by Clancy, Tom
“Right. Sorry. I thought we could shorthand it.”
“I’m a little sensitive about that,” Rodgers said. “When I was a general, they were the enemy.”
“Aren’t they still?” Hood asked. “Or is North Korea funding its own nuclear program?”
“I’ve got a new office, Paul, one with a window,” Rodgers replied. “Things look different. They have to.”
The comment came out more explosive than illuminating. Rodgers might still be looking at things from a general’s perspective if Hood had not forced him to change offices. He decided to ignore his own minioutburst.
“It’s three days until launch,” Rodgers continued. “I’m hoping the prime minister is just being cautious. But I would like to know.”
“What does Bob say about all this?” Hood asked.
“He’s going to sniff around from downwind,” Rodgers said. “But you know what our HUMINT resources are like.”
Like most intelligence agencies, Op-Center had cut back on expensive human intelligence and relied primarily on ELINT, electronic intelligence. That was fine, as long as adversaries used cell phones and E-mails, or spoke in public places where the agencies had VARDs—videographic or acoustic reconnaissance devices. If not, the analog fish slipped through the digital net.
“Lorraine Sanders will be here in a few minutes,” Hood said. “Let me talk to her about this, see what she thinks.”
“She’s a smart lady,” Rodgers said. “I assume she’s helping you to integrate into the system.”
“That, plus I’ll be reporting to the president through her,” Hood said.
Rodgers was surprised. “Does she have veto power over your operations?”
“No. Only the president, to whom I report.”
“But if the chief of staff controls the flow of information—”
“Conveying information in a timely fashion is part of her job description,” Hood replied sharply. “Mike, is there something we need to talk about? Apart from this, I mean?”
“No,” Rodgers said. “Why?”
“Because that’s the second kick in the ass you’ve given me in as many minutes,” Hood replied.
“That was not my intention,” Rodgers assured him. “I’m sorry if it came out that way.”
“This isn’t easy, Mike. Being here, talking to you, none of it. The six months of silence—that wasn’t something I wanted.”
“Okay,” Rodgers said. “But out of curiosity, Paul, if you didn’t want the silence, why the hell didn’t you pick up the phone?”
“Embarrassment? Discomfort? Maybe a little envy because I left the high road and you still had it?”
“You could have talked to me about that,” Rodgers said.
“We talked when you left. It didn’t change anything,” Hood said. “I wasn’t happy about the way things went down. Who could be? Then it became awkward because so much time did pass.”
“And now?” Rodgers asked.
“Has this been easy for you?”
“No,” Rodgers admitted.
“There’s your answer,” Hood said. “Look, I’ve got Sanders coming, and I want to get into this situation of yours. I’ll be in touch after the meeting.”
Rodgers thanked him and hung up.
Conflicted did not begin to describe how Rodgers felt at the moment. It began to look as if Hood had been demoted upward. Part of Rodgers felt bad for him. A smaller, more insistent part of him did not. Yet what had been the oddest part of the conversation had nothing to do with that. It happened when they were talking about Herbert and his limited HUMINT capabilities.
Rodgers had called them “our” resources.
Even six months later, it was difficult not to think of them all as a team. Hood, Herbert, and Rodgers had gone through a lot together, more than most men got to experience in a lifetime. The deaths of coworkers, family crises, fighting the clock to prevent civil wars and nuclear attacks. Maybe Op-Center was an idea as well as a place. Maybe it was hardwired, like Rodgers’s need to wear a uniform of some kind even if it was a suit. Perhaps they always would be a team, despite working from different places toward different ends.
And perhaps what the sage once said of divorce was also true of Mike Rodgers and Paul Hood. That going separate ways wasn’t a sign two people didn’t understand one another but just the opposite.
An indication that they had begun to.
SIXTEEN
Washington, D.C. Monday, 3:18 P.M.
