Tom Clancy - Op-Center 06 - Divide and Conquer

by Eikeltje

  father had was football. Charles also idolized the Beatles because they

  had made it out--the same reason, ironically, his father and so many of

  his contemporaries hated "those young punks." Charles realized that he

  could not escape poverty musically because he had no talent for that and

  it had already been done. He had to get out his way, make a mark that

  was uniquely his own. How could he have known that he would find his

  hidden skills by joining the Royal Marines, 29 Commando Regiment, Royal

  Artillery, and learning to work with explosives? By discovering the

  pleasure and genius involved in tearing things down?

  It was a glorious feeling to put events like- this in motion. It was

  the creation of art: living, breathing, powerful, bleeding, changing,

  utterly unforgettable art. There was nothing else like it in the world,

  the aesthetics of destruction. And what was most rewarding was that the

  CIA had inadvertently helped him by sending that man to watch for him.

  The agency would conclude that it couldn't be the Harpooner who had

  attacked their man. No one had ever survived an encounter with the

  Harpooner.

  Charles settled comfortably into his seat as the Cessna left the lights

  of the rig behind.

  That was the beauty about being an artist, he told himself.

  It gave him the right and privilege to surprise.

  Camp Springs, Maryland Monday, 12:44 a.m.

  Throughout the Cold War, the nondescript two-story building located near

  the Naval Reserve flight line at Andrews Air Force Base was a staging

  area for pilots and their crews. In the event of a nuclear attack,

  their job would have been to evacuate key officials from the government

  and military to a safe compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  But the ivory-colored building with its neat, green lawn was not just a

  monument to the Cold War. The seventy-eight full-time employees who

  worked there now were employed by the National Crisis Management Center,

  familiarly known as Op-Center, an independent agency that was designed

  to collect, process, and analyze data on potential crisis points

  domestically and abroad.

  Once that was done, Op-Center then had to decide whether to defuse them

  preemptively through political, diplomatic, media, economic, legal, or

  psychological means or else--after gaining the approval of the

  Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee--to terminate them

  through military means. To this end, Op Center had at its disposal a

  twelve-person tactical strike team known as Striker. Led by Colonel

  Brett August, Striker was based at the nearby Quantico FBI Academy.

  In addition to the offices upstairs, a secure basement had been built

  into the facility to house the more sensitive intelligence retrieval

  systems and personnel. It was here that Paul Hood and his top advisers

  worked.

  Hood came directly from the White House affair. He was still dressed in

  his tuxedo, which earned him a "Good morning, Mr. Bond" greeting from

  the Naval officer at the gate. It made him smile. It was the only

  thing that had done that for days.

  A strange uneasiness had settled over Hood after the president made his

  comments. He couldn't imagine why the president had said the United

  States would offer intelligence assistance to the United Nations. If

  there was one thing many member nations feared, it was that the United

  States was already using the international organization as a means of

  spying on them.

  The president's short speech had pleased some people, most notably

  delegates who were targets for acts of terrorism.

  But it struck some other attendees as odd. Vice president Cotten

  appeared surprised, as did Secretary of State Dean Can" and America's

  United Nations Ambassador Meriwether. And Mala Chatteijee had been

  openly bothered by the comment. So much so that she'd actually turned

  to Hood and asked if she had understood the president correctly. He

  told her that he believed she had.

  What he didn't tell her was that Op-Center would almost certainly have

  been involved in or briefed about any such arrangement. Something might

  have been arranged during the time that he was away, but Hood doubted

  it.

  When he visited his office the day before to catch up on business he had

  missed, he saw no reference to a multinational intelligence effort.

  Hood didn't bother talking to anyone after the dinner.

  He left promptly and went to Op-Center, where he did additional digging

  into the matter. This was the first time he had seen the weekend night

  crew since his return.

  They were glad to see him, especially weekend night director Nicholas

  Grille. Grille was a fifty-three-year-old former Navy SEAL intelligence

  expert who had moved over from the Pentagon around the same time Hood

  had first joined Op-Center. Grille congratulated him on the fine job he

  and General Rodgers had done in New York and asked how his daughter was.

  Hood thanked him and told him that Harleigh would be all right.

  Hood began by accessing the files of the DCI--the Director of Central

  Intelligence. This independent body was a clearinghouse of information

  for four other intelligence departments: the Central Intelligence

  Agency;

  Op-Center; the Department of Defense, which included the four branches

  of the military, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National

  Security Agency, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency; and

  Department Intelligence, which consisted of the Federal Bureau of

  Investigation, the Department of State, the Department of Energy, and

  the Department of Treasury.

