Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber

loved being of Saudi extraction, she was souredby the fact that it put such a limit on her advancement. Would a Muslim woman, a daughter of Arabia, ever become anything more than what she was? A department head, for example? No.
    Because of the concerns that would arise, she did not dare to go to the native country of her parents, and had not done so since she was taken there as a child. One day, she would do hajj, of course, but she kept putting it off. After the promotion.
    She picked up the phone, spoke to her supervisor. “Marge, Nabila. I’ve got one that’s bothering me a little. I’m shipping you the download now. The site itself was taken offline less than a minute after Referer dropped the link in my lap.” Referer was a system of ’bots that ceaselessly searched the Web looking for new sites that fulfilled a broad range of criteria having to do with terrorism, including threats, money transfer, indications of personnel movement, and a myriad of other factors. It was an excellent system. Gone were the days when the CIA was a technological fool.
    “Have you translated it?”
    “It’s bilingual, and the English is correct.”
    “I’m waiting.”
    “Sent from this end.”
    Marge Pearson had been in the Soviet Russia Division back in the Stone Age. With thirty years in the CIA, she had not the slightest intention of retiring, and praise Allah for that. She was a company legend, and Nabila counted herself extremely lucky to have such an influential and respected boss. A recommendation from Marge meant automatic advancement, and she was generous to her kids, Marge was. So, maybe even Nabby had a shot.
    “I’m looking at it. I see; that’s a very direct threat.”
    “That’s what’s bothering me.”
    “We’ll move this one along.”
    Nabila could almost hear Marge thinking. She decided to help a little. “An Arab would not make a threat this direct unless he could carry it out, and intended to do so.”
    “This could cause a run on scarves.”
    “That’ll be the day.” She cherished the safety of the West. The idea of Šar’ah being imposed here was too horrifying to contemplate. Šar’ah was an ancient and imperfect system that had only one place in the world of modern jurisprudence: it should be considered suggestive where appropriate, advisoryand nothing more. Western law was one of the greatest of all human inventions, and the more it spread the better the world would become. It was that simple. Šar’ah was from a time before human rights were really understood, and therefore it should be considered a historical artifact, not a living system of laws.
    “Nabila, I want this to go to the prelim, but I’ll need more if it’s going to make the final.”
    Nabila swallowed her surprise. Marge was referring to nothing less than the Presidential Daily Brief.
    But this—how could this go so far so fast? Further up the ladder, maybe they knew something Nabila didn’t. Even the mention of getting near the briefer excited her. Getting in the briefer—in her world, that was game, set, and match.
    She thought for a moment. How could she advance this? “Let me take a look around,” she said. “I’ll see if I can get anything more.”
    She could put in a request to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to do a backward lookdown for identifiables on the ground at the Finnish university, but that would be futile. Such requests had to be vetted on both sides of the fence. The CIA might not let it go out. The NGIA might not let it come in. In any case, it would take the request hours to move between stovepipes, if it ever did.
    No, the only way to get anything done was to jump the fence—that is to say, call somebody over there directly. That meant dealing with her brother, which was not a pleasant thought. They shared the house, at this point, in silence. Still, she dialed his number.
    Day by day, his disapproval of her was growing. She’d seen by the way he prayed, the extra hand movements,