Sea of Terror (3 page)

"Scanners in the passageways and public areas ping the cards' strips every few seconds," Lockwood added. "A computer in Security tallies up where every card is at any given moment, and which cards are missing. Or it can isolate, identify, and pinpoint the location of any one particular card, anywhere on board."

"Very convenient," Dean said. "What if someone forgets and leaves his card in his stateroom?"

"Then a steward very politely informs him of the fact," Llewellyn replied, "as soon as he tries to go ashore or to enter a monitored public area. If he loses his card, he is escorted down to Security, where his identity can be verified, and he is issued another card."

"And how do you safeguard the data?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Dean gestured at the back of the big screen. "You've got a lot of sensitive, personal information there. I'm not saying you, necessarily ... but what's to stop one of your security people from misusing it?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Llewellyn said.

"You liked the looks of that one woman v/ho just went through. . . what was her name? Miss Johnson? And here, right at your fingertips, you have her age, her marital status, her address, her phone number, her Social Security number, what she does for a living, where she works, health conditions. For all I know, it tells you whether she prefers Harvey Wallbangers to scotch on the rocks! Are you telling me you don't see how that much personal information could be misused?"

"All data here are destroyed, Mr. Dean," Mitchell insisted.

"No, they're not! Those X-ray images are erased--or so you tell me--but the personal data are still there. And why should the public accept your word that even the naked pictures get shit-canned?"

"Mr. Dean," Lockwood said. "There are professional and legal standards here. We are professionals, no less than doctors or therapists! And our clients, the companies using X-Star's equipment, I assure you are self-policing. A scandal--"

"In other words, Mr. Dean, we're not going to do anything that would generate lawsuits or right-to-privacy injunctions," Llewellyn said, interrupting.

"Maybe not," Dean said, shrugging. "But what about outside access? Hackers?"

Lockwood patted the keyboard in front of her. "This network is completely isolated from the Internet. Hackers can't get in."

"Oh? What kind of protection software do you use?"

Lockwood hesitated, and Mitchell answered, "They're not supposed to tell you, but you've been cleared. It's a software package called Netguardz."

"Ah, right. I've heard of it."

"Since when is the American CIA so interested in protecting the privacy of individual citizens?" Mitchell asked.

"There's a difference between what I do for a living," Dean replied slowly, "and what I feel and believe on a personal level."

"Really?" Lockwood said. "Maybe you're in the wrong line of work."

"I've often thought so."

The door to the security room opened and a young man in the blue uniform of the Royal Sky Line walked in.

He was young, in his mid-twenties, perhaps. "Hey there," he said. "Shift change!"

"About time," Llewellyn said, standing. He turned to Lockwood. "Can I get you anything, Ellen? Tea? Coffee?"

"I'm fine, thanks," the woman said. "I'll be breaking for lunch in a little bit."

"Suit yourself. How about you gents?"

"Thanks, no."

Mitchell stood up as well. "Well... you wanted to see the operation here, Mr. Dean," he said. "Are we done? You got all you wanted?"

"I think so," Dean said. He nodded at Llewellyn and Lockwood. "It was nice meeting you both. Thank you for your help."

He turned for one last look down through the windows onto the concourse again. There was someone he'd been watching for. . . .

Yes! There she was. He resisted the urge to wave.

"See anyone you know?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes, actually. A ... friend."

"More CIA?" Mitchell frowned. "Just how many of you are there here today?"

Dean grinned. "Just me. She's not Company." Which was true enough. "She's just a friend, and I happen to know she's taking your cruise to the Med and was going to check in through your queue today."

"Really?" Mitchell said, joining him at the window and looking down at the line of tourists. "Who is it?"

"I'm not going to tell you that!" Dean said. "You're about to strip her naked and peer up every orifice in living black and white! She can just remain anonymous, thank you very much!"

Lockwood snorted. "If his friend was CIA, you don't think he'd tell us so, do you?"

The young man sat down at the console in the seat Llewellyn had vacated. "What's all this? CIA? Cloak-and-dagger stuff?" The others ignored him.

Dean turned away from the window. "What's next on the tour?"

