Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)

by Clancy, Tom

  “A fisheye lens,” Hood said.

  “Colloquially, yes,” Viens replied. “Elevator security uses either regular or wide-angle lenses, depending on the size of the carriage, the lighting in the corners, and whether the hot spot for crime is in the doorway or in the corners. There are also privacy issues about camera placement. Some counties will only allow a straight-down view on the top of the head. The way our lady is standing, the brim of the hat is positioned to block as much of the camera’s view as possible.”

  “I’m still not sure what you’re saying,” Hood told him. “Wouldn’t you stand the same way regardless of the lens?”

  “No,” Viens said. “A regular lens would not have fattened the brim to cover the nose this way. It’s very likely that our assassin saw actual security images generated by this camera.”

  While the men spoke, Mae Won made a phone call.

  “And it probably was not Ms. Kendra Peterson,” Stoll declared. The thumbnail 3-D constructs were complete, along with the superimpositions. There were some two-dozen pictures. Stoll set up a slide-show presentation of the full-size images. “There is a match total of six percent based on available security cam viewing surface of seven percent of her anatomy.”

  “Does that mean there is not enough to go on or that she is not the one?” Hood asked.

  “It isn’t her,” Stoll declared. “We have a series of click points,” he said. He used the cursor to highlight parts of the visible physiognomy. “There are small bulges in bone, cartilage, flesh, even minute wrinkles. Some of them we can see, some of them we can extrapolate from the shadows. Ninety-four percent of these two faces is dissimilar in just the small area we can see. Unless she had facial surgery, the woman in the elevator can’t be Ms. Peterson. And she did not have surgery, since I took a few of the older images that Bugs sent over and compared them to the lady at the press conference this morning. Those are identical.”

  “Mr. Hood?” Mae Won said.

  “Yes?”

  “Hay-Adams security says they only save those camera images for two days,” the young woman said as she hung up the phone. “They already did their own comparison of the images. I thought if we scanned that picture library we might see which of the women went to the hotel.”

  “Can’t we find out who visited the security office?” Stoll asked. “Politicians have benefits in the hotel ballroom. They must send advance security teams to check out the cameras.”

  “Actually, Darrell has already looked into that,” Hood said. “The Hay-Adams does not keep a record of visits by Congressional advance staff. Even if they did, that might not help us. There could be a chain of people involved in passing information to the actual assassin.”

  “Including Ms. Peterson, if she is involved in any of the senator’s security,” Stoll pointed out.

  “Possibly,” Hood agreed.

  The phone beeped. Mae Won answered it. “Sir, it’s for you,” she said to Hood. “It’s Bugs.”

  “Tell him I’ll be back in a minute,” Hood said. “Matt, we still need to ID the woman in the photographs. Is there any way to construct a face from what we have? Bone structure from the chin, a jawline, anything?”

  Stoll shook his head. “Not with any software I have.”

  “What about mug shots?” Viens asked. “The FBI has a file online. It might be worth comparing the chin we have with those.”

  “We might as well, though I don’t think our assassin is a contract killer,” Hood said.

  “Why not?” Viens asked.

  “Because they were too smart to end up on a camera,” Hood said. “I doubt they have ever been inside a police station.”

  “This is weak,” said a voice from behind.

  Hood turned. Bob Herbert was in the doorway.

  “What is weak, Bob?” Hood asked amiably. This was not the time to get defensive. Herbert was still in a volatile mode, and they had a case to solve.

  “I’ve been sitting here listening to you guys play Junior Crimestoppers.” Herbert rolled his wheelchair into the office. “You should have folded your intelligence chief into this, people. I’ve known hookers who were too smart to get caught on security cameras. That doesn’t de facto make them potential assassins.”

  “Our intelligence chief removed himself from circulation yesterday,” Hood remarked. “I thought it was best to let him return on his own. I’m glad he has. What’s your take, then?”

