But understanding and forgiving were not the same.
Now Paul Hood had been replaced. Maybe the White House position was better for Hood in some ways. But it was still a very sudden take-it-or-leave-it offer, not the kind of move that fattened a man’s ego. Rodgers did not need to gloat. That was in Bob Herbert’s nature, not his own. However, he also did not want to be a friend to Hood. That was a status Hood had never earned.
As soon as there were no other emergencies to handle, Rodgers was finally able to call the White House switchboard. They put him right through. That was how Rodgers knew that Hood was reporting to the Oval Office. He had been given cabinet-level treatment. Someone had literally walked his extension information to the switchboard rather than E-mailed it, where it might go unattended for hours. The name Paul Hood had been placed before the bank of operators so they knew who he was, where he was, and what his title was.
It also puts the president’s fingerprints all over Hood, Rodgers reflected. Unlike Op-Center, where a man was measured by his abilities, Hood’s fate was tied to that of the new chief executive. Whatever Hood himself did, he could be elevated or scapegoated at the whim of Dan Debenport.
“This is Paul Hood.”
“Christ, Paul. Didn’t they even give you an assistant?”
It took a moment for Hood to place the voice. “Mike?”
“It is,” Rodgers replied. “Bob told me where to find you.”
“Jeez, I’m glad he did! How the hell are you?”
“I’m doing terrific,” Rodgers assured him. “The change has been good for me.”
“I can imagine,” Hood said. “Unexus ain’t small potatoes.”
“No. Lots of starch here,” Rodgers joked, glancing at his jacket.
“How does it feel being in the private sector for the first time?”
“I’m happy, and my bank account is happy,” Rodgers admitted. “Speaking of changes—”
“Yeah. This is a big one. A sudden one,” Hood said.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m tucked in the corridors of power without an assistant,” Hood said. “I’m told there will be a couple of them waiting in my other office down the road. An office that has a window, I hope.”
“That would be nice,” Rodgers said. He had a fleeting screw you moment as he looked out his own large floor-toceiling window. The Washington Monument rose in the distance, stone white against a cloudless blue sky.
“Bob tells me you’re enjoying what you’re doing,” Hood went on.
“I’m still fighting with powers from across the sea but usually with less bloodshed,” Rodgers said. The banality of this conversation was painful. Still, after six months of silence the quasi-hail-fellow-well-met dialogue was necessary. “So what can you tell me about this new position of yours?”
“Not a hell of a lot, yet,” Hood said. “New is the operative word. The job is just some five or six hours old.”
“Has it got a title?”
“A lofty-sounding one. I’m special envoy to the president.”
“Which is what, exactly?” Rodgers asked.
“Well, I’m still a bit unclear about that,” Hood admitted. “The position was described as ‘an international intelligence troubleshooter, unaffiliated with any group but with access to the resources of all of them.’ ”
“What about political access through the president?”
“You mean working heads of state?” Hood asked.
“Exactly. In particular, I wonder if that includes getting the ear of the Chinese prime minister?”
“I don’t know. Does it pertain to intelligence troubleshooting?”
“It does,” Rodgers said.
“Impacting the private or public sector?”
“Public there, private here.”
“ ‘Here’ meaning Unexus.”
“Right,” Rodgers said.
“Maybe you had better give this to me from the top,” Hood suggested.
Paul Hood had never been an evasive, cover-your-ass bureaucrat, and that was not what was happening here. He sounded like a man who really did not know the mechanics, let alone the parameters of his job. Since it had only been in existence for one morning, that was understandable.
Rodgers told him what had happened with Le Kwan Po and the Xichang space center and the exclusion of the Guoanbu from the equation. Hood seemed surprised to hear that. Unlike Washington, Chinese intelligence agencies shared information with each other and with the impacted ministries.
“What you really need to know is whether the prime minister has specific information or concerns that your satellite may be a target,” Hood said.
“Their satellite, our subcontract,” Rodgers said.
“Right. Sorry. I thought we could shorthand it.”
“I’m a little sensitive about that,” Rodgers said. “When I was a general, they were the enemy.”
“Aren’t they still?” Hood asked. “Or is North Korea funding its own nuclear program?”
“I’ve got a new office, Paul, one with a window,” Rodgers replied. “Things look different. They have to.”
The comment came out more explosive than illuminating. Rodgers might still be looking at things from a general’s perspective if Hood had not forced him to change offices. He decided to ignore his own minioutburst.
“It’s three days until launch,” Rodgers continued. “I’m hoping the prime minister is just being cautious. But I would like to know.”
“What does Bob say about all this?” Hood asked.
“He’s going to sniff around from downwind,” Rodgers said. “But you know what our HUMINT resources are like.”
Like most intelligence agencies, Op-Center had cut back on expensive human intelligence and relied primarily on ELINT, electronic intelligence. That was fine, as long as adversaries used cell phones and E-mails, or spoke in public places where the agencies had VARDs—videographic or acoustic reconnaissance devices. If not, the analog fish slipped through the digital net.
