War of Eagles

SIXTEEN

Of all the people General Carrie had met at Op-Center, the one she had enjoyed the most was Liz Gordon. The two women sat in facing armchairs in front of the desk. Carrie felt it might make these talks less intimidating than if she were behind the desk. Liz was the only one who moved her chair, turning it so that she was facing the new director rather than sitting at an angle. The staff psychologist also offered her viewpoints without having to be asked. She was the only one who did not say exactly what she thought the new director wanted to hear. They talked about Paul Hood and his impact on the organization before moving on to the existing personnel.

“The senior staff is going to want to please you,” Gordon told Carrie a few minutes into their informal chat. “But they will also resent you.”

“Because I replaced Paul Hood or because I replaced a man?” Carrie asked.

“Both,” Liz said. “And also because you were given the job most of them would have wanted.”

“I earned this position,” Carrie replied. She jabbed the desk with an index finger. “I also earned the three stars I’m wearing, something no other woman ever accomplished.”

“You see, General, that is part of the problem,” Liz replied. “You are a woman with three stars. I know Bob, Darrell, Lowell, Ron, and Matt. I know them very well. To the first two, at least, your promotion represents a bone to our gender and not a real accomplishment.”

“That would be their problem, not mine,” Carrie said. “Do you think they will work less for me than they did for Hood?”

“As I said, they still need the director’s approval if they want to keep their jobs. I’m sure they feel as if they are all on probation.”

“They are,” Carrie replied.

They were interrupted by a call from Bob Herbert. He brought Carrie up to date on the conversation with Mike Rodgers. Rodgers had also spoken with Paul Hood and had phoned to tell Herbert about that. Hood was going to see what he could do about getting intel from the Chinese prime minister.

Carrie thanked Herbert and hung up. There was a very strange mix of resentment and suck-up in Herbert’s brusque but meticulously complete briefing.

“None of them is in danger of being dismissed, and I don’t care whether they like me or not,” the general went on. “But I want to be sure I can count on them to give the job everything they’ve got.”

“You can,” Liz said confidently. “Bob and Darrell are competitive with each other and themselves, so they will always overreach—”

The conversation was interrupted by a beep on the intercom.

“Yes?” Carrie said.

“General, Darrell McCaskey and Matt Stoll are here to see you,” Bugs Benet informed her.

“Thank you. Send them in,” Carrie said.

“I’ll leave,” Liz said, rising.

“I appreciate your input, Liz. We’ll finish this later.”

“I look forward to it,” the psychologist replied.

Liz stepped out as McCaskey walked in. Carrie noticed McCaskey fire the psychologist a short, narrow look. It was the kind of look soldiers going into interrogation gave to soldiers leaving interrogation: Did you crack? Did you tell them something I should know about?

The moment passed quickly. As McCaskey entered, he was back on the job. Matt Stoll came in behind him. Carrie had not yet met the scientist alone. The MIT graduate was a lumpy man with eyes that saw elsewhere. Stoll struck her as a man who used his senses to guide him through this world while his mind lived in another, far more interesting place. He was carrying a compact disk on his index finger.

Carrie stood and went behind her desk. She did not want to be an armchair general when she received an official update.

“We may have caught a break,” McCaskey said. He stopped in front of the desk and remained standing. “There was a man at the club who Interpol and the Taipei police were watching. He was a reputed slave trader by the name of Hui-ling Wong, aka Lo Tek. He died in the blast. The coastal patrol had seen his boat arrive, and officers were dispatched to all the clubs he usually frequents.”

“Why didn’t they arrest him en route?” Carrie asked.

“Because they have no evidence,” McCaskey said. “The agents were at the nightclub with acoustic devices, hoping he would say something that would give them a reason to arrest him.”

“Did he?” Carrie asked, looking at the CD.

“No,” McCaskey replied. “But the agents were wearing wide wires, digital, wide-frequency recorders that collect every sound in a room and send it to a central location where the extraneous noises are removed.”

“That’s the only way to collect specific conversations without using a parabolic dish,” Stoll said.

