The Doodlebug War Page 2
“So let’s talk about what we’re abstracting from what we’re picking up and how we’re getting to those conclusions.” Koontz picked up a laser pointer and highlighted a row of a dozen small charts at the base of a pyramid of similar presentations. Each time he paused on one, it dramatically increased in size before shrinking back again when he moved on.
“This set of charts shows the types of data we evaluate to build up a threat assessment. Down here at the bottom are the various original sources, each graded for credibility based on a variety of factors: historical reliability, how far up or down the chain the source individual is, and so on. We’ve already kicked out the ones we think aren’t credible. We associate the score we’ve given that source to the data we derived from him or her and move the results up to the next level. Let’s jump up a couple of tiers now.
“Up here, we start trying to extract a picture of the actual attack—where, how, when, and so on. To do that, we pull in all sorts of additional data: what types of bombs have most recently been in use and what types of situations they’ve been used in. That gives us another way to test the likelihood that each piece of data is accurate, as well as to fill in blanks with good guesses where we don’t have any data at all, based on context and the information we do have.
“For example, if we think we know which country an attack will be in but not what the specific target will be, we can contrast a profile of that place with those of others where attacks have already occurred in the same area, nation, or region—does it have a military base? A big open market? A police training academy? Let’s skip up a few more levels.
“Up here at the very top is the description of the expected attack and the credibility of each individual datum associated with that attack. We might be pretty sure of the target, for example, but not the date. Are you with me so far?”
“Yes, it’s very impressive.”
“Good. So now, here’s a dashboard with bar graphs relating to all the potential attacks we’re tracking right now on a global basis. These charts display a high-level picture of what we think all the terrorist groups around the world are up to.” He was wielding and clicking his laser pointer now as if he were Errol Flynn fencing with an evil opponent displayed on the screen. “And by changing the color—like this—we can show how close each attack is to execution—and now which terrorist groups are involved in which attacks—and now which ones involve more than one terrorist group—and now the severity of the anticipated attacks. Pretty useful stuff when you want to brief the politicos on where we stand or put out a warning bulletin to the field.”
“I’ll bet,” Frank said. “How about that column over on the right—the one that’s so much higher than the rest? What threat is that one tracking?”
“Right. That’s the one we’ll talk about today. George, have you been briefed on this one yet?”
“Barely. Assume I don’t know more than Frank, and you won’t be too far off.”
Koontz’s head bobbed in a silent humph. “Well, this won’t take long, because we don’t know much either. Let’s do a pyramid view of this one.”
The screen cleared to reveal what looked at best like the beginnings of the foundation of a triangle of charts. Only a few graphs filled the second layer with nothing in the half-dozen tiers that should have been above that.
“As I said, we don’t have a whole lot to work with yet. We haven’t even been able to populate the first level with all the types of sources we need to do much in the second tier.
“So when you ask what’s being threatened, Frank, we really have no idea. For example, what’s the target? Maybe the power grid? Communications? Finance? All of the above? So far, we don’t have a clue. Except for one point that has been locked down, all we know—or think we know, anyway—is that it’s something big and some or all of it’s going to occur on U.S. soil. That’s why George suggested we ask you to help us out. He says you’ve got a knack for thinking outside the box and might spot something our in-house guys miss.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but thanks. How exactly do I fit in?”
“You’ll be on one of several interdisciplinary groups—we refer to them as Tiger Teams—that we’re assembling to address every type of attack we think might occur. Besides you, it will have Agency, military, and technical members, each of whom will bring a unique perspective and capability to the effort.”
“What will that involve?”
“Mostly just attending weekly meetings, reviewing the information and analyses you’re given, and speaking up if you have something to say. You won’t have any specific research or other tasks to perform, but you will be expected to stay on top of everything that comes your way, and let us know if you see anything we’ve missed or you think we aren’t paying appropriate attention to that we should. So some weeks you’ll be busy, and sometimes you might not have much to do for a few days.”
“That sounds fine. One more question before we continue?”
“Sure.”
“You said you do have one aspect of the attack locked down. What’s that?”
“That’s where we’re headed next.” Koontz clicked his remote, and suddenly every wall lit up with a satellite view of a fractal maze of impenetrable mountains.
“This is a section of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. We believe that somewhere down there is Mullah Muhammad Foobar. That’s the guy pulling the strings on this attack.” A large red ring appeared on the center of the image covering one wall.
Ah—so that was it. They wanted his help in finally capturing the Big Guy—the terrorist leader with the most territory, the most followers, and the most atrocities to his credit. Terrorist acts that even the media hesitated to describe in full. Frank felt uneasy at the thought of directly opposing him, even though he was seated in a secret CIA conference room thousands of miles away from the terrorist.
