about field operatives, about soldiers, and about Op-Center staff that were bending under personal and professional stress. She had been especially helpful with Hood's fourteen-year-old daughter, Harleigh. The eldest of his two children had been among the hostages taken by rogue peacekeepers at the United Nations. Liz had given him solid, effective advice about dealing with her post-traumatic stress disorder. The psychologist had also helped Hood reconnect with his twelve-year-old son Alexander after the stressful divorce from Sharon.
Hood shut the door, went to his desk, and input his personal computer code. It was not the name of his children, or his first pet, or the date he started working here. Those were things that a hacker might figure out. Instead, it was Dickdiver, the main character of his favorite novel, Tender Is the Night. It also made Hood smile to key it in. Hood and his long-ago fiancee Nancy Jo Bosworth had read it to each other when they first moved in together. When there was still magic in his world and romance in his heart. Before stolen software designs compelled Nancy to run off with out telling him why or where.
It took almost twenty years for Hood to find her. It happened by accident, during a trip to Germany on Op- Center business. Nancy told him she had wanted the money for them but grew ashamed. Since she could not return it, she kept it for herself.
Old feelings returned for them both. Though the passions were not acted upon, they helped to undermine what had been a colorless, rebound marriage to Sharon. While Hood was alone now, the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel was still the key to a sublime place, the last time Hood was truly happy. The password was his way of remembering that every day.
Hood started going through his E-mail. He used to come to the office and read the newspaper, then answer phone calls. Now the news was on-line, and the telephone was something you used in the car or at lunch. GovNet, which provided Op-Center's secure Internet access, was devoting a lot of space to Wilson's death on their welcome screen. That was not surprising, since his fire walls made it possible for most government agencies to link what had formerly been dedicated lines.
They were reporting that he had gone to a party at Senator Don Orr's town house, left around ten-thirty, and went back to his suite at the Hay-Adams. A woman had come to visit him. According to the hotel, she arrived at eleven and left around twelve-thirty. The concierge reported that she had been wearing a block print coat that came down to her knees and a matching crocheted hat with a black ribbon. The wide brim was dipped low. Obviously, she did not want to be recognized.
That was not unusual. Many officials and businessmen had trysts in local hotels. They did not want their guests to be identified or photographed by security cameras. Typically, hotel management respected the desire for privacy by allowing expected visitors to pass without scrutiny.
The Metropolitan Police did not know who the woman caller was. She had given a name, Anna Anderson, which had led them to an elderly woman who was clearly not the perp. She may have selected the name as a joke, a reference to the woman who claimed to be Anastasia, the daughter of Czar Nicholas II. The security cameras in the hotel lobby and on the street showed her leaving unhurriedly and walking down Sixteenth Street, where she was lost in the night. Visitors like her seldom used valet parking. They did not want their license numbers traced.
Washingtonians assumed that everyone, from waiters to cab drivers, was looking for a payday from a tabloid newspaper or television show. More often than not they were right. The police assumed that Wilson died after the woman left. Otherwise she could have called 911 and then slipped away. This belief was reinforced by the fact that there did not appear to be anything suspicious about Wilson's death. He had perspired heavily presumably from the exertion and the bed suggested 'an active evening,' as one source put it. Though Wilson was young and had no history of heart trouble, many forms of heart disease could slip past a routine electrocardiograph. The autopsy would tell them more.
There was nothing exceptional in the E-mails. A few resumes from agencies and private businesses that were being downsized. Op-ed pieces from the left, right, and center. Requests for interviews, which Hood routinely declined. He was not a self-promoter and saw no benefit to giving out information about how Op-Center worked, or with whom. His E-mail even contained links to password-protected web sites of individuals who were willing to provide intelligence from various countries and foreign agencies. He forwarded these to Bob Herbert.
Most were con artists, a few were foreign agents trying to find out about Op-Center, but occasionally there were nuclear scientists or bio technicians who genuinely wanted to get out of the situations they were in. As long as they were willing to talk, American operatives or embassy officials in their countries were willing to listen.
Hood was about to access his personal address for private E-mail when Bugs beeped him. Senator Debenport was on the line. Hood was not surprised. It was budget time on the Hill, and the South Carolina senator had recently replaced Senator Barbara Fox as the chairman of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committee. Those were the officials who kept track of what the federal intelligence agencies did and how much it cost.
'Good morning, Senator,' Hood said.
'That may be true somewhere,' the sandpaper-voiced senator replied.
'Not in my office.'
Hood did not ask why. He already knew the answer.
'Paul, last night the CIOC Budget Subcommittee agreed that we have to work out a strategic retrenchment,' Debenport told him.
The CIOC's euphemism for budget cuts.
'We took a four percent hit last fiscal year and six percent the year before that,' Hood told him. 'What's the
