Sea Of Fire (2003)

by Clancy, Tom - Op Center 10

  Darling stopped in the doorway and turned. “Why bother? I don’t know what data you hoped to glean from this telephone, but it is simply an estate intercom.”

  Herbert said nothing. That explained why his laptop did not ping. The phone had no numbers in memory.

  “Do we have any other business?” Darling asked.

  “Yeah,” Herbert said. “I’ve got a suggestion for you. I know more than I just told you. So do the people I work with. We’re going to get you and everyone you work with. My suggestion is that you cooperate with us.”

  “It’s time for you to leave, Mr. Herbert,” Darling said. “You are a man rich with suspicion, not knowledge.”

  “And you’re a man with zero conscience,” Herbert said angrily. “You and your associate Mahathir bin Dahman.”

  That was it. Bob Herbert had just played the only name he knew, the only other information he possessed. He hoped it was enough to rattle Darling into doing something careless or impulsive, such as attacking him so the fire chief could have him arrested. Or spitting out additional information in a rage. Or even better, cooperating.

  It did not.

  “Mr. bin Dahman is indeed an associate,” Darling replied affably. “I’m lucky to have a partner of his local and international standing. And you are a sad, flailing fellow, R. Clayton Herbert.” That was the last thing Darling said before he left the room.

  Herbert wanted to punch something. Hard. Jervis Darling was guilty as Judas F. Iscariot. By not calling the police he had proved that to Herbert. But the impromptu interrogation had backfired. Herbert had gambled and lost, because now Darling was on guard. He could send his people into hiding, leaving Herbert without the two things Op-Center needed.

  One was proof.

  The other was the missing radioactive materials.

  FIFTY

  Cairns, Australia Saturday, 11:27 P.M.

  Jervis Darling returned to his bedroom on the second floor. He encountered Andrew on the way and told him to make certain Mr. Herbert left the house and that the others left the grounds as soon as they found their koala. Darling did not doubt the animal was there. They would have made certain of that before coming to the door.

  Darling quietly shut the door and went to the back, to a large dressing room. He was numb and furious at the same time. The silence weighed thick and heavy in his ears. Darling sat at the restored Louis XVI desk and rang his nephew. He pulled over the only telephone in the mansion that had the number of the Hosannah in memory. He punched in his personal code, 525, to obtain a dial tone. Obtained by bin Dahman from the Russian air force, the secure phone was named the konsulstvo, or the “consulate.” It was the secure phone in use at Russian embassies around the world. The konsulstvo was a large, square unit with a computer-style keypad on the top and a receiver on the side. The keypad was for writing codes. Hawke had done that before sailing.

  “We rescued someone from the sampan.”

  Nothing the American had said after that really registered. Darling’s answers had come from some independent, automatic-functioning part of his brain. Kannaday and Hawke had done more than suffer a setback in the Celebes Sea. They had permitted a security breach that led an investigator here. More than one, probably. Darling suspected that the woman who had come with them was with the Singaporean navy. Now that he thought about it, she had that stiff-necked, feet-wide-apart posture of a seaman.

  An American and a Singaporean. With Australian officials probably hanging to the rear because they did not want to tangle with Jervis Darling. Not until they had evidence. It made sense. Fortunately for Darling, whatever Mr. Herbert was doing at the study telephone would have netted him nothing. Not R. Clayton Herbert nor the people he worked for, whoever they were. That did not even matter. Any group ferreting around in Darling business was unwelcome. He would find out who they were, and they would be stopped. First, however, Darling had to make sure there was nothing to find. Starting with the Hosannah.

  As Darling input the yacht’s number, he burned inside. He wanted to strike out in all directions simultaneously. He was angry at Kannaday and Hawke. Their ineffective-ness caused this security breach. He would deal with Kannaday now, Hawke later. He also wanted to punish Herbert for invading his home. Darling would find a way to punch a hole in his life. And he would end the career of the fire captain who had assisted Herbert. They had not paid their dues on the world stage. Darling would not allow these wage slaves to question or delay him, let alone stop him. He would take this hit and move on.

