by Clancy, Tom
Charles turned on the light beside the bed and drew the heavy drapes. Next, he picked the locks between his room and the adjoining room. That was another route of escape in case he needed it. Then he pulled over the desk chair. He braced the back of the wooden chair under the knob of the door between his room and the next. He would be able to remove the chair quickly to escape. But if anyone on the other side tried the door, they would think it was locked.
The security arrangements took under a half hour. When they were finished, Charles sat on the bed. He went to his luggage and took out his .45. He placed it on the floor beside the bed. He pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket and lay it on the night table. He also brought over a bag of several stuffed animals he had bought when he first came to Baku. All of the animals had costumes. If Charles were ever questioned, the plush toys were for his daughter. There were photos of a young girl in his wallet. It was not his daughter, but that did not matter. Then he opened the Zed-4. There was one last call to make.
The call was to the abandoned van. The microchip he had placed in the gas tank was a remote detonator. It had been nicknamed a Kamikaze Cell Phone by its Taiwanese inventor. The KCP had no function other than to pick up the signal, do its job, and then die. This particular KCP had been programmed to heat to 145 degrees Fahrenheit when triggered. Some chips could be programmed to emit high-pitched sounds to interfere with electronic signals or even confuse bloodhounds. Other chips could be used to create magnetic bursts that would cause radar or navigational tools to go haywire.
This chip would melt and leave no trace of itself. It would also set the gas tank afire. The police and fire department would be forced to respond at once to calls about a burning van. They would arrive in time to save some of the vehicle along with what little evidence Charles had left for them to find. That included the traces of Charles’s blood. The heat of the fire would cause the water content of the blood to evaporate, leaving clear stains on the metal door handle, glove compartment knob, and other sections of the van that had not burned. The police would conclude that the wounded terrorist had tried to destroy the van and the evidence before leaving. They would assume that their quick response had enabled them to save what they were not supposed to see.
Charles punched in the number of the KCP. He waited while his signal traveled twenty-five miles into space and bounced back to a street three blocks away. There were two short clicks and then the dial tone returned. That meant the call had been completed. The chip had been designed to disconnect from the Zed-4 as it began to heat up.
Charles hung up. He put everything into his backpack except for the .45. As he did, he heard sirens. They stopped exactly where they were supposed to.
By the burning van.
Comforted by the unparalleled feeling of a job well done, Maurice Charles made the final preparations for his stay. He removed one of the pillows from the bed and put it on the floor between the bed and the window, directly in front of the nightstand. Then he lay down and looked to his right, toward the bed. The hem of the bedspread reached nearly to the floor. Beneath and beyond the bed, he could see the front door. If for some reason anyone came in, Charles would see their feet. That was all he had to see to stop them.
Charles kept his clothes and shoes on in case he had to leave in a hurry, but they did not distract him. Nothing did now. This was the time he enjoyed most. When he had earned his rest and his pay.
Soon, even the sound of the police and fire sirens did not penetrate his deep, rewarding sleep.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Saint Petersburg, Russia Tuesday, 9:31 A.M
At 9:22 A.M. Piotr Korsov e-mailed General Orlov a brief data file. The file contained a list of the secure calls that had been intercepted between Azerbaijan and Washington during the past few weeks. Most of those calls had been between the American embassy and either the CIA or the NSA. The Russian Op-Center had been unable to decrypt any of the conversations, but Orlov was able to scratch them off his list. Those calls were pretty much routine and not likely suspects for calls made by the Harpooner.
Over the past few days, there had also been calls to the NSA from Gobustan, a village to the south of Baku. They were all made before the attack on the oil rig. The calls from the embassy to the United States had a slightly different bandwith from the Gobustan calls. That meant the calls were made from different secure phones. In a note attached to the file, Korsov said he was watching for new calls made from either line.
Orlov was not very hopeful. The Harpooner probably would not signal his allies to tell them he had been successful. Whoever he was in league with would hear about that from their own intelligence sources.
The very fact that a secure satellite uplink had played any part in this business was personally disturbing to Orlov. That was the kind of technology his space flights had helped to pioneer—satellite communications. The fact that they were being so expertly abused by terrorists like the Harpooner made him wonder if the technology should have been developed at all. It was the same argument people had made for and against splitting the atom. It had produced plentiful and relatively clean atomic power, but it had also bred the atomic bomb. But Orlov had not had a hand in that work. Just in this.
Then again, Orlov thought, as Boris Pasternak wrote in one of his favorite novels, Doctor Zhivago, “I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.” Progress had to allow monsters like the Harpooner to surface. That was how it showed the creators where the flaws were.
Orlov had just finished reviewing the material when his private internal line beeped. It was Korsov.
“We picked up a ping,” Korsov said excitedly.
“What kind of ping?” Orlov asked. A ping was how his intelligence officers described any kind of electronic communication.
“The same one we recorded as having been sent from Gobustan,” Korsov replied.
“Was the call made from Gobustan?”
