Sea of Fire

Chapter Sixty-Four

Research was job number four for Paul Hood. That came after quarterbacking, cheerleading, and devil's advocacy.

Hood usually did research only on weekends, when Op-Center had just a skeleton staff. He actually enjoyed it. Searching for information exercised his linear thinking. It gave more logic to those "yeah but…" questions. It also shut out his emotions, his fears. He was totally in the moment.

Bob Herbert had left the cell phone open. Hood had put the call on the speakerphone, cranked up the volume, and listened to the conversation between the rescue team and Peter Kannaday. As soon as he heard that name, Hood conducted a computer search through Interpol and FBI files. Nothing showed up. That was good. It suggested the man was telling the truth, that he had been used and shanghied. Hood also did a wider off-line search and came across the registry filing for the Hosannah. There was information about Peter Kannaday. He was the owner of the yacht before it was "sold" to the apparently nonexistent Arvids March. It included copies of his license and dates when the yacht had visited various ports in the South Pacific and the Caribbean. Hood forwarded that information to Herbert's computer. If the Hosannah had been used to traffic nuclear material, the abbreviated log might help to track pickups or drop-offs.

Hood felt the way Warrant Officer Jelbart did. The man was a guest, not a prisoner. That was very easy to forget in times of high emotion, which occurred with some frequency whenever Bob Herbert was involved.

That's why you have to hold tight to what you once determined was right, Hood told himself. Otherwise, police officers became bullies, presidents became tyrants, and intelligence officers became both.

Hood sent the Kannaday file to Herbert with an audible prompt. He knew the intelligence chief would be sitting in the cabin, stewing. He wanted to make sure Herbert got the E-mail.

Hood heard the wheelchair beep over the phone. The data file had arrived. He still found it pretty amazing that information could be sent around the world so quickly, so completely, and so secretly. He remembered when he was still in school, and telexes were a big, innovative deal. That was about the time when Pong was the rage at airports and college lounges.

At least most forms of terrorism still had to be done the old-fashioned way. The killing tools of that despicable trade had to be moved slowly, by hand. And like a slug trailing slime across a slate walk, there was no way to erase all evidence of its passage. In days of depressing reality, that was a cheering thought.

It was at once sad and astonishing what passed for hope in the twenty-first century.