Severe Clear sb-24

by Stuart Woods

  Severe Clear

  ( Stone Barrington - 24 )

  Stuart Woods

  Stuart Woods

  Severe Clear

  1

  Scott Hipp turned off I-295 South in Fort Meade, Maryland, at the dedicated exit entitled “NSA Employees Only” and drove to the mirrored black building that is the headquarters of the National Security Agency. The NSA was that part of the United States intelligence community responsible for communications surveillance and code-breaking, and Hipp was its deputy director for cryptology, so he could park in the underground garage instead of in one of the eighteen thousand parking spaces surrounding the building.

  Feeling smug that he would return to a cool automobile instead of those baking outside, he inserted his ID badge in the elevator panel and rode up to his office on the top floor, which he entered at the stroke of eight A.M., as he did every day. Four people awaited him at his conference table, drinking his coffee.

  Hipp set his briefcase on the conference table and sat down. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said without preamble.

  The four exchanged some glances and shuffled through their papers.

  Hipp watched them with satisfaction, since he knew they knew there was not much he didn’t know.

  “How about a cryptology joke?” asked one of them, removing a sheet of paper from a stack.

  “Amuse me,” Hipp said.

  “Overnight down at Fort Gordon, one of our computers picked up a twenty-two-second cell phone conversation between someone in Afghanistan and someone in Yemen. The conversation was too brief to pinpoint locations, and much of it was garbled. The funny part is that, in the middle of the conversation, two English words were clearly spoken: ‘the’ and ‘Arrington.’”

  “That is terribly amusing,” Hipp said with a straight face. “It’s also very common, since English is a worldwide language, and foreigners often use phrases from or fragments of English.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Does anyone at Fort Gordon, or for that matter, anyone here have any thoughts on what the words mean?”

  “Well,” the man said, “I Googled it and there were essentially four hits, among a lot of duplication: first, there’s some techie businessman named Arrington who’s apparently famous in that world; second, there’s an old Virginia family by that name; third, there’s an Arrington vineyard; and fourth, there’s a new hotel opening in Los Angeles called The Arrington. I like that one best because it has the ‘The’ in front of it.”

  “Tell me about the hotel,” Hipp said.

  “You remember the movie star Vance Calder, who was murdered some years back? The hotel is being built on the grounds of his former home, something like twenty acres, in Bel-Air, a top-scale residential community in L.A.”

  “Home of the Bel-Air Hotel, I believe,” Hipp replied.

  “Right,” the man said. “The hotel is being named for his widow, nee Arrington Carter, who herself was murdered early last year. Curiously, both Mr. and Mrs. Calder were murdered by former lovers.”

  “Any apparent significance there?” Hipp asked.

  “Not really, just a coincidence. The hotel is having a grand opening soon-apparently it’s a hot ticket out there.”

  “If it’s a hot ticket in L.A.,” Hipp observed, “there are probably not many invitations circulating in either Afghanistan or Yemen.”

  “That occurred to me, sir.”

  “In what language did the cell phone conversation take place?”

  “A combination of Urdu and Arabic. Not enough was captured to make any sense of it.”

  “All right,” Hipp said. “Put ‘The Arrington’ on the phraseology watchlist and let’s see if anything pops up. I don’t think a single mention of the name is grounds for any sort of alert at this point.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, scribbling a note on the message and setting it aside.

  The meeting went on for another hour, five men trying to find some evil intent in the overnight traffic. At nine-thirty, Hipp closed his briefcase and stood up. “I’m due at the White House at eleven,” he said. “You people finish up somewhere else. I need the office.”

  The four men shuffled out, and Hipp spent a few minutes going over calls and correspondence with his secretary.

  Hipp arrived at the White House at ten forty-five and was admitted to the cabinet room in the West Wing. By eleven there were eight representatives of other intelligence and security agencies present, and the president of the United States entered the room on time. Everyone stood, and he told them to sit, and the meeting began.

  An hour and twenty minutes later, the meeting broke, and Hipp went down to the White House Mess to get some lunch before driving back to Fort Meade. He chose a table by himself, but a moment later, the president’s chief of staff, Tim Coleman, walked up. “Hi, Scott, mind if I join you?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Hipp replied.

  “How’d your meeting go?”

  “Like most meetings-nothing monumental was decided. Sometimes I think all this agency cross-talk has gone too far.”

  “I know how you feel,” Coleman said. “That’s why I wasn’t there.”

  A Filipino waiter came with menus, and they ordered.

  A discussion of the troubles of Tiger Woods ensued, and the two men agreed that all the man had to do was to win a couple of tournaments and he’d be back on track. They were on coffee when Hipp, trying to keep the conversation going, told Coleman about the capture of two English words in a foreign telephone conversation.

  “What words?” Coleman asked.

  “‘The Arrington.’”

  Coleman looked at Hipp. “What do you think it means?”

  “Could be a new hotel about to open in L.A.,” Hipp said. “I put it on the phraseology watchlist, and we’ll see if it comes up again.”

