Rubens completed his presentation and took a few more questions from the group, ending the briefing with the suggestion that Desk Three begin exploring plans for inserting a covert team onto both the Pacific Sandpiper and the Atlantis Queen. Two Black Cat teams of about six men each might be able to gather intelligence about what was actually happening on those vessels and, if the decision was made to take them down, would already be in place.
"Your suggestion is noted, Mr. Rubens," Wehrum said, leaning back in his leather chair. "Thank you for the presentation."
And Rubens was dismissed.
He was gathering up his notes and replacing them in his briefcase when he sensed movement beside him. "Oh, hello, Debra," he said as Collins drew near. "Bill."
"So… why were you being nice to me this morning?"
"What do you mean?"
"You were actually supporting me there on a couple of points."
She made a face. "Despite what you seem to believe, Bill, we are on the same side."
"Sometimes it's a bit hard to keep that in mind," he replied. He was surprised at the strength, even now, of his anger at this woman. It had been years, but once she'd betrayed their relationship, their friendship, to advance her own agenda…
The memory still burned.
It was necessary to keep up the facade, at least, of professionalism. But he would also keep watching his back.
"I just thought you should know, Bill," she told him, "that there will be no Black Cat op on this one."
"Indeed? So the Agency is employing psychics now, to read the future?"
"No, but I can read the weather vane. The Sandpiper situation was included in this morning's pickle. The President is inclined to allow the Brits to handle this one."
The "pickle" was the old name for the President's Intelligence Check List, or PICL, a ten-page newsletter prepared by the CIA each night listing the top five or six intelligence developments of interest to the President and a few other high-level personnel, including DIRNSA, Rubens' boss. The system had changed oyer the years and was now an internal Web page supposedly routed through the NCTC, but insiders still referred to the Agency's intelligence briefs as "pickles" and to the CIA itself as "the pickle factory."
"The British?" Rubens said. "Why?"
"They're closer, for one thing. They have an aircraft carrier less than a hundred miles from those ships. Our closest carrier battle groups are in Norfolk and in the Med, four days away, at best. The ships are both British-flagged. And, frankly, if those ships have been hijacked, the President would rather someone else fell on his face right now."
"I see."
"A word to the wise, Bill. Don't make waves."
Rubens considered this as he checked out past the various security checkpoints on his way to the underground White House garage. The current administration was coming under a lot of fire in the news media, lately. The energy crisis, the banking and global monetary crises, the unbearably slow ongoing extraction from Iraq and Afghanistan all had carried over from the last administration into this one, leaving scars and, worse, a bureaucratic tendency at every level of government not to do anything that might be construed as yet another failure in either foreign or domestic policy.
A hostage rescue was always a high-risk proposition, with a terrible possibility of innocents being killed, if not by their terrorist captors, then by so-called friendly fire as the hostage rescue team stormed in. The more hostages there were, the likelier it was that casualty figures would be unacceptably high. Even a successful rescue might expect a 5 percent casualty rate among the hostages. With something like 3,400 civilians at risk, 5 percent was 170 people dead and wounded.
And if the rescue turned into a clusterfuck like Eagle Claw…
Yeah. No wonder the President wanted someone else on point this time.
But Desk Three, Rubens decided, would begin preparing for a hostage rescue anyway. The one thing they could not afford now was to be caught unprepared.
"Yeah, now this is more like it!" James Petrovich said, his eye pressed up close to the LED screen of his camera. "I think I love my job."
"Feeling warmer, yet?" Fred Doherty asked with a sour smile.
"Oh, yeah! Big-time."
"Unfortunately, we won't be able to use the footage. Damn her!"
The two of them were again on the Deck Twelve Terrace overlooking the Atlantean Grotto Pool area. An hour earlier, Terry Carter had text-messaged Doherty on his cell phone — the Queen had her own cell network on board, since they were well out of range of shore-based systems when they were at sea — with the news that Gillian Harper would be sunbathing at the pool.
Once again, Doherty and Petrovich had trekked up to the terrace area overlooking the Grotto Pool. The sun was shining now, though there were still banks of clouds visible to the south, and the air was considerably warmer now. Gillian Harper had arrived right on cue, wearing an almost nonexistent bikini… then promptly removed the top and stretched out on her back on a deck chair, fully and magnificently displayed for the camera looking down on her from above as she began rubbing herself down with suntan lotion.
"Quit bitching, boss," Petrovich said. "Carter said he wanted her to get more exposure!"
"Yeah, but I think he meant something we could air on TV."
"Not a problem. It^ll be late-night airtime. We'll just drop some pixilation over her titties. Blur 'em right out."
There were a handful of other sunbathers, and two or three other women had gone topless as well. It was not unusual, Doherty knew, for cruise ships to designate one of their pools — usually on an upper deck where they were not in full view of staterooms or public areas where there might be children present — as a topless area, or even as clothing optional, at least during certain hours. European cruise lines, especially, were far more relaxed about such things than American lines. There would be Ship's Security present in the Atlantean Grotto lounge, he knew, tactfully steering families with children or fully dressed male sightseers elsewhere.
Personally, Doherty didn't care if Harper ran around the ship stark naked. She did have a reputation to uphold in that department, after all. But right now he wanted useable footage for CNE, and the self-centered little exhibitionist just wasn't cooperating.
He'd need to text Carter back about this one.
Odd. A couple of people — they looked like teenaged boys, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps, though they could have been a couple of years older — had just emerged from the Grotto Restaurant almost directly beneath Doherty's camera position. They wore shorts, T-shirts, and sandals… not exactly out of place at the poolside but not exactly in place, either.
"Where the hell is Security?" he asked aloud. The two kids had wandered over to the starboard rail and were leaning against it, but they weren't watching the ocean. Instead, they'd turned and were watching Harper, grinning and making suggestive motions with their hands. After a few moments, one of them pulled a cell phone from his pocket, punched in a number, and started talking into it.
"Security's probably watching the show on their TV monitors," Petrovich said.
"No," Doherty said. "They should have someone present to make sure female sunbathers don't get gawked at. Something's not right."
"Ah, they're probably just keeping a low profile. You worry too much, boss."