“The agents were killed in the blast, but everything they recorded was sent to a mobile unit not far from the club,” McCaskey said. “Through my Interpol connections we got a copy.”

Stoll held up the CD on his finger.

“The explosion destroyed everything within one hundred yards of the epicenter,” McCaskey went on. “The bombers would have known the blast radius and made sure they were beyond that. But they would have had to be within three hundred fifty yards to detonate a radiocontrolled device. Matt executed a thorough acoustic search in that window and managed to pick up the very faint trigger ping, the signal sent to activate the bomb.”

“We got the guys talking on the stairwell, Madam General,” Stoll said, “They were breathing hard, moving real fast, and speaking Cantonese.”

“So they were probably from the mainland,” the general remarked. “What did you get?”

“Until the blast killed the wide wires, we managed to pick up their names,” Stoll told the general. He smiled a little for the first time. “More important, we got remarkably clear voiceprints.”

“There was no one else in the stairwell at that point,” McCaskey noted.

Like fingerprints, voiceprints were unique to every individual. Stoll placed the CD on the general’s desk.

“We passed those charts back to Interpol and the Taipei police,” McCaskey said. “They’ve mobilized all of their ELINT units, including those of the military. They’ve sectored the city and are scanning every cell phone call being made. Which, at this hour, is not a lot.”

“They don’t actually have to listen to the calls,” Stoll explained. “All they need is to find a frequency that matches either voice.”

“Yes. I’ve worked with voiceprinting before,” the general said.

“Sorry,” Stoll said.

“So we have PRC bombers working in Taiwan,” Carrie said. “Hired hands?”

“We believe so. The working theory is that it’s the Tong Wars redux, right down to fighting of brothels and the trafficking of slave girls,” McCaskey said. “Foot soldiers working for gang leaders. In this case, though — and it’s the worst-case scenario — the leaders could be Beijing heavyweights. It will be tough to get to them.”

“Maybe,” General Carrie said. “Do you remember how Jack Manion dealt with the tongs?”

“Not actually, General.”

“His background was required reading when I went over to G2,” the general said. “In 1920, a gentleman named Dan O’Brien took over as San Francisco’s chief of police. He put his childhood friend Manion in charge of the Chinatown Squad. Inspector Manion recruited Chinese to infiltrate and inform on the warring factions, on shipments of heroin, on contracted hits. He made sure his men were there to intercept and interdict. He even came up with early electronic surveillance devices, such as electrified doormats to let him know how many people were inside a room. Manion also made protecting his sources a high priority. He always had his own men on the street where spies could go with information or for protection. Not only did Manion end the violence, but after ten years in the precinct, the grateful Chinese refused to let him leave. He stayed there until his retirement in 1946.” She leaned forward. “We need that here.”

“In China or in general?” McCaskey asked.

“Both. Our immediate concern will be making sure that we’ve got a blast shield for whatever is blowing up in China,” Carrie said. “I don’t care if they kill each other. But like Manion, I don’t want that spilling into the streets. Not the streets of Charleston or the streets of Taipei.”

“I still don’t see how we’re going to get close to the Chinese leaders,” McCaskey said. “We don’t have a deep well of HUMINT personnel and none over there. Are there resources you can call on?”

“There may be,” she said. “Let’s wait and see what the CA patrol turns up over there.”

CA was a chase and apprehend mission. In Carrie’s experience it was more often than not a full-fledged CAT operation: chase, apprehend, and terminate. Most spies and enemy infiltrators did not like to be apprehended.

McCaskey and Stoll left. Carrie slipped the CD into the computer and listened to the exchange between the bombers. The back-of-the-throat sound of the Chinese language was strikingly unfamiliar, but it was clear that both men were talking. They were definitely equals. They had been hired by someone else.

The prospect of facing a crisis this big on her first day in the director’s seat both scared and invigorated the general. She could not help but wonder if someone at the Pentagon or the White House had anticipated this.

“Toss it to the chick with three stars. See how she handles the long ball… ”

She would handle it just fine. Not only because her career depended upon it but because of something more important.

Lives did.