  Coleman stood up. “I gotta get back to work, Scott. Good to see you.”

  “Same here, Tim.”

  Coleman turned to go, then stopped. “Say, let me know if your watchlist catches that phrase again, will you?”

  Hipp was about to ask why, but Coleman was already striding across the room.

  Tim Coleman went back to his office, and on the way in he said to one of his secretaries, “Get me the director of the Secret Service, please. Right now.”

  2

  Stone Barrington arrived at the offices of Strategic Services, his most important legal client, and was shown to a large conference room. A large object under a sheet dominated the table, and half a dozen men and women stood, chatting idly and drinking coffee.

  At the stroke of three P.M. Michael Freeman, chairman and CEO of Strategic Services, the world’s second-largest security firm, entered. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “please be seated.” Everyone found a chair.

  “I know most of you have already met, but let me take a moment to review. To my immediate right is Stone Barrington, legal counsel to Strategic Services, and the largest individual investor in the hotel. Strategic Services is, of course, a significant investor, as is Superlative Hotel Management, or Super, as we like to call it, and they are represented here by David Connor, CEO, to Stone’s right, and by Morton Kaplan, to my left, who is serving as the executive director of our hotel. At the other end of the table are Katie Rogers, Super’s marketing director, and Caroline Hugenot, the director of design for the hotel, and finally, Dick Trevor, who leads the architectural team for us.

  “I have one more introduction to make. Ladies and gentlemen, The Arrington.” Freeman took hold of the sheet covering the object on the table and, with a flourish, whipped it off, revealing a large model of the hotel. Everyone applauded.

  “I know you’ve all seen the place at some stage of the construction, bu
t this will be the first bird’s-eye view that any of us has seen, unless someone owns a helicopter I don’t know about.” Freeman produced a laser pointer and switched it on.

  “The front gate is here, of course, and the drive takes arrivals up the hill to the reception building, which is an expansion of the Vance Calder house and contains the reception desk, concierge staff, phone exchange, bell captain’s office with adjacent luggage storage space, and the executive offices. Behind that building, where the Calder pool once was, is the house built for Arrington Carter Barrington and her husband, Stone Barrington, and next to that is the former Calder guest house, now Cottage One.”

  Freeman continued to point out the new pool, the par-three, nine-hole golf course, the tennis courts, gymnasium, cottages, and buildings containing rooms for both guests and their traveling staffs. “Most of the parking is underground, leaving the roads and paths free for the electric carts that will transport guests and their luggage to their accommodations.

  “We have an indoor theater seating three hundred people and an outdoor amphitheater built into the hillside that seats fifteen hundred. There is a mini-mall here, containing a spa, hair salon, and eight top-end shops and boutiques. A guest who arrives having lost all his luggage can reequip himself or herself there in an hour or less.”

  Freeman pointed to two large cottages in a secluded corner of the property. “These are our two presidential cottages, and after weeks of diplomacy, negotiation, and security planning, I can finally divulge what most of you do not know: two days before our grand opening, the presidents of the United States and Mexico will meet to conduct final negotiations and the signing of a new trade and immigration treaty between the two countries, covering all sorts of things that you will read about in the newspapers. Additionally, both presidents will attend our grand opening celebration.

  “The Arrington is an ideal location for such a meeting, especially since it will not yet have any guests except Stone Barrington and his party, and I can assure you that between the United States Secret Service and the people of Strategic Services, there will be security rivaling that of the White House.”

  More applause and happy smiles.

  “There are two hundred suites, fifty rooms, three restaurants, and everything else a guest’s heart could desire. As you may know, Centurion Studios has underwritten the grand opening celebration, and they have taken twenty-five suites for that night. Many of their out-of-town guests will be staying on for some days. Centurion has also seen that the crowd attending the celebration will be a star-studded one. One thousand invitations were sent out all over this country and the world, and I’m told that there have been more than nine hundred acceptances. Before you ask, the invitation list is now closed, but then you all had the opportunity of inviting guests.

  “Now, I’d like to ask Mort Kaplan to take us through the schedule of events on opening day.”

  –

  K aplan stood up. He was a tall, slender, handsome man of around fifty in a Savile Row suit and a tan. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Kaplan took them, step by step, through the schedule of the opening day and gave them their suite assignments. “Since all of our guests will be arriving on the same day, I would be grateful if you could check into the hotel with your luggage the previous day. The Secret Service will have your names at the gate. We’ve rented a fleet of golf carts, which will bear our logo, to supplement our own fleet of electric vehicles, so that will help us deal with the rush. We will also have a dozen check-in stations at the front desk, instead of the usual four. Each guest will receive a rather expensive gift box and a packet of information, including a map of the property, table assignment for dinner, and other amenities.”

  Kaplan continued for most of an hour, then thanked everyone and sat down.

  “Thank you, Mort,” Freeman said. “That was very impressive, and I’m sure everything will go smoothly. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our meeting. I’m sure I’ll see you all at the grand opening.”

