Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Sea Of Fire Part 2

"I'd be honored to take it personally," Coffey said.

"Your keynote speech in Brisbane last year was not in his nightstand reading stack, I'm sure," Penny said. "But I do believe his disinterest is spread across the entire organization."

Ellsworth was chief solicitor for the Australian Maritime Intelligence Centre. Based in Darwin, Northern Territory, the MIC was the first line of defense against illegal aliens trying to make their way into Australia. They maintained that nationals who desired amnesty typically defected to foreign emba.s.sies in their own countries. As far as Ellsworth was concerned, every boat, plane, or raft that came through the back door carried drugs, smugglers, or terrorists. According to ARRO's research, just over 65 percent of those craft did. The other 35 percent transported people who were poor, terrified, and searching for a less oppressed life. The "Australia first" MIC had a great deal of influence in parliament. By law, illegal immigrants were typically returned to their point of origin within twenty-four hours. ARRO and the MIC were constantly fighting one another for a way to make the process more equitable.

As Penny spoke, her cell phone beeped. The young woman excused herself and answered it.

"It could be the baby-sitter," she said apologetically. She punched the hands-free phone that was bracketed to the dashboard. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mrs. Masterson?" asked a man's voice.

"This is she."

"Mrs. Masterson, is Mr. Lowell Coffey with you?"

"I'm Lowell Coffey," the attorney said. "Who is this?"

"Sir, this is Junior Seaman Brendan Murphy in the command of Warrant Officer George Jelbart, MIC," the young man replied. "I have your name from Mr. Brian Ellsworth. Sir, Warrant Officer Jelbart was wondering if you might have some free time today."

"I'm here for a conference," Coffey replied.

"Yes, sir, we know."

"What did Mr. Jelbart have in mind?" Coffey asked.

"A flight to Darwin," Murphy replied.

"That's clear across the continent!" Coffey declared. "Why does he need to see me?"

"We have a situation, sir," the officer replied. "One that he needs to discuss with you face-to-face."

"What kind of situation?" Coffey asked.

"A hot hot one, sir," the caller replied gravely. one, sir," the caller replied gravely.

The way the MIC officer emphasized hot hot led Coffey to believe that he was not referring to the temperature or an imminent event. That left just one interpretation. led Coffey to believe that he was not referring to the temperature or an imminent event. That left just one interpretation.

"There are some people I should talk to before I agree to anything," Coffey said, glancing at Penny.

"We are a little squeezed for time," Murphy said. "You are the first and hopefully only call I'm making about this."

"If I decide to come, when can you arrange for transportation?"

"A P-3C patrol craft has been dispatched to Sydney Airport, Mr. Coffey," the caller replied. "It will arrive within the hour. As I said, sir, the warrant officer would like to talk to you in person."

Penny and Coffey exchanged looks. She tapped the Mute b.u.t.ton.

"That doesn't sound like an invitation," she said.

"No," Coffey agreed. It sounded like an order.

"What do you want to do?" she asked.

"That doesn't seem to matter, does it?" he asked.

"Why not?" she asked. "You're a civilian and an American. You can tell the junior seaman, 'No thanks,' and hang up."

"Then I wouldn't find out why Ellsworth recommended they call," Coffey said. "I have a feeling the MIC is interested in talking to Op-Center, not just to Lowell Coffey."

"What makes you say that?" Penny asked.

"I'd rather not say until I'm sure," Coffey replied. It was not that he did not trust Penny. But he was an attorney. A cautious one. He did not like to say anything he did not believe or know to be true.

Coffey disengaged the Mute b.u.t.ton.

"Where will the plane be waiting?" Coffey asked.

"If you go to the domestic cargo terminal, someone will meet you," the caller said.

"All right," Coffey said. "I'll be there."

"Thank you, sir," the junior seaman said. "I'll inform the warrant officer."

And Coffey would inform Hood.

He apologized to Penny. She said that she understood completely. He said that he hoped he would be back soon.

In his heart, though, he sensed that would not be the case. Especially if "hot" meant what he thought it did.

FIVE.

Darwin, Australia Thursday, 8:42 A.M.

Fifty-two-year-old Warrant Officer George Wellington Jelbart had seen and experienced many extraordinary things in his thirty-two years of service in the Royal Australian Navy.

