“If you’re here, you’ve already been cleared by the heads of your respective organizations,” he went on. “Beyond that, everything we cover is for the eyes and ears of this group only. You’ll find clearance credentials in the folders in front of you. You have to fill them out before you leave.”

Stroud made all the introductions himself. He impressed me by knowing everyone’s name and title without notes. It was a complete alphabet soup in that room — CIA, FBI, NSA, MPD. There were counterterrorism analysts, as well as reps from Secret Service and Homeland Security, and one exhausted-looking agent from the National Clandestine Service who had just arrived from Riyadh.

When he was done, Stroud sat down and nodded to the analyst on his right. “Let’s begin,” he said. “We have a hell of a lot of material to cover this morning.”

I raised my eyebrows at Mahoney. This was a big meeting. Ned made a little circling gesture with his finger, mouthed the words “in the loop,” and then pointed at me.

Yeah, I guess so.

“AT APPROXIMATELY THREE o’clock this morning, two DC metro police officers were shot and killed at the Brentwood rail yard in Northeast Washington,” the analyst started in. It wasn’t any easier to hear about the murders a second time. Both officers had families. I didn’t know them, but that didn’t matter. When another officer goes down, we all feel it.

“An indeterminate number of suspects were on-site, all of whom escaped. What we did find, however, was twenty pounds of Semtex explosives. And six canisters of aerosolized sarin. The sarin had already been deposited in the air-conditioning ducts of several Metro subway cars.”

My head was starting to buzz. That was a staggering amount of deadly material. A couple pounds of Semtex can take down a high-rise, and sarin gas is a nightmare at any dosage.

The professional decorum in the room began to break apart at that point. Several side conversations started up around the table, and the questions were flying all at once.

“Are we any closer to knowing who’s running this … this attack?” one of the NSA guys asked. He was bigger and louder than the rest of us.

“Actually, yes,” the analyst said. He looked across the table at his colleague from Riyadh. “You want to take that?”

The man from Riyadh’s name was Andrew Fatany. He was clearly running on fumes and needed a shave. His voice was disturbingly hoarse when he got up to speak.

“Here’s what I can tell you,” Fatany said. “We now have credible intelligence on the existence of a fledgling, independent terror organization based out of Saudi Arabia. Beyond that, we have several unconfirmed reports regarding the establishment of a multifunctional cell here in Washington, a very serious and deadly one, I’m afraid. They’re well financed and organized.”

It felt like half the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Nobody said a word now, just listened.