Executive Power

FIFTY FIVE.

The old house wasn't in the nicest neighborhood, and it wasn't in the best condition, but it served its purpose. It was right on the bubble where North D.C. bordered Northeast D.C.

Compared to the southeast quadrant of the city, the neighborhood was tame, but trouble could still be found if you didn't pay attention to where you were going at two in the morning. That was the Washington take on things, but having spent most of his life living under occupation, David found the neighborhood to be extremely safe.

He'd passed himself off to the landlord as a French software designer who owned his own company and was trying to break into the U.S. market. He would only be in D.C. sporadically, as meetings with his lobbying firm and the Department of Commerce dictated, but when he was in town he would need ample space to continue his work. The rent was reasonable and the landlord didn't balk when David handed over the first two months plus deposit in cash. In the five months since then David had wired the rent to the landlord from a dummy account in Paris that matched his false identity of Jean Racine.

David's only request, which he offered to pay for, was to upgrade the electrical service in one of the upstairs rooms and get the house wired for high-speed Internet access. The landlord, who lived a little more than a mile away, objected to neither and stayed true to his promise that he wouldn't bother David as long as David was a quiet and respectful tenant.

Now David sat in the converted office on the second floor of the Victorian home and concentrated on the array of visual equipment before him. Mounted on the wall were eight Sorry twenty-one-inch flatscreen monitors costing over a thousand dollars each. Two workstations were set up on the long folding table that served as a desk. The station on the left was for checking e-mail, managing his funds, which were spread out at various financial institutions around the world, and keeping an eye on a certain online news service that provided almost instantaneous access to what was going on at 1600 Pe

The other workstation was dedicated to controlling the other seven monitors as they fed him live feeds from traffic cameras around the city.

That part of the plan had been achieved with less effort than he had anticipated. Simple bribery had bought him access to the Washington D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles' traffic camera network. At any given moment he was just a few key strokes away from accessing any one of the more than one hundred cameras located throughout the District. The password to enter the system had cost him only $2,000.

The DMV was a. true menagerie of immigrants, most of whom had come from Third World countries where government salaries were often augmented by bribes and payoffs. The young Palestinian who he approached leapt at the chance to make a little extra money and never once asked why the stranger from his homeland wanted access to such information.

The man could have thrown out a decent guess, but he would have assumed wrong. David had his eyes set on a very ripe target. One that would enrage the United States and unite the Arab world. The pressure for peace in the Middle East and a free and autonomous Palestinian state was about to reach an apogee. David just needed one simple meeting to take place and he would spring the trap.

FIFTY SIX.

Rapp followed Turbes down the sterile hallway of the New Headquarters Building of the George Bush Center for Intelligence.

The CTC had been recently relocated from its relatively small space on the sixth floor of the Original Headquarters Building to the bottom two floors of the south wing of the new structure.

This massive increase in space, staff and budget was a reflection of just how seriously Washington was now taking the threat of terrorism.

To Rapp's mind this was a mixed blessing. The new funding was great for buying high-tech equipment and training new people, but it also brought with it more oversight, more accounting, more red tape and in general more people getting in each other's way. Rapp was an advocate of small specialized teams that could react quickly and plan operations with as little interference as possible. Instinctively he recoiled against large organizations and for that reason more than probably any other he always felt a little uncomfortable entering the new CTC.

Turbes stopped at a door and slid his ID through the magnetic card reader, while Rapp loosened the knot of his tie and undid the top button of his dress shirt. They had barely entered the CTC and analysts were already lining up to have a word with Turbes. Somewhere near the back of the line Rapp spotted Marcus Dumond and Olivia Bourne. Dumond was the CTC's resident computer genius, and Bourne was the senior regional analyst for the Gulf States. Officially, she had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. Unofficially, she kept as close a watch on the Saudi royal family as politics would allow.

When Rapp had been brought in from the field and named special assistant to the DCI on counterterrorism, Ke

Ke

When the Feds came and broke down his apartment door, Dumond was living with Steven Rapp. Rapp heard about the incident from his brother and alerted Ke

Both Bourne and Dumond were gesturing to get Rapp's attention.

Bourne held up a piece of paper and pointed eagerly to the face on the printout. Rapp bypassed the line and went straight for Bourne.

Grabbing her by the elbow, he pulled her away from the crowd.

Keeping his voice hushed, he asked, "What's up?"

Bourne smiled.

"We've got a bead on Prince Charming."

Rapp's first reaction was to turn and see what Turbes was doing. It looked like two CTC employees were wildly explaining a problem to the head boss in hopes that he would referee their dispute. Rapp looked to Dumond and Bourne and said, "Follow me."

The three of them walked down the side aisle of the large open room that held a sea of cubicles. The maze of plastic and fabric dividers was affectionately known as the Bull Pen to those who worked counterterrorism.