“More specifically, we think he’s somewhere within this area—about forty miles across. How much do you know about Foobar?”
“Well, I guess you’d say I’ve got a basic newspaper level of knowledge. He’s the latest guy to claim leadership in the fight of radical Islam against the West. He came out of nowhere a couple of years back and managed to come out on top over the various factions competing to take over.”
“That’s accurate, as far as it goes. But he’s not just the ‘latest guy’ to claim leadership and try to restore Sharia law to the Middle East. He’s also trying to take the world back fourteen hundred years. A lot of his appeal comes from his success in tying his cause to the glories of the original Arab conquest in the first millennium. He reinforces that story line in every way possible. He makes each of his generals assume the name of one of the great Arab leaders that fought their way across most of the known world—westward across North Africa and up into Spain and destroying the last of the Byzantine Empire to the north. He says he won’t rest until he’s reestablished Arab dominion over the whole shebang.”
“That’s a pretty big ambition.”
“You think? So check this out.” The images on the screen gave way to a video showing a gesticulating, bearded man in a robe standing on a balcony above a dusty square thronged with an enormous crowd. “This is Foobar’s spokesman. No one from the West has ever seen Foobar himself. But we think we know where he is, so let’s take a closer look at the sandbox we think he’s playing in.”
The video stopped, and they were once again gazing down at the endless labyrinth of sinuous mountain ranges. With a wrenching change of perspective, the view zoomed into the area inside the red circle as if they were falling out of the sky. Frank instinctively clutched the arms of his chair as he plunged downward toward the snow-topped mountains at ever-increasing speed.
Koontz chuckled. “I guess I should have warned you. Kinda feels like you’re being sucked into a black hole when I do that, doesn’t it?
“But wouldn’t it be as hard for him to get out as for us to get in?” Frank asked.
“Speed-wise, yes. But he’d have plenty of ways to get out, and it would be hard for us to cover all of them. Let’s check that out from this location, as an example.” Koontz flashed his controller, and a simple web of blue lines sprang up on the screen. “These are footpaths running out from this village through valley bottoms and over mountains.”
The view zoomed out again in abrupt steps. Each time it did, the web of lines expanded and multiplied, with each blue tendril branching and re-branching. Whenever the image briefly stabilized, it looked like a map of the neural networks of a brain composed of mountains.
“Every one of these trails is not only an escape route for Foobar but also a conduit the terrorists can use to get information in to him and back out again. Any questions so far?”
“No, but I guess if you were pretty sure which proclamations came from Foobar, you could use the time it took between when you thought one was sent and where you intercepted to calculate the distance it had traveled. Put all those calculations together like GPS signal data, and you’d get an area you were pretty certain he was in, assuming he hadn’t been moving around, anyway. Is that why you think this is where he is?”
“Good observation. Yes, that’s one of the ways.”
“Interesting. What’s your confidence level with the data you’re picking up about the attack we’re talking about?”
“Not great when it comes to specifics, because we don’t have enough data to work with, and all kinds of attacks get mentioned from time to time. It’s like starting with a dozen different jigsaw puzzles, all poured on the floor, and then trying to reassemble the picture you care about without knowing what that puzzle is supposed to look like when it’s completed. So far, we’ve only got about twenty percent of the picture we want to talk to you about. But we already know enough to tell we don’t like what we see.”
Frank noticed that Koontz’s assistant ethics officer was listening with rapt attention. He wondered whether this was the first big briefing the kid had ever been in on.
“So what’s the picture, Hermann?” George asked.
“We’ve only got the edges; nothing in the center at all. All we know, like I said earlier, is that it’s going to be in the U.S. And also that it’s going to be really big.”
“How big is really big?”
Koontz clicked his remote one last time, and the glass walls of the conference room gradually became transparent again. Frank blinked a few times to readjust as the mountain wilderness they were sitting in faded back into something that looked like an open study area at a student union.
Hermann took off his spectacles and rubbed his face. “In what—for once—we believe are the exact words of the Mullah himself, ‘it will make the scene at ground zero on 9/11 look like a child’s birthday party.’”
* * *
2
There’s No Place Like Home
Frank stared with distaste at the chaos that surrounded him. The disorder didn’t bother him; his living room was usually a shambles of disheveled shelves and discarded articles of clothing that never quite made their way back into a closet. It was the cause of the mess that was disconcerting. His landlord was converting the building to condominiums, and three weeks from now, he would need to temporarily vacate the cramped, dark apartment he’d occupied since his divorce many years before. When he received the notice, he’d vowed to use his forced retreat as an opportunity to dispose of as much as possible of the accumulated detritus of decades of bachelor life. Now that the task was at hand, he was finding it to be a real pain in the ass.
