Chapter 29 That same morning HYDRA arose early in his apartment on East 62nd Street; he needed as much time as posible to prepare for his departure. After taking a shower and rinsing himself off with cold water, and still only wearing a towel, HYDRA pulled the vinyl clothing bags and the hatbox from his closet and laid them on his bed. He put on his clothes, dressing in a casual sports jacket and slacks, then slipped the large wallet from the bottom drawer of the nightstand in his bedroom. He took it to the kitchen, setting it on the table and unfolded it with the palm of his hand. He methodically extracted every piece of ID, arranging them in three separate rows, representing Matthews, Gereke, and Koester. Taking his own wallet out of his back pocket, HYDRA replaced his own ID with that of Matthews's, then put his regular wallet back in his pants pocket and the large one in his inside jacket pocket. He found the croissant he had purchased the day before at the next-door bistro and ate it with a simple glass of orange juice. Checking inside his refrigerator, HYDRA took out a carton of eggs, a jug of milk, three oranges, and several bananas, pouring the milk down the sink and putting the fruit and eggs in a trash sack which he left by the door. The last thing he needed during his absence was to upset the landlord with the smell of rotting food. Returning to the bedroom, HYDRA pulled a large suitcase from under the bed and opened it next to the pair of vinyl fabric sacks. He first unzipped the bag containing Gereke's uniform and coveralls and took them out, then neatly folded them in two, setting them each on top of the bag. Pulling up the cloth along the perimeter of the right side of the suitcase, HYDRA found the zipper underneath and pulled it 360o, releasing the suitcase's false bottom. He stuffed Gereke's outfits in the space, then pressed the bottom firmly into place and zipped it shut. Koester's uniform was next, which he simply packed in the regular part of the suitcase on top of Gereke's. Finally, he opened the hatbox, lifting out the hat which was still lodged inside its cardboard protector and set it inside the left half of his suitcase, surrounding it with socks and underwear. In his bathroom he turned off the water to his sink and toilet, then grabbed the suitcase, pausing a moment as he passed the kitchen to reexamine the refrigerator and the freezer. With his other hand he scooped up the sack of fruit before he left, then double-locked the door behind him. Outside he walked to Park Avenue where he caught a taxi in front of the Regency Hotel. "La Guardia Airport," he told the driver. Upon his arrival at National Airport in Washington, D.C. a little over an hour later, HYDRA fetched his bag and entered a stall in the nearest men's room, replacing Russell Matthews's ID with that of Peter Koester's. At the United Airlines ticket counter he picked up Koester's prepaid ticket for Flight No. 95 which was scheduled to arrive at SeaTac International Airport in Seattle at 7:25 p.m. local time. Chapter 30 The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 carrying the passengers on United Airlines Flight 95 arrived at Sea-Tac twenty minutes late due to a rainstorm which had blown in from the southwest, the direction of the area's prevailing storm winds. Occasionally, as it had happened on the evening of HYDRA's arrival, low level winds coming off the ocean split in two at the tip of the Olympic Peninsula; one portion rushing south around the Olympic Mountains, and the other blowing north through the Juan de Fuca Straight. Both fronts had converged in the Puget Sound, causing a violent thunderstorm to ensue. As he waited for his luggage on the airport's ground floor, HYDRA watched the sheets of rain pound against the floor-to-ceiling glass panels, illuminated by occasional lightning flashes. He cursed his luck; he hadn't planned on bad weather, but he feared that arriving a day late at Bangor SUBASE would risk raising some eyebrows. He had booked himself a room at the Nendels Suites hotel in Bremerton and planned to catch the ferry, but due to the weather HYDRA decided to change his plans to drive the whole distance, circling Puget Sound via Interstate 5. Using Sergeant Peter Koester's ID, HYDRA presented himself at the Thrifty Car Rental counter, a different rental agency than he'd used on his previous visit, and rented a Chevy Lumina , telling the agent he'd only need it for one night. Thrifty's lot was outside the airport off the South Pacific Highway so HYDRA waited for the shuttle on the curb, which, even though it was covered, was being swept by rain-soaked gales. When the shuttle arrived, HYDRA threw his luggage in the trunk, then clambered aboard, the only passenger. The van's wipers vainly fought against the wind as the driver maneuvered it through a sea dotted by the airport's lights, blinking on and off in the storm. Once they arrived inside the rental building, HYDRA handed Koester's papers to the agent on duty, who told him that a Thrifty employee could go out into the lot and fetch his car for him. While he was waiting in the office, HYDRA took a local map and reviewed the route to Bremerton. Essentially, he would be circling south and westwards around Puget Sound, crossing the Narrows Bridge at Tacoma to reach the Kitsap Peninsula where the base was located. A flash of lightning lit up the room, immediately followed by a thunderclap as the Chevy Lumina materialized through the glass. A carhop in a yellow slicker and matching hat popped out