accountability to directors who were nowhere near the battlegrounds. No
one could fight a man like the Harpooner with baggage like that. And
Hood was guilty of supporting that system. He was as guilty as his
counterparts at CIA, NSA, or anywhere else. The irony was that Jack
Fenwick had apparently done something off the books. It was Hood's job
to find out what that was. The bureaucrats are checking up on the
bureaucrats, Hood thought bitterly. Of course, he probably should not
be thinking at all right now. He was tired and frustrated about the
situation with Battat. And he had not even called home to see how
Harleigh was doing. Rodgers had stayed with Hood between the time he
first phoned Orlov and Orlov returned the call. While they waited for
Bob Herbert to come back, Rodgers left to grab a soda. Hood decided to
call home. It did not improve his mood. He was doing just the thing
that Sharon had always hated. Working late. Calling home as an
afterthought. He could hear the anger in her throat, in the tightness of
her mouth, in the brevity of her answers.
"I'm doing laundry," Sharon said.
"Harleigh is in the den playing solitaire on the computer. Alexander is
in his room doing homework and studying for a history test."
"How does Harleigh seem today?" Hood asked.
"How do you think?" Sharon said.
"Your own psychologist said it's going to be a while before we see any
kind of change. If we see any kind of change," Sharon added.
"But don't worry, Paul. I'll handle whatever comes up."
"I'm not going anywhere, Sharon," Hood said.
"I want to help."
"I'm glad. Do you want me to get Alexander?" she asked.
"Not if he's studying," Hood said.
"Just tell him I called."
"Sure."
"Good night," Hood said. He could feel Sharon hesitate. It was only a
moment, but it felt much, much longer. "
"Night, Paul," she said, then hung up. Hood sat there holding the phone
for several moments. Now he was a bastard and a bureaucrat. He lay the
phone in its cradle, folded his hands, and waited for Rodgers. As he
sat there, something began to tick inside him. It wasn't a clock or a
bomb. It was like a cam and rocker arm. And with each click of the
arm, a spring grew tighter inside him. A desire to do something--and not
just debate or call the Russians for help. Hood wanted to act.
Something was not right, and he needed to know what it was. Rodgers and
Herbert arrived together. They found Hood staring at the back wall of
his office where plaques and framed photographs once hung, the mementos
of his years in government. Pictures with world leaders, with
constituents. Photographs of Hood laying cornerstones or working in a
Thanksgiving soup kitchen. His life as a bloody goddamn bureaucrat. As
part of the problem, not the solution.
"Are you all right?" Herbert asked.
"Fine," Hood said.
"Did you get news?" Herbert pressed.
"No," Hood said.
"But I want to make some."
"You know where I stand on that," Herbert said.
"What were you thinking of?"
"Battat," Hood said. That was not entirely true. He was thinking that
he never should have withdrawn his resignation. He should have left
Op-Center and never looked back. He wondered if resigning had actually
been for him and not to spend more time with his family, as he had
believed. But he was back, and he was not going to run away. Battat was
the next stop in his thought process.
"This man was sent to the hospital with some kind of sickness where a
pair of assassins were waiting," he said.
"That doesn't sound like a coincidence."
"No, it doesn't," Herbert agreed.
"My brain trust and I have been looking into that." Herbert's brain
trust consisted of four deputy intelligence directors who had been
brought to Op-Center from military intelligence, the NSA, and the CIA.
fifty-seven. With input from Darrell McCaskey, who liaised with the FBI
and Interpol, Op Center had the best per capita intelligence team in
Washington.
"Here's what we've been thinking," Herbert said.
"The CIA is ninety-nine percent certain the Harpooner passed through
Moscow and went to Baku. A DOS agent thinks he saw him on a flight to
Moscow, but that may have been intentional."
"Why?" Rodgers asked.
"It wouldn't be unprecedented for a terrorist to let himself be seen,"
Herbert said.
"Back in 1959, the Soviet spy Igor Slavosk allowed himself to be seen at
Grand Central Station in New York so he could draw police attention and
bring FBI personnel to his apartment. When they got to the place down on
Jane Street, it blew up. Slavosk came back, collected badges and IDS,
and had perfect fakes made. He used them to get into FBI headquarters
in Washington. So, yes, it's possible the Harpooner allowed his
presence to be known through channels."
