Divide and Conquer

TWENTY

Paul Hood arrived at Op-Center, where he was to meet with Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers. He also telephoned Liz Gordon. He asked her to wait around so he could talk to her later. He wanted to get her input on what, if anything, might be happening with the president from a clinical standpoint.

Hood bumped into Ann Farris on the way to his office. She walked with him through the tight, winding maze of cubicles to the executive wing. As Herbert had joked when he first went to work at Op-Center, that was where the cubicles had ceilings.

“Anything interesting going on?” Ann asked.

“The usual confusion,” Hood said. “Only this time, it’s happening in Washington, not overseas.”

“Is it something really bad?”

“I don’t know yet,” Hood said. “There seems to be a loose cannon somewhere in the NSA.” Hood didn’t want to say anything about the president possibly having mental lapses of some kind. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ann, but Megan Lawrence had told him something in confidence. For now, he wanted to keep the number of people with whom he shared that as small as possible. “What’s going on in your department?”

“The usual efficiency and expert coordination,” she said with a disarming smile.

“You mean nothing’s going on.”

“Exactly,” Ann said. She waited a moment, then asked, “Do you expect to be here long?”

“A couple of hours,” he said. “There’s no reason to go back to the hotel. I’d just sit there and watch some bad sitcom.”

“Can I interest you in dinner?” she asked.

“It may be a long night,” Hood said.

“I don’t have any plans, either,” she said. “My son is staying with his dad this week. There’s nothing for me to go home to but a spoiled cat and those same sitcoms.”

Hood’s heart began thumping a little faster than usual. He very much wanted to say yes to Ann. But he was still a married man, and going out with a divorced female coworker could cause trouble, legally as well as ethically. And Op-Center did not need this distraction. The intelligence team was brilliant at uncovering information. Hood having dinner with Farris would be common knowledge by morning. Besides, if dinner with Ann was in the back of his mind, he would not be focusing on a crisis in the executive branch.

“Ann, I wish I could,” he said sincerely. “But I don’t know when I’ll be finished here. Some other time?”

“Sure,” she said with a small, sad smile. She touched the back of his hand. “Have a good meeting.”

“Thanks,” Hood said.

Ann left, and Hood continued on his way.

Hood felt terrible now. He had not done what he really wanted to do, which was have dinner with Ann. And he had hurt her feelings.

He stopped. He wanted to go after her and tell her he would have the dinner. But once he started down that road, there was no turning back. Hood continued toward his office.

Hood buzzed Rodgers and Herbert when he arrived. Rodgers said he would be right over. Herbert was on the computer and said he would be with them in a few minutes.

Rodgers was alert and professional when he arrived. The general had always wanted to run Op-Center. If he harbored any resentment about having it handed to him and then abruptly pulled away, it did not show. Above all, Rodgers was a good man and a team player.

General Rodgers had spent most of the day overseeing the activities of Op-Center while Paul Hood was involved with the president and the UN initiative. As Hood briefed his deputy director about Herbert’s talk with Fenwick, Herbert wheeled in. The intelligence chief was flushed and perspiring slightly. He had hurried to get here.

“How’s your relationship with Sergei Orlov at the Russian Op-Center?” Herbert asked breathlessly.

The question surprised Hood. “I haven’t spoken to him in about six months. Why?”

“I just received a message that was forwarded from the U.S. embassy in Baku,” Herbert said. “One of the CIA’s people over there, Tom Moore, is now convinced that Baku has had a visit from the Harpooner. Moore doesn’t know why the bastard’s there—”

“It could have something to do with what you were just telling me about,” Rodgers said to Hood. “Bob’s conversation with Fenwick—”

“About Iran fearing terrorist attacks from Azerbaijan,” Hood said.

Rodgers nodded.

“I agree that that’s a possibility,” Herbert said. “Paul, if it is the Harpooner, Moore wants to catch him going into or keep him from getting out of the former USSR. He’s hoping that the Russian Op-Center can help.”

“How?” Hood asked. “Orlov and I shared our files years ago. There was nothing on the Harpooner.”

“Orlov’s facility was new then,” Herbert said. “He or his people may have found something in the old KGB files since then. Something they might not have told us about.”

“It’s possible,” Hood agreed. Op-Center was understaffed, and the situation at their Russian counterpart was even worse. Keeping up a regular flow of information was difficult.

“In addition to intel on the Harpooner,” Herbert said, “Moore was hoping that Orlov’s people might be able to watch the northern and northwestern sections of Russia. He was thinking that the Harpooner might try to leave the region through Scandinavia.”

Hood looked at his watch. “It’s about three in the morning over there,” he said.

“Can you reach him at home?” Herbert asked. “This is important. You know it is.”

Herbert was right. Regardless of the intelligence chief’s desire to see the terrorist captured, tried, and executed, the Harpooner was a man who deserved to be out of circulation.

“I’ll call,” Hood said.

“Before you do, what about President Lawrence?” Rodgers asked. “How did things go over there?”

“I’ll fill you in after I talk to Orlov,” Hood said as he accessed his secure phone list on the computer. He found Orlov’s number. “But from the look of it, we’re facing a lose-lose situation. Either the president is suffering from some kind of mental fatigue, or we’ve got a group of top officials running a black ops action of some kind—”

“Or both,” Herbert said.

“Or both,” Hood agreed. “I’ve got Liz Gordon coming in later to talk about what the president might be experiencing.”

Before punching in Orlov’s home telephone number, Hood called Op-Center’s linguistics office. He got Orly Turner on the line. Orly was one of Op-Center’s four staff translators. Her area of expertise was Eastern Europe and Russia. Hood conferenced her in to the call. Though Orlov spoke English well enough, Hood wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings, no delays if technical terms or acronyms had to be explained.

“You want to know what my gut tells me?” Herbert said.

“What?” Hood asked as he punched in Orlov’s number.

“That all of this is related,” Herbert said. “The president being out of the loop, Fenwick dealing secretly with Iran, the Harpooner showing up in Baku. It’s all part of a big picture that we haven’t figured out yet.”

Herbert left the office. Hood didn’t disagree with him. In fact, his own gut was willing to go one step further.

That the big picture was bigger than what they imagined.