My second-in-command, Hood thought. Technically, Hood would be on vacation for two weeks before his resignation took effect. Mike would be acting director until then. Hood hoped the president would give Mike the job full time after that. It would be a terrible blow to Mike if he didn't.
Hood picked up the Nodong fragment. It was like holding a piece of his life. Japan was spared an attack, one to two million lives saved. Several lives lost. This memento and others like it were passive, but the memories they triggered were anything but.
He put the fragment back in the carton. The hum of air coming from the overhead vents seemed unusually loud. Or maybe the office was just unusually silent? The night crew was on, and the phone wasn't ringing. Footsteps weren't coming to or from his door.
Hood quickly went through the other memories tucked in the top drawer of his desk.
There were postcards from the kids when they vacationed at Grandma's--not like this last time, when his wife took them there while she decided whether or not to leave him. There were books he'd read on airplanes with notes scribbled in the margins, things he had to remember to do when he got where he was going or when he returned. And there was a brass key from the hotel in Hamburg, Germany, where he bumped into Nancy Jo Bosworth, a woman he'd loved and planned to marry. Nancy had walked out of his life over twenty years before without an explanation.
Hood held the brass key in his palm. He resisted the urge to slip it into his pocket, feel like he was back at the hotel, just for a moment. Instead, Hood placed the key in the box. Returning to the girl, even in memory, who'd walked out of his life, wasn't going to help save his family.
Hood shut the top drawer. He'd told Sharon that he would take her on one big last-night-of-having-an-expense-account dinner, and there was no excuse to miss it. He'd already said his last good-byes to the office workers, and the senior staff had thrown him a surprise party that afternoon--even though it wasn't much of a surprise. When intelligence chief Bob Herbert had E-mailed everyone the time and date, he'd forgotten to remove Hood's E-mail address from his list. Paul had pretended to be surprised when he walked into the conference room. He was just glad that Herbert didn't make mistakes like that as a rule.
Hood opened the bottom drawer. He took out his personal address book, the crossword puzzle CD-ROM he'd never gotten to use, and the scrapbook of daughter Harleigh's violin recitals. He'd missed too damn many of those. The four of them would be going to New York at the end of the week so Harleigh could perform with other young Washington virtuosi at a function for United Nations ambassadors. Ironically, they were celebrating a major peace initiative in Spain, where Op-Center had been involved in helping to prevent a civil war. Unfortunately, the public--parents included--were not invited. Hood would have been curious to see how the new secretary-general, Mala Chatterjee, handled her first public affair. She had been chosen after Secretary-General Massimo Marcello Manni had suffered a fatal heart attack. Though the young woman wasn't as experienced as other candidates, she was committed to the struggle for human rights through peaceful means. Influential nations like the United States, Germany, and Japan--which saw her strong stand as a means to tweak China--helped her get the appointment.
Hood left the government phone directory, a monthly terminology bulletin--the latest names of nations and their leaders--and a thick book of military acronyms. Unlike Herbert and General Rodgers, Hood had never served in the military. He'd always felt self-conscious about never having risked his life in the service, especially when he had to send Striker into the field. But, as Op-Center's FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey once pointed out, "That's why we call this a team. Everyone brings different skills to the table."
Hood paused when he came to a stack of photos in the bottom of the drawer. He removed the rubber band and looked through them. Among the pictures of barbecues and photo-ops with world leaders were snapshots of Striker's Private Bass Moore, of Striker commander Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires, and of Op-Center's political and economic liaison Martha Mackall. Private Moore died in North Korea, Lieutenant Colonel Squires lost his life on a mission in Russia, and Martha had been assassinated just a few days before on the streets of Madrid, Spain. Hood replaced the rubber band and put the stack of pictures in the carton.
He closed the last drawer. He picked up his well-worn City of Los Angeles mousepad and Camp David coffee mug and placed them in the box. As he did, he noticed someone standing to his left, just outside the open office door.
