War of Eagles (19 page)

“It is twenty-eight degrees fifteen minutes north, sir,” the second lieutenant replied.

“Elevation?”

“Eighteen hundred feet, sir,” Yam replied.

General Carrie smiled and nodded. That felt good.

There was no time to chat further, nor any need. Carrie had seen all she needed to see. They were four sharp, enthusiastic marines. A little young, but that was all right. Youth had energy and clarity uncorrupted by cynicism. They would need that as reality started peeling away the layers of idealism.

Wishing them well and saluting them proudly, the general brought Captain Tallarico back into the room. She congratulated him for his work, then returned to her golf cart.

As she headed back to the NCMC, General Carrie was confident in the group but a little uneasy about their inexperience. There was no way to get it, other than by being in the field. But she was suddenly much more aware of the fragility of the four tires than she had been driving over.

Hood reached Beijing surprisingly refreshed and exhilarated. He had slept for most of the flight, and he had left having done something that made him feel good. Something that had nothing to do with work. Not directly, anyway.

Whether he was the mayor of Los Angeles or the director of Op-Center, Hood had always tried to spend time with his kids before traveling anywhere. This was especially true on Op-Center business, when he usually went away for more than just an overnight visit. Hood used that time to plug tightly into his family. He craved it, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Sharon Hood had never really been a part of that. She allowed her husband to give his attention to the kids.

As he thought back on it, that was how they did everything after Harleigh was born. Their love was funneled to their daughter and then their son. They never gave any to each other. Maybe Sharon was doing what she thought the kids needed. Hood’s time at home was limited, and she wanted the kids to have full access to their father. Whatever the cause, over time their life became all about kids and career, with Sharon spending her free time working on her cable TV cooking show. The events that subsequently rocked their personal lives simply accelerated the sad, lonely drift.

The state to which they had deteriorated was evident whenever Hood went to see the kids. It was not just how snippy Sharon was with him. It was how openly affectionate she and her new lover were. He did not think their hand-in-hand walks around the yard or hugs in the window were an act for his benefit. But he did see that Sharon was capable of more than she gave him.

Then again, the new man was around a lot more. Jim Hunt was a caterer Sharon had met on her show. The former Mrs. Hunt was an electrician Jim had met, the kids told him, when she was repairing an oven in a restaurant. Hunt had been the one who divorced her. He had come to the relationship with Sharon bearing full closure with his past and a white tablecloth ready to spread on their happy relationship banquet. An emotionally free and available caterer who made his own hours. It was a recipe that had to make Sharon Hood weak with need.

Hood had pondered all of that, again, as he drove to the house from Op-Center. He had called to make sure the kids would be there before heading out. Then he also did something impulsive that only made sense because he was angry at just about every woman he knew, from Lorraine Sanders to Julie Kubert to General Carrie Morgan and Sharon Hood.

He turned, irrationally, to one for support. One he believed might actually want to hear what he had to say.

He guessed that the number of the former Mrs. Jim Hunt was the same as her son’s, for whom he had gotten an internship at Op-Center six months before. He called. A woman answered. Hood asked if this was the former wife of Jim Hunt. She asked who wanted to know.

“Paul Hood, the former husband of Sharon Hood,” he replied.

There was a silence so long he thought his phone had died.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” she replied. “This is Gloria Lynch-Hunt. Is everything all right with Frankie?”

Frankie was her son, her only child. Of course she would assume that was why he was calling.

“Actually, as of yesterday morning things were very well with Frankie,” he said. “The truth is I’m not at Op-Center anymore. I’m working on special projects for the president.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “Does he need a recording system installed in the Oval Office?”

“Excuse me?” It took a moment for Hood to understand what she had said. Gloria was an electrician. She was making a joke. Hood was caught off guard. He was also surprised by her voice, which was very soft and very high. It was not what he imagined a female electrician would sound like. Not that a female electrician should sound like anything, he knew. But he could not help having imagined her as smoky-voiced and a little hulking, albeit slimmed down because she would be dating again after years of complacency in marriage and eating her husband’s rich foods. “No,” Hood went on. “I’m not calling about the president, Mrs. Hunt. Gloria. I’m calling to see if you want to have lunch or coffee.”