  Marcus was asleep when his uncle reached him. The elder Darling asked to speak with Hawke immediately. Marcus went to the security chief’s cabin and got him.

  “Yes, sir,” Hawke said when he came on.

  That was John Hawke. Called to the radio late at night for something that was obviously out of the ordinary. Yet his voice was the same flat instrument it always was.

  “I want you to do the following as quickly as possible,” Darling said. His voice was not as composed. “Destroy the lab completely and then the radio room. None of the equipment must survive. Then take the yacht to sea and sink it in deep water. There has to be a fire. Start it in the galley. Is there sufficient dinghy space for the crew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Darling said. “Get to it.”

  “Sir, Captain Kannaday will want to know why this is being done,” Hawke said.

  The devious bastard, Darling thought. Hawke had to be curious as well. Once again, the security chief wanted to keep Peter Kannaday between himself and Darling. Unfortunately, that was not going to be possible. Hawke was about to take two punches.

  “Tell the captain that his security team failed to kill all of the men on the sampan,” Darling said. “One of them was recovered.”

  The radio went stubbornly silent. That had been punch number one.

  “It would be best if the captain were lost with his ship,” Darling went on. “I do not want the accident to be perceived as an insurance scam. We do not need additional investigations.”

  That was punch number two. Hawke now knew just what the security lapse had caused.

  “I will see to all of it,” Hawke replied.

  There was no hint of humility in the security chief’s voice. Just determination.

  Darling preferred that. He wanted results, not repentance.

  Darling hung up the phone. He pushed it away and sat back.

  Jervis Darling had spent a lifetime building corporations, amassing wealth and power, and, most importantly, evolving a worldview. He realized that only businessmen had the resources to move the world forward. Governments were too partisan and slow. Armies were too bestial and rigid. Only he and his kind had the vision to motivate the masses. First, however, they had to make themselves indispensible. They had to use mercenaries like John Hawke to surgically strike targets around the world. They would target factories, transportation centers, financial districts, and power plants. Existing governments and terror groups would take the blame. Especially since he would be hiring many of their members. And covering the events in his media outlets. Darling and his colleagues would eliminate competition to make their own resources more valuable. They would use that base to build de facto political power. From there, nothing was off limits.

  Darling was still angry. But he was relatively unconcerned about the project or his goals. He had never undertaken a business or political operation that did not experience a few bumps. This was the first one the current action had suffered. He was confident that the undertaking would survive and move forward.

  As confident as he was that R. Clayton Herbert would soon be wishing he had gone somewhere else this evening.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Cairns, Australia Sunday, 12:00 A.M.

  “I blew it,” Bob Herbert said over the phone.

  “What do you mean?” Hood asked.

  “I gave a world-class, standing-room-only performance of how not to gather information.”

  “You’re bein
g way too rough on yourself, Bob,” Hood said. “You did the best you could under extremely adverse circumstances.” He was speaking softly but firmly.

  “Paul, I created the friggin’ adverse circumstances!” Herbert went on. “You want a list of do-nots that I would have reamed a newbie for? I did not case the site. I went to the wrong phone. And I gave the subject an overview of what we know without getting anything back except a vague confirmation that our suspicions were correct.”

  “This isn’t lab science,” Hood pointed out. “You took a huge risk against staggering odds.”

  “That’s what the best is supposed to do, and my job title says I’m supposed to be one of the best,” Herbert replied. “The best are also supposed to do one thing more. They’re supposed to succeed.”

  “This is just one battle in the war,” Hood replied. “And I’m not so sure we lost it.”

  “I’ve won battles before,” Herbert shot back. “This is not what victory feels like.”

