Clancy, Tom - Op Center 09 - Mission of Honor

by Mission of Honor [lit]

  "No," Hood replied. "Not a thing."

  There was a short silence. Hood had learned to read the silences of foreign officials. It meant that they did not believe the last thing you had said, but they were too diplomatic to tell you so.

  Having made his point, Kline thanked them all again and hung up.

  "Yeah, friend. We're gonna tell you that we let Dhamballa walk off into the sunset," Herbert muttered.

  "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure we did the right thing there," McCaskey said.

  "We established our mission parameters, and we stuck to them. Our people are safe, and they're coming home. We did the right thing," Rodgers declared with finality.

  "We also lost an opportunity to establish close ties with the Botswana government," McCaskey pointed out. "In the end, that kind of relationship can prove extremely useful."

  "Especially if it turns out that something else is going on in that region," Herbert said.

  "Then we would have had to tell them why we were there and how we got in," Hood reminded them.

  "That would not be a basis for establishing trust," Rodgers said.

  "Trust is not a factor in this, Mike," McCaskey said. "Need is a factor. If they need us, the rest is irrelevant."

  "We can go to the Botswanans when this done, make fresh overtures," Hood said. He winked at McCaskey. Things had gotten tense again between the former G-man and Rodgers. Hood wanted to take the edge off. "You can do that when you go to collect Maria. Make it a belated honeymoon."

  "That would be nice," McCaskey admitted.

  "What would be nice is figuring out where the Japanese fit in all this," Herbert said.

  "We also have to get that information out somehow," Coffey said. "Let people know that the Brush Vipers did not kill the bishop. I don't know if I sympathize with Dhamballa and Leon Seronga. I certainly don't like what they did. But they should not take the rap for something they did not do."

  "I agree with you one hundred percent," Hood said. "We have to try to clear them and at the same time gather evidence about how and why the Japanese are tied to this."

  "What a time to not have a press department," Herbert remarked. "Ann would have come up with some good ways to leak this."

  "My staff can handle whatever needs to be presented to the media," Coffey remarked.

  "Yeah, but Ann Farris had panache," Herbert said. "She presented things to the media from ten different directions. From here, through the newspapers, on radio talk shows. It was a coordinated assault."

  "Bob, we'll figure out how to do it," Hood said.

  "Maybe Ann will consult," Herbert suggested.

  "We'll get it done," Hood assured him. He looked away. He did not want to think about Ann Farris. That was both a personal and a professional issue. He had no time for it right now.

  The phone beeped. Hood grabbed it. "This is Hood," he said.

  "Paul, it's Aideen."

  'Talk to me, Aideen!" Hood said.

  "We made it," she told him. "We are in Maun."

  Hood did not realize how tense his shoulders were until they relaxed. The others in the room cheered.

  "Did you hear that?" Hood asked.

  "I did," she said.

  "How are you?" Hood asked. "Where are you?"

  "Paris dropped us at a hotel-the Sun and Casino. There are rooms. We're taking one." . "*

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  OP-CENTER

  "Be our guest," Hood said.

  "We will be," Aideen replied.

  "Everyone come through all right?" Hood asked.

  "We're tired, but that's it," she said. "Hold on. Maria would like to talk to her husband."

  Hood punched off the speaker. He transferred the call to McCaskey's station. The other men rose. They left the Tank to give McCaskey some privacy.

  Coffey and Herbert left to go home. Rodgers turned to go. Hood lay an arm on his shoulder.

  "You did a great job, Mike," Hood said. "Thank you."

  "They did it," he said, pointing to the Tank. "The people overseas."

  "You picked them, you sold them on it, you ran it," Hood said. "You did a helluva job. This is going to work. The human intelligence team is going to knock some heads together out there."

  "I believe you're right about that, anyway," Rodgers replied.

  "Go home," Hood told him. "Get some rest. We'll need it for the wrap-up tomorrow."

  Rodgers nodded and left. Hood noticed that, tired as Rodgers was, his shoulders were strong and straight, just as they must have been when he was a recruit at the age of nineteen.

  As Hood was about to leave, McCaskey emerged. He looked like a kid on the night before Christmas.

  "Good talk?" Hood asked.

  "Yeah," McCaskey said. "Real good. Maria sounds absolutely drained but satisfied."

  "She should be," Hood said. "They did an amazing job over there."

  "She wants to come home as soon as possible," McCaskey went on. "I'm going to fly to London and collect my wife."

  "Great," Hood said. He felt a stab of sadness. He was going to go home to an empty apartment.

  McCaskey's eyes became wistful. "Listen, I'm sorry about the way I've been acting since this started. It hit a primo sore spot-"

  "Don't apologize," Hood said. "I've got 'em, too. We all

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  do." He smiled. "The important thing, Darrell, is that we learned something very important."

  "What's that?" McCaskey asked.

  "How not to engage HUMINT operatives in the future," Hood replied.