the door and ran around it, opening the trunk. HYDRA threw his luggage in the trunk and took the wheel. Visibility was at most thirty feet, but since the highway was deserted HYDRA quickly found his way to the interstate without any problems. On I-5 cars headlights came in and out of focus as they rushed past, leaving a spray in their wake. As he neared Tacoma the storm's intensity increased and several drivers had already pulled over to the curb and stopped. Rain pounded on his windshield, and the only thing HYDRA could see in the rearview mirror were his own eyes staring back at him. He sucked in his breath and rechecked the speedometer. His speed had dropped to twenty-five miles per hour. The Lumina was one of the last vehicles still traveling on the interstate. HYDRA could barely read the exit sign at Fife and reminded himself there were only three more between him and 132. Downtown Tacoma was deserted, with traffic lights blinking on and off on empty streets. A mile later HYDRA found Exit 132, Bantz Boulevard-Highway 16, and followed Highway 16 north up the Peninsula. At Port Orchard, where Highways 16 and 3 converged, lightning flashed across the sound, illuminating the turbulence of the waves. He passed through Navy Yard City on 3, carefully watching for the turnoff to Kitsap Way. The town of Bremerton, where he'd booked a room under the name of Sergeant Peter Koester, lay halfway between Tacoma and Bangor SUBASE on the Kitsap Peninsula directly west of Seattle across the sound. Bremerton was also the site of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, a 680-acre Navy overhaul and repair base. In the downpour HYDRA barely found the sign; taking the exit at the last moment, he looped around it, proceeding east parallel to Oyster Bay. Squinting in the gloom, HYDRA saw the red-and-white sign for his motel, Nendels Suites, and pulled into the lot under a covered awning. The rain was still so intense it was almost impossible to make out the other three buildings where the rest of the rooms were. Hanging plants flew violently back and forth, while the drive was littered with overturned potted trees. A lone girl was behind the desk, lit only by a fluorescent light. HYDRA shoved open the car door, and trying to avoid being doused by a gust of wind, he ran around the Lumina and yanked open the lobby door. "How ya' doin'?" "I'm wet," HYDRA told the desk clerk, smiling involuntarily at the combination of red lipstick, nail polish and excessive hair. "Me, too." HYDRA stared at her blouse, made transparent by the rain, revealing a pair of full breasts trapped inside a lace brassiere. "Let me guess?" the clerk teased him, looking at his coveralls, "you're in the Navy." HYDRA said nothing, only grinning in response. The girl's hardened nipples showed clearly behind her blouse and she had a full mouth and a look she learned from fashion photographs. "Sergeant Koester?" she asked, mispronouncing the name, so that it rhymed with "firster." "Sergeant Peter Koester from Washington, D.C.?" "Kester," HYDRA corrected her. "Oh, sorry. We've got your room ready if you can get to it. It's in Building Two." Chapter 31 By early Monday morning virtually every agent in the Washington, D.C. CI-3 field office had already departed for one of the capital's civilian or military airports to begin the search for Edwin D. Bailey. Pairs of agents simultaneously boarded civilian flights at Washington National, Dulles, Berwyn Heights and Baltimore-Washington International airports, while their associates boarded chartered MATS transports at Andrews AFB, Fort Belvoir Military Reservation, Bolling AFB, and Fort George G. Meade. In addition, two teams were given specific orders to fly directly to New York and Los Angeles to parcel out to the counterintelligence units there files relevant to their respective geographical areas. At the same time, Woodring dispatched seven separate teams of Justice Department lawyers, giving each team orders to visit the headquarters of each of the regional Bell telephone companies and inform its top executive of the existence of a FEMA warrant granting the FBI unlimited powers to tap any line it so chose. Leaving nothing to chance, Woodring had instructed his men to install a wiretap on the home and office telephones of every interviewee prior to his interview. Due to the expected volume of intercepted material, all lines scheduled to be wiretapped were doubled up and rerouted to Fort George G. Meade, where employees of the National Security Agency would immediately begin to sort and transcribe every conversation until Bailey was found. Meanwhile, Harry Volz and Police Inspector Lindsay were moved to an undisclosed FBI safe house located in the suburbs of the capital which was guarded day and night by a select team of HRT agents. Woodring had quickly decided that the first interviews would be Bailey's former commanders at Fort Benning and Fort Bragg. On the other hand, he doubted that the instructor in charge of Bailey's company in the 4th Airborne Training Battalion at Fort Benning would remember much, since each of the "Black Hats" in charge of 4th Battalion's four separate companies was responsible for training over 5,000 men per year. Likewise, Woodring didn't expect to hear anything significant from the commander of the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division whose normal strength was approximately 3,000 men, or from his instructors at the Special Warfare Center, who were responsible for training not only potential candidates for