"Lunch, actually," Mitchell said, standing by the door. "After you?"

As Dean walked out, he heard the young man's voice behind him. "Coo! Now there's a sweet bird!" "Jesus!" Lockwood said. "Grow up!"

Royal Sky Line security queue

Atlantis Queen passenger terminal

Southampton, England Thursday, 1202 hours GMT

Carolyn Howorth couldn't resist. She stepped into the yawning mouth of the white tunnel and struck a sexy pose, hips cocked sharply to one side, left hand on her hip, right arm straight overhead. "See anything you like, boys?" she asked.

Dropping her arm, she swished out of the tunnel, smiling sweetly at the cruise line security guard waiting outside.

He looked puzzled. "Did you say something, ma'am?" he asked.

"Not really," she said. "Just checking to see if these things are equipped for sound."

"No, ma'am. It just takes your picture."

"Oh, I see. Is that all?"

She glanced up over her left shoulder. She could see the line of windows up near the ceiling of the cavernous room, the office where Charlie Dean was making nice with the Royal Sky Line security people, and wondered if he'd just gotten an eyeful. She didn't see him, however, and so she walked on down the line to the end of the conveyor, claiming her handbag, her camera, and her laptop computer. She asked the guard for a hand check on her camera. He had her remove her camera from its case and looked down into the lens, but Carolyn noticed that his eyes were watching hers, checking for nervousness or other telltale clues.

"Open the computer, please, miss," the guard told her, setting the camera aside. "Thank you. Now turn it on for me."

She pressed the power switch and they waited for the machine to boot up. "Damned Vista," she told him. "It tries to boot everything at once and takes forever."

Finally, though, the screen came up. Satisfied, the guard motioned to her to close it up and put it away. "Thank you," he said, apparently satisfied. "Have a nice cruise!"

"Thank you," she told him. She was wondering if he had any
i.e.
what was possible in computer technology these days. It wouldn't be hard at all to have a working laptop exactly like this one, which booted to a full screen and yet had free space enough inside for a disassembled gun or high explosives or almost anything else she cared to smuggle onto the ship.

Presumably, they'd checked for that sort of thing when her laptop had gone through the carry-on scanner . . . but still.

In fact, her machine wasn't at all what it appeared to be, or not entirely, at least. The computer part did work.

Technically, Carolyn did not work for the NSA as Charlie Dean did. She was GCHQ, one of the Menwith Girls, as they were known, an employee stationed at Menwith Hill, in Yorkshire, of the highly secret British eavesdropping agency that was closely partnered with America's NSA. Carolyn had worked with Dean before, in an op targeting the Russian mafia.

Through the double glass doors and onto the dock. A gangway festooned with bunting extended up to the entry port on the Atlantis Queen's port side, where a ship's officer waited for her.

He checked the electronic pad he was holding. "Good afternoon, Ms. Carroll," he said with a pleasant smile. "May I see your ticket and your passkey, please?"

"Certainly." She fished into her handbag and produced both. For this operation, Carolyn was traveling as Judith Carroll and all of the electronic information about her in the system, save for her nationality and her gender, was completely false.

The officer swiped her card through a reader and handed it back to her. "Here you are, Ms. Carroll. We'll keep your ticket for you in the bursar's office. Your passkey serves as your ticket and your ID during your cruise. You have your ID bracelet?"

"Oh, yes. Somewhere here." Again she fumbled through her bag, producing a slender strip of white plastic with a small metal clasp.

"I don't need it, miss," he told her. "All of your information is in the ship's computer. I was just going to tell you that you should keep your passkey with you at all times during the cruise ... but that if you want to go to the pool, the spa, the sauna, or any of the other shipboard facilities where you might not want to have to carry the key along, you can wear that bracelet instead."

"But what's it all forV she asked him, giving him her best wide-eyed innocent's look.

"Security, miss. It's for your safety." He pressed several keys on his electronic pad. "Right, then! You're all checked in. Stateroom Six-oh-nine-one. That's straight ahead to the elevator, then up to Deck Six and follow the signs. Have a nice voyage!"

"Thank you ..." She glanced at his name badge. "Mr. Norton, is it?"

