The name stirred a vague memory. “This is the thing about intel coordination? I didn’t realize it was up yet.”

“It’s not. It’s years away. Decades, even.”

“I’m surprised. I thought that was a big DCI priority.”

“Yeah, right, like anyone cares what the DCI thinks. Look, in the first place you have dozens of different systems, all mutually incompatible, a lot of them written in languages no one uses anymore. You could never get them to talk to one another. So let’s have a single system that everyone uses, right? I mean, we could just agree on a commercial database system and tweak it a little, but oh, no, the government can’t do that, it might save too much money, so there are endless committee meetings about agreeing to formulate a plan to plan for developing a data plan. It’s like riding on a glacier. But you didn’t come down here to talk about data set coordination. Tell me you want to sit on my lap and coo sultry songs in my ear.”

“I’ll have to take a rain check on that. Actually, I was interested in Paki -stani sites, any chatter about a big coup, any approaching major blow to the infidels.”

“This is nuclear, right?” Borden knew where she worked. “Someone lifted a bomb.”

“No one lifted a bomb, Borden. Get real. If someone lifted a bomb there’d be red lights flashing in the hallways and a whoop-whoop sound would be playing over the hall speakers. I’m just following up on some suggestive comint, and rather than send it through the usual channels I thought I’d come down here and get it from the unearthly intelligence himself.”

“Or itself. But now that you mention it, there was this little beauty. It sprang into being, as near as we can figure, at 9:53 P.M. our time and immediately went viral in the jihadi Web world.”

He pressed keys, and the screen of code shrank to a window and another, larger window popped up. Borden pulled out his headphone jack and the sound of a Pashtun song filled the room, a man singing, with tabla and rubab in back, a war song about jihad and how sorry the infidels will be when the Muslims take their revenge, how they will wail. The screen showed quick cuts of European and American cities, interwoven with shots of nuclear explosions and devastated cities: Paris, explosion, Hiroshima; New York, explosion, Hamburg ’44; and so on. Cynthia watched it twice.

“No idea where this came from, of course,” she said.

“Well, they try to mix us up, the usual anonymous cutouts, run it through Moscow and then Kiev and then Iceland, et cetera, but I’m pretty sure this one comes out of a server in Peshawar. There are technical similarities with some stuff we know was produced there, so odds-on it’s the same guy or group. Their production values are coming right along, I have to say.”

“They’ve mastered production values? Why fight on?”

“I agree,” said Borden. “You should order your burqa before the rush.”

“Seriously, though, the real reason I came down here was I need a favor.”

“I’m listening.”

“Suppose the Pakistani Ministry of Trade wanted to do a survey to see if certain items had been purchased domestically or imported into Pakistan over, say, the past three months, and because they’re an up-to-date country they would send an official e-mail to these firms, with a form attached, which I’ve designed for them, and the merchants would fill out the form and send it to a link at the official Ministry of Trade Web site but really-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m all over it like a cheap suit,” said Borden. “The e-mail part is trivial, of course, and obviously you don’t want the Pakistanis to know you’ve doing this survey in their name. Interesting little problem.” Borden looked up to the ceiling and his eyes started to glaze as the unearthly intelligence cranked up.

Cynthia said, “So you can do it?”

Borden glanced at her, rolled his eyes upward, and mimed typing. “Mozart on the keys. To night too late?”

“To night would be perfect. “ She handed him the sheets of paper. “Here’s the apparatus list and the company list. Thanks a million, Borden. I owe you a big one.”

“Indeed you do, and yet I surmise that the payback would not include, say, sexual favors of any kind.”

“Correct. But I will allow you to fantasize about me all you want. And by the way, there are women on this floor who might not find that kind of remark amusing.”

“Well, those women can kiss my pimply ass,” said Borden. “I happen to be very selective about whom I fantasize about.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I was starting to feel like, you know, cheap? Oh, and Borden.” Cynthia was now moving toward the door. “Let’s just keep this little project between the two of us, okay?”

“What project?” said Borden, and swiveled his bulk back to the screen.

Cynthia stayed at work until eight or so that evening, long enough to determine that Borden had set up his phony Pakistani Web site and sent the e-mails, and then went home. The next three days passed without any significant intercepts. On the fourth day, a Friday, Cynthia received an e-mail from Borden with an attachment containing the catch from their fake Pakistani government survey. She was perusing the information on her screen when Lotz burst in.

“We got another one. It’s dynamite. So to speak.” He handed her a paper, a sheet from the NSA’s machine translation service.

She read it, put on her headset, and called up the referenced sound file. The Urdu conversation had been recorded off the same cell phone that Cynthia’s original trucker had used outside Kahuta.

KAHUTA: Peace be with you, brother.

PESHAWAR: And with you be peace. All is well?

KAHUTA: Yes, we are on the road. We have the birdcage concealed under sacks of wheat.

PESHAWAR: And it’s satisfactory? No leaks?

KAHUTA: No, we tested it. We used one made by the same plant that manufactures birdcages for Kahuta itself.

PESHAWAR: It might have been better to dispense with the barrel and just bury the material in a sack of wheat.

KAHUTA: No. It has to be shielded. It may be a while before the theft is discovered, but we can’t take the chance that an alarm will go out and the authorities will be watching with… ah… special equipment.

PESHAWAR: Well, you know best. You have done wonderful work! How long will you be?

KAHUTA: Not long. A day or two at the most. Tell our friends they will have their birdcage by Thursday evening at the latest. God is great!

PESHAWAR: God is great! Death to the enemies of God!

She listened to it three times, making notes, and then removed the headset.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Speaker ID was fairly accurate for a change. I assume the search term was birdcage.”

“Yeah, we have a priority on it. Anytime anyone mentions a birdcage on any of the phones we’re tracking we generate a translation. They use the English term.”

“Yes, people there often do with technical words,” said Cynthia. She stared at the transcript and recalled the care with which the trucker (if he was a trucker) had mentioned the word. He’d used it three times. Cynthia didn’t think he would’ve done that if he’d been talking about structures for confining fowl rather than the fifty-five-gallon steel drums with internal bracing that were used throughout the world to transport highly radioactive matter.

Lotz’s attention had turned to Cynthia’s computer screen. “What’s that stuff?” he asked.

“Just a survey I did. Four days ago, M. K. Chupa Metal Fabricators Ltd. purchased from Lahore Foundry Supply Company Ltd. a Morgan Mark IV dual-energy bale-out furnace and a used Bridgeport Series One manual milling machine, plus graphite crucibles and various other casting and machining accessories, for the equivalent of ninety-three hundred dollars and they paid cash. Before you ask, Pakistani tax records have no record of any M. K. Chupa Ltd. Chupa, by the way, is Urdu for “hidden.” Could be just a coincidence, I guess.”