the Special Forces, but members of all the U.S. armed forces in addition to selected civilians from other government departments. But quite a different situation would apply to Colonel Chuck Morrell, Commander, 5th Special Forces Group. Even though the 5th Special Forces Group included three battalions, a headquarters element and support organizations amounting to over a thousand people, Morrell had handpicked the members of Bailey's Blue Light unit himself, originally limiting strength to only forty men. Woodring had scheduled initial interviews with the commanders of the 4th Airborne Training Battalion, instructors of the Special Warfare Center the colonel in charge of the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne, and Colonel Morrell at 5th Special Forces Group at approximately the same time to prevent one from tipping off any of the others, in case one or more of them might have any knowledge of Bailey's unusual affliction. Chapter 32 Even though he had been alerted that Woodring had located Bailey's file at China Lake, Ken Czarlinsky, chief of the TCOM Group at Ft. Meade, continued to analyze the HYDRA tape, desperately looking for some anomaly which would tell him more about its origins. On the same Monday morning Woodring's agents were flying out of Washington on both civilian and MATS jets, Czarlinsky told his wife, who hadn't seen him all weekend, that he was still at the office. Czarlinsky then called F. Jackson Tice, who also had been working late that weekend, and invited Tice to share a cup of coffee. "Square root of seven," sighed Czarlinsky, leaning back in his chair. "I dare say," F. Jackson Tice replied, not knowing at all what the department chief had meant. Tice's forte was languages, not random number generation. "It's good equipment, I can say that much." "That's good to know since it's ours." "DOE designed its boxes to key off an irrational number -- insured that they'd have steady supply of truly random digits." "I see." "The ones with the new codes are impossible to crack -- we don't waste much time on actual decryption, but we got lucky on this one." "Thank God," Tice agreed and stroked his moustache thoughtfully, hoping Czarlinsky wouldn't ask him a technical question. "Usually we look for just signatures -- RF, digital, anything we can find." Tice nodded slightly to indicate his continued attentions, even though he had no idea what Czarlinsky meant. "With the quality of reception we've got here, we can amplify any signal, literally pull it apart, then find the anomalies in it, you know, the glitches even a manufacturer doesn't know are there." "Glitches. Right, Ken." "Once we find an anomaly, then the sender has a signature. That's what we look for, the glitch, the bad part that produces its own special static." Tice suddenly understood -- once TCOM had found an anomaly in the sender's transmission, it could identify that sender over and over again, making it easier to locate him. "Also, since HYDRA's not operating over an ILC, he didn't have to slow his message down to 9,600 bps and cram it into a 3,000-kilocycle range for voice like a telephone." "Oh, indeed." "I wish we had more on disk, though." "Too short?" "Too short? It's like a hiccup," Czarlinsky muttered, absentmindedly staring at the knobs and disks on his console. Chapter 33 Early the next morning HYDRA awoke at 6:30 a.m., showered and shaved, then opened his suitcase, pulling out Sergeant Koester's coveralls and regular boots. He slipped on the boots and coveralls, checking his appearance in the bathroom mirror one last time before he left his room to have an early breakfast. Several other visitors dressed in Navy uniforms were already seated in the dining room, having begun their day early in order to be able to report to base by 7:30 a.m., the usual time. No one paid much attention when a blond-headed man wearing coveralls entered the room and found himself an empty table near the front. The waitress who came to HYDRA's table was the same girl who had been at the reception desk the previous night. She grinned at the handsome stranger, knowing he hadn't expected to see her again so soon. "Good morning, Lieutenant. Did you sleep alright?" "No problem, and you?" "I slept all right." Her uniform was stretched tightly across her chest, revealing her ample figure. Like the night before she was wearing red lipstick and nail polish, but this morning, HYDRA noticed, her hair seemed to have more body, falling across her shoulders and down her back. "Is this your first visit? I haven't seen you here before." "No. I've never been to Washington." "Where'd you come from?" "From D.C." "I went there once -- with my parents. I had a good time." HYDRA said nothing. "Oh, I guess you want to order. You know what you want?" "Two eggs sunny side up and bacon with some coffee and orange juice. Make the coffee black." The waitress took his order, turning a few heads as she returned to the kitchen. HYDRA resumed reading the Seattle Times, when a small headline at the bottom of the first page caught his attention. Protestors expected at Bangor SUBASE for arrival of USS Eisenhower. While base security would understandably be heightened, HYDRA guessed the presence of the protestors would have the unintended effect of creating a greater feeling of sympathy on the part of base security for arriving visitors dressed in uniform. If he were lucky an "us against them" mentality would prevail, making his task all the easier. If he were lucky. "Breakfast's here." HYDRA folded up his newspaper