Dark Zone

52

The national security adviser rubbed his hand across his forehead, as if he were trying to manipulate some part of his brain through the skin and skull. Then he leaned across the long table in the White House situation room, his voice reverberating against the paneled walls of the nearly empty conference room.

“What do we know for sure here?” Hadash asked Rubens. “You have a lot of guesses strung together.”

“I agree,” said Rubens. “But the information is provocative. I’ m told that the stolen-car ring is run by a man named Mussa Duoar, who was born in Algeria. He’s a Muslim, and apparently not a French citizen although he’s lived in the country for at least ten years, if not more.”

“Why isn’t he a citizen?” asked President Marcke.

“I don’t know,” said Rubens. “Possibly a matter of choice. The family name seems to come up in connection with the Algerian independence movement in the nineteen-sixties, but you could probably say that about half the population.”

Marcke nodded. Though only Hadash, Rubens, Vice Admiral Brown, the President, and CIA Director Jake Namath were at the meeting, it was being held in the large room beneath the White House to facilitate easy communications with the Secretary of State, who had already left for Paris ahead of the President’s scheduled visit. The Secretary of State’s worried image filled a video screen nearby.

“The target would fit with other intercepts from the Middle East as a very high-value symbol,” said Rubens. “This would be a grand slam for them, the equivalent in France of the World Trade Center. The impact in Europe would be immense. Immeasurable. And it makes sense given Arab and Muslim reaction to France’s increased cooperation with the U.S. on security matters following their embarrassment over Iraq. They’ve been burning French flags in Egypt and Palestine for the past eight months. They’ll go crazy with this.”

“But how credible is the information?” asked Namath. “We’re always getting this sort of background chatter.”

“I think this goes beyond background chatter” said Rubens. “There are gaps, certainly, but these things don’t present themselves as complete pictures.”

“There are major gaps here,” said Hadash.

“Yes,” conceded Rubens. “But the time factor is critical. If we interpret the date on the site as being significant.”

“You have no idea if it has any significance at all,” said Namath. “You told us that yourself. Is it saying this is the date we will strike? Or is it saying wait until the weather turns cloudy?”

Before Rubens could rebut him, Marcke cut in.

“We have to inform the French,” said the President. “Think if the situation were reversed and this was the Statue of Liberty we were talking about — we’d want to know. Absolutely. And now. With as many details as we can provide.”

“I doubt they’ll believe us,” said Namath.

“They may or they may not,” agreed the President. “That’s their call.”

“They’ll want specifics,” said Lincoln.

“As would I,” said Marcke.

Rubens had no problem sharing the eavesdropping information they had obtained from Morocco — it didn’t involve sensitive technology, nor was the source on French soil. The information about the computers was somewhat more delicate, but the work had been done from the United States and it provided a vital clue; there was no way it could be left out.

Telling them about the chemist, however, would make it clear that the Americans were running an operation on French soil. It was one thing for everyone to know that this sort of thing went on and quite another to admit it openly.

“Telling them about the French source would add a great deal of credibility,” said the Secretary of State.

“That’s letting them in too deeply,” objected Brown. “And it may endanger our people.”

“I doubt they’ll assassinate your people,” said the President drily.

“Agreed,” said Rubens. “However, the Frenchman LaFoote believes the head of Paris security was involved.”

“Unlikely,” said Namath.

“Perhaps,” said Brown. “But if he was, our people would definitely be at risk.”

“They’re at risk now,” said Namath.

“The French don’t know about our operation,” said Rubens.

“I think any data we have we should share,” said Lincoln.

But Rubens and Brown stuck to their position, and eventually Hadash backed them up; together they worked out an arrangement that would leave LaFoote and, more important, the Deep Black agents unmentioned. They would also leave out the fact that the explosives involved seemed to have been made by a chemist who had worked for the French government — but at the same time supply enough technical data about what they perceived the threat to be. The French would figure out what the explosives were, even though they would be given the impression that the Americans didn’t know who had helped develop them.

“You think they would turn around and track the chemist, what’s his name, on their own?” asked Namath.

“Vefoures,” said Rubens. “They may. They’re welcome to. We’ve tried. He’s gone, almost surely killed. It’s the car thief we need, Mussa Duoar,” added Rubens. “He’s connected to the computers. He’s a devout Muslim. He has connections in the underworld. And to terrorists. He’s in the middle of this.”

