“I’ll tell her that, too.”
“I’m serious, Paul, you can’t give this to Fincher. That’s part of our deal.”
They reached a fork in the path, where it branched in three separate directions. Seale stopped, and Crocker pointed them to the northwestern path, and they resumed walking.
“Give me a couple more meetings, I’ll have this down,” Seale said.
“I half expected you’d want me to come to Grosvenor Square. You haven’t seemed very much like a walk-in-the-park fellow.”
“Angela said it was how you preferred to do business. I guess you’re as much of a traditionalist as she is.”
Crocker flicked his cigarette into the grass, watched the smoke vanish in the rain. “Have you heard from her?”
“Talked to her today. She’s still at the NCTC, playing counterterror expert.”
“Let’s hope she’s doing more than just playing.” The National Center for Counterterrorism was one of the by-products of the recent restructuring of the American intelligence apparatus. In theory, the office oversaw all civilian and military counterterrorist operations, and served as both a clearinghouse and a main communications center for intelligence gathered on the same. The Center was directed by the National Intelligence Director, a new post created at the time of the restructuring, and the highest intelligence office in the U.S. Government, outranking even the Director at the CIA. Angela Cheng’s appointment to the Center had been a promotion, in every sense of the word.
“Amen,” Seale agreed. “She’s actually the source on the FYI. She asked me to bring it to you personally.”
Crocker glanced to Seale, mildly surprised, and beginning to suspect that he wasn’t much going to like what he was about to hear next.
“We’ve got some information on some of your missing MANPADs,” Seale explained.
“Some?”
“Four of them, actually. Starstreaks.”
“Jesus Christ,” Crocker muttered. Four Starstreaks were a lot of Starstreaks, especially considering it would take but one of them to bring down an airliner during landing, or, worse still, takeoff. If all four of the MANPADs were in the same hands, it was a substantial potential threat.
Seale reached into his overcoat pocket, then opened his hand to Crocker, revealing a folded piece of white notepaper, almost surreally bright against the darker skin of his palm. “Serial numbers.”
Crocker took the paper, tucked it into his own pocket. There was no point in looking at it now. When he got back to the office, he’d run the numbers past D-Int, to see what they turned up. But he did have a question.
“Tell me,” Crocker said. “These Starstreaks didn’t turn up in Chechnya, by any chance?”
Seale shook his head and came to a stop, looking at him quizzically. “You’re in the right region. We think they’re in Uzstan.”
That’s one hell of a coincidence, he thought, which means it’s not a bloody coincidence at all.
“You think?”
“Our man in Tashkent isn’t a slouch, Paul, not with the strategic importance that Uzbekistan holds in the war. He’s got an asset who claims that he witnessed the sale of four Starstreaks by some Afghan warlord to an Uzbek national in Surkhan Darya province last month. Said the whole deal went down for sixty grand, American.”
“Who bought them?”
“We don’t know.”
“But they’re in Uzbekistan?”
“Hell, they could be anywhere by now. But as of a month ago, they came over the border from Afghanistan into Uzstan, yes.”
Crocker scowled, fishing out a second cigarette.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Seale asked.
The flame from Crocker’s lighter quavered in the breeze and the rain. We shook his head and lit his smoke. “No. Not yet, at least.”
“You have something going on in Chechnya?”
“Not at the moment.”
Seale stared at him, frankly curious. Crocker shook his head a second time, then offered Seale his hand.
“Thank you,” he said. “And thank Angela when you speak to her next. I appreciate the courtesy.”
They shook hands.
“We’ll be interested to know what you find,” Seale said.
“You’re not the only one,” Crocker told him.
Back in his office, Crocker had Kate ring the Deputy Chief to see if she had five minutes to discuss a favor to the Americans. She did, and before Crocker headed up to see her, he handed Kate the piece of notepaper he’d received from Seale.
“Run this over to Simon, tell him it’s the numbers of four Starstreaks, he’ll know what that means.”
“I know what that means,” Kate replied mildly. “I do more than just make the coffee.”
“But nothing quite as well. Tell him CIA thinks the missiles were sold in Uzbekistan within the last month. The question I have for him is how those missiles got there in the first place.”
“I hear and I obey,” Kate said.
“The first part is true enough,” Crocker snapped, and headed upstairs to see Alison Gordon-Palmer.
“Will one Minder be enough?” the Deputy Chief wanted to know.
“To help with the snatch? Seale seemed to think one would suffice.”
“You’ll send Poole?”
“I was thinking Lankford, actually. He did a grab last March in Frankfurt, pulled it off quite well. And he hasn’t been to Casablanca. Poole has.”
“Fincher hasn’t been there, either.”
“Fincher is locked at his desk for the moment, as you well know.”
Alison Gordon-Palmer paused, thinking, then said, “Andrew Fincher isn’t a bad officer, Paul. Confining him to his desk is a waste of manpower.”
“He may be a fine officer, but he’s a bad Minder. And if you’re proposing that I send him instead of Lankford, the Americans made it clear that’s not an option. This was given to us on condition that we didn’t use Fincher, in fact.”
“His reputation is that bad?”
“Seale doesn’t trust him, certainly. Whether the command is from Langley, I can’t speculate.”
“And Seale’s promising the whole line of sweets, is he?”
“He assures me that we’ll get just about anything we could ask for.”
“Is there anything we should be asking for, Paul?”
The question surprised Crocker, mostly because it was exactly the kind of question that Donald Weldon, the DC’s predecessor, never would have asked.
“Not at the moment. I’m sure something will come up.”
“I have no doubt. All right, then, I’ll sell it to C. You task Lankford, run him over to Grosvenor Square for the briefing. If we’re quick about it, we could have him in Morocco before dark.”
“We’ll have to be very quick about it,” Crocker said.
Gordon-Palmer smiled at him, as if she knew every last one of his secrets.
“Then why are you still here talking to me, Paul?”
He’d finished briefing Lankford and had called Seale to tell him the loan had been approved when Kate buzzed him from her desk to say that Director Intelligence was outside.
“Send him in,” Crocker told the intercom, and got to his feet as Simon Rayburn pushed through the door. Crocker smiled, pleased to see him, and Rayburn returned it. There were few people in the building that Crocker genuinely got on with, but his opposite number was one of those few, and Rayburn, for his part, both knew and appreciated that fact. There had been times in the history of the Firm when the Director of Intelligence and the Director of Operations had scarcely tolerated the sight of each other, to the obvious detriment of SIS. Both Crocker and Rayburn knew how fortunate they were that they did not live and work in those times.