Tom Clancy - Op-Center 06 - Divide and Conquer

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Tom Clancy - Op-Center 06 - Divide and Conquer Page 10

by Eikeltje


  for five minutes, from four-ten to four fifteen

  Hood thanked her then looked at Herbert.

  "I've got to get going," Hood said.

  "My appointment's in forty minutes."

  "You don't look happy," Herbert said.

  "I'm not," Hood said.

  "Can we get someone to nail down who Fenwick is meeting in New York?"

  "Mike was able to connect with someone at the State Department when you

  two were up there," Herbert said.

  "Who?"

  "Lisa Baroni," Herbert told him.

  "She was a liaison with the parents during the crisis."

  "I didn't meet her," Hood said.

  "How did Mike find her?"

  "He did what any good spymaster does," Herbert said.

  "When he's someplace new, he looks for the unhappy employee and promises

  them something better if they deliver. Let's see if she can deliver."

  "Good," Hood said as he rose.

  "God. I feel like I do whenever I go to Christmas Eve Mass."

  "And how is that?" Herbert asked.

  "Guilty that you don't go to church more often?"

  "No," Hood replied.

  "I feel like there's something going on that's much bigger than me. And

  I'm afraid that when I figure out what that is, it's going to scare the

  hell out of me."

  "Isn't that what church is supposed to be about?" Herbert asked.

  Hood thought about that for a moment. Then he grinned as he left the

  office, "louche," he said.

  "Good luck," Herbert replied as he wheeled out after him.

  Gobustan, Azerbaijan Monday, 11:56 p.m.

  Gobustan is a small, rustic village located forty-three miles south of

  Baku. The region was settled as far back as 8000 b.c. and is riddled by

  caves and towering outcroppings of rock. The caves boast prehistoric

  art as well as more recent forms of expression--graffiti left two

  thousand years ago by Roman legionnaires.

  Situated low in the foothills, just beneath the caves, are several

  shepherds' shacks. Spread out over hundreds of acres of graze able

  land, they were built early in the century and most of them remain in

  use, though not always by men tending their flocks. One large shack is

  hidden behind a rock that commands a view of the entire village. The

  only way up is along a rutted dirt road cut through the foothills by

  millennia of foot traffic and erosion.

  Inside, five men sat around a rickety wooden table in the center of the

  small room. Another man sat on a chair by a window overlooking the

  road. There was an Uzi in his lap. A seventh man was still in Baku,

  watching the hospital. They weren't sure when the patient would arrive,

  but when he did, Maurice Charles wanted his man to be ready.

  The window was open, and a cool breeze was blowing in. Except for the

  occasional hooting of an owl or rocks dislodged by prowling foxes in

  search of field mice, there was silence outside the shack--the kind of

  silence that the Harpooner rarely heard in his travels around the world.

  Except for Charles, the men were stripped to their shorts. They were

  studying photographs that had been received through a satellite uplink.

  The portable six-inch dish had been mounted on the top of the shack,

  which had an unobstructed view of the southeastern sky and the

  GorizonT3. Located 35,736 kilometers above twenty-one degrees

  twenty-five minutes north, sixty degrees twenty-seven minutes east, that

  was the satellite the United States National Reconnaissance Office used

  to keep watch on the Caspian Sea. Charles's American contact had given

  him the restricted web site and access code, and he had downloaded

  images from the past twenty-four hours.

  The decoder they used, a Stellar Photo Judge 7, had also been provided

  by Charles's contact through one of the embassies. It was a compact

  unit roughly the size and configuration of a fax machine. The SPJ 7

  printed photographs on thick sublimation paper, a slick, oil based sheet

  that could not be faxed or electronically transmitted. Any attempt to

  do so would be like pressing on a liquid crystal display. All the

  receiver would see was a smudge. The unit provided magnification with a

  resolution of ten meters. Combined with infrared lenses on the

  satellite, he was able to read the numbers on the wing of the plane.

  Charles smiled. His plane was on the image. Or rather, the Azerbaijani

  plane that they had bought.

  "Are you certain the Americans will find that when they go looking for

  clues?" asked one of the men. He was a short, husky, swarthy man with

  a shaved head and dark, deep-set eyes. A hand-rolled cigarette hung

  from his downturned lips. There was a tattoo of a coiled snake on his

  left forearm.

  "Our friend will make sure of it," Charles said.