  Once Hood was into the DCI database, he asked for recent agreements or

  initiatives pertaining to the United Nations. There were nearly five

  thousand listings. He eliminated those that did not involve

  intelligence gathering for the United Nations and its members. That

  reduced the list to twenty-seven. Hood browsed those quickly. The last

  was filed a week before, a preliminary report about the failure of the

  CIA field office to catch Annabelle Hampton's terrorist-support

  activities in New York. Blame was placed on New York field office head

  David Battat and his supervisor in Washington, Deputy Assistant Director

  Wong. Wong was given a written warning, which was not entered into his

  record. Battat was given a sterner reprimand, which did not become part

  of his permanent dossier. But Battat would be hung out to dry for a

  while, doing what Bob Herbert had once described as "sewer rat-a-tat"

  jobs--dirty work in the line of fire. The kind of work that freshmen

  agents usually had to perform.

  There was nothing about a United Nations operation involving any of the

  fourteen intelligence agencies.

  Given the new detente the president was trying to establish with the

  United Nations, it wasn't surprising that Lawrence would look for a way

  to help them. But presenting a desire or opportunity as a done deal was

  mystifying.

  The president would have needed the cooperation of the head of at least

  one of these agencies just to und
ertake a study for such a proposition,

  and that wasn't anywhere in the files. There wasn't even any

  correspondence, electronic or otherwise, requesting such a study.

  The only answer Hood could think of was a handshake deal between the

  president and the CIA, FBI, or one of the other groups. But then one of

  those persons would have been there at tonight's dinner, and the only

  representative from the intelligence community was Hood.

  Perhaps the president was trying to force the issue, the way John F.

  Kennedy did when he announced, publicly, that he wanted Congress to give

  NASA the funds to put a man on the moon. But United States involvement

  in international intelligence-gathering was an extremely sensitive area.

  A president would be reckless to attempt a wide-ranging operation like

  this without assurances from his own team that it was possible.

  It could all be the result of a series of misunderstandings.

  Maybe the president thought he had the support of the intelligence

  community. Confusion was certainly not uncommon in government. The

  question was what to do now that the idea had been presented to the

  world body.

  The United States intelligence community was sure to be torn. Some

  experts would welcome the opportunity to plug directly into resources in

  nations like China, Colombia, and several former Soviet republics where

  they currently had very restricted access. Others--Hood included--would

  be afraid of joining forces with other nations and being fed false data,

  data that would then become part of U.S. intelligence gospel with

  potentially disastrous results. Herbert once told him about a situation

  in 1978, just before the overthrow of the shah of Iran, when anti

  extremist forces provided the CIA with a code used by supporters of the

  Ayatollah Khomeini to communicate via telefax. The code was

  accurate--then.

  Once the ayatollah assumed power, the shah's files were raided, and the

  code was found to be in American hands.

  The code remained in the CiA's system and was used to interpret secret

  communiques. It wasn't until the ayatollah's death in 1989--when the

  secret communiques said he was recovering--that the CIA went back and

  took a close look at the code and the disinformation they'd received.

  Ten years of data had to be reviewed and much of it purged.

  Hood could just imagine what Teheran would say about joining this new

  antiterrorism network.

  "Sure, sign us up. And don't forget to use this new code to monitor the

  Sunni terrorists working out of Azerbaijan." It could be a real code

  for real transmissions, or the Iranians could use false transmissions to

  create deeper mistrust of the Sunnis. The United States could not

  refuse to help them, because the president had offered; we could not

  trust the code; and yet what if it turned out to be real and we ignored

  it?

  The whole thing was a potential for disaster. For his part. Hood

  intended to contact Burton Gable, the president's chief of staff, to

  find out what he knew about the situation. Hood didn't know Gable well,

  but he had been one of Lawrence's think tank geniuses and was

  instrumental in getting the president reelected. Gable hadn't been at

  the dinner, but there was no policy undertaking in which he was not

  involved.

  Hood went back to the motel, napped, then was back at Op-Center at

  five-thirty. He wanted to be there when his staff arrived.

  Hood had spoken to psychologist Liz Gordon about Harleigh, and to

  attorney Lowell Coffey about the divorce, so both of them knew he was

  coming back. Hood had also informed General Rodgers, who had let

  intelligence chief Bob Herbert know.

