"Anyway-at first things went well. We ran four real-world operations our first year. All successful. No losses. Then came the new administration. I briefed the President on our team and our mission. However, it seemed like the new administration had different ideas about what we were to be used for. The President appointed Lamb as our liaison and tried slipping in some questionable missions and I had to call him on it."
"What kind of questionable missions?"
Hawkins shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Suffice it to say they were based in the U.S. and involved eliminating certain persons. You've got to remember that everything we were doing was illegal-both in the United States and outside of it. It got kind of hard to see the lines sometimes, because there really weren't any lines. So we basically had to believe the information that Lamb was feeding us. He and I went round and round sometimes about how much my people needed to know. He believed in the minimum and I believed in the maximum. On top of that, I don't believe all the minimum information he gave us was legitimate. I couldn't exactly go check on all of it. That's not to say that whatever we did wasn't in the ultimate good interests of the United States. I believe it all was, but it's just that in the intelligence arena there's a lot of manipulation going on-getting people to do mission A for reasons that are actually connected to mission B-if that makes any sense.
"And that brings us to the present situation. I think we're getting the minimum information. And I'm not sure how much of the minimum is true. I'm not even sure if my name really was on the message or if the message is real."
Fran smiled. "Games within games, eh?"
Hawkins's face was dead serious. "That's the gray world you're in now. I've lived in it for many years. The number-one rule: Trust no one. Believe nothing you're told."
"Even what you tell me?" Fran asked.
"Yeah. Even what I tell you, if you're smart." Hawkins ran a hand through his hair. "The last thing my team was working on was trying to track down those two missing nuclear weapons. They disappeared from a Soviet stockpile in what is now Kazakhstan. We got that through a HUMINT-human intelligence-source sixteen days ago. Apparently the bombs have been missing for about three weeks now. We believe a former Russian general sold them to the highest bidder. Of course, the damn Russians, or whatever the hell you call them now, didn't bother announcing the news. How the bombs got out of the country and where they went we don't know. One of those bombs is now accounted for."
Fran nodded. "Vredefort Dome."
"Right. We thought we had a line on the other one in Colombia-a drug kingpin who certainly had the money to buy one and the smuggling capability to get it from Russia to South America."
"But why would he want a nuclear bomb?"
Hawkins shook his head. "I don't know. Lamb wouldn't tell me that. I had to guess. Why would anyone want a bomb? The ultimate power, I suppose. Blackmail. Whatever. Lots of people would like one. Turns out he didn't buy one, though. We went in and extracted him. He knew nothing about it." Hawkins shrugged. "At least we took him out of the drug network, although some other scumbag will take his place."
"Four years is a long time to be doing that sort of work," Fran commented.
Hawkins shrugged. "It's all I have."
Fran pointed at the ring on his left hand. "What about your wife? Do you have kids?" As soon as she said it, she could sense the shift in Hawkins. The hard planes of his face coalesced into a mask.
"We had no children and my wife doesn't need me much now."
Fran was confused. "Are you divorced?"
"No." There was a long, awkward silence.
Fran decided not to pursue that subject any further. "What do you think the connection with the bombs is?" This was getting very close to her computer printouts. They hadn't even told her about the other bomb still out there, just about the blast at Vredefort Dome. That other bomb on the loose would have made the results even worse-if it was possible to contemplate worse than what the numbers had shown.
"I don't know. As Debra said-the Vredefort explosion came before the transmission. I think the South African radicals got one bomb and used it in the best possible way they could. I don't think they could have afforded the other one. We just picked up some Intel after I got here that Libya might have the other one. I don't know. My team is still on the trail. That's the only thing that makes me think that something very important is happening-they pulled me off my team to come here. And the fact that Lamb is here. He doesn't like wasting his time on wild goose chases."
Fran thought about what her computer had predicted. "I told you my job is statistical projection. Well, I did a run after the explosion at Vredefort Dome. Fed in all the economic and political data available-although they didn't tell me there was another bomb still out there. Not that it could have turned out much worse than it did."
"I know," Hawkins said. "I just looked at the projections."
Fran pushed the plate of food aside, uneaten. "The weird thing is that this whole incident with Ayers Rock is what I'd call a wild card. There's no way anyone could have predicted this. It really skews the data."
"Is that good or bad?" Hawkins asked, thinking about the spreadsheets and summaries he had just talked about with Lamb.
"I don't know. The original future courses and their probabilities were pretty grim, so any change may be for the better. There was a fifty-nine percent chance of-"
They both looked up in surprise as an agitated Debra Levy appeared at their table with Don Batson in tow and interrupted. "There's been another transmission!"
They followed Debra through the hallways to the main control room of the communications center. The room had been cleared except for members of the team, Major Spurlock, and Lamb. Spurlock was typing away at a computer keyboard, his attention focused on the screen in front of him.
"This one is different," he said. "It's on a shifting frequency, and the content that I can get isn't in the same format."
"Let me see," Levy said. Spurlock relinquished his chair and Levy sat down. Her fingers flew over the keyboard while the other members watched. After a few minutes she sat up in the chair. "He's right. It's different in more than one way." She stared intently at the screen, ignoring the rest of the people in the room.
"But we know it came from the Rock, right?" Lamb asked.
"Yes, sir." Spurlock pointed out the large windows at the dishes. "We've kept dish four dedicated at minimum attitude in the Rock's azimuth. It picked this message up."
"Was it directed up like the first one?" Hawkins asked.
Spurlock sat at another console, leaving the one he had been at to Levy, who was working again. "This one went out with a lot less power. If we hadn't been watching for it, we never would have caught it. This was more a broadband transmission at low power in all directions. I don't think it was specifically directed at anyone spot."
"What about down links?" Lamb asked. "Was it trying to communicate with the other locations like the first one?"
"No, sir. Like I said, this one was just sort of put out there-we have no idea where it was directed to. It most certainly was not a meteor burst transmission like the first. In fact, it might not necessarily be a coherent transmission."
"What does that mean?" Fran asked.
"I mean it might just be a microwave burst of energy, not necessarily a message." Spurlock shook his head. "I don't know… I've never seen anything like this. If it was a transmission, I'm not sure what kind of transmission it was."
Lamb was exasperated. "You'd better start explaining this a hell of lot better than you are, mister, because right now you aren't making a damn bit of sense."