There was another long, long silence. This time Hood
had
lost her. He pressed Redial. He wondered if she would still be laughing or if she would not bother to pick up at all.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi. Sorry. Lost the signal there.”

“That’s okay. I was thinking this might have been a joke,” she said. “Maybe it is, I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because you come up as Unknown Caller on the phone ID, and my former husband is a dick. This is the kind of stunt he would have one of his restaurant or chef buddies pull.”

“To what end?” Hood asked. He understood the idea of postdivorce payback, but that seemed excessive.

“Mr. Hood, you’re a stranger. Maybe you won’t be, after the dinner you’re going to buy me—at a restaurant of my choosing, where I know my ex holds no sway. Until then, ‘my former husband is a dick’ will have to suffice. The details are bloody—and personal.”

“Understood,” he said. It was odd. He felt no need to warn Sharon that her beau might be “a dick.”

“I have to say, this still seems kind of strange,” she said.

“It is completely strange,” he admitted.

“Do you even know what I look like?”

“No,” he admitted as a jolt of concern flashed through him. “And this isn’t an us-against-them alliance,” he added. “You know what I think I was subconsciously thinking?”

“No. I’m not even sure I understood what you just said.”

He smiled. “I think, Gloria, that I reasoned: Sharon and I did not get along. Sharon and Jim
do
get along. Therefore, you and I may get along.”

The third silence was the shortest. “I’ll buy that,” she said. “Sort of a nearsighted date. When do we find out?”

Hood thought he detected a hint of excitement in her voice. It took him a moment to get this joke, too. They were not quite blind dating.

“I’m actually headed overseas now for a couple of days,” Hood told her.

“Any place exciting?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“But you can’t tell me.”

“Right.”

“Sexy,” she said.

That made Hood feel both good and uncomfortable at the same time. He actually choked on saliva as he said, “Can we chalk it in for Saturday?”

“Consider it chalked. That’ll save me a DVD rental,” she said.

“It’s been that way for me, too,” Hood said.

He hung up feeling pleased with himself. Not because he had made the call but because he had actually had a constructive conversation with a woman. He was upbeat as he reached the house, stayed upbeat as he talked to the kids on the back patio, and even smiled as he waved good-bye to Sharon and Jim as they did the dishes together, laughing as they scrubbed some kind of sauce from cooking implements he did not recognize. It was the first time in a year that Hood did not feel like sticking a steak knife in Hunt’s raw heart.

Maybe that was because he had, though the “dick” did not yet know it. He loved having a secret that would cause Jim a little confusion and discomfort and probably some jealousy, even though he would never admit it.

Screw him.

And now, invigorated, Paul Hood was ready to tackle a world crisis. He did not know whether it was sad or remarkable that such a small thing as a date with this one particular woman could have such a large impact on his outlook. And he realized as he moved through a short diplomatic line that it had nothing to do with Gloria Hunt per se. It had to do with Paul Hood taking control of his life.

As revelations go, that was something an international crisis manager should have realized long before this.

Hood was met at the Beijing Capital International Airport by a car from the embassy. The driver introduced himself as Tim Bullock. The young man looked to be about twenty-four or twenty-five.

“How long have you been in Beijing?” Hood asked as they waited for the two pieces of luggage he had brought.

“Four months, sir. I have a poli-sci degree from Temple University.”

“You’re from Philadelphia?”

“Yes, sir. Birthplace of the nation. That’s what got me into political science. When I understood what those men did—Mr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, Mr. Jefferson, and the others—the risks they took so their countrymen could live free, I knew I wanted to have a positive impact on people’s lives.”

“Is it difficult for you to watch Communism at work in China?”

