The God's Eye View

CHAPTER 17

Anders sat at his desk, waiting for Delgado, trying not to be impatient. It hadn’t been difficult to create some “intel” about a letter bomb en route from Istanbul to Washington, DC. In exchange for the promise of a half dozen M32A1 Multi-Shot Grenade Launchers plus ordnance, his contacts in Turkey simply phoned each other on some prepaid mobile units, using English and words like bomb and explosion and Allahu Akbar, along with a mention of FedEx and Washington, DC. NSA’s AURORAGOLD eavesdropping network flagged the cellular traffic; a Tailored Access Operations team tapped into FedEx’s computer network to track the package; and Thomas Delgado, credentialed as an army Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert, was sent to meet the plane carrying the “letter bomb” when it touched down at Washington Dulles. Discreet calls were placed to corporate officials; instructions conveyed to field personnel; employees directed to offer complete cooperation. Nothing left to chance, and nothing left now but to wait.

Remar opened the door and leaned his head in. “The president is convening the National Security Council again. He wants you back in the Situation Room in two hours.”

Anders swore under his breath. “What’s your take?”

“I think he’s going in.”

“Wasn’t McQueen supposed to give us breathing room on that?”

“He did what he could. But the advice of a general versus the advice of a senator… not much of a contest.”

“You think this is blowback? The president taking advantage of McQueen’s urge for patience to make himself look tough by comparison?”

“Could be. Impossible to say. I still think it was the right call at the time.”

Anders checked his watch and rubbed his hands together. “All right, I’ll need the car ready to go in an hour. Delgado should be in before then.”

On cue, there was a brash knock on the outer door. Remar went out. A moment later, he returned with Delgado, who marched in, this time in a digitally camouflaged army combat uniform rather than the customary natty suit, strode directly to the desk, and handed over a FedEx package. Remar eased out, closing the door behind him.

Anders looked at Delgado for a moment, resisting the urge to immediately tear open the package. No need for the man to see how important this was. “Any problems?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

“Nope. The minimum-wage guy loading packages onto the truck was very happy to show me where I could find what I was looking for. And to move off to a safe distance until I’d retrieved it. Guess the word had gone out.”

Anders pulled the cord on the mailer, reached inside, and retrieved a thumb drive. He inserted it into a USB port and ran a decrypt program. A minute went by, and then another, but it seemed that not even the supercomputers the special desktop unit was tied into were going to be able to crack it, at least not immediately as he had hoped. There were multiple gigabytes of information on the drive, though — the real deal, presumably, not another decoy. Well, even if the encryption held, the main thing was that he had it. Perkins was gone. Now all he had to do was tie off Hamilton and the whole breach would be rectified.

For a moment, he wondered what Perkins had turned over. Well, it seemed he might never find out. He supposed he could live with that. The main thing was that it wasn’t God’s Eye. It couldn’t have been.

Delgado nodded toward the package. “You want me to check out the address it was going to?”

Anders had already sent Manus to do a little sniffing there — a mailbox facility in Adams Morgan, a neighborhood in downtown DC — but he’d found nothing. Still, a variety of systems had confirmed that Hamilton had rented a box there two weeks earlier. Almost certainly a one-off he’d established before leaving for Istanbul, and therefore almost certainly, at this point, a dead end.

“No,” Anders said. “No need.”

Delgado nodded and turned as though to go. Then he turned back. “Hey, I meant to ask you something earlier. It’s probably nothing, so it slipped my mind.”

Anders raised his eyebrows.

Delgado touched the hair plugs as though to ensure they were still there. “Do you know an Ariel?”

Alarm bells went off in Anders’s mind but he maintained his neutral expression. “I don’t know. Aerial who?”

“I’m not sure. Perkins said something about an Ariel. In the car, before he died. I think that was the name.”

The alarm bells got louder. “What did he say?”

“Ah, forget it, it was nothing.”

Anders suppressed his irritation at what was obviously a gambit intended to tease out the real level of Anders’s interest. He fixed Delgado with an even stare. “I’d always rather you share too much, Thomas, and let me decide whether something is really nothing. Does that make sense?”

Delgado glanced away like a schoolchild embarrassed by a reprimand. “He said, ‘I love you, Ariel.’ And I was just wondering… I don’t know. Was that his wife?”

Anders knew perfectly well Delgado could have looked into that question himself. Presumably he’d already tried, but found nothing. Anders didn’t know why the man was curious, and he had to be careful about revealing his own growing concern.

“No, I believe his wife’s name was Caryn.”

“Maybe a daughter, then.”

Another thing Delgado could have, and probably had, already checked. But why?

“Doubtful. Perkins had two sons, but no daughters, so far as I’m aware.”

Delgado looked faintly disappointed. “Oh. It’s just interesting, the places people’s minds sometimes go when they realize it’s the end.”

“Well, whoever she might have been, at least Perkins felt the presence of someone he loved when he died. A small grace, but something.”

Delgado cracked a knuckle. “Anyway, like I said, probably nothing, but like you said, better to mention it than not.”

“Indeed.”

The moment Delgado was out the door, Anders called in Remar and briefed him. That feeling he’d had with Snowden — of being in Chile again, the ground shaking, sidewalks disintegrating — was back, and he had to place his hands on the desk to maintain his equilibrium.

“Aerial?” Remar said. “You don’t think—”

“What else can we think? ‘Aerial, I love you’? If Chambers had a relationship with Perkins, who knows what she might have told him on the pillow? Without a doubt she would have told him about the new God’s Eye security protocols we had her implement. The protocols she took live the very night she died. If she confided in Perkins, he’d know what happened to her wasn’t random. And whatever she confided, he’d have a powerful motive to reveal it. Why else would a twenty-five-year-veteran on the verge of a full pension and honorable retirement turn traitor? Nothing else makes sense.”

There was a long pause. Remar said, “Jesus Christ.”

“Look into it. I want to know if they were together.”

“The data’s going to be over a year old.”

“I want to know if they were together. If Hamilton knows about God’s Eye, we have got to short-circuit this rescue. More so now than ever.”

Remar’s expression was grim — whether over the possibility of God’s Eye being exposed, or over what might be required to prevent exposure, or both, Anders didn’t know. Or care.

“Do you understand?” he said. “Hamilton needs to be stopped. No matter what it takes.”