“Lizuca, I want to send you a digital photograph.” Danielle reached into the pack she carried. In addition to the spare headset microphones, handheld microphones, and makeup, she also carried a micro-digital camera that had seriously set her finances back but had also proven worth its weight in gold since she’d had it.
“Of course, Danielle. Is this part of a news story?”
“Not yet.” Danielle made her way around Cezar, who mewled at her with a pleading face and looked as though he were about to cry, to one of the notebook computers the news staff kept charged and online at all times. “I want you to do some research on this guy.”
“Of course. Do you have his name? It would be easiest, I think, to begin there.”
“I don’t have a name.” Danielle hooked a USB cable to the digital camera, opened the appropriate program on the computer, downloaded the picture from the camera, then shot the digital image into cyberspace as an encrypted burst. “That’s one of the things I want.”
“I see.” Lizuca sounded doubtful. “This task you put before me, it is quite difficult, yes?”
“Yes,” Danielle answered. “Difficult, but not impossible. One-World has huge video archives, and they’ve got search programs espionage agencies around the world would give their eyeteeth for.”
“Yes, but those things are necessary to doing good business. We are not spies.”
Cezar made wild gestures toward the monitor where the video editors worked on the footage of the night’s attack. The cameraman bit his knuckles in frustration, then clapped his open hands together in obvious supplication.
“I know we’re not spies,” Danielle said to ease the woman’s mind. Half-dozen countries around the world had claimed at one time or another that OneWorld NewsNet was an espionage unit working for Western powers. The news corporation’s reporters had broken several big stories about biological weapons and terrorist movements that had sent United Nations and United States troops into the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa during the past few years.
UPLOAD COMPLETE printed across the notebook computer’s LCD screen.
“Do you have the picture?” Danielle asked.
“It is coming through now.”
Danielle covered the sat-phone’s mouthpiece and glared at Cezar. “Calm down. The piece they’re editing is for the midnight updates for CNN and FOX News. We’re saving your brilliance for OneWorld.”
Cezar looked relieved as he glanced back at the computer monitors. “Those are for CNN and FOX?”
“Yes. You don’t think we’re going to give them all your hard work, do you?”
“Oh.” Cezar crossed his hands over his chest. “That is all right then.”
“I thought it would be.”
“Danielle,” Lizuca said, “I have the picture now. He is a very evillooking man, yes?”
Danielle didn’t exactly get evil when she looked at the CIA agent. Conniving, maybe, and certainly self-serving. She studied the image on the digital camera’s view screen.
“Run that image through the search programs,” Danielle said. “Let me know the minute you find anything out.”
“My shift here, unfortunately, is almost over. It is possible that I won’t be able to finish this before it is time for me to go home.”
“Want overtime?” One of the first things Danielle had negotiated for herself was the ability to pass out overtime to research assistants.
“Of course. Money is money, Danielle, and though Mr. Carpathia’s corporate policies are very generous, I find I can always use a little more. I am supporting my mother and three sisters, yes? And there is a dress I saw just last week in a shopwindow that is—how do you say?—to die for, yes?”
An artillery round exploded in the distance, causing everyone in the RV to look up apprehensively.
Not exactly the way I would have put it, Danielle thought as fear drew a chill across the back of her neck. She tried to blame the air-conditioning, but she knew what had caused the feeling.
“I will find out who this man is,” Lizuca promised. “If he is in OneWorld’s digital archives, yes?”
“Yes,” Danielle replied. “The minute you find out—”
“I will call you. I give you my promise, yes?”
“Thanks.”
“It is—how you say?—no problem. Stay safe. I will be praying for you, yes?”
“Yes,” Danielle said. She broke the connection, took a final look at the mystery man’s picture, and thought, Whoever you are, I’ll have you. It won’t be long. Not with OneWorld’s resources. She felt good about that, confident. She clicked off the camera, keeping the picture stored.
She thought about the man Captain Remington was questioning, and she wished she were a fly on the wall for that. Secrets were no doubt popping loose in that room. From what she’d seen of the Ranger captain, he was an unstoppable force once he got started.
The problem with secrets, Danielle knew from her career as a journalist, was that once they started coming out, usually they couldn’t be stopped. And secrets had a tendency to change everything.
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0612 Hours
“Only a fool would believe he could pull something like that off.” The response was the only one Remington could think of as he considered the possibility that President Fitzhugh had entered into an agreement with Israel to lash out in a concerted effort against major terrorist organizations in exchange for Chaim Rosenzweig’s chemical wonder.
Believing that Israel would want to do that was no problem. Ever since 1948, when the nation had been forged from the ashes of the Second World War and been placed like a dagger in the heart of the Middle East, Israel had cried out for security and prayed for death to her enemies. Her enemies’ prayers ran along the same lines, of course.
“The State Department convinced Fitzhugh he could get it done, sir,” Winters insisted. “At least, that was what I heard. Plans have been in the making to continue American police action throughout the Middle East.”
“To protect the oil concerns.”
Winters nodded. “China has been growing, Captain Remington. So has their need for