  And they would. That was the reason for staging this attack on the

  Iranian oil rig. Once the incident occurred, the United States National

  Reconnaissance Office would search the satellite database of images from

  the Guneshli oil region of the Caspian. Surveillance experts would look

  back over the past few days to see who might have been reconnoitering

  near the rig. They would find the images of Charles's plane. Then they

  would find something else.

  Shortly after the attack, a body would be dropped into the sea--the body

  of a Russian terrorist, Sergei Cherkassov. Cherkassov had been captured

  by Azerbaijan in the NK, freed from prison by Charles's men, and was

  presently being held on the Rachel. Cherkassov would be killed shortly

  before the attack, shot with a shell from an Iranian-made Gewehr 3

  rifle. That was the same kind of bullet that would have been fired by

  security personnel on the rig. When the Russian's body was found-thanks

  to intelligence that would be leaked to the CIA--the Americans would

  find photographs in the terrorist's pockets: the photographs Charles had

  taken from the airplane. One of those photographs would show portions

  of the airplane's wing and the same numbers seen in the satellite view.

  Another of the photographs would have markings in grease pencil showing

  the spot that particular terrorist was supposed to have attacked.

  With the satellite photographs and the body of the terrorist, Charles

  had no doubt that the United States and the rest of the world would draw

  the conclusion that he and his sponsors wanted them to draw.

  The wrong one.

  That Russia and Azerbaijan had united to try to force Iran from its

  lucrative rigs in Guneshli.

  New York, New York Monday, 4:01 p.m.

  The State Department maintains two offices in the vicinity of the United

  Nations Building on New York's East Side. One is the Office of Foreign

  Missions and the other is the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

  Forty-three-year-old attorney Lisa Baroni was the assistant director of

  diplomatic claims for the Diplomatic Liaison Office. That meant

  whenever a diplomat had a problem with the United States' legal system,

  she became involved. A legal problem could mean anything from an

  allegedly unlawful search of a diplomat's luggage at one of the local

  airports, or a hit-and-run accident involving a diplomat, to the recent

 
seizure of the Security Council by terrorists.

  Ten days before, Baroni had been on hand to provide counsel for

  diplomats but found herself giving comfort to parents of children who

  were held hostage during the attack. That was when she'd met General

  Mike Rodgers.

  The general talked with her briefly when the siege was over. He said he

  was impressed by the way she had remained calm, communicative, and

  responsible in the midst of the crisis. He explained that he was the

  new head of Op-Center in Washington and was looking for good people to

  work with. He asked if he could call her and arrange an interview.

  Rodgers had seemed like a no nonsense officer, one who was more

  interested in her talent than her gender, in her abilities more than in

  the length of her skirt. That appealed to her. So did the prospect of

  going back to Washington, D.C. Baroni had grown up there, she had

  studied international law at Georgetown University, and all her friends

  and family still lived there. After three years in New York, Baroni

  could not wait to get back.

  But when General Rodgers finally called, it was not quite the call

  Baroni had been expecting.

  It came early in the afternoon. Baroni listened as Rodgers explained

  that his superior, Paul Hood, had withdrawn his resignation. But

  Rodgers was still looking for good people and offered her a proposition.

  He had checked her State Department records and thought she would be a

  good candidate to replace Martha Mackall, the political officer who had

  been assassinated in Spain. He would bring her to Washington for an

  interview if she would help him with a problem in New York.

  Baroni asked if the help he needed was legal. Rodgers assured her it

  was. In that case, Baroni told him, she would be happy to help. That

  was how relationships were forged in Washington. Through

  back-scratching.

  What Rodgers needed, he explained, was the itinerary of NSA Chief Jack

  Fenwick who was in New York for meetings with United Nations delegates.

  Rodgers said he didn't want the published itinerary. He wanted to know

  where Fenwick actually ended up.

  That should have been relatively easy for Baroni to find. Fenwick had

  an office in her building, and he usually used it when he came to New

  York. It was on the seventh floor, along with the office for the

  secretary of state. However, Fenwick's New York deputy said that he

  wasn't coming to the office during this trip but was holding all of his

  meetings at different consulates.

  Instead, Baroni checked the file of government-issued license plates.

  This listing was maintained in the event of a diplomatic kidnapping. The

  NSA chief always rode in the same town car when he came to New York.

  Baroni got the license number and asked her friend. Detective Steve

  Mitchell at Midtown South, to try to find the car on the street. Then

  she got the number of the car's windshield-mounted electronic security

  pass. The ESP enabled vehicles to enter embassy and government parking

  garages with a minimum of delay, giving potential assassins less time to

  stage ambushes.

