But while the century was finished, Albert Beaudin was not. Growing up as a resistance fighter had taught Albert never to be afraid of anything. It taught him never to accept defeat. And it taught him how to organize a small but devoted band into a powerful force.
Albert heard a jet. He looked up. He watched as a lowflying aircraft threw cones of white light above the clouds. There must be severe storms to the south. Aircraft usually did not fly directly over the city this late.
Albert listened until the roar of the jet engines had faded. Then he let his green eyes move across the rest of the dark Parisian skyline.
There were indeed storms to the south. Storms that were going to sweep the world. Albert found himself staying up at night, recapturing the drama, risk, and excitement of the last great war he fought for his homeland.
However, the results of this war would be different. It would be fought without the loss of French lives. It would be fought in a foreign land. And it would show the world what ingenuity and stealth could accomplish.
It would also do one thing more. It would shift the center of world power from a handful of bellicose nations to a handful of men. Men who were impervious to bombs and sanctions.
Men who would restore their homeland to a prominence it had not known for over two centuries.
Chapter Twelve
After meeting with Paul Hood and briefing Bob Herbert, Mike Rodgers went to his office. For the first time in weeks, he was energized.
Over a year before, General Rodgers had talked to Hood about establishing a HUMINT team for Op-Center, one that would not only gather information but have the ability to infiltrate enemy units if necessary. Events had forced them to put the idea on hold. Rodgers was glad to be bringing it back. He knew that spearheading a new HUMINT team would not ease the loss of the Strikers. It would not change the general's perception that he had mismanaged aspects of the Himalayan operation. It would not accomplish that any more than remanning Striker would have done. But Hood's aggressive step reminded Rodgers that command was not a profession for the timid.
Or the self-pitying.
The first thing Rodgers did was to access the computer files of the agents he and Hood had discussed. Op-Center kept track of all the operatives who had worked with them. The "cooperatives," as Bob Herbert called them. The COs were not aware of the electronic surveillance. Senior Computer Specialist Patricia Arroyo in Matt Stoll's office hacked everything from credit card transactions to phone bills. They did this for two reasons. First, Op-Center needed to be able to contact freelance agents quickly, if necessary. Covert operatives often resigned. They frequently dropped out of sight, changed addresses, and occasionally changed identities. But evejp if credit card numbers were different, purchase preferences and phone contacts were the same. Those patterns were easy to locate and track to new credit cards or telephone numbers.
The second reason Op-Center continued to watch former COs was to make certain that potential partners were not spending time with potential adversaries. Calls placed to cell phones were very closely monitored. Patricia had developed software to cross-reference these numbers with phones registered to embassy employees. Nearly 40 percent of all foreign service workers were intelligence gatherers. Tax documents and bank accounts were watched to make sure the sums matched. The records of family members were also collected. Wherever possible, computer passwords were broken and Emails read.
Even experienced, well-intentioned intelligence workers could be tricked, seduced, bribed, or blackmailed.
Locating Maria Corneja, David Battat, and Aideen Marley was not a problem.
The thirty-eight-year-old Corneja, a Spanish Interpol agent, had recently married Darrell McCaskey. McCaskey was OpCenter's NAFIL-National and Foreign Intelligence Liaison. He had returned to Washington while Maria settled her affairs in Madrid. She would be joining her husband in a week.
Forty-three-year-old David Battat was the former director of a CIA field office in New York City. Battat had recently returned to Manhattan after helping Op-Center stop a terrorist from sabotaging oil supplies in Azerbaijan. Thirty-four-yearold Aideen Marley was still in Washington. The former foreign service officer had worked with Maria Corneja, averting a Spanish civil war two years before. Now she was working as a political consultant for both Op-Center and the State Department.
The other operatives were living in different parts of the world. Twenty-eight-year-old Falah Shibli was still working as a police officer in Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel. A veteran of seven years in the Sayeret Ha'Druzim-Israel's elite Druze Reconnaissance unit-the Lebanon-born Israeli had assisted Op-Center in their Bekaa Valley operation.
Forty-nine-year-old Harold Moore divided his time between London and Tokyo. Moore was a former G-man who had been recruited by McCaskey to help Op-Center with its first crisis, finding and defusing a terrorist bomb on board the space shuttle Atlantis. Feeling underappreciated, Moore had elected to take early retirement. He was now working as a consultant to both Scotland Yard's Specialist Operations Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Intelligence and Analysis Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Twenty-nine-year-old Zack Bemler was based in New York. Bemler was a magna cum laude Ph. D. graduate in international security from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. The young man had been courted by the CIA and the FBI but ended up working for World Financial Consultants, an international investment group. After rogue generals were prevented from overthrowing the legitimate government in Russia, then-political liaison Martha Mackall contacted Bemler. Bemler had dated Martha's kid sister Christine at Princeton. Together, Martha and Bemler worked to clean out the generals' bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The twenty-five million dollars was used to fund joint intelligence ventures between Paul Hood and Sergei Orlov's Russian Op-Center.
Rodgers knew how to contact the personnel he wanted. He had the money to hire them. But numerous questions remained. Should he mix veterans with new personnel, combine new ideas with the old? Would these people consider working for Op-Center full-time, if at all? If so, where would they be based? Would it be practical to run an entirely freelance operation? Then there were logistic issues. They could not travel as a unit in a military transport, since those aircraft were routinely watched by satellite and on the ground. Upon arriving at an air base, they might be spotted and followed. But it was also unwise to put them on a single commercial flight. If one were identified, they might all be exposed.
Rodgers also had to figure out how to run the unit. Covert operatives were more like artists than soldiers. They were creative individuals. They did not enjoy working groups or doing things by the book.
The general wanted input from Herbert. He also wanted to talk to the spy chief about the way the team had come about. After the meeting with Hood, Mike Rodgers could think of nothing but the new team. It did not occur to him until hours later that it probably upset Herbert to be excluded from this process. As a former spy himself, Herbert had a great poker face. He might not have let his displeasure show to Rodgers. Herbert was also a team player. He would not want to dull Rodgers's enthusiasm.