'Being human. Making a mistake now and then or wanting something that isn't yours. Or even wanting something that was yours.' Hood turned toward Hausen so as not to make it seem as if he were turning away from Nancy. But he was. And she obviously knew it because she stepped between the men.
'God, Paul, why do you put this burden on yourself?
This burden to be so perfect?' 'Nancy, this isn't the time or place—' 'Why?' she asked. 'You think we'll have another?' He said bluntly, 'No. No, we probably won't.' 'Forget me for a moment. Think about you. When we were younger, you worked hard so you could get ahead.
Now you are ahead and you're still pushing. Who's it for?
Are you trying to set an example for your kids or your subordinates?' 'Neither,' he said with an edge. Why was everyone always on his back about his ethics, work and otherwise?
'I'm only trying to do what's right. Personally, professionally, just what's right. If that's too simple or too vague for everybody, it isn't my problem.' 'We can leave,' Hausen said. He put the phone in his jacket pocket and walked briskly toward Hood. He was obviously pleased, and unaware that he was interrupting anything. 'The government has given clearance for us to leave at once.' He turned to Lang. 'Is everything set, Martin?' 'The jet is yours,' Lang said. 'I won't be joining you.
I'd only be in the way.' 'I understand,' Hausen said. 'The rest of us had better be going.' Stoll strugged into the backpack with the T-ray imaging unit. 'You betcha,' he said glumly. 'Why go to the hotel where I can have room service and a hot bath, when I can go to France and fight terrorists?' Hausen extended an arm toward the door. He had the eager, impatient manner of someone hurrying dinner guests out into the night. Hood hadn't seem him so animated all day. Was this, as he suspected, Ahab finally closing in on the White Whale— or was it, as Ballon believed, a politician about to score an unprecedented public relations coup?
Hood took Nancy's hand and started toward the door.
She resisted. He stopped and turned back. She was no longer the confident woman who strode toward him in the park. Nancy was a sad and lonely figure, seductive in her need.
He knew what she was thinking. That she should be opposing them, not helping them destroy what was left of her life. As he watched her stand there, he flirted with the idea of telling her what she wanted to hear, of lying to her and saying that they could try again. His job was to protect the nation and he needed her help for that.
And once you tell that lie, he thought, you can lie to Mike and your staff, to Congress, even to Sharon.
'Nancy, you'll have work,' Hood told her. 'I said I'd help you and I will.' He was going to remind her again who walked out on whom, but what was the point? Women weren't consistent or fair.
'But that's my problem, not yours,' Nancy said. It was as if she'd read his mind and was determined to prove him wrong. 'You say you need my help if you get inside. Fine. I won't walk out on you a second time.' Snapping her head the way she did in the hotel lobby, she walked toward Hausen. The long, blond hair swept to the side, as if it were brushing away doubt and anger.
Hausen thanked her, thanked them all, as the five of them entered the elevator for the quick ride to the lobby.
Hood stood beside Nancy. He wanted to thank her, but just saying it didn't seem to be enough. Without looking at her, he squeezed her hand and quickly released it. From the corner of his eye he saw Nancy blink several times, the only break in her otherwise stoic expression.
He couldn't remember when he felt both this close and this far from a person. It was frustrating being unable to move in one direction or the other, and he could only imagine how much worse it felt for Nancy.
And then she let him know by reaching over and squeezing his hand and not releasing it as tears crept from her eyes. The ping of the elevator as they reached the lobby broke their touch but not the spell as she released him and they walked, eyes ahead, toward the waiting car.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
When he was a kid growing up in Houston, Darrell McCaskey carved his own Smith & Wesson automatic made out of balsa wood and kept it tucked in his belt at all times, the way he'd read the real FBI agents did. He screwed an eye-hook to the front of the weapon and attached a rubber band to the 'gun sight.' When the rubber band was hooked to the hammer and released, he could fire small cardboard squares like bullets. McCaskey kept the squares in his shirt pocket where they were accessible and safe.
Darrell wore the gun starting in sixth grade. He kept it hidden under his button-down shirt. It gave him a John Wayne-rigid walk that the other kids teased him about, but Darrell didn't care. They didn't understand that keeping the law was everyone's responsibility as well as a full-time job.
And he was a short kid. With hippies and yippies popping up and demonstrations and sit-ins happening everywhere, he felt better with a beltful of protection.
McCaskey shot the first teacher who tried to take the gun from him. After writing an essay in which he carefully researched the Constitution and the right to bear arms, he was permitted to keep the weapon. Provided he didn't use it other than for self-defense against radicals.
As a rookie FBI agent, McCaskey loved stakeouts and investigations. He loved it even more when he was an Assistant Special Agent in Charge and had more autonomy.
When he became a Special Agent in Charge and then a Supervisory Special Agent, he was frustrated because there were fewer opportunities to spend time in the street.
When McCaskey was offered the position of Unit Chief in Dallas, he took the promotion largely because of his wife and three kids. The pay was better and the job was safer and his family got to see him more. But as he sat behind a desk coordinating the actions of others, he realized just how much he missed stakeouts and investigations. Within two years, joint activity with Mexican authorities gave him the idea to form official alliances with foreign police forces. The FBI Director approved his plan to draft and spearhead FIAT— the Federal International Alliance Treaty. Quickly approved by Congress and eleven foreign governments, FIAT enabled McCaskey to work on cases in Mexico City, London, Tel Aviv, and other world capitals. He moved his family to Washington, quickly rose to Deputy Assistant Director, and was the only man Paul Hood asked to become Op-Center's interagency liaison. McCaskey had been promised and given relative autonomy, and got to work closely with the CIA, the Secret Service, his old friends at the FBI, and more foreign intelligence and police groups than before.
But he was still deskbound. And thanks to fiber optics and computers, he didn't leave his office the way he did when he was revving up FIAT. Because of diskettes and Email, he didn't even have to walk over to the Xerox machine or even lean over to the out box. He wished he could have lived in the time of his childhood heroes, G-man Melvin Purvis and Treasury Man Eliot Ness. He could almost taste the exhilaration of chasing Machine Gun Kelly through the Midwest, or Al Capone's thugs up rickety stairways and across dark rooftops in Chicago.
He frowned as he pushed buttons on his phone.
Instead, I'm entering a three-digit code to call the NRO. He knew there was no shame in that, though he didn't see himself inspiring kids to make their own balsa-wood telephones.
He was put right through to Stephen Viens. The NRO had been downloading satellite views of the Demain plant in Toulouse, but they weren't enough. Mike Rodgers had told him that if Ballon and his people had to go in, he didn't want them going in blind. And despite what Rodgers had told Ballon, none of Matt Stoll's technical team knew to what degree the T-Rays would be able to penetrate the facility, or how much it would tell them about the layout or distribution of forces.
Viens had been using the NRO's Earth Audio Receiver Satellite to eavesdrop on the Demain site. The satellite used a laser beam to read the walls of a building the way a compact disc player read a CD. However, instead of data pits in the surface of a disc, the EARS read vibrations in the walls of buildings. Clarity depended upon the composition and thickness of the walls. With favorable materials such as metals, which vibrated with greater fidelity and resonance than porous brick, computer enhancement could recreate conversations which were taking place within the buildings.
These triple paned windows were no good: they didn't vibrate sufficiently to be read.
'The structure is red brick,' Viens said thickly.
McCaskey's head dropped.
