“No prob.” Jacobs laid a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “Hang in there.”
Frankie smiled and reached up, touching Jacobs’s hand with hers. “Thanks.”
Art called over two teams of agents after Jacobs had departed and tasked them with checking out the establishment on the card. Someone at Tony’s Tacos might recognize the photo taken from Portero’s driver’s license. An employee or patron might know him. Or it could be a cold trail.
But there might be a hot one to pick up on. “So our shooters took a tape.”
“And left one,” Frankie pointed out. “Why do you suppose that was?”
“Well, let’s assume they came for a tape, and to shut Portero up. Both of those are more ‘probable’ than ‘possible’ now. If they came to do what they did, I’d sure bet they’d have a complete wish list.”
“Then one of the tapes might have been, what? A decoy? Maybe just another tape? A duplicate? Which one?”
Art thought back to what Jacobs had given them a minute before. “It would have to be a decoy, something he could give up easily if challenged. You ever read some of the travel guides for New York? They suggest keeping a second wallet with a twenty-dollar ‘mugger’s fee’ in an outside pocket.”
“Like a shirt pocket,” Frankie said. “And keep the real thing in your pants pocket. The front one.”
“Right where the one we have came from.” Art smiled with satisfaction for the first time in eighteen hours. The others had been motivated by nervousness. “Our shooters may have gotten the wrong tape.”
“Which means they may be back for the real one.” Frankie knew that a question was inevitable. “But back where?”
Art held the business card up, flipping it over and over before stopping the motion with the number facing his partner. “Our freaked-out blond hostess said Portero was there to meet someone, and I doubt it was the two who showed up.”
“The card was in the same pocket as the tape,” Frankie carried the thought on. “You want to do a reverse search on it.”
“Why bother the phone company?” Art mused, scooting his chair forward and lifting the handset to his ear. “Fingers crossed it’s a two-one-three number.” He punched the seven numbers and waited.
“City desk,” the female voice answered on the other end.
Art’s face puzzled over the words. “City desk?” Oh, boy. “Uh, what paper is this?”
There was a quiet laugh. “The Los Angeles Times, sir.”
He hung up without carrying the conversation further. Just another wrong number. “It looks like Portero might have been about to give something to the Times.” The silencing theory was gaining credence exponentially.
“Let’s hope we have whatever it was,” Frankie said. “And now?”
Art stood and put his jacket back on, ready to go do some real work. “We visit an old friend.”
“Of whose?” Frankie gathered up her purse and followed her partner out of their cubicle, getting the answer only after they were in the elevator.
The car pulled up around the corner from the yellow bungalow in one of Los Angeles’s disappearing nice, quiet neighborhoods, its two occupants exiting and checking their surroundings before walking off.
They were dressed nicely, the elderly woman noticed, and very neat in appearance. But it was very early for anyone in the neighborhood to have visitors. Maybe they were police, she thought, as she muted the television, leaving the morning news anchor without a voice. As chairperson of the neighborhood watch, she was ever-vigilant. The gangs had stayed away from the middle-class area she had lived in for fifty years, but of late there had been gunshots at night in the distance. What was the world coming to?
So, from her early-morning perch behind the huge bay window her late husband had installed as a birthday present some twenty years before, she watched as the two strangers disappeared around the corner. They were walking normally, not hurried, not overly cautious, but it was her duty to watch over the block. There was no reason to call the police. They were busy enough with emergencies, she knew. But she did do a simple thing that the very pleasant lieutenant from the local police station had suggested when unknown visitors appeared in the neighborhood.
CHAPTER THREE
SKIRMISH LINES
The West Wing of the White House was built as a much-needed addition to the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1902, forty years before the smaller East Wing was completed during the Second World War, and had developed into the second tier of power in the executive branch. The various working spaces of the President’s executive staff are there, spread over two levels, none more than a quick jaunt from the Oval Office in the southeast corner. Traditionally the ground floor housed the offices of the closest and most visible advisers, with the upper level saved for policy and council positions designated by the President. Located in the northwest corner of the roughly square wing, the office of the President’s national security adviser was farther in steps from the Oval Office than any of the close crowd on the ground floor. Only a few policy assistants one level up had to travel as far, though they were unlikely to ever have the access to the President that Bud DiContino had. That was something that transcended being simply “near” the Man. Bud had his ear, and his trust.
Sitting behind his dark wood desk in the office that he had spent more hours in than his own bed during the previous year, the NSA noted the time. The morning meeting called the night before by DCI Anthony Merriweather was not completely unexpected considering the fireworks that had erupted in Cuba within the last twelve hours. Bud’s head had barely hit the pillow in the wee hours when the call came notifying him that “something is going on in Cuba.” He was a bit surprised that the call had come not from Langley, but from the National Security Agency out at Fort Meade, the government monolith that did amazing things with communications and cryptographies. Signal intercepts of chaotic communications between Cuban military units had been the first indication of a “Significant Event,” to use intelligence parlance.
Why the word hadn’t come from the Agency, however, could be summed up in one word — Merriweather. The DCI had not taken anything close to a liking to Bud, who often found himself arguing the opposite side of positions held by the former senator from Massachusetts, who had also chaired the Joint Congressional Committee on Intelligence Oversight. That had been his path to the position he now held; that and some strategic arm-twisting by friends of the President on the Hill. Others should have been considered before Merriweather, Bud believed. Greg Drummond, for one, though his “junior” standing in the Agency had worked against such a move. The same for Pete Miner, the CIA’s number-two man. This had been a political appointment, it was clear. A return of favors not yet performed. Those would be delivered in two years— campaign time.
This was D.C., after all.
The NSA took his briefing folder and jacket and walked into his deputy’s adjoining office. “Nick, I’m heading over.”
Deputy NSA Nicholas Beney looked up from the computer. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. Don’t fry your eyes on that thing,” Bud said.
His boss was computer paranoid, which was funny considering the high-tech work he had done in the Air Force. Or maybe because of it. Beney found it quite amusing. “I can order one up for your office.”
“That’s all I need,” Bud said, turning away and beginning the same walk — right turn, left, then right again— he had made twice that morning already. One was for the President’s daily intelligence briefing — nothing much on the platter, other than the scant information on the fighting down South — and the other for a brief update on the modernization of the Russian BMEWS about to begin in earnest. He had handled both well, as usual.