Divide and conquer - Tom Clancy [65]
"Don't tell me, "I told you so,"
"Herbert said.
"Why?" Hood asked.
"A high-level official at the CIA in Washington got the intel about the Harpooner from the NSA," Herbert told them.
"The NSA didn't have anyone in Baku, so they notified the CIA. The CIA sent David Battat."
"Whom the Harpooner knew just where to find," Rodgers said.
"Instead of killing him, the Harpooner poisoned him somehow. And then Battat was used to bring out Moore and Thomas at the hospital."
"Apparently," Herbert said.
"Paul, you asked a question a moment ago," Rodgers said.
"You wanted to know who else would be necessary for a psyops maneuver to work against the president. That's a good question, but it's not the first one we need to answer."
"No?" Hood said.
"What is?"
"Who would benefit the most from the mental incapacitation of the president?" Rodgers asked.
"And at the same time, who would be in a perfect position to help make some of the disinformation happen?" Hood's stomach was growling now. The answer was obvious. The vice president of the United States.
Washington, D.C. Monday, 11:24 p.m.
Vice President Charles Gotten was in the ground-floor sitting room of the vice presidential residence. The mansion was located on the sprawling Massachusetts Avenue; grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. It was a twenty-minute drive from here to the vice president's two offices: one in the White House and the other in the neighboring Old Executive Office Building. It was just ' a short walk from the mansion to the National Cathedral.
Gotten had been spending more time than usual at the cathedral. Praying. An aide knocked and entered. The woman told the vice president that his car was ready. The vice president thanked her and rose from the leather armchair. He entered the dark, wood-paneled hallway and headed toward the front door. Upstairs, Cotten's wife and children were asleep.. My wife and children. They were words Gotten never thought would be part of his life. When he was a senator from New York, Cotten had been the ultimate lady's man. A new, gorgeous date to every function. The press referred to these younger women as "Cotten candy." There were regular jokes about what went on below the Gotten belt. Then he met Marsha Arnell at a Museum of Modern Art fund-raiser in Manhattan, and everything changed. Marsha was twenty-seven, eleven years his junior. She was a painter and an art historian. She was telling a group of guests about late-twentieth-century art and how the work of commercial artists like Frank Frazetta, James Bama, and Rich Corben defined a new American vision: the power of the human form and face blended with landscapes from dream and fantasy. Gotten was hypnotized by the young woman's voice, her ideas, and her vital and optimistic view of America. They were married four months later. For nearly ten years; Marsha and their twin girls had been the foundation of Charles Cotten's life. They were his focus, his heart, and their future was never far from his thoughts. They were the reason the vice president had conceived of this plan. To preserve America for his family. The fact was, the United States was at risk. Not just from terrorist attacks, though more and more those were becoming a very real threat.
The danger facing the United States was that it was on the verge of becoming irrelevant. Our military could destroy the world many times over. But other nations knew that we would never do that, so they did not fear us. Our economy was