by Tom Clancy
“Yes?”
“Señor Diaz? This is Consuela.”
“Yes?”
“Moira called a moment ago. She wishes for you to call her at home.”
“Thank you.” And the connection broke.
Cortez looked at his desk clock. He’d let her wait ... twenty-three minutes. His place was yet another luxury condominium in Medellin, two buildings down from that of his boss. Was this the call? he wondered. He remembered when patience had come hard to him, but it was a long time since he’d been a fledgling intelligence officer, and he went back to his papers.
Twenty minutes later he checked the time again and lit a cigarette, watching the hands move around the dial. He smiled, wondering what it was like for her to have to wait, two thousand miles away. What was she thinking? Halfway through the cigarette, it was time to find out. He lifted the phone and dialed in the number.
Dave got to the phone first. “Hello?” He frowned. “We have a bad connection. Could you repeat that? Oh, okay, hold on.” Dave looked over to see his mother’s eyes on him. “For you, Mom.”
“I’ll take it upstairs,” she said at once, and moved toward the stairs as slowly as she could manage.
Dave put his hand over the receiver. “Guess who?” There were knowing looks around the dining room.
“Yes,” Dave heard her say on the other phone. He discreetly hung up. Good luck, Mom.
“Moira, this is Juan.”
“Are you free this weekend?” she asked.
“This weekend? Are you sure?”
“I’m free from lunch Friday to Monday morning.”
“So ... let me think ... ” Two thousand miles away, Cortez stared out the window at the building across the street. Might it be a trap? Might the FBI Intelligence Division ... might the
whole thing be a ... ? Of course not. “Moira, I must talk to someone here. Please hold for another minute. Can you?”
“Yes!”
The enthusiasm in her voice was unmistakable as he punched the hold button. He let her wait two minutes by his clock before going back on the line.
“I will be in Washington Friday afternoon.”
“You’ll be getting in about the time—about the right time.”
“Where can we meet? At the airport. Can you meet me at the airport?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what flight I’ll be on. I’ll meet you at ... at the Hertz counter at three o’clock. You will be there, yes?”
“I will be there.”
“As will I, Moira. Goodbye, my love.”
Moira Wolfe looked again at the photograph. The smile was still there, but she decided it was not an accusing smile.
Cortez got up from his desk and walked out of the room. The guard in the hall stood when he came out of the door.
“I am going to see el jefe,” he said simply. The guard lifted his cellular phone to make the call.
The technical problems were very difficult. The most basic one was power. While the base stations cranked out about five hundred watts, the mobile stations were allowed less than seven, and the battery-powered hand-held sets that everyone likes to use were three hundred milliwatts, and even with a huge parabolic dish receiving antenna, the signals gathered were like whispers. But the Rhyolite-J was a highly sophisticated instrument, the result of uncounted billions of research-and-development dollars. Supercooled electronics solved part of the problem. Various computers worked on the rest. The incoming signals were broken down into digital code—ones and zeroes—by a relatively simple computer and downlinked to Fort Huachuca, where another computer of vastly greater power examined the bits of raw information and tried to make sense of them. Random static was eliminated by a mathematically simple but still massively repetitive procedure—an algorithm—that compared neighboring bits to one another and through a process of averaging numerical values filtered out over 90 percent of the noise. That enabled the computer to spit out a recognizable conversation from what it had downloaded from the satellite. But that was only the beginning.
The reason the Cartel used cellular phones for its day-to-day communications was security. There were roughly six hundred separate frequencies, all in the UHF band from 825 to 845 and 870 to 890 megahertz. A small computer at the base station would complete a call by selecting an available frequency at random, and in the case of a call from a mobile phone, changing that frequency to a better one when performance wavered. Finally, the same frequency could be used simultaneously for different calls on neighboring “cells” (hence the name of the system) of the same overall network. Because of this operating feature, there was not a police force in the world that could monitor phone calls made on cellular-phone equipment. Even without scrambling, the calls could be made in the clear, without even the need for code.
Or that’s what everyone thought.
The United States government had been in the business of intercepting foreign radio communications since the days of Yardley’s famous Black Chamber. Technically known as comint or sigint—for communications or signals intelligence—there was no better form of information possible than your enemy’s own words to his own people. It was a field in which America had excelled for generations. Whole constellations of satellites were deployed to eavesdrop on foreign nations, catching snippets of radio calls, side-lobe signals from microwave relay towers. Often encoded in one way or another, the signals were most often processed at the headquarters of the National Security Agency, on the grounds of Fort Meade, Maryland, between Washington and Baltimore, whose acres of basement held most of the supercomputers in the world.
The task here was to keep constant track of the six hundred frequencies used by the cellular phone net in Medellin. What was impossible for any police agency in the world was less than a light workout for NSA, which monitored literally tens of thousands of radio and other electronic channels on a continuous basis. The National Security Agency was far larger than CIA, far more secretive, and much better funded. One of its stations was on the grounds of Fort Huachuca, Arizona. It even had its own supercomputer, a brand-new Cray connected by fiberoptic cable to one of many communications vans, each of which performed functions that those in the loop knew not to ask about.
