“And I don’t think he totally trusts the encryption either.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Slott. The encryption was an NSA standard, all but theoretically impossible to crack.
“He usually leaves it off unless something important’s going on,” said Lauren. “The transmissions can be detected and—”
“Something damn important is going on,” said Slott. “Who’s with him? Sergeant Young?”
“Um, Guns turns his phone off, too,” said Lauren. “I’m sure Ferg tells him to.”
Slott struggled to control his anger. It wasn’t Lauren or Corrigan’s fault that he couldn’t talk to Ferguson — they couldn’t control what the op did — and, to be honest, neither could he.
He liked Ferguson’s results — who didn’t? — but the op had always struck him as being arrogant, acting as if he didn’t have to follow the rules everyone else did.
“I called the hotel desk,” said Lauren. “He left orders not to be disturbed. Maybe—”
“I want to talk to him now,” Slott told them. “Get somebody to get him. Have him call me.”
“Colonel Van Buren’s operation has his men tied up,” said Corrigan.
“Tell Seoul to send someone down there,” snapped Slott, referring to the CIA’s South Korean office.
“How much should I tell them?” asked Lauren.
Slott hesitated. There were two separate problems he had to deal with: the plutonium itself and his people’s failure to discover it. If he had Seoul work on problem number one, he might not be able to discover the seriousness of problem number two. What he needed for now was to keep the two problems separate if at all possible.
On the other hand, he needed to talk to Ferguson ASAP, not when Ferguson felt like checking in.
“Dan?” said Corrigan.
“Don’t tell them anything. Ferguson is just an American who’s supposed to call home.”
Corrigan and Lauren glanced at each other.
“I’ll come up with something,” said Corrigan.
18
The knock on the hotel-room door was not quite loud enough to wake the dead, but it was sufficient to jostle someone with a mild hangover. Ferguson lifted his head and grunted, “Yeah?”
“Robert Christian?”
It was the cover name Ferguson had used to check in. The voice speaking was English with an American accent.
“Yeah?”
“Your uncle wants to talk to you.”
“What time is it?”
“Going on ten o’clock.”
Ferguson groaned and slipped out of bed. “My uncle, huh?” At least his knee felt better. “Where’s he live?”
“Washington.”
He grabbed his Glock and a flash-bang grenade and walked to the door, flipping on the TV as he went. Ferguson had chosen the hotel because it had eyepieces in each room’s door; Ferguson had replaced his with a wireless video camera whose wide-angle lens allowed it to view the entire hallway.
The image on the TV screen showed that there was a man and a woman outside, both dressed in suits, both Western, more than likely American. They didn’t have guns showing, and they didn’t have backup down the hallway, unless they were hiding in the stairway. No headsets, no radios.
The man leaned against the door, apparently in a misguided attempt to peer through the spyglass.
“My uncle hasn’t lived in Washington in twenty years,” said Ferguson. Silently, he slid back the dead bolt and unhooked the chain.
“We’re from the embassy,” said the man, still leaning against the door.
“Which embassy would that be?” asked Ferguson. As he did, he yanked the door open. The man fell inside, helped along by Ferguson, who grabbed his arm and threw him against the bureau. Ferguson kicked the door closed behind him, then knelt on the man’s chest, his pistol pointed at his forehead.
“I’m hoping you’re new,” Ferguson told the CIA officer, who clearly was. “Like maybe you just got off the plane.”
“I’ve been in Korea three months,” managed the man.
“That’s long enough to know better.”
Ferguson quickly searched him; he wasn’t carrying a weapon. His business cards indicated he was Sean Gillespie and a member of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Asian Trade Council, the cover du jour obviously.
“What’s going on in there?” yelled his teammate from the hall, pounding on the door.
“Let her in,” Ferguson said, getting up. “Before I shoot her.”
Gillespie opened the door, and his fellow CIA officer, a thin brunette with thick glasses, came inside, her face flushed. Like Gillespie, she looked about twenty-three going on twelve.
“What is this?” she sputtered, mesmerized by Ferguson’s gun.
“Lock the door and lower your voice,” Ferguson told her. “Then you have about ten seconds to tell me why you’re here blowing my cover.”
The brunette’s cheeks went from red to white.
“Why are you here?” said Ferguson.
“You’re supposed to come right away to the embassy and call home,” said Gillespie. “We were told to bring you.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t say.”
“You’re not on official cover?” asked the brunette.
“Do these boxers look official?” said Ferguson.
Official cover” meant that the officers held positions with the government and had diplomatic passports. It also meant that just about anyone who counted knew they were CIA.
Someone traveling on unofficial cover, like Ferguson, had no visible connection with the Agency or the government. Other officers were supposed to be extremely careful when approaching them, since anyone watching might easily put two and two together and realize the other person was a spy.
Unsure whether the two nuggets had been followed, Ferguson told them to leave without him. They refused; they had their orders after all and insisted on accompanying him to Seoul. After considerable wrangling, he convinced them to meet him on the train to Seoul. Ferguson gave them a head start, then he called The Cube and asked what the hell was going on.
“There you are,” said Corrigan.
“Two bozos from the embassy just woke me up. What’s the story?”
“Oh. Slott needed to talk to you and—”
“So you got Seoul to blow my cover?”
“No.”
“You need to talk to me?”
“Dan does. Listen—”
“I’ll call back.”
Ferguson hung up, looked at his watch. Guns wouldn’t be up for several hours. He decided he’d let him sleep; they weren’t supposed to meet until the afternoon anyway.
Ferguson turned off the phone, gathered his gear in an overnight bag, then left. Outside, he took a cab to a hotel near the science museum, checked in, then strolled downstairs to the coffee shop. When he was sure he wasn’t being followed, he went out on the street and caught another cab at random, waving the first one off, and
