Severe Clear (Stone Barrington 24)
“Interesting. Well, I heard not half an hour ago that an NSA computer had picked up two more messages from California, one signed ‘Wynken,’ the other, ‘Blynken.’”
“So I might as well have stayed at home.”
“Your trip wasn’t for nothing. You got to know Hamish, and he got us confirmation on the three operatives. That’s worth a lot. It will make Scott Hipp at NSA very happy to know that his people’s work was confirmed.”
“Who is Scott Hipp?”
“A deputy director, in charge of electronic surveillance and cryptology. Very political. I expect to hear from the White House tonight that he has told them about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.”
“I expect the Secret Service will be interested in that information.”
“Yes, they will,” Kate replied. “One thing troubles me, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Remember when Grace issued you your credentials and the two phones?”
“Yes?”
“Remember that we have constant GPS tracking on some of our phones?”
“Yes.”
“Hamish has one of those phones, one of those with the facility of encrypting, and the tracking on that phone indicates that he never left London.”
Holly stared at her boss blankly.
“Also, that Citation Mustang that he occasionally borrows from his friend, a London entrepreneur, has not been out of its hangar at Blackbushe Airport for the past ten days.”
“So Hamish lied to me?”
“Exactly,” Kate replied. “Now I want to see if he claims reimbursement for the airplane’s fuel usage. He can always say that he found another way to contact his sources and changed his mind about flying, but if he claims for the fuel, I’ll have his head.”
“But what about the information he said he got from his sources? Can we trust that?”
“Yes, because it has already been confirmed by the NSA—also, because Hamish has always been very careful not to overstate the quality of the information he passes to us, and he has never been wrong.”
“Somehow, I feel had,” Holly said.
“You haven’t been had, Hamish has just blown in your ear, that’s all. Now, don’t you have secretaries to interview?”
Holly stood up. “Yes, ma’am.” She went to her office, where the first candidate awaited her.
20
Mike Freeman answered his suite door at The Arrington to find a messenger standing there with a package. He signed for it, tipped the man, and took it inside. He unwrapped a large cardboard tube and found a note attached to it.
“Call me when you receive this,” it said, and it was signed by Scott Hipp.
Mike opened the tube and shook out an enlarged photograph, a satellite view of the Los Angeles area. He flattened the photo and weighted the corners, then he called Hipp on his direct line.
“Scott Hipp.”
“It’s Mike Freeman, Scott. What have you sent me?”
“First, a little preamble,” Hipp said. “Yesterday one of my people was going through data collected on an automated computer, and he found two more messages with the text ‘All is well. I am fine.’ One was signed ‘Wynken,’ the other, ‘Blynken.’”
“Uh-oh.”