  “I talked to Darrell a few minutes ago, and my take is simple,” Herbert said. “The killer has to fit two criteria. Otherwise, he isn’t the killer. First, who stands to gain by Wilson’s death? Second, who has the chops to pull it off? The only guy we have on that short list is Link. That leaves us two options. One: we waste resources looking for people who may also fit the criteria. Or two: we lean on Link with everything we can muster. Squeeze him like a lemon and see if we get juice. If not, then we move on.”

  “How would you squeeze him?” Hood asked.

  “Thanks for asking,” Herbert said. “We have to do what we used to do with suspected moles or double agents. We go right up and say, ‘We think you’re a rat. We’re gonna be all over you until you crack.’ Invariably, they look to get the heat off themselves. I believe these guys did that once by killing Robert Lawless. If we lean on Link, he’ll either do that again or shut his operation down. In any case, he’ll have to contact his cohorts to do that. When he does, we’ll be all over them.”

  The room was emphatically silent.

  “Who would make that call?” Hood asked.

  “Darrell just did,” Herbert replied. “That’s why Bugs was calling you. To tell you that Darrell was on the line.”

  “It was the right decision,” Hood remarked.

  “He knew you’d think so,” Herbert said.

  “What did Link say?”

  “He thinks you’re desperate, and this proves it,” Herbert replied. “Darrell told Link he was wrong. It was all the usual back-and-forth up-front bluster. Just like the United Nations. The real work is going to take place behind the scenes. Darrell has Maria on the way to help. Matt’s poking around computer files to find out more on Stone.”

  “Sounds good,” Hood said.

  “Yeah. Thanks. I’ll let you know what turns up,” Herbert said.

  The intelligence chief turned and left the room. Hood let him go without comment. The silence was even deeper now. Hood broke it by thanking the team and leaving. Stoll hurried after him.

  “Chief?” Stoll said.

  Hood turned. “Yes, Matt?”

  “Bob was a little out of line there—you handled that well.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But the truth is we’re hearing a lot of conflicting things about Op-Center and the CIOC,” Stoll said.

  “Hearing from whom?”

  “Okay, we’re not actually hearing it,” Stoll said. “We’re sort of hacking it from Company and FBI internal E-mail.”

  “They should have used Mr. Wilson’s firewalls,” Hood said.

  “They do,” Stoll said.

  “And you broke through?”

  “Not exactly,” Stoll told him. “There’s a serious flaw in MasterLock, one that hackers would have had to plan ahead to exploit. Two years ago I sent E-mails to the agencies with a virus. A time bomb. What it does is lurk in the software and reset it to a previous systems checkpoint on my command. It’s like sending the computer into the past for as long as I need, then restoring the current programs. If someone is on the computer, they are unlikely to notice.”

  “Matt, that’s brilliant.”

  “Thanks. I figured the best way around increasingly sophisticated firewalls was to go in before they were raised. The point is, according to internal E-mails, there are folks who say we’re grandstanding by working on this Wilson thing, and others who say we’re going down and desperate for attention.”

  “Neither of those is true,” Hood said.

  “Then what is true?”

  “We were downsized,
period,” Hood told him. “Right now I’m working to see if we can’t get some of our assets restored.”

  “Oh? What are the odds?”

  “Pretty fair,” Hood said. “I’ll let all the department heads know when I have more information.”

  “Sweet. We could use a lift.”

  Hood gave the younger man’s shoulder a squeeze, then went back to his office. He had never felt so torn in his life. His position made him unavailable for office gossip, let alone the gossip of other offices. Nor had Op-Center ever been a place where workers had a reason to gripe. There had been sadness and setbacks, but always due to missions. There was never a sense that the organization itself was in jeopardy. Certainly no one ever believed that Op-Center would be blindsided by the CIOC and other government agencies. Like Paul Hood, the National Crisis Management Center was the golden child of intelligence.

  They thought.

  Hood reached his office and shut the door. He stood inside, staring at his desk. If Hood accepted the president’s offer, he would be participating in the spoils system he had always fought. His guiding principle would not necessarily be what was right but what was right for Op-Center. He would no longer be Pope Paul, as Herbert and the others sometimes called him in jest, but Apostate Paul.

