By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“I wasn’t the only guy from the mosque, by a long shot, in Camp Hill,” Britton said. “And they hadn’t seen much of me while I was in there. Yeah, they were suspicious. They’re very suspicious people. Anyway, I didn’t want to ask too many questions, and they weren’t talking much about Somalia— which I figured was because they really hadn’t been to Somalia —so I let it rest.

“And then, about six months ago, two mullahs showed up. They said they were from Somalia. I don’t know if they were or weren’t. But they certainly were from someplace other than here. Spoke English like Englishmen. And what they were up to, I don’t know. They kept me out of their meetings.”

“You tell the FBI about them?”

“I told Chief Kramer. He told the FBI, and the FBI told him they had nothing on the names I’d given him. So the chief staked out the mosque, got pictures of them, and gave the pictures to the FBI. The chief got word to me that the FBI had run them. They were pilots for an Arab airline— Yemen Airways, I think—and were in the country legally. Going to some flight school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. All approved by the U.S. government.”

“And?”

“And that was the end of it until a couple of weeks ago— about the time your airplane went missing in . . . where?”

“Luanda, Angola,” Miller finished.

“. . . when the lunatics began talking more than a little smugly about what was going to happen when the Liberty Bell was no more.”

“You report that? To Chief Kramer? The FBI?”

“These people come up with some nutty idea once a week. They’re going to blow up City Hall or the Walt Whit-man Bridge or the Benjamin Franklin Bridge or one of the sports arenas. Poison the water. Assassinate the archbishop. It’s just talk. I don’t report much—or any—of it until I have more than hot air to go on. You heard about the kid who kept crying ’Wolf’?”

Miller nodded.

"And then you showed up,” Britton went on.

“And asked you if you had heard anything about the Liberty Bell,” Miller said.

Britton nodded.

“You have to admit that flying an airplane into the Liberty Bell sounds bizarre,” Britton said.

“Bizarre or not, we think that’s what they intend to do,” Miller said. “You have the names of the two Somalians?”

“They’d be in my report. Schneider?”

“I can get that,” Sergeant Betty Schneider said. “But you said the FBI said they had nothing on those names. What about the names the FBI put on the stakeout photos?”

“The chief never gave them to me,” Britton said. “I suppose he has them.”

“He went out for coffee,” Betty said. “Maybe he’s back.”

She left the interview room and a minute later returned with Chief Inspector Kramer.

“They never gave me names,” he announced. “Just said the two were on the up-and-up. I can call there, but it’s late and all I’m going to get is the duty officer, who’ll probably stall me until he can clear it with the Special Agent in Charge.”

“Chief,” Miller said, “I’d like to suggest we wait until I can tell Castillo about this.” He turned to Britton. “How long can you stay?”

Chief Kramer answered for him: “We picked him up on suspicion of murder. We can probably keep him until breakfast —say, eight o’clock—without making the AALs more than usually suspicious.”

“Castillo said he’d get back to me as soon as he could. Why don’t we wait for that?”

“Okay with me,” Chief Inspector Kramer said. “Okay with you, Britton?”

Detective Jack Britton said, with no enthusiasm whatever, “Why not?”

[THREE]

Delta Force Compound Fort Bragg, North Carolina 2310 9 June 2005

Around the time the first Delta Force was organized, the Army had about finished implementing a new personn