Cyberstrike by James Barrington (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

radical Islamic agenda, is planning on creating a major atrocity right here in DC. But there’s been nothing specific, nothing that we could get a proper handle on. And at the same time we’ve been trying to do a little in-house sanitising, identifying people in the Bureau whose ethnicity or background or anything else might have made them liable to radicalisation, just in case they’re a part of it. Whatever it is. If it really exists. Sleepers are a real big problem for us right now and yet no one ever mentions it. Almost every day we find men and woman who slip up somehow and we uncover depths of deception that keep me awake at night. You wouldn’t ever know or even suspect that people you’ve worked with for ten years, people who’ve served their country with honour and earned medals in combat, harbour a desire to do harm to their communities.’

‘Trying to identify the viper in the bosom before it strikes,’ Simpson had suggested. ‘Treachery has always existed and it always will. The problem is that nobody ever learns the lessons of history. In fact, the one lesson we do learn from history is that nobody ever learns the lessons of history.’

‘Exactly. And it’s not just us. The Agency – the CIA – and the Secret Service have been doing the same, and probably the NSA as well, but their policy is to never tell anyone anything, so we can’t be sure. It’s a hellish difficult situation and we have to tread real carefully. If we had any concrete suspicions we’d at least know where we should start looking, but we haven’t, so it’s all low-key and non-specific.’

‘And who checks the checkers?’

Rogers shook his head.

‘Don’t get me started on that. We’re in what James Jesus Angleton called a wilderness of mirrors and we don’t know whether we’re looking at reality or a reflection.’

‘T. S. Eliot,’ Simpson had replied.

‘What?’

‘I know Angleton used the expression, but it comes from “Gerontion”, a poem by T. S. Eliot that he wrote just after the end of the First World War. The title’s Greek and it translates as “little old man”, and the poem is a dramatic monologue describing the state of Europe after the fighting was over as seen through the eyes of that old man.’

‘Literature’s not my thing,’ Rogers had admitted, ‘and I didn’t know that. But you can see our problem. What I do know is that the team of people I’ve got working for me are one hundred per cent straight and loyal. I’ve picked them myself and I trust every single one of them with my life because that’s what you have to do when you’re working as a real tight-knit group. Or, to put it another way, if any of my people were actually radicalised closet Muslims, then I have no idea how you could ever trust anybody again.’ He looked across at her keenly and shook his head. ‘Richard said you specialised in undercover operations and have something of a gift for spotting bad guys.’

‘I have. I’ve spent the last few years down in Colombia trying to identify cartel members on the streets and at the same time trying to work out which of the police officers working with me were also full-time employees of those same cartels. That, let me tell you, was a real wilderness of mirrors, not to mention bloody dangerous with everybody armed to the teeth and just itching to start pulling the trigger. Now, there’s not much I can do to help identify people in the Bureau or any other organisation who might be about to switch from being an all-American patriot to a dedicated shahid whose latest fashion accessory is a Semtex waistcoat, because that’s an in-house problem and you need to be inside the organisation to tackle it. But I should be able to do something on the streets.’

Rogers had waited while the waitress refilled their coffee cups before he’d leaned forward and replied.

‘That’s where the danger lies, at least in my opinion. But you’re brand new here in DC. I’ve seen your briefing notes, but you don’t know the area and you don’t know the people, so how do your bosses expect you to be able to help us out?’

‘I’m a quick learner, and I have a very good memory. More importantly, people are pretty much the same wherever you go, and in my experience those people who are walking on the wrong side of that thin blue line that separates the law-abiding from the lawless do have certain characteristics. For one thing, they tend to be more aware of their surroundings and that shows. Your average member of Joe Public will travel to work looking straight ahead while he or she thinks about what they’ll be doing that day, what meeting they’ll be attending, what jobs they need to do, even where they’re going to have lunch. They’ll take no more notice of their fellow pedestrians or commuters than they need to avoid bumping into them. But the lawless will always be aware of where they are and what’s going on because they’ll be looking out either for a chance to break the law, to commit some crime like dealing drugs, or for any sign of a police officer who might be looking for them. After a while, you can quite easily spot the bad guys.’

‘It’s as simple as that?’ Grant Rogers had demanded.

‘No, of course not. That’s just a very basic example of the kind of thing I look out for. Now, I’m going to need some things from you, like a cheap and anonymous place to stay while I’m here in DC. I can’t do this from a hotel. I need to be anonymous, just one more face in the crowds on the streets, so that means a small apartment or something.’

‘We can sort that. Might take a couple days, but not a problem. What else?’

‘Information, really. I’m sure the Bureau has reams of regulations