Sea Of Fire (2003)

by Clancy, Tom - Op Center 10

  The only diplomats on the team were Coffey and Ellsworth. Ellsworth had stayed behind to act as a liaison with other intelligence agencies. That left the burden on Coffey. Coffey, a man whose mind was being jostled as thoroughly as the rest of him.

  The helicopter slipped over a ridge and dropped toward a white landing pad on top of a hill. As it settled down, Coffey decided that, in fact, he preferred the chopper to the corvette. The ride was a hell of a lot shorter. The chopper came to rest with the slightest bump. The pilot cut the rotor, and Jelbart jumped out. A man was approaching from along a dirt path. There was an observation tower some 400 yards behind him. While the pilot retrieved Herbert’s wheelchair, FNO Loh and Coffey joined Jelbart. The Singaporean officer had been quiet and expressionless throughout the journey. Perhaps she felt uncomfortable being in Australia. Or she might have been focused on the mission. Or both. It could also be that after hanging around politicians and attorneys for his entire professional life, Coffey was unused to people who were silent when they had nothing to say.

  Coffey waited by the helicopter until Herbert was in his wheelchair. Even without his chair, the intelligence chief was surprisingly mobile. His arms were thickly knotted with muscles. With remarkable ease, he could cross an aisle or hop onto a desk to assault someone on the other side. Those arms reminded Coffey of the climbing roots of a banyan tree. Herbert’s strong fingers could probably dig holes in concrete. He swung unaided from the door-frame of the chopper into his chair. It was an inspiring thing to see.

  The fire officer was nothing like Coffey had imagined. He had expected Paul Leyland to be a strapping and immaculate man. A GQ cowboy with outback trappings. He was not.

  Paul Leyland was not especially presentable. His olive-green uniform was rumpled and spotted with perspiration on the collar, under the arms, and behind the knees. His skin was rash-red, not bronze. It looked like there were patches of fur stuck to his boot. He was well under six feet tall. He was not even wearing an outback shade hat. His bald head was bare and sweaty.

  “I think we’re going to be able to do business with this guy,” Herbert said as they approached.

  “What makes you say that?” Coffey asked.

  “Two things. First, he smiled when he shook Officer Loh’s hand,” Herbert said.

  “So? Maybe he just likes the ladies,” Coffey suggested.

  “Exactly,” Herbert said. “He’s not wearing a wedding band. He’s up in his tree house most of the day. She’ll be an asset.”

  “That’s quite a leap of faith,” Coffey said. “Jelbart said Leyland has a woman working for him.”

  “Yup,” Herbert said. “That strengthens my case.”

  “How?”

  “She’s the only female firefighter in this department,” Herbert told him. “He had to okay her being here. He likes having a woman around, and it doesn’t matter if she’s foreign. Which is my second point. It shows he’s got an open and independent mind.”

  “I’m not signing off on any of that,” Coffey said.

  “Dinner at the 1789 in Georgetown says I’m right,” Herbert replied.

  “Does everything have to be a war with you?” Coffey protested.

  “Not a war. Call it a dispute with hair on its chest. You in or out?” Herbert pressed.

  “I’m in,” Coffey said.

  The men left the landing pad. They crossed damp grasses to where the others were standing. The group was brightly lighted in the glow of the footlights on the landing pad. Jelbart introduced them.

  “I understand you’re the offsider running the team,” Leyland said as he shook Herbert’s hand.

  Coffey noticed that the captain did not smile. Herbert did, however. From the side of his mouth, at Coffey.

  “Actually, Officer Loh and I will be conducting activities jointly,” Herbert told him.

  Both Jelbart and Loh looked at the intelligence chief. Loh was impassive. Jelbart seemed somewhat surprised. But he said nothing.

  “I see,” Leyland said. “So which of you is going to tell me exactly what these activities are? And would you like to go to the cabin to do it?” He pointed toward a small structure near the base of the tower. “It’ll be getting pretty chilly out here in a few minutes. You might be more comfortable.”

