He fired up his laptop, found a wireless network, set up an encrypted connection, and got in touch with Stan, a colleague and former comrade-in-arms in the greater Washington, D.C., area. It was quitting time there, and Saturday to boot, but Stan was known to work odd hours. Seamus asked Stan whether it wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to his intellectual faculties to track down the provenance of a certain instant message, and wondered whether Stan was too much of a pussy to get it done discreetly, without setting the whole counterterrorism network alight.