“Car thieves don’t blow up national monuments,” said Namath.

“They also usually don’t gather money for terrorists,” said Rubens. “Or have connections with radical Muslims.”

“Connections that don’t necessarily add up to anything except coincidences,” said Namath.

“Granted, I’m making a leap,” conceded Rubens.

“What about the warhead that’s missing?” asked the President.

“Definitely still a concern,” said Rubens. “Mussa was from Algeria.”

“More connections,” said Namath.

“Admittedly, it may be a coincidence. We have nothing tying him or any of this to the warhead. What we’ve seen so far are conventional explosives, the exact type that Vefoures was working on,” said Rubens. He turned to Namath. “We have no indication that the warhead is involved and as far as I know it hasn’t been located, unless you’ve found it.”

Namath’s frown made it clear that the CIA hadn’t.

“The explosive could be used to fashion a triggering device for a nuke,” said Hadash.

“Absolutely,” said Rubens. “But it would be no easier with this explosive than with another. And quite frankly, such lenses are not easily constructed. You’ve seen all the trouble the Pakistanis have had.”

“It would be easier to overengineer,” said Hadash. “To compensate for the inferior lens.”

“It would be a big bomb then,” said Rubens.

“But that’s what we’re talking about.”

Rubens conceded that he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that the warhead was involved, but even Namath had to admit that there wasn’t any indication that it was. The discussion shifted over to other possible targets.

As the conversation continued, Rubens noticed that Hadash began glancing at his watch every few minutes. He obviously had a busy schedule today and even though it was still very early in the morning would want to push things along to wrap up quickly. Hadash and the President would be leaving Washington at 2:00 a.m. tomorrow, and Rubens knew from experience that the national security adviser would want to finish early and sneak home for a nap before boarding the plane. The President never bothered with such strategies; he seemed never to be affected by jet lag, either.

“What do you think the odds are that the French will believe us?” President Marcke finally asked Rubens.

“Truthfully, I’m not sure.”

“Admiral?”

“Not sure.”

“Line?”

“I don’t know,” said the Secretary of State.

The President turned to Hadash with the same question.

“About as much as if they told us the White House was being targeted,” said the national security adviser.

I hope more than that, thought Rubens, though he didn’t say it.

“How did the General’s court hearing go?” asked Brown on the helicopter back to Crypto City.

“It was an informal meeting with the judge,” said Rubens. He explained that the judge had appointed a lawyer to represent the General.

“Stay on top of it,” said Brown.

“I’m trying,” said Rubens. “There’s a medical examination this afternoon.”

“You’ll be there?”

“I hope to be.”

“You should try.”

The secure phone buzzed in Ruben’s briefcase; he was only too happy for the excuse to end the conversation.

“Rubens,” he said, snapping the phone on. “Johnny Bib says the explosives fit the Eiffel Tower program precisely,” said Chris Farlekas. “They’ve located the library and he wants to go ahead and recover the hard drive.”

“How difficult will it be?” Rubens asked Farlekas.

“Unknown until we get somebody in to look at the setup. But I’d think it’d be a piece of cake. It’s a small library outside of Paris. The drive itself isn’t anything special — you could replace it in a few minutes or so. There’s a similar size one in the Paris safe house and we can upload the legitimate programs within an hour, maybe less. Whatever is on that locked-out section, of course, stays locked out.”

On the one hand, the sectors had been locked out because of a physical error on the drive, then it would be unlikely that anyone would realize they had taken it. On the other hand, if the locked-out space wasn’t really bad — if what Johnny Bib and his people thought was a malfunction turned out to be a clever masking program they had never encountered before — then whoever was using it would know they were on their trail.

In an ideal world, Rubens would have preferred leaving the drive in place for a few weeks and setting up some sort of trap to catch whoever accessed it. But this wasn’t an ideal world; he was simply going to have to take a risk, and it seemed to him that the risk with the least amount of foreseeable downside was in grabbing the drive.

“Can Tommy get it after he meets with LaFoote?”

“That may be difficult. There were complications.”

“What sort?”

“LaFoote is dead. Looks like murder.”

“I see.”

A confirmation that they were on the trail to something, he thought, though beyond that was all speculation.

“Get Dean over there right away,” Rubens told Farlekas.

“Charlie Dean? Change a computer drive?”

“Good point,” said Rubens. “Send Lia with him to do the actual swap.”