With the satellite photographs and the body of the terrorist, Charles had no doubt that the United States and the rest of the world would draw the conclusion that he and his sponsors wanted them to draw.
The wrong one.
That Russia and Azerbaijan had united to try to force Iran from its lucrative rigs in Guneshli.
FOURTEEN
New York, New York Monday, 4:01 P.M.
The State Department maintains two offices in the vicinity of the United Nations Building on New York’s East Side. One is the Office of Foreign Missions and the other is the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
Forty-three-year-old attorney Lisa Baroni was the assistant director of diplomatic claims for the Diplomatic Liaison Office. That meant whenever a diplomat had a problem with the United States’ legal system, she became involved. A legal problem could mean anything from an allegedly unlawful search of a diplomat’s luggage at one of the local airports, or a hit-and-run accident involving a diplomat, to the recent seizure of the Security Council by terrorists.
Ten days before, Baroni had been on hand to provide counsel for diplomats but found herself giving comfort to parents of children who were held hostage during the attack. That was when she’d met General Mike Rodgers. The general talked with her briefly when the siege was over. He said he was impressed by the way she had remained calm, communicative, and responsible in the midst of the crisis. He explained that he was the new head of Op-Center in Washington and was looking for good people to work with. He asked if he could call her and arrange an interview. Rodgers had seemed like a nononsense officer, one who was more interested in her talent than her gender, in her abilities more than in the length of her skirt. That appealed to her. So did the prospect of going back to Washington, D.C. Baroni had grown up there, she had studied international law at Georgetown University, and all her friends and family still lived there. After three years in New York, Baroni could not wait to get back.
But when General Rodgers finally called, it was not quite the call Baroni had been expecting.
It came early in the afternoon. Baroni listened as Rodgers explained that his superior, Paul Hood, had withdrawn his resignation. But Rodgers was still looking for good people and offered her a proposition. He had checked her State Department records and thought she would be a good candidate to replace Martha Mackall, the political officer who had been assassinated in Spain. He would bring her to Washington for an interview if she would help him with a problem in New York.
Baroni asked if the help he needed was legal. Rodgers assured her it was. In that case, Baroni told him, she would be happy to help. That was how relationships were forged in Washington. Through back-scratching.
What Rodgers needed, he explained, was the itinerary of NSA Chief Jack Fenwick who was in New York for meetings with United Nations delegates. Rodgers said he didn’t want the published itinerary. He wanted to know where Fenwick actually ended up.
That should have been relatively easy for Baroni to find. Fenwick had an office in her building, and he usually used it when he came to New York. It was on the seventh floor, along with the office for the secretary of state. However, Fenwick’s New York deputy said that he wasn’t coming to the office during this trip but was holding all of his meetings at different consulates.
Instead, Baroni checked the file of government-issued license plates. This listing was maintained in the event of a diplomatic kidnapping. The NSA chief always rode in the same town car when he came to New York. Baroni got the license number and asked her friend, Detective Steve Mitchell at Midtown South, to try to find the car on the street. Then she got the number of the car’s windshield-mounted electronic security pass. The ESP enabled vehicles to enter embassy and government parking garages with a minimum of delay, giving potential assassins less time to stage ambushes.
The ESP didn’t show up on any of the United States checkpoints, which were transmitted immediately to State Department security files. That meant that Fenwick was visiting foreign embassies. Over one hundred nations also transmitted that data to the DOS within minutes. Most of those were close U.S. allies, such as Great Britain, Japan, and Israel. Fenwick had not yet gone to visit any of them. She used secure e-mail to forward to Rodgers the information where Fenwick hadn’t been.
Then, just after four P.M., Baroni got a call from Detective Mitchell. One of his squad cars spotted the chief of staff’s car leaving a building at 622 Third Avenue. That was just below Forty-second Street. Baroni looked up the address in her guide to permanent missions.
The occupant surprised her.
FIFTEEN
Washington, D.C. Monday, 4:03 P.M.
Paul Hood arrived at the west wing of the White House at four o’clock. Even before he had finished passing through the security checkpoint, a presidential intern had arrived to show him to the Oval Office. Hood could tell he had been here at least several months. Like most seasoned interns, the freshly scrubbed young man had a slightly cocky air. Here he was, a kid in his early twenties, working at the White House. The ID badge around his neck was his trump card with women at bars, with chatty neighbors on airplanes, with brothers and cousins when he went home for the holidays. Whatever anyone else said or did, he was interacting with the president, the vice president, cabinet, and congressional leaders on a daily basis. He was exposed to real power, he was plugged into the world, and he was moving past the eyes and ears of all media where the expressions and casual utterances of even people like him could cause events that would ripple through history. Hood remembered feeling a lot of that when he was a kid working in the Los Angeles office of the governor of California. He could only imagine how much more extreme it was for this kid, the sense of being at the center of the universe.
The Oval Office is located at the far southeast corner of the West Wing. Hood followed the young man in silence as they made their way through the busy corridors, passed by people who did not seem at all self-important. They had the look and carriage of people who were very late for a plane. Hood walked past the office of the national security adviser and the vice president, then turned east at the vice president’s office and walked past the office of the press secretary. Then they turned south past the cabinet room. They walked in silence all the while. Hood wondered if the young man wasn’t speaking to him because the kid had a sense of propriety or because Hood wasn’t enough of a celebrity to merit talking to. Hood decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The office past the cabinet room belonged to Mrs. Leigh. She was seated behind her desk. Behind it was the only door that led to the Oval Office. The intern excused himself. Hood and the president’s tall, white-haired secretary greeted each other with smiles. Mrs. Leigh was from Texas, with the steel, poise, patience, and dry, self-effacing humor required for the guardian of the gate. Her husband was the late Senator Titus Leigh, a legendary cattleman.
