Том Клэнси - The Teeth of the Tiger

“Hey, Tony, you want to look at this one, buddy.”

The addressee was their old friend 56MoHa@eurocom.net, and the content reconfirmed his identity as a nexus for bad-guy message traffic:

ATEF IS DEAD. HE DIED RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES HERE IN MUNICH. AN AMBULANCE WAS SUMMONED AND THEY TREATED HIM ON THE SIDEWALK BUT HE DIED IN THE HOSPITAL OF A HEART ATTACK. REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. FA’AD. And his address was Honeybear@ostercom.net, which was new to Jack’s computer index.

“Honeybear?” Wills observed with a chuckle. “This guy must surf for women on the ’Net.”

“So, he does cybersex, fine. Tony, if we just whacked a guy named Atef over in Germany, here’s confirmation of the event, plus a new target for us to track.” Ryan turned back to his workstation and used his mouse to check sources. “Here, NSA picked up on it, too. Maybe they think he’s a possible player.”

“You sure like making leaps of imagination,” Wills observed tersely.

“My ass!” Jack was actually angry for once. He was beginning to understand why his father had often been so pissed off at intelligence information that arrived in the Oval Office. “God damn it, Tony, how much clearer do things have to be?”

Wills took a deep breath and spoke as calmly as usual. “Settle down, Jack. This is single-source, a single report on something that might or might not have taken place. You don’t throw your hat over the barn about something until it’s confirmed by a known source. This Honeybear identity could be a lot of things, few of which we can certify as a good guy or a bad guy.”

For his part, Jack Jr. wondered if he was being tested – again! – by his training officer. “Okay, let’s walk through it. MoHa Fifty-six is a source that we’re highly confident is a player, probably an operations officer for the bad guys. We’ve been sweeping the ’Net for him since I’ve been here, okay? So, we sweep the ether and this letter turns up in his mailbox at the same time we believe we – us – have a kill team in the field. Unless you’re going to tell me that Uda bin Sali really did have a myocardial infarction while he was daydreaming about his favorite whore in downtown London. And that the Brit Security Service found the event highly interesting only because it’s not every day that a suspected terrorist banker drops dead on the street. Have I missed anything?”

Wills smiled. “Not a bad presentation. A little thin on the evidence, but your proposition was well organized. So, you think I should walk it upstairs?”

“No, Tony, I think you should run it upstairs,” Ryan said, easing back on the obvious anger. Take a deep breath and count to ten.

“Then I guess I’ll do it.”

FIVE MINUTESlater, Wills walked into Rick Bell’s office. He handed over two sheets of paper.

“Rick, do we have a team at work in Germany?” Wills asked. The response was not the least bit surprising.

“Why do you ask?” Bell had a poker face that would have impressed a marble statue.

“Read,” Wills suggested.

“Damn,” the chief of analysis reacted. “Who pulled this fish out of the electronic ocean?”

“Take a guess,” Tony suggested.

“Not bad, for the kid.” Bell looked very closely at his guest. “How much does he suspect?”

“At Langley, he’d sure as hell be getting people nervous.”

“Like you are?”

“You might say that,” Wills replied. “He makes good leaps of imagination, Rick.”

Bell made a face this time. “Well, it’s not exactly the Olympic long-jump competition, is it?”

“Rick, Jack puts two and two together about as fast as a computer tells the difference between one and zero. He’s right, isn’t he?”

Bell took a second or two before replying. “What do you think?”

“I think they got that Sali character for sure, and this is probably mission number two. How are they doing it?”

“You really do not want to know. It’s not as clean as it looks,” Bell answered. “This Atef guy was a recruiter. He sent at least one guy to Des Moines.”

“That’s a good enough reason,” Wills judged.

“Sam feels the same way. I’ll turn this over to him. Follow-up?”

“This MoHa guy needs a closer look. Maybe we can track him down,” Wills said.

“Any idea where he is?”

“Italy, looks like, but a lot of people live on the boot. Lots of big cities with lots of ratholes. But Italy is a good place for him. Centrally located. Air service everywhere. And the terrorists have let Italy alone lately, and so nobody’s hunting down the dog that isn’t barking.”

“Same in Germany, France, and the rest of Central Europe?”

Wills nodded. “Looks that way. They’re next, but I don’t think they fully appreciate it. Heads in the sand-like, Rick.”

“True,” Bell agreed. “So, what do we do with your student?”

“Ryan? Good question. Sure as hell, he’s a quick learner. He’s particularly good at connecting things,” Wills thought out loud. “He makes big leaps of imagination, sometimes too far, but, still, it’s not a bad quality for an analyst to have.”

“Grade to this point?”

“B-plus, maybe a low A, and that’s only because he’s new. He’s not as good as I am, but I’ve been in the business since before he was born. He’s a comer, Rick. He’ll go far.”

“That good?” Bell asked. Tony Wills was known as a careful conservative analyst, and one of the best Langley had ever turned out, despite the green eyeshade and the garters on the sleeves.

Wills nodded. “That good.” He was also scrupulously honest. It was his natural character, but he could also afford to be. The Campus paid far better than any government agency. His kids were all grown – the last one was in his final year at the University of Maryland in physics, and, after that, he and Betty could think about the next big step in life, though Wills liked it here and had no immediate plans to leave. “But don’t tell him I said so.”

“Big head?”

“No, that wouldn’t be fair. But I don’t want him to start thinking he knows it all yet.”

“Nobody with half a brain thinks that way,” Bell said.

“Yeah.” Wills stood. “But why take the chance?”

Wills headed out, but Bell still didn’t know what to do with the Ryan kid. Well, something to talk with the Senator about.

“NEXT STOP.Vienna,” Dominic informed his brother. “We got another subject.”

“You wonder how steady this job will be?” Brian wondered aloud.

His brother laughed. “Man, there’s enough mutts in America to keep us busy for the rest of our lives.”

“Yeah, save money, fire all the judges and juries.”

“My name ain’t Dirty Harry Callahan, you jarhead.”

“And I’m not Chesty Puller, either. How do we get there? Fly, train – maybe drive?”

“Driving might be fun,” Dominic said. “I wonder if we can rent a Porsche . . ?”

“Oh, great,” Brian grunted. “Okay, log off so I can download the file, will ya?”

“Sure. I’ll see what the concierge can set up for us.” And he headed out of the room.

“THIS ISthe only confirmation we have?” Hendley asked.

“Correct.” Granger nodded. “But it tallies exactly with what our guys on the ground told us.”

“They’re going too fast. What if the other side thinks, ‘Two heart attacks in less than a week’ . . ? Then what?”

“Gerry, the nature of this mission is recon-by-fire, remember? We halfway want the other side to get a little nervous, but soon their arrogance will set in and they’ll write it off as random chance. If this were TV or the movies, they’d think CIA was playing hardball, but it isn’t the movies, and they know that CIA doesn’t play that kind of game. The Mossad, maybe, but they’re already wary of the Israelis. Hey” – a lightbulb went off in Granger’s brain – “what if they’re the guys who offed the Mossad officer in Rome?”