  Herbert was calling from his cell phone in the Humvee. FNO Loh and Paul Leyland had found the koala. They met Herbert in front of the mansion where they helped him down the stairs. The group left the grounds after conferring with Jelbart by phone. Herbert agreed with the warrant officer’s assessment. Jelbart felt that Darling’s armed guards would be unusually aggressive after what happened. They unanimously decided that the best thing to do was return to the observation base and regroup. Herbert and Loh were sitting in the back. Leyland was driving. Little Maluka was asleep in the passenger’s seat.

  “Bob, right now it doesn’t matter how we got here,” Hood said. “Let’s look at where we are and what we’re up against.”

  “All right,” Herbert said and took a breath. That seemed to calm him somewhat. “We’re facing a world-class thug who knows he’s been found out. He also knows that at least one of his partners has been identified. And he knows that we have someone who may be able to ID the boat they used to carry the stolen nuclear material. He cannot be happy with any of that information.”

  “Agreed. So what does he do?”

  “First, he has to make his own involvement deniable,” Herbert said. “His phone records and financial transactions are probably clean. I’m betting it’s the same with bin Dahman and whoever else is involved. Darling has to assume the pirate is heavily guarded and that we already took from him whatever information we want. So he probably won’t bother going after him. The only place our boy’s immediately vulnerable is the boat.”

  “We haven’t been able to find the other vessel involved in this transaction,” Hood said. “What chance do we have of finding this one? It may already have been hidden.”

  “That’s very possible,” Herbert agreed. “But I want to find it. I really want to find it.”

  “You want to get Jervis Darling,” Hood pointed out. “That isn’t the same thing.”

  “It will be if we find the boat,” Herbert said. “Damn, I wish that pirate had seen something. At least we’d know what we were looking for.”

  “You could have him hypnotized,” Hood suggested, half in desperate jest. “Maybe he’ll remember more.”

  “That’s good for quitting smoking, not interrogation,” Herbert said.

  “There is one thing,” Loh said.

  “What’s that?” Herbert asked. “Paul, can you hear FNO Loh?”

  “Barely,” Hood said.

  Herbert held the cell phone between them. He asked the Singaporean to speak up.

  “The pirates would not have attacked a much larger vessel,” Loh said loudly. “It’s night now. Small vessels tend to go to anchor.”

  “How does that help us?” Herbert said. “There are probably a lot of small boats on the open sea.”

  “This one would not be stopped,” she said. “If it’s out there, and Darling is afraid of being caught, he would have it running somewhere.”

  “Good point,” Leyland contributed. “But that still leaves a lot of area to cover.”

  “Not as much as you might think,” Herbert said. “Chances are pretty good the boat won’t be going toward Cairns. Darling won’t want that ship anywhere near him.”

  “What if he wanted to hide it?” Hood asked. “What better place than his own facility?”

  “That was probably the game plan before we showed up,” Herbert said. “Now, Darling would never risk it. If there is a hint of radioactivity on board that vessel, it’s as good as a fingerprint. We could identify the source from just a particle of material. Darling has to imagine that someone will come looking.”

  “We should get our ships back out to sea,” Loh said.

  “I agree,” Herbert said. “But we should also get the chopper in the air and run a zigzag search heading seaward. If the vessel is back, Darling may have to send it out again. Just so he isn’t caught. If it’s not back, it’s going to be racing to a safe haven somewhere else.”

  “Is there any kind of electronic surveillance we can do from here?” Hood asked.

  “I’m sure the transport vessel is in a silent running mode by now,” Herbert said.

  “We can do a GPS sweep,” Loh said.

  “Right,” Herbert agreed.

  “I didn’t get that,” Hood said.

  “Ask Stephen Viens to do a read on the global positioning satellite beacons in the region,” Herbert said.

  “The satellites, not the receiver?” Hood asked.

