Tom Clancy's Op-Center_ Divide and Conquer Part 6

"Excellent," Herbert said. "Straight ahead has always been my favorite way, too."

Hood punched in the president's direct line. The phone beeped at the desk of his executive secretary, Jamie Leigh, instead of going through the switchboard. Hood asked Mrs. Leigh if she could please squeeze him in for a few minutes somewhere. She asked him for a log line for the calendar to let the president know what this was about. Hood said that it had to do with Op-Center having a role in the United Nations intelligence program.

Mrs. Leigh liked Hood, and she arranged for him to see the president 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. "G.o.d. I feel like I do whenever I go to Christmas Eve Ma.s.s."

"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 h.e.l.l 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. "Touche," he said.

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

THIRTEEN.

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 grazeable 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 un.o.bstructed 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 StellarPhoto Judge 7, had also been provided by Charles's contact through one of the emba.s.sies. 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, oilbased 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 Cherka.s.sov. Cherka.s.sov had been captured by Azerbaijan in the NK, freed from prison by Charles's men, and was presently being held on the Rachel. Rachel. Cherka.s.sov would be killed shortly before the attack, shot with a sh.e.l.l 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. Cherka.s.sov would be killed shortly before the attack, shot with a sh.e.l.l 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.

FOURTEEN.

New York, New York Monday, 4:01 P.M 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 a.s.sured 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 pa.s.s. The ESP enabled vehicles to enter emba.s.sy and government parking garages with a minimum of delay, giving potential a.s.sa.s.sins 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 emba.s.sies. 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, j.a.pan, 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 Mitch.e.l.l. 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.

FIFTEEN.

Washington, D.C. Monday, D.C. Monday, 4:03 4:03 P.M. P.M.

Paul Hood arrived at the west wing of the White House at four o'clock. Even before he had finished pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.ky 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, pa.s.sed 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, white-haired 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 t.i.tus 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 can 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 a.s.sured 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 emba.s.sies of any of our top allies."

"Thanks," Hood said. "Let me know if you find out anything else."

Hood hung up. He put the phone back in his pocket. That was strange. The president had announced an intelligence initiative involving the United Nations, and one of the first missions the national security adviser visits belongs to Iran. As a sponsor of the kind of terrorism the United Nations opposed, that did not make sense.

The door to the Oval Office opened.

"Mrs. Leigh, would you do me a favor?" Hood said.

"Yes."

"Would you get me Jack Fenwick's itinerary in New York?"

"Fenwick? Why?"

"He's one of the reasons I asked you the question I did," Hood replied.

Mrs. Leigh looked at Hood. "All right. Do you want it while you're with the president?"

"As soon as possible," Hood said. "And when you get the file number, let me know what else is in the file. I don't need specific doc.u.ments, just dates when they were filed."

"All right," she said. "And Paul-what you asked before? I have noticed a change."

He smiled at her. "Thanks. If there's a problem, we're going to try and fix it quickly and quietly, whatever it is."

She nodded and sat at her computer as the vice president emerged from the Oval Office. Charles Cotten was a tall, stout man with a thin face and thinning gray hair. He greeted Paul Hood with a warm handshake and a smile but didn't stop to talk. Mrs. Leigh punched the phone intercom. The president answered. She told him that Paul Hood was here, and the president asked her to send him in. Hood went around the desk and walked into the Oval Office.

SIXTEEN.