“No, sir. It is another form of the kind of duress these individuals have always lived under,” Bullock said in exquisite diplomatic-speak. “But they will overcome that, I believe. It is a strong and fascinating country.”

“So you like this assignment?” Hood asked.

“Very much, sir,” Bullock replied. “Dating is problematic, but the day trips are not like going to the Jersey shore. And this is a choice position for someone who wants a career in the dipco.”

Dipco
was the diplomatic corps. Or as Op-Center’s late political liaison Martha Mackall used to call it, the “fiftyfifty” corps. You spent half the time trying to do your job and half the time trying to stay alive. In her case, her frank misanthropic view of the profession had proved sadly accurate. Bob Herbert had another name for it: the “diplomatic corpse.” Happily, there were still men like Bullock who had stars—and stripes—in their eyes. At least, for now.

Bullock carried Hood’s bags, told him there were beverages and snacks in the car, and said the eighteen-mile drive to the American compound at Xiu Shui Bei Jie 3, 100600 would take under a half hour. He asked Hood if he needed to use the rest room before they departed.

“Thanks,” Hood told him. “I went before I left.”

Bullock did not acknowledge the joke. He was in a mode Hood recognized: the focused, efficient “dipcoproby” mode. A career in the diplomatic corps meant doing everything right during his six-month probationary period, especially when it came to collecting and delivering VIPs in a timely and efficient manner. Hood had never possessed that kind of polish. Then again, he never had the kind of career vision Bullock seemed to have. Hood had planned on a career in finance. He fell into politics and felt his way from post to post as he moved between the two fields. He always tried to do what was right, not what was expected.

Until six months ago,
he reflected. That was when he fired Mike and made a deal with Senator Debenport to work more closely with the White House. At the time, he had no idea how closely that meant. It was strange. Here he was feeling used and compromised, yet the kid in the front seat would probably sign away his soul to be doing what Hood was doing. The president’s special intelligence envoy did not have the heart to tell Bullock that would probably
be
the price.

Hood sat back in the deep leather seat of the bulletproof sedan and looked out the window. The driver pointed out a few landmarks but was respectfully silent the rest of the time. Beijing was not what Paul Hood had expected. Even through the pollution, the pale yellow disc of the rising sun brought out the rich, earthy reds and browns of the stones and tiles that comprised the ancient structures. Except for these old walls and pagoda-style rooftops, and the billboards of Mao that were still surprisingly plentiful, the capital of the People’s Republic of China looked like a modest-sized American city. There were a few newer highrises, some well-preserved turn-of-the-century buildings, and a great many trees and plazas. There were paved roads and cobbled roads, all of them still relatively uncrowded this early in the morning.

The sedan pulled up to the high iron gates. There was a marine sentry in a guard booth inside. He pressed a button, and a small oblong panel slid down in one of the columns of the gate. There was a dark glass inside. Bullock rolled down the window and pressed his palm on the clear vertical screen. A narrow green line scanned his palm from the top to bottom, then from the left to the right. A moment later, the gate popped open. The box closed, and Bullock drove through. The marine had never left the safety of the booth.

“They had a retinal scan installed for a few days,” Bullock told Hood. “But it was very difficult to lean that far from the car.”

Good old government planning,
Hood thought as they drove along the curving drive. Hood was quite aware of a four-story bunker-style building to the right of the compound, just outside the gate. He had no idea what the Chinese characters said, but it did not matter. Whether the building was supposed to be the Institute for Cultural Exchange or the Department of Petroleum Research, it was in fact a listening post. The eastern side, which overlooked the embassy, had eight windows. They would all take direct sunlight until about one or two P.M. The shades were drawn in all but one, which had the widest view of the grounds. There were probably a number of still and video cameras concealed within the room. Everyone who came or went at the United States embassy was photographed, their conversations recorded. A number of satellite dishes and antennae were crowded on the roof, more than an ordinary office building would require. All of that raw data was stored and analyzed.