State Of The Union

Chapter 28

Rick Morrell pulled their car into the underground parking structure of the distinctive semicircular building known as Berlin’s Kempinski Hotel Bristol. After finding an empty stall, Morrell used his keycard to summon the elevator and the three men rode to the sixth floor.

When the elevator doors opened, Gordon Avigliano led the way down the lavishly carpeted hallway to a rich mahogany door where he rapped out a quick code.

“Housekeeping,” said Avigliano in a high-pitched voice, shouldering his way into the room as DeWolfe opened the door for them. “Fluff your pillow? Chocolate mint?”

“Scot,” said DeWolfe, shaking his hand and ignoring Avigliano. “Good to see you again.”

“You too,” said Scot, genuinely glad to see the operative who had helped rescue him from Adara Nidal’s terrorist compound in the Libyan desert last year.

“Hey,” shouted Carlson, who walked over and grabbed Scot Harvath by both shoulders so he could look at him, “why wasn’t I surprised when they told me you were in trouble?”

“Nice to see you too, Steve,” replied Harvath.

“Now that we’re all reacquainted,” interjected Morrell, who had locked the door behind them and was making his way to the center of the room. “Maybe we can get started.”

Morrell turned to DeWolfe, “How are we doing?”

The communications expert was bent over a map of the world, complete with latitude and longitude lines, upon which he had placed a clear plastic slide. “I’m just working out our elevation and azimuth,” he replied.

“What about the electronic countermeasures?”

“I swept the room three times and placed the ECMs in the appropriate positions, so don’t worry. Not only is nobody listening to us, but even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. All of the equipment is working perfectly, and everything is tip-top.”

“Good. This is the first time I have been handpicked by the president for an operation, and I don’t intend to screw it up. In fact, this is our first scrambled communication with him and I expect it to go off without a hitch. Is that clear?”

“Yes sir, boss,” responded DeWolfe. He was aiming for one of the Defense Department’s dedicated satellites and as he computed the best ‘takeoff’ angle for their transmission, Carlson assembled a wire spider-web satellite dish the size of a di

According to DeWolfe’s calculations, they had twenty more minutes before they would pass into their optimal broadcast window, so Morrell allowed Avigliano to run out to pick up orders of the lamb and salad sandwiches packed in pita bread known as Döner Kebabs. Though Morrell would have preferred Cokes, when Avigliano returned with a beer for each of the men, he let it slide.

Harvath had grabbed a quick shower and shave and after dressing in a black sweater and a new pair of jeans, joined the rest of the team in the living room. He sat down on one of the leather couches, opened up Gary Lawlor’s suitcase on the floor in front of him and began to go through it again.

Carefully, he removed each piece of clothing and after thoroughly examining it, folded it and set it on the couch next to him.

“Where’d you get that?” asked DeWolfe, as Harvath was emptying out the contents of Lawlor’s shaving kit.

“What?” said Harvath, holding up a tube of toothpaste. “This?”

“Not the toothpaste. That other thing you’ve got sitting there next to those clothes.”

“This organizer?” asked Harvath, reaching for the oversized PDA that had been vexing him since he had first found it in Gary’s luggage.

“Yeah, let me look at it,” said DeWolfe who crossed over to where Harvath was sitting and took the device from him. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

DeWolfe had powered the device up and was scrolling through its programs. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages.”

“I know. It’s an antique,” replied Harvath as he looked over DeWolfe’s shoulder to see what he was doing. “Gary hates almost anything computerized, so I figured the organizer was part of his cover somehow.”

“You mean to tell me you’ve never seen one of these things before?”

“Of course I have, but by the time I got my PDA, it was about a quarter of the size of that thing.”

“When you were a SEAL, didn’t you ever work with a burst transmitter?”

Harvath’s eyes widened. “A burst transmitter?That’s what that thing is supposed to be?”

“Yup. It uses one of the early modem cards with a pop-out phone jack. Did you find any telephone adaptor plugs in that bag?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Harvath holding up a small clear plastic box, “I did, but how do you know about all of this?”

“When I was studying communications and electronic surveillance at the Agency we got to play with one of these. The device was set up to look like one of the early PDAs. It actually was a pretty simple and pretty clever way to camouflage what, in its day, was a cutting edge burst transmitter.”

“Speaking of camouflage,” interrupted Morrell, who had walked over to see what DeWolfe was looking at. “Where’s that Tabard IR suit I lent you back in DC?”

“It’s in safe hands,” replied Harvath, his attention still focused on the burst transmitter.

“Whose hands? I’m responsible for that and those Tabard suits aren’t cheap.”

“Kate Palmer is holding onto my stuff for me until I get back.”

“Secret Service Agent Kate Palmer?” asked Carlson. “The one who works at the White House?”

“Yeah,” said Harvath, motioning for DeWolfe to hand the device back to him. “Why? You know her.”

“No, but she’s hot. You don’t suppose when we get home you could-”

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” replied Harvath, “you’re not her type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Carlson.

“It means, I know what kind of guys she likes and you’re not it.”

“Oh yeah? Well maybe you’re wrong. What kind of guys does she like?”

“Guys like Avigliano-tall, blond, andgood looking.”

“Oh, so in other words she’s got no taste. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Fuck you,” said Avigliano from across the room.

Harvath ignored them and turned back to DeWolfe. “The burst transmitters I’ve worked with were in conjunction with field radios, not telephone lines. Plus, they were much smaller. Why would he want to lug something like that around? Why not upgrade and go with something more compact?”

“From what I understand, the Dark Night operation was established in the eighties and after the Soviet Union fell, the team was retired, so there was no need for it. Don’t get me wrong, though. This thing might be a little out of date, but it’s still good technology.”

“I’ve never seen one like this masked with all that PDA software. Do you know how it works?” asked Harvath.

“Sure,” said DeWolfe, ejecting the PDA’s stylus and reaching across Harvath to tap the screen. “Let’s say you were a handler like Gary and had several different operatives you were going to need to communicate sensitive information with. The burst transmitter allows you to type out your message, encrypt it, and then send it in a quick burst over the telephone. To the uninitiated, it sounds just like a fax tone, but if you have one of these little beauties and the proper encryption key, you can unencrypt the information and read the message on the screen here.”

A fax tone, thought Harvath, recalling the shrill tone he had heard over Gary Lawlor’s home phone when he had redialed the last number Gary had called before disappearing. That must have been what he was hearing,a burst transmission.

“On any op,” continued DeWolfe, “you would want to compartmentalize as much as possible, so Gary would have had a specific encryption code for each one of his operatives. All he would have to do is select that code program and make sure it was up and ru