Hood turned on the car, cranked up the air-conditioning, and set the secure cell phone in its dashboard holder. He slipped on the headset and autodialed Darrell McCaskey's number. As he pulled from the parking area, Hood did one thing more.

He prayed that McCaskey found just one reason to continue the investigation.

TWENTY-FIVE.

Washington, D.C. Tuesday, 10:44 A.M.

"How did it go, Darrell?"

After punching in the number, Hood grabbed a can of c.o.ke from a cooler under the glove compartment. He always kept one there for emergencies, beside an ice pack he replaced each morning. The caffeine helped him focus. Once in a while he also reached for the ice pack. That was for meetings that ran too long, got too loud, and went nowhere. Presidential meetings were invariably very direct.

"The interview went all right," McCaskey said. "Mike was there, which was rough. He is not happy."

"No one is," Hood said. He could not concern himself with Mike Rodgers right now. "What about Link?"

"I have to say, Paul, the admiral was pretty forthcoming. The nutsh.e.l.l: Link did not like William Wilson and does not care that he's gone."

"Not a surprise but also not d.a.m.ning," Hood said. He took a long swallow of c.o.ke. Motives could be elusive and misleading. He wanted to stick to the mechanics of the a.s.sa.s.sination itself. "Is there any evidence that Link has the a.s.sets to carry off these kinds of missions?"

"Evidence? No. Potential? Yes. Link has two former Company people on staff. One is a guy named Eric Stone, who is running the convention. He was Link's a.s.sistant and supposedly is a very efficient organizer. The other individual with intelligence credentials is the senator's executive a.s.sistant, Kendra Peterson. It turns out Kendra had medical training in the Marines."

"That's not in her file, is it?" Hood said. His head was still in the Oval Office, on the decision he had to make. Dossier data was swimming, anchorless, in his memory. He took another hit of c.o.ke.

"No, it isn't," McCaskey said. "Kendra spent several months working in health care but left because of tendonitis in her hands. Presumably, the affliction was temporary. If a disability had been noted in Kendra's record, it might have impacted her career in the military and afterward. The staff sergeant probably let her transfer without remarking on what was a very brief tenure."

"Or her medical experiences may have been deleted more recently by a really efficient organizer who had access to them," Hood pointed out.

"It's possible. The point is, one of the first skills Kendra would have learned over there was how to give an injection," McCaskey said.

"I'll have Matt Stoll run a comparison on images captured by the security camera and at this morning's press conference," Hood said. "That may tell us if Ms. Peterson goes on the suspect list. What was your impression of Link himself?"

"He's very confident and a bit of a bully," McCaskey said. "He also made it clear that he feels extremely inconvenienced by our investigation. It's difficult to tell whether he's guilty or whether he just resents the h.e.l.l out of our probe."

"Or he may just have it in for Op-Center," Hood said. The NSA and the NCMC had experienced a few run-ins over the years, including the exposure of former operative Ron Friday as a double agent. "If you had to guess, which is it?"

"That's tough to say, Paul. Link definitely views the investigation as politically motivated," McCaskey said. "He thinks Op-Center is using it to try to roll back the budget cuts. Truth is, I think we're going to hear a lot of that as long as we're involved in the Wilson killing."

"When have we ever worried about what people think?" Hood asked. It was ironic, though, Hood thought. Link could end up being right for the wrong reasons. "I'm going to get Matt Stoll working on that image comparison. What are the codes for the hotel image files?"

"WW-1 and RL-1," McCaskey replied. "I'm going to call Bob Herbert and pick his brain, then pop over to the British emba.s.sy. I rang George Daily. He's setting up a conference call with their security chief here. He was going to see if the Brits have anything on file about Wilson being watched, stalked, or threatened."

"Good idea. We'll talk more when you get back."

Hood hung up and called Bugs Benet. He asked him to access the online news photo services. He wanted images of Kendra Peterson, including this morning's press conference. They should be appearing online by now. Hood asked to have the pictures sent to Stoll's office along with Darrell's image files on the Wilson and Lawless killings. When he reached the office, Hood went directly to Matt Stoll's office.

The corridors were unusually quiet. There were fewer personnel, of course, and those who were there did not seem to be making eye contact with Hood. Maybe it was his imagination. Or maybe it was a variation on what they learned in elementary school. If they did not look at the teacher, they would not get called on. If they did not look at the director, they would not be fired.

Matt Stoll's office was different from the others in the executive level. The computer wizard had originally set up the Computer and Technical Support Operations in a small conference room. Hood had always intended to move the CATSO, but Stoll quickly filled the room with a haphazard arrangement of desks, stands, and computers. As Op-Center's computing needs grew, Stoll simply added to the original disarray. Within a few months, it would have been too much trouble to move it.

