Thus, Third Echelon, a sub-agency of the NSA, consists of an elite team of strategists, hackers, and field operatives. We respond to crises of information warfare--a war that is hidden from the media and the ordinary man on the street. You're not going to see our battles on CNN. At least I hope not. If you do, then we've failed.

"How's it going, Sam?" Lambert asks, chewing a bite of burger.

"Can't complain, Colonel," I reply, sitting at one of the plastic tables across from him. He once told me to call him "Irv," but I just can't bring myself to do that. "Colonel" is fine with me. It always strikes me as incongruous, us meeting like this. Here we are, two innocuous middle-aged men meeting in a shopping mall for fast food--yet we're about to discuss things that might affect the security of the United States.

Lambert gets right to the point. "Sam, another Splinter Cell has been assassinated," he says, looking me in the eyes.

I wait for him to continue.

"Rick Benton. Stationed in Iraq, but it happened in Brussels."

"I've heard of him. Never met him," I say.

"No, of course not. We keep you guys apart for a reason."

"What happened? Do we know?" I ask.

Lambert shakes his head. "Details are still coming in. The Belgian police are all over it, so we have to get the information through ordinary diplomatic channels, and you know how slow that can be. But we're getting cooperation from the Belgian Military Intelligence and Security Service. One of their guys was killed with Benton."

"What dowe know?"

"Benton was in the process of obtaining some sensitive information from his contact in Brussels, an intelligence officer named Dirk Verbaken. Unknown assassins murdered both men in Benton's hotel room during the lunch hour. Apparently Benton and Verbaken got together for a face-to-face, but someone else knew about it. They were both shot, and there's every reason to believe that it's the same MO as what happened in Macau to Dan Lee. Same ballistics--caliber and so forth."

"You think it's the Shop?"

"It has to be. I can't think of another enemy organization that has an inkling that we exist. The Shop has been on notice for over a year now, and they know the NSA is on to them. Whether or not they're completely aware of Third Echelon and what we do is anyone's guess. Mine is that they areaware of us. How else would they be able to target two Splinter Cells in a three-month period?"

I shrug and venture, "They've tapped into our personnel records? Maybe they have talented hackers, too."

"Our firewall is impenetrable," Lambert replies. "Carly's too good at that stuff. We'd know if we were being hacked."

"There was the security breach that occurred nine months ago."

Lambert nods. "I've thought of that. It's a possibility. A remote one, but yeah, you're right. Carly and I discussed this and there's about a one-in-three-hundred chance that someone got in. Improbable but not impossible."

"So what were Benton and this Belgian guy meeting about? What was his name?"

"Verbaken. The last report I received from Benton indicated he was investigating a possible connection between the Shop and 'something in Belgium.' He told me he was going to Brussels to meet with an intelligence contact there and that he would report in as soon as he was done. For months he was in the process of tracking a major Shop arms supply line coming into Iraq from the north. The customers are the various insurgents and terrorist factions that have been hounding our allies, the new Iraqi government, and usever since the president declared that the war in Iraq was over. I know Benton was getting close to finding out some truths about those guys." Lambert took a long slurp of soda. "I'm afraid Benton turned out to be careless. It cost him his life."

"Is Belgium giving us any info on their guy? What was heworking on?"

"Well, we have a clue. Benton's OPSAT was recovered from the hotel room. It was smashed to hell, but upon examination of the device our people were able to extract a minimum number of files that hadn't been transmitted to us. One was a shot of a page from a file belonging to Verbaken. When Belgian Intelligence saw the photo, they confirmed that it was from a missing file that detailed the activities of Gerard Bull."

"Gerard Bull?" I'm surprised. I haven't heard that name in many years. Gerard Bull was a Canadian arms designer and dealer who was active in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. He worked for our government for a while until there was a falling out. He served some prison time for illegal arms dealing. After he got out of prison, he worked extensively out of Europe. During the eighties he had close ties with Saddam Hussein and spent a lot of time designing and building high-tech arms for Iraq. His most famous "creation" was the design for what he called a "supergun." He called it the "Babylon." It was supposed to be a giant cannon-like weapon that could fire a payload an incredibly long distance. Alternatively, with the aid of boosters, a payload could be launched into space without the need of rockets. Bull never finished the project, but he did build a small prototype called the "Baby Babylon." It was dismantled and destroyed during the Gulf War. Bull was assassinated in 1990--in Brussels, to be exact. It is widely believed that the Mossad was responsible for the killing.

"So what's that all about?" I ask.

"I don't know," Lambert replies. "Belgian intelligence confirmed that Verbaken had recently added material to the file because he believed that someone previously associated with Bull was continuing the physicist's work for terrorists in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Verbaken hadn't completed his investigation and had not filed any detailed reports. He died without leaving anyone a clue as to where his notes are. They were probably inthe file. And it's gone."

"Except for the one page recovered from the OPSAT."

"Right."

"Did the killers take the file?"

"We assume so. I wonder if they were after the file to begin with, or were the targets either Verbaken or Benton and the file was just gravy?"

"Or after both guys andthe file," I suggest.

"There's that possibility, too."

We're quiet for a moment as we let these thoughts sink in. I finish my pizza and ask, "You heard the news about London?"

Lambert nods grimly. "That's another thing I wanted to talk with you about. As you can imagine, we're all very concerned about it."

"The news report was very vague. What happened?"

"I was in my car when it happened," Lambert says. "I got on to the Pentagon immediately, and what they could gather in the few minutes after it occurred was that some suicide bombers were masquerading as actors or something. It happened by the National Theatre. A big truck packed with explosives blew up. Part of Waterloo Bridge crumbled. It's a big mess."

"Anyone claiming responsibility?"

"Not yet," Lambert answers. "But the modus operandi suggests the Shadows, don't you think?"

The Shadows. They're a bunch of shady characters who've grabbed some headlines lately. A relatively new barrel of terrorists, the Shadows operate all over the world but are believed to be headquartered somewhere in the Middle East. (Where else?) I can't remember who coined the name, but it wasn't them. I think it was a newspaper from the region--maybe Turkey--that referred to them as the Shadows and it stuck. From then on messages from the group were signed "the Shadows." I think they were flattered.