Carmichael’s suite was at the end of the hallway. He was protected by DeRenzi and two more guards here, but when Mayes stepped into the office outside of Denny’s bedroom, D/NCS told the security officers to wait outside. DeRenzi and the others stepped out, and Carmichael shut the door and locked it.
Carmichael was just finishing up a phone call with Brewer, who was on her way to D.C., where she had been summoned to the JSOC safe house to speak with Dakota, so Mayes took a moment to look around. The windows to the outside were tempered glass; not bulletproof, but they did not need to be, because iron slats could fall into place at the touch of a button. One exit out of the office led to the bedroom, a second to the hallway that served as the spine of the south wing, and the third to a narrow inner hallway that led past a narrow staircase, which ascended one flight to a locked door. The other side of the door was the south wing attic, which itself was secured from the outside and shut off from the other parts of the building. Beyond the stairway in the narrow hall was a bathroom, and then a large conference room.
As soon as Denny finished his call he looked at his watch. “It’s ten p.m., Mayes. Trouble?”
“We have a problem.”
“Talk.”
“Catherine King. I gave Zack Hightower the day to recover after he watched her house all night long. I put four cars on her tail. She ran around doing press all morning, just what you’d expect to see from her. She’s all over the news with the story you fed her. But then, just after noon, she started running an SDR.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. A good one, too, from the sound of it. Our surveillance people stayed on her for the first half hour, but she slipped them. She was in the wind from about one fifteen p.m. till almost two forty-five, at which time she returned to her car parked at the CNN building. She took that back to her office at the Post, arriving at three fifteen p.m.”
Carmichael said, “From the look on your face, I assume there is something more.”
“There is. At four twenty p.m. today she bought a ticket on a six ten flight to Tel Aviv.”
Carmichael’s razor-tight face stretched tighter as he scowled. “Son of a bitch. It’s Gentry. He got to her somehow.”
Mayes said, “It’s possible.”
Carmichael just said, “Gentry told her about BACK BLAST. He’s sending her to Tel Aviv to find out details from people she knows in the Mossad.”
“What can they possibly tell her?”
“Details, obviously.”
“Details even I don’t know?”
“Don’t start, Mayes. We’ve been through this.” Mayes didn’t push it, and Carmichael thought a moment. “I want surveillance on her e-mail and phone within the hour.”
Mayes nodded.
“And the other reporter working with her. What was his name?”
“Shoal. He’s not an investigator, he’s just—”
“I don’t care what he is. I want a full surveillance package on him. Phone and e-mail as well.”
“I’m on it.”
Carmichael added, “And get some more assets to cover Gentry’s father in Florida. Catherine King might have passed on the fact we were looking for someone from Jacksonville. He will read that as a threat.”
Mayes said, “More assets? Who, Denny? We don’t have SAD men we can call up, remember. The JSOC forces are deployed here in the District, and contracted security have proven themselves unable to go up against him. Who are we going to send down there other than the case officers already watching him?”
Denny Carmichael thought it over, then a thought came to him. “Harvey Point.”
Mayes cocked his head. “What about Harvey Point?”
“There is a training evolution going on down there right now, isn’t there?”
“Yes. Twenty-five case officers from Europe are down at the Point taking a class in defensive driving. One of Suzanne Brewer’s initiatives to improve security at foreign postings.” He shrugged. “But… what about them? Those folks aren’t shooters. They are just case officers. None of them have fired a gun since the Farm. You want to send a bunch of cocktail circuit spooks out to capture the Gray Man?”
“They don’t have to capture him. Send them down there immediately, all of them. Get them to lean on his dad, to see if he’s been in contact. They will be able to detect deception in him. Put them on the street corners, in the grocery stores, flood the zone. If Gentry goes down there and they get wind of it, we can fly shooters in from Bragg in a couple of hours.”
Mayes said, “I’ll get them moving down.”
60
Suzanne Brewer pulled her BMW 535i into the garage of the JSOC safe house three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. She was annoyed to be here; she’d rather be either back at the TOC at Langley running down the latest leads, or else curled up in her bed at home in Springfield, desperately trying to catch one of her all too few three-hour cat naps. It was ten-thirty p.m., after all; she had been on her way home for a break when she diverted all the way into the District, and since the last spate of Violator sightings were eight hours old she doubted she’d be needed back at Langley until the morning.
But she was here because Dakota had called and demanded a meeting.
The JSOC team had done everything she’d asked of them as they’d been sent on one chase after another over the past few days, so she gave in to his demand without putting up much of a fight. She knew they’d be tired and angry for being spun up again and again, often getting to locations where facial recog hits were too old for them to do more than wander around with only faint hopes their target might just be loitering in the area reading a newspaper.
The most recent callout of the JSOC team had taken place near Union Station around two p.m. Brewer’s team at the TOC had caught the facial recog hit, and Brewer herself had double-checked it within five minutes of the image being captured.
The image was of a man, very possibly Violator, walking into the large parking garage just to the west of the massive train station in the center of the District.
Another image showing the same man was captured inside the garage just a minute later, and it had him walking up a ramp towards one of the higher levels. This photograph did not contain a good view of his face, but with the first image to go on, Suzanne decided to deploy Dakota and his men.
The full twelve-man JSOC team arrived, followed shortly behind by CIA assets, and they all searched the entire area.
But no sign of Violator was detected, and the analysts at the TOC were unable to find any images of him leaving the area. The interior of the train station was virtually enveloped by camera coverage, and the lack of any computer matches there led Brewer to the conclusion her target had simply vanished.
Suzanne then sat down at a monitor in the TOC and individually checked the image of each and every vehicle that left the parking garage from the moment Violator entered until four hours later, long past the time JSOC had ruled out Gentry still being in the area, because she worried they might have missed him. Early in this slow, laborious endeavor she thought she detected the problem. She noticed an issue with one of the cameras covering the garage. The angle at which the sun’s rays hit the windshields of the cars leaving the H Street NE exit from one forty-five to two fifteen p.m. caused a large flashing glare on each and every digital image, and even by going manually through all the images time-stamped during this period, Suzanne could barely make out the drivers of any of the cars and trucks. If Gentry had left by this exit, inside a vehicle, within a half hour of when he arrived, it would have been almost impossible to identify him.