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wasted.’
    â€˜We didn’t know he’d been killed. The police didn’t tell us. Our involvement was limited to intelligence traffic, nothing more.’
    â€˜Can you check everything on the hard drive today?’
    â€˜Working from the date of the known American interception?’
    Sally hesitated. ‘We could initially go forward from there. We might need to go backwards, depending upon what we find. My guess is that there was earlier traffic that wasn’t intercepted.’
    John opened his folder, reading aloud: ‘“Invite the brothers to the celebration.”’ He looked up. ‘It certainly reads as if there was something earlier. Let’s start from the date of this transmission, see how and where we go from there.’
    â€˜The Bradford murder file had that message in unencrypted English. Was that how it was originally intercepted by NSA? Or was it encrypted?’
    John went back to the file. ‘It was in English, on the private link from a Facebook account. It was encrypted in what amounted to little more than a schoolboy code: figures plus one for corresponding letter in the alphabet to decipher. Bennett would have had a crib to read it. It would have provided virtually instant translation.’ John smiled and looked up. ‘At first we agreed with America that the encryption was something incredibly clever, something we hadn’t come across before because it was too simple!’
    â€˜So there won’t be any translation difficulties if there’s more, using the same encryption?’ She’d need to run a passport search, Sally reminded herself. There hadn’t been one among Bennett’s personal belongings she’d sifted through in Bradford or in the hostel computer locker. With one realization came another. ‘What did you do here, after getting that one message? Did you monitor the German sender’s computer address? And Bennett’s?’
    John returned to his folder. ‘Bennett’s message was intercepted from a Cologne Internet café. The account was in the name of Mohammed, which has to be the most generic Arabic name. We installed a monitor for a month. We put Bennett’s electronic address on a watch list, also for a month. After that we checked with Thames House, who said we could lift both.’
    It wasn’t just Bradford police who’d screwed up, Sally recognized. It might have helped if she’d at least had an indication from London that she was picking up a botched case. Edging the computer towards the man, she said, ‘Can we get started, to see how much time we might have lost so far.’
    â€˜If there’s more and it’s encrypted Arabic, it’ll take longer than what’s left of today; the code will have to be broken and the Arabic translated. Sometimes there are words or colloquialisms too close in definition to give the instant translation you want.’
    â€˜My mother was Jordanian,’ disclosed Sally. ‘I’m totally bilingual. Even with a difficult translation I could get a gist sufficiently for a general impression. And Bennett’s from a background that makes it doubtful he’d know any Arabic.’
    â€˜So we could be lucky.’ The man smiled.
    â€˜Luck would be a bonus.’ Sally at once regretted the rare self-pity; she didn’t even believe in luck.
    *   *   *
    Marian Lowell got to the commissary early, determined to get their already-chosen table from which they couldn’t be overhead. Burt Singleton came in as she was setting out her Caesar salad. He scuffed awkwardly with his tray from the service line and remained standing.
    â€˜The sole’s come off my boot,’ he complained.
    â€˜Don’t do another home repair; buy new at Kmart.’ She was conscious of the occasional smiles and looks from other early diners, aware of the gossip that she and Singleton were longtime lovers. It wasn’t