Jelbart spent his first twelve years of military service with the Hydrographic Force. Based in Wollongong, just south of Sydney, he and his team constantly updated charts of the 30,000 kilometers of Australia's coastline as well as adjoining waters. He loved being out in ships and planes, producing maps that covered nearly one sixth of the world's surface. Even when his team was caught in a tropical cyclone, a category five hurricane, or a tsunami, he relished the work he was doing. As his naval officer father once described it, "The Navy puts muscle in your back. Danger keeps it strong."

The next nine years were radically different and much less muscular. Because Jelbart was so familiar with the geography surrounding Australia, Deputy Chief of Navy Jonathan Smith moved him to the Directorate of Naval Intelligence. That was during the 1980s, when the influx of j.a.panese businessmen and investors brought an influx of j.a.panese criminals. There, in a windowless office, Jelbart helped signal personnel pinpoint the direction and location of broadcasts coming from local waters and surrounding nations. He did that out of duty, not love. Finally, on his fortieth birthday, Jelbart requested a transfer. He needed to be back on the sea or at least in the sunlight. Smith agreed to a compromise. He gave Jelbart a promotion and shifted him to the Maritime Intelligence Centre. There, the newly minted warrant officer would be out-of-doors and dealing with a wider range of illegal activities than he had in his previous posts.

That was where Jelbart encountered the unexpected on a weekly basis. Some of it was heartbreaking. There were the Malaysian slavers who abducted Aborigine children via cargo plane. There were refugees from war-ravaged East Timor who were dropped offsh.o.r.e using World War II-surplus parachutes. Most of them were young. All of them were inexperienced jumpers. Fifty of the sixty-seven of them drowned. There were the Australian drug traffickers who used surfboards with high-tech listening devices to spy on MIC aircraft. Jelbart had even investigated sea-monster sightings in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Those turned out to be Chinese submarines conducting maneuvers.

But in all his years in the Royal Australian Navy, the sandy-haired, six-foot-four-inch Brisbane native had never heard anything like this. The implications were chilling.

Jelbart had arrived at his office in the Australian Central Credit Union Building, 36 Mitch.e.l.l Street, at seven A.M. Throughout the early 1990s he had arrived early to hear phone messages and go through the mail. Since the late 1990s he had to come to the office early to slog through E-mails. If he could eliminate the E-mails from fellow officers who were compelled to forward bad jokes, he could do the job in an hour. Unfortunately, he had to open every correspondence on the off chance it had something to do with naval matters.

Shortly after Jelbart arrived, the phone beeped. His aide, Junior Seaman Brendan Murphy, answered. Murphy forwarded the call. It was from Captain Ronald Trainor of the Freemantle-cla.s.s patrol boat Suffolk Suffolk. They had found a man floating in the Banda Sea twelve miles east of Celebes.

"The fellow was barely conscious and clinging to a section of waterlogged pine," Trainor reported. "He's dehydrated and lost a lot of blood. He had been shot twice in the lower legs and managed to rig some crude bandages from his shirt. We a.s.sume he's a pirate whose mission ended badly."

"That's a possibility," Jelbart said.

Jelbart was confused. This was a routine rescue on international waters. It did not require the ship's captain to report to him personally.

"But what drew us to him was extremely unusual," the captain went on.

Jelbart grew concerned as Trainor explained. What they found was not only unusual, it was inexplicable. The warrant officer wanted a complete investigation. Trainor told him that they would search for the rest of the vessel and crew, as well as whoever attacked them. In the meantime, the injured man was going to be airlifted to the Royal Darwin Hospital along with the remnants of his vessel. Jelbart said that he would meet the helicopter there to take charge of the evidence and arrange for security. When he hung up, Jelbart realized that he would also have to notify Chief Solicitor Brian Ellsworth. Ostensibly, the Banda Sea castaway was being brought to Darwin for medical care. But Captain Trainor's other discovery made that a secondary issue from the MIC's point of view. The man had to be questioned. There were complex legal issues surrounding the interrogation of a foreign national recovered in international waters.

Ellsworth was in the shower when Jelbart called. The civilian official lived with his newscaster wife in the exclusive La Grande Residence on Knuckey Street.

At the warrant officer's insistence, Mrs. Ellsworth summoned him to the phone. Jelbart explained the situation as it had been explained to him. The forty-three-year-old solicitor thought for a minute before replying.

"I will meet you at the hospital," Ellsworth replied. "But there is someone else I would like you to call."

"Who?"

