independent. It was something that they recognized in each other, and in themselves, and they were working on it. He was the first man Elizabeth had known who could compare to her father. They were big shoes to fill, in her estimation.
“When your father gets back to Washington invite Todd out here for dinner.” Kathleen smiled. “Unless you’re not ready for that yet.”
Elizabeth had to laugh. “It would scare him half to death, but it would be cool to see how he handled it.”
Kathleen laughed too. “I think it will frighten your father just as badly.” She studied her daughter’s face for a long moment or two. “I’m afraid for you in the business.”
“There’s hardly any kind of a job without a risk, Mother. And I’m not going to live in a cotton-lined box.”
“I don’t mean physically, though that frightens me. I’m talking about what it’s eventually going to do to you. Your father is a wonderful, kind, caring, giving man. I love him. But there’s a hard, cynical side to him because of what the CIA has made him do. Sometimes being around him is like biting on tinfoil.” Kathleen smiled sadly, and reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her daughter’s forehead. “I don’t want that for you. There’s nothing wrong with being soft and feminine. You can even accomplish it without being weak and stupid.”
“You’ve proven that, Mother,” Elizabeth said, warmly.
The telephone rang. Kathleen flinched, but then took the portable phone out of her bathrobe pocket and answered it. She’d been expecting the call. “Hello.”
Elizabeth watched her mother’s face for some sign of what kind of a call it was.
“Yes, I understand, Otto. Thank you for calling.” Kathleen’s face was perfectly neutral. “I know that you can’t go into the details, but how soon before you know when he’s out of there and safe?”
Elizabeth’s heart skipped a beat.
“Thank you,” Kathleen said. “As a matter of fact she’s here with me now. I’ll put her on.” She gave the phone to Elizabeth. “Otto’s heard from your father. He’s safe for now.”
Elizabeth took the phone. “Thanks for calling, Otto,” she said. “Is he still in-country?”
“About ten miles from bin Laden’s camp. He’s going to try to make it down to Kabul sometime tonight, and we’re sending a C-130 and some marines to pull him and some other Americans out. The White House will have to put some pressure on the Taliban government, but that can be done.”
“What’s going on? Why can’t he fly out of there commercially the same way he came in?”
“Oh, wow, Liz, I don’t know if you want to tell Mrs. M. this, but the President’s holding a news conference around eleven. Your father’s chip went off the air yesterday and the President ordered a cruise missile strike on bin Laden’s camp.”
“Goddamnit—”
“Wait, Liz. We tried to delay the strike until we were sure what was going on up there, but the White House was convinced that your father was dead, and their only option was to hit bin Laden as hard as they could.”
“But my father’s okay?”
“For now. But the Taliban are probably waiting for him to show up in Kabul, and there’s rioting all over the city. The Taliban have given all foreigners forty-eight hours to get out of there, so it’s a little confusing.”
“What about our assets on the ground?”
“We have a couple of people at the old embassy, but that’s where a lot of the rioting is concentrated. Dave Whit taker will try to reach them to see if they can do anything to help, but for now it’s up to your dad.”
Kathleen got up and went into the bathroom, leaving Elizabeth alone for the moment.
“Did we get bin Laden?”
“Nobody knows yet. There was a lot of damage, but there were survivors. The NRO is working on the updates, so we’ll just have to wait.”
“My father will be okay,” Elizabeth said, more for her own benefit than Rencke’s.
“He’s made it this far, he’ll make it the rest of the way, Liz. He’s tough.”
“That he is,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll get dressed and come in.”
“Maybe you want to stay with your mom.”
“I’ll be there in a half-hour.”
“Okay, but Dick Yemm is on his way out there, so tell Mrs. M. to sit tight for now.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Your dad’s.”
“I see,” Elizabeth said. She broke the connection as her mother came back. They exchanged looks and that was enough.
“I’ll put on the coffee while you get dressed,” Kathleen said. “But I want you to keep me informed.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There wasn’t a day went by that Major Louise Horn didn’t miss her old mentor Hubert Wight. But six months ago he’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel and reassigned to Air Force Intelligence Operations in the Pentagon. She was moved up to his old slot as chief of photographic interpretation at the NRO’s Operations Center attached to the CIA’s headquarters (renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence). She wished he was here right now. A lot of the down loaded satellite images she was looking at were indistinct because of a pall of smoke that still covered bin Laden’s camp. What looked like the remains of a burned-out truck in one photograph turned out to more likely be the corner of a building in the next, and perhaps a storage depot of fifty-gallon oil drums in another. His eye was always sharper than hers, and he had the uncanny ability to pick out some little detail that cleared up whatever mystery they were trying to unravel. It was unrealistic, but several times this morning she had seriously contemplated picking up the phone and asking him to drive out.
He used to have a miniature gallows and noose on his desk. Everybody knew that it signified what would happen to anyone who made a serious mistake and bounced it upstairs without double checking. Their customers, besides the air force, CIA and National Security Agency, were the President and his National Security Council. They were the big dogs, the ones who set national policy. It was a heavy responsibility that Louise was feeling this morning because she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. When he left, Wight had given her the gallows for her desk.
She was hunched over one of the big light tables in the dimly lit Interp Center above the Pit where a dozen computer terminals were arranged in semicircular tiers facing the main display. The screen, ninety feet wide and thirty feet tall, showed the real-time positions and tracks of every U.S. intelligence-gathering satellite in orbit. What those satellites looked at was controlled from the consoles.
The first series of shots they had down linked during the missile strike were clear enough to make a snap judgment. The camp had been almost totally obliterated. Based on the first look, Louise had sent out the preliminary damage assessment over her signature, complete with a dozen of the best photographs and her interpretation of them.
She stubbed out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and immediately lit another. Chain-smoking was a bad habit she’d been trying to break for the past year. And she had done pretty good until last night. She had graduated third in her class at the Air Force Academy. She had wanted to fly jets, but at six-five with an IQ of 160 she was too tall and too smart to be a fighter pilot. She belonged here, and she loved her job, eavesdropping on the entire world. It was a voyeur’s playground, and Louise was nothing if not curious. But what she was looking at now wasn’t squaring with her first assessment. The camp had been heavily damaged, there was no doubt about that, but there were more survivors than she had first suspected. In fact her count was already up to eighteen, and still rising, while her earlier prediction had been for only a handful.
The Far Eastern Division morning supervisor Lieutenant Mark Hagedorn came over from the processing lab with a fresh batch of 100em X 100em transparencies. A third of them were marked with red tabs, indicating that they were infrared-enhanced. “Hot off the press, Maj,” he said. Hagedorn had graduated last in his class at the Academy, but he had the same gift as Colonel Wight. He was able to “see” things. Although his smartass attitude was almost unbearable at times, every supervisor he worked for, including Louise, wished they had a dozen of
