by Clancy, Tom
The president took a long breath. He started to say something and then stopped. “All right, Paul. You’ve got my attention. What do we do next?”
“I suggest we proceed under the assumption that we’ve got a serious problem,” Hood said. “I’ll continue the investigation from our end. We’ll see what we can find out about the Iranian connection. Check on what else Fenwick has been doing, who he’s been talking to.”
“Sounds good,” Lawrence said. “Fenwick is due back late tonight. I won’t say anything to him or to Red until I hear from you. Let me know as soon as you learn anything else.”
“I will, sir.”
“Will you also bring Senator Fox up to speed?”
Hood said he would and then stood. So did the president. He seemed a little stronger now, more in command. But the things Megan had told Hood still troubled him.
“Mr. President,” Hood said, “I do have one more question.”
The president looked at Hood intently and nodded once.
“A few minutes ago, you said that this was ‘more bullshit,’ ” Hood said. “What did you mean?”
The president continued to regard Hood. “Before I answer that, let me ask you a question.”
“All right.”
“Don’t you already know the answer to that?” the president asked.
Hood said that he did not.
“You came to see me only because of what happened last night?” the president asked.
Hood hesitated. The president knew that he and the First Lady were old friends. It was not Hood’s place to tell the president that his wife was worried about him. But Hood also did not want to be just one more person who was lying to the president.
“No,” Hood answered truthfully. “That is not the only reason.”
The president smiled faintly. “Fair enough, Paul. I won’t press you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But I will tell you one thing about the bullshit,” the president said. “This is not the only mix-up we’ve had here over the past few weeks. It’s been frustrating.” The president extended his hand across his desk. “Thanks for coming, Paul. And thanks for pushing me.”
Hood smiled and shook the president’s hand. Then he turned and left the Oval Office.
There was a group of eager-looking Boy Scouts waiting outside with a photographer. The young men were award-winners of some kind, judging by their sashes. Hood winked at them, taking a moment to savor their openmouthed awe and innocence. Then he thanked Mrs. Leigh as he passed her desk. She flashed a concerned look at Hood, and he indicated that he would call her. She mouthed a thank-you and then showed the Boy Scouts inside.
Hood walked briskly to his car. He started the engine, then took out his cell phone and checked his messages. There was only one. It was from Bob Herbert. As Hood headed toward Fifteenth Street, he called Herbert back.
“Bob, it’s Paul,” said Hood. “What’s up?”
“Plenty,” Herbert said. “First of all, Matt traced the call that came from the Hay-Adams.”
“And?”
“The call originated on Fenwick’s cell phone.”
“Bingo!” Hood said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Herbert replied.
“Explain,” Hood said.
“I got a call a few minutes ago, one I didn’t expect to get,” Herbert said.
“From?”
“Fenwick,” Herbert replied. “He was open and sounded surprised by what I had to say. He told me he didn’t speak to the president last night. He said his briefcase was stolen, which is why he didn’t get the calls I left on his cell phone. He only got the one I left at his office.”
“I’m not ready to buy that,” Hood replied. “The president did receive a call, and it was routed through the hotel.”
“True,” Herbert said. “But do you remember Marta Streeb?”
“The woman who had the affair with Senator Lancaster?” Hood asked.
“Right.”
“What about her?”
“Her calls were run through a phone bank at Union Station so they couldn’t be traced,” Herbert said.
“I remember,” Hood said. “But the president isn’t having an affair.”
“Are you sure?” Herbert asked. “His wife said he was acting strange. That could be guilt—”
“It could be, but let’s rule out the national security issues first,” Hood snapped.
“Sure,” Herbert replied.
Hood took a moment to calm down. His anger surprised him. Hood had never had an affair, but for some reason, Herbert’s comment made him feel guilty about Sharon.
“What else did Fenwick have to say?” Hood asked.
“That he doesn’t know a damn thing about any UN initiative,” Herbert said. “He didn’t get any calls about it and didn’t read about it in the paper. He told me he was sent to New York to help the Iranians with the situation involving the Harpooner and possible Azerbaijani terrorists in the Caspian. And there could be some truth to that,” Herbert pointed out. “If the CIA was compromised over there, the Iranians might need to turn to someone else for help. Someone that could get them signal intelligence capacity ASAP.”
“Were the Iranians working with the CIA on this?”
“I’m trying to find that out,” Herbert said. “You know those Company guys. They don’t like to share. But think about it. Op-Center’s worked with other governments, some of them hostile. We’d get in bed with Teheran if all we were going to do was snuggle a little.”
That was true, Hood had to admit.
“And Fenwick was at the mission,” Herbert continued. “That much is pretty clear.”
“It’s about the only thing that is,” Hood replied. “Bob, you said that Fenwick was sent to New York. Did he say who sent him?”
“Yes,” Herbert replied, “and I don’t think you’re going to like this. Fenwick says the president was the one who sent him.”
“Triple-O?” Hood asked. Triple-0 was oral orders only. They were given when an official didn’t want to leave a paper trail to or from a potentially explosive situation.
