Divide and Conquer

FOURTEEN

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 no-nonsense 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 Baroni listened as Rodgers explained that his superior, Paul Hood, had withdrawn his resignation.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.