as the waitress served him his food. As she set down his plate her hair brushed his face and her breast was only a few inches from his mouth. "Are you coming back tonight?" the waitress asked. HYDRA looked up from his plate into her eyes. Sergeant Koester was going to have a little fun while he was in Bremerton. "Yeah, I'll be back. Why?" "Well, I thought you being new to the area and all you might want someone to show you around." "You're not working tonight?" "No. Tonight's my night off. But I can meet you here if you want." "Meet me at my room at seven." The waitress would have preferred the lobby, but something in Koester's manner made her suddenly go along with him. She smiled slightly, then left his table. After the waitress left, HYDRA quickly finished his breakfast and returned to his room, where he unpacked the HP-100LX palmtop and the spectrum analyzer from his suitcase, carried them to the car and put them in the trunk. Pulling out of the hotel drive, HYDRA followed Kitsap Way along the bay, taking State Highway 3 north to the town of Silverdale on the opposite end of Dyes Inlet. Five miles north of Silverdale HYDRA found the Bangor Exit on the right and followed it across the highway. On Trident Boulevard a few protestors had already arrived, scattered in several small clumps each dedicated to a different sign. HYDRA saw one placard decorated with the outline of a mushroom cloud behind a large "X" and smiled to himself. In just a few more days the anti-nuclear lobby would achieve quite a different status in the public's mind. Just outside the main gate HYDRA turned right and pulled to a stop in front of the Pass and ID Building, where he presented Sergeant Koester's papers to the civilian security guard on duty. "Many protestors out there yet?" "A few," HYDRA replied. "They come here every year about this time. Must be the weather -- there's nothing else for them to do." The guard brought up the TDY roster on his computer, then checked Koester's order number against the base's, and, finding a match, issued HYDRA a temporary pass. Noticing Koester was crypto-cleared, the guard decided to let HYDRA choose how he wanted to check in. "You want to talk to the duty officer or call communications commander yourself?" "It's my first visit. I'd better call my command." "Suit yourself. Strategic Weapons is 4525. Phone's over there. Just dial the extension number to get through." "Thanks." HYDRA walked to the telephone, picked up the handset and dialed the four-number extension. "Strategic Weapons, Sergeant Robinson." Chapter 34 The next morning at Ft. Meade, F. Jackson Tice received a second call from the chief of TCOM Group, Ken Czarlinsky. Czarlinsky refused to divulge his purpose over the telephone for requesting that Tice come down to his office immediately. "Watch this, Mr. Tice." Tice watched the CRT screen of a nearby spectrum analyzer as Ken Czarlinsky replayed the HYDRA fragment. A jumble of luminescent spaghetti performed a meaningless dance before his eyes. "Fascinating, Ken, umm." "Exactly, Jackson. It's so obvious I can't believe I missed it" "It is?" "Look at that screen and tell me what you see!" Czarlinsky pressed the button and the dancing lines on the spectrum analyzer suddenly froze in position. F. Jackson Tice tugged thoughtfully at his moustache, issuing only a knowing murmur. "Look at that! Clear as a bell! They're not a fast Fourier transform at all -- he's got himself a new set of chips!" "Not Fourier?" asked Tice, now totally perplexed. "Why not?" "He almost outwitted us," "How?" Tice asked, capitulating. "Oh. Sorry, Jackson," Czarlinsky apologized, turning away from the screen. "Look, everything these days that involves conversion of analog to digital and back again uses the same technology in its chips called the fast Fourier transform, taken from the nineteenth century mathematician -- " Czarlinsky tapped on the CRT screen with his finger. "Fourier realized that complex waves, no matter how messy, are actually combinations of hundreds of perfect waves -- these regular waves are like the building blocks, and the Fourier transform puts them all together!" "So it's nothing more than a formula?" ventured Tice. "Exactly. But, as my screen shows here, HYDRA's not using FFT at all." "But how does he go from analog to digital then?" asked Tice, feeling like a genius for getting this far. "I would have never seen it, if it hadn't been for Dr. Roy." "The Indian from Bell Labs?" "You know him?" "Well, I've met him a couple of times with Glen, he's really not in my field -- " "I would have never realized." "Thank God." "Wavelets. Just like those chips that Dr. Roy showed to us." "Wavelets?" "From that company in Cambridge. Roy's always into the soft aspects of the problem -- it's unbelieveable what he did with that call-routing formula." Tice vaguely remembered that the famed Dr. Roy of Bell Labs had singlehandedly rewritten the 125-page-long formula which governed how all AT&T's long distance telephone calls were switched, cutting the cost to Ma Bell of switching every call in the United States fifteen per cent without so much as adding a bolt in additional hardware. "The Fourier transform is the exact same thing -- twentieth-century hardware and nineteenth-century software!" F. Jackson Tice took a second look at the frozen image on the CRT screen, trying to divine the meaning of the waves. "So Dr. Roy's developed a new formula for digital conversion, too?" asked Tice. "It's always the Indians. Why is that?" "What, you mean in mathematics?" "Inside