  “We’re a little squeezed for time,” Herbert said. “And we won’t be out here that long.”

  “All right,” Leyland said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Discretion, for one thing,” Herbert said. “Nothing we are about to discuss can be repeated.”

  “I can keep a secret,” Leyland said. “Just tell me one thing. Is what you want to do legal?”

  “In theory, and if everything goes the way I hope,” Herbert replied.

  Leyland looked at him strangely. “That’s like calling a match ‘safe’ until you strike it.”

  “Captain Leyland, I’m a solicitor,” Coffey interjected. “The situation is equivalent to breaking down the door of a house that’s on fire. Technically, you are trespassing. But by every other measure, it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You burble like a solicitor,” Leyland said. “So the answer is no?”

  “The answer is that we are investigating a national security matter,” Jelbart said.

  “An international security issue,” FNO Loh added.

  “Correct,” Jelbart agreed. “We can bat around the fine points of ethical versus legal law if you like. Or we can try to save a couple of million lives. Which will it be?”

  Leyland looked at the group. “I’m out here to save lives. I’m listening, people.”

  “Thank you,” Jelbart said.

  “Captain, do you have any kind of personal or professional relationship with Jervis Darling?” Herbert asked.

  “We trapshoot twice a week,” Leyland said.

  “That’s fantastic,” Coffey said.

  “That was a joke,” Leyland told him. “No. I have no personal or professional relationship with Mr. Darling. In fact, the only part of him I have ever seen is the arse end of his helicopter.”

  “What about firefighting?” Herbert asked.

  “Our squad doesn’t even watch his estate,” Leyland said. “He has his own security and fire prevention service.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Herbert said. “Still, I’m hoping there’s a loophole somewhere. I need a reason to go into the estate.”

  “A reason to get on the property or in the house?” Leyland asked.

  “In the house,” Herbert said.

  “You mean like asking to use the dunny?”

  Coffey inferred from the context that dunny meant lavatory.

  “No, it has to be somewhat more substantial than that,” Herbert replied. “Assuming Mr. Darling is there, I need to be inside the mansion for about ten minutes while he is on the outside. Would you have a legal right to check the grounds for fire safety violations?”

  “Only if there were a fire,” Leyland said. “We have what’s called the right of inquiry. We are allowed to investigate the cause of a blaze to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But don’t ask me to start a fire. It hasn’t rained for two weeks. It could easily spread.”

  “We wouldn’t ask you to do that,” Jelbart said.

  Coffey watched Herbert’s expression go from hopeful to annoyed. Obviously, the intelligence chief thought he had his way in.

  “Let me ask you this,” Leyland said. “Is it necessary that you see Mr. Darling himself?”

  “No. His presence is not required,” Herbert said.

  “He may not even be there,” Jelbart pointed out.

  “Then I have something that may work, though it’s going to take a bush liar to sell it,” Leyland said.

  “We’ve got some of those,” Herbert replied. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m thinking that Mr. Darling would rather deal with us than with a group that could really do him some damage,” Leyland replied.

  “Who?” Jelbart asked.

  “Come with
me,” Leyland added. He started toward the tower. “I’m going to show you how to stamp your passport.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  Washington, D.C. Saturday, 7:31 A.M.

  Matt Stoll was the only other person in the operations level when Paul Hood arrived. That was not unusual. It was a Saturday morning.

  Hood came in on Saturday mornings now because he had nowhere else to go. He would get an update from Herbert or Coffey wherever he was. One thing on his to-do list was to call Daphne Connors and see if she was free that night. If he did not push himself, no one else would.

  Stoll usually came in on weekends to write or try out software he did not get to use during the week. Unless there was a technology convention in town, the computer genius did not have an active social life. He had no interest in socializing with women who did not speak his language.

  “She doesn’t have to know gate propagation in high-res temporal resolution, though that would be heaven,” he once said. “But she should know how many megabytes there are in her PC and what that means. If I have to explain it, then the sex is never very good.”

  Hood was not clear on who the sex was not good for or why. He was glad he was not on the need-to-know list.

