Because Herbert stayed in touch with so many people-never asking them for anything, just seeing how they were doing, what the family was up to--it was easy for him to call and slip in important questions among the chitchat without making it seem as though he were fishing.
Now the two men were back in Hood's office. But the Herbert who wheeled through the door was different than before.
'Is everything all right?' Hood asked.
The usually outgoing Mississippi native didn't answer immediately. He was extremely subdued and staring ahead at something only he could see.
'Bob?' Hood pressed.
'They thought they had him,' Herbert said.
'What are you talking about?'
'A friend of mine at the CIA slipped me some news from the embassy in Moscow,' Herbert said.
'Why?'
Herbert took a long breath.
'Apparently, they had a solid lead that the Harpooner was in Baku.'
'Jesus,' Hood said.
'What for?'
'They don't know,' Herbert said.
'And they lost him.
They sent one freakin' guy to do the recon and--surprise!--he got clocked. I can't blame them for wanting to be low profile, but with a guy like the Harpooner, you have to have backup.'
'Where is he now?' Hood asked.
'Is there anything we can do?'
'They don't have a clue where he went,' Herbert said.
He shook his head slowly and swung the computer monitor up from the armrest.
'For almost twenty years what I've wanted most out of life is to be able to hold the bastard's throat between my hands, squeeze real hard, and look into his eyes as he dies. If I can't have that, I want to know that he's decaying in a hole somewhere with no hope of ever seeing the sun. That's not a lot to ask for, is it?'
'Considering what he did, no,' Hood said.
'Unfortunately, Santa's not listening,' Herbert said bitterly. He angled the monitor so he could see it.
'But enough about that son of a bitch. Let's talk about the president.'
Herbert shifted in his seat. Hood could see the anger in his eyes, in the hard set of his mouth, in the tense movements of his fingers.
'I had Matt Stoll check the Hay-Adams phone log.'
Matt Stoll was Op-Center's computer wizard.
'He hacked into the Bell Atlantic records,' Herbert said.
'The call came from the hotel, all right, but it didn't originate in any of the rooms. It originated in the system itself.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning someone didn't want to be in one of the rooms where they might have been seen coming or going,' Herbert said.
'So they got to the wires somewhere else.'
'What do you mean 'got' to them?' Hood asked.
'They hooked in a modem to transfer a call from somewhere else,' Herbert said.
'It's called dial-up hacking.
It's the same technology phone scammers use to generate fake dial tones on public phones in order to collect credit card and bank account numbers. All you need to do is get access to the wiring at some point in the system. Matt and I brought up a blueprint of the hotel. The easiest place to do that would have been at the phone box in the basement. That's where all the wiring is. But there's only one entrance, and it's monitored by a security camera--too risky. Our guess is that whoever hacked the line went to one of the two public phones outside the Off the Record bar.'
Hood knew the bar well. The phones were right beside the door that opened onto H Street. They were in closetike booths and there were no security cameras at that spot. Someone could have slipped in and gotten away without being seen.
'So, with the help of a dial-up hacker,' Hood said, 'Jack Fenwick could have called the president from anywhere.'
'Right,' Herbert told him.
'Now, as far as we can tell, the First Lady is correct. Fenwick's in New York right now, supposedly attending top-level meetings with UN ambassadors. I got his cell phone number and called several times, but his voice mail