the old conversion chips everything but the math was up to date! Every CD player, modem, telcom, its most important chip was working on an ancient formula from the 1800s -- no one gave it a second thought." "Amazing." "It's right on the screen!" Czarlinsky emphasized tapping the glass screen. "Instead of recording every change, each variation like FFT, wavelets just look at enough changes to recreate the image. Don't you see? It's an entirely more efficient formula!" "So how old are they?" "HYDRA's chips?" "Yes, when were they made?" "They're experimental, they're not even being manufactured yet." "But -- " "But don't you get it? HYDRA isn't Bailey -- Bailey would have never retrofitted his box with these chips and not changed his codes." The two sentries stationed in the glass booth outside the Defense and Missile Special Aeronautics building raised their eyebrows as Professor Glen Hockaday raced down the steps two at a time, then suddenly stopped, and desperately fumbled in his coat pocket for his car keys. A second later his old Buick roared down Savage Road, quickly disappearing over the first hill. When he reached the gatehouse at Building No. 4, Hockaday tossed his holographic pass at the startled bluejackets inside, rushing into the reception room. There he was met by Tice who led him directly to Czarlinsky's office. Hockaday summoned up enough energy to shake Czarlinsky's hand, then found the nearest chair. "Jackson just told me you've found something." Chapter 35 HYDRA only had to wait ten minutes at the Pass and ID Building before Sergeant Pat Holt, the officer on duty at the Strategic Weapons Facility, came to pick him up. Holt, a Marine in his early twenties, knew enough to handle any visitor from the Naval Investigative Service with kid gloves, since the NIS had authority to investigate anything it wanted to on the base. "Sergeant Koester? Sergeant Pat Holt at your service." HYDRA returned Holt's firm grip and smiled politely, saying nothing. "Your first time here?" "That's right." "If you give me your papers, I'll take care of security, if that's OK?" "Great," HYDRA said and handed the Marine his papers. Holt nodded at his shoulder bags and the two suitcases on the floor. "You want me to take your equipment and put it in the car?" "Thanks." Holt grabbed all the bags under one arm in bellhop fashion, lugging them outside to a faded olive-drab Chevy station wagon, and shoved them in the rear. HYDRA let himself in the passenger door and waited. "See any protestors?" Holt asked, after he got in the car. "Just a few scattered around." "Colonel says more of them'll show up by this afternoon. With the Cold War over you'd think they'd find something else to bitch about." "Some people never give up." "I guess so." Holt stopped at the second security gate and handed his and HYDRA's passes to the civilian security guard, who looked HYDRA up on his computer, then waved them through. Instead of circling the base as the van had done on the tour, Holt turned off Trident Road onto Trigger Avenue, stopping at the operational area gate, handing their passes for the second time to another civilian guard. Directly ahead were two manned guard towers connected by a double fence topped with barbed wire, which protected the Main Operational Area where the Strategic Weapons Facility was located. The pair of Marines inside the third guardpost took their time looking over the passes Holt just handed them, then one of them left his hut and peered in the passenger window of the station wagon to double-check the picture on Sergeant Koester's ID with HYDRA's face in the car. Satisfied, he waved them through. At Nendels Suites, Pamela Michaud served her last breakfast customer and was walking out the lobby when the daytime manager, Mr. Howard, shouted her name from behind the front desk. "Yes?" "Marcie didn't show up today. I need you here." Marcie was the alcoholic maid from Silverdale who was always late. Pam was furious. She cleaned rooms all day -- she'd be exhausted by the time she was supposed to meet Peter. "Mr. Howard, please. I can't." "Pam, I don't really have any choice." Giving him a look of uncontrolled fury, Pamela stormed off to the tiny employee locker room where she stripped off her waitress outfit, tossed it on the floor, threw open Marcie's locker and yanked out a pair of dark blue slacks and matching blouse. She put them on, grabbing a mop and bucket, then cursed at herself for forgetting the vacuum cleaner and went back and got it. When she returned to the lobby, Pamela slammed the bucket on the floor, spilling some water and startling a customer at the desk. "What rooms am I supposed to clean?" Mr. Howard pretended to ignore her. He was still busy with the customer. "What rooms?" she repeated menacingly. "Second floor -- all of them -- can't you see I'm busy?" Howard snapped, throwing a ring of keys in her face. She was tempted to tell him off and quit right there on the spot, then immediately thought better of it. More than anything, Pamela Michaud wanted out of Bremerton and at the moment was willing to do anything that would speed her departure. It was only when she exited the service elevator that she remembered that Peter was staying in Room 204 down the hall. A smile crossed her face. Sergeant Peter Koester was about to get the cleanest room on the second floor. Now she looked around--the corridor was deserted, which was good, since she didn't want Peter to discover her wearing Marcie's awful uniform. She stopped at the door to Room 204 and had