The door buzzer sounded, catching him by surprise. He looked at his watch and smiled. Of course! He’d invited his daughter, Marla, to come around and pick through the wreckage before he consigned it to the nearest landfill. The buzzer had been just a warning; she had a key to let herself in.
She was duly impressed when she entered. “So, did you just dump everything on the floor, or have you actually packed or gotten rid of anything?”
“Some of both, thank you very much. Where do you want to start?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a map?”
“Fine! You’re on your own. I’ll be in the kitchen, working.”
“Oh, don’t be such a grouch. And don’t disappear on me so quick.”
He watched as she meandered around the room, crouching to look into one box or another. As usual, he wondered how he had ended up with such a self-possessed, attractive, outgoing daughter. Clearly, her mother deserved the credit for all of that.
“Are those pictures over there?”
“Yes, I found them in the bottom of a closet. Haven’t bothered with them since forever.”
“Come on—sit down and look at them with me, will you?”
He hesitated. There was a reason he hadn’t looked at them in all these years. But he cleared the couch of boxes and papers anyway, and they sat down, the box of pictures between them.
“Gee, I’ve never seen most of these before. Look how young you and Mom are in this one!”
Frank glanced at the picture she handed him and then quickly gave it back. Clare, his ex-wife, was radiant, holding a newborn Marla in her arms. And there he was, standing awkwardly at her side, wearing a scruffy T-shirt and a scruffier beard. He was not proud of that period in his life.
“Yeah, well, that’s how you look when you’re not as old as you get later on. Look, I really do have a lot of work to do. There’s a bunch of empty boxes in the bedroom. Throw whatever you want into one of the empty boxes you’ll find in the bedroom, and put your name on the front, because I’m going to get rid of just about everything else.”
She was about to object, but the look on his face made her decide otherwise.
He stood up. “Coffee?”
“Sure. But only if you’re making it anyway.”
“The answer is yes.”
He tried to shift his thoughts elsewhere as he filled the coffee maker. That wasn’t difficult, because he’d made little progress since his meeting with Koontz. He was quick to obsess over details at the best of times, and he’d passed that low threshold days ago. Putting the can of coffee away, he retrieved a notepad from its hiding place inside a box of crackers. In that pad were the notes he’d scribbled down each time he returned from a visit to the CIA facility. Given the Agency’s penchant for discovering anything and everything it wished about him, a simple pad of paper in a cracker box seemed far more secure than a laptop connected to the Internet.
Hunched over his tiny kitchen table with his chin resting on one hand, he reviewed his notes relating to the CIA’s master report on Foobar and the Caliphate. Something about that report bothered him: some crucial flaw in the underlying reasoning. But he couldn’t yet figure out what it was. An hour later, he was no better off.
“Ahem.” Marla was standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Yes?”
“How’s the coffee doing?”
“Ouch!” He stood up and stared at the coffee maker. It had turned itself off long ago. “Ah, I’d say it’s a little cold.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, I guess I kind of got wrapped up in what I was doing.”
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“Imagine that. Anyway, I’m all done. How about we go out for a bite to eat before I take off?”
He looked back at the pad of paper, lying open on the table. That wasn’t good. “You know I’d love to, but I’ve really got to finish up what I’m working on.”
“Rain check?”
“Of course. I’ll give you a call.”
She gave him a hug, and turned to wave goodbye from the door to his apartment.
He felt guilty as he stood at his window, watching her walk away. But he wanted to ferret out the gremlin lurking in the report that was teasing him before it gave up on the effort. As soon as Marla turned the corner, he put on a jacket, trotted down the stairs, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and set off in the opposite direction.
Walking briskly with no particular destination in mind, he returned to the incomplete picture Koontz’s team had pieced together using the brute force of the CIA’s massively parallel super computers. What was it that seemed wrong?
It took more than an hour of rapid walking, but at last, he began to get an inkling of what was troubling him: some of the pieces in the puzzle seemed to have been subtly forced into place. He suspected those pieces were not the direct product of actual data from the field but were based on assumptions the report’s authors had failed to identify as such. That could explain why some of the conclusions the authors had reached struck him as being dubious.
On his return, he noticed a framed picture on his bedroom dresser where none had been before. He picked it up and saw himself standing next to Clare. It was their wedding day. Marla must have found the picture in one of the boxes she’d rummaged through. He was surprised it still existed; he was sure he’d thrown everything like this away when Clare had left him.