into iPods, shopping, eating on the run, kissing, cuddling, exchanging bitter words, oblivious, cell phones slapped to their ears, accessing e-mail or porno, slouched, hunched, drunk, stoned, fights breaking out, first-date embarrassments, skulking, mumbling to themselves. A chaos of unedited video from which the analysts were required to find specific patterns, digital omens, electronic warning signs.
Lerner must have alerted the case officers to his arrival, because he saw a striking young woman whom he judged to be in her midthirties detach herself from a view screen and come toward him. He at once knew that she was or had been, at any rate, a field agent. Her stride was not too long, not too short, not too fast, not too slow. It was, to sum it up in one word, anonymous. Because an individual's stride was as distinctive as his fingerprints, it was one of the best ways to cull an adversary out of a swarming pack of pedestrians, even one whose disguise was otherwise first-rate.
She had a face that was both strong and proud, the chiseled prow of a sleek ship knifing through seas that would capsize inferior vessels. The large, deep blue eyes were set like jewels in the cinnamon dusk of her Arabian face.
"You must be Soraya Moore," he said, "the senior case officer."
Her smile showed for a moment, then was quickly hidden behind a cloud of confusion and abrupt coolness. "That's right, Mr. Bourne. This way."
She led him down the length of the vast, teeming space to the second conference room from the left. Opening the frosted-glass door, she watched him pass with that same odd curiosity. But then considering his often adversarial relationship with CI, perhaps it wasn't odd after all.
There was a man inside, younger than Soraya by at least several years. He was of middling height, athletic, with sandy hair and a fair complexion. He was sitting at an oval glass conference table working on a laptop. The screen was filled with what looked to be an exceptionally difficult crossword puzzle.
He glanced up only when Soraya cleared her throat.
"Tim Hytner," he said without rising, When Bourne took a seat between the two case officers, he discovered that the crossword Hytner was trying to solve was, in fact, a cipher-and quite a sophisticated one at that.
"I have just over five hours until my flight to London departs," Bourne said. "Triggered spark gaps-tell me what I need to know."
"Along with fissionable material, TSGs are among the most highly restricted items in the world," Hytner began. "To be precise, they're number two thousand six hundred forty-one on the government's controlled list."
"So the tip that got Lindros so excited he couldn't help going into the field himself concerned a transshipment of TSGs."
Hytner was back to trying to crack the cipher, so Soraya took over. "The whole thing began in South Africa. Cape Town, to be exact."
"Why Cape Town?" Bourne asked.
"During the apartheid era, the country became a haven for smugglers, mostly by necessity." Soraya spoke quickly, efficiently, but with an unmistakable detachment. "Now that South Africa is on our 'white list,' it's okay for American manufacturers to export TSGs there."
"Then they get 'lost,'" Hytner chimed in without lifting his head from the letters on the screen.
"Lost is right." Soraya nodded. "Smugglers are more difficult to eradicate than roaches. As you can imagine, there's still a network of them operating out of Cape Town, and these days they're highly sophisticated."
"And the tip came from where?" Bourne said.
Without looking at him, Soraya passed over sheets of computer printouts. "The smugglers communicate by cell phone. They use 'burners,' cheap phones available in any convenience store on pay-as-you-go plans. They use them for anywhere from a day to, maybe, a week, if they can get their hands on another SIM card. Then they throw them away and use another."
"Virtually impossible to trace, you wouldn't believe." Hytner's body was tense. He was putting all he had into breaking the cipher. "But there is a way."
"There's always a way," Bourne said.
"Especially if your uncle works in the phone company." Hytner shot a quick grin at Soraya.
She maintained her icy demeanor. "Uncle Kingsley emigrated to Cape Town thirty years ago. London was too grim for him, he said. He needed a place that was still full of promise." She shrugged. "Anyway, we got lucky. We caught a conversation regarding this particular shipment-the transcript is on the second sheet. He's telling one of his people the cargo can't go through the usual channels."