean, you’ll have to work in from the other end,” Thorn reasoned out loud. “Find out who these users are first before we get a read on the kind of data they’re sending and receiving.”