There were now four people working in the rectangular s.p.a.ce. Stoll and his longtime friend Stephen Viens, Op-Center's imaging expert, worked back to back in the center of the room. Viens had previously managed the spy satellite access time schedules at the National Reconnaissance Office. Whenever the military or a spy agency needed images from s.p.a.ce-based resources, they scheduled it through Viens. After Stoll's old college mate was scapegoated for a black ops funding scam, Hood hired him.

Before yesterday morning, three other individuals had worked in this office: Mae Won, Jefferson Jefferson, and Patricia Arroyo. Seven other technical experts worked in an adjoining office. Stoll had been asked to lay off five of the techies and one of these three people. He had selected Patricia Arroyo, who had the least seniority. She and the others were gone within the half hour. That was standard procedure in government agencies. Otherwise, disgruntled personnel could sabotage equipment or programs or walk off with sensitive material. Hood had made an exception in the case of Mike Rodgers. That was not a chance he could take with the others.

Hood greeted the solemn group and told them why he was there. Stoll did not wait for Bugs to send him pictures. He went to a raw news feed from one of the networks, grabbed images of the press conference, and isolated Kendra Peterson. He opened Darrell's files of the hotel security camera images. He opened his 3-D ACE file and left-clicked each of the images to drop them in the file. ACE stood for Angular Construct and Extrapolation, a graphics program Stoll had written. It created 3-D images based on a very little amount of information. Though it could not construct an entire face from a nose, it could show the nose from all angles. These could be superimposed over other photographs to see if they matched.

The only distinctive images they had of the a.s.sa.s.sin showed gloved hands, a chin, and a portion of one ear. Everything else was under a hat, a scarf, in boots, or beneath loose-fitting clothes. Even the skin color was unreliable. Kendra was a very light-skinned Asian woman. The woman in the elevator had a dark chin, but that could have been caused by the shadow of the hat.

"This lady sure knew what she was doing," Viens said. He had walked over to have a look.

"Darrell figures she cased the hotels before going in," Hood said.

"I don't think so," Viens said. "At least, not in the way that you're thinking."

"Why not?"

"She knew where the cameras were, and she apparently knew what kind of lens they were using," Viens said. "She would not know that simply by eyeballing the cameras, since they were probably behind a two-way mirror."

"What kind of lens were were they using?" Hood asked. they using?" Hood asked.

"The elevator at the Hay-Adams was using a thirty-seven millimeter wide-angle lens," Viens told him. "It foreshortens the center of the image and distorts the periphery so you can cover one hundred and eighty degrees of vision."

"A fisheye lens," Hood said.

"Colloquially, yes," Viens replied. "Elevator security uses either regular or wide-angle lenses, depending on the size of the carriage, the lighting in the corners, and whether the hot spot for crime is in the doorway or in the corners. There are also privacy issues about camera placement. Some counties will only allow a straight-down view on the top of the head. The way our lady is standing, the brim of the hat is positioned to block as much of the camera's view as possible."

"I'm still not sure what you're saying," Hood told him. "Wouldn't you stand the same way regardless of the lens?"

"No," Viens said. "A regular lens would not have fattened the brim to cover the nose this way. It's very likely that our a.s.sa.s.sin saw actual security images generated by this camera."

While the men spoke, Mae Won made a phone call.

"And it probably was not Ms. Kendra Peterson," Stoll declared. The thumbnail 3-D constructs were complete, along with the superimpositions. There were some two-dozen pictures. Stoll set up a slide-show presentation of the full-size images. "There is a match total of six percent based on available security cam viewing surface of seven percent of her anatomy."

"Does that mean there is not enough to go on or that she is not the one?" Hood asked.

"It isn't her," Stoll declared. "We have a series of click points," he said. He used the cursor to highlight parts of the visible physiognomy. "There are small bulges in bone, cartilage, flesh, even minute wrinkles. Some of them we can see, some of them we can extrapolate from the shadows. Ninety-four percent of these two faces is dissimilar in just the small area we can see. Unless she had facial surgery, the woman in the elevator can't be Ms. Peterson. And she did not have surgery, since I took a few of the older images that Bugs sent over and compared them to the lady at the press conference this morning. Those are identical."

"Mr. Hood?" Mae Won said.

"Yes?"

"Hay-Adams security says they only save those camera images for two days," the young woman said as she hung up the phone. "They already did their own comparison of the images. I thought if we scanned that picture library we might see which of the women went to the hotel."

"Can't we find out who visited the security office?" Stoll asked. "Politicians have benefits in the hotel ballroom. They must send advance security teams to check out the cameras."

"Actually, Darrell has already looked into that," Hood said. "The Hay-Adams does not keep a record of visits by Congressional advance staff. Even if they did, that might not help us. There could be a chain of people involved in pa.s.sing information to the actual a.s.sa.s.sin."

"Including Ms. Peterson, if she is involved in any of the senator's security," Stoll pointed out.

"Possibly," Hood agreed.

The phone beeped. Mae Won answered it. "Sir, it's for you," she said to Hood. "It's Bugs."

"Tell him I'll be back in a minute," Hood said. "Matt, we still need to ID the woman in the photographs. Is there any way to construct a face from what we have? Bone structure from the chin, a jawline, anything?"

