Those had a range of two and one-half miles. The Zed-4 utilized a series of satellite links to pick up cellular transmissions from around the world. A series of internal audio enhancers and boosters virtually eliminated breakup and lost signals. The Zed-4 was also quite secure.
Most secure-phone calls, including the United States Tac-Sat units, were encrypted with a 155-digit number. In order to crack the code, eavesdroppers had to factor that into its two component prime numbers.
Even using sophisticated computers like the Cray 916, that could take weeks. The CIA had managed to cut that time into days by stealing computer time from personal computers. In 1997, the agency began using Internet servers to piggyback the numbers into home computer systems.
Small amounts of memory were appropriated to work on the problem without the user being aware of it. Networked throughout a system of millions of PCS, the CIA was able to add gigabytes of computation power to the problem. It also created a problem for counter programmers since it was not possible to shut down the Cia’s so-called Stealth Field System.
Thus, the Zed-4 was created using a complex encryption code of 309 digits. Even the SFS lacked sufficient power to break that code in a timely fashion. Charles answered on the third ring.
“B-sharp,” he said. That was the receiver code name.
“C-natural,” said the caller.
“Go ahead,” said Charles.
“I’m across the street from the target,” said the caller.
“They’re bringing him out the side door.”
“No ambulance?”
“No,” said the caller.
“Who’s with him?” Charles asked.
“Two men,” said the caller.
“Neither of them in uniform.” Charles smiled. Americans were so predictable. If there were more than one operative, they invariably went to the user’s manual.
“How to Be a Soldier or Spy,” Rule Fifty-three: Put the man above the mission. That thinking went at least as far back as the United States cavalry out West. Whenever the more aggressive Native American tribes like the Apaches were being pursued, they would stop to attack homesteaders. The warriors would always rape one of the women, leaving her where the cavalry was certain to find her. Invariably, the soldiers would send the woman back to the fort with an escort. That would not only delay the pursuing column but leave them depleted.
“Is backup in place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then take them,” Charles said.
“It’s done,” the caller said confidently.
“Out.” The phone went dead. Charles hung up. That was it. The last piece. He’d allowed the one agent to live to draw the others out. An injection in the neck, a fast-acting bacterial pneumonia, and the entire local cast was out of commission. Now there would be no one to put pieces together, to stop him from completing the mission. Charles had one more call to place before he went to bed. It was to a secure line in Washington, to one of the few men who knew of Charles’s involvement in this operation. To a man who didn’t follow the rule book. To a man who helped devise one of the most audacious schemes of modern times.
Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 1:35 a.m.
The ride to the V.I.P Hospital took just under ten minutes. The V.I.P was the only hospital the American embassy deemed to be up to the standards of western health care. They had an arrangement with Dr. Kanibov, one of the city’s few English-speaking physicians. The fifty-seven-year-old Kanibov was paid off the books to be available for around-the-clock emergencies and to recommend qualified specialists when necessary. Tom Moore didn’t know if a specialist was going to be necessary. All he knew was that Pat Thomas had woken him twenty minutes earlier. Thomas had heard David Battat moaning on his cot. When Thomas went over to check on Battat, he found him soaked with perspiration and trembling. The embassy nurse had a look at him and took Battat’s temperature. He had a fever of 105. The nurse suggested that Battat may have hit his head or suffered capillary damage when he was attacked. Rather than wait for an ambulance, Thomas and Moore loaded Battat into one of the embassy staff cars in the gated parking lot and brought him to the hospital themselves. The medic called ahead to let Dr. Kanibov know that they had a possible case of neurogenic shock. This is all we need, to be down a man, Thomas thought as he drove through the dark, deserted streets of the embassy and business district. It was bad enough to have too few people to deal with normal intelligence work. But to find the Harpooner, one of the world’s most elusive terrorists, was going to take more. Thomas only hoped that his call to Washington would get them timely cooperation on a Saint Petersburg connection. Dr. Kanibov lived just a block from the hospital.
