Stone - 25 - Collateral Damage

discussing the, ah, event with others. If they violated the order, they could be held in contempt of court and jailed indefinitely.”
    “What an attractive idea,” Holly said, grinning. “I knew you’d come up with something.”
    Stone sighed. “There’s another way to deal with the problem of leaks, though—a more honest way.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Get the president to reveal to the public what happened in L.A.”
    “Holy shit!” Holly exclaimed. “The media would go absolutely nuts!”
    “Not as nuts as if they found out about it from Kelli or someone else who was there. It just may not be possible to keep a lid on this forever, and I think it would be better for the president, and for the country, if he were the one to tell them about it, instead of The New York Times or Vanity Fair . And you have the ear of the president, through Kate.”
    “I knew you’d tell me what to do,” Holly said. “And I knew I wouldn’t like doing it.”
    Stone shrugged. “An attorney gives advice—hopefully good advice. It’s not always fun to follow it.”

They were back at Stone’s house, having a nightcap in his study when Holly’s cell phone went off. She looked at it. “It’s the director,” she said, “and at eleven o’clock at night. This can’t be good.” She pressed the button. “Good evening, Director.”
    “Holly, I have Felicity Devonshire on the line, and I want to conference you in, so that you can hear what she has to say directly from her. And I don’t mind if Stone listens, too.”
    “Thank you, Director.”
    There was a click. “Holly?” Felicity asked. “Are you there?”
    “Yes, Felicity.” She thought about adding, “Stone, too,” just to rub it in, but didn’t.
    “I’m sorry to call you so late.”
    “It’s not as late as it is there,” Holly said.
    “Yes, well, we’ve been up all night. We’ve had a big break in the hunt for Jasmine.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Early yesterday morning we got a tip from a milkman about a house on the Thames, west of London, quite a spiffy neighborhood. He said that he’s seen Jasmine there twice in the past two weeks, and after a thorough interview with him we decided that the lead was good enough for a raid. And that’s how we captured Habib Assam.”
    “I know that name—he’s al Qaeda, isn’t he?”
    “He is—very important. We’ve had his brother in custody in the UK for nearly a year, and we made a lot of progress in turning him, but he wouldn’t give up Habib. Now that he’s in custody, the brother is talking.”
    “Wonderful. Has he given you anything on Jasmine?”
    “Jasmine is part of his cell, as is Habib. He’s telling us that there’s a New York cell, too.”
    “How big a cell?”
    “Half a dozen people, now plus Jasmine, working from an apartment somewhere on the West Side.”
    “Do you have an address?”
    “I don’t think he knows that, but there’s more,” Felicity said.
    Holly didn’t like the sound of that.
    “There are cells in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, too, each with something on the order of four to six people. The brother says they are all well supplied with weapons and explosives and ready to move when they get the order.”
    “From whom?” Holly asked.
    “Ayman al-Zawahiri, since bin Laden’s death, the head of al Qaeda.”
    “Go on.”
    “The cell leaders in each city were sent there while bin Laden was still running things, each with a lot of money, and told to do their own recruiting and training of the recruits. Al-Zawahiri has been waiting for all the cells to reach full strength and training and to select targets, then report in. Full readiness is expected sometime soon, perhaps within a month.”
    “Good God,” Holly said.
    “Quite. The head of the New York cell is also named Habib. We don’t have a last name. We’ve no doubt that the arrival in New York of Jasmine was the catalyst that set things off there.”
    “Were you able to get any names of the people in the other cities?”
    “We’re working on that now. Something else we’ve learned: the setting off of the device in Los Angeles was meant to be the start of a new American and European jihad, but the failure of that effort has slowed things, and the killing of Dr. Kharl has, at least for the moment, stopped any large-scale attacks, the next of which was to be London. It is our conclusion that, without Kharl to make the devices, that effort is dead, because there is just no one else