Philip Kerr: Esau

Just south of Arlington National Cemetery, the highway deviated to the east and the familiar concrete shape that was the biggest office building in the world came into view. To Perrins it seemed only appropriate that the U.S. Department of Defence should be headquartered within sight of those Americans who had died in wars.

The Cadillac deposited him in front of one of the Pentagon’s many entrances, and he made his way into the building. Sometimes he thought that there must be five of everything at the Pentagon: five sides, five stories, five concentric hallways, and a five-acre courtyard in the centre. For all he knew, there might even have been as many as five thousand of the Pentagon’s twenty-five-thousand-strong workforce already at their desks by the time he arrived, even though it was five o’clock in the morning. Certainly the place looked busy enough.

The NRO was headquartered in Department 4C956, and although it did not officially exist at all, the Office of Space Systems, as it was sometimes also known, was easy enough to find; 4 indicated the fourth floor, C indicated Ring C — Ring A faced the courtyard, and Ring C was in the middle — 9 was corridor nine; and 56 was the number of the suite of offices.

Perrins went straight to the conference room, where he found several men and women, some of them wearing the uniform of their respective service but all of them grim-faced and awaiting the arrival of the director of NRO, Bill Reichhardt, who entered the room only a few seconds behind Perrins.

Reichhardt, a tall, thin, grey-haired man in a dark suit, took his place at the head of the table, smiled thinly at Perrins, and nodded at a bespectacled man whose round shoulders, shiny bald head, and reverentially clasped hands gave him the look of a devout and supplicatory priest about to ask that the Lord bless their gathering.

‘All right, Griff,’ Reichhardt said hoarsely, and lifted his collar from his Adam’s apple, as if there was something in his throat other than anger at having been roused from his bed. ‘Get on with it.’

The priestly man cleared his throat and started to speak.

‘I’m sure everyone in this room is now aware of the situation that was reported by the tracking complex at Cheyenne Mountain earlier this evening,’ he said. ‘Full details are available in the reports in front of you. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you that the situation has now been confirmed by both Norwegian Mission Control Centre at Tromso and the French MCC at Toulouse.’

‘Jesus,’ said someone. ‘Do we know why?’

‘So far we’ve been unable to surface any further intelligence on that.’

‘Griff,’ one of the naval uniforms asked, ‘what’s the grade of sensitivity on this material?’

‘We’re talking SCI.’

SCI was the most secret of all U.S. Government classifications. Affecting matters of truly Olympian secrecy, it stood for ‘sensitive compartmental intelligence’.

‘So what’s the beverage of choice?’ said an army man.

Reichhardt looked up from his notepad and raised his eyebrows.

‘What do you say, Griff? Any bright ideas?’

‘I’d suggest a lower level reconnaissance, sir. We ought to put some U2Rs in the air over that area. Round the clock over flights.’

‘Alvin?’ Reichhardt was now looking at one of the air force uniforms.

‘Well, sir, I’d be concerned about the conservation of the asset. By which I mean the aircraft. The trouble with the U2R is that it’s not a particularly sturdy aircraft. It’s designed for one purpose — long flights at low altitudes and low speeds. It was easy enough to shoot down back in the early sixties, when the Russians nailed Gary Powers.’ He shrugged. ‘Now more than ever. However...’

Perrins had been nodding his agreement.

‘My reading,’ he said, interrupting, ‘is that both sides are likely to take a dim view of any perceived American military interference in the region. The Indians see us as Pakistan’s natural ally. Trouble is, since this whole thing got going, it’s the Chinese who have been backing the Pakistanis, not us. If one of those U2s gets itself shot down, it might just jeopardize our ability to honestly broker a peace.’

‘Is that what we want to do?’ asked Reichhardt. ‘Honestly broker a peace?’

‘There’s no strategic advantage to be gained by letting a war go ahead. Bill.’

Reichhardt nodded slowly and studied the cover of the report in front of him, tapping at it with the point of his mechanical pencil, until the dots began to add up to a whole constellation.

‘Alvin? You were about to add a however, I think,’ he prompted the air force man.

‘However, when it comes to high-quality photography, there’s nothing else that can do the job quite as well as the U2. If we were to make sure that we only launched a few missions, when the weather was at its very best, say when the recon area was less than twenty-five percent overcast, then I’d be a lot more confident of getting an early result.’

‘They’ll get a better shot of the ground,’ grumbled Perrins. ‘But so will the local surface-to-air missile batteries.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ snapped Reichhardt. Glancing over at Perrins, he added, ‘I hear what you say, Brian, but in the short term I really don’t see we have any choice but to take the risk.’

‘It’s your call. Bill,’ shrugged Perrins.

‘Alvin? I want those U2s launched right away.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Codename—’ Reichhardt bounced the pencil against his teeth. ‘Anyone? I’d rather not have to have a computer-generated codename. They’re so damned nonsensical that I can never remember them.’

‘How about Icarus?’ said Perrins.

‘I think not,’ laughed Reichhardt. ‘I mean, wouldn’t that just be tempting fate?’

Perrins smiled back, affecting innocence.

‘We don’t want our wings to melt. No, we’ll call it Bellerophon. That’s B-E-L–L-E-R-O-P-H-O-N.’ He chuckled again and then added: ‘Look it up if you don’t know what it means, Bryan. Bellerophon flew to heaven on Pegasus.’ He laughed again, with smug satisfaction. ‘Benefits of a Harvard education.’

Perrins, who was a Yale man, nodded silently and was about to point out that Zeus had sent a gadfly to sting the horse and Bellerophon was thrown, but he checked himself, deciding that it could wait until the next meeting. If the U2s did succeed in uncovering something, then no one would care about the codename anyway. But if the U2s drew a blank, then he could remind Reichhardt of the story behind the name, as if he had only just remembered it. Childish, but enjoyable. In the intelligence game, you had your fun where you could. Especially where the Pentagon was concerned.

Across the Bay Bridge, on Interstate 80 out of San Francisco, the East Bay area comprised Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, with Oakland and Berkeley the two most likely destinations for a traveller. Although the two cities were virtually contiguous, something less tangible than a line of foothills separated blue-collar Oakland, a busy port, from its wealthier and more northerly neighbour. Berkeley was a student town, its hills dominated by the University of California. A few more enlightened people regarded Berkeley as the most intellectually important place west of Chicago, and the Athens of the Pacific Coast. But for most Americans — certainly those who remembered the peace movements of the late sixties and early seventies — Berkeley was still a byword for die-hard radicalism. Drugs, sit-ins, and tear gas over People’s Park.