'I see,' Hood said.
'What's been happening?' Coffey asked.
'Your ships are being watched,' Hood said.
That opened Coffey's eyes. The attorney rolled onto his side. He ignored the complaints from his belly. 'How? By whom?'
'By a Chinese satellite,' Hood told the attorney. 'It's apparently being time-shared by the North Koreans. We have an idea who may be running the actual surveillance, though we don't know who may have ordered it. Bob is looking into that now.'
'You know, it could be nothing at all,' Coffey said. 'It may be a planned reconnaissance. I'm sure the North Koreans routinely watch the military activities of other nations in this region.'
'They do, but military traffic is uncommon in that sector,' Hood said. 'This is not someplace they would have targeted without a reason.'
'That reason being we may have been seen or heard or ratted out,' Coffey suggested.
'In a manner of speaking,' Hood replied. 'We don't know yet how it happened. What's the latest over there?'
'Jelbart and Loh are still trying to find the ship that made the drop-off here,' Coffey replied. 'The only thing we're sure of is that it did not leave the way it was supposed to.'
'How do you know that?'
'The ships that come here are required to file an itinerary with the International Nuclear Regulatory Commission,' Coffey told him. 'FNO Loh called Paya Lebar Airbase and asked for an air force F5 Tiger II flyover of the route. The jet didn't find any ship there. Jelbart informed the INRC and asked for their help. They were useless.'
'What do you mean?'
'Roughly half the ships are spot-checked on their way to this site, when they are carrying nuclear materials,' Coffey told him. 'They are boarded and checked for radiation leaks, security, general seaworthiness. The ships are not checked after they leave the site.'
'So no one knows if they have even made the drop,' Hood said.
'Correct.'
'That's insane,' Hood said.
'I agree. So do Warrant Officer Jelbart and FNO Loh,' Coffey said. 'The problem is that maintaining a fleet is expensive. The INRC is financed by grants from the United Nations, environmental groups, and dues paid by nations that use the waste fields. That gives them about fifteen million dollars a year to oversee all international nuclear shipments, not just waste product.'
'That's all?' Hood said.
'Yes, and that doesn't take into account whatever kick-backs are being handed out,' Coffey added.
'That's a helluva low priority we give the security of nuclear material,' Hood said with disgust.
'That's true, Paul. But to be honest, people who want to smuggle nuclear material are going to do so whether the INRC increases its activities or not,' Coffey said.
'That does not mean we have to make it easy for them,' Hood pointed out. 'We wouldn't even have known about this incident except for the attack by the sampan.'
'Not everything is as well-ordered as law and finance,' Coffey said.
'Funny you should say that,' Hood said. 'I've been thinking about the nature of our business, and it should be more structured. We live in a high-tech world. We can watch someone key in a cell phone number from outer space. Losing ships and radioactive waste are inexcusable.'
'Only in hindsight,' Coffey said. 'When I was in college, I interned with a criminal lawyer. I used to go to prisons with him to interview clients. Once we had perpetrators locked up, it was easy to kick ourselves in the ass and realize what we should have done to save lives. These people we're dealing with now, the smugglers and terrorists, are full-time sociopaths. How do you compete with that? How do you stop someone from putting botulism in an ATM deposit and poisoning the money supply? How do you prevent someone from filling a glass water bottle with acid and carrying it into a jetliner?'
'I don't know,' Hood admitted. 'But we have to figure it out. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of lives!'
'The numbers aren't the issue, Paul,' Coffey said. 'I've watched hostage negotiators work. To them, a single captive is their entire world. Anyway, the problem is not how we apportion resources. The problem is us. We still have the equivalent of a moral gag reflex.'
'And that is?'
'We're civilized,' Coffey said sadly. 'Hell, I'm so civilized I can't even be at sea without feeling my guts in my throat. Our quarry does not have that disadvantage.'
'You may be right about that, about everything,' Hood said. 'But I know this. If we want to stay civilized, we're going to have to find a way of identifying who's with us and who's against us.'
'Ideally, yes,' Coffey said. 'The question is how.'
'That's something Op-Center is going to have to look at a lot more carefully, Lowell,' Hood said. 'We need more comprehensive human intelligence and preventative interference.'
'You mean profiling and spying on your neighbor,' Coffey said. 'We become the sociopaths we behold.'
'I'll trust our civilized nature to keep that from happening,' Hood said.
'If nothing else, that puts you on the high road,' Coffey said. 'Right now all that seems to get you is a better vantage point from which to watch all the fighting and destruction.'
'I hate to say this, but you're sounding like Bob now,' Hood noted.
'Frustration will do that,' Coffey said.
'Only if you let it,' Hood said. 'Meanwhile, I'll let you know when I hear from Bob.'
'Okay,' Coffey said. 'You know, maybe it's just the nausea talking. I'll try to hold tighter to my optimism.'
'Thanks. We can use some of that,' Hood said.
The attorney clicked off the phone. For a moment he felt like he did when he used to listen to a closing argument on behalf of a defendant he knew was guilty. He felt virtuous in theory but crafty in practice.
Coffey sat, this time more slowly. He felt a little better now, proving that seasickness was to some degree a state of mind. As long as he did not pay it attention, he was fine.
He rose cautiously and opened the door. The seaman was waiting outside. Coffey gave him the phone and thanked him. Then the attorney followed him to the bridge. He walked closer to port side so that when the vessel rolled, he could simply lay a shoulder against the wall and slide forward.
The more he thought about it, the more Coffey realized what his problem was.
He had joined the National Crisis Management Center to help keep it honest, as it were. To keep it from becoming unaccountable, in case the leadership ever moved in the direction of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Despite his own protests and resistance, however, Coffey knew that Hood was right. More needed to be done to protect lawful people and nations. And that protection had to come from places like Op-Center. Bob Herbert had once described it as the cowcatcher that guarded the rushing locomotive. Op-Center was uniquely equipped to position itself between progress and disaster. It had men like Darrell McCaskey, Mike Rodgers, and Bob Herbert to share experience in police work, the military, and intelligence. There were technical geniuses like Matt Stoll and the seasoned staff psychologist Liz Gordon. It had communications experts, political professionals, and an authority on satellite reconnaissance. Coffey knew international law. And Paul Hood was a skillful manager who knew how to synthesize all these talents.
If Hood were looking for order, Coffey was holding too tightly to it. Not all the answers were found in law books. Sometimes they were found in people. And he knew that this was a team of good people.
Hood was right when he said he would trust in their civilized qualities to keep abuses from happening. That thought made Coffey proud, and that pride was what had lifted his spirits.
The challenge was great. But there was one thing more important than that. Something they could not afford to forget.
The challenge was far from hopeless.
