37
Alexandria, Virginia
USA
JAMES WHITFIELD SAT IN THE windowless room at the back of his house, illumination coming only from a small lamp hovering over his desk.
Arrogance.
With age was supposed to come wisdom, and for the most part it had. But now he’d made grave, and uncharacteristically amateurish, mistakes. Not only had he drawn conclusions with insufficient facts, he’d erred on the side of underestimating an opponent instead of the other way around. In his younger years battling the KGB, he’d be dead. A fate that would have been richly deserved.
The clock on his laptop ticked over to four p.m. and before he could even reach out, a quiet ring emanated from it. Another example of the captain’s unflagging efficiency.
“Yes,” he said, picking up the heavily encrypted line.
“Did you receive the file I had couriered to you, sir?”
“I did.”
“You know we use the Internet to transmit—”
“I’m aware of that, Captain. Thank you. Now, what have you found out about the transfers?”
“Not as much as we’d hoped. I have been able to confirm that both are on hold.”
“Why?”
“Smith reported a concussion from a car accident this morning.”
Whitfield would have actually allowed himself an admiring smile if the situation weren’t so dire. Had that simply been a convenient excuse or was the army scientist sticking his middle finger in the air?
“And Russell?”
“Some sort of disciplinary action. Obviously, our eyes aren’t as sharp inside the Agency.”
Disciplinary action. He himself might not have thought of that. Credible in that it was something that could crop up suddenly, would prevent reassignment, and also was entirely fitting with her work history. Clever. Clever enough to make him break a sweat.
“Keep me informed, Captain. There are no details too trivial.”
“I understand, sir.”
Whitfield severed the connection and reached into an open safe to retrieve the file on Smith, ignoring for the moment the much thinner one on Russell. His wife started a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the house but the comforting sense of normalcy that it usually provided didn’t come. Not today.
He spread the contents across his desk in neat stacks—not something that could be done with the computer files the captain was constantly trying to get him to use. There was something about seeing it all laid out that helped him think. Though he recognized that his was the last generation harboring such a bias.
Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s record was spotless. He had performed admirably as a front-line doctor in virtually every hot spot on the planet and later had become one of the army’s top virus hunters. It seemed generally agreed on that he was borderline brilliant in the realm of science and, more interesting, just as capable in combat. On no less than two occasions, he had taken command of the special forces team he’d been embedded with as a doctor and the experienced operators had fallen in behind him without question.
If he had any weakness, it was that he wasn’t terribly good at hiding the fact that he believed himself to be the smartest man in the room. It was an attitude that tended not to be particularly appreciated by one’s superiors, but one that Whitfield could sympathize with. And in Smith’s defense, it appeared that he generally was the smartest man in the room.
In truth, if he had been aware of the existence of Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, Whitfield would have seriously considered recruiting him. The problem was that he suspected someone had beat him to it.
Many of Smith’s exploits were easily explained on the surface. The Hades virus had been very much within his sphere of influence. And his involvement with DNA computers could—tenuously—account for his actions in France. Even his participation in investigations in Russia and Africa tracked to a bioterror angle. But upon deeper analysis, disturbing questions surfaced. Actual orders were hard to come by and it seemed that he had been on mysterious leaves of absence during a number of those episodes.
Just as strange was his on-again-off-again partnership with Peter Howell. Not that anyone wouldn’t want the former SAS/MI6 man watching their back, but he was a retired foreign agent. The U.S. military had its own people for these types of operations.
And finally, there was the stalling of the transfers his contacts inside the army and CIA had orchestrated.
The obvious explanation was that Smith, and possibly Russell, had a power base outside the organizations they were publicly affiliated with. A power base that was in no way trivial.
Whitfield continued to shuffle through the papers for another ten minutes, but finally had to admit that the answers weren’t there. Only dangerous hints and impenetrable shadows.
Revealing himself had been stupid. He’d been understandably reluctant to move against two patriots who had served their country so admirably. It seemed reasonable to believe that his conversation with Smith, combined with the transfers, would convince the scientist that he had inadvertently tread on ground well beyond his pay grade. As far as Russell was concerned, she was even easier. Embroil her in the Yemeni resistance and she’d forget all about this. That woman just liked to fight.
Now, though, he was paralyzed until he could gain a deeper understanding of the situation and players. Any blind action on his part could have serious and unpredictable repercussions.
Patience was the only available course of action. He’d have to be content to watch and wait. It wouldn’t last, though. Soon he would have to act and deal with the blowback as best he could.