"Need any help?"
Hood smiled lightly. He ran a hand through his wavy black hair. "No, but you can come in. What are you doing here so late?"
"Checking the Far Eastern newspaper headlines for tomorrow," she said. "We've got some disinformation out there."
"About?"
"I can't tell you," she said. "You don't work here anymore."
"Touche," he replied, smiling.
Ann Farris smiled back as she walked slowly into the office. The Washington Times once described her as one of the twenty-five most eligible young divorcees in the nation's capital. Nearly six years later, she still was. Op-Center's five-foot-seven-inch-tall press liaison was wearing a tight black skirt and white blouse. Her dark rust eyes were large and warm, and they softened the anger Hood was feeling.
"I promised myself I wasn't going to bother you," the tall, slender woman said.
"But here you are."
"Here I am."
"And it's not a bother," he added.
Ann stopped beside the desk and looked down at him. Her long, brown hair fell along her face and over the front of her shoulders. Looking at her eyes and smile, Hood was reminded of all the times during the past two and a half years that she'd encouraged him, helped him, made no secret that she cared for him.
"I didn't want to bother you," she said, "but I also didn't want to say good-bye at a party."
"I understand. I'm glad you're here."
Ann sat on the edge of the desk. "What are you going to do, Paul? Do you think you'll stay in D.C.?"
"I don't know. I was thinking about going back to the financial world," he said. "I've arranged to see a few people after we get back from New York. If that doesn't work out, I don't know. Maybe I'll settle in some small rural town and open an accounting practice. Taxes, money market, a Range Rover, and raking leaves. It wouldn't be a bad life."
"I know. I lived it."
"And you don't think I can."
"I don't know," she said. "What are you going to do when the children are gone? My own son's scratching on teenagerhood and I'm already thinking about what I'll do when he leaves for college."
"What will you do?" Hood asked.
"Unless some wonderful, middle-aged guy with black hair and hazel eyes carries me off to Antigua or Tonga?" she asked.
"Yes," Hood said, flushing. "If that doesn't happen."
"I'll probably buy a house somewhere in the middle of one of those islands and write. Real fiction. Not the stuff I give the Washington Press Corps every day. There are some stories I want to tell."
The former political reporter and one-time press secretary to Connecticut Senator Bob Kaufmann did indeed have stories to tell. Tales of spin-doctoring, affairs, and back-stabbing in the corridors of power.
Hood sighed. He looked at his depersonalized desk. "I don't know what I'll do. I've got some personal things to work on."
"With your wife, you mean."
"With Sharon," he said softly. "If I succeed, then the future will take care of itself."
Hood had made a point of saying his wife's name because it made her seem more real, more present. He did that because Ann was pushing more than usual. This would be her last chance to talk to him here, where the memories of a long, close professional relationship, of triumph and mourning, and of sexual tension were suddenly very vivid.
"Can I ask you something?" Ann said.
"Sure."
Her eyes lowered. So did her voice. "How long will you give it?"
"How long?"
Hood said under his breath. He shook his head. "I don't know, Ann. I really don't." He looked at her for a long moment. "Now let me ask you something."
"Sure," she said. "Anything." Her eyes were even softer than before. He didn't understand why he was doing this to himself.
"Why me?" he asked.
She seemed surprised. "Why do I care about you?"
"Is that what this is? Care?"
"No," she admitted quietly.
"Then tell me why," he pressed.
"It isn't obvious?"
"No," he said. "Governor Vegas. Senator Kaufmann. The president of the United States. You've been close to some of the most dynamic men in the nation. I'm not like them. I ran from the arena, Ann."
"No. You left it," she said. "There's a difference. You left because you were tired of the smears, of the political correctness, of having to watch every word. Honesty is very appealing, Paul. So is intelligence. So is keeping cool when all those charismatic politicians and generals and foreign leaders are running around swinging their sabres."
"Steady Paul Hood," he said.
"What's wrong with that?" Ann asked.