The tall, elderly, white-goa teed physician was waiting when they arrived. Battat’s teeth were chattering, and he was coughing. By the time a pair of orderlies put him on a gurney just inside the door, the American’s lips and fingernail beds were rich blue.
“Very restricted blood flow,” said Kanibov to one of the orderlies.
“Oxygen.” He looked in Battat’s mouth.
“Traces of mucus. Suction, then give me an oral temperature.”
“What do you think is wrong?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Kanibov said.
“The nurse at the embassy said it could be neurogenic shock,” Thomas said to the doctor.
“If it were, his face would be pale, not flushed,” the doctor said with annoyance. He looked at Thomas and Moore.
“You gentlemen can wait here or you can go back and wait–”
“We’ll stay here,” Thomas informed him.
“At least until you know what’s wrong.”
“Very well,” the doctor said as they wheeled Battat into the ward. It seemed strangely quiet for an emergency room, Thomas thought. Whenever his three boys hurt them selves back in Washington or in Moscow, the ERS were like the West Wing of the White House: loud, purposeful chaos. He imagined that the clinics in the poorer sections of Baku must be more like that. Still, the silence was unnerving, deathlike. Thomas looked at Moore.
“There’s no sense for both of us to be here,” Thomas said.
“One of us should get a little sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Moore said.
“I was making those contacts we discussed and reviewing files.”
“Did you find anything?” Thomas asked.
“Nothing,” Moore said.
“All the more reason for you to go back to the embassy,” Thomas said.
“David is my responsibility. I’ll wait here.” Moore considered that.
“All right,” he said.
“You’ll call as soon as you know something?”
“Of course,” Thomas said. Moore gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then walked back through the lobby. He pushed the door open and walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side.
A moment later, Tom Moore’s head jerked to the right and he dropped to the asphalt. Washington, D.C. Monday, 6:46 p.m. Paul Hood arrived at Op-Center, where he was to meet with Bob Herbert and Mike Rodgers. He also telephoned Liz Gordon. He asked her to wait around so he could talk to her later. He wanted to get her input on what, if anything, might be happening with the president from a clinical standpoint. Hood bumped into Ann Farris on the way to his office. She walked with him through the tight, winding maze of cubicles to the executive wing. As Herbert had joked when he first went to work at Op-Center, that was where the cubicles had ceilings.
“Anything interesting going on?” Ann asked.
“The usual confusion,” Hood said.
“Only this time, it’s happening in Washington, not overseas.”
“Is it something really bad?”
“I don’t know yet,” Hood said.
“There seems to be a loose cannon somewhere in the NSA.” Hood didn’t want to say anything about the president possibly having mental lapses of some kind. It wasn’t that he. didn’t trust Ann, but Megan Lawrence had told him something in confidence. For now, he wanted to keep the number of people with whom he shared that as small as possible.
“What’s going on in your department?”
“The usual efficiency and expert coordination,” she said with a disarming smile.
“You mean nothing’s going on.”
“Exactly,” Ann said. She waited a moment, then asked, “Do you expect to be here long?”
“A couple of hours,” he said.
“There’s no reason to go back to the hotel. I’d just sit there and watch some bad sitcom.”
“Can I interest you in dinner?” she asked.
“It may be a long night,” Hood said.
“I don’t have any plans, either,” she said.
“My son is staying with his dad this week. There’s nothing for me to go home to but a spoiled cat and those same sitcoms.” Hood’s heart began thumping a little faster than usual. He very much wanted to say yes to Ann. But he was still a married man, and going out with a divorced female coworker could cause trouble, legally as well as ethically. And Op-Center did not need this distraction. The intelligence team was brilliant at uncovering information. Hood having dinner with Farris would be common knowledge by morning. Besides, if dinner with Ann was in the back of his mind, he would not be focusing on a crisis in the executive branch.