The lighting was subdued and mostly blue. The thick carpet under his feet was red with an abstract pattern of yellow lines. On the walls, massive display screens showed a rotating NSA logo. The ceiling was studded with black glass domes that he was certain hid cameras that tracked his every move. Instead of slot machines, however, the room contained dozens of gleaming workstations, each with a padded chair and a high-end laptop.
Two people waited for them at the far end of the huge room. One was a woman dressed in an air force uniform, while the other was a civilian in a sweater vest and khaki pants. At first Chapel thought the woman was very short, but as they approached he realized that it was just that although the civilian wasn’t very tall — probably six and a half feet — he was so thin; Chapel found himself thinking this was the tallest little guy he’d ever met. His hair was short but somehow messy, which just added to the impression. He didn’t make eye contact as the two groups came together.
The woman was perhaps sixty years old, with short, curly hair and warm eyes. She gave them a high-wattage smile and reached out with both hands for Hollingshead. “Rupert!” she exclaimed. “How lovely to see you again.” And then she actually pecked him on the cheek.
The director squirmed away as if a boa constrictor was trying to wrap itself around his throat. “Good morning, Charlotte,” he said. He turned and looked back at Chapel and Wilkes. “Boys, meet Colonel Charlotte Holman.”
Chapel came to attention and offered her a salute. Wilkes did the same after a moment’s hesitation.
“Oh, please,” Holman said, laughing. “No need for that. We’re all friends here. We’re very nearly family!”
Chapel held the salute. Eventually, a little awkwardly, Holman returned it. “At ease, Captain,” she said, shaking her head in amusement.
Chapel wished he had any idea whatsoever what was going on.
“Colonel Holman,” Hollingshead tried to explain, “is an old acquaintance. I didn’t actually expect her to come meet us here.”
“I’m the subdirector for the S1 Directorate. Customer Relations,” she told Chapel and Wilkes. It took Chapel a moment to realize that meant she was an interagency liaison. The NSA had no field agents like himself — it simply gathered information, which it then passed on to other organizations like the DIA. Holman, then, was responsible for that dissemination. He had forgotten that the NSA used business lingo to refer to its activities — the information it provided was referred to as its “products” and the security agencies it served were its “customers.”
“Normally on a case like this you’d be meeting with my director,” Holman told them, “but he’s still back at that incredibly tense briefing you came from.” She mocked a shiver. “Pretty scary stuff, huh?” She laughed again. Chapel got the impression she laughed a great deal, even about inappropriate things like a dirty bomb attack. “Rupert thought he was going to just come over here and somehow miss seeing me altogether, but I’m a little too sly for that.”
“Now, now, Charlotte, I had no intention of—”
“I can see by the looks on your faces you’d like to know what there is between us,” she said.
Chapel had to admit he was mildly curious.
“I’ll tell you, but it’s a secret, so, shush!” She mimed locking her lips with a key. “Rupert and I dated once upon a time.”
“Once being the operative term, I’m, uh, afraid,” Hollingshead said. “It was ten years ago. My wife had, well, passed and some… mutual friends. Set us up. As it were.”
“It was lovely,” Holman told them. “Who would have thought in this day and age there were any true gentlemen left? Rupert was wonderful. Such a shame it didn’t work out.”
Hollingshead was actually blushing. Chapel couldn’t help but be fascinated — he knew nothing at all about the director’s personal life. The man kept such things intensely private. He didn’t like seeing his boss in such obvious distress, but considering the reason, well—
“I wasn’t, er, ready,” Hollingshead said. “To. You know. Date again.”
“One day you will be,” Holman said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I’ll get my hooks in you yet, Rupert.” She laughed again.
Chapel knew, in an instinctive way, that this flirtatious persona was just that. If Rupert Hollingshead only pretended to be a bumbling absent-minded professor, Charlotte Holman was putting on just as much of an act. But it worked. He had just met this woman. She outranked him. Yet he had to keep reminding himself he shouldn’t trust her — she just seemed so harmless.
“Oh, where are my manners?” she said. “I still haven’t introduced Paul. Paul, please say hello to our friends from the DIA.”
The skinny guy in the sweater vest held out one hand for them to shake. He didn’t make eye contact, though. “Paul Moulton,” he muttered. “I’m an analyst in Tailored Access Operations.”
“One of our very best,” Holman said, reaching up to put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “When Rupert asked for our help, I knew Paul was exactly the man we needed. He’ll help you find this bad guy, be assured of it.”
“I’m afraid time is at a premium,” Hollingshead said. “Do you think we could, ah, get down to it?”
“Of course,” Holman said. She led them over to one of the workstations. Moulton sat down in the chair and logged in. Holman looked over at Hollingshead. “So tell us exactly what you’re looking for today.”
The way she said it left Chapel with no doubt she already knew, but she wanted Hollingshead to say it out loud. That way he actually had to ask her — which meant he would owe her something. He shuddered to imagine having to operate on the level these two took for granted. The endless games, the rivalries between agencies — he wondered what kind of brain it took to keep it all straight.
“Someone hijacked a Predator drone this morning. That is to say,” Hollingshead told her, “they fed it control data that was not authorized by any governmental or military body. We need to know who did it, that’s all. A physical location would be nice, but a name would be even better.”
Holman nodded. “I imagine we can do that. Funny, though. Normally you could take care of this yourself, couldn’t you?”
“The analyst I would usually turn to,” Hollingshead said, glancing away, “is unavailable at the moment.”
“How frustrating. Paul, can you bring up data on the drone fleet?” She turned to face Chapel and Wilkes. “Communications with the drones is all logged, of course, recorded and stored on Department of Defense servers. Paul — mirror your screen to display three, please.”
One of the big screens on the wall lit up with an image of the workstation’s desktop. Moulton opened an application that showed a list of files all dated in the last twenty-four hours. There were hundreds of them. “What you see here,” Holman said, “is computer code describing what the Predators were doing at a given time, whether that means shifting the inclination of an aileron or turning off their cameras or, for sake of argument, firing a Hellfire missile.”
“All these drones were in the air?” Chapel asked.
“No, most of those are just for UAVs still sitting in their hangars,” Holman explained. “They send a constant stream of updates and checklists back to command, even when they’re inactive, just so we can keep track of where they are.”
“I’ll highlight the active ones,” Moulton said. On the screen only a half-dozen or so listings changed to blue. “It’s one of these?”
Hollingshead put on his glasses and studied the screen. “There. The one that just stops at 05:51:14,” he said, pointing at the big display. Chapel realized that must be the moment when the Predator hit the cargo container and destroyed itself — putting it off-line.