The Mark of the Assassin by Daniel Silva Read Free Book Online Page B

computer system automatically distributes cables based on key words and classification. The cable from London went to the offices of the director, the deputy directors for intelligence and operations, the executive director, and the duty officer on the Middle East desk. It was also routed directly to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center.
    Seconds later it appeared on the computer screen of the officer assigned to the Islamic extremist group called the Sword of Gaza. The officer’s name was Michael Osbourne.

6
     
    CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
     
    Headquarters, Michael Osbourne’s father always said, was the place good field men went to wither and die. His father had been a case officer in the Soviet Directorate. He had recruited and run agents from Moscow to Rome to the Philippines. James Angleton, the famed CIA counterintelligence officer who engaged in a destructive mole hunt for twenty years, ruined his career, the same way he ruined the careers of hundreds of other loyal officers. He spent his final years writing useless assessments and shuffling paper, and he left the Agency bitter and disillusioned. Three years after retirement he died of cancer.
    Michael’s return to headquarters was as reluctant as his father’s but brought on by different circumstances. The opposition knew his true name and occupation, and it was no longer safe for him to operate undercover in the field. He accepted his fate rather like a model prisoner takes to a life sentence. Still, he never forgot his father’s admonition about the perils of life at Langley.
    They worked together in a single room, known affectionately as the bull pen, on Corridor F of the sixth floor. It looked more like the newsroom of a failing metropolitan daily than the nerve center of the CIA’s counterterrorism operation. There was Alan, a bookish FBI accountant who tracked the secret flow of illicit money through the world’s most discreet and dirty banks. There was Cynthia, a flaxen angel of British birth who knew more about the IRA than anyone else on earth. Her cramped cubicle was hung with brooding photographs of Irish guerrillas, including the boy who blew off her brother’s hand with a pipe bomb. She gazed at them throughout the day, the way a girl might stare at a poster of the latest teen heartthrob.
    There was Stephen, alias Eurotrash, whose task was to monitor the various terrorist and nationalist movements of Western Europe. And there was Blaze, a six-foot-four-inch gringo from New Mexico who spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and at least ten Indian dialects. Blaze focused on the guerrillas and terrorists of Central and South America. He dressed like his targets in sandals and loose-fitting Indian garb, despite repeated written warnings from Personnel. He considered himself the modern equivalent of the samurai, a true warrior poet, and he practiced martial arts with Cynthia when the work was slow.
    Michael sat in the corner next to Gigabyte, a flaking, pimply boy of twenty-two who surfed the Internet all day, searching the ether world for terrorist communication. Alternative rock music blared from his headphones, and Michael had seen things on his screen that awakened him in the middle of the night. He erected a barrier of old files to shield the view, but when Gigabyte snickered, or when his rock music grew suddenly louder, Michael knew it was best to close his eyes and place his head facedown on the desk.
     
    The wall clock hung next to a three-foot cardboard gunman in silhouette, stamped with the circular red international symbol for no. It was nearly 11:30 p.m., and Michael had been working since five that morning. The bull pen was far from deserted. Peru’s Shining Path had kidnapped a government minister, and Blaze was pacing, working the telephones. France’s Direct Action had bombed a Paris Metro station; Eurotrash was hunched over his computer terminal reading message traffic. The IRA had murdered a Protestant developer in front of his