to insert several keys in the lock before she found the one that fit. After that she dragged the bucket, mop, and vacuum cleaner inside and was already in Peter's room, she felt a curious feeling of relief. Peter was from a big city; from the other side of the country; she would make sure he would fall in love with her and take her away with him. She knew she could compete with any woman on the peninsula, but worried what the girls in Washington were like. Maybe they were all young and just as attractive as she was. Pamela let the mop fall to the floor as she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door. Her reflection looked ridiculous -- a girl in thick-soled sneakers and blue pajamas. Impulsively she unbuttoned her blouse, revealing a pair of full breasts straining against a wired-lace bra. She unhooked her brassiere and cupped her breasts in her hand, turning from side to side, admiring their fullness. Bending over, she slipped off her shoes and pants -- she would clean Peter's room wearing only her panties, then tell him about it if things worked out. Pulling the mop and bucket into the bathroom she decided to do the hard part first and clean the bath and tile. Thinking how good it would look that evening, she poured Lysol into the bowl, sprayed and scrubbed it. A toothbrush in a cup and battery-powered Braun shaver on the sink were the only souvenirs Peter had left behind to remind her of his existence. She dropped the scrub brush back in the bucket, telling herself he'd never know if she took a look around, but then she couldn't tell him about cleaning his room with no clothes on. The whole floor was quiet, the guests had departed to the nearby bases, including Sergeant Koester, who most probably wouldn't be back for hours. Pam walked into the suite and turned on the television to mask the sound of drawers being opened and closed just in case anyone was listening outside the room. A couple of pairs of socks. Underwear. Regulation tee shirts and an airline ticket folder. Pam gingerly picked up the folder and opened it, sucking in her breath when a pair of receipts fell upon the desk. A stub remained in one for Peter Koester's return flight, Sea- Tac to National Airport. The second ticket contained only a receipt made out to R. Matthews for a different flight on USAir from La Guardia to Washington. Pam felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. Who was R. Matthews? A girlfriend of his from New York? She was probably staying in his apartment in Washington, D.C., while he was in Bremerton, waiting for him to come back. Angrily, Pam methodically opened and shut all the remaining drawers, looking for anything she could find which would further inform her about the identity of R. Matthews. Finding them either empty or containing only hotel property, she slid back the closet door, found HYDRA's suitcase and threw it on the bed. It was an old Hartmann with combination locks. Locks which most people left at their factory setting of 1-1-1. She turned both dials to triple one, then tried the latch. It popped open automatically. If Peter Koester was fucking Roberta Matthews she wanted to know about it before their date that night. She rifled through the clothing, all folded and neatly arranged in stacks, finding no evidence of letters, pictures or other items lovers normally exchange. While she felt under a pile of shorts, her right hand caught on something sharp which gave her a small cut. Pushing the shirts aside, at first she couldn't find what could have nicked her--the whole interior of the case was lined with light fabric. Curious now, she slowly ran her hand along the inside perimeter when she felt it again. Raising the lining up from the bottom, she found the zipper head and pulled it around all four sides of the suitcase, releasing the double bottom. "TDY said you're headed for the tin can, that true?" Holt asked HYDRA after they'd passed the guardpost. "That's it." Marine Sergeant Holt, deciding to avoid further conversation with the crypto- cleared tech from NIS, drove the rest of the way along Tecumseh Street in silence. He stopped in front of a concrete-block code shack surrounded by its own cyclone fence and guarded by two solemn-faced Marines in front. Holt handed HYDRA back his ID and opened up the trunk for him so he could remove his computer and spectrum analyzer. HYDRA grabbed his equipment, then presented his base pass to the Marine on duty. "Your name, sir?" "Sergeant Koester." "Where'd you TDY out of, Sergeant Koester?" "Washington, NIS." "Why're you here?" "TOD, software change, the rest is classified." "Just a minute." The Marine took HYDRA's papers and entered the code shack, returning a couple of minutes later. "All right, Sergeant, you can go inside." Sitting half-naked on the hotel bed, Pam held the oversized wallet in her hands and slowly pulled out one piece of ID after another, before returning each to its proper slot. Russell Matthews, New York Driver's License. American Express Card, Lieutenant Jack Gereke. Blockbuster Video, Russell Matthews. Missouri Driver's License, Lieutenant Jack Gereke. So who was Sergeant Peter Koester? Her heart racing, she dropped the wallet back into the suitcase's false bottom, and picked up the neatly folded leather holster, discovering it held an almost weightless plastic gun. She unsnapped the leather safety guard, carefully pulling the gun from the holster, turning it over in her hands, then pressed a button and a clip fell out, fully loaded with almost weightless bullets. HYDRA