"Go on," Hood said quietly. He was getting impatient. Not at Bob
Herbert; the intelligence chief was simply a convenient target. Hood
wanted Orlov to call him back. He wanted to hear that everything was all
right at the hospital. He wanted some good news for a change.
"Sorry," Herbert said.
"So the Harpooner somehow lets it be known that he's going to Baku. He
has some kind of operation planned. He knows there are CIA personnel
attached to the embassy. He also knows that the CIA might not want to
expose those people since police from the Azerbaijani Ministry of
Internal Security are probably keeping an eye on embassy personnel,
watching for foreign intelligence operations. So the CIA brings someone
in from Moscow."
"Battat," said Hood.
"Yes," Herbert said. He seemed a little uneasy.
"David Battat was the head of the CIA's New York City field office. He
was the man who hired Annabelle Hampton."
"The junior officer we busted during the UN siege?" Rodgers said.
Herbert nodded.
"Battat was in Moscow at the time. We checked him. He's clean. One of
our CIA contacts told me he was sent to Baku to do penance for the New
York screw up." Hood nodded.
"All right. You've got Battat in Baku."
"Battat goes out to a target area to watch for the Harpooner and gets
taken down," Herbert said.
"Not taken out, which the Harpooner could have done with no problem.
Battat was apparently infected with a virus or chemical designed to drop
him at a specific time. Something serious enough so that he'd be taken
to the hospital."
"Under guard from his fellow CIA operatives," Hood said.
"Exactly," Herbert replied.
"Pretty maids all in a row."
"Which leaves the Harpooner free of CIA interference to do whatever he's
planning," Hood said.
"That's what it looks like," Herbert said.
"No one but the United States, Russia, and probably Iran has any kind of
intelligence presence in Baku."
"Because of the Caspian oil?" Rodgers asked. Herbert nodded.
"If the Harpooner also hit operatives from Moscow and Teheran, we
haven't heard about it." Hood thought about that.
"Iran," he said softly.
"Excuse me?" Herbert said.
"That's the second time we've been talking about Iran today," Hood said.
"But not for the same--" Herbert said, then stopped.
"Not for the same reason?" Hood asked.
"Aw, no," Herbert said after a moment.
"No."
"Hold on," Rodgers said.
"You're thinking the game of telephone could go from the Harpooner to
Teheran to Jack Fenwick to the NSA to the CIA," Herbert said.
"It's possible," Hood said.
"That would put Fenwick in bed with them on something involving the
Harpooner," Herbert said.
"Something he would not want the president to know about," Hood pointed
out. Herbert was shaking his head.
"I don't want this to be happening," he said.
"I don't want us working with the sonofabitch who killed my wife."
"Bob, I need you to calm down," Hood said. Herbert was glaring at Hood's
desk.
"If the Harpooner is up to something in Baku, we might still be able to
get him," Hood said.
"But only if we stay focused." Herbert did not respond.
"Bob?"
"I hear you," Herbert said.
"I'm focused." Hood looked at Rodgers. A minute ago. Hood wanted to
lash out. Now that one of his friends was hurting, the desire had
subsided. All he wanted to do was help Herbert. Why did he never feel
that way about Sharon when she was angry?
"Mike," Hood said, "we really need to pin down what Fenwick's been up to
and who, if anyone, he's been working with."
"I'll get that information," Rodgers said.
"But I can tell you this much. I found two e-mails in my computer files
from six months ago. They were written by Jack Fenwick and Burt Gable."
"What were the memos about?" Hood asked.
"They were responding to a Pentagon white paper," Rodgers said.
"The paper was about me minimal threat of possible Russian military
alliances with neighbors who were not part of the former Soviet Union.
Fenwick and Gable took issue with that."
"The head of the National Security Agency and the president's chief of
staff both took issue to the report, independently," Hood said.
"Correct," said Rodgers.
"The memos were sent to all the members of congress and various military
leaders."
"I wonder if the two men met philosophically online," Hood said.
"What was the time code on the memos?"
"A few hours apart," Rodgers said.
"They didn't appear to be part of a concerted effort. But they both
shared an aggressive disapproval of the report."
"I guess it doesn't matter whether Fenwick and Gable issued those memos
independent of one another or whether they found out they had something
in common when they read them," Hood said.
