“Of course, sir. I broke it, I can re-create it.”
“Just the way it was? As if the old user was back at the computer keys?”
“Identical.”
“Great. I want you to send a message from the protocol in London to the receiver in Kismayo. Do you have pencil and paper?”
“Do I have what?”
“I know it’s old-fashioned, but I want to stick to secure phone, not e-mail, just in case.”
There was a pause while Ariel slithered down his ladder and returned with pieces of equipment he barely knew how to use. The Tracker dictated his message.
The message was encrypted in exactly the same code Dardari would have used, then it was sent. As everything from Dardari to Somalia was now taped, it was heard by Fort Meade and Cheltenham and decrypted again.
There were some raised eyebrows at both listening posts, but the orders were to eavesdrop but not interfere. According to standing orders, Fort Meade sent a copy to TOSA, which passed it on to the Tracker, who accepted it with a straight face.
In Kismayo it was not the Troll, now dead, who received it but his replacement, J
amma, the former secretary. He decoded it word by word, using the crib the Troll had left behind. But he was no expert, even if there had been a slip. But there was not. Even the required typos were in place.
Because it is cumbersome to send by e-mail in Urdu or Arabic, Dardari, the Troll and the Preacher had always used English. The new message was in English, which Jamma, a Somali, knew, but not with the same fluency. But he knew enough to know this was important and should be brought to the Preacher without delay.
He was one of the few who knew the Preacher’s apparent appearance on the Internet to recant all his teachings was phony because his master had made no broadcasts for over three weeks. But he knew that across the great Muslim diaspora in the West, most of the fan base was disgusted. He had seen the posted comments, hour after hour. But his own loyalty was undimmed. He would make the long and wearisome journey back to Marka with the message from London.
Just as Jamma was convinced he had been listening to Dardari, Fort Meade and Cheltenham were convinced the pickle tycoon was at his desk in London, assisting his friend in Somalia.
The real Dardari was staring miserably out at the driving, early-September rain, while behind him, in front of a roaring fire, three former Marine commandos were having a laughter-filled ramble down memory lane and all the fights they had been in. Curtains of gray cloud swept down across the glen and hurled water onto the roof.
In the blistering heat of Kismayo, the loyal Jamma filled the petrol tank of the pickup for that night’s long haul to Marka.
In London, Gareth Evans transferred the first million of Harry Andersson’s dollars to Abdi’s secret account in Grand Cayman and reckoned that in three more weeks he would have the Malmö, cargo and crew back on the high seas with a NATO destroyer escort.
In an embassy safe house in London, the Tracker wondered if his fish would bite. As dusk settled on Virginia, he called TOSA headquarters.
“Gray Fox, I think I may need the Grumman. Could you send it back to Northolt for me?” he said.
12
The Preacher sat in his study inside his compound in Marka and thought about his enemy. He was no fool, and he knew he had one out there somewhere. The phony sermon on his website that had effectively destroyed his reputation proved it.
For ten years, he had deliberately made himself the most elusive of the al-Qaeda terrorists. He had moved from safe house to safe house in the mountains of North and South Waziristan. He had changed name and appearance. He had forbidden any camera to come near him.
Unlike a dozen, at least, now all dead, he had never used a mobile phone, for, unlike some of them, he knew the full scope of the American ability to pluck the tiniest whisper out of cyberspace, track the source to a single hut and blow both building and occupants to dust.
With one single exception, which he now bitterly regretted, he had never e-mailed anyone from the house in which he resided. He had always had his sermons of hate transmitted miles away from his residence.
Yet someone had penetrated. The actor on the phony sermon was too like him. The man who looked like him and spoke like him had announced to the world his real name and the pseudonym he had used as an executioner in the Khorosan.
He did not know how or why or who had betrayed him, but he had to accept that his pursuer could well have penetrated the real identity protocol of his computer in Kismayo. He did not understand how it could have been done, for the Troll had assured him it was impossible. But the Troll was dead.
He knew about drones. He had read volumes printed in the Western press about them and what they could do. He could presume that, even then, there were details that had never been divulged, even to the technical publications. He had to presume he had been traced and that, far above his head, invisible, inaudible, a circling machine was watching his town and even his compound.
All this had led him to the conviction that he would have to sever all contacts with his present life and disappear again. Then Jamma arrived from Kismayo with a message from his friend Mustafa in London that changed everything. It concerned fifty million dollars. He summoned his former secretary, now the Troll’s replacement.
“Jamma, my brother, you are tired. It is a long journey. Rest, sleep, eat well. You will not be going back to Kismayo. It is abandoned. But there is another journey for you. Tomorrow, perhaps the next day.”
• • •