  “The receiver itself, on the boat, is a passive site. All it does is tap into a continuous beacon from three satellites—four if you’re adding altitude to the mix, which we are not. We can’t pinpoint the boat by looking for a specific ID number. What we can do, though, is watch for the beacons themselves and triangulate them. Viens will know what I mean. Have him run a scan every minute or so. If we’ve got someone who’s running at twenty-five knots or more, that will be worth looking into. Especially if they’re heading away from Cairns.”

  “I like it,” Hood said.

  Hood said he would have Viens’s office look into the GPS as soon as possible.

  Herbert thanked him and hung up. Then he reached back and put the phone in his wheelchair. He felt a little bit better than before. At least they had a plan. And there was one thing an intelligence officer could always count on. Night was when vermin tended to move about.

  “From what I’ve been hearing, that boat was armed,” Leyland said. “What if it has some kind of surface-to-air missiles? Your chopper has no defense. They won’t believe that Little Maluka got lost on his boardie.”

  “His what?” Herbert asked.

  “His board. Surfing.”

  “You’re right,” Herbert said. “But if they shoot at us, we’ll know one thing for sure.”

  “What’s that?” Leyland asked.

  “We found the right boat.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Washington, D.C. Saturday, 11:00 A.M.

  The phone beeped, and Hood snapped it up. He had just finished talking to Stephen Viens, who was rushing to the office. In his absence, weekend surveillance staffer Mary Timm was starting up the GPS sweep. It was not a complex operation, and the exchange officer was from the Communications Security Establishment of Canada’s Department of National Defence. That was the branch of government that analyzed and catalogued intercepted radio and various electronic emissions from other nations. The CSE liaised closely with both the United States and Great Britain’s SIGINT services.

  “R. Clayton Herbert,” said the deep and smoky voice on the other end of the phone. “That’s Bob Herbert. He’s on your staff, isn’t he?” There was a hint of a Louisiana accent.

  Hood did not like calls that opened with questions. Especially when the voice was not familiar. But the caller had access to Hood’s direct line. That meant he had high-level security clearance.

  “Who is this?” Hood asked.

  “Bruce Perry,” the caller replied.

  Perry was the special assistant to the president for democratic elections. It was a post that monitore
d voting activities in foreign nations. Hood could not understand what Special Assistant Perry wanted with Herbert, or why he used that form of Herbert’s name. He did a GovScan search of Perry’s name. Those personnel files were little more than glorified résumés. They were available to officials who might need assistance in highly specialized areas.

  “I don’t believe we’ve ever met,” Hood said, stalling while he scanned Perry’s file.

  “You may be correct,” Perry replied. “But then, it isn’t my job to keep track of peoples’ activities.”

  Oh, Hood thought. It’s going to be one of those kinds of conversations. And then he spotted the reason Perry was calling. The sixty-four-year-old was a former ambassador to Australia.

  “All right, Mr. Perry,” Hood said. “Yes, Bob Herbert is an officer here. You already knew that, or you wouldn’t be asking. What’s on your mind?”

  “Mr. Herbert has just been to see Mr. Jervis Darling at his home,” Perry said. “You’ve heard of Jervis Darling?”

  “I read newspapers,” Hood said. Darling had obviously wasted no time getting his puppets onstage.

  “Newspapers do not tell the full story of this man,” Perry said.

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “Mr. Darling has put a substantial portion of his personal fortune into countless unheralded charitable activities, which include democratic advocacy programs,” Perry went on. “He is a rock in that region, and Mr. Herbert had no right to call on him.”

  “In a democratic society we have all kinds of rights,” Hood pointed out.

  “The right to privacy is chief among those,” Perry replied.

  “Fair enough. I assume Mr. Darling called you. Did he say what Mr. Herbert was after?”

  “He said there was some nonsense about misplaced nuclear waste,” Perry said, chuckling. “The idea that Mr. Darling would know anything about that is completely ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, for one thing, Mr. Darling believes absolutely in the rule of law,” Perry said. He was no longer chuckling. “He also happens to be an extremely moral man.”