Kate and I spent the rest of the morning ringing the alarm bell, so to speak.

The Incident Command Center went from ant hill to beehive, if you'll pardon the insect analogy.

Kate and I fielded about a dozen calls from higher-ups, congratulating us, and so forth. Also, all the bosses wanted a private briefing from us, but we managed to put them off. They really didn't want any information-they wanted to say they were part of the solution, though, of course, they were becoming part of the problem.

Finally, I had to agree to a joint task force meeting, such as we'd had yesterday morning. But I was able to put it off until 5:00 P.M. by lying about having to stay by the phones for calls from my worldwide network of informants. In some respects, the bosses here resembled the NYPD brass when a big case was making the news. Photo ops with me and Kate couldn't be far off. In any case, by the time Jack Koenig returned from collecting frequent flier miles, the meeting would be over, and Jack would be pissed. Tough. I told him to stay here.

Within a half hour of our conversation with Mrs. Hambrecht, FBI agents were subpoenaing the phone records of Mrs. Hambrecht, and of course General Waycliff for April 15. At the same time, the good people in the J. Edgar Hoover Building were pushing hard to get the deleted information from Colonel Hambrecht's file, which I really didn't need now. But they were also trying to find the names of the surviving men in his flight who bombed Al Azziziyah, which we did need.

According to my e-mail, the FBI had immediately warned the Air Force and DoD that the men on the Al Azziziyah mission were in great and immediate danger, and that some degree of danger also existed for all the other men who flew the Libyan mission. The Air Force agreed to cooperate fully and quickly, of course, but in any bureaucracy, quickly is a relative term.

I didn't know if the CIA was being kept informed, but I hoped they were not. I still had this weird idea that the CIA knew some of this already. Okay, it's easy to get totally paranoid about those people, and half the time, as I keep reminding myself, they're not as smart or cunning as people think. But, as with any secret organization, they themselves sowed the seeds of mistrust and deception. Then they wonder why everybody thinks they're hiding something. What they're usually hiding is the fact that they don't know much. Sometimes I do the same thing, so how could I complain?

I never actually thought that the FBI-which is the heart of the Anti-Terrorist Task Force-knew more than they were telling us in New York. But I was convinced they knew, as Kate said, that the CIA was in business for itself. And they let it pass because, after all, we're all on the same team, and we're all on the side of the angels, and everybody has the best interests of the country at heart. The only problem was in defining best interests.

The good news was that Koenig and Nash were out of the country.

Anyway, during a little lull in the beehive activity, I looked at the printouts that Kate was still running from cyberspace.

I started with a New York Times story, dated March 11, 1989, headlined, "Blast Wrecks Van of Skipper Who Downed Iran Jet." This was about the Vincennes captain, and didn't seem pertinent, except as an example of what we suspected was happening now.

Kate handed me an Associated Press article, dated April 16, 1996, headlined, "Libya Seeks Trials Over 1986 Air Raids." I read aloud, " Libya demanded Monday that the United States surrender the pilots and planners behind air raids on Libyan cities ten years ago, and Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, insisted the United Nations take up the case." I looked at Kate and said, "I guess we didn't hand anyone over, and Gadhafi got impatient."

"Read on," she said.

I continued, "We can't forget what happened," Gadhafi said on the anniversary of the U.S. attacks, which Libya said wounded over a hundred people, and killed thirty-seven, including Gadhafi's adopted daughter. "These children… are they animals, and Americans are human beings?" asked Gadhafi, in a CNN interview in the ruins of his bombed-out home, left standing a full decade after the raids.'" I looked up at Kate.

She said, "I'm guessing that Asad Khalil lived in this military compound with the Gadhafi family. Remember, there was a family connection, according to our files."

"Right." I thought about this and said, "Khalil would have been about fifteen or sixteen when the raid occurred. His father was already dead, but he must have had friends and family at this compound."

Kate nodded. "He's avenging them, and the Gadhafi family."

"Makes sense to me." I thought again about what Gabe had said earlier. I said to Kate, "Now we know what's motivating this guy, and I have to tell you… I mean, I don't sympathize with the bastard, but I understand."

She nodded. "I know." She added, "Khalil is more dangerous than we thought, if that's possible. Read on."

I read the end of the AP story, '"Gadhafi spoke as Libya conducts ceremonies in remembrance of the U.S. raids on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and on Benghazi. The raids were in retaliation for the bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin on April five, nineteen eighty-six, which killed one U.S. serviceman. Libya's demands mirror U.S. insistence that Libya turn over to American or British courts two men wanted for the nineteen eighty-eight bombing of Pan Am Flight One-Oh-Three over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed two hundred seventy people."' I put the article aside and said, '"Round and round it goes; where it stops, nobody knows.'"

"Indeed. A war without end. This is just another battle brought about by the last battle, which will lead to the next battle."

There's a depressing thought. I scanned a few more articles, and came across later articles about the captain of the Vincennes incident. As I said, there was no direct connection with Khalil, but I noticed an interesting progression of headlines, one of which, from the New York Times, read, "Bombing Inquiry Moving from State Terror Theory." The first of the succeeding articles indicated that maybe the Iranian government wasn't involved after all, and maybe no extremist groups were involved. Maybe it was a lone political weirdo, or maybe it was just a coincidence, or a personal grudge, leaving one wondering about who the captain or his wife pissed off down at the officers club. Bullshit. It was incredible how Washington spun these stories to calm people down and not get everyone worked up about Iranians, or Iraqis, or Libyans, or other countries who really didn't like us, and who got their own people worked up over the slightest incidents.

There must be some sort of great diplomatic strategy at work, but I didn't get it. By this time next month, Asad Khalil would be described as a lone malcontent, angry at the U.S. for smearing ink on his entry visa. If you don't think anyone knows what they're doing in the White House or the J. Edgar Hoover Building or the Pentagon or Langley, try the State Department-they're totally adrift with one oar in the water. Anyway, geopolitics aside, Asad Khalil was either done and gone, or heading toward his next victim. I said to Kate, "Any word on the crews of that mission?"

"No. But they won't necessarily tell us. By now, the FBI could have the survivors covered."

"I think they should tell us. In the NYPD, the investigating detective knows and is responsible for everything."

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, John, but this is not the NYPD, and you'll be lucky if you even get a phone call telling you Khalil has been arrested."

This really sucked. I racked my brain for ways to get a piece of the action, but all I could think of was that Jack Koenig owed me a favor, though we disagreed on that obvious and simple fact. But Koenig wasn't around, and I had no pull or influence here, and no one else owed me anything. I asked Kate, "Have you slept with a supervisor who could do us a favor?"