walked inside the communications shed where he was met by a pair of NSA-cleared Navy technicians wearing plain uniforms and holstered sidearms. While he handed one of them his base pass, the other unsnapped the leather safety strap on his holster, leaving his hand on his gun as per regulation. "Who are you?" "Sergeant Peter Koester." "Where'd you TDY from, Koester?" "Washington, NIS Headquarters." "What for?" "Technical Operations Directive -- software mod followed by a TEMPEST check on the laser gun." "Why weren't we notified about this before?" Both men's unblinking eyes were fixed on HYDRA, impatient for his reply. "Motorola delivered the chips late. McPhee just got 'em last week, even though he was supposed to have gotten them two months ago. So he wanted me to haul my ass out here asap before he got a call from Ft. Meade." "Great," sighed the one holding HYDRA's ID and TOD order. "How're Mark's kids doing, anyway? Last time I saw 'em was three years ago." "Sheila's still at Country Day and Bill's on varsity -- Mark says he's a natural athlete." "He still play golf?" asked the one with his hand on the gun. "Oh, yeah, he's got the same old four-handicap he's always had -- " "I thought it was five," the other interrupted. HYDRA's face froze. His eyes involuntarily darted to the unholstered gun. "Jerry, stop fuckin' this guy around, it's his first visit for godsakes." "Sorry," grinned the second tech. "We get pretty bored in here. Come on back and let's get this over with." Pam put the Glock back in its holster, snapped it shut, wrapping the strap around it as she'd found it and set it next to the large leather wallet and the maps, then zipped the false bottom shut. After that she refolded and repacked the clothes on top of it, closed the suitcase, and turned the combination locks to a random setting hoping Peter hadn't memorized where he'd left them. Next she checked all the dresser drawers, making sure all their contents were in reasonable order and that they were all firmly closed. She quickly put on her bra and the rest of her uniform and left, then cleaned the remaining rooms on the second floor in record time, before leaving the hotel without saying a word to anyone. While HYDRA was being watched by the man with his hand on the gun, the second Navy cipher clerk had his back to them. Kneeling in front of a floor safe, he was fiddling with the lock. Scattered around them were teletype machines and CRT monitors, whose blank screens were only occasionally disturbed by random blips. "Here it is." He handed it to HYDRA with a smile who took the laser gun and set it on the nearest desk. HYDRA unpacked the HP-100LX computer and the DKD-1810 spectrum analyzer from their vinyl cases and plugged the analyzer into the palmtop. Next he plugged the DKD-1810's wand into the analyzer, waved it in the air, and hit a key on his computer. "Got to see if the sniffer's working." The Navy code clerk nodded in understanding. He'd been through several TEMPEST checks before. HYDRA silently took the adapter cord Castor had made for him and plugged it first into the HP-100LX, then into the laser gun, an operation the code clerk hadn't seen before, but which didn't surprise him. "Here goes nothing," HYDRA murmured as he pressed the trigger. The palmtop's LED screen momentarily displayed a pattern filled with dancing waves, then went blank. HYDRA opened the gun and deftly removed its original chips, then slipped a UV- resistant plastic case from a pocket in his coverall, set it next to the gun and opened it, revealing an identical pair of chips. "OK, after I put these in, I've got to check them against the first set, but, they're set so I'm not going to zeroize them when I do it, all right?" The clerk nodded appreciatively, watching HYDRA press the trigger a second time to recording stray emissions with the DKD-1810. "That's it, we're done." Chapter 36 The arrival of a Gates Learjet C-21A belonging to the 89th Military Airlift Wing caused barely a stir at Fort Bragg, the base known as the "Home of the Airborne." Its passengers, the four teams of two FBI agents, deplaned without incident, were met by four separate jeeps driven by Army CID officers as requested and driven to their separate destinations. Overhead a squadron of UH-60A Black Hawk helicopters roared past at low altitude, disappearing over the banks of Smith Lake. At 148,000 acres in size, Fort Bragg is one of the largest military bases in the world and is the home of XVIII Airborne Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, the "Golden Knights" Army Parachute Team, in addition to the 1st Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Assigned to SOCOM's command were several Special Forces Groups, including the 5th commanded by Colonel Chuck "Black Beret" Morrell. Neither of the two agents who had been assigned to interview Colonel Morrell had ever been in the military in his life. Joe Kelly was a former street cop from D.C. and his partner, John Barrone, had joined the FBI directly after college. Even though both agents were in their late thirties and highly experienced in the field, they both felt ill at ease in the foreign environment of the Special Forces Camp. They were used to controlling the field, knowing they always had the option of calling for whatever additional support they needed if a situation required it. But today's visit was different. Chuck "Black Beret" Morrell commanded a force of over one thousand highly-trained men, all of whom were in the immediate vicinity and had been trained to