War of Eagles

TWELVE

After Paul Hood was shown to his office, a young female intern who did not look much older than his daughter came in and cheerfully showed him how to work his computer. The lady — Mindy, from Texas money, he knew from her accent and her Armani suit — dutifully looked away after telling him how to program his personal password.

“A master program maintains a record of all your Web stops, Mr. Hood,” the slender young woman informed him. “The president has asked us all to be circumspect about where we go.”

Hood could actually hear the Southern-born president using a word like that, imbuing it with the proper balance of danger and piety. The young intern sounded very mature indeed, carrying forth that word from the commander in chief. At Op-Center, Hood used to tell people the same thing. It took him two words, though: “No porn.”

Mindy showed Hood how to work the telephone and gave him a swipe card for the men’s room. She was very professional about that, too. After the young woman left, Hood sat alone, with the door shut. Chief of Staff Sanders said she would come by at three. She wanted to review her thoughts with Hood on how the new office might work. She assured him, however, that the decision would be his, and he would have full autonomy on the final setup.

As long as you agree, Hood thought. Otherwise, the new special envoy would be removed, and someone else would get the job. That was how things worked in the nation’s capital.

It was difficult to process everything that had just happened. Hood looked around and smiled mirthlessly. About the only thing today had in common with yesterday was that Hood still did not have a window.

Just an exit, if he needed it.

Hood felt alone, despite the people he knew were just a few feet away. He was at the seat of power, yet he felt strangely powerless. It would be odd not to receive hourly intelligence reports from the research rooms upstairs. It was frustrating not to have anyone of a Bob Herbert or Darrell McCaskey caliber to consult.

That is not entirely true, he reminded himself. Hood owed Bob Herbert a phone call.

It took a moment for Hood to remember how to work the telephone. He had to press nine, enter his department code, then punch in the number he wanted. At Op-Center it was the other way around.

“Paul, what the hell is going on?” Herbert asked after Hood had said hello.

“More changes,” Hood replied.

“That’s obvious. The phone ID says you’re calling from the White House.”

“I’m the new special envoy to the president,” Hood replied.

“Special envoy to where?” Herbert asked.

“Everywhere. I am still an international crisis manager,” Hood replied.

“Did you know that this was coming? Any of it, including the changing of the guard over here?”

“No,” Hood said.

“Neither did I. And we’re intelligence professionals.”

“An attack always comes from somewhere you’re not expecting it,” Hood pointed out.

“Is that what this was?” Herbert asked.

“What do you mean?”

“An attack?” Herbert said. “Hell, I thought we were all on the same side.”

The remark caught Hood like a palm-heel strike to the side of the head. Herbert had a point. Hood was obviously not pleased with how this had gone down, and he was not sure why. Not everyone got “fired” to the White House. He should be flattered, not angry. Maybe it was the idea that he was now working for someone. He had never done that in his career, not as the mayor of Los Angeles, as a financial adviser, or as the head of Op-Center. Though the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee watched what the NCMC was doing and how the money was spent, Hood was the superior officer. He did not report to one. The question he had to answer, truthfully, was whether he considered the president an enemy.

No. Lorraine Sanders, maybe, he decided. She struck him as being extremely territorial.

“How is everyone taking the change?” Hood asked.

“I don’t know,” Herbert admitted. “Numb, I guess. We had a staff meeting this morning, and everyone was pretty quiet. But I haven’t really talked to anyone. I’ve been looking into this situation we have.”

“Can you talk about it?” Hood asked. He wanted to put on his professional hat as soon as possible. Dwelling on personal issues was not going to get him anything but deeper into them.

“Sure,” Herbert replied. “You’ve still got your security clearance, right?”

“Yeah,” Hood said. Herbert was not joking. That bothered Hood, but like everything else, he was not sure why. Herbert was just doing his job, following a protocol that Hood had helped to establish.

“Someone out there is capping Chinese interests abroad,” Herbert told him. “There have been three incidents in one day. General Carrie wanted to know if they are connected or if we need to be concerned about that.”

“Do you?” Hood asked.

“It’s too early to say,” Herbert replied. “Charleston police report finding the remains of Chinese stowaways in the harbor. An hour ago there was an explosion at a nightclub in Taipei. Special guests received special treatment there—”

“From mainland Chinese girls,” Hood said.

“You see where this is going,” Herbert replied. “We do not believe that someone is attacking men and women who leave China. We suspect the target is the enabler, whoever is helping them to get out and making money from their sale in Taipei or the United States. Darrell just got off the horn with a friend in the Taipei Municipal Police Department. The Section Four Bomb Squad, attached to the Xihu Police Substation, was at the site within minutes. They found a badly wounded fellow who has since been identified as Hui-ling Wong, a suspected slaver. He died on the way to the hospital, but they found his boat in the harbor.”

“Did they get any phone records, computers?”