  McCaskey smiled and left. Hood went back to his warm office. He took an old fan from the closet, set it on the floor beside his chair, angled it up, and turned it on. It felt good. If he shut his eyes, he could imagine he was on the beach in Carlsbad, California, where he used to go with young Harleigh and Alexander. They would stroll along the miles-long concrete seawall, occasionally going down to the beach to sit, drink, or watch for dolphins.

  Where did those breezy, innocent days go? How did he end up alone? How did he land in the windowless basement of an old military building, leading a team of military officials, diplomats, and intelligence officers, trying to put out fires around the world?

  You wanted to get out of politics but still do something important, he reminded himself.

  Well, Paul Hood got that. He also got the pressures and demands that came with that challenge.

  Yet there is also deep, deep satisfaction, he had to admit. And this moment was one of them.

  But now it was time to get back to work. Before Hood left for the night, he wanted to send Emmy Feroche an E-mail to thank her for her help and tell her not to worry about Stiele, for now. Then, after a long night's sleep, there was a conversation he had to try to have. A chat with the man who probably knew much more about this situation than he had let on: Shigeo Fujima. Hood suspected that, at best, the conversation would go something like the talk with Edgar Kline. On topic without being particularly illuminating.

  Only this time, it would be Paul Hood generating those carefully measured pauses.

  SIXTY-SIX

  Tokyo, Japan Monday, 3:18 P.M.

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  The red telephone beeped in Shigeo Fujima's office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  The head of the Intelligence and Analysis Bureau had no intention of answering it. Not unless the call came in on his private black line. Fujima was waiting to hear some very specific information. Without that information, other conversations were not relevant. Nor were they of any interest at the moment. Fujima's deputies could handle those.

  The young, clean-cut intelligence officer was smoking an unfiltered cigarette. He sat with the phone headset resting on his head as he looked at a map of Botswana on his computer. The map was marked with symbols signifying copper, coal, nickel, and diamond mines. China produced a great deal of coal. But those other assets would have been useful to them. The map was also marked with red flag
s. Those were targets he had hit. One at the airport in Maun. The other, a psy-ops strike, at Dhamballa's camp in the Okavango Swamp. His people had used a laptop to re-create Seronga's voice, using taped radio communiques. Communiques that also enabled them to pick up the password. Then they had broadcast their own message to Dhamballa, that Seronga had been the one who killed the American bishop.

  That had put doubt in Dhamballa's mind about the loyalty of Leon Seronga. If the Botswanans had not brought Dhamballa down, Fujima had to make certain that the cult itself was unstable. The Vodunists could not have been allowed to succeed with what they were planning.

  Now, just two things remained:

  First was to make sure that both the Europeans failed. That was an easier task.

  Then there were the Chinese. That would take more time, but it must be done. Beijing and Taipei were an even greater threat.

  The outside line kept beeping. Fujima used one cigarette to light another. He looked at his watch. It was about eight A.M. in Botswana. The operatives should have reached the target by now. They tracked him from the swamp, first by boat and then by air. They should have found him.

  And then the call came. Fujima continued to smoke as he punched the button to answer. He inhaled quickly, then blew out smoke to relax.

  "Mach two," Fujima said, using the code word that was changed daily. "Go ahead."

  "I would recognize that exhaling of cigarette smoke even if you did not use the code word," the caller remarked. "So might an enemy, if he were using my secure phone."

  "Point taken," Fujima said. That was the trouble with so many field agents. They had to be invisible and silent most of the time. When they got a chance to speak their mind, they did. Agent Kaiju was no exception.

  "We found him," Kaiju went on.

  "Where?" Fujima asked. As the intelligence director spoke, he accessed a drop-down menu of the cities in Botswana.

  "City one, sector seven," the caller reported.

  "I'm there," Fujima replied. The Belgian was in Gaborone near the athletic stadium. He dragged silently on his cigarette. Then he exhaled from the side of his mouth.

  "He is in a hotel," Kaiju informed him. "The sign is in English. I cannot read it."

  "The Sun and Casino," Fujima told him, consulting the map. "That's the only one in the area."

  "Very good," the caller said. "What do we do?"

  Fujima thought for a moment. "Debrief and neutralize," he replied.

  Kaiju repeated the instructions. Fujima acknowledged them.

  He hung up and promised to call back when he and his partner had more information.

  Fujima sucked hard on his cigarette. He blew out angrily. He did not like to authorize killings. But surgical eliminations were sometimes necessary to prevent greater loss of life in the future. It was made easier by the fact that the target was someone who had helped to create the current chaos.

  But even with that accomplished, Fujima did not imagine that the looming crisis would go away. All the interrogation would give them was more information, more time to plan a response.

  His telephone continued to beep. Fujima continued to ignore it. He had not slept in over a day, and he was tired. He did not want to slip and say something he would regret.

  Instead, the intelligence director punched out his cigarette. He sat back in his high leather chair, closed his eyes, and waited. He waited to hear that this part of the mission was at last concluded. Though the respite, he suspected, would be a short one.