Howard didn’t smile back. “Actually,” he said, “I promoted him. Lieutenant, now. He got married, has a son, and has settled down considerably. I know you’ll want your own team, but he’ll be sticking around a few weeks to make sure you get settled in.”
“I appreciate that.”
Howard nodded. “The new boss should be in his office,” he said. “Have you two met yet?”
Kent shook his head. “Not formally. I saw him at some political thing once.”
“He seems okay, for a civilian. Michaels was a good man — backed me up every turn, and was willing to get his own hands dirty. I hope you do as well with Thorn.”
“Me, too.”
“Ah, there’s Betty. Come on, I’ll show you your new toy.”
“Sir,” Tom Thorn’s secretary said, “Marissa Lowe is here.”
“Send her in.”
Lowe was an attractive black woman, a few years older than he was, and tall, maybe five-ten. Her curly hair was cut short, and her gray suit was businesslike enough, the skirt reaching nearly to her knees. She wore a red silk blouse, and what looked like gold and ruby earrings that dangled an inch below her lobes. Dark brown eyes and lots of smile wrinkles at the corners. A fine-looking, very…
Thorn shook the woman’s hand. She had a firm grip.
“Please, have a seat,” he said with a smile.
She flashed him a smile in return, her teeth very white against her milk-chocolate skin. She walked to the couch and sat. She moved very well, he saw, smooth and controlled.
“What can I do for the CIA, Ms. Lowe?”
“Marissa, please, Commander.”
He smiled again. “Call me Tom, then.”
She nodded. “Shortly before you took over Net Force, our embassy in Ankara had a little visit from the Turkish ambassador, Mustafa Suleyman Agar. The Ambassador’s people had come across some intel he figured might be important to the Turks’ national security.” She had a silky, deep voice.
Thorn nodded. “Okay.”
“Well, calls were made, people talked to, and someone somewhere decided that Net Force ought to be asked to help out the ambassador by having a look at the information — which was hidden somehow on a disk of tourist photographs that came from Iran. The Turks were fairly certain something was there because their agent got himself killed in the process of collecting and bringing it home.”
“I see. Go on.”
“Your Jay Gridley has been digging into it and found a code. He managed to crack part of it. It turned out to be a list of secret agents from the former USSR stationed in Africa and the Middle East, going as far back as the nineteen sixties.”
Thorn seemed to remember a report he’d barely had time to glance at from Gridley, who he had just met. “Ah, yes. I recall Jay said something about Russian spies.”
“Well, it has been a while since the evil empire collapsed, but the Russians never throw anything away, you know, so some of the agents were still in place, if a bit long in the tooth. Real names, code names, dates, places, everything.”
He nodded. “I can see where that would be very valuable.”
She echoed his nod. “The Turks scooped up the ones in their territory, and passed out names of the others to their friends in the region.”
“So we get points for helping the Turks?”
“Oh, yeah, big time.”
Thorn searched his memory, which was usually pretty good about such stuff. There was something else…? Ah, he had it.
“I’ve been swamped with e- and paperwork and I’m not up to date,” he said, “but if I recall correctly, Gridley said he thought there was more material to be decoded.”
“Yes, sir, that’s what we understood. And we are hoping that it is a continuation of the list into our geography.”
“Any reason to believe that?”
“Your man seems to think so, from the report he sent. The way the countries and spies are listed shows a progression in this general direction, going from east to west. We’re hoping it will jump the ocean.”
“You’re thinking maybe there are some Russian spies still knocking around in the U.S.?”
“Oh, we
“Indeed. So, what is it you want me to do, Marissa?”
“Nothing, really. We’d just like to make sure you keep this one on the front burner. We would appreciate it.”
“I believe we can do that.”
She gave him her brilliant smile yet again. He liked it, and he liked her. She seemed grounded, no-nonsense, straight to the point, and there was never enough of that to go around.
She stood. “I’d like to drop by from time to time, touch base, since I’m kind of the de-facto liaison from the spooks to the computer nerds. I’ll call before I show up.”
He grinned. “You’ll be welcome any time, Marissa. A pleasure to have made your acquaintance.”
“You, too, Tommy.”
Normally, he didn’t much care for that nickname, but it didn’t sound so bad coming from her.
A few minutes later, his secretary beeped him. “Sir. General Howard and Colonel Kent are here to see you.”
“Great. Send them in.”
4
Samuel Cox sat staring at his desk, as if the solution to his problem might be found between the computer and the hard-copy outbox.
His first reaction to the phone call had been close to panic. Not because he was worried about anybody overhearing it — Vrach’s voice was disguised, distorted far beyond vox-pattern recognition. The call was also scrambled, using state-of-the-art equipment. The NSA itself would bang their heads against the code if they tried to break it. After all, they had devised the scrambler, and they said their code was practically unbreakable.
No, it wasn’t that he was worried about being overheard. But the words that the Doctor had spoken so matter-of-factly? They had chilled Cox right to the bone.
The Turks had given Net Force a computer disk to decode. Thus far, the organization had been successful in finding at least some of the information hidden on the disk. They had uncovered a list of agents who had worked for the former Soviet Union in the Middle East forty years ago.
Cox had merely shrugged at that part of the news. It meant nothing to him.
Ah, the Doctor had said, but there could be more, much more — including a list of Soviet spies elsewhere in the world.