“No,” Korsov replied. “It was made from Baku to a site very close by. A site that was also in Baku.”
“How close?” Orlov asked.
“The caller and receiver were less than a quarter mile,” Korsov told him. “We can’t measure distances less than that.”
“Maybe the Harpooner was calling accomplices who have another secure line,” Orlov suggested.
“I don’t think so,” Korsov told him. “The phone call only lasted three seconds. As far as we can tell there was no verbal communication.”
“What was sent?”
“Just an empty signal,” Krosov said. “We’ve fed cartographical data into the computer. Grosky is overlaying the signal and trying to pinpoint the exact location now.”
“Very good,” Orlov said. “Let me know as soon as you have it.”
As soon as Orlov hung up, he put in a call to Mike Rodgers to let him know about the apparent NSA-Harpooner connection and the possible location of the Harpooner. Then he called Odette. He hoped that the American she had saved was ready to move out. Orlov did not want to send Odette against the Harpooner unassisted, but he would if he had to. Because more than that, he did not want to lose the Harpooner.
As Orlov punched in Odette’s number, he began to feel hopeful and upbeat. The technology that he had helped put into space was actually a two-edged sword. The Harpooner had been using a secure satellite uplink to help destroy lives. Now, with luck, that uplink would have an unexpected use.
To pinpoint the Harpooner and help destroy him.
THIRTY-NINE
Teheran, Iran Tuesday, 10:07 A.M.
The chief of the Supreme Command Council of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran had been called at home shortly after dawn. Teheran maintained listening posts on many of their oil rigs in the Caspian Sea. From there, they eavesdropped electronically on foreign shipping and on military sites along the Caspian coast. Each post sent a pulse every five minutes to indicate that the el
ectronics were still on-line. The sudden silence of Post Four was the first indication anyone in Teheran had that something was wrong in the Caspian.
An F-14 Tomcat was immediately dispatched from the Doshan Tapeh Air Base outside of Teheran. The Tomcat was one of ten that remained of the seventy-seven that had been a part of the shah’s state-of-the-art air force. The fighter confirmed that the oil rig had been destroyed. Salvage experts and military engineers were immediately parachuted into the region by a Kawasaki C-1 transport. While rescue patrol boats hurried to the site from Caspian fleet headquarters in Bandar-e Anzelli, the engineers found burn marks on the platform that were consistent with powerful high explosives. The fact that the underside had been struck suggested a submarine attack that had somehow eluded sonar detection. At nine-thirty A.M., the salvage experts found something more. The body of Russian terrorist Sergei Cherkassov.
The report galvanized the often fractious officers of the SCCAF as well as the minister of the Islamic Revolutions Guards Corps, the minster of foreign affairs, the minister of the interior, and the minister of intelligence. The moderates had joined the extremists, and by ten A.M., the order had been given: the IRI military was ordered to defend Iranian interests in the Caspian at any and all cost.
On the sea, the initial thrust was to be an antisubmarine defense. That was spearheaded by antisubmarine aircraft and helicopters. Marine battalions in the region were also mobilized. The second wave would consist of destroyers and frigates, which were to be stationed around the remaining rigs. Chinese-made Silkworm missiles were rushed to the forces defending the Caspian.
In the air, Chinese-made Shenyang F-6s began regular patrols from both the Doshan Tapeh Air Base and the Mehrabad Air Base. Three surface-to-air missile battalions in the region were also put on high alert.
At the same time, Iranian embassies in Moscow and Baku were ordered to notify the Russian and Azerbaijani governments that while the attack was under investigation, any further moves against Iranian interests would be regarded as a declaration of war by those governments. Iranian diplomats were informed by both governments that they had had no hand in the attack on the Iranian oil facility. Representatives of Moscow and Baku added that Iran’s increased military presence was unwelcome. Both nations indicated that their own navies and air forces would be placed on alert and would increase patrols in the region.
By late morning, waters that had given lives to fishermen and oilmen the night before were rich with something else.
The promise of death.
FORTY
Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 1:33 A.M.
Mike Rodgers was in his office when General Orlov called. After hearing what the Russian had to say, Rodgers immediately called Paul Hood in his car and gave him the new information about the Harpooner.
“How certain is General Orlov. about the NSA-Harpooner connection?” Hood asked.
“I asked him that,” Rodgers told Hood. “Orlov answered that he is very certain. Though I’m not sure the president is going to put a lot of credence in what a Russian general thinks.”
“Especially if several of the president’s top advisers refute that information,” Hood said.
“Paul, if Orlov is correct, we’re going to have to do more than tell the president,” Rodgers said. “There’s going to have to be a massive housecleaning in the NSA. We can’t have American intelligence agencies hiring terrorists who have attacked American interests, taken American lives.”
“Didn’t we do that with the German rocket scientists after World War Two?” Hood asked.
“The operative phrase is, ‘after World War Two,’ ” Rodgers said. “We didn’t hire German scientists to work for us while they were still building missiles to attack Great Britain.”
“Good point,” Hood said.