  The ESP didn't show up on any of the United States checkpoints, which

  were transmitted immediately to State Department security files. That

  meant that Fenwick was visiting foreign embassies. Over one hundred

  nations also transmitted that data to the DOS within minutes. Most of

  those were close U.S. allies, such as Great Britain, Japan, and Israel.

  Fenwick had not yet gone to visit any of them. She used secure e-mail

  to forward to Rodgers the information where Fenwick hadn't been.

  Then, just after four p.m." Baroni got a call from Detective Mitchell.

  One of his squad cars spotted the chief of staff's car leaving a

  building at 622 Third Avenue.

  That was just below Forty-second Street. Baroni looked up the address

  in her guide to permanent missions.

  The occupant surprised her.

  Washington, D.C.

  Monday, 4:03 p.m.

  Paul Hood arrived at the west wing of the White House at four o'clock.

  Even before he had finished passing through the security checkpoint, a

  presidential intern had arrived to show him to the Oval Office. Hood

  could tell he had been here at least several months. Like most seasoned

  interns, the freshly scrubbed young man had a slightly cocky air. Here

  he was, a kid in his early twenties, working at the White House. The ID

  badge around his neck was his trump card with women at bars, with chatty

  neighbors on airplanes, with brothers and cousins when he went home for

  the holidays. Whatever anyone else said or did, he was interacting with

  the president, the vice president, cabinet, and congressional leaders on

  a daily basis. He was exposed to real power, he was plugged into the

  world, and he was moving past the eyes and ears of all media where the

  expressions and casual utterances of even people like him could cause

  events that would ripple through history. Hood remembered feeling a lot

  of that when he was a kid working in the Los Angeles office of the

  governor of California. He could only imagine how much more extreme it

  was for this kid, the sense of being at the center of the universe.

  The Oval Office is located at the far southeast corner of the West Wing.

  Hood followed the young man in silence as they made their way through

  the busy corridors, passed by people who did not seem at all self

  important They had the look and carriage of people who were very late

  for a plane. Hood walked past the office of the national security

  adviser and the vice president, then turned east at the vice president's

  office and walked past the office of the press secretary. Then they

  turned south past the cabinet room. They walked in silence all the

  while. Hood wondered if the young man wasn't speaking to him because

  the kid had a sense of propriety or because Hood wasn't enough of a

  celebrity to merit talking to. Hood decided to give him the benefit of

  the doubt.

  The office past the cabinet room belonged to Mrs. Leigh. She was seated

  behind her desk. Behind it was the only door that led to the Oval

  Office. The intern excused himself. Hood and the president's tall,

  whitehaired secretary greeted each other with smiles. Mrs. Leigh was

  from Texas, with the steel, poise, patience, and dry, self-effacing

  humor required for the guardian of the gate. Her husband was the late

  Senator Titus Leigh, a legendary cattleman.

  "The president's running a few minutes late," Mrs. Leigh said. "But

  that's all right. You can tell me how you are."

  "Coping," Hood said.

  "And you?"

  "Fine," she replied flatly.

  "My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure."

  "I've heard that somewhere," Hood said as he continued toward the

  secretary's desk.

  "It's Lord Tennyson," she replied.

  "How is your daughter?"

  "She's strong, too," Hood said.

  "And she has an awful lot of people pulling for her."

  "I don't doubt that," Mrs. Leigh said, still smiling.

  "Let me know if there's anything I ca
n do."

  "I absolutely will," Hood said. He looked into her gray eyes.

  "There is something you can do for me, though."

  "And that is?"

  "Off the record?"

  "Of course," she assured him.

  "Mrs. Leigh, has the president seemed all right to you?" Hood asked.

  The woman's smile wavered. She looked down.

  "Is that what this meeting is about?"

  "No," Hood said.

  "What makes you ask a question like that?"

  "People close to him are worried," Hood said.

  "And you're the one who's been asked to bell the cat?" she asked.

  "Nothing that calculated," Hood said as his cell phone beeped. He

  reached into his jacket pocket and answered the phone.

  "This is Paul."

  "Paul, it's Mike."

  "Mike, what's up?" If Rodgers was calling him here, now, it had to be

  important.

  "The target was seen leaving the Iranian mission to the UN about three

  minutes ago."

  "Any idea where he was the rest of the time?" Hood asked.

  "Negative," said Rodgers.

  "We're working on that. But apparently, the car didn't show up at the

  embassies of any of our top allies."

  "Thanks," Hood said.

  "Let me know if you find out anything else." Hood hung up. He put the

 

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