Cynthia thought that the woman sounded more satisfied than the grim occasion warranted. It must have given her considerable pleasure to have all these big, important men hanging on her words. She felt a sister-hood: Doris and Cynthia both had jobs that were almost silly until the bad day came; they were the night watchpersons who never got to sit at the big table, but on the bad day they got to tell the boys in charge the evil tidings, and the boys had to listen! Cynthia looked at the NEST woman and thought, That is not my fate, a job like that is not where I intend to end up, a middle-aged minor supergrade wearing a purple dress so people will notice her.

Bettleman thanked the woman and opened the room to discussion, of which there was very little. The main conclusion was that the material should be put before the president for his decision. Bettleman responded by asking for more detailed options, from both the Pentagon man, Colonel Brand, and the CIA man, Wayne Price. Price was the youngest person at the table, a man in his forties, and his smooth face had the constipated look of someone operating out of his depth. In years gone by the deputy director for operations of the CIA was one of the most powerful men in the world. He ran legions of spies and dozens of front organizations, he was the world’s biggest briber, he played with the rulers of nations like pawns on a board. But no longer. This guy, Cynthia knew, had been recently shot into his job by the resignation of three people senior to him, in the great political revolution that had also stripped the central intelligence coordinating power from the CIA director and given it to Bettleman’s tiny office. The national government believed that what the CIA could not do-coordinate national intelligence-with a multibillion-dollar black budget and twenty thousand troops could be done by one man and a corporal’s guard of bureaucrats.

They all listened to what Price had to say. He had sent a message to his Pakistani operation to gather anything they had on a nuclear theft or on the whereabouts of Abu Lais, but so far there hadn’t been any incoming humint that such a plot was in the offing. Col o nel Brand did not roll his eyes, and no one passed looks. The CIA still retained some resources and had some good people, but as an organization capable of meeting the intel needs of the United States it was finished. Bettleman said something diplomatic, a head pat, to Price and then turned to the col o nel.

They all turned to the uniform, like flowers to the sun, because everyone understood that the military was the big player here. Colonel Brand talked about assets and intercepts and operations. The Defense Intelligence Agency had its own little NSA for monitoring certain communications, the kind you couldn’t get with the big antennae or the satellites, and it had its own little CIA too, although that bordered on the illegal. It seemed DIA knew all about Abu Lais and his nuclear plotting. There had been indications-buzzing on the terror networks-for some time. The col o nel thought Abu Lais was the key; they should all forget about the Pakistanis and find Abu Lais. Cynthia found it hard to follow the col o nel; the buzz in her head was like the buzz on the terror networks, obscure, threatening, boiling with many tongues all saying wrong wrong wrong.

“Ms. Lam?”

She started. Spalling was calling her name, not for the first time, she realized, and she became aware that everyone was looking at her. She felt herself blush.

“Sir?”

“Ah, you’re back with us,” Spalling said, which provoked a titter around the room. “Yes, Ms. Lam, I understand you have some linguistic evidence you derived from the Abu Lais interception.”

“Yes, sir. He was speaking Standard Arabic with a Pashtun accent. I also detected a softening of the Arabic gutterals characteristic of someone who has spent time speaking English.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“About the Pashtun accent? I’m fairly certain about that. On the En – glish, it’s more or less a guess. The colloquy wasn’t long enough for me to make a definitive call.”

Colonel Brand asked, “Is this kind of speech what you might expect from a man with Pashtun as his cradle tongue, who had later been educated in the U.K. or the U.S., and then learned Arabic as an adult?”

“It’s possible, sir, but his Arabic was pretty good. He could have learned it as a child, like many people in that part of the world… But also-”

This was the moment. They’d all heard the tape. Why couldn’t they hear the phoniness? Why didn’t anyone ask the obvious questions about a senior scientist chatting casually about the theft of nuclear materials to his wife-if it even was Qasir and his wife? But no one did. They were all team players too.

“Yes, Ms. Lam?” said Spalling, but she shook her head and mumbled, and Bettleman nodded vaguely in her direction and began to sum up the meeting. He said the obvious: The White House would have to be informed and he would undertake to do that this afternoon. There would have to be a fuller analysis of the situation in the president’s daily intel brief tomorrow, and he would be sure to ask for options, so the Chiefs would have to get that rolling right away. Col o nel Brand could be trusted to do just that. Then he passed compliments all around, expressed optimism, and was about to close the meeting when Morgan spoke up.

“What are we going to call this? I mean, the incident and the intel that comes in.”

“Let’s stick with GEARSHIFT until further notice, shall we?” Bettleman said.

The meeting broke up shortly afterward, the attendees assembled in transitory clots around the room, the principals and their aides mostly, speaking in confidential tones as they filed out. Cynthia was pulling up her cables when she heard, as if from someone standing right next to her, a fragment of a conversation. Startled she looked up and saw that the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency was deep in conversation with another man, halfway across the room. That she could hear what they were saying was a trick of the safe room’s peculiar acoustics.

She turned away, still coiling her cable, and listened. The DDO said, “Anything new on Ringmaster?”

“Only that it’s confirmed; Ringmaster’s definitely a hostage. Do you think this business here is connected to Showboat?”

“Has to be,” said the DDO, “but I’m goddamned if I know how. Look, when we get back to Langley…”

But Cynthia couldn’t hear what was planned when they got back to Langley, because they had moved away from the acoustic pocket. She continued her packing up, keeping her inner excitement from showing in her expression only with difficulty. She had by accident snatched the gold ring of intelligence work: she had learned something she was not supposed to know, and from the highest levels of the CIA. This slip established that there was more to GEARSHIFT than the CIA was willing to share with the rest of the intelligence community: no one had mentioned anything called Ringmaster or Showboat at the meeting, so she assumed they were names of assets or operations so secret that not even the highly cleared people at this meeting were allowed to know about them. But now she knew, and it remained only to determine how she could use the knowledge to her best advantage. It never for a moment occurred to her to share this knowledge with Morgan or anyone else at NSA.