War of Eagles

SEVEN

Nothing ticked off a career intelligence officer more than not having intelligence. And right now, Op-Center’s intelligence director was extremely ticked off.

The people who glided past Bob Herbert’s open office door would not have known anything was wrong with the forty-eight-year-old officer. Their quick, questioning glances and hushed conversation suggested they knew there was something amiss at Op-Center, though no one knew exactly what that was. They may have heard rumors from Bugs Benet or seen the new arrival when she strode through the hall. But no one knew what it meant.

Including Herbert.

The intelligence chief sat quietly behind his desk in his new, state-of-the-art wheelchair. His expression was neutral. He appeared to be a man very much in control. But physical peace was a hair-trigger condition that rested, like crustal plates, on a molten sea of emotion. And Herbert’s emotions were bubbling.

Herbert had come to work a half hour before, after spending a long night overseeing the software setup of Op-Center’s lean but crackerjack intelligence division. He had arrived expecting to experience an exciting start-up with his colleagues, the culmination of six months of team effort, Sunrise at Campobello. Instead, Herbert found something much different.

A few minutes after Herbert had passed the upstairs guard — who logged him as present, information that went to the computers of all the division directors — Bugs Benet called to inform him that there was someone in Paul Hood’s office, a three-star general. A woman. She obviously had the creds to get downstairs, she had an ID card that gave her access to Hood’s office when she swiped it through the lock, and she told Benet to call a meeting of the senior staff for ten A.M. in the Tank, the conference room at Op-Center. Then she shut the office door.

“That was the last I saw or heard of her,” Benet told Herbert. “I’m calling you first.”

“Where is Paul?” Herbert asked.

“At the White House,” Benet said.

“Oh?” That did not sound good. Washington had a singular way of removing an individual from power and assuring a continuity of command. This was it. “Did you try calling him?”

“No. That will go on the phone log.” Benet lowered his voice. “If Paul has been dismissed, his security status may have changed. I don’t want to be accused of passing operational data to an outsider.”

It was a valid point. Paranoid, but valid. Herbert asked to be put through to the general.

The woman took the call. She introduced herself as General Morgan Carrie, the new director of Op-Center, and said she would brief Herbert and his colleagues at the staff meeting. When Herbert asked what that meant for Paul Hood, she told him she did not have that information and would see him in forty-five minutes.

And hung up.

Herbert tried to call Hood, but he did not answer his cell phone. Ticked off quickly became pissed off as frustration and consternation grew. Darrell McCaskey called, and Herbert told him what he knew. Liz Gordon suggested that they track him down using the GPS and intercept him somewhere.

“If he’s been dismissed, we don’t know what he might do,” the staff psychologist said.

“I don’t think Paul is the kind of guy who would off himself,” Herbert said.

“Actually, those are exactly the people you have to worry about, the über-steady souls who guide you through a crisis, then don’t have a place to put their key,” Gordon countered. “Like soldiers who come back from war. The job is finished, the purpose is removed from life, it’s time to check out. Though that’s not what concerns me about Paul.”

“What does?” Herbert asked. The intelligence chief was half-convinced that this was displacement, that Liz Gordon was upset and disoriented and looking for a place to put her key.

“He might turn his anger outward, at the thing he perceived has hurt him,” Gordon said.

“The president?”

“Op-Center,” she replied. “He could go to the press and complain, visit an old friend and divulge secrets without thinking, just get himself into a lot of trouble.”

“I think Paul is a little steadier than that,” Herbert replied.

“Do you.” It was a statement, not a question. “Remember what a chance meeting with an old girlfriend did to him?”

“Liz, that was the love of his life.”

“And what is Op-Center? This place is his life.”

Liz had a point there. Herbert still thought the soul of her concern was psychobabble, and he was not ready to hunt Paul Hood down and put a tail on him. Still, Herbert agreed that they should revisit this question after the staff meeting. Hopefully, by that time, General Carrie would have more information about her predecessor or Hood himself would have gotten in touch by then.

Hood had to know they would be concerned.

The emotionally impervious Matt Stoll called to ask if the rumors of a new director were true and how Herbert thought this would impact his own staff and operations. Herbert said he did not know, but he was perversely relieved that someone, at least, was concerned about Op-Center and not about its people. It reminded him that, like it or not, they had a job to perform, a nation to serve.

And then it was two minutes to ten o’clock. Time to get intelligence.

Assuming, of course, that any of them still had jobs.