“Triple-O,” Herbert told him.
“Jesus,” Hood said. “Look—someone else would have to have been in this Iranian loop.”
“Sure,” Herbert agreed. “The veep, probably. The chief of staff—”
“Call Vice President Cotten’s office,” Hood said. “Find out what he has to say. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“I’ll call out for pizza,” Herbert told him.
Hood hung up and concentrated on getting himself through the maddening rush-hour traffic.
At the moment, it was a welcome diversion.
EIGHTEEN
Gobustan, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 1:22 A.M.
The other men had gone to sleep on threadbare bedrolls they had bought secondhand in Baku. But Maurice Charles was still awake, still sitting at the wooden table in the shepherd’s shack. Though he never had trouble sleeping before a mission, he did have trouble waiting for other people to do things. Things on which the mission depended. Until then, he would not—could not—rest.
When the phone finally beeped, he felt a nearly electric shock. This was it. The last unfinished business before H-hour.
Charles went to the equipment table. Beside the StellarPhoto Judge 7 was a Zed-4 unit, which had been developed by the KGB in 1992. The secure phone system was the size and general shape of an ordinary hardcover book. The small, flat receiver fit neatly into the side. It was a remarkable improvement over the point-to-point radios Charles had used when he was first starting out. Those had a range of two and one-half miles. The Zed-4 utilized a series of satellite links to pick up cellular transmissions from around the world. A series of internal audio enhancers and boosters virtually eliminated breakup and lost signals.
The Zed-4 was also quite secure. Most secure-phone calls, including the United States Tac-Sat units, were encrypted with a 155-digit number. In order to crack the code, eavesdroppers
had to factor that into its two-component prime numbers. Even using sophisticated computers like the Cray 916, that could take weeks. The CIA had managed to cut that time into days by stealing computer time from personal computers. In 1997, the agency began using Internet servers to piggyback the numbers into home computer systems. Small amounts of memory were appropriated to work on the problem without the user being aware of it. Networked throughout a system of millions of PCs, the CIA was able to add gigabytes of computation power to the problem. It also created a problem for counterprogrammers, since it was not possible to shut down the CIA’s so-called Stealth Field System. Thus, the Zed-4 was created using a complex encryption code of 309 digits. Even the SFS lacked sufficient power to break that code in a timely fashion.
Charles answered on the third ring. “B-sharp,” he said. That was the receiver code name.
“C-natural,” said the caller.
“Go ahead,” said Charles.
“I’m across the street from the target,” said the caller. “They’re bringing him out the side door.”
“No ambulance?”
“No,” said the caller.
“Who’s with him?” Charles asked.
“Two men,” said the caller. “Neither of them in uniform.”
Charles smiled. Americans were so predictable. If there were more than one operative, they invariably went to the user’s manual. “How to Be a Soldier or Spy,” Rule Fifty-three: Put the man above the mission. That thinking went at least as far back as the United States cavalry out West. Whenever the more aggressive Native American tribes like the Apaches were being pursued, they would stop to attack homesteaders. The warriors would always rape one of the women, leaving her where the cavalry was certain to find her. Invariably, the soldiers would send the woman back to the fort with an escort. That would not only delay the pursuing column but leave them depleted.
“Is backup in place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then take them,” Charles said.
“It’s done,” the caller said confidently. “Out.”
The phone went dead. Charles hung up.
That was it. The last piece. He’d allowed the one agent to live to draw the others out. An injection in the neck, a fast-acting bacterial pneumonia, and the entire local cast was out of commission. Now there would be no one to put pieces together, to stop him from completing the mission.
Charles had one more call to place before he went to bed. It was to a secure line in Washington, to one of the few men who knew of Charles’s involvement in this operation.
To a man who didn’t follow the rule book.
To a man who helped devise one of the most audacious schemes of modern times.
NINETEEN
Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 1:35 A.M.
The ride to the VIP Hospital took just under ten minutes. The VIP was the only hospital the American embassy deemed to be up to the standards of western health care. They had an arrangement with Dr. Kanibov, one of the city’s few English-speaking physicians. The fifty-seven-year-old Kanibov was paid off the books to be available for around-the-clock emergencies and to recommend qualified specialists when necessary.
Tom Moore didn’t know if a specialist was going to be necessary. All he knew was that Pat Thomas had woken him twenty minutes earlier. Thomas had heard David Battat moaning on his cot. When Thomas went over to check on Battat, he found him soaked with perspiration and trembling. The embassy nurse had a look at him and took Battat’s temperature. He had a fever of 105. The nurse suggested that Battat may have hit his head or suffered capillary damage when he was attacked. Rather than wait for an ambulance, Thomas and Moore loaded Battat into one of the embassy staff cars in the gated parking lot and brought him to the hospital themselves. The medic called ahead to let Dr. Kanibov know that they had a possible case of neurogenic shock.
This is all we need, to be down a man, Thomas thought as he drove through the dark, deserted streets of the embassy and business district. It was bad enough to have too few people to deal with normal intelligence work. But to find the Harpooner, one of the world’s most elusive terrorists, was going to take more. Thomas only hoped that his call to Washington would get them timely cooperation on a Saint Petersburg connection.
