Sea of Shadows

computer and then to his laptop computer and finally to his palm-top. “As I recall,” he said, “these were supposed to get rid of those.” He pointed to the fat stack of papers on his desk. “That was a great idea. Whatever happened to it?”

Moody smiled. “Um … I believe that paper covers computer, sir.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Moody held out the folder to the admiral. “You remember the rules, sir. Rock smashes scissors. Scissors cut paper. Paper covers rock. Well, somebody did a study, and it turns out that paper covers computer as well.”

Admiral Rogers accepted the folder. “By extrapolation, I assume that means that rock smashes computer.”

Moody pointed to the desk. “It certainly does, sir. Unfortunately, that still leaves paper.”

The admiral sighed. “No way around it, I guess.” He opened the folder. “What have you got here, Troy?”

“A SITREP from USS Antietam, sir.”

“I can see that,” the admiral said. “But I don’t feel like wading through four pages of minutiae in search of whatever little nugget of wisdom you found buried in there. Just give me the Reader’s Digest version.” He closed the folder. “What’s going on with Antietam?”

“They’ve completed repairs to their starboard rudder nearly a week ahead of schedule, sir. Barring problems during shakedown, they’re ready to put to sea now. I know you’ve been trying to scare up a fourth ship for your Search Attack Unit, sir. Looks like Antietam is going to be available after all.”

The admiral nodded. “Excellent work, Troy. The CNO has been up my ass for two days to come up with another ship.”

“So I understood, sir.”

“Good man. Now, get on the horn and tell the admin weenies to cut steaming orders for Antietam.”

“Already done, sir. They won’t be final until you sign them, of course, but I’ve taken the liberty of starting the ball rolling, just in case you decided to assign Antietam to the SAU.”

The admiral nodded. “Excellent.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to waste any time,” Commander Moody said. “Antietam still has to do a quick shakedown after her rudder repairs.

They’ll really have to drop the hammer to catch up. The SAU has a head start, and those guys are hauling ass.”

Rogers looked at his chief of staff. “Whiley will catch ’em,” he said.

“He’s up for admiral after this tour, and he’s not going to pass up a chance to play war hero. They can use the sprint south as their shakedown. Then, if the rudder gives them any trouble, they can turn back to port and let the SAU continue on without them. But that’s not going to happen. Whiley won’t let it happen. He’ll be there, all right. You can bet your ass on it.”

“One more thing, sir,” Commander Moody said. “Captain Whiley is a senior full-bird captain, sir. He’s going to want to assume command of the SAU. I don’t imagine Captain Bowie is going to like the idea of giving it up.”

“Bowie’ll shit a brick,” the admiral said, “but there’s nothing I can do about that. Whiley outranks him seven ways from Sunday. If Whiley wants SAU Commander, it’s his.”

“Antietam is an air-shooter, sir,” Moody said. “I’ve been looking back through the daily OPSUM messages; that crew hasn’t done anything but Anti-Air Warfare for a long time. Undersea Warfare is a highly perishable skill. If you don’t use it, you lose it. If Captain Whiley is smart, he’ll let the Towers run the show.”

The admiral smiled. “If he were smart. Have you met Whiley?”

“No, sir.”

“He’s a dip-shit,” Admiral Rogers said. “Don’t quote me on that. Oh, he did all right with those Iranian MiGs last month, but the man is a weasel at heart.”

Commander Moody kept a carefully neutral face. “No comment, sir.”

The admiral’s smile grew even wider. “Good man! Now, get Antietam on the horn, and let’s kick their ass out of port.”

CHAPTER 27

LONDON

FRIDAY; 18 MAY

0928 hours (9:28 AM)

TIME ZONE +1 ‘ALPHA’

Andrew Smythe Harrington (OBE) was a top-echelon analyst with the British Secret Intelligence Service, better known to the world as the SIS, or “the Firm.” Nearing fifty, he looked closer to thirty, and — he admitted to himself as he twisted in his chair to ease the kink in his lower back — felt closer to sixty. Handsome in an Errol Flynn sort of way, Harrington had garnered a reputation as something of a ladies’ man (which he most certainly was not) and an exceptional chess player (which — all modesty aside — he most certainly was). But Harrington liked to refer to his real talent in life as “a gift for seeing the obvious.”

His office was on the third floor of SIS headquarters at Vauxhall Cross.

Unlike the toweringly elegant Century House, which had served as the headquarters for the Secret Intelligence Service until 1995, the Vauxhall Cross complex was an architectural polyglot of cylinders, cubes, and truncated pyramids that had led its detractors to nickname it Legoland.

Harrington was entitled to a corner office on the top floor, both by seniority and by the influence conferred by his Order of the British Empire. But he had rejected a large, prestigious office in favor of a smallish cubicle with no windows. His job was to think, and he took that job very seriously. To ensure that his thinking was as efficient as possible, he avoided distractions wherever he could, including windows, unnecessary decorations, and the attractive female secretary that so many of his peers seemed to find indispensable.

He scanned the American newspaper article for the third time and then placed it carefully on top of the neat stack of papers in the center of his desk. There were over four hundred pages in the stack. Police reports, USAMRIID and CDC contagion projections, toxin concentration counts from the embassy after decontamination, medical reports from Walter Reed Hospital, regional threat assessments, a forensic analysis of the T2 trichothecene mycotoxin, and traffic analyses of known and suspected terrorist movements before, during, and after the attack. Also in the stack were the only three documents that really mattered: a copy of the visitors log from the British Embassy in Washington, a transcript of the interview of one Mr. Larry S. Burke, shift supervisor for the carpet cleaning company, and the Washington newspaper article.

Harrington laid his hand on top of the little stack. Everything was right here, in those three little bits of paper, as difficult to miss as the fox in the proverbial henhouse. How was it possible that no one else had seen it?

The carpet cleaning company, WizardClean, had dispatched a three-man crew to the British Embassy. But only two men had shown up to do the job. The Washington police were still searching for the third man, the missing Sailor, who hadn’t been seen since the night of the attack.

But Seaman Apprentice Jerome Gilbert was not the key to the puzzle.

He had been added to the work crew just an hour or so before the attack. It was extremely unlikely that he could have been in on the plot. In all probability, Gilbert had been dead well before the two attackers had reached the embassy.

That meant the real third man was still missing, the regular third man for the WizardClean work crew assigned to the embassy. A twenty-eight-year-old Arab American named Isma’il Hamid. According to the shift supervisor from the carpet cleaning company, Hamid had reported for work with the rest of his crew, but he’d been too sick to go out with the truck.

Harrington picked up the transcript of the supervisor’s interview with the Arlington police, flipped to the