  As it turned out, the cherubic-looking Stoll was not here to tinker with a new program. He said he had gotten a call from Bob Herbert. The intelligence chief told him he needed something very specific.

  “Bob wants me to rig him a Hoover,” Stoll said in his joyless monotone. Excitement, whenever Stoll showed it, was in the speed his fingers moved on a keyboard. Right now he was typing very rapidly.

  “Which is what?” Hood asked. He suddenly felt very sorry for any woman Stoll had ever met.

  “A Hoover is a data vacuum,” Stoll replied. “Bob wants to use his wheelchair computer as a drop zone for an external source.”

  “You mean we plug into Bob, and Bob plugs into something else,” Hood said. “He serves as a conduit that allows us to read the ‘something else.’ ”

  “I couldn’t have said it better,” Stoll said.

  “What is Bob planning to plug into?” Hood asked.

  “Well, he called right before his chair was loaded into a helicopter, so he didn’t go into a whole lot of detail,” Stoll said. “Apparently, Bob’s going to try to get into Jervis Darling’s estate. He wants to jack into his phone system.”

  “Why? I thought we already hacked the Darling phone records.”

  “We did,” Stoll said. “If he’s using his own uplink for secure calls, they wouldn’t show up on his public records. But if Bob plugs in directly, he’s accessing the origin point of the calls. That will give him access to all the numbers in the telephone’s memory.”

  “What if those numbers aren’t programmed in?” Hood asked.

  “Most phones retain the information somewhere,” Stoll assured him. “The redial function usually stores ten to twenty numbers. It costs less to build a chip that eliminates numbers by attrition. They get scrolled from the system rather than erased. Most people don’t know that.”

  “What about incoming calls?” Hood asked. “We need to ID them.”

  “If Darling’s phone has caller ID or whatever the Australian equivalent is, those numbers will also be stored,” Stoll said. “If he doesn’t, we’ll have to settle for the outgoing calls.”

  “Did Bob say how he intended to get access to Darling’s private line?” Hood asked.

  “For the record, it’s not the line he needs to get access to,” Stoll said. “It’s the phone itself. Bob can’t just splice into the fiber optics. That would put him outside the scrambler. Any data he got would be useless.”

  “I see. Okay. How does Bob plan to jack into the phone?”

  “He didn’t say,” Stoll replied. “I’m sure Darling has an office phone with multiple lines. That would mean there’s a data port. All Bob has to do is plug his computer into that. That will give us access.”

  “That’s all Bob has to do,” Hood said. “I’ll give him a call.”

  “He said he was turning his phone off,” Stoll told him. “He doesn’t want it beeping while he’s in with Darling. If it helps, Lowell told him the only legal risk would be invasion of privacy. Lowell is also pretty sure Darling would not press that issue. He said the reasons for the investigation would come out, and the publicity would be bad for Darling, even if he were innocent.”

  “The legal options are not what worries me,” Hood said. “If Darling’s into nuclear trafficking, he’s probably also in bed with some ugly characters. They may not bother with lawyers.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Stoll said.

  Hood scowled.

  “I guess we could call Lowell to try to stop him,” Stoll suggested.

  “No,” Hood said. “We need facts to support our theory, and this is probably the best way to get them. I take it Lowell is not going along.”

  “Right,” Stoll said. “It was Bob, a fire warden, a lady officer from Singapore, and a koala.”

  “A koala? An animal?” Hood asked.

  “Yeah. Search me what that’s all about.” Stoll smiled as he finished writing his program. “It’s like the cast of the Wizard of Oz. And they’re in Oz. Pretty ironic, don’t you think?”

  That it was. Right down to the big, blustering wizard spewing fire. Only this Oz was no dream.

  Stoll activated the program. He ran a test on an Op-Center phone line just to make sure it was working. It functioned perfectly. They had all the numbers Lowell Coffey had phoned the day before he left. Hood looked away and ordered the list purged from Stoll’s computer.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t peek in the girls’ locker room in high school, either,” Stoll said.