"The question is whether they did something about it. Whether they got
together and did some plotting."
"What makes you think they might have?" asked Herbert, easing back into
the conversation.
"Gable's name came up today in my talk with the president," Hood said.
"He and Fenwick's assistant Don Roedner were responsible for keeping the
CIOC in the loop about that UN initiative."
"And didn't," Herbert said.
"No, they didn't." Hood tapped the desk slowly.
"We've got two issues here," he said a moment later.
"Fenwick's activities in New York and the Harpooner's activities in
Baku."
"Assuming they are separate," Herbert said.
"The two operations do have Iran in common. The Harpooner has worked
for Teheran before." Hood nodded.
"What if he's working for them again?"
"Against Azerbaijan," said Herbert.
"It's possible," Rodgers said.
"The Iranians have two potential areas of conflict with Azerbaijan. The
Caspian oil reserves and the bordering Nagorno-Karabakh region."
"But why would Fenwick want to be involved in something like that?"
Herbert said.
"Just to prove the Pentagon wrong? Then what?"
"I don't know," Hood said. He looked at Rodgers.
"Get to him and make him open up. Not only about Iran but about why he
lied to the president."
"Tell him you've got information you can only tell him face-to-face,"
Herbert said.
"Right," Hood said.
"Have Liz work out a psych profile of the president. One based on
firsthand observations, including my own, that makes it look as though
Lawrence is losing his grip. Bring that to Fenwick, ostensibly on the
Q.T. Ask if he's heard anything about this." Rodgers nodded and left.
Hood looked at Herbert.
"If Iran has any military adventures on the drawing board, they may have
moved troops or materiel. The NRO may have noticed something. Has
Stephen Viens gone back to work there?"
"Last week," Herbert said. The NRO was the National Reconnaissance
Office, the top-secret facility that manages most of America's spy
satellites. An agency of the Department of Defense, the NRO is staffed
by personnel from the CIA, the military, and civilian DOD personnel. The
existence of the NRO was declassified in September of 1992, twenty years
after it was first established. Stephen Viens was an old college buddy
of Op-Center's computer chief Matt Stoll. He had been extremely helpful
getting information to Op-Center when more established groups like
military intelligence, the CIA, and the NSA were fighting for satellite
time. Viens had been accused of hiding money in a black ops situation
but was later vindicated.
"Good," Hood said.
"See if Viens can find anything. The NRO may have spotted activity in
Iran without perceiving any immediate danger."
"I'm on it," Herbert said. The intelligence chief wheeled his chair from
the office. Hood sat back. He looked at the phone. He wanted to hear
from Oriov. He wanted to hear that the Russian had someone in place and
that Battat would be all right. He wanted to hear that they had managed
to put the brakes on the bad news and could start turning this situation
around. We have to. Hood thought. There was something out there.
Something big and dangerous. He did not know what it was or who was
behind it. He did not know if the pieces Op-Center had collected would
fit together. He only knew one thing for certain: Whatever it was, it
had to be stopped.
Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 5:01 a.m.
David Battat felt frigidly cold and light-headed. He could hear his
heart in his ears, feel it in his throat. He was aware of being wheeled
somewhere. There were faces over him. Lights flashed by. Then he felt
himself being lifted. He was placed on a bed, still experiencing a
sense of forward motion. He was not strapped down, but there were
raised metal gates on the side of the bed. Battat shut his eyes. He did
not know what had happened to him. He remembered waking up at the
embassy, perspiring and shaking. Moore and Thomas brought him to the
car, and then he m
ust have slept. The next thing he knew, he woke up on
a gurney. He heard people moving around him. He coughed and opened his
eyes. There was a white-haired man looking down at him.
"Mr. Battat, can you hear me?" the man shouted. Battat nodded.
"We are going to undress you and put you in a gown," the man said to
him.
"Then we need to get an-IV into you. Do you understand?" Battat nodded.
"What... happened?"
"You're ill," the doctor told him as a pair of male nurses came over.
They began lifting and undressing him.
"You have a very high fever. We have to bring it down."
"Okay," Battat said. What else could he say? He could not have
resisted if he wanted to. But he did not understand how he could have
gotten sick. He had felt fine before. The medical team worked on him
for several minutes. Battat was not entirely aware of what they were