MISSION OF HONOR
79
contacts were the same. Those patterns were easy to locate and track to new credit cards or telephone numbers.
The second reason Op-Center continued to watch former COs was to make certain that potential partners were not spending time with potential adversaries. Calls placed to cell phones were very closely monitored. Patricia had developed software to cross-reference these numbers with phones registered to embassy employees. Nearly 40 percent of all foreign service workers were intelligence gatherers. Tax documents and bank accounts were watched to make sure the sums matched. The records of family members were also collected. Wherever possible, computer passwords were broken and Emails read.
Even experienced, well-intentioned intelligence workers could be tricked, seduced, bribed, or blackmailed.
Locating Maria Corneja, David Battat, and Aideen Marley was not a problem.
The thirty-eight-year-old Corneja, a Spanish Interpol agent, had recently married Darrell McCaskey. McCaskey was OpCenter's NAFIL-National and Foreign Intelligence Liaison. He had returned to Washington while Maria settled her affairs in Madrid. She would be joining her husband in a week.
Forty-three-year-old David Battat was the former director of a CIA field office in New York City. Battat had recently returned to Manhattan after helping Op-Center stop a terrorist from sabotaging oil supplies in Azerbaijan. Thirty-four-yearold Aideen Marley was still in Washington. The former foreign service officer had worked with Maria Corneja, averting a Spanish civil war two years before. Now she was working as a political consultant for both Op- Center and the State Department.
The other operatives were living in different parts of the world. Twenty-eight-year-old Falah Shibli was still working as a police officer in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. A veteran of seven years in the Sayeret Ha'Druzim- Israel's elite Druze Reconnaissance unit-the Lebanon-born Israeli had assisted Op-Center in their Bekaa Valley operation.
Forty-nine-year-old Harold Moore divided his time between
London and Tokyo. Moore was a former G-man who had been recruited by McCaskey to help Op-Center with its first crisis, finding and defusing a terrorist bomb on board the space shuttle Atlantis. Feeling underappreciated, Moore had elected to take early retirement. He was now working as a consultant to both Scotland Yard's Specialist Operations Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Intelligence and Analysis Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Twenty-nine-year-old Zack Bemler was based in New York. Bemler was a magna cum laude Ph.D. graduate in international security from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The young man had been courted by the CIA and the FBI but ended up working for World Financial Consultants, an international investment group. After rogue generals were prevented from overthrowing the legitimate government in Russia, then-political liaison Martha Mackall contacted Bemler. Bemler had dated Martha's kid sister Christine at Princeton. Together, Martha and Bemler worked to clean out the generals' bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The twenty-five million dollars was used to fund joint intelligence ventures between Paul Hood and Sergei Orlov's Russian Op-Center.
Rodgers knew how to contact the personnel he wanted. He had the money to hire them. But numerous questions remained. Should he mix veterans with new personnel, combine new ideas with the old? Would these people consider working for Op-Center full-time, if at all? If so, where would they be based? Would it be practical to run an entirely freelance operation? Then there were logistic issues. They could not travel as a unit in a military transport, since those aircraft were routinely watched by satellite and on the ground. Upon arriving at an air base, they might be spotted and followed. But it was also unwise to put them on a single commercial flight. If one were identified, they might all be exposed.
Rodgers also had to figure out how to run the unit. Covert operatives were more like artists than soldiers. They were creative individuals. They did not enjoy working ia*groups or doing things by the book.
80
OP-CENTER
The general wanted input from Herbert. He also wanted to talk to the spy chief about the way the team had come about. After the meeting with Hood, Mike Rodgers could think of nothing but the new team. It did not occur to him until hours later that it probably upset Herbert to be excluded from this process. As a former spy himself, Herbert had a great poker face. He might not have let his displeasure show to Rodgers. Herbert was also a team player. He would not want to dull Rodgers's enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, Herbert had been busy for most of the day. Rodgers busied himself with the personnel files and other OpCenter business. That included daily military reports from around the world. Rodgers liked to keep track of former allies as well as potential enemies. A crisis management officer never knew when he would have to call on one group for assistance or fight the other.
The night team came on at six P.M. That left Rodgers free to concentrate on the team and possible sites for a shakedown operation. He did not want to talk to any potential agents until he had something concrete to propose to them.
It was shortly before ten P.M. when Bob Herbert finally returned Rodgers's call.
'You were right,' Herbert said.
'Glad to hear it,' Rodgers said. 'About what?'
'Something is going on in Botswana,' Herbert said.
It felt like it had been ages since Rodgers gave Herbert the newspaper. This had been a long day.
Rodgers listened as Herbert told him about the meeting with Edgar Kline. It sounded like a regional scuffle until he mentioned the name Albert Beaudin. In intelligence circles, Beaudin was known as the Musketeer.
'What does he have to do with this?' Rodgers asked.
'I'm not sure he does,' Herbert said. 'But there is a connection between him and the Brush Vipers of thirty-odd years ago.'
Rodgers was concerned about that. He was also intrigued. Beaudin was a powerful but elusive figure. Since the
