The Enemy Within

Peter nodded. “Yeah, I do. I think that’s why none of your people have ever been able to find a print they could match at any of the crime scenes. Plus, there’s at least one piece of supporting evidence that backs up my hunch.”

He sorted through the stacked documents and pulled out a stapled collection of transcripts and photocopied letters. “Take a gander at those.”

She glanced through them and looked up. “The oral and written communiques issued by the different terrorist groups?”

“Uh-huh. Supposedly issued by everybody from the New Aryan Order to the Black Liberation Front. But they’ve got one thing in common. Rossini and I both checked them over to make sure.” Peter paused to take a sip of his cold coffee, set the cup aside again, and continued. “Every single message is perfect. Not a single spelling error. Not a single misplaced comma. Not a single piece of slang. They’re all absolutely grammatically perfect.”

Helen vaguely remembered hearing or reading something similar. Had it been in a memo from the FBI’s own language experts? She frowned. So many documents had crossed her temporary desk in such a short space of time that she’d often suspected the task force would drown in paper before finding its first terrorist. Still, how had she missed something like this? How had they all missed something like this?

She already knew the answer to her question. The FBI task force had been swamped right from the day it was formed hit from all sides at every turn by new demands on its time and its limited resources. If Peter’s guess was right, that had been an important part of the terrorist plan from the very beginning. Her face darkened in anger.

He reached out and took the material out of her unresisting hand. “I think all of these little propaganda pieces were written by the same people. By people with a thorough, but very academic, knowledge of American English.”

Helen nodded slowly, still rocked by the stomach-turning possibility that the Bureau task force had been walking right past an important clue. ’God, Peter, I think you’re probably right.” She hesitated. “But…”

“But I don’t have a single shred of solid proof beyond those communiques,” he finished the sentence for her.

She shook her head. “I’ll talk to Flynn tomorrow morning anyway. We’ve been focusing all our energies on the domestic angle. Maybe it’s high time we widened our search.”

Peter smiled crookedly. “You think Special Agent Flynn’s really going to listen to a wild-eyed theory from an Army grunt?”

“Coming from a smart Army grunt? He might. Mike Flynn’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Helen countered. “He doesn’t put up with bullshit, but I’ve never seen him turn away a good idea no matter where it came from.”

“That’s nice,” Peter said, still clearly unconvinced. He bit down on a yawn and glanced at his watch. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up. “Look, maybe we should try to get some sleep. You’ve got to report back, and I’ve got a date with Rossini a little later this morning.”

“Oh? A date with the Maestro?” Helen asked, slipping her arm around his waist. “Is there something I should know about you, Colonel Thorn?”

He laughed softly, almost against his will. “Not that kind of a date, Agent Gray.” His smile slipped. “Rossini wangled a copy of that damned computer virus out of the Computer Emergency Response Team. We’re going to run it by somebody he knows a guy the Maestro says is a Grade A computer whiz.”

He shrugged. “Of course, it’s probably just a waste of time. God knows, every cybernetics expert in the federal government is already doing the same thing.”

Helen hugged him tighter. “You just keep at it, Peter.” Then she stepped back and held out her hand. “Now come take me to bed.”

Thorn’s grin returned. “Yes, ma’am. Anything you say.”

Herndon, northern Virginia

Joseph Rossini took the Dulles Access Road out toward Herndon, relying on their official Pentagon identity cards to get them through the tollbooths without having to scratch around for exact change. He also drove fast, exceeding the speed limit by at least fifteen miles an hour.

The older man caught Thorn watching him out of the corner of his eye and lifted his shoulders. “I hate poking along, Pete. Going fifty-five’s just not efficient.”

Thorn hid a smile by pretending to take an interest in the passing scenery. Saddled with a loving wife and a multitude of kids, the Maestro had obviously decided to settle for the first half of the male equation seeking “fast cars and loose women.”

They sped past what looked like a military encampment. It was a staging area for one of the security patrols established under the President’s vaunted Operation SAFE SKIES. Two Blackhawk helicopters and a couple of Humvees sat under camouflage netting in a clearing off to the side of the road. Soldiers wearing the Screaming Eagles patch of the 101st Air Assault Division tramped through the mud left by another hard rain. They looked thoroughly bored and uncomfortable.