  The group chatted among themselves for a few minutes, then filed out and headed for the elevators. Mike Freeman tugged at Stone’s sleeve. “Stick around for a minute, will you?”

  “Sure, Mike.”

  Freeman closed the conference room door and waved Stone to a seat.

  “You’re looking very serious, Mike.”

  “I’m feeling very serious,” he replied.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I had a phone call this morning, a conference call, actually, with the director of the Secret Service, Howard Carroll, and the president’s chief of staff, Tim Coleman, whom I believe you know.”

  “I know Coleman, but not Carroll.”

  “They told me that an NSA computer recorded a cell phone conversation between someone in Afghanistan and someone in Yemen. Most of it was garbled, but the words ‘The Arrington’ in English were discernible.”

  “That’s disturbing,” Stone said, and he felt it.

  “Both the White House and the Secret Service feel that a single mention of the hotel’s name is not necessarily significant, and they’ve put the name on a kind of electronic watchlist to see if there’s any further chat about it. In the meantime, nobody is panicking-yet-but we’ve agreed that our security for the grand opening should be stepped up even above the present level. We’ve twenty-five of our people assigned to the event, and I’ve told them I would speak with you and request that another twenty-five of our agents be assigned, plus half a dozen more to serve in the security center, monitoring the hundred and fifty high-definition cameras we have installed around the property.”

  “I’m certainly agreeable to that and anything else you feel we need,” Stone said. “And I think we’re fortunate to have you as a principal in the hotel.”

  “Thank you, Stone, I’ll see to it. When I told the others that our security at the hotel is nearly at White House levels, I wasn’t kidding, and now we’re ratcheting it up a couple of notches. We’ve already made the perimeter of the property highly secure, and there are only four access points, which will be beefed up with concrete barriers. The Secret Service is now going to increase their number of agents, many of them armed with automatic weaponry, and they’re bringing in shoulder-fired Stinger ground-to-air missiles and distributing them at high points around the property, in case of an attack from the air. Every airport in Southern California will be alerted to the possibility of airplane rentals by foreign nationals. And every flight plan filed in the area will be checked against the watchlists.”

  “It sounds as though you’ve got it covered,” Stone said.

  “Tim Coleman has told me that Kate Rule, at the CIA, is sending out orders to every station to question all informants.”

  “I can’t think of anything you haven’t done,” Stone said.

  “Neither can I,” Mike said, “but I’m going to worry about it every day until this event is behind us.”

  “So am I,” Stone said.

  3

  Stone returned from his meeting at Strategic Services to find Kelli Keane waiting for him. He had completely forgotten the appointment.

  “Hello, Kelli,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’m sorry I’m late, a board meeting ran on a bit.” Kelli Keane was a former reporter with the Post who had quit to write magazine pieces. And a biography of Arrington. Stone was uneasy about talking to her, but she had made the point that he could help her be sure that what she had to say in the book was accurate.

  He seated her on the sofa and took a chair opposite, while Joan brought in a bottle of mineral water and two glasses. He certainly wasn’t going to drink while talking to her.

  “Lunch will be ready in a few minutes,” Joan said.

  Stone had also forgotten that their appointment was for lunch. “How can I help you?” he asked.

  “To begin with, I’d like to run through some chronology,” Kelli replied, “to get events in their proper order.”

  “All right.”

  “You met Arrington when?
”

  “Oh, many years ago, at a cocktail party. Her first words on being introduced to me were ‘We must never marry.’”

  Kelli laughed. “Oh, yes, ‘Arrington Barrington.’ How did you ever resolve that point?”

  “We ran through the options, and it seemed to her that ‘Arrington Carter Barrington’ worked, separating the two names just enough. This was after she had accepted my proposal.”

  “Why did it take you so long to marry?”

  “Pretty simple-she married someone else.”

  “And how did that happen?”

  “It was winter. We had planned a vacation bareboating in the Caribbean, on the island of St. Marks. We were to meet at the airport. I arrived first, it had begun to snow, and I was concerned that she might have trouble getting there. Finally, she called and said that the New Yorker had asked her to write a profile of the movie star Vance Calder, and that she had to meet with him, since he was returning to L.A. the following day. She promised to get a flight to St. Marks the next day.

  “I went ahead to the island, but my flight was the last one out before they closed the airport. Turns out, Arrington was snowed in in New York for several days, and so was Vance Calder. We were communicating by fax, this being before e-mail was prevalent and before St. Marks got good cellular service, and after a few days, I got a fax saying that she was going back to L.A. with Vance, and that it was over between us.”

  “Pity.”

  “Yes, I had bought a ring and was going to pop the question.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Well, yes. Took me a while to get over that.”

  “And by that time, Arrington was pregnant?”

  Stone froze; she had boxed him in, and this was a question he did not want to address. “It happens to married people.”

  “It also happens to unmarried people,” Kelli said, “and to people who have not yet decided to marry.”