  Herbert rolled in first. He had lost his wife and the use of his legs

  in the American embassy bombing in Beirut in 1983. But he had turned

  that setback into an advantage: Herbert's customized wheelchair was a

  mini communications center with phone, fax, and even a satellite uplink

  that helped to make him one of the most effective intelligence

  collectors and analysts in the world.

  Rodgers followed him in. Though the gray-haired officer had played a

  key role in ending the terrorist standoff at the United Nations, he was

  still recovering emotionally from the torture he'd suffered at the hands

  of Kurdish terrorists in the Middle East. Since his return, there

  hadn't been quite the same fire in his eyes or bounce in his walk.

  Though he hadn't broken, some proud, vital part of him had died in that

  cave in the Bekaa Valley.

  Rodgers and Herbert were happy to see him. The two men stayed long

  enough to welcome him back and for Hood to brief them on what had

  happened at the state dinner. Herbert was blown away by what the

  president had said.

  "That's like the Goodyear Blimp saying it's going to watch the stands

  for rowdy fans instead of watching the Super Bowl," Herbert said.

  "No one would believe that.

  No one."

  "I agree," Hood said.

  "Which is why we've got to find out why the president said it. If he

  has a plan that we don't know about, we need to be brought into the

  loop. Talk to the other intel people and find out."

  "I'm on it," Herbert said as he wheeled out.

  Rodgers told Hood that he would get in touch with the heads of Army,

  Navy, Air Force, and Marine intelligence to find out what their

  knowledge of the situation was.

  When Herbert and Rodgers left. Hood was visited by the only key members

  of the team who hadn't known about Hood's return, FBI and Interpol

  liaison Darrell McCaskey and press liaison Ann Farris. McCaskey was just

  back from a stay in Europe, working with his Interpol associates and

  nurturing a romance with Maria Comeja, an operative he had worked with

  in Spain.

  Hood had a good sense about people, and his instincts told him that

  Darrell would be handing in his resignation before long to return to

  Maria. Since McCaskey was gone while Hood's retirement was briefly in

  effect, he had not missed his boss.

  Ann Farris was a different story. The five-foot, seven inch-tall

  divorcee had always been close to Hood and had hated to see him leave.

  Hood knew that she cared for him, though no one could have told that

  just by looking at her. The thirty-four-year-old woman had developed

  the perfect poker face for reporters. No question, no revelation, no

  announcement made her jump. But to Hood, her large, dark-rust eyes were

  more articulate than any speech-maker or television moderator he had

  ever heard. And right now, her eyes were telling Hood that she was

  happy, sad, and surprised all at once.

  Ann walked toward the desk. She was dressed in what she called her

  "uniform," a black pantsuit and white blouse with a pearl necklace. Her

  brown hair was shoulder length and held back from her face with a pair

  of clips. Hood's office was stripped of his personal touches.

  He hadn't had time to put the photographs and mementos back. Yet after

  the struggles with Sharon and the coldness of his hotel room, Ann's

  arrival suddenly made this place seem
like home.

  "Mike just told me," she said.

  "Told you what?"

  "About Sharon," Ann replied.

  "About your coming back. Paul, are you all right?"

  "I'm a little banged up, but I'll be okay."

  Ann stopped in front of the desk. Was it only just ten days ago that

  she had stood there while I packed? Hood thought. It seemed so much

  longer. Why did pain stretch time while happiness made it feel so

  short?

  "What can I do, Paul?" Ann asked.

  "How are Sharon and the kids?"

  "We're all reeling. Liz is helping Harleigh, Sharon and I are pretty

  civil, and Alexander is Alexander. He's okay." Hood dragged a hand

  through his wavy black hair.

  "As for what you can do, I just realized we're going to have to send out

  a press release about my return."

  "I know." She smiled.

  "A head's-up would have been a big help."

  "I'm sorry," Hood said.

  "That's all right," Ann replied.

  "You had other things on your mind. I'll write something up and show it

  to you."

  Ann looked down at him, her shoulder-length brown hair framing her

  angular features. Hood had always felt the sexual tension between them.

  Hell, he thought.

  Everyone around them did. Bob Herbert and Lowell Coffey used to tease

  Hood about it. Hood's unwillingness to give in to that tension had

  always kept Ann at a distance. But he could feel that distance closing.

  "I know you have a lot to do," Ann said, "but if you need anything, I'm