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Kennedy relaxed slightly as the president's press secretary stepped in and told the photographers that the event was over. She stood patiently while the president shook some hands and thanked everybody for coming out. Like almost all politicians at this level President Hayes was very good at making people feel appreciated. He laughed, slapped a few shoulders, and then waved good-bye as he walked up the lawn toward the Oval Office.
As he approached Kennedy his expression turned a bit more serious. Not wanting to discuss anything outside, he simply said, "Aren't you a little early this morning, Irene?"
"Yes, sir."
Hayes frowned. He doubted she was here to report good news. He continued up the slight slope and waved for her to join him.
Kennedy hesitated for a second and looked past the president in search of his chief of staff. She was pleased to see her hanging back in order to bask a while longer in the aura of two Hollywood big hitters. Valerie Jones and Rapp couldn't stand each other. Kennedy had little doubt that, given the opportunity, Jones would use every ounce of influence to dissuade her boss from signing off on the operative's aggressive plan.
Kennedy followed the president into his office past the Secret Service agent standing post by the door. Hayes walked straight to his desk and looked at his schedule. After a moment he asked, "How much time do you need?"
"Fifteen minutes uninterrupted."
Hayes nodded thoughtfully. Kennedy was not the type of person to waste his time. He pressed the intercom button on his phone and said, "Betty, I need fifteen minutes."
"Yes, Mr. President."
Hayes came out from behind his desk and walked across the office. He unbuttoned his suit coat and sat on one of the couches by the fireplace. Looking up at the director of the Central Intelligence Agency he said, "Let's hear the bad news."
Kennedy sat next to him and brushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear. "As you know since 9/11 we've developed some fairly elaborate statistical models for tracking certain economic indicators. We've identified key banks, brokerage houses, and financial services institutions that handle money we have reason to believe is linked to terrorism. In addition to that our Echelon system tracks millions of e-mails and phone calls on a daily basis. Due to the sheer volume of data that we're talking about, and the fact that much of it is encrypted, we're not able to track these trends real-time."
"What's the lag?" asked the president.
"The financial trends we usually have a pretty good handle on by the end of the business day, but Echelon intercepts can sometime take a week to decipher, and then up to a month to translate. Although if we're targeting a specific e-mail account or phone number, the information can be decrypted and translated in near real-time."
"So what have you noticed that has given you cause to worry?"
"It started at the end of Friday with the financials. The first trend we picked up on was the price of gold closing up four dollars and twenty-six cents. This by itself is nothing to get alarmed about, but the next trend we noticed was that the dollar closed down eight cents. The Dow was off by fifty-six and the Nasdaq closed down sixteen. None of this on the face of it is an unusual day in the financial markets, but when we began to look at the specific institutions that we think have ties to terrorism some unsettling trends showed up."
Kennedy pulled a piece of paper from a folder and handed it to the president. She pointed to the first line with her pen. "The jump in gold was started by a bank in Kuwait that sold two hundred eighty million dollars in U.S. stocks and bonds and dumped all of it into Swiss gold. Over the weekend we discovered four other accounts at various institutions that had liquidated their U.S. investments and purchased gold. Those accounts represented nearly two hundred million dollars."
The president studied the sheet of paper. "What are the chances that all five of these accounts are getting the same financial advice?"
"It is a remote possibility, but it assumes that there is a respected financial advisor out there who would suggest a wholesale conversion of assets at a time when there are no economic indicators that would necessitate such a drastic move. My people tell me the chance of this is extremely unlikely."
Hayes frowned at the sheet of paper. "So that gets us back to the fact that five flagged accounts all placed bets last Friday that the U.S. economy is about to take a hit."
"Correct," nodded Kennedy. "In addition, we also discovered another handful of smaller flagged accounts that made similar but less drastic moves."
Hayes stared at the sheet of paper, reading the various names and countries. "Anything else?"
"Yes." She cleared her throat. "Mitch has come across some very valuable intel." From her bag Kennedy retrieved the file that Rapp had given her only hours ago. She laid it on the glass coffee table that sat between the two couches and opened it to display a sheet with the faces of five bearded men on it. "I know you've been shown these photos before, but to refresh your memory they are all on the FBI's most wanted list. They represent what we think is the reconstituted leadership of al-Qaeda."
Kennedy flipped the page, revealing a map of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. "For the last six months we have been tracking several of these individuals as they've traveled through the mountainous region of Pakistan. A few weeks ago two of them met up in Gulistan." Kennedy pointed to the city on the map. "From there they were tracked to a small village eighteen miles to the west."
She turned the page again, to a satellite photo that showed a village of approximately one hundred dwellings plus outbuildings. The town was spread out along the base of the mountain with one main road leading in and several cutting across the axis. "The village has been watched day and night for the last five days. Yesterday this convoy pulled into town."
A new image appeared, showing eight pickup trucks and several SUVs. Four of the pickups had large antiaircraft guns mounted in the beds, and all of them were overflowing with heavily armed men. "Four hours ago we had a high-altitude reconnaissance drone circling at forty thousand feet, and we were lucky enough to get the following pictures. These three individuals getting out of the trucks we believe to be Hassan Izz-al-Din, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, and Ali Saed al-Houri."
The president picked up the black-and-white photograph and stared at the three faces circled in red. These reconnaissance photos were rarely completely clear to him, but he knew there was a small army of analysts and a supercomputer that somehow made sense of it all.
"All of them had a hand in 9/11," Kennedy added.
The president took a second hard look at the photograph. "You're sure these are the same men?"
"Mitch has an asset in the region who told him this meeting would be taking place."
Hayes set the photo down and took off his reading glasses. "They're in this village right now?"