Of all the people General Carrie had met at Op-Center, the one she had enjoyed the most was Liz Gordon. The two women sat in facing armchairs in front of the desk. Carrie felt it might make these talks less intimidating than if she were behind the desk. Liz was the only one who moved her chair, turning it so that she was facing the new director rather than sitting at an angle. The staff psychologist also offered her viewpoints without having to be asked. She was the only one who did not say exactly what she thought the new director wanted to hear. They talked about Paul Hood and his impact on the organization before moving on to the existing personnel.
“The senior staff is going to want to please you,” Gordon told Carrie a few minutes into their informal chat. “But they will also resent you.”
“Because I replaced Paul Hood or because I replaced a man?” Carrie asked.
“Both,” Liz said. “And also because you were given the job most of them would have wanted.”
“I earned this position,” Carrie replied. She jabbed the desk with an index finger. “I also earned the three stars I’m wearing, something no other woman ever accomplished.”
“You see, General, that is part of the problem,” Liz replied. “You are a woman with three stars. I know Bob, Darrell, Lowell, Ron, and Matt. I know them very well. To the first two, at least, your promotion represents a bone to our gender and not a real accomplishment.”
“That would be their problem, not mine,” Carrie said. “Do you think they will work less for me than they did for Hood?”
“As I said, they still need the director’s approval if they want to keep their jobs. I’m sure they feel as if they are all on probation.”
“They are,” Carrie replied.
They were interrupted by a call from Bob Herbert. He brought Carrie up to date on the conversation with Mike Rodgers. Rodgers had also spoken with Paul Hood and had phoned to tell Herbert about that. Hood was going to see what he could do about getting intel from the Chinese prime minister.
Carrie thanked Herbert and hung up. There was a very strange mix of resentment and suck-up in Herbert’s brusque but meticulously complete briefing.
“None of them is in danger of being dismissed, and I don’t care whether they like me or not,” the general went on. “But I want to be sure I can count on them to give the job everything they’ve got.”
“You can,” Liz said confidently. “Bob and Darrell are competitive with each other and themselves, so they will always overreach—”
The conversation was interrupted by a beep on the intercom.
“Yes?” Carrie said.
“General, Darrell McCaskey and Matt Stoll are here to see you,” Bugs Benet informed her.
“Thank you. Send them in,” Carrie said.
“I’ll leave,” Liz said, rising.
“I appreciate your input, Liz. We’ll finish this later.”
“I look forward to it,” the psychologist replied.
Liz stepped out as McCaskey walked in. Carrie noticed McCaskey fire the psychologist a short, narrow look. It was the kind of look soldiers going into interrogation gave to soldiers leaving interrogation: Did you crack? Did you tell them something I should know about?
The moment passed quickly. As McCaskey entered, he was back on the job. Matt Stoll came in behind him. Carrie had not yet met the scientist alone. The MIT graduate was a lumpy man with eyes that saw elsewhere. Stoll struck her as a man who used his senses to guide him through this world while his mind lived in another, far more interesting place. He was
carrying a compact disk on his index finger.
Carrie stood and went behind her desk. She did not want to be an armchair general when she received an official update.
“We may have caught a break,” McCaskey said. He stopped in front of the desk and remained standing. “There was a man at the club who Interpol and the Taipei police were watching. He was a reputed slave trader by the name of Hui-ling Wong, aka Lo Tek. He died in the blast. The coastal patrol had seen his boat arrive, and officers were dispatched to all the clubs he usually frequents.”
“Why didn’t they arrest him en route?” Carrie asked.
“Because they have no evidence,” McCaskey said. “The agents were at the nightclub with acoustic devices, hoping he would say something that would give them a reason to arrest him.”
“Did he?” Carrie asked, looking at the CD.
“No,” McCaskey replied. “But the agents were wearing wide wires, digital, wide-frequency recorders that collect every sound in a room and send it to a central location where the extraneous noises are removed.”
“That’s the only way to collect specific conversations without using a parabolic dish,” Stoll said.
