Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“I call her Natalie because I like her, General,” McNab said. “She’s my kind of gal.” And then he quoted the secretary of State: “ ‘You miserable goddamn shameless hypocritical sonofabitch!’ ”

It was what Secretary of State Natalie Cohen had said to President Clendennen in the Situation Room of the White House on February 12, immediately after the President had announced that “for the good of the country, for the good of the office of the President, I am inclined to accept Ambassador Montvale’s offer to become my Vice President.”

It was the first time anyone in the room had ever heard her say anything stronger than “darn.”

“My God!” Naylor said.

“She calls a spade a spade,” McNab said. “There aren’t many other people in Foggy Bottom—offhand, I can’t think of one—who do that.”

Naylor looked at McNab as if he were forming his words. When finally he said nothing, McNab went on:

“We can ask her at the agency if she’s been contacted, and I’m sure that among Lammelle’s gnomes is someone who can lift any fingerprints there might be on the envelope.”

Franklin Lammelle was DCI, director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“All right,” Naylor said. “And the CIA would be the most logical choice to deal with this situation, right?”

McNab didn’t reply.

“McNab, you’re not thinking of going down there to rescue Colonel Ferris, are you?”

“General, I would say that none of us has enough information to make any decisions on how to deal with this,” McNab said. “But we can think about it while we’re at Langley doing our bit to help the President get reelected.”

“Is that how you think of it?”

McNab didn’t reply directly, instead saying, “Having complied with Action One of the SOP by notifying my superior headquarters of the situation, with your permission, General, I will now take Action Two.”

General Naylor nodded his permission.

“Al,” McNab said to Captain Walsh, “would you please bring the Brick up here?”

Sixty seconds later, Walsh laid the Brick on the table. It had been provided to General McNab by the AFC Corporation free of charge. The chairman of the board of the AFC Corporation, Dr. Aloysius Francis Casey, had, during the Vietnam war, been the communications sergeant on a Special Forces A Team.

He credited that service for giving him the confidence to do such things as apply for admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology without having a high school diploma, and then shortly after being awarded his Ph.D. by that institution, starting the AFC Corporation, which quickly became the world leader in data processing and encryption.

“Like the jarheads say, General,” he had told then–newly promoted Brigadier General McNab when he flew, uninvited, in one of AFC’s Learjets to Fort Bragg, “once a Green Beanie, always a Green Beanie. And now it’s payback time.”

The translation was that he was willing to provide the Special Operations community with the very latest in communication and encryption equipment free of charge. When he left Fort Bragg that day, he had taken with him Brigadier General McNab’s aide-de-camp—“You can call me Aloysius, hotshot,” Casey had told then–Second Lieutenant C. G. Castillo—so that Castillo could not only select from AFC’s existing stocks of electronic equipment but could also tell what communications abilities Delta Force and Gray Fox wished it had.

General McNab now opened the attaché case. A green LED told him the system was in STANDBY mode. He flipped a few switches and other green LEDs illuminated. One was ENCRYPTED VOICE COMMUNICATION, one ENCRYPTED DATA COMMUNICATION, and one ENCRYPTED SCAN.

General McNab removed a device about the size of a cigarette lighter from the attaché case, put it to his eye, aimed it at the FedEx Overnight envelope, and then at the photograph and message it contained.

A red LED illuminated briefly over the legend ENCRYPTED DATA TRANSMISSION IN PROGRESS, and then went out.

General McNab then picked up a telephone handset and pushed a button.

“Yes, sir?” the voice of Major General Terry O’Toole, deputy commander of SPECOPSCOM, came over the Brick’s speakers after bouncing off a satellite 27,000 miles over the earth.

“Terry, I just sent you what was handed to me as I walked out of my quarters this morning,” McNab said.

“I’m looking at it, General,” O’Toole said.

“Load up your wife and get over to Colonel Ferris’s quarters. Show her this, tell her we’re working on it, and to keep her mouth shut about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell her as soon as I learn anything, I’ll let her know.”