"Why should it?"

"Well, there are obvious similarities… historical analogies."

I reached over and took my beer out of her hand. "Every war is different. The only similarities are that they all suck, and good people get killed."

"That's too simplistic."

"Not if one of those dead people is you, or someone you love."

"You know what I'm talking about. A lot of people believe we went to Iraq on false pretenses, that the government lied, that this war has lasted too long, too many casualties… clearly things haven't gone as predicted or anticipated. It was sold as short and simple. It's complicated and bloody. That sounds a lot like Vietnam, doesn't it?"

"That was then, this is now. That was a different time, a different world, a different America. The country was at war with itself-black versus white, young versus old, the establishment against the new order. A messy foreign war was one more than we could handle."

I had the sense this was more than casual banter, and she confirmed that, asking, "What if we find that Clifford Daniels did something really bad? Something really stupid?"

"Like what?"

"I have no idea. But look what he was involved with. As you mentioned earlier, consider where he worked, and who he worked with." She took back my beer and drained it. She handed me the empty can. "This case makes me nervous."

"This case is making a lot of people nervous. We'll find what we find, and let the chips fall where they may. It's not our job to calculate or curb the political fallout."

"Are you sure you're right?"

Before I could answer, my cell phone went off. I pulled it from my pocket and answered. It was Phyllis, who, without any preamble, informed me, "Get over here right away."

"Where's here?"

"My office. The decoded transcripts have arrived." She drew a heavy breath. "It's… it's worse than we imagined."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bian trailed behind me in her car, a cute little green Mazda Miata- Maseratis for poor chicks. I turned on the radio and listened to the 8:00 p.m. news update.

The newscaster spooled off the results of the latest poll for the upcoming presidential election, just over a week off and picking up steam fast. This poll, like the ten polls that preceded it, showed a nation more or less evenly divided, and an election too close to predict.

A smug blabberperson for the President came on the air and described the poll numbers as a stunning victory for his camp, because after nearly four years his boss had only managed to piss off half the electorate.

The contender's equally self-assured spokesperson used his equal time to proclaim a signal triumph for his man, as, even after two years of energetic campaigning, half the electorate still did not realize what a complete stinker he was.

Though it's possible I paraphrased their words incorrectly.

What I thought it showed was a margin so thin that the smallest political fart could blow the election either way. I wondered if the big guy in the Oval Office had yet been notified about the death of Clifford Daniels-probably yes and probably, somewhere in the White House basement, unsmiling people were burning the midnight oil.

The next news item was casual and succinct: A car bomb went off in Karbala, a Shiite city south of Baghdad, with sixty dead and more than thirty wounded. Somewhere else, north of Baghdad, three U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb. Then we rushed into the weather-chilly and wet for the foreseeable future-which accorded with what I could see through the windshield, and with my mood.

Regarding the discussion a few minutes before, it struck me that I, too, had become inured, even blase, toward these recurrent reports of death and destruction in Iraq. It's a little like Chinese water torture- either you ignore the incessant drumbeat or it drives you nuts.

But for Bian, who had served there, who had lost soldiers there, whose fiance was serving there, her emotional investment was bigger-for her, detachment wasn't an option. Nor was it for several hundred thousand other families and loved ones who would spend the next few days cowering each time the doorbell chimed, fearing the sight of a Jarhead officer on their doorstep, delivering the tragic news that one of the dead Marines shared their surname.

Anyway, when we arrived, Will and John were lounging in Phyllis's office. As was a third gent, whose mother must've been acquainted with Will's dad-their resemblance was scary.

Phyllis introduced us to this new gentleman, whose name was Samuel Elkins, from the NSA Office of External Support, whatever that means.

Samuel-not Sam, he stipulated-spent a few moments explaining to Bian and me what he did for a living. Who cared? He eventually suggested, "Why don't we all sit, and I'll go over what we found."

We all sat.

In the middle of the conference table were two imposing stacks of paper, about three inches thick each. A third stack was in front of Phyllis, which, from the bent and misaligned edges, had already been read and digested. But before Bian or I were allowed to indulge our curiosity, we had to go through the usual obligatory self-congratulatory claptrap.

Samuel summed it up, telling us, "The point is, you were lucky. The code on Daniels's computer is one we're familiar with. The patent belongs to a company named NEMOD, a small boutique outfit outside San Francisco."

Apparently, he and Tim had already talked about me, because he glanced in my direction and mentioned, "I'll spare you the technical details, except to make a few points."

I informed him, "My hands are registered weapons. A very few points."

Everybody chuckled. I'm a lot of fun at these things.

Samuel continued, "NEMOD creates and handles secure accounts for customer groups. You pay them a fairly stiff monthly fee, certify the individual members of your transmission group or cell, and they send you encoding and decoding software, which you upload on your computer. The messages are routed through NEMOD's proprietary servers directly between correspondents. It's fairly foolproof."

Bian commented, "It's a closed system, right?"

He nodded. "That's why it's fortunate you got that laptop. There's really no other way to detect and read these e-mails." He looked at me and hypothesized, "Whoever owned that computer, maybe he had a background in counterintelligence."

No maybes about it, buster. But Phyllis quickly cut off that line of inquiry and informed me, "NEMOD does mostly private-sector work-as a matter of interest, it has legally binding confidentiality agreements with its clients. But after the CEO and I had a brief and amicable discussion, he became reasonable."

Samuel must've overheard their conversation, because he laughed. He noted, "After Phyllis busted his… well, after she talked with him, we e-mailed NEMOD the files, and they promptly decoded and e-mailed back the transcripts."

In a sign of impatience that I shared, Bian reached across the conference table and asked, "May we see these?"

He nodded, and we both ended up with a large stack of messages, all written in English, some short, others long and fairly wordy.

As I thumbed through the tops of the pages, it seemed like all of them were back-and-forth stuff between two parties, labeled Crusader One and Crusader Two.

Bian, also perusing her stack, mentioned, "The headers, the two subjects, they appear to think of themselves-or maybe they relate to each other-as conspirators involving Iraq."

Samuel replied, "That would seem to be correct."

I read through the first few missives. They opened with warm salutations, a little friendly banter and gossip, then segued into the more substantive material. The style of writing was informal and the tone suggested correspondents who were well acquainted, even chummy. A lot of Arab names and Iraqi organizations were cited, which looked to me like alphabet soup.