The Assassin. Andrew Britton
was there that Jonathan Harper, in desperate need of an Arabic language specialist for an upcoming operation, had found her the previous year.
The rain started coming harder. She tucked her head down a little and increased her pace as she crossed the square for the shelter of the embassy. Climbing the short flight of marble stairs, she pulled open the door to the service entrance, then dug her ID out of her purse for the benefit of the armed marine at the security checkpoint.
He gave her a smile, which she tried to return as they went through the ritual. After being passed through, she made her way directly to the elevator. Soon she was in her office on the third floor. The term “office” was perhaps overly generous, as it was nothing more than a small, windowless cubbyhole. Secretly, Naomi suspected the room had been hijacked from some unfortunate janitor to make room for her. She sometimes caught herself sneaking little glances at the custodians she passed in the halls, searching for the smallest hint of forthcoming retribution.
She turned on her computer, then shrugged off her coat and draped it over the radiator. She was doing her best to wring the water out of her hair when someone tapped on the door. “Yeah?”
One of her fellow analysts poked her head in. “Hey, Naomi.” A little grin appeared on her face. “You forgot your umbrella again, didn’t you?”
Kharmai sighed in acknowledgment. “You’d think I would know better. I mean, I did live here until I was eighteen.”
“Well, if you haven’t learned by now, you never will. Anyway, the boss wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. What’s the agenda?”
“I’m not sure,” the woman replied. “But you’re the only one invited to the party. He wants you to bring these.”
She took the proffered list and glanced at the numbered files. “Where is he?”
“Room C.”
Naomi raised an eyebrow. Conference Rooms A through E were secure, with cipher locks on the doors and lead shielding in the walls. They were reserved for the most delicate embassy business, and since most of what was said in the building was not for public consumption, the rooms were usually occupied. Still, it wasn’t often that she was summoned for a private discussion with the ranking CIA officer in the embassy. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single precedent, which made her slightly uneasy.
She shrugged in resignation; she’d find out soon enough. “I’m on my way.”
As usual, Naomi nearly missed Emmett Mills when she finally made it to the conference room, balancing a steaming cup of coffee and a stack of paperwork in her arms. At five feet three, Naomi was only a few inches shorter than the silver-haired chief of station, but she knew that the man’s slight stature merely served to disguise a powerful intellect. By his midthirties, Mills had already earned four master’s degrees from three different schools, as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
Now fifty-four and approaching mandatory retirement, he was something of a legend at Langley. Naomi knew about most of the things he had pulled off during his illustrious career, but even if she’d been kept in the dark, she would have recognized the man’s experience in his confident, finely drawn features. Mills was constantly wearing a slightly bemused smile, as though appraising the talent—or ineptitude—of the next generation. It always made her feel self-conscious, feelings that were not quite canceled out by the knowledge that he needed her. Mills had spent the majority of his career in the operations directorate; as a result, he relied heavily on Naomi when it came to technical matters. Since her posting to the embassy, she had been responsible for most of the electronic traffic between their department and the various British intelligence agencies.
“Glad you could finally make it, Kharmai.” She started in on a feeble apology, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Do me a favor and kick on that doorstop. We’ve only got a few minutes before the defense attaché shows up to claim the room, so I’ll make this brief. Did you find everything I asked for?”
She nodded as she took the seat across from him, nearly spilling her coffee in the process. Behind her, the door eased shut with a gentle click, locking automatically. She held up a folder. “This is a copy of our current watch list. All of these people have been linked in some way to one of the nine major terrorist groups in Iraq, and they’re all based here in London. It’s hard to keep track with our limited resources, but we do the best we can. Most of the ties are incidental: family relations, for example. Anything involving a financial transaction gets kicked over to Scotland Yard, MI5, and MI6. Unfortunately, they’re a little less generous when it comes time to reciprocate, but that’s understandable. This is their country, after all.”
Mills nodded along, neatly concealing his vague amusement. He’d long ago noticed Kharmai’s peculiar lapses when it came to her own national identity.
She set the file to one side, then selected another, much heavier folder. “This one came courtesy of the Ministry of Defense. It’s a compilation of all the voiceprints they have on file at Whitehall, arranged in numerical order and based on cell phone intercepts here in the U.K. This is only a sample, of course. They’ve been fine-tuning the system, but they face the same problem we do in terms of geographical limitations. For us, the towers are based in Fort Meade, which confines the intercepts to the metro area. Here it’s the M41 to the west and the A10 to the east.” She was referring to the main roads that circled the city. “All in all, it’s a seven-mile radius, or about twenty-five square miles, total, with the MoD as the epicenter.”
“Okay. Do we have an idea of the daily take?”
“More than an idea, sir.” Her smile was almost coy; she was on steady ground now, sure of herself and what she was saying. “Don’t forget, I know a lot of people over there. Right now, they’re picking off between two and three hundred transmissions a day.”
He was surprised. “That many?”
Naomi shrugged. “Most of it’s worthless. They’ve talked about pulling some of the keywords to narrow the scope. The NSA is playing around with the same idea, but the towers on the roof at Whitehall are much, much smaller, which limits both the range and the amount of traffic they can handle.”
“Will they give us access to their database?”
“If we can come up with a good reason. We’ll still need some search parameters, though. They have thousands of intercepts on file.”
“What about going the other way? If you had a recording, for example, could you run it through the system to look for a match?”
“Of course. In fact, that’s the easiest way, but it still takes some time.”
“What kind of time are we talking about? Hours or days?”
She considered the question. “Again, you’re better off if you have someplace to start, like age or gender. Ninety percent of the flagged intercepts are male voices, anyway, but everything helps. Maybe a couple of days, if you were starting with nothing.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Sir, what’s going on? If this is about the Iraqi prime minister, we can send it to the top of the list. If there’s a match on file, you’ll cut down on a lot of your wait time. I think I can guarantee cooperation on the British end. The default position in a situation like this is to share everything.”
His smile was fading fast. “What makes you think that—”
“Sir, give me some credit. You ask me to bring you our watch list and this”—she held up the voiceprint folder—“which is worthless without the recordings, but you already knew that.” She paused for a moment. “They found something in Baghdad, didn’t they? A tape?”
He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, it’s a tape. But they didn’t find it. We found it, here in London.”
That surprised her; it was standard practice to work with MI5 on such occasions. The Agency rarely took things into its own hands on friendly soil. “And?”
Mills