*****
At Fort Meade, “Ingrid” received the new record from the nameless machine to it’s left, against the wall, nameless for the sole reason that it could not be seen from the control consoles where the geeks usually sat. The record went into the cue. It would have moved immediately, or one would assume so, if there was anything in the programming that was designed to detect duplicate messages, or if anyone had put a listening watch on the landline in Dhahran, or even if the analyst team had had a chance to see the original message, or if the NSA would send its raw intercepts with some level of interest on to other agencies for them to analyze. But none of these things were so, they made another invisible “seam” in the great intelligence and counter-terrorism “system” in the United States. Instead, “Ingrid” sent other calls onward to “Fluffy” and her fellows for consideration and classification, and this message waited. If anyone had known to ask, “Ingrid” would have told them that she thought it would be about nine hours before this record would get a turn with “Fluffy” or one of the others. At best, Fluffy would send it to an analyst, but not necessarily the same one as the original. If luck played a part, the same analyst would see both, and see them in a small enough span of time to remember they were identical and to think that strange. If luck did not smile this time, nobody would ever make the connection at all.