“Where do you suppose it came from?” Browning said.

“What were you reading when the message appeared?”

“Archives material. Mostly diplomatic reports. One of the Senate staff guys needed it for his boss who's on the armed services committee. He was looking for patterns of Soviet behavior, probably so he could jack up the defense budget.”

“What was the context of these reports?”

“They were from field agents to the director. It had to do with Soviet nuclear development. They were in the old files that Clinton ordered declassified.”

“Interesting. That tells us that that the material was meant for eyes only at the highest level.”

“Sounds plausible. But what's this business with the protocol?”

Rowland sighed. “I don't know what the agency is going to do when old war horses like me get put out to pasture. Let me tell you how the protocols worked back in the old covert action days. First a policy would be approved, usually at the highest levels, with the director, NSA, joint chiefs all signing on. The president would be kept out of the loop officially, for purposes of deniability. The policy would generate a course of action in response to a given threat or threats. That was the protocol. The action was distilled into an order. The order was broken down into a number of parts.”

“Makes sense. That way those who carried out the order only knew their small part of it. You preserve secrecy.”

'Aha, I guess they did teach you something in the halls of Eli, even if it's all wrong. Those nutty plans like whacking Castro or Iran-contra were set up that way, and they all fell apart."

“So why have a protocol at all?”

“The prime reason is so the guys at the top can disavow responsibility. A protocol was usually reserved for the most serious type of action. In this case, we're talking about a political assassination. It was not something taken lightly. Heads of state are not supposed to plot the demise of other heads of state or people in their own government. It makes for bad precedent. So the order would be multilevel. It was designed not to leave fingerprints. No one gave orders that could be traced back. A number of predetermined circumstances had to come about for the command to be followed through to its end.”

“It sounds like the fail-safe system they used with the nuclear bombers. There were several steps involved, and the mission could be aborted up until the very last.”

“Something like that. Let me give you another analogy. A threat is perceived. One hand takes out the gun. The threat grows. Another hand loads the bullet. The threat escalates. A third hand cocks the hammer. Next, the trigger is pulled and the threat is eliminated. All those action-reaction steps would be necessary for the gun to fire.”

Browning nodded. “I understand what you're saying, but I can't figure out how the bloody thing got onto my computer.”