She slapped him.
“Idiot,” she hissed, reaching over and waving her hand in front of the flush sensor.
“What the hell’s the story?”
“Idiot,” she repeated. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small, round makeup case. “Here.”
Dean took the case. He turned it over and then opened it. There was nothing inside, so he started to give it back. She grabbed it from him, opened it, then pushed it in front of his face.
“What, my five o’clock shadow?” he asked.
“Just shut up.”
Something about the mirror wasn’t right. The woman tilted it slightly, clicked something on the back, then frowned and shook her head as she pocketed it.
“Retina scan?” he asked, finally catching on.
“Did they recruit you off the street?” the woman asked. “Or is it just that you’re from Texas?”
“Do I sound like I’m from Texas?”
“You sound like you’re from the planet Moron,” said the woman.
“Well, don’t let that stop you from explaining who the hell you are,” Dean told her.
“Santa Claus. Now why the hell are you talking to a Russian agent?”
“Who?”
“You idiot. The fat boy sitting next to you in the waiting area works for the Russian Security Service.”
“He does?”
“Listen, do me a favor and go home, okay? I don’t have time to baby-sit an NSC wanna-be.”
“Fuck you.”
“Gee, Chuckie, what a clever comeback. That wow ’em back in Houston?”
“I don’t come from Texas.”
“I know where you’re from.” She glanced toward the door of the rest room, as if she heard someone coming. “Yeah,” she said to herself. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Okay.”
Dean strung his carry-on bag over his shoulder. Except for the fact that she obviously knew who he was, he might have thought the woman psycho.
Not that those were mutually exclusive propositions.
“Just go catch your flight,” she told him, turning back around and pointing. “When you get there, in the terminal, go to Gate Two. Gate Two — you can count that high?”
“Ha-ha.”
“I’m not joking.”
“I don’t have a ticket beyond Poland. I’m supposed to be going to Surgut, but no one gave me a ticket.”
“You
“That’s going to take me to Surgut?”
“Buy a ticket on the first flight on the board.” She pushed open the door to the stall. “Good-bye.”
The door to the men’s room opened before Charlie could grab her. “Ooo-la-la,” said the newcomer, watching her leave.
“Yeah, ooo-fucking-la,” said Dean.
5
Rubens straightened and walked down the narrow aisle behind the row of consoles, glancing toward the back of the room where the technical people were monitoring relevant intercepts and other real-time intelligence. Jeff Rockman, who was assigned to communicate with the field agents on the operation, leaned from the station Rubens had just been hunched over.
“You were right,” Rockman told Marie Telach, who as watch commander was supervising the mission. “She went into the men’s room.”
“Did she dunk his head in the toilet?”
“No.”
“She must like him,” said Rubens acerbically. Lia DeFrancesca — shanghaied from the Army Special Forces Delta unit — was one of his best field agents but had a personality that the Wicked Witch of the West would have admired. “And what’s with the miniskirt?”
“Tools of the trade,” said Telach.
“Which trade is that?”
“Boss.” Telach gave him the same look a teenager’s mother might use to ward off an overprotective father.
“All right,” said Rubens. He turned back to Rockman. “The Russian take the flight?”
“They’re just boarding,” said Rockman. One of his computer screens showed the Polish flight’s manifest, which was being updated passenger by passenger as they boarded. “There goes Dean.”
“One of George Hadash’s best men,” sneered Telach.
“We can leave Mr. Hadash out of this,” said Rubens. “Dean is doing us a favor, even if he doesn’t know it.”
“Classic deer caught in the headlights,” she answered.
“He’s not that bad.” Rubens had reviewed Dean’s file again. He had been a competent — maybe more than competent — Marine sniper, no mean feat. He had nothing but disdain for the CIA operatives he’d worked with, which made it extremely unlikely he would knowingly help Collins. And the fact that he hadn’t just decked DeFrancesca spoke well for his self-control.
“All right, they’re aboard,” said Rockman. He began pumping the keys on one of his computers. “You want to listen to the plane and tower?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Rubens. “What about Lia?”
“Just made her flight,” said Rockman. “Gave one of the male attendants a wedgie.”
“No doubt.”
Located on subbasement three of OPS 2/B in the heart of the Black Chamber, the Art Room was the center of operations for Desk Three. An improvement over the original War Room — officially known as OPS 1 Room 3E099— the Art Room allowed a small group of specialists and former field agents to run operations all across the globe. Sitting at three banks of consoles, Rubens’ people — called runners because they “ran” the field agents — could access real-time data from satellites and other sensors. If their own library of scripts and programs couldn’t get them into target computers or security systems, they could call on Desk Three’s hacking operation, which was housed in a separate facility. Besides tying into the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC), which maintained an array of satellites, they had their own satellite and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) force available, controlled from a bunker down the hallway.
Rubens had handpicked the runners from former CIA as well as NSA officers. (With the exception of Collins, Rubens had a high opinion of the agency and most of its ops.) The majority of the runners had some science or technical background as well as experience in the field. Jeff Rockman, for example, had started with the NSA as a cryptographer. Assigned to the Moscow embassy, he had begun working with some CIA agents there and helped turn a low-level field clerk into a major conduit of Russian cipher keys. Loaned to the agency, he’d distinguished himself in Afghanistan before returning to Crypto City to help Rubens set up some of the procedures for Desk Three. Telach had led a clandestine mission into North Korea, sabotaging a nuclear research facility during the Clinton years. She had then come back to the NSA and helped work out the bugs in Predator 2.1 and Predator 3.0, two programs that Rockman could unleash with hot keys from his station. (The differences in the versions had to do not with the basic coding but with the ways the programs disguised themselves. Depending on the configuration, both programs could either act as sniffers, gathering data, or simply destroy the targeted computer.)
Rockman and the other runners could speak directly to agents such as Lia through a secure satellite communications system. An ear-set chip was embedded in Lia’s inner ear; the chip was just small enough to escape detection by a metal detector. But the most critical part of the system was contained in her jacket, whose
