Hood turned. Bob Herbert was in the doorway.
“What is weak, Bob?” Hood asked amiably. This was not the time to get defensive. Herbert was still in a volatile mode, and they had a case to solve.
“I’ve been sitting here listening to you guys play Junior Crimestoppers.” Herbert rolled his wheelchair into the office. “You should have folded your intelligence chief into this, people. I’ve known hookers who were too smart to get caught on security cameras. That doesn’t de facto make them potential assassins.”
“Our intelligence chief removed himself from circulation yesterday,” Hood remarked. “I thought it was best to let him return on his own. I’m glad he has. What’s your take, then?”
“I talked to Darrell a few minutes ago, and my take is simple,” Herbert said. “The killer has to fit two criteria. Otherwise, he isn’t the killer. First, who stands to gain by Wilson’s death? Second, who has the chops to pull it off? The only guy we have on that short list is Link. That leaves us two options. One: we waste resources looking for people who may also fit the criteria. Or two: we lean on Link with everything we can muster. Squeeze him like a lemon and see if we get juice. If not, then we move on.”
“How would you squeeze him?” Hood asked.
“Thanks for asking,” Herbert said. “We have to do what we used to do with suspected moles or double agents. We go right up and say, ‘We think you’re a rat. We’re gonna be all over you until you crack.’ Invariably, they look to get the heat off themselves. I believe these guys did that once by killing Robert Lawless. If we lean on Link, he’ll either do that again or shut his operation down. In any case, he’ll have to contact his cohorts to do that. When he does, we’ll be all over them.”
The room was emphatically silent.
“Who would make that call?” Hood asked.
“Darrell just did,” Herbert replied. “That’s why Bugs was calling you. To tell you that Darrell was on the line.”
“It was the right decision,” Hood remarked.
“He knew you’d think so,” Herbert said.
“What did Link say?”
“He thinks you’re desperate, and this proves it,” Herbert replied. “Darrell told Link he was wrong. It was all the usual back-and-forth up-front bluster. Just like the United Nations. The real work is going to take place behind the scenes. Darrell has Maria on the way to help. Matt’s poking around computer files to find out more on Stone.”
“Sounds good,” Hood said.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’ll let you know what turns up,” Herbert said.
The intelligence chief turned and left the room. Hood let him go without comment. The silence was even deeper now. Hood broke it by thanking the team and leaving. Stoll hurried after him.
“Chief?” Stoll said.
Hood turned. “Yes, Matt?”
“Bob was a little out of line there — you handled that well.”
“Thanks.”
“But the truth is we’re hearing a lot of conflicting things about Op-Center and the CIOC,” Stoll said.
“Hearing from whom?”
“Okay, we’re not actually hearing it,” Stoll said. “We’re sort of hacking it from Company and FBI internal E-mail.”
“They should have used Mr. Wilson’s firewalls,” Hood said.
“They do,” Stoll said.
“And you broke through?”
“Not exactly,” Stoll told him. “There’s a serious flaw in MasterLock, one that hackers would have had to plan ahead to exploit. Two years ago I sent E-mails to the agencies with a virus. A time bomb. What it does is lurk in the software and reset it to a previous systems checkpoint on my command. It’s like sending the computer into the past for as long as I need, then restoring the current programs. If someone is on the computer, they are unlikely to notice.”
“Matt, that’s brilliant.”
“Thanks. I figured the best way around increasingly sophisticated firewalls was to go in before they were raised. The point is, according to internal E-mails, there are folks who say we’re grandstanding by working on this Wilson thing, and others who say we’re going down and desperate for attention.”
“Neither of those is true,” Hood said.
“Then what is true?”
“We were downsized, period,” Hood told him. “Right now I’m working to see if we can’t get some of our assets restored.”
“Oh? What are the odds?”
“Pretty fair,” Hood said. “I’ll let all the department heads know when I have more information.”
“Sweet. We could use a lift.”
Hood gave the younger man’s shoulder a squeeze, then went back to his office. He had never felt so torn in his life. His position made him unavailable for office gossip, let alone the gossip of other offices. Nor had Op-Center ever been a place where workers had a reason to gripe. There had been sadness and setbacks, but always due to missions. There was never a sense that the organization itself was in jeopardy. Certainly no one ever believed that Op-Center would be blindsided by the CIOC and other government agencies. Like Paul Hood, the National Crisis Management Center was the golden child of intelligence.
They thought.
Hood reached his office and shut the door. He stood inside, staring at his desk. If Hood accepted the president’s offer, he would be participating in the spoils system he had always fought. His guiding principle would not necessarily be what was right but what was right for Op-Center. He would no longer be Pope Paul, as Herbert and the others sometimes called him in jest, but Apostate Paul.
But was anything so clear cut anymore? It did not matter whether the president was right or wrong about the threat Senator Orr represented. That was psychological spin-doctoring. What mattered was hanging on to men like Matt Stoll and Darrell McCaskey. Hood would not like everything the new NCMC was asked to do. But this was not about his comfort zone. This was about preserving enough of Op-Center so that their important primary mission of crisis management could continue.
Hood went to the phone to call Senator Debenport. He would agree to the terms Debenport and the president had presented. He would ask for guarantees, not to be made an ambassador but to protect the existing staff.
He would make his deal with the devil.
TWENTY-SIX
Kenneth Link sat alone in the conference room, reviewing a computer file of layout plans for the convention floor. Eric Stone had E-mailed a suggestion for the location of the podium. He felt the stand should be moved fifteen yards closer to the north side of the convention center. That put the speakers closer to the right when people entered the arena through the main gate. Link felt the change was gimmicky and declined to approve it.
Or maybe Link was just being contrary. He was not sure. The interview with Darrell McCaskey had left him in a sour mood. It had not gone the way he had anticipated. The admiral believed that by being forthright about his team and his dislike of Wilson, he would convince McCaskey of his innocence. Instead, something about their talk had caused Op-Center to harden its position. Link was a naval officer and a former head of covert operations for the CIA. He would not permit the tinsel-eyed former mayor of Los Angeles to hunt him. Or, even worse, to judge him.
Throughout his career, Link had always found the struggle between need and protocol, between expediency and restraint difficult to rectify. Right and wrong are subjective. Legal and illegal are objective. When the two forces are in conflict, which one should be followed? Especially when a legal wrong has the potential to rectify countless moral wrongs.
Link invariably put self-determination above regulations, which meant honoring right above legal. It meant more than that, though. Working in national defense was not a job for the fearful. It also was not a job for the unprepared. A man needed resources. Fortunately, Link had them. He was loyal to people, and people were loyal to him.