Clarke surveyed them all and Helen was astonished. There was a smile on his face, and this was such a rare thing it made all of them, even the Agency people, feel rewarded. 'That's great work, Dan. We can work with this. We can do something. General Barksdale?'
'It has to be somewhere near Vegas,' Barksdale replied. 'We need to start putting people in place right now.'
Clarke nodded. 'Right, we need — '
'Sir?' Even the President was staring at her as if this were an unwarranted interruption.
'Miss Wagner?' Clarke looked coldly at her.
'Are we asking ourselves enough questions about this? We don't know why this man was in Vegas in the first place. We don't know what drove him to talk to that woman in the casino or kill himself.'
'This isn't your field, Wagner.' Levine scowled. 'If you'd got as many years in Operations under your belt as some of us around this table, you'd know that the simplest explanation is always the best. People are a lot less smart than we think.'
'So,' she continued, 'what we are being asked to accept is that this man somehow left the Children, made his way to Vegas — how we don't know — issued this warning, and then, for some reason, killed himself.'
'It doesn't sound so implausible, really.' Fogerty smiled.
'No? And he just happens to be someone that we can identify so easily? Someone who has prints? A police record?
It seems to me that if they wanted to give us a sign, if they wanted to lead us in the wrong direction, this is one great way of doing it.'
'That's bull,' Levine said.
'Not necessarily.' To Helen's astonishment it was Fogerty who came to the rescue. 'There's a possibility this is some kind of game. Or it could be something genuine. We just don't know. But what we do know is that it's the best — in fact the only — lead we have. Even if this is some elaborate kind of trick, we may still be able to pick something up from it. We now, at least, have a chance of narrowing down our focus. You can't expect us to dismiss that.'
'No,' she answered, thinking. 'I agree.'
'The important thing is to be ready,' Fogerty continued. 'We need to have a high-level team in place when we need them — and I'm not leaving this to anyone local. We're going to have to ship them in, and that's going to take… how long, Jim?'
A thickset man in a USAF uniform looked at his watch and said, 'We can have a team on the ground within five hours of departure. There's no civilian air traffic today because of the emergency. We can take you straight in to the domestic airfield in Vegas. I'll position helicopters there that will enable us to go on to pretty much anywhere in the vicinity in the space of an hour or so once you give us the target.'
'Right, Miss Wagner? Are you any closer to locating this target through reconnaissance?' Clarke asked.
'We're looking, sir,' she answered. 'We need to do some reprogramming. It won't begin in earnest for another three hours or so. That's as tight as I can push it.'
'Push it tighter,' Clarke said. 'And hell, the bottom line is simple, surely. This guy is the one proven link with the Children we've got. Do you people have any more about to pop out of the woodwork?'
No one spoke. 'Well, then, there you are. If something better comes in — and I don't see much hope of that written on your faces — we have the resources to cope with it. In the meantime, prepare to get a team down to Vegas that can go in, take hold of these people when we find them, and secure whatever installation they have there intact. Intact! Do I make myself plain?'
They all nodded.
'I have to go along,' Helen said. 'I need three or four people from my team with me.'
'No,' Barnside grunted, 'if anyone goes along from the Agency it's someone from the operational side.'
She blinked. 'We are going to have to take control of whatever equipment they have down there, and do it quickly. I don't want to risk trying that down the line. I've got MIS people who are going to be essential. But I need to be there.'
Clarke looked at her. 'I take your point. But what about the imaging? I don't want you sitting on the asphalt in Vegas if it means any slippage there.'
'We have an excellent team chasing that, sir. I can breathe down their necks as easily from Vegas as I can sitting in a bunker here.'
'You make a good case,' Clarke said. 'Organize your people. Take whoever you want.'
'Sir,' Barnside said testily, 'we can't have Agency staff out in the field without an Operations presence. If you're agreeable I'll accompany Assistant Director Wagner.'
'This is an FBI operation, Dave,' Dan Fogerty pointed out slowly. 'Remember our orders. No range wars here.'
'Guaranteed.'
'You're happy with that?' Clarke asked.
Fogerty nodded. 'Sure. Provided we all know where the chain of command lies.'
'It lies with me, Dan,' Clarke said. 'Ultimately. And let's not forget the purpose of this. At the risk of repeating myself, gentlemen, we need this installation in good working shape and, if possible, these people alive. The Shuttle can't be our only option. Understood?'
The door to the bunker opened and Graeme Burnley walked in, face taut with trepidation, a couple of sheets of paper in his hand.
'Good.' Clarke got up from his chair, not waiting for them to answer. He looked tired, Helen thought. He looked impatient, and that was dangerous in any leader. 'By my watch you'll probably be getting into Vegas towards midday local. Let's see if we can get this thing wrapped up by the end of the afternoon. And then get back to some nice easy problems, like running the country. And burying Bill Rollin-son. Until we do that, nothing starts to get back to normal.'
They watched him go. When the door closed, Ben Levine grunted, 'The little guy looked like he'd eaten a frog. I wonder what the hell was wrong with him.'
Fogerty watched them from across the table, and Helen was struck, not for the first time, by the contrast between the two: both relics of the previous administration, one an old pro, risen through the ranks, the other someone who crossed over from academia and, to an extent, never ceased to treat this as an intellectual exercise.
'You should get yourself one of these new smart pagers,' Fogerty said, pulling something out from his jacket pocket. 'This damn thing was twitching like crazy all through that little conversation we just had.'
Levine's eyes hooded over. 'What's it say?'
Fogerty looked at the screen and smiled. 'It says the markets have just gone. Right down into the gutter. Best avoid those falling bodies on your way down to Vegas, gentlemen. Hard cash is the currency of the day from now on.'
CHAPTER 33
Departure
'Quite a set-up.' The pilot nodded at the control centre, so white under the scorching afternoon sun that it made Lieberman's eyes hurt.
'Oh yes.' Lieberman was fresh from the video conference and finding it hard to focus on all the things running through his head. And wishing he could push one abiding image out of his mind. That of Challenger, rising into the sky on a hot day in 1986, punching into the blue heavens on a column of smoke and flame, then exploding like some giant firework that burned a big black hole in the stomach of all the millions who saw it.
Bob Davis tossed his dying cigarette over the edge of the precipice, then immediately reached into his shirt pocket to pull out another one. 'And not a bit of it works. We are in a mess, aren't we?'
Lieberman bristled. This quick, easy cynicism was something he knew all too well himself, but it just wasn't appropriate. He'd been all over the site, spent the best part of an hour poring over the scale model of the satellite. Leaving the motives to one side, what Sundog had achieved on the mountain was astonishing. They had created an entire operational nerve centre and placed it in a remote, secure location, away from prying eyes, yet linked through enough state-of-the-art communications gear back to La Finca, straight out into the big wide world.