“The president’s running a few minutes late,” Mrs. Leigh said. “But that’s all right. You can tell me how you are.”
“Coping,” Hood said. “And you?”
“Fine,” she replied flatly. “My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere,” Hood said as he continued toward the secretary’s desk.
“It’s Lord Tennyson,” she replied. “How is your daughter?”
“She’s strong, too,” Hood said. “And she has an awful lot of people pulling for her.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Mrs. Leigh said, still smiling. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“I absolutely will,” Hood said. He looked into her gray eyes. “There is something you can do for me, though.”
“And that is?”
“Off the record?”
“Of course,” she assured him.
“Mrs. Leigh, has the president seemed all right to you?” Hood asked.
The woman’s smile wavered. She looked down. “Is that what this meeting is about?”
“No,” Hood said.
“What makes you ask a question like that?”
“People close to him are worried,” Hood said.
“And you’re the one who’s been asked to bell the cat?” she asked.
“Nothing that calculated,” Hood said as his cell phone beeped. He reached into his jacket pocket and answered the phone.
“This is Paul.”
“Paul, it’s Mike.”
“Mike, what’s up?” If Rodgers was calling him here, now, it had to be important.
“The target was seen leaving the Iranian mission to the UN about three minutes ago.”
“Any idea where he was the rest of the time?” Hood asked.
“Negative,” said Rodgers. “We’re working on that. But apparently, the car didn’t show up at the embassies of any of our top allies.”
“Thanks,” Hood said. “Let me know if you find out anything else.”
Hood hung up. He put the phone back in his pocket. That was strange. The president had announced an intelligence initiative involving the United Nations, and one of the first missions the national security adviser visits belongs to Iran. As a sponsor of the kind of terrorism the United Nations opposed, that did not make sense.
The door to the Oval Office opened.
“Mrs. Leigh, would you do me a favor?” Hood said.
“Yes.”
“Would you get me Jack Fenwick’s itinerary in New York?”
“Fenwick? Why?”
“He’s one of the reasons I asked you the question I did,” Hood replied.
Mrs. Leigh looked at Hood. “All right. Do you want it while you’re with the president?”
“As soon as possible,” Hood said. “And when you get the file number, let me know what else is in the file. I don’t need specific documents, just dates when they were filed.”
“All right,” she said. “And Paul—what you asked before ? I have noticed a change.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks. If there’s a problem, we’re going to try and fix it quickly and quietly, whatever it is.”
She nodded and sat at her computer as the vice president emerged from the Oval Office. Charles Cotten was a tall, stout man with a thin face and thinning gray hair. He greeted Paul Hood with a warm handshake and a smile but didn’t stop to talk. Mrs. Leigh punched the phone intercom. The president answered. She told him that Paul Hood was here, and the president asked her to send him in. Hood went around the desk and walked into the Oval Office.
SIXTEEN
Baku,
Azerbaijan Tuesday, 12:07 A.M.
David Battat lay on the flimsy cot and stared at the dark ceiling of the damp basement storehouse. Pat Thomas slept on his back in a cot on the other side of the small room, breathing softly, regularly. But Battat couldn’t sleep.
His neck still ached, and he was angry at himself for having gotten cold-cocked, but that wasn’t what was keeping him awake. Before going to sleep, Battat had reviewed the original data the CIA had received about the Harpooner. He could not put it out of his mind. All signs, including a reliable eyewitness, pointed to it having been the terrorist that was being met by the
Rachel
. And if that were so, if the Harpooner had passed through Baku on his way to somewhere else, Battat was deeply troubled by one question:
Why am I still alive?
Why would a terrorist with a reputation for scorched-earth attacks and homicidal behavior leave an enemy alive? To mislead them? To make them think it wasn’t the Harpooner who was there? That had been his initial reaction. But maybe the terrorist had left him alive for another reason. And Battat lay there, trying to figure out what that reason could be.
The only reason he could think of would be to carry misinformation back to his superiors. But he had not carried any information back, other than what was already known: that the
Rachel
was where it was supposed to be. And without knowing who got on or where it went, that information did them no good.
Battat’s clothes had been gone over carefully for an electronic bug or a radioactive tracer of some kind. Nothing had been found, and the clothes were subsequently destroyed. If one had been located, it would have been used to spread disinformation or to misdirect the enemy. Moore had gone through Battat’s hair, checked under his fingernails, looked in his mouth and elsewhere for a microtransmitter that could be used to locate Battat or eavesdrop on any conversations he might have. Nothing had been found.
There wasn’t a damn thing, he thought. And it gnawed at him because he didn’t think this was a screw-up. He was alive for a reason.
He shut his eyes and turned on his side. Thinking about this while he was dead tired would get him nowhere. He had to sleep. He forced himself to think about something pleasant: what he would do when he found the Harpooner.
The thought relaxed him. As he lay there, Battat began to feel warm. He attributed that to the poor ventilation in the room and the distress he was feeling over everything that had happened.