who is running the convention. He was Link's assistant and supposedly is a very efficient organizer. The other individual with intelligence credentials is the senator's executive assistant, Kendra Peterson. It turns out Kendra had medical training in the Marines.'
'That's not in her file, is it?' Hood said. His head was still in the Oval Office, on the decision he had to make. Dossier data was swimming, anchor less in his memory. He took another hit of Coke.
'No, it isn't,' McCaskey said. 'Kendra spent several months working in health care but left because of tendonitis in her hands. Presumably, the affliction was temporary. If a disability had been noted in Kendra's record, it might have impacted her career in the military and afterward. The staff sergeant probably let her transfer without remarking on what was a very brief tenure.'
'Or her medical experiences may have been deleted more recently by a really efficient organizer who had access to them,' Hood pointed out.
'It's possible. The point is, one of the first skills Kendra would have learned over there was how to give an injection,' McCaskey said.
'I'll have Matt Stoll run a comparison on images captured by the security camera and at this morning's press conference,' Hood said.
'That may tell us if Ms. Peterson goes on the suspect list. What was your impression of Link himself?'
'He's very confident and a bit of a bully,' McCaskey said. 'He also made it clear that he feels extremely inconvenienced by our investigation. It's difficult to tell whether he's guilty or whether he just resents the hell out of our probe.'
'Or he may just have it in for Op-Center,' Hood said. The NSA and the NCMC had experienced a few run-ins over the years, including the exposure of former operative Ron Friday as a double agent. 'If you had to guess, which is it?'
'That's tough to say, Paul. Link definitely views the investigation as politically motivated,' McCaskey said. 'He thinks Op-Center is using it to try to roll back the budget cuts. Truth is, I think we're going to hear a lot of that as long as we're involved in the Wilson killing.'
'When have we ever worried about what people think?' Hood asked. It was ironic, though, Hood thought. Link could end up being right for the wrong reasons. 'I'm going to get Matt Stoll working on that image comparison. What are the codes for the hotel image files?'
'WW-1 and RL-1,' McCaskey replied. 'I'm going to call Bob Herbert and pick his brain, then pop over to the British embassy. I rang George Daily. He's setting up a conference call with their security chief here. He was going to see if the Brits have anything on file about Wilson being watched, stalked, or threatened.'
'Good idea. We'll talk more when you get back.'
Hood hung up and called Bugs Benet. He asked him to access the online news photo services. He wanted images of Kendra Peterson, including this morning's press conference. They should be appearing online by now. Hood asked to have the pictures sent to Stoll's office along with Darrell's image files on the Wilson and Lawless killings. When he reached the office, Hood went directly to Matt Stoll's office.
The corridors were unusually quiet. There were fewer personnel, of course, and those who were there did not seem to be making eye contact with Hood. Maybe it was his imagination. Or maybe it was a variation on what they learned in elementary school. If they did not look at the teacher, they would not get called on. If they did not look at the director, they would not be fired.
Matt Stoll's office was different from the others in the executive level. The computer wizard had originally set up the Computer and Technical Support Operations in a small conference room. Hood had always intended to move the CAT SO but Stoll quickly filled the room with a haphazard arrangement of desks, stands, and computers. As Op-Center's computing needs grew, Stoll simply added to the original disarray. Within a few months, it would have been too much trouble to move it.
There were now four people working in the rectangular space. Stoll and his longtime friend Stephen Viens, Op-Center's imaging expert, worked back to back in the center of the room. Viens had previously managed the spy satellite access time schedules at the National Reconnaissance Office. Whenever the military or a spy agency needed images from space-based resources, they scheduled it through Viens. After Stoll's old college mate was scapegoated for a black ops funding scam, Hood hired him.
Before yesterday morning, three other individuals had worked in this office: Mae Won, Jefferson Jefferson, and Patricia Arroyo. Seven other technical experts worked in an adjoining office. Stoll had been asked to lay off five of the techies and one of these three people. He had selected Patricia Arroyo, who had the least seniority. She and the others were gone within the half hour. That was standard procedure in government agencies. Otherwise, disgruntled personnel could sabotage equipment or programs or walk off with sensitive material. Hood had made an exception in the case of Mike Rodgers. That was not a chance he could take with the others.
Hood greeted the solemn group and told them why he was there. Stoll did not wait for Bugs to send him pictures. He went to a raw news feed from one of the networks, grabbed images of the press conference, and isolated Kendra Peterson. He opened Darrell's files of the hotel security camera images. He opened his 3-D ACE file and left-clicked each of the images to drop them in the file. ACE stood for Angular Construct and Extrapolation, a graphics program Stoll had written. It created 3-D images based on a very little amount of information. Though it could not construct an entire face from a nose, it could show the nose from all angles. These could be superimposed over other photographs to see if they matched.