“Lorraine Sanders will be here in a few minutes,” Hood said. “Let me talk to her about this, see what she thinks.”
“She’s a smart lady,” Rodgers said. “I assume she’s helping you to integrate into the system.”
“That, plus I’ll be reporting to the president through her,” Hood said.
Rodgers was surprised. “Does she have veto power over your operations?”
“No. Only the president, to whom I report.”
“But if the chief of staff controls the flow of information—”
“Conveying information in a timely fashion is part of her job description,” Hood replied sharply. “Mike, is there something we need to talk about? Apart from this, I mean?”
“No,” Rodgers said. “Why?”
“Because that’s the second kick in the ass you’ve given me in as many minutes,” Hood replied.
“That was not my intention,” Rodgers assured him. “I’m sorry if it came out that way.”
“This isn’t easy, Mike. Being here, talking to you, none of it. The six months of silence—that wasn’t something I wanted.”
“Okay,” Rodgers said. “But out of curiosity, Paul, if you didn’t want the silence, why the hell didn’t you pick up the phone?”
“Embarrassment? Discomfort? Maybe a little envy because I left the high road and you still had it?”
“You could have talked to me about that,” Rodgers said.
“We talked when you left. It didn’t change anything,” Hood said. “I wasn’t happy about the way things went down. Who could be? Then it became awkward because so much time did pass.”
“And now?” Rodgers asked.
“Has this been easy for you?”
“No,” Rodgers admitted.
“There’s your answer,” Hood said. “Look, I’ve got Sanders coming, and I want to get into this situation of yours. I’ll be in touch after the meeting.”
Rodgers thanked him and hung up.
Conflic
ted did not begin to describe how Rodgers felt at the moment. It began to look as if Hood had been demoted upward. Part of Rodgers felt bad for him. A smaller, more insistent part of him did not. Yet what had been the oddest part of the conversation had nothing to do with that. It happened when they were talking about Herbert and his limited HUMINT capabilities.
Rodgers had called them “our” resources.
Even six months later, it was difficult not to think of them all as a team. Hood, Herbert, and Rodgers had gone through a lot together, more than most men got to experience in a lifetime. The deaths of coworkers, family crises, fighting the clock to prevent civil wars and nuclear attacks. Maybe Op-Center was an idea as well as a place. Maybe it was hardwired, like Rodgers’s need to wear a uniform of some kind even if it was a suit. Perhaps they always would be a team, despite working from different places toward different ends.
And perhaps what the sage once said of divorce was also true of Mike Rodgers and Paul Hood. That going separate ways wasn’t a sign two people didn’t understand one another but just the opposite.
An indication that they had begun to.
SIXTEEN
Washington, D.C. Monday, 3:18 P.M.
Of all the people General Carrie had met at Op-Center, the one she had enjoyed the most was Liz Gordon. The two women sat in facing armchairs in front of the desk. Carrie felt it might make these talks less intimidating than if she were behind the desk. Liz was the only one who moved her chair, turning it so that she was facing the new director rather than sitting at an angle. The staff psychologist also offered her viewpoints without having to be asked. She was the only one who did not say exactly what she thought the new director wanted to hear. They talked about Paul Hood and his impact on the organization before moving on to the existing personnel.
“The senior staff is going to want to please you,” Gordon told Carrie a few minutes into their informal chat. “But they will also resent you.”
“Because I replaced Paul Hood or because I replaced a man?” Carrie asked.
“Both,” Liz said. “And also because you were given the job most of them would have wanted.”
“I earned this position,” Carrie replied. She jabbed the desk with an index finger. “I also earned the three stars I’m wearing, something no other woman ever accomplished.”
“You see, General, that is part of the problem,” Liz replied. “You are a woman with three stars. I know Bob, Darrell, Lowell, Ron, and Matt. I know them very well. To the first two, at least, your promotion represents a bone to our gender and not a real accomplishment.”
“That would be their problem, not mine,” Carrie said. “Do you think they will work less for me than they did for Hood?”
“As I said, they still need the director’s approval if they want to keep their jobs. I’m sure they feel as if they are all on probation.”
“They are,” Carrie replied.
They were interrupted by a call from Bob Herbert. He brought Carrie up to date on the conversation with Mike Rodgers. Rodgers had also spoken with Paul Hood and had phoned to tell Herbert about that. Hood was going to see what he could do about getting intel from the Chinese prime minister.
Carrie thanked Herbert and hung up. There was a very strange mix of resentment and suck-up in Herbert’s brusque but meticulously complete briefing.
“None of them is in danger of being dismissed, and I don’t care whether they like me or not,” the general went on. “But I want to be sure I can count on them to give the job everything they’ve got.”
“You can,” Liz said confidently. “Bob and Darrell are competitive with each other and themselves, so they will always overreach—”
The conversation was interrupted by a beep on the intercom.
“Yes?” Carrie said.
“General, Darrell McCaskey and Matt Stoll are here to see you,” Bugs Benet informed her.
“Thank you. Send them in,” Carrie said.
“I’ll leave,” Liz said, rising.
“I appreciate your input, Liz. We’ll finish this later.”