  But was anything so clear cut anymore? It did not matter whether the president was right or wrong about the threat Senator Orr represented. That was psychological spin-doctoring. What mattered was hanging on to men like Matt Stoll and Darrell McCaskey. Hood would not like everything the new NCMC was asked to do. But this was not about his comfort zone. This was about preserving enough of Op-Center so that their important primary mission of crisis management could continue.

  Hood went to the phone to call Senator Debenport. He would agree to the terms Debenport and the president had presented. He would ask for guarantees, not to be made an ambassador but to protect the existing staff.

  He would make his deal with the devil.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 11:50 A.M.

  Kenneth Link sat alone in the conference room, reviewing a computer file of layout plans for the convention floor. Eric Stone had E-mailed a suggestion for the location of the podium. He felt the stand should be moved fifteen yards closer to the north side of the convention center. That put the speakers closer to the right when people entered the arena through the main gate. Link felt the change was gimmicky and declined to approve it.

  Or maybe Link was just being contrary. He was not sure. The interview with Darrell McCaskey had left him in a sour mood. It had not gone the way he had anticipated. The admiral believed that by being forthright about his team and his dislike of Wilson, he would convince McCaskey of his innocence. Instead, something about their talk had caused Op-Center to harden its position. Link was a naval officer and a former head of covert operations for the CIA. He would not permit the tinsel-eyed former mayor of Los Angeles to hunt him. Or, even worse, to judge him.

  Throughout his career, Link had always found the struggle between need and protocol, between expediency and restraint difficult to rectify. Right and wrong are subjective. Legal and illegal are objective. When the two forces are in conflict, which one should be followed? Especially when a legal wrong has the potential to rectify countless moral wrongs.

  Link invariably put self-determination above regulations, which meant honoring right above legal. It meant more than that, though. Working in national defense was not a job for the fearful. It also was not a job for the unprepared. A man needed resources. Fortunately, Link had them. He was loyal to people, and people were loyal to him.

  This matter of William Wilson should never have become the problem it was. Everything had been done the right way and for the right reasons. Looking under the man’s tongue was on the medical examiner’s checklist, but the tiny needle left no obvious trauma in the soft, veinal undertissue. Only someone who knew that anatomy well would have picked it up. Wilson’s death should have been news for two days. After that, he would have been fodder for the weekly news magazines and monthly financial magazines for an issue or two. Most importantly, his banking scheme would have been forgotten. Others could have moved in with different opportunities for investors. Domestic opportunities that would be part of the USF platform. A program based on investments in American technology, manufacturing, and resources. A program that would have put money into the economy and given citizens deep and extensive tax benefits.

  A program that would have really put the United States First Party on the political map.

  In all their planning, no one had ever imagined that an intelligence service would get involved. Until this morning, Link had not thought they would stay in this for more than another day. He had thought the hiring of Mike Rodgers would discourage them, and the publicity about opportunism would be embarrassing. He had obviously underestimated Paul Hood. Link did not know if the investigation was a result of the man’s fabled idealism, Hollywood-bred narcissism, or a combination of both. Regardless, the admiral could not let it get in his own way. There were still actions to be taken, and Op-Center would interfere.

  There was a point in intelligence and military operations when there was no longer any benefit to being clandestine. When a covert assassination fails, the strategy must shift to a Bay of Pigs scenario—albeit one that is designed to work. When the so-called architect group reaches that point, the question is no longer whether people suspect you did it but whether they can prove it.

  Kenneth Link went to a floor cabinet in the far corner of the conference room. There was a safe inside. He opened it and removed a STU-3—a Secure Telephone Unit, third generation. He jacked the all-white phone into a socket behind a regular office phone on the conference table. The STU-3 looked like a normal desk set but with a cryptoignition key that initiated secure conversations. This model interfaced with compatible cell phones, which is what he was calling now.

