Mission of Honor

Chapter Fourteen

Paul Hood was shaving when Bob Herbert called. The intelligence chief was already at Op-Center. They had spoken about Edgar Kline just a few hours before. Hood told Herbert that they should give the Vatican representative any support he required.

"What did I interrupt?" Herbert asked.

"Just scraping my face," Hood replied as he finished up. "What's up?"

Op-Center's director pulled the hand towel from his bare shoulder. He wiped his cheeks and chin. He felt a sad pang as he thought back to when his young son Alexander used to watch him do this. He would not be there the day Alexander started shaving. How the hell did that happen?

Herbert's soft, Southern accent brought Hood back to the moment.

"I just got a call from Ed Kline," Herbert said. "Powys Bradbury has been working the phones."

"The priest?" Hood said.

"Father Bradbury, yes," Herbert replied.

"Is he all right?"

"They don't know," Herbert told him. "He telephoned each of his deacon missionaries, the guys in the field, and told them to pack up and go back to the diocese in Cape Town."

"Are they sure it was him?" Hood asked.

"Yeah," Herbert said. "One of the deacons asked him something about a conversation they had a few weeks ago. The caller knew what the two of them had spoken about."

"Did Father Bradbury give a reason for recalling the missionaries?" Hood asked.

"None," Herbert said. "Apart from saying he was okay and would catch up with them in Cape Town, the preacher didn't tell them anything else. Nothing about where he was, where he would be, or what comes next. Kline got the records of calls that were placed to the missionaries' cell phones."

"And?"

"Nada," Herbert said. "The number was blocked. Stoll says someone probably hacked the local computers to erase the number as soon as it appeared. Or maybe it was blocked on the caller's end. Our own TAC-SATs do that."

"Which means these people have some technological talent either in the group or available to them," Hood said.

"Right," Herbert said. "We'll have to wait for this Dhamballa guy to surface again before proceeding. In the meantime, I want to do two things. First, we should get people into Botswana. We will need intelligence resources on the ground. Second, assuming Beaudin is part of this, I want to try to get a look at his possible end game."

"How?" Hood asked.

"Revolutions need two things," Herbert said.

"Guns and money," Hood said.

"Exactly," Herbert went on. "We need to try to find out if any of Beaudin's companies are funneling money to Botswana."

"Absolutely," Hood said. He thought for a moment. "There's someone I used to work with on Wall Street who might be able to help with that," he said. "Let me give her a call."

"I knew those years you spent in the exciting world of finance would come in handy," Herbert teased.

"It hasn't helped my stock portfolio," Hood said as he walked into the bedroom. He looked at the clock. When Emmy Feroche worked with Hood at Silber Sacks, she used to be in the office at four A. M. to check the Tokyo and Hong Kong exchanges. Now she worked for the FBI's Finance Division investigating white-collar crime. Hood had not spoken to Emmy in over a year, but he bet that she was still an early riser.

"Do me a favor?" Hood said.

"Sure," Herbert said.

"Give Darrell a call," Hood said. "Tell him I'm contacting a friend at the Bureau. I don't want him upset because I'm playing in his sandbox."

"You've got to stop doing that," Herbert joked.

"Yeah," Hood replied.

Hood said he would call back as soon as he had spoken to Emmy. However, before he hung up, Herbert had one thing to add.

"When I came in this morning, there was a voice mail message from Shigeo Fujima."

"I know that name," Hood said.

"He's the head of the Intelligence and Analysis Bureau of Gaimusho, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs," Herbert said. "Fujima did the Japanese security follow-up on our North Korea operation."

"That's right," Hood said.

"Fujima wanted to know if we had any information on a guy named Henry Genet," Herbert said.

"Who is?"

, "A member of the board of directors of Beaudin International Industries," Herbert said. "But that's not all he does. Genet spends a lot of time in Africa pursuing his main business."

"Which is?" Hood asked.

Herbert replied, "Diamonds."