The next problem was making the computer work. The names and identities of many Cartel figures were fully known to the U.S. government, of course. Their voices had been recorded, and the programmers had started there. Using voiceprints of the known voices, they established an algorithm to recognize those voices, whichever cellular frequency they used. Next, those who called them had their voices electronically identified. Soon the computer was automatically keying and recording over thirty known voices, and the number of known voice-targets was expanding on a daily basis. Source-power considerations made voice identification difficult on occasion, and some calls were inevitably missed, but the chief technician estimated that they were catching over 60 percent, and that as their identification data-base grew larger, that their performance would grow to 85 percent.
Those voices that did not have names attached were assigned numbers. Voice 23 had just called Voice 17. Twenty-three was a security guard. He had been identified because he had called 17, who was also known to be a security guard for Subject ECHO, as Escobedo was known to the comint team. “He’s coming over to see him,” was all the recorded signal told them. Exactly who “he” was they didn’t know. It was a voice they had either not yet heard or, more likely, not yet identified. The intelligence specialists were patient. This case had gone a lot quicker than normal. For all their sophistication, the targets never dreamed that someone could tap in on them in this way and as a consequence had taken no precautions against it. Within a month the comint team would have enough experience with the targets to develop all sorts of usable tactical intelligence. It was just a matter of time. The technicians wondered when actual operations would begin. After all, setting up the sigint side was always the precursor to putting assets in the field.
“Wha
t is it?” Escobedo asked as Cortez entered the room.
“The American FBI Director will be flying to Bogotá tomorrow. He leaves Washington sometime after noon. It is to be a covert visit. I would expect him to be using an official aircraft. The Americans have a squadron of such aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base. There will be a flight plan filed, probably covered as something else. Anything from four tomorrow afternoon to eight in the evening could be the flight. I expect it to be a twin-engine executive jet, the G-Three, although another type is possible. He will be meeting with the Attorney General, undoubtedly to discuss something of great importance. I will fly to Washington immediately to find out what I can. There is a flight to Mexico City in three hours. I’ll be on it.”
“Your source is a good one,” Escobedo observed, impressed for once.
Cortez smiled. “Sí, jefe. Even if you are unable to determine what is being discussed here, I hope to find out over the weekend. I make no promises, but I will do my best.”
“A woman,” Escobedo observed. “Young and beautiful, I am sure.”
“As you say. I must be off.”
“Enjoy your weekend, Colonel. I will enjoy mine.”
Cortez had been gone only an hour when a telex came in, informing him that last night’s courier flight had failed to arrive at its destination in southwestern Georgia. The amusement that invariably accompanies receipt of top-secret information changed at once to anger. El jefe thought to call Cortez on his mobile phone, but remembered that his hireling refused to discuss substantive matters over what he called a “nonsecure” line. Escobedo shook his head. This colonel of the DGI—he was an old woman! El jefe’s phone twittered its own signal.
“Bingo,” a man said in a van, two thousand miles away.
VOX IDENT, his computer screen announced: SUBJECT BRAVO INIT CALL TO SUBJECT ECHO FRQ 848.970MHZ CALL INIT 2349z INTERCEPT IDENT 345.
“We may have our first big one here, Tony.”
The senior technician, who’d been christened Antonio forty-seven years earlier, put on his headphones. The conversation was being taken down on high-speed tape—it was actually a three-quarter-inch videotape because of the nature of the system used to intercept the signal. Four separate machines recorded the signal. They were Sony commercial recorders, only slightly modified by the NSA technical staff.
“Ha! Señor Bravo is pissed!” Tony observed as he caught part of the conversation. “Tell Meade that we finally caught a frozen rope down the left-field line.” A “frozen rope” was the current NSA nickname for a very important signal intercept. It was baseball season, and the Baltimore Orioles were coming back.
“How’s the signal?”
“Clear as a church bell. Christ, why don’t I ever buy TRW stock?” Antonio paused, struggling not to laugh. “God, is he pissed!”
The call ended a minute later. Tony switched his headphone input to one of the tape machines and crab-walked his swivel chair to a teleprinter, where he started typing.
“What’s this ‘agitation’ business?”
“I can’t put ‘pissed’ in an official TWX,” Antonio pointed out. “This one’s hot. We have some operational intel here.” He pressed the transmit key on his terminal. The signal was addressed to a code-word destination—CAPER—which was all anyone who worked in the van knew.
Bob Ritter had just left for home, and was only a mile up on the George Washington Parkway when his secure carphone made its distinctive and, to him, irritating noise.
“Yeah?”
“CAPER traffic,” the voice said.
“Right,” the Deputy Director (Operations) said with a suppressed sigh. To his driver: “Take me back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Getting back, even for a top CIA executive, meant finding a place to reverse course, and then fight the late D.C. rush-hour traffic which, in its majesty, allows rich, poor, and important to crawl at an equal twenty miles per hour. The gate guard waved the car through, and he was in his seventh-floor office five minutes after that. Judge Moore was already gone. There were only four watch officers cleared for this operation. That was the minimum number required merely to wait for and evaluate signal traffic on the operation. The current watch officer had just come on duty. He handed over the signal.