  Bold action had to be taken. The action would be condemned, but it would also discourage others from pursuing Link. The police would look elsewhere for the Hypo-Slayer, as the media had taken to calling it. Before long, the investigation would all but disappear. The killer would not be found. The public would lose interest.

  Besides, there would be other news to replace it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Washington, D. C. Tuesday, 12:10 P.M.

  Mike Rodgers felt like Philip Nolan in The Man Without a Country. Whereas Edward Everett Hale’s protagonist had been exiled for his part in the treasonous activities of Aaron Burr, Rodgers felt as if he had been banished by timing and circumstance. He was still employed by Op-Center, which had betrayed its charter. The general believed that Paul Hood was pursuing what the military described as a directed service agenda. That was a program masquerading as patriotism that was designed to help the branch itself, like starting a war to test new weapons or burn through old ordnance. Op-Center had a marginally legitimate reason to look into Wilson’s death. Now they were pursuing it beyond that original mandate for self-serving reasons. Ironically, part of Rodgers understood those reasons. It had obviously hurt Hood to ask for Rodgers’s resignation. He wanted to make sure there were no more firings. But part of Mike Rodgers also wanted to go to Op-Center and call Hood out, challenge him for the sludge he was flinging on Rodgers’s new employer.

  Instead, Rodgers sat down with Kat Lockley and Kendra Peterson and reviewed the plans for the convention as well as Senator Orr’s platform. Now and then, they solicited Rodgers’s opinion. The women were responsive to the handful of suggestions he made. The staff had spent so long knocking ideas around just between themselves, they were happy to have a new set of eyes. The experience was a good one for Rodgers. It was nice to be heard.

  When the meeting was over, Rodgers asked Kat Lockley to lunch. She said she could get away in about a half hour. Rodgers said he would wait for her on Delaware Avenue. That lifted his spirits even more. At Op-Center, he had to remain detached from the women because he was the
number-two man. He did not want to be emotionally involved with someone he might have to overrule or send into combat. It was pleasant to get in there and push around ideas, especially among young women who had energy and fresh ideas. And, yes, killer smiles. Bob Herbert had once described a meeting with young women at some university mock think tank as “PC.”

  “Not politically correct,” Herbert said. “Pleasantly coercive.”

  This meeting was definitely PC.

  On the way out, Rodgers bumped into Admiral Link. The future vice presidential candidate did not look happy.

  “Is your friend Mr. McCaskey usually so bullheaded?” Link asked. “I don’t mean that meeting,” he added. “McCaskey called back to tell me we were going to see some rising tide on this investigation.”

  “What?” Rodgers said. “That doesn’t sound like Darrell at all. Someone must be holding his feet to the flame.”

  “Is Hood usually this reckless?” Link asked.

  Rodgers shook his head firmly. “This budget crisis must have really shaken him up. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “I don’t think so—”

  “I don’t mind,” Rodgers said. “I was thinking about going over there anyway and kicking up dust.”

  “No,” Link said. “Hood is going to do what he wants. Let him. Why fight a battle we’re going to win anyway?”

  “Because I’ve got rockets in the launcher, and I’ve flipped open the safety cover,” Rodgers said.

  Link smiled. “Save them for the campaign, General. This is a sideshow. That’s all it is.”

  Rodgers reluctantly agreed. There were times when he simply wanted to engage the enemy, and this was one of those times. Link thanked him for his support and went to see Kendra. Rodgers walked out to Delaware Avenue, sat on a bench, and let the sunshine wash over him. It was amazing how different the same sun felt in different parts of the world. It was searing in the deserts of the Southwest where he had once trained a mechanized brigade, impotent in the Himalayas, slimy in the humid Diamond Mountains of North Korea. It was full of warmth and vitamins in the South American plains, an outright enemy in the Middle East, and comforting here, like freshly brewed tea. Individuals and institutions had almost as many colors as the sun. Everything depended on the place, the day, and the circumstances.