"A gentleman named Lowell Coffey," Ellsworth said. "He is in Sydney for a conference on international civil rights."

"That's the ARRO symposium?"

"Yes," Ellsworth said. "Mr. Coffey works for the National Crisis Management Center in Washington."

"Op-Center? Do we really want a foreign intelligence service involved in this?" Jelbart asked.

"We want the NCMC for three reasons," Ellsworth told him. "First, we'll want to get a very quick read on this situation. The NCMC can help us. Second, one of their best people is already in Australia. I don't agree with his politics, but he is smart and well-informed. Finally, holding this shipwrecked alien could backfire. Especially if the explanation turns out to be something very innocent. If that happens, we have someone to share the blame."

That last was not entirely honorable, Jelbart thought, but the solicitor did have a point. Jelbart thought, but the solicitor did have a point.

Ellsworth had told Jelbart how to get in touch with Lowell Coffey. He was to call Penny Masterson, who was Mr. Coffey's host for the ARRO conference. The warrant officer pa.s.sed the information to Brendan Murphy. Jelbart also told Murphy to dispatch a plane to Sydney. If the American agreed to come, Jelbart did not want to waste any time.

While the junior seaman made the calls, Jelbart composed an E-mail explaining the situation. He sent the message coded Level Alpha to Rear Admiral Ian Carrick at Royal Australian Navy headquarters in Canberra. The Level Alpha clearance guaranteed that only the rear admiral would see it. When that was finished, Jelbart checked his computer to see what appointments he would have to cancel today. And possibly tomorrow. He hoped this took no longer.

If it did, what Jelbart hoped was just an incident could turn out to be a crisis.

SIX.

Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 7:33 P.M.

"What do we know about the hair up Shigeo Fujima's nose?" Paul Hood asked.

Hood, Bob Herbert, and Mike Rodgers were sitting in Hood's office. It was the end of an uneventful day in the middle of an uneventful week. As much as Hood had often wished his plate were not so full, he felt restless when it was empty. Especially since he did not have a family to go home to. Ironically, it was his overpacked schedule that had cost him his family.

Paul Hood's question hung in the air like a high, arching fly ball. Shigeo Fujima was the head of the j.a.panese Intelligence and a.n.a.lysis Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fujima had helped Op-Center resolve a recent crisis in Botswana without explaining why he knew what he knew. Or why he was interested. That did not sit well with Hood. Especially since the young officer was not returning Hood's calls.

"We know nothing," Herbert replied, finally calling the catch.

"What have we done to find out?" Hood asked.

"Last time I checked, which was about two hours ago, everyone in the tech lab, including Matt Stoll, had been unable to get into the IAB computers," Herbert went on. "Stoll says that all the files we want to look at are apparently in dedicated systems."

"I'm not surprised," Hood said. "The IAB does not play well with others." Daphne Connors's sandbox reference popped into his head. Maybe the woman had something there after all.

"Do we want to send someone to Tokyo?" Rodgers asked. "Check the files after hours?"

General Rodgers had recently established a human intelligence team at Op-Center. It consisted of international operatives who had worked with Op-Center in the past. Three of the members had distinguished themselves on the inaugural mission to Botswana.

"Who would you a.s.sign?" Hood asked.

"I've been talking to the guys we worked with during the Korean missile crisis," Rodgers said. "They gave me the names of people they have used. I talked to several of them. One in particular seems a good candidate. Bibari Hirato. She's based in Tokyo."

"This makes me nervous. What's she got against her own country?" Herbert asked.

"j.a.pan isn't her country," Rodgers said.

"I see," Herbert said.

"Bibari is the daughter of a Korean comfort woman. Her father is one of three or four hundred j.a.panese sol.diers who used her early in the war. Bibari's mother gave her a j.a.panese name so she could go over if she chose to."

"And mess with them," Herbert said.

"In a word, yeah," Rodgers said.

"Objection withdrawn," Herbert said.

"Mike, why don't we have Bob run a check on her?" Hood said. "If she's clean from our point of view, let's do it."

"It was on the to-do list for tomorrow," Rodgers said.

As the men were chatting, Hood's phone beeped. Hood's a.s.sistant, Bugs Benet, said Lowell Coffey was calling from Australia.

"Thanks," Hood said.

"What time is it there?" Herbert asked.

"Late tomorrow morning," Rodgers said.

"Too early for Lowell to have p.i.s.sed off anyone at a breakfast meeting," Herbert said.