Stoll shook his head. "Not with any software I have."

"What about mug shots?" Viens asked. "The FBI has a file online. It might be worth comparing the chin we have with those."

"We might as well, though I don't think our a.s.sa.s.sin is a contract killer," Hood said.

"Why not?" Viens asked.

"Because they were too smart to end up on a camera," Hood said. "I doubt they have ever been inside a police station."

"This is weak," said a voice from behind.

Hood turned. Bob Herbert was in the doorway.

"What is weak, Bob?" Hood asked amiably. This was not the time to get defensive. Herbert was still in a volatile mode, and they had a case to solve.

"I've been sitting here listening to you guys play Junior Crimestoppers." Herbert rolled his wheelchair into the office. "You should have folded your intelligence chief into this, people. I've known hookers who were too smart to get caught on security cameras. That doesn't de facto make them potential a.s.sa.s.sins."

"Our intelligence chief removed himself from circulation yesterday," Hood remarked. "I thought it was best to let him return on his own. I'm glad he has. What's your take, then?"

"I talked to Darrell a few minutes ago, and my take is simple," Herbert said. "The killer has to fit two criteria. Otherwise, he isn't the killer. First, who stands to gain by Wilson's death? Second, who has the chops to pull it off? The only guy we have on that short list is Link. That leaves us two options. One: we waste resources looking for people who may also also fit the criteria. Or two: we lean on Link with everything we can muster. Squeeze him like a lemon and see if we get juice. If not, fit the criteria. Or two: we lean on Link with everything we can muster. Squeeze him like a lemon and see if we get juice. If not, then then we move on." we move on."

"How would you squeeze him?" Hood asked.

"Thanks for asking," Herbert said. "We have to do what we used to do with suspected moles or double agents. We go right up and say, 'We think you're a rat. We're gonna be all over you until you crack.' Invariably, they look to get the heat off themselves. I believe these guys did that once by killing Robert Lawless. If we lean on Link, he'll either do that again or shut his operation down. In any case, he'll have to contact his cohorts to do that. When he does, we'll be all over them."

The room was emphatically silent.

"Who would make that call?" Hood asked.

"Darrell just did," Herbert replied. "That's why Bugs was calling you. To tell you that Darrell was on the line."

"It was the right decision," Hood remarked.

"He knew you'd think so," Herbert said.

"What did Link say?"

"He thinks you're desperate, and this proves it," Herbert replied. "Darrell told Link he was wrong. It was all the usual back-and-forth up-front bl.u.s.ter. Just like the United Nations. The real work is going to take place behind the scenes. Darrell has Maria on the way to help. Matt's poking around computer files to find out more on Stone."

"Sounds good," Hood said.

"Yeah. Thanks. I'll let you know what turns up," Herbert said.

The intelligence chief turned and left the room. Hood let him go without comment. The silence was even deeper now. Hood broke it by thanking the team and leaving. Stoll hurried after him.

"Chief?" Stoll said.

Hood turned. "Yes, Matt?"

"Bob was a little out of line there-you handled that well."

"Thanks."

"But the truth is we're hearing a lot of conflicting things about Op-Center and the CIOC," Stoll said.

"Hearing from whom?"

"Okay, we're not actually hearing it," Stoll said. "We're sort of hacking it from Company and FBI internal E-mail."

"They should have used Mr. Wilson's firewalls," Hood said.

"They do," Stoll said.

"And you broke through?"

"Not exactly," Stoll told him. "There's a serious flaw in MasterLock, one that hackers would have had to plan ahead to exploit. Two years ago I sent E-mails to the agencies with a virus. A time bomb. What it does is lurk in the software and reset it to a previous systems checkpoint on my command. It's like sending the computer into the past for as long as I need, then restoring the current programs. If someone is on the computer, they are unlikely to notice."

"Matt, that's brilliant."

"Thanks. I figured the best way around increasingly sophisticated firewalls was to go in before they were raised. The point is, according to internal E-mails, there are folks who say we're grandstanding by working on this Wilson thing, and others who say we're going down and desperate for attention."

"Neither of those is true," Hood said.

"Then what is is true?" true?"

"We were downsized, period," Hood told him. "Right now I'm working to see if we can't get some of our a.s.sets restored."

"Oh? What are the odds?"

"Pretty fair," Hood said. "I'll let all the department heads know when I have more information."

"Sweet. We could use a lift."

Hood gave the younger man's shoulder a squeeze, then went back to his office. He had never felt so torn in his life. His position made him unavailable for office gossip, let alone the gossip of other offices. Nor had Op-Center ever been a place where workers had a reason to gripe. There had been sadness and setbacks, but always due to missions. There was never a sense that the organization itself was in jeopardy. Certainly no one ever believed that Op-Center would be blindsided by the CIOC and other government agencies. Like Paul Hood, the National Crisis Management Center was the golden child of intelligence.

They thought.