“The agents were killed in the blast, but everything they recorded was sent to a mobile unit not far from the club,” McCaskey said. “Through my Interpol connections we got a copy.”
Stoll held up the CD on his finger.
“The explosion destroyed everything within one hundred yards of the epicenter,” McCaskey went on. “The bombers would have known the blast radius and made sure they were beyond that. But they would have had to be within three hundred fifty yards to detonate a radiocontrolled device. Matt executed a thorough acoustic search in that window and managed to pick up the very faint trigger ping, the signal sent to activate the bomb.”
“We got the guys talking on the stairwell, Madam General,” Stoll said, “They were breathing hard, moving real fast, and speaking Cantonese.”
“So they were probably from the mainland,” the general remarked. “What did you get?”
“Until the blast killed the wide wires, we managed to pick up their names,” Stoll told the general. He smiled a little for the first time. “More important, we got remarkably clear voiceprints.”
“There was no one else in the stairwell at that point,” McCaskey noted.
Like fingerprints, voiceprints were unique to every individual. Stoll placed the CD on the general’s desk.
“We passed those charts back to Interpol and the Taipei police,” McCaskey said. “They’ve mobilized all of their ELINT units, including those of the military. They’ve sectored the city and are scanning every cell phone call being made. Which, at this hour, is not a lot.”
“They don’t actually have to listen to the calls,” Stoll explained. “All they need is to find a frequency that matches either voice.”
“Yes. I’ve worked with voiceprinting before,” the general said.
“Sorry,” Stoll said.
“So we have PRC bombers working in Taiwan,” Carrie said. “Hired hands?”
“We believe so. The working theory is that it’s the Tong Wars redux, right down to fighting of brothels and the trafficking of slave girls,” McCaskey said. “Foot soldiers working for gang leaders. In this case, though—and it’s the worst-case scenario—the leaders could be Beijing heavyweights. It will be tough to get to them.”
“Maybe,” General Carrie said. “Do you remember how Jack Manion dealt with the tongs?”
“Not actually, General.”
“His background was required reading when I went over to G2,” the general said. “In 1920, a gentleman named Dan O’Brien took over as San Francisco’s chief of police. He put his childhood friend Manion in charge of the Chinatown Squad. Inspector Manion recruited Chinese to infiltrate and inform on the warring factions, on shipments of heroin, on contracted hits. He made sure his men were there to intercept and interdict. He even came up with early electronic surveillance devices, such as electrified doormats to let him know how many people were inside a room. Manion also made protecting his sources a high priority. He always had his own men on the street where spies could go with information or for protection. Not only did Manion end the violence, but after ten years in the precinct, the grateful Chinese refused to let him leave. He stayed there until his retirement in 1946.” She leaned forward. “We need that here.”
“In China or in general?” McCaskey asked.
“Both. Our immediate concern will be making sure that we’ve got a blast shield for whatever is blowing up in China,” Carrie said. “I don’t care if they kill each other. But like Manion, I don’t want that spilling into the streets. Not the streets of Charleston or the streets of Taipei.”
“I still don’t see how we’re going to get close to the Chinese leaders,” McCaskey said. “We don’t have a deep well of HUMINT personnel and none over there. Are there resources you can call on?”
“There may be,” she said. “Let’s wait and see what the CA patrol turns up over there.”
CA was a chase and apprehend mission. In Carrie’s experience it was more often than not a full-fledged CAT operation: chase, apprehend, and terminate. Most spies and enemy infiltrators did not like to be apprehended.
McCaskey and Stoll left. Carrie slipped the CD into the computer and listened to the exchange between the bombers. The back-of-the-throat sound of the Chinese language was strikingly unfamiliar, but it was clear that both men were talking. They were definitely equals. They had been hired by someone else.
The prospect of facing a crisis this big on her first day in the director’s seat both scared and invigorated the general. She could not help but wonder if someone at the Pentagon or the White House had anticipated this.
