Pandemic

Wu reread the e-mail, satisfied. He intentionally left out any attempt to minimize his role or justify his actions. He did not owe them that. Without hesitating, he tapped the "send" button. As soon as the e-mail left his screen, he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He had done his part to warn others.

He reached down and opened the same desk drawer where he had twice deposited those dirty envelopes that had ruined his life and, possibly, countless others. The money was gone, but he pulled out the two bottles from the drawer. One was a popular Chinese wine, the other a pill bottle containing one hundred tablets of a major sedative.

He popped the lid off the pill bottle. Bringing the hard plastic to his lips, he tasted the bitter-salty flavor as he stuffed as many pills as would fit into his mouth. He choked them down with a gulp of wine. He had another sip of wine, but the medicinal taste lingered. He took a deep breath, and then swallowed the rest of the tablets.

CHAPTER 8

CIA HEADQUARTERS LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

It was an ominous name: "Carnivore". The software system electronically spies on e-mails from across the globe, trying to sniff out criminal activity and threats to U.S. national security. Among the several hundred million screened that day, Dr. Ping Wu's final e-mail piqued Carnivore's interest because it contained the words "terrorist" and "virus". After translating it into passable though grammatically questionable English. Carnivore graded the e-mail as "moderately suspicious", meaning it required review by human eyes.

As did 68,435 other e-mails sent the same day.

The overburdened CIA staffers who ran Carnivore were forever falling behind in their attempt to find the needle in an electronic haystack. Eavesdropping on the entire world was a challenge that the CIA had yet to master. Another "backlog debulking" loomed in the near future. The term was classic CIA-speak — a euphemism for a random, massive hard drive purge of all but the most suspicious of the unread e-mail backlog. The espionage world's equivalent of Russian roulette.

Even if Wu's e-mail wasn't destined to be lost in the "backlog debulking," no one at Langley would have a chance to review it for a minimum of seven days.

HARGEYSA SOMALIA

A southern breeze stirred up flakes from the dirt road. It carried with it the faint smell of food that drifted in from the cooking fire of the militia posted a half mile down the road.

Hazzir Kabaal and Abdul Sabri stood out front of the laboratory complex in the windy but warm dusk. Minutes earlier they had said prayers together with mats almost touching. Neither had spoken a word since.

Kabaal had a knack for reading people, which helped explain his unfettered success in the cutthroat world of print media. But after four days spent in Sabri's company, Kabaal still read nothing behind the man's pale eyes and placid expression. From that alone, Kabaal realized that Sabri was a man to be reckoned with. Having witnessed the dispassionate and unhesitating manner in which Sabri executed the Malaysian — one of their own men — Kabaal knew he had chosen well.

His choice was not made in haste. Kabaal had screened several candidates before settling on Sabri. He was not the only candidate with a history distinguished by ruthlessness. However, one report from the major's thick blood-stained military file tilted the balance in his favor.

Six years earlier, Sabri had led an elite team of Egyptian soldiers against an insurgency in the south of the country. After a bitter standoff, with heavy casualties on both sides, the government soldiers captured a rebel leader. Major Sabri was entrusted with interrogating the man to uncover the whereabouts of his fellow fighters who had melted away into the nearby hills. The rebel leader withstood twenty-four hours of torture without divulging a word. So Sabri changed tactics. He had the man's wife led into the room. Chained to a chair beside the bed, the rebel was forced to watch as three of Sabri's men viciously raped the woman. When the leader stayed mute, despite his wife's screams, Sabri's men brought in the man's youngest daughter and strapped her to the bed. That was the breaking point. Sabri had the rest of the rebels rounded up and summarily executed within twelve hours of the incident.

After hearing this account from the mouth of an eyewitness, Kabaal knew Sabri was the man he sought. A man of single-minded focus and unflinching violence capable of doing whatever necessary to achieve their goal: the preservation of Islam, at any cost.

Why? Kabaal wondered again. Why had this secular enforcer swapped sides and become a defender of Islam? Kabaal mulled the question over, more out of curiosity than concern. Sabri was foremost a fighter, a man of action. The cause was secondary. Kabaal would, and in fact had, bet his life on this belief.