"I don't know," Hood said. He stood and picked up the carton. "What I do know is that something's wrong somewhere in my life, and I need to find out what it is."
Ann also rose. "Well, if you need any help looking for it, I'm available. If you want to talk, have coffee, dinner--just call."
"I will," Hood smiled. "And thanks for stopping by.">
"Sure," she said.
He motioned with the carton for Ann to go first. She left the office briskly, without looking back. If there was sadness or temptation in her eyes, Hood was spared both.
He shut the office door behind him. It closed gently but with a solid, final click.
As he walked past the cubicles to the elevator, Hood accepted good wishes from the night team. He rarely saw them, since Bill Abram and Curt Hardaway ran things after seven. There were so many young faces. So many go-getters. Steady Paul Hood was definitely feeling like an antique.
Hopefully, the trip to New York would give him time to think, time to try and fix his relationship with Sharon. He reached the elevator, stepped in, and took a last look at the complex that had taken so much of his time and spirit--but had also given him those adrenaline jolts. There was no point lying to himself: He was going to miss it. All of it.
As the door shut, Hood found himself getting angry again. Whether he was angry at what he was leaving or what he was going to, he just didn't know. Op-Center psychologist Liz Gordon once told him that confusion was a term we'd invented to describe an order of things that was not yet understood.
He hoped so. He truly did.
THREE
Paris, France Tuesday, 7:32 A.M.
Every section of Paris is rich with something, be it history, hotels, museums, monuments, cafes, shops, markets, or even sunshine. Just northeast of the Seine, beyond the half-kilometer-long Le Port de Plaisance de Paris de l'Arsenal--a canal for recreational boating--is a region rich with something a little different: post offices. There are two of them a few blocks apart on the Boulevard Diderot and a third building between them, just to the north. Other post offices are scattered throughout the district. Most of them derive the bulk of their business from the tourists who come to Paris year round.
Each morning at five-thirty, an armored truck operated by the Banque de Commerce begins its rounds of these post offices. It carries an armed driver and one armed guard up front and another armed guard in back, along with postage stamps, money orders, and postal cards to deliver to the five post offices. When it completes its rounds, the armored truck is carrying canvas sacks loaded with the counted, banded cash collected by each post office the day before. Typically, the cash is international currency equivalent to three-quarters of a million to one million U.S. dollars.
The truck follows the same route every day, making its way northwest and then turning up the heavily traveled Boulevard de la Bastille. Once the armored car is past the Place de la Bastille, it deposits its cargo at a bank building on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir. The policy of the Banque de Commerce, like many armored car companies, is to adhere to the same path every day. That way, the drivers will know the route and its character and recognize any changes. If there's an electrical team working on a streetlight or a road crew working on a pothole, the driver is informed ahead of time. A two-way radio is always turned on in the cab and is monitored by a dispatcher at the Banque de Commerce office across the river on the Rue Cuvier near the Jardin des Plantes.
The one constant--paradoxically, the one constant that always changes--is traffic. The men watch from behind bulletproof windshields as faster-moving cars and trucks weave around the heavily armored four-ton vehicle. Along Le Port de l'Arsenal, boat traffic is also constant, mostly motorboats from fourteen to forty feet in length. They come here from the river so that crews can dine, rest, take on fuel, or undergo repairs at the docks.
The men in the armored truck did not notice anything unusual on this sunlit morning except for the heat, which was even worse than it had been the day before. And it wasn't even eight A.M. yet. Though their dark gray caps were hot and snug, the men wore them to keep the sweat from dripping into their eyes. The driver wore an MR F1 revolver; the guard in the passenger's seat and the man in the back both carried FAMA assault rifles.
Traffic was heavy at this hour, as trucks made deliveries and small cars maneuvered to get around them. None of the men in the armored car thought anything was out of the ordinary when a truck in front of them slowed to let a Citroen pass. The truck was an old rig with battered, dirty-white metal siding and a green canvas curtain in the back.