“Paul, this is the guy that helped kill Bob Herbert’s wife,” Rodgers said. “If Orlov’s intel is true, the NSA has to be held accountable for this.”
“I hear you,” Hood said. “Look, I’ll be at the White House soon. Work on trying to get me any kind of backup you can. See if Bob can dig up signal intelligence that backs up Orlov’s claims.”
“He’s working on that now,” Rodgers said.
Hood hung up, and Rodgers got up. He poured coffee from the pot that sat on a cart in the back of his room. It was an aluminum cart from the 1950s. He’d picked it up at a Pentagon garage sale ten years before. He wondered if the sounds of crisis still resonated somewhere deep in its molecular structure. Arguments and decisions about Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam.
Or were they arguments about whose turn it was to treat for coffee and Danish? Rodgers wondered. That was part of war, too, of course. The moments of down-time that let decision makers catch their breath. Do something real instead of theoretical. Remind themselves that they were talking about people’s lives and not just statistics.
When he sat back down, Rodgers started going through the files of the NSA’s top officials. He was looking for people who had previous ties with Jack Fenwick or had ever investigated Middle Eastern terrorist groups. The NSA could not have contacted the Harpooner unless someone in one of those groups had helped. If it turned out that Orlov was right, Rodgers wanted to be ready to help with the purge. A purge of Americans who had collaborated with a man who had murdered American men and women, soldiers, and civilians.
He wanted to be ready with a vengeance.
FORTY-ONE
Washington, D.C Tuesday, 1:34 A.M.
The White House is an aging monument in constant need of repair. There is peeling paint on the southern columns and splitting wood on the third-floor terraces.
But in the West Wing, especially in the Oval Office, there is a sense of constant renewal. To outsiders, power is a large part of the appeal of the Oval Office. To insiders, it is the idea that an intense new drama presents itself every hour of every day. Whether it’s small, cautious maneuvering against a political rival or the mobilization of the military for a massive offensive and possible casualties, each situation starts, builds, and ends. For someone who thrives on outthinking an adversary or on extrapolating short- and long-term results from quiet decisions, the Oval Office is the ultimate challenge. It clears the game board every few minutes and offers new contests with new rules. Some presidents are aged and drained by the process. Other presidents thrive on it.
There was a time until very recently when Michael Lawrence was invigorated by the problems that crossed his desk. He was undaunted by crises, even those that required quick military action and possible casualties. That was part of the job description. A president’s task was to minimize the damage caused by inevitable aggression.
But something had changed over the past few days. Lawrence had always felt that however stressful situations got, he was at least in control of the process. He could chair meetings with confidence. Lately, that was no longer the case. It was difficult for him even to focus.
Lawrence had worked with Jack Fenwick and Red Gable for many years. They were old friends of the vice president, and Lawrence trusted Jack Cotten. He trusted his judgment. Lawrence would not have selected him as a running mate otherwise. As vice president, Cotten had been more closely involved in the activities of the NSA than any previous vice president. Lawrence had wanted it that way. For years, the CIA, the FBI, and military intelligence had had their own agendas. The Executive Branch needed its own eyes and ears abroad. Lawrence and Cotten had more or less appropriated the NSA for that task. The military could still utilize the NSA’s chartered assets, which were the centralized coordination and direction of U.S. government intelligence technical functions and communications. Under Cotten, its role had quietly been expanded to increase the breadth and detail of intelligence that was coming directly to the president. Or, rather, to Fenwick and the vice president and then to the president.
The president stared at the open laptop on his desk. Jack Fenwick was talking about Iran. Data was downloading quickly from the NSA. Fenwick had some facts and a go
od deal of supposition. He also had an edge. He appeared to be going somewhere, though he had not yet indicated where.
Meanwhile, Lawrence’s eyes stung, and his vision was foggy. It was difficult to concentrate. He was tired, but he was also distracted. He did not know who to believe or even what to believe. Was the data from the NSA real or falsified? Was Fenwick’s intelligence accurate or fabricated?
Paul Hood suspected Fenwick of deception. Hood appeared to have the evidence for it. But what if it were Hood’s evidence that wasn’t trustworthy? Hood was going through an extremely stressful time. He had resigned his post at Op-Center, then returned. He had been at ground zero of the explosive UN hostage crisis. His daughter was suffering from an extreme case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Hood was in the process of getting a divorce.
What if it were Hood who had the agenda, not Fenwick, the president wondered. When Fenwick had arrived at the White House before, he admitted that he had been to the Iranian mission. He admitted it openly. But he insisted that the president had been informed. The vice president corroborated that fact. So did the calendar on the president’s computer. As for the call regarding the United Nations initiative, Fenwick insisted that was not placed by him. He said the NSA would investigate. Could it have been placed by Hood?
“Mr. President?” Fenwick said.
The president looked at Fenwick. The national security adviser was seated in an armchair to the left of the desk. Gable was to the right, and the vice president was in the center.
“Yes, Jack?” the president replied.
“Are you all right, sir?” Fenwick asked.