“Talk.”
“Catherine King. I gave Zack Hightower the day to recover after he watched her house all night long. I put four cars on her tail. She ran around doing press all morning, just what you’d expect to see from her. She’s all over the news with the story you fed her. But then, just after noon, she started running an SDR.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. A good one, too, from the sound of it. Our surveillance people stayed on her for the first half hour, but she slipped them. She was in the wind from about one fifteen p.m. till almost two forty-five, at which time she returned to her car parked at the CNN building. She took that back to her office at the Post, arriving at three fifteen p.m.”
Carmichael said, “From the look on your face, I assume there is something more.”
“There is. At four twenty p.m. today she bought a ticket on a six ten flight to Tel Aviv.”
Carmichael’s razor-tight face stretched tighter as he scowled. “Son of a bitch. It’s Gentry. He got to her somehow.”
Mayes said, “It’s possible.”
Carmichael just said, “Gentry told her about BACK BLAST. He’s sending her to Tel Aviv to find out details from people she knows in the Mossad.”
“What can they possibly tell her?”
“Details, obviously.”
“Details even I don’t know?”
“Don’t start, Mayes. We’ve been through this.” Mayes didn’t push it, and Carmichael thought a moment. “I want surveillance on her e-mail and phone within the hour.”
Mayes nodded.
“And the other reporter working with her. What was his name?”
“Shoal. He’s not an investigator, he’s just—”
“I don’t care what he is. I want a full surveillance package on him. Phone and e-mail as well.”
“I’m on it.”
Carmichael added, “And get some more assets to cover Gentry’s father in Florida. Catherine King might have passed on the fact we were looking for someone from Jacksonville. He will read that as a threat.”
Mayes said, “More assets? Who, Denny? We don’t have SAD men we can call up, remember. The JSOC forces are deployed here in the District, and contracted security have proven themselves unable to go up against him. Who are we going to send down there other than the case officers already watching him?”
Denny Carmichael thought it over, then a thought came to him. “Harvey Point.”
Mayes cocked his head. “What about Harvey Point?”
“There is a training evolution going on down there right now, isn’t there?”
“Yes. Twenty-five case officers from Europe are down at the Point taking a class in defensive driving. One of Suzanne Brewer’s initiatives to improve security at foreign postings.” He shrugged. “But . . . what about them? Those folks aren’t shooters. They are just case officers. None of them have fired a gun since the Farm. You want to send a bunch of cocktail circuit spooks out to capture the Gray Man?”
“They don’t have to capture him. Send them down there immediately, all of them. Get them to lean on his dad, to see if he’s been in contact. They will be able to detect deception in him. Put them on the street corners, in the grocery stores, flood the zone. If Gentry goes down there and they get wind of it, we can fly shooters in from Bragg in a couple of hours.”
Mayes said, “I’ll get them moving down.”
60
Suzanne Brewer pulled her BMW 535i into the garage of the JSOC safe house three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. She was annoyed to be here; she’d rather be either back at the TOC at Langley running down the latest leads, or else curled up in her bed at home in Springfield, desperately trying to catch one of her all too few three-hour cat naps. It was ten-thirty p.m., after all; she had been on her way home for a break when she diverted all the way into the District, and since the last spate of Violator sightings were eight hours old she doubted she’d be needed back at Langley until the morning.
But she was here because Dakota had called and demanded a meeting.
The JSOC team had done everything she’d asked of them as they’d been sent on one chase after another over the past few days, so she gave in to his demand without putting up much of a fight. She knew they’d be tired and angry for being spun up again and again, often getting to locations where facial recog hits were too old for them to do more than wander around with only faint hopes their target might just be loitering in the area reading a newspaper.
The most recent callout of the JSOC team had taken place near Union Station around two p.m. Brewer’s team at the TOC had caught the facial recog hit, and Brewer herself had double-checked it within five minutes of the image being captured.