"Lieutenant Norton, miss."

"Maybe I'll see you around the boat?"

He grinned at her. "Could be. But it's a ship, not a boat."

She started to reply, but he was already turning to greet the next person coming up the gangway.

Not a problem. Norton wasn't part of the security staff in any case. She needed to see if she could run into Foster, Ghailiani, or Llewellyn sometime during the course of the voyage.

In the meantime, she was going to enjoy this assignment. A four-week cruise to the eastern Mediterranean? With stops in Madeira, Greece, Turkey, and Israel? And all at the Company's expense! Now that was luxury!

She was looking forward to checking out her accommodations for the next glorious month.

Yeah, this was going to be fun\

Lower Mortimer Road

Woolston, England

Thursday, 1215 hours GMT

Mohamed Ghailiani trudged up the steps leading to his flat, one flight up from the street just across the Itchen Toll Bridge from the center of Southampton. He was tired and he was worried. He'd tried phoning home earlier that morning, but Zahra hadn't answered. With all of the craziness going on at work lately ...

He turned his key in the lock and stepped through the front door. "Zahra?" he called.

There was no answer. Odd.

Pocketing his keys, he walked through to the living room. "Zahra? I'm home!"

Mohamed Ghailiani was Moroccan, but his family had moved to England in 1973, when he'd been five. He was a Crown subject and thought of himself as British. He was not particularly religious, though he did go to mosque most Fridays. It was a formality, something that gave him a social connection with other members of Britain's Moroccan community.

He'd worked for Royal Star Line for six years, now.

Before that, he'd worked for a computer company in London, and before that he'd been an electronics technician in the British Army. He was good with computers.

He supposed that that was why Khalid had approached him two days ago.

Finding no one in the living room, he continued through to the kitchen. The men were waiting for him there.

"What are you--," he began, but stopped when the two men pointed handguns squarely at his face.

"Shut up, you," one of the gunmen said in heavily accented English. He pointed at one of the white-painted kitchen chairs beside the table. "Sit down. Someone wants to talk to you."

Trembling, Ghailiani did as he was told.

Chapter 2

Atlantis Queen passenger terminal Southampton, England Thursday, 1315 hours GMT

"i don't like it," dean said.

"You're not being paid to like it," the voice of William Rubens whispered in Dean's ear. "It's necessary."

"Oh, yes. Necessary. And all in the sacred and most holy name of national security."

"Are you having a problem with this op, Mr. Dean?" Rubens asked. "Something personal!"

Rubens was the head of Desk Three, Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, and Dean's boss. A tiny microphone and bone-conducting speaker surgically implanted behind Dean's left ear picked up his own voice-- which could be pitched just above a sub-vocalized murmur and still be clearly heard back at the Art Room, the black chamber beneath NSA headquarters that ran Desk Three operations--and played Rubens' replies in his head. The antenna and power supply that gave Dean a direct satellite comm link back to Fort Meade, Maryland, and the headquarters of the NSA was coiled up in his belt. His handlers in the Art Room had been able to listen in on his entire conversation with Mitchell, Llewellyn, and Lockwood.

The strip of plastic he'd left in the Security Office, however, was a bit more sophisticated.

"No, sir," Dean told Rubens. "Nothing that will affect the mission, anyway. But I don't like spying on an ally, and I don't like spying on ordinary people."

It was after lunch, now, and Dean was sitting on one of the plastic couches in the main waiting area just outside of the security checkpoint, a laptop computer open in front of him. Several hundred people, most in casual tourist dress, sat elsewhere on the concourse, gathered in small groups talking, or were lining up to go through the checkpoint. He stared at the laptop's screen, his lips moving slightly as he continued to speak with Rubens three thousand miles away.

"Okay. This should do it." Dean pressed the return key on his laptop. "Initiating. Are you getting the signal?"

"Wait a second."

There was a long pause. Transatlantic encrypted transmissions had been more and more uncertain of late. Communication satellite coverage wasn't as good these days as it had been ten years earlier, thanks to an aging infrastructure and some serious budget cuts. Even the NSA, with the largest budget of any branch of the U. S. intelligence community, had been feeling the bite lately.