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"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen them."
"Why?" asked Rapp.
"The Feds have them in custody, and so far they haven't offered us access."
Rapp slammed the trunk shut. "What?"
Akram could tell he was really pissed off. "Don't worry about it right now. Irene says she'll bring you up to speed in the morning. You're supposed to be at the White House at nine a.m. for a briefing." Akram folded his hands in front of him. "Until then, she wants you to go home and get some sleep."
Rapp laughed in a mocking manner.
"She said you'd do that."
"Do what?"
"Laugh at the thought of anyone ordering you to go home and sleep. Irene said it stems from your deep-seated problem with authority. I told her I understood completely, and we agreed that if you argued I'm supposed to order you to go to Langley and help with the translations, at which point she predicted that you would curse at me some, and then go home and sleep."
Rapp laughed sincerely this time. Kennedy knew him too well. "All right you guys are real funny. I get the picture."
The first prisoner came off the plane. It was Ahmed Khalili, the young computer man from Karachi. He had a hood over his head, but this time it was clean-nothing like the filthy burlap sack that he had sported in Afghanistan. Rapp and Akram had talked at length about Khalili. Either he was going to be extremely helpful, or he had completely deceived them to this point. He'd talked freely throughout most of the flight. Rapp had recorded everything, and then every few hours he would send the information back to Langley via an encrypted burst transmission.
Khalili's revelations were helping to peel back the layers of communication within al-Qaeda, revealing the way they used the internet to contact cells in America. They were getting much smarter, having learned the hard way about the power of American spy satellites. They still used high-end encryption software and placed messages within known websites to be retrieved by their disciples abroad, but for every two real messages, a fake one was sent to confuse the Americans. To frustrate the listeners and watchers even further, they'd also begun a campaign of disinformation, flooding sites that they knew were monitored with messages claiming that an attack was imminent. Khalili told of times they sat in cafes in Karachi watching CNN and laughed with hilarity as the terror alert in America was raised in the wake of one of their frenzied message-sending campaigns. These feints were classic guerilla tactics, designed to water American security forces down. Al-Qaeda was no longer one-dimensional. In order to survive they had been forced to adapt.
Every system of communication had its weakness, and Khalili had given them a crucial piece of information concerning al-Qaeda's. In the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the al-Qaeda leaders no longer used phones or radios to talk to each other. The American satellites were always overhead looking down, watching and listening, spy drones could often be heard circling overhead in the dark sky with their distinctive low-pitched hum, and jet fighters and helicopters with well-trained commandos were never far off.
To beat a high-tech enemy, al-Qaeda simply went low tech. Handwritten messages were couriered between commanders. This delivery system would often take days, and restrict the speed with which al-Qaeda could plan and react, but it was better than getting a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb dropped on the place where you were sleeping.
Khalili told Rapp they were now using a similar low-tech strategy with the internet. Instead of using high-end encryption software, which was all but useless against the National Security Agency's supercomputers, they were now communicating with their American cells using teenage internet chat rooms. It had been Khalili's idea. The volume at these sites was overwhelming and it wasn't encrypted. In Khalili's mind it was the last place the supersnoops in America would look. After a phone call back to the CTC, Rapp found out Khalili had been right.
Rapp looked at his car keys and said to Akram, "I want Marcus to meet with him first thing in the morning." Rapp was referring to Marcus Dumond, the CIA's resident computer genius. "I understand maybe a quarter of what he's talking about, so for all I know he's been selling me a load of crap."
"But you don't think so?"
"No but what do I know?" Rapp shrugged. He was at the end of his rope.
"You have great instincts," Akram told him. "Based on everything you've told me, I think you're on the mark."
Abdullah was carried out of the plane by two men. It was obvious to Rapp that since the Saudi wasn't screaming, he was fully dosed on morphine. "I gave him another shot about thirty minutes ago." Rapp grabbed a piece of paper from his
pocket and handed it to Akram. "Just like you told me I wrote down every dosage and the time they were administered."
Akram looked at the sheet. No wonder Rapp hadn't slept, he'd had to give the man a shot every sixty to ninety minutes.
"Good luck with him," said Rapp. "I think he might be a pathological liar."
Akram smiled ever so slightly. He loved a good challenge.
Car keys in hand, Rapp pointed at his Pakistani friend, and said, "After you've got these two tucked in, I want you to take a crack at the two guys they picked up in Charleston, and if you get any crap from the feds, let me know and I'll expedite things."
Akram nodded. A master at concealing his emotions, he gave nothing away. Kennedy had told him under no circumstances was he to tell Rapp of the events that had transpired between the White House and the Justice Department. Telling Rapp at this late hour would only ensure another sleepless night for him and anyone else he decided to roust out of bed.
Akram reached out and nudged Rapp toward the driver's seat. "Don't worry about anything. Just go home and get some sleep. You look like hell."
* * *
Fifty-Two
ATLANTA