“But the boat was real,” Battat said.
“I saw the name–” “A name that was put there to hold your attention for a while,” Thomas said.
“Shit. We fell for that one, big time.”
“Which brings us to the second and suddenly very likely scenario,” Williamson said.
“If the Harpooner has been in Baku, there are two things we need to find out pretty damn quick. First, what he wanted and second, where he is now. Is that about right?”
Thomas nodded.
Moore rose.
“I’m betting he’s no longer using the Russian passport. I’ll get into the hotel computers and check the names of the guests against our passport registry database. See if any new names pop up.”
“He may also be working with people here, in which case he may not be staying at a hotel,” Thomas said.
“I’ll give you a list of known or suspected foreign cells,” Moore told him.
“You and Mr. Battat can crosscheck those with people the Harpooner might have worked with before.”
Battat said he would do that.
“There’s one other thing we should try,” Thomas said.
“We pretty much tapped out our Moscow-based sources on this before Mr.
Battat came down. It wasn’t very productive, but that was all we had time for. What about other governments in the region?”
“We haven’t made any significant intelligence inroads with any of them,” the deputy ambassador admitted.
“We don’t have the personnel to nurse the relationships, and a lot of the republics, including Azerbaijan, have had their resources strained with internal problems.
Everyone is busy spying on each other, especially on Chechnya.”
“Why there?” Battat asked.
“Because despite the coalition government that exists on paper, Chechnya is really controlled by Islamic militias intent on destabilizing and bringing down the other republics, including Russia,” she said.
“I’m hoping that the initiative the president announced last night in Washington will remedy that.”
“What initiative?” Battat asked.
“An intelligence cooperative with the United Nations,” Moore told him.
“He announced it last night in Washington.”
Battat rolled his eyes.
“You know, there is one place we might be able to try,” Thomas said.
“A couple of years ago I remember hearing that the National Crisis Management Center was involved with a Russian group based in Saint Petersburg.”
“A Russian crisis management group,” Moore said.
“Yeah, I remember hearing about that.”
“I can call Washington and have them contact Op Center Moore said.
“See if they still have a relationship with the Russians.”
“When you do, have them contact Bob Herbert over there,” Thomas suggested.
“He’s the head of intelligence–a really capable guy from what I hear. I understand that the new guy running the place. General Rodgers, is something of a hard-ass.”
“He’s not running Op-Center,” the deputy ambassador said.
“Who is?” asked Thomas.
“Paul Hood,” said the deputy ambassador.
“We got a directory update this morning. He withdrew his resignation.”
Moore snickered.
“I’ll bet he won’t be involved in the UN intelligence program.”
“Regardless,” Thomas said, “have them contact Herbert.
The Harpooner may try to slip out of the region by heading north, into Scandanavia. If he does, the Russians may be able to help us up there.”
Thomas agreed. Everyone rose then, and Thomas offered his hand to the deputy ambassador.
“Thank you for everything,” Thomas said.
“I’m truly sorry about all this.”
“So far, no real harm has been done.”
“We’re going to see that it stays that way,” Thomas said.
“I’ll have a room prepared for the two of you,” Williamson said.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s a place to crash.”
“Thanks,” Thomas said.
“But until we find our man, I have a feeling I won’t be getting a lot of sleep.”
“None of us will, Mr. Thomas,” Williamson assured him.
“If you’ll excuse me. Ambassador Small is due back from Washington at ten p.m. He’ll want to be briefed on this as soon as possible.”
Thomas left and walked down the corridor to Moore’s office. The ADPI hated having lost the Harpooner. But he also hated the fact that the bastard was probably laughing at them for taking the whale bait. He also wondered if the Harpooner might somehow have known that Battat had come from Moscow. Maybe that was why he’d let the agent live, to create conflict between the CIA office in Moscow and Baku. Or maybe he did it just to confuse them, have them waste time wondering why he hadn’t killed Battat.
Thomas shook his head. Your mind is all over the damn place, he chided himself. Stop it. You’ve got to focus. But that was going to be tough, Thomas knew, because the Harpooner was obviously a man who liked to keep his trackers off balance by mixing games with reality.
And so far, he was doing a helluva job.
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 3:00 p.m.
The cell phone rang in the office of the red-haired man. He shooed out two young assistants who closed the door behind them. Then he swiveled his chair so the high leather back was facing the door. He looked out the window, drew the cell phone from his inside jacket pocket, and answered on the fifth ring. If the phone had been stolen or lost and someone answered before that, the caller had been instructed to hang up.
“Yes?” the red-haired man said softly.
“He’s completed phase one,” said the caller.
“Everything is exactly on schedule.”
“Thank you,” said the red-haired man and clicked off.
He immediately punched in a new number. The phone was answered on the fifth ring.
“Hello?” said a gravelly voice.
“We’re on track,” said the red-haired man.
“Very good,” said the other.
“Anything from Benn?” asked the red-haired man.
“Nothing yet,” said the other.
“It will come.”
The men hung up.
The red-haired man put the phone back in his jacket pocket. He looked out across his desk and the office beyond. The photographs with the president and foreign heads of state. The commendations. A seven-by-ten-inch American flag that had been given to him by his mother.
The red-haired man had carried it, folded, in his back pocket during his tour of duty in Vietnam. It was framed on the wall, still creased and soiled with sweat and mud, the lubricants of combat.
As the red-haired man called his two aides back to the office, the ordinary nature of that act, the return of routine, underscored the extreme and complex nature of what he and his partners were undertaking.
To remake the international political and economic map was one thing.
But to do it quickly, in a stroke such as this, was unprecedented.
The work was daunting, and it was exciting. If the operation ever were to become publicly known, it would be considered monstrous by some. But to many, so were the American Revolution and the Civil War in their day.
So was the involvement of the United States in World War II, before Pearl Harbor. The red-haired man only hoped that if their actions were ever revealed, people would understand why they had been necessary. That the world in which the United States existed was radically different from the world into which the United States had been born. That in order to grow it was sometimes necessary to destroy. Sometimes rules, sometimes lives.
Sometimes both.
Camp Springs, Maryland Monday, 3:14 p.m.
Paul Hood called Senator Fox after returning from the White House. She admitted being totally confused by the president’s remarks and had put in a call to him to talk about it. Hood asked her to hold off until after he had had a chance to review the situation. She agreed.
Then Hood called Bob Herbert. Hood briefed the intelligence chief on his conversation with the First Lady, after which he asked Herbert to find out what he could about the phone call from the hotel and whether anyone else had noticed any odd behavior from the president.
Because Herbert stayed in touch with so many people-never asking them for anything, just seeing how they were doing, what the family was up to–it was easy for him to call and slip in important questions among the chitchat without making it seem as though he were fishing.
Now the two men were back in Hood’s office. But the Herbert who wheeled through the door was different than before.
“Is everything all right?” Hood asked.
The usually outgoing Mississippi native didn’t answer immediately. He was extremely subdued and staring ahead at something only he could see.
“Bob?” Hood pressed.
“They thought they had him,” Herbert said.
“What are you talking about?”
“A friend of mine at the CIA slipped me some news from the embassy in Moscow,” Herbert said.
“Why?”
Herbert took a long breath.
“Apparently, they had a solid lead that the Harpooner was in Baku.”
“Jesus,” Hood said.
“What for?”
“They don’t know,” Herbert said.
“And they lost him.
They sent one freakin’ guy to do the recon and–surprise!–he got clocked. I can’t blame them for wanting to be low profile, but with a guy like the Harpooner, you have to have backup.”