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” Hood admitted. “I don’t mind being a spy. I never liked being a voyeur.”

  “Interesting. We’ll have to discuss the distinction,” Stoll said.

  “I can give it to you in two words,” Hood said as he clapped a hand on Stoll’s rounded shoulder. “National security.”

  “The voyeuristic instinct is a doorway to intelligence, and intelligence is the spy’s basic unit of data,” Stoll said. “Unless you look, how do you know Lowell’s not working for the Chinese or some terrorist group?”

  “He believes too strongly in the rule of law. Tell me, do you routinely check on all of us?” Hood asked.

  “Nope. I’m not a voyeur. I was only asking you.”

  Hood felt like kicking himself. He should have known better than to take one of Matt Stoll’s infamous buggy rides. They took you slowly around the park without getting you anywhere. Hood did not have the time or focus for this kind of discussion.

  Stoll told Hood he would not know anything else until data started coming in. Hood asked his computer wizard to let him know the moment that happened, then left to go to his office. It was disconcerting to see the corridors so empty. It was like a manifestation of his own hollow life. Maybe that was something Bob Herbert had learned after losing his wife. You mourn, but you don’t sit still. You fill that empty hall with anything you can. Even if it isn’t necessarily good for you.

  Of course, there’s a difference between recreational and reckless, Hood thought. He was certain that Bob had considered the risks. He was also sure of something else. Herbert was probably enjoying the hell out of them. Hood only hoped that the intelligence chief was aware of the greatest danger.

  Complacency.

  A quiet, seaside estate was not war-ravaged Beirut or a skinhead stronghold in Germany. Those were the kinds of environments where Herbert was accustomed to waging war. They were unstable regions where instinct kept the mind and body on high alert.

  Hood had to trust that his colleague knew what he was getting into. He also hoped that Herbert would come up with something else. Something that quickly sketched plans did not always allow.

  An exit strategy.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The Great Barrier Reef Saturday, 10:03 P.M.

  He hurt
.

  Everywhere.

  Peter Kannaday suffered pain with every breath. It was dull and warm and it was everywhere. He felt it spiritually as well as physically. The captain lay on his bed in a bruised heap, belly down, face to the wall. He had slept on and off since Hawke’s thugs had brought him here. Kannaday’s eyes and mouth were open, but it was dark. He did not see, nor speak, nor swallow. His stomach was rumbling from hunger. His tongue was swollen and dry. The only liquid he had tasted lately was his own blood.

  Sometime during the night Kannaday had roused himself briefly to see if the door was locked. It was not. He checked to see if his gun was still there. It was not. He was free to walk the deck, broken and humiliated but unarmed. He would probably be able to radio Jervis Darling because he was free and he was still the captain. But what would he say? That he had been minimized, reduced to a figurehead? That he had not been able to enforce his authority or hold what was his? That he had no idea what to expect or what to do?

  Kannaday closed his mouth. Even his neck muscles hurt. He must have strained them when he struggled with the men who were holding him. He had to get past the pain and think. It was clear that Hawke would not kill him. He wanted Kannaday as a buffer between himself and the law. But Kannaday had no idea what Darling might do. Darling did not like dealing with weak men. Kannaday would be kept around no longer than necessary. Then he would be dismissed or, more likely, eliminated. Darling was a man of absolutes.

  From the slow rocking of the swells, Kannaday could tell that they were close to shore. No doubt Hawke had reported back to the cove and was now following their cruising course along the Great Barrier Reef. Kannaday had time to act, but not a lot.

  Kannaday forced himself to move. He got his arms under him and pushed up. Slowly. His upper arms trembled as he worked himself into a sitting position. He eased his back against the wall at the side of the bed. The solid support felt good. His head throbbed as blood fought to reach it. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Miraculously, it did not feel as if any ribs were broken. He flexed his fingers. They were swollen. Maybe he had punched someone. He could not remember. The last thing he remembered clearly was running down the stairs. That moment was so immediate he felt as though he could go back there. Do things differently.