follow the colonel's orders without question. They came to a halt in front of a nondescript two-story barracks building guarded by two MPs who immediately stepped aside once the two CID agents escorting Kelly and Barrone showed them their ID. The MPs told them Colonel Morrell's office was only twenty feet down the corridor to the right, where a corporal, acting as Morrell's secretary, sat outside behind a metal desk. The corporal had a quizzical look on his face as he was saluted by his unexpected visitors. "How can I help you, gentlemen?" "We're here from the FBI. We'd like to speak with the colonel for a moment," replied Agent Kelly calmly. "Just a minute." Before the corporal could pick up his telephone, one of the Army agents leaned forward and grabbed the handset out of his hands. Colonel Morrell walked through his office door, about to give an order to his aide, when he stopped dead in his tracks. Wearing olive drab jungle fatigues and spit-shined jungle boots, Morrell looked every bit the hard-eyed soldier in his green beret. "Can I help you, gentlemen?" "Colonel, we're from the FBI. We'd like to speak to you a second," Kelly repeated. The CID agent released his grip on the corporal's telephone, letting him hang it up. "What about?" "Sorry, sir, but it's classified. We'll have to tell you in private." Morrell looked at his aide, then the pair of CID agents, then Kelly and Barrone. "All right, come on in. Don, hold all my calls." Morrell's office was comfortable enough with its carpeting and wood-paneled walls. The blinds were shuttered, muting the noonday light. "Make yourselves comfortable," Morrell said, pointing to a couple of armchairs. Before Kelly sat down he slipped an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Morrell across his desk. "Colonel, my instructions are to ask you to read this document before we go any further -- " Whatever friendliness remained in Morrell's demeanor vanished as he ripped open the envelope and read the words National Security Decision Directive No. 208 at its top. ". . . authorizes us to ask you any question concerning any personnel present or former and any of their activities and operations no matter what security classification they may carry. Also, -- " "Enough," the colonel snapped. "Why did you come here?" Kelly blinked, then opened an attache case, pulling out a legal-length file with Bailey's photo stapled to its cover and set it on the colonel's desk. Morrell took one look at it, refusing to pick it up. "Where'd you get this?" "I'm sorry, colonel, but our orders -- " In a violent motion Morrell scooped up Bailey's file, then pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his tunic pocket and put them on. "I haven't seen this man in over a dozen years since he was in Blue Light." "So you remember him," prompted Kelly. "Yes, Mr. FBI, I remember Captain Bailey." "Why?" asked Barrone. "Why? Because during the whole time I've been in the Army I've only met a handful of men like him, that's why." "Bailey was exceptional?" "Exceptional? Captain Bailey was the best we ever had. He practically sailed through the Q Course -- and let me tell you, it's a lot tougher than Basic Airborne -- His GT scores were top one percent. You read the file, didn't you?" "Did CIA contact you about him?" Morrell paused a moment, glaring back at the pair of CI-3 agents across his desk. "You don't know where he is, do you? That's why you're here, isn't it?" Kelly and Barrone glanced at each other, before Kelly answered. "No. We don't know where he is. We were hoping you could help locate him for us. We want to talk to him." "One day a man showed up at the Warfare Center. He'd been talking with General Jack, then they sent him over to see me." "Did he give you his name?" "He didn't have to, one look at him and I knew where he was from." "Do you remember his name?" asked Barrone. "Yeah. I remember it. It was a bad joke. Axe. Keith Axe. Chauncey Laudon's hatchet man." "Axe?" Kelly gasped. "Are you sure? At the time he was stationed in Mexico City -- " " -- Where he ran Operation BUNCIN." "What do you know about that?" General Morrell picked up the copy of the NSDD, slowly crumpling it into a wad of paper. "Nobody's bothered to tell you, have they? How many men'd the FBI put on this, anyway, fifty, a hundred, more? Pretty funny, coming here in a Learjet to locate a dead man. "Here, you can take this and stuff it up the ass of whoever wrote it," Morrell snarled, tossing the wad at Kelly, who caught it just before it hit him in the face. "Edwin D. Bailey is dead. You got that. Dead. D-E-A-D. Dead." "He -- " "He was a good officer. The best. He put it all together and they killed him." "Good to see you back," the familiar FPS sentry told Woodring at the gatehouse, taking Woodring's ID and sticking it into the confirmation slot. Woodring merely nodded in reply. He hadn't slept for over seventy-two hours. The guard handed him his card, then he sped along Savage Road to Building No. 4, where he slammed to a stop, leapt out of his car, and rushed up the concrete steps to the glass booth at the door, tossing his pass at the sentry inside before jumping into a waiting golf cart. Woodring ordered the driver to take him to the elevator immediately then grabbed the vehicle's built-in telephone and dialed Czarlinsky's office to warn him of his arrival. Exiting the elevator, Woodring grabbed the clipboard offered to him by the second sentry at the hallway's end, barely scrawling his signature on it before he tossed it back at him. K1/K-24A 138