“Nada,” Herbert said. “The guy never used any of those. He had a nickname, Lo Tek. All his deals were conducted in person or arranged via ship-to-ship or ship-toshore communications.”

“Sensible.”

“The harbor police did get his radio operator, though. They’re hoping he’ll be able to tell them something.”

“Do you think Hui-ling was the target?” Hood asked.

“No,” Herbert said. “It would have been just as easy to take out his ketch. He was probably just a bystander who happened to deserve what he got.”

“So the business was the target,” Hood said.

“Yes, but Ron and General Carrie both think there might be a proxy war being fought here. I’m inclined to agree.”

Those words were not a slap. They were worse. Hearing Herbert mention Ron Plummer and General Carrie in the same sentence was like hearing his former wife talk about her new boyfriend. It reminded Hood, painfully, that forces beyond his control had wrested him from people and events that had defined his life. It was an effort to speak, let alone to speak unemotionally.

“Why do you think that?” Hood asked flatly.

“The PRC has an enormously high rate of illegal emigration,” Herbert said. “In terms of sheer numbers, it’s higher than that of any other nation. Those refugees were the people Wong reportedly hunted. He would not have been able to pluck people from offshore vessels without the tacit approval of the People’s Liberation Navy. Not in a ketch that size, in those waters, in a perpetual state of silent running. That alone would have caught the attention of every radar station along the coast. Wong had to be paying people off.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“Not yet,” Herbert said. “But we may have a back door to that information. The attacks in Charleston and Taipei bookended the bombing of sugar silos in South Africa. According to public records in Durban, one of the investors in that refinery is the Tonkin Investment Corporation, a group of Vietnamese shipping entrepreneurs who have close ties with members of the Chinese government. Specifically, they handle official government investments managed by Chou Shin, who is the vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Relief Fund. The Chicom UFRF manages funds for the survivors of soldiers who died in the struggle to put the Communists into power and keep them there. Chou is a hard-liner, an acolyte of Mao who also happens to be the director of the 8341 Unit of the Central Security Regiment.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Hood said. “They’re extremely low profile.”

“Very. Their job is to spy on political and philosophical enemies of Chicom at home and abroad. Chou has deep files on students, radicals, black marketeers, and plutocrats.”

“A kind of anti — J. Edgar Hoover,” Hood suggested.

“Exactly,” Herbert said. “Chou also has the resources to attack the trade in illegal émigrés.”

“For what reason?” Hood asked.

“Defense. Spite. The profits could be used to finance rival factions in Beijing, or maybe he has a grudge against some minister or general. What’s interesting is the timing of the events. The first two, the blasts in Charleston and Durban, happened relatively close together.”

“You mean someone might have had the silo scenario primed in the event of an attack on the émigrés.”

“Right. But the blast in Taipei came significantly later — possibly a response to the bombing in Durban.”

“That isn’t a proxy war,” Hood said. “It’s gods hurling thunderbolts at one another.”

“Not giving a damn about collateral damage, I know,” Herbert said. “In any case, Maria has Interpol connections who deal regularly with the National Security Bureau in Taipei. They’ve got people inside Beijing. We’re trying to find out who is on the top of Chou’s hit list, someone who might have the resources to have the counterstrike in Durban ready and waiting.”

Maria Corneja McCaskey was the Spanish-born wife of Op-Center’s FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey. She had retired from Interpol to come to the United States with her new husband. She had not settled comfortably into domesticity and was retained by Op-Center to interface with the global police agency and its affiliates.

“So who are we rooting for?” Hood asked. “The slavercapitalist or the repressive spy who’s watching out for war widows?”

It was a rhetorical question, and Herbert took it as such. “The sad thing is, people end up suffering either way,” the intelligence chief remarked.

“I hope there’s something you can do to minimize that,” Hood said.

There was a short silence as Hood worked through another painful moment. In the past that would be the start of a discussion between Hood and one of his senior staff, not the end.

“Are there any resources you can bring to bear?” Herbert asked.

“I’ll find out,” Hood said. “Hell, Bob, I’m still learning how to work the telephones.”

“Didn’t they give you an assistant?”

“I get to hire two,” Hood said.

“Hey. That’s a step up from Op-Center.”

“Not really,” Hood said. “I have no idea where to find them.”

There was another short silence. It grew into a long one. Herbert was not one for small talk, and Hood felt as if the intelligence chief had been extending the conversation unnaturally.

“I guess I’d better let you go,” Hood said.

“Sorry,” Herbert said. “I was just checking my caller ID. There’s an incoming call I’d better take.”

“Sure,” Hood told him. “I’ll have a look into this Chinese situation and get back to you.”

“Thanks,” Herbert said. “Hey, Paul, have you heard from Mike lately?”

“I haven’t spoken to him since he left Op-Center,” Hood told him. “Why?”

“Because that’s who is calling me,” Herbert replied.