“I look forward to it,” the psychologist replied.
Liz stepped out as McCaskey walked in. Carrie noticed McCaskey fire the psychologist a short, narrow look. It was the kind of look soldiers going into interrogation gave to soldiers leaving interrogation: Did you crack? Did you tell them something I should know about?
The moment passed quickly. As McCaskey entered, he was back on the job. Matt Stoll came in behind him. Carrie had not yet met the scientist alone. The MIT graduate was a lumpy man with eyes that saw elsewhere. Stoll struck her as a man who used his senses to guide him through this world while his mind lived in another, far more interesting place. He was carrying a compact disk on his index finger.
Carrie stood and went behind her desk. She did not want to be an armchair general when she received an official update.
“We may have caught a break,” McCaskey said. He stopped in front of the desk and remained standing. “There was a man at the club who Interpol and the Taipei police were watching. He was a reputed slave trader by the name of Hui-ling Wong, aka Lo Tek. He died in the blast. The coastal patrol had seen his boat arrive, and officers were dispatched to all the clubs he usually frequents.”
“Why didn’t they arrest him en route?” Carrie asked.
“Because they have no evidence,” McCaskey said. “The agents were at the nightclub with acoustic devices, hoping he would say something that would give them a reason to arrest him.”
“Did he?” Carrie asked, looking at the CD.
“No,” McCaskey replied. “But the agents were wearing wide wires, digital, wide-frequency recorders that collect every sound in a room and send it to a central location where the extraneous noises are removed.”
“That’s the only way to collect specific conversations without using a parabolic dish,” Stoll said.
“The agents were killed in the blast, but everything they recorded was sent to a mobile unit not far from the club,” McCaskey said. “Through my Interpol connections we got a copy.”
Stoll held up the CD on his finger.
“The explosion destroyed everything within one hundred yards of the epicenter,” McCaskey went on. “The bombers would have known the blast radius and made sure they were beyond that. But they would have had to be within three hundred fifty yards to detonate a radiocontrolled device. Matt executed a thorough acoustic search in that window and managed to pick up the very faint trigger ping, the signal sent to activate the bomb.”
“We got the guys talking on the stairwell, Madam General,” Stoll said, “They were breathing hard, moving real fast, and speaking Cantonese.”
“So they were probably from the mainland,” the general remarked. “What did you get?”
“Until the blast killed the wide wires, we managed to pick up their names,” Stoll told the general. He smiled a little for the first time. “More important, we got remarkably clear voiceprints.”
“There was no one else in the stairwell at that point,” McCaskey noted.
Like fingerprints, voiceprints were unique to every individual. Stoll placed the CD on the general’s desk.
“We passed those charts back to Interpol and the Taipei police,” McCaskey said. “They’ve mobilized all of their ELINT units, including those of the military. They’ve sectored the city and are scanning every cell phone call being made. Which, at this hour, is not a lot.”
“They don’t actually have to listen to the calls,” Stoll explained. “All they need is to find a frequency that matches either voice.”
“Yes. I’ve worked with voiceprinting before,” the general said.
“Sorry,” Stoll said.
“So we have PRC bombers working in Taiwan,” Carrie said. “Hired hands?”
“We believe so. The working theory is that it’s the Tong Wars redux, right down to fighting of brothels and the trafficking of slave girls,” McCaskey said. “Foot soldiers working for gang leaders. In this case,
though—and it’s the worst-case scenario—the leaders could be Beijing heavyweights. It will be tough to get to them.”
“Maybe,” General Carrie said. “Do you remember how Jack Manion dealt with the tongs?”
“Not actually, General.”
“His background was required reading when I went over to G2,” the general said. “In 1920, a gentleman named Dan O’Brien took over as San Francisco’s chief of police. He put his childhood friend Manion in charge of the Chinatown Squad. Inspector Manion recruited Chinese to infiltrate and inform on the warring factions, on shipments of heroin, on contracted hits. He made sure his men were there to intercept and interdict. He even came up with early electronic surveillance devices, such as electrified doormats to let him know how many people were inside a room. Manion also made protecting his sources a high priority. He always had his own men on the street where spies could go with information or for protection. Not only did Manion end the violence, but after ten years in the precinct, the grateful Chinese refused to let him leave. He stayed there until his retirement in 1946.” She leaned forward. “We need that here.”
“In China or in general?” McCaskey asked.
“Both. Our immediate concern will be making sure that we’ve got a blast shield for whatever is blowing up in China,” Carrie said. “I don’t care if they kill each other. But like Manion, I don’t want that spilling into the streets. Not the streets of Charleston or the streets of Taipei.”
“I still don’t see how we’re going to get close to the Chinese leaders,” McCaskey said. “We don’t have a deep well of HUMINT personnel and none over there. Are there resources you can call on?”
“There may be,” she said. “Let’s wait and see what the CA patrol turns up over there.”
CA was a chase and apprehend mission. In Carrie’s experience it was more often than not a full-fledged CAT operation: chase, apprehend, and terminate. Most spies and enemy infiltrators did not like to be apprehended.
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