Final Winter

‘Perhaps. I mean, that’s a simplistic answer to a complex problem, but as one of our late lamented presidents said, sometimes simple answers are just the hard ones. I just don’t know. I’m just one analyst, Brian. I know that there are better and more experienced analysts out there who are probably looking at the same problem, right now.’

‘So if you had the power, what would you do?’

‘I’d recommend that the people who are performing this chatter, that some of them get picked up and squeezed. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened yet. And I may do just that at our meeting this afternoon. Ask Adrianna to have some of these characters picked up.’

Brian said, ‘Typical response from those who make the rules. If I knew about some low-level street dealers setting up shop in my precinct, sometimes we’d string them along. See where they went and who they saw. Makes sense.’

‘Sure, but if the intelligence is correct, a major terrorist attack is set to take place within a month. I’d think you’d want those people in your control, debriefing them, before that date arrived.’

‘Well, that’s for the higher-ups to decide, I guess. All I know is that I’ve got lots of work to do and precious little time to do it.’

Darren said, ‘Adrianna’s the next one on your investigation list, am I right?’

Brian said, ‘Christ, is there anything you don’t know?’

‘Sure. Lots. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know, smart one, you tell me. What should I do?’ Darren thought for a moment and shrugged. ‘Hell, I’d wait until after this Final Winter thing is completed before digging into the Princess’s background. What’s the point?’

Brian seemed to agree. ‘My thoughts, too.’

~ * ~

Adrianna noted the time from a little clock icon up on the corner of her screen. Time to get out of this little hole and get dressed, but not before one more task was done. She toggled open a familiar file and looked again at the names. Amil Zahrain of Pakistan.

Ranon Degun of Bali.

Henry Muhammad Dolan of Great Britain.

They had performed their roles, and had performed them well. They had taken messages and rebroadcast them, and had added to the din of the chatter out there. They were good soldiers.

Just like poor Hamad Suseel of Palestine. Brought over to the United States for one purpose, to raid the offices of Tiger Team Five. Things had been too quiet the past several months. She needed something to shake up the increasing complacency, to make the higher-ups and her own Tiger Team members fearful of the hard-core men out there who wanted to kill for the sake of their God.

Of course she felt bad about the deaths in Connecticut. Two of the Tiger Team members she had counted as friends.

But it had had to be done.

Just like now, with what was going to happen to the men from Bali, Britain and Pakistan.

Adrianna wrote up a file protocol, with information and JPEG photos of the three, plus their home addresses and habits. All placed into a file which was compressed and encoded.

There. Done.

She disconnected the laptop’s power cord, picked the machine up, and left the cubbyhole underneath the stairs. Walking back out to the cellar, she left the door open and walked upstairs, carrying the laptop, her bathrobe still fastened around her waist.

Now she was in the small dining room where she had dined the other night with Brian, that good-looking, interesting young man from—-

Cut it out, she thought harshly. No time for that.

She placed the laptop on the table, moved the screen around so she could look at it properly.

Took a breath.

Pressed a key.

A quick dialogue box appeared.

FILE TRANSFER COMPLETED.

There. It was now in somebody else’s capable hands. Just a second or two earlier, a compressed chunk of data had been uplinked from her CIA laptop to a satellite 23,000 miles overhead in geosynchronous orbit. The transmission had lasted less than a second, if that. Any type of surveillance being conducted at her home — quite unlikely — would have registered, if the watchers were very, very lucky, a tiny burst of static. That would’ve been all. But the data package squirted up to the CIA satellite had been received and the information was being extracted and expanded, and with the proper code phrases and authorizations the data now stored in the memory banks of the overhead satellite would be rebroadcast to certain individuals back on the ground.

And the satellite’s own data-processing software would indicate only that it had received a burst of data from a certain point in Maryland, where dozens and dozens of offices that could have been the source of the information were located.

Quite simple, quite delicate — and quite deadly.

Especially for those three men.