“We have something hot,” the officer said.
“You’re not kidding. It’s Cortez,” Ritter observed after scanning the message form.
“Good bet, sir.”
“Coming here ... but we don’t know what he looks like. If only the Bureau had gotten a picture of the bastard when he was in Puerto Rico. You know the description we have of him.” Ritter looked up.
“Black and brown. Medium height, medium build, sometimes wears a mustache. No distinguishing marks or characteristics,” the officer recited from memory. It wasn’t hard to memorize nothing, and nothing was exactly what they had on Félix Cortez.
“Who’s your contact at the Bureau?”
“Tom Burke, middle-level guy in the Intelligence Division. Pretty good man. He handled part of the Henderson case.”
“Okay, get this to him. Maybe the Bureau can figure a way to bag the bastard. Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
Ritter nodded and resumed his trip home. The watch officer returned to his own office on the fifth floor and made his call. He was in luck this night; Burke was still at his office. They couldn’t discuss the matter over the phone, of course. The CIA watch officer, Paul Hooker, drove over to the FBI Building at 10th and Pennsylvania.
Though CIA and FBI are sometimes rivals in the intelligence business, and always rivals for federal budget funds, at the operational level their employees get along well enough; the barbs they trade are good-natured ones.
“There’s a new tourist coming into D.C. in the next few days,” Hooker announced once the door was closed.
“Like who?” Burke inquired, gesturing to his coffee machine.
Hooker declined. “Félix Cortez.” The CIA officer handed over a Xerox of the telex. Portions of it had been blacked out, of course. Burke didn’t take offense at this. As a member of the Intelligence Division, charged with catching spies, he was accustomed to “need-to-know.”
“You’re assuming that it’s Cortez,” the FBI agent pointed out. Then he smiled. “But I wouldn’t bet against you. If we had a picture of this clown, we’d stand a fair chance of bagging him. As it is ...” A sigh. “I’ll put people at Dulles, National, and BWI. We’ll try, but you can guess what the odds are.” If the Agency had gotten a photo of this mutt while he was in the field—or while he was at the KGB Academy—it would make our job a hell of a lot easier.... “I’ll assume that he’s coming in over the next four days. We’ll check all flights directly in from down there, and all connecting flights.”
The problem was more one of mathematics than anything. The number of direct flights from Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and other nearby countries directly into the D.C. area was quite modest and easy to cover. But if the subject made a connecting flight through Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Mexico, or any number of other cities, including American ones, the number of possible connections increased by a factor of ten. If he made one more intermediary stop in the United States, the number of possible flights for the FBI to monitor took a sudden jump into the hundreds. Cortez was a KGB-trained pro, and he knew that fact as well as these two men did. The task wasn’t a hopeless one. Police play for breaks all the time, because even the most skilled adversaries get careless or unlucky. But that was the game here. Their only real hope was a lucky break.
Which they would not get. Cortez caught an Avianca flight to Mexico City, then an American Airlines flight to Dallas-Fort Worth, where he cleared customs and made yet another American connection to New York City. He checked into the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South. By this time it was three in the morning, and he needed some rest. He left a wakeup call for ten and asked the concierge to have him a first-class ticket for the eleven o’clock Metroliner into Union Statio
n, Washington, D.C. The Metroliners, he knew, had their own phones. He’d be able to call ahead if something went wrong. Or maybe ... no, he decided, he didn’t want to call her at work; surely the FBI tapped its own phones. The last thing Cortez did before collapsing onto the bed was to shred his plane-ticket receipts and the baggage tags on his luggage.
The phone awoke him at 9:56. Almost seven hours’ sleep, he thought. It seemed like only a few seconds, but there was no time to dawdle. Half an hour later he appeared at the desk, tossed in his express check-out form, and collected his train ticket. The usual Manhattan midtown traffic nearly caused him to miss the train, but he made it, taking a seat in the last row of the three-across club-car smoking section. A smiling, red-vested attendant started him off with decaffeinated coffee and a copy of USA Today, followed by a breakfast that was no different—though a little warmer—from what he’d have gotten on an airliner. By the time the train stopped in Philadelphia, he was back asleep. Cortez figured that he’d need his rest. The attendant noted the smile on his sleeping face as he collected the breakfast tray and wondered what dreams passed through the passenger’s head.
At one o’clock, while Metroliner 111 approached Baltimore, the TV lights were switched on in the White House Press Room. The reporters had already been prepped with a “deep background, not for attribution” briefing that there would be a major announcement from the Attorney General, and that it would have something to do with drugs. The major networks did not interrupt their afternoon soap operas—it was no small thing to cut away from “The Young and the Restless”—but CNN, as usual, put up their “Special Report” graphic. This was noticed at once by the intelligence watch officers in the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center, each of whom had a TV on his desk tuned into CNN. That was perhaps the most eloquent comment possible on the ability of America’s intelligence agencies to keep its government informed, but one on which the major networks, for obvious reasons, had never commented.
