without borders.
Testing a new kind of spy required a new kind of counterspy. Anita, an educator-interrogator. In a world where there were rumors of an American physician-assassin, the rules were definitely changing. Perhaps for the best. Le believed that Hood may have come for the reasons stated: to collect intelligence without prejudice and to begin forming a strategic international alliance. Whether that union lasted for as long as it took to protect the launch, or whether it was the start of a new detente remained to be seen. Even if that was not why Hood was here, the prime minister might be able to use him in that way. That would make this like any relationship in politics or in life. If it was successful, it did not matter who had contributed what and why.
His wife may have been wiser and more prophetic than she knew.
THIRTY-FOUR
General Carrie did not get very much sleep.
She came home, sat on the sofa to go through the mail, and the next thing she knew, her husband was very gently nudging her awake.
“You must have been tired,” Dr. Carrie said.
The woman opened her eyes. The general was lying against the armrest, her feet on the floor. Her husband’s brown eyes were staring down at her.
“What?” she asked, still groggy.
“I said you must have been tired,” he repeated. He held up an envelope. “You actually opened a ‘You Won a Millions Bucks!’ come-on.”
General Carrie’s eyes shifted from her husband to the envelope. She did not remember opening it. She did not even remember sitting here. She looked at the clock on the digital video recorder. It was coming up on nine A.M. It was late.
“The housekeeper will be here in twenty minutes,” Dr. Carrie said.
“Yeah. Thanks,” his wife replied. She moved stubborn limbs in an attempt to get up. Her husband helped her. He was already dressed, which meant he had showered, and she did not hear him. She smelled coffee. General Carrie did not hear him make that, either.
“Can I get you anything before I leave?” he asked.
“Tea, thanks,” she said. “Also, a kiss.”
He bent over and planted one on her lips. It did not work as well as caffeine, but it was a start.
The neurosurgeon brought his wife her tea, then left. Carrie rose and took a long slug of the strong Earl Grey. She felt as tired as she did when she had come home. She heard the car pull from the driveway and savored her daily moment of solitude. She checked her cell phone. There was just one message. It was from the Andrews dispatch sergeant, probably wanting to know when he should come and get her. She was glad someone had been there for her the night before. That was the great thing about working on an air force base. There was always a driver in the staff pool. She called him and told him she’d be ready to leave at 9:30.
The general took off her uniform, showered quickly, and felt better when that was done. The housekeeper had arrived and let herself in. Patricia Salazar was a young single mother of two who went about her work with easy efficiency. It had occurred to Carrie years before that Patricia would be a perfect spy. She had the run of the house, and who would ever suspect a Portuguese-speaking housekeeper of being an agent for a third party?
Which was exactly the point. Carrie had her G2 staff run a background check. Although Patricia had been married to an NCO in an army signals regiment seven years before, he had left her — and the children — for another woman. Phone logs were checked, as were travel records. Patricia was watched for several weekends. The Salazars apparently had no contact after Patricia came to Maryland to live with her sister and brother-in-law.
Carrie had not felt bad about doing that. A clean house — and a happy housecleaner — were not more important than national security. But caution was a part of her profession. The general did not usually discuss work at home and never took sensitive documents to the house. But she did not want to go to work with a bug concealed in the heel of her shoe.
Carrie poured another cup of tea into a thermos, then glanced at the news on-line before the car arrived. There had been no explosions during the night. That was both good and bad. Good because no one had been hurt. Bad because each new event would give them more information to work with.
The driver arrived, and Carrie left with two things that were at her side constantly: her laptop and her secure phone. As soon as the general was comfortably settled in the car, she raised the glass partition between the seats and switched on the telephone. She entered the password neurodoc, then punched in 1*. That speed-dialed the cell phone of someone she spoke with almost every day, the man who had helped her rise through the military. The man who had ensured her promotion and made the transfer to Op-Center possible. General Raleigh Carew, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“You did not call since you started,” Carew said.
“I was settling in, getting the overview.”
“And what’s your impression of Op-Center?”
“Most of the people are dedicated, hardworking, and extremely burned out,” the general informed him.
“Burned out in what way?”
“They work long hours, they take their cases home with them, and when they are not involved in a crisis, I’m told they are busy looking for the next one.”
“Told by whom?”
“Liz Gordon, the staff psychologist,” Carrie said. “That last factor is the one that’s killing them. There is no downtime.”
“What’s going on there? The Napoleon syndrome?” Carew asked.
“I do not get the sense they are trying to compete with the big boys of intelligence,” Carrie told him. “At least, that’s not their primary motivation. It is more like a bunker mentality. They see themselves as a key line of defense — which they are. But according to Liz, Paul Hood made them feel as if they are the only line of defense. His personal line of defense.”
“Against what?”
“Mediocrity,” she replied. “Liz thinks that Paul Hood used the NCMC to fix the world in ways that he couldn’t fix his life.”
“General Carrie.” Carew sighed. “Are you going to sit there and give me a lot of psychobullshit?”
“Mr. Chairman, I was not the one who brought up the Napoleon syndrome,” Carrie remarked.
Carew was silent for a moment. “Touche,” he replied. “Go on.”
“Liz says that the big problem is the way Hood integrated everyone into the crisis management process on every level. Military planning was plugged into tech, intelligence gathering was hot-wired into the political liaison office, legal worked with psychological, everyone handson everywhere. I saw that happening myself around two this morning. I was talking to Herbert and McCaskey, and they were overanalyzing everything they had picked up that day instead of acting on it. The guiding principle is that the team takes risks but not chances.”
“Everything comes from the brain, not the gut,” Carew said.
“Exactly,” Carrie said. “Whereas we encourage our intel people to explore from within, these people investigate from without. They started a unit of field agents under Mike Rodgers, but it never worked out. Liz says that Hood couldn’t let go. I discovered that Hood is also one reason that Liz back-doored a recommendation to then-Senator Debenport that Mike Rodgers be the first one downsized. Hood’s number two was burning out big time.”
“That’s because he’s a soldier, not a bureaucrat. He took the full frontal hits for Op-Center, all of them in the field.”