“Toss it to the chick with three stars. See how she handles the long ball. . . .”
She would handle it just fine. Not only because her career depended upon it but because of something more important.
Lives did.
SEVENTEEN
Taipei, Taiwan Tuesday, 4:22 A.M.
Senior Inspector Loke Chichang and Lieutenant Hanyu Yilan were partners at the Taipei Municipal Police Force CID—Criminal Investigation Division. Chichang was a twelve-year veteran, Yilan a five-year man. Chichang came from a family of soldiers and had extensive training in judo and marksmanship. Yilan was a graduate of the Central Police University with a doctorate in criminology. Chichang was a wide, burly man with muscle stacked on muscle. Yilan was barely 115 pounds of bone. Chichang had a wife and three children. Yilan did not.
But both men had at least one thing in common. A passion to protect their homeland.
They had been at home when they heard the explosion in the harbor. They immediately went to the stationhouse, fearing that Taiwan might be under attack. That had been ruled out by the time they arrived—not through detective work but because nothing else blew up. A report from Interpol provided additional information: the bombing was the work of two men. Listening squads in vans were being positioned about the city, scanning cell phone conversations to find a match for their voice patterns. Chichang and Yilan joined one of the units, sitting in patrol car seventeen behind a van. The precinct commander wanted a police presence around the city. That was not just to reassure the population but to force the perpetrators to hide.
To compel them to use a wireless phone.
Voiceprints, radio triangulation, and similar technologies both impressed and frightened Chichang. The forty-year-old reasoned that if the police could watch lawbreakers, criminals could also watch police. That was one reason he did not use a cell phone. When he needed to call home, he pulled over to one of the increasingly rare pay phones and put his coins in the slot. The other reason was that he already had enough gear hanging from his belt, from his gun to his radio to pepper spray and a baton. Moreover, he did not want to carry something that might beep or vibrate as he moved into a hazardous situation. His point-to-point radio was easy to turn off with just the
press of a button. After that, it stayed silent and still.
“We’ve had a hit in the Daan District,” the CID dispatcher said over the phone. “One hundred percent match over a cell phone.”
Yilan was at the wheel. He pulled the patrol car from the curb and quickly headed west.
“The target is in the Cho-Chiun Hotel,” the dispatcher went on. “Cars three, seventeen, twenty, and twenty-one are closest. There is an underground parking structure. That is the rendezvous location. A bomb squad and backup are on the way, coming in silent, headlights only. Everyone else is to be turned away.”
That was not just for safety, of course. One of the incoming cars could be the bombers’ ride.
Chichang removed his snub-nosed .38 from its shoulder holster. He checked his weapon. Taiwan was not a society accustomed to guns and shoot-outs. Even among the police, pistol craft was a low priority and infrequently needed. Most crime was committed by thugs with clubs or knives. Homicide was relatively rare because it was difficult to get away from the crime scene and from the island nation. Chichang was a rarity, a true marksman. He had recently scored a 98 percent, the department’s highest ever, in the yearly handgun test. The examination involved eight points of ability: decision shooting against pop-up targets, reduced-light shooting, hitting moving targets, the use of cover when under fire, shooting to disable, alternate position shooting, reloading drills, and malfunction drills. The inspector would have earned a perfect score if a pigeon had not flown onto the range. Chichang did not think the bird was part of the test, but he could not be sure. He chose to shoot it. It was the wrong choice.
The gun was loaded, the safety was off, and the hammer mechanism was functioning free and clear, as his father used to describe it. The former army officer was the one who first taught his son how to shoot. Chichang slipped the weapon back into the holster as his heart began to speed up. The inspector had discharged his gun only once in all his years on the police force. That was during a raid on a drug factory in a harbor warehouse. He had wounded a pusher in the shin when the individual swung an AK-47 toward him. The victim was fifteen. He was sentenced to the same number of years in prison. Chichang was commended for his restraint.