Dr. Kanibov lived just a block from the hospital. The tall, elderly, white-goateed physician was waiting when they arrived. Battat’s teeth were chattering, and he was coughing. By the time a pair of orderlies put him on a gurney just inside the door, the American’s lips and fingernail beds were rich blue.
“Very restricted blood flow,” said Kanibov to one of the orderlies. “Oxygen.” He looked in Battat’s mouth. “Traces of mucus. Suction, then give me an oral temperature.”
“What do you think is wrong?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Kanibov said.
“The nurse at the embassy said it could be neurogenic shock,” Thomas said to the doctor.
“If it were, his face would be pale, not flushed,” the doctor said with annoyance. He looked at Thomas and Moore. “You gentlemen can wait here or you can go back and wait—”
“We’ll stay here,” Thomas informed him. “At least until you know what’s wrong.”
“Very well,” the doctor said as they wheeled Battat into the ward.
It seemed strangely quiet for an emergency room, Thomas thought. Whenever his three boys hurt themselves back in Washington or in Moscow, the ERs were like the West Wing of the White House: loud, purposeful chaos. He imagined that the clinics in the poorer sections of Baku must be more like that. Still, the silence was unnerving, deathlike.
Thomas looked at Moore. “There’s no sense for both of us to be here,” Thomas said. “One of us should get a little sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Moore said. “I was making those contacts we discussed and reviewing files.”
“Did you find anything?” Thomas asked.
“Nothing,” Moore said.
“All the more reason for you to go back to the embassy,” Thomas said. “David is my responsibility. I’ll wait here.”
Moore considered that. “All right,” he said. “You’ll call as soon as you know something?”
“Of course,” Thomas said.
Moore gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then walked back through the lobby. He pushed the door open and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side.
A moment later, Tom Moore’s head jerked to the right and he dropped to the asphalt.
TWENTY
Washington, D.C. Monday, 6:46 P.M.
Paul Hood arrived at Op-Center, where he was to meet with Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers. He also telephoned Liz Gordon. He asked her to wait around so he could talk to her later. He wanted to get her input on what, if anything, might be happening with the president from a clinical standpoint.
Hood bumped into Ann Farris on the way to his office. She walked with him through the tight, winding maze of cubicles to the executive wing. As Herbert had joked when he first went to work at Op-Center, that was where the cubicles had ceilings.
“Anything interesting going on?” Ann asked.
“The usual confusion,” Hood said. “Only this time, it’s happening in Washington, not overseas.”
“Is it something really bad?”
“I don’t know yet,” Hood said. “There seems to be a loose cannon somewhere in the NSA.” Hood didn’t want to say anything about the president possibly having mental lapses of some kind. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ann, but Megan Lawrence had told him something in confidence. For now, he wanted to keep the number of people with whom he shared that as small as possible. “What’s going on in your department?”
“The usual efficiency and expert coordination,” she said with a disarming smile.
“You mean nothing’s going on.”
“Exactly,” Ann said. She waited a moment, then asked, “Do you expect to be here long?”
“A couple of hours,” he said. “There’
s no reason to go back to the hotel. I’d just sit there and watch some bad sitcom.”
“Can I interest you in dinner?” she asked.
“It may be a long night,” Hood said.
“I don’t have any plans, either,” she said. “My son is staying with his dad this week. There’s nothing for me to go home to but a spoiled cat and those same sitcoms.”
Hood’s heart began thumping a little faster than usual. He very much wanted to say yes to Ann. But he was still a married man, and going out with a divorced female coworker could cause trouble, legally as well as ethically. And Op-Center did not need this distraction. The intelligence team was brilliant at uncovering information. Hood having dinner with Farris would be common knowledge by morning. Besides, if dinner with Ann was in the back of his mind, he would not be focusing on a crisis in the executive branch.
“Ann, I wish I could,” he said sincerely. “But I don’t know when I’ll be finished here. Some other time?”
“Sure,” she said with a small, sad smile. She touched the back of his hand. “Have a good meeting.”
“Thanks,” Hood said.
Ann left, and Hood continued on his way.
Hood felt terrible now. He had not done what he really wanted to do, which was have dinner with Ann. And he had hurt her feelings.
He stopped. He wanted to go after her and tell her he would have the dinner. But once he started down that road, there was no turning back. Hood continued toward his office.
Hood buzzed Rodgers and Herbert when he arrived. Rodgers said he would be right over. Herbert was on the computer and said he would be with them in a few minutes.
Rodgers was alert and professional when he arrived. The general had always wanted to run Op-Center. If he harbored any resentment about having it handed to him and then abruptly pulled away, it did not show. Above all, Rodgers was a good man and a team player.
General Rodgers had spent most of the day overseeing the activities of Op-Center while Paul Hood was involved with the president and the UN initiative. As Hood briefed his deputy director about Herbert’s talk with Fenwick, Herbert wheeled in. The intelligence chief was flushed and perspiring slightly. He had hurried to get here.