The driver's eyes drifted to the left, toward the canal. "I tell you," he said. "I would like to be out there today on my little Whaler. The sun, the rocking of the waves, the quiet."
The other man's eyes snapped over as the masts and trees rushed by. "I'd be bored."
"That's because you like to hunt. Me? I'd be content to sit in the breeze with my cassette player and fishing--"
The driver swallowed the rest of the sentence and frowned. Neither the caps nor the weapons nor the open radio nor the familiarity of the route mattered when the old truck in front stopped suddenly, and the curtain in back was pulled aside. A man stood in the back. Another man walked around from the passenger's side. Both wore camouflage uniforms, bulletproof vests, gas masks, equipment belts, and thick rubber gloves. Each man held a shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The man in the truck leaned to the passenger's side slightly, angling himself so that the back of the RPG was facing away from the cab of their truck. The other man stood on the street, the RPG angled upward slightly.
The guard in the truck reacted immediately. "Emergency!" he said into the open microphone. "Two masked men in truck, license 101763, have stopped in front of us. They are armed with rocket launchers."
A heartbeat later, the men fired.
There was a faint whoosh as twin spikes of yellow orange flame shot from the rear of the grenade launchers. At the same time, a smooth, steel-jacketed, pear-shaped projectile rocketed from the barrel of each tube. The grenades hit the windshield on either side and exploded. The guard in the passenger seat raised his gun.
"The windshield held!" the guard cried triumphantly.
The driver looked into the right and left side mirrors. Then he started to nose to the right, into oncoming traffic. "Attempting evasive maneuver to the north lanes--" he said.
Suddenly, both men screamed.
High-end bulletproof glass, made of plastic laminate, is designed to withstand even close-proximity blasts from hand grenades. It may shatter in a single-hole or web pattern, but it'll hold without fragmentation for one or possibly two assaults. After that, there are no guarantees. Whoever is behind the glass--the driver of an armored car or limousine, the employee at a bank, prison, parking or transit booth, or federal office building--is supposed to call for backup and e
vacuate the target area if possible. In the case of an armored car, even if the occupants can't drive off, the driver and passenger are both armed. In theory, once the glass is breached, the attackers are equally at risk.
But the grenades that had been fired from the truck were two-chambered. The front chamber contained an explosive. The larger back chamber, which was shattered in the blast, contained disulphuric acid.
The windshield had broken the same way in two spots, a sunburst pattern caused by high-velocity fragmentation: a nearly inch-wide crater at the center with filament-thin cracks radiating from it. Some of the acid had been blown through the hole, splattering the driver and passenger in the face and lap. The rest of the acid ate through the cracks by dissolving the non-chemically inert polymers that were a component of the glass.
Etienne Vandal and Reynold Downer slung the grenade launchers over their shoulders. Downer jumped from the back as the armored car slammed into the right rear corner of the truck. The truck skidded to the right, the armored car to the left, and both came to a stop. Vandal and Downer jumped onto the hood of the armored car. All they had to do was kick the windshield to knock it in. It came apart just as Vandal had said it would. The glass was thicker and heavier than Downer had expected, and the acid residue caused the rubber heel of his boot to smoke. But he only had a moment to think about that. The Australian pulled an automatic from a holster he wore on his right hip. He was standing on the passenger's side. As cars in the other lanes slowed and watched and then sped away, Downer fired a single shot into the forehead of the guard. Vandal did the same on the other side.
The lone guard in the sealed cargo compartment called the dispatcher from his own secure radio in the back. Vandal had known he would do that because, after leaving the military with an impeccable record, the lieutenant had easily landed work as a security guard for the Banque de Commerce armored cars. He had served on an armored vehicle just like this one for nearly seven months. Vandal also knew that at this point in the journey, with traffic as heavy as it was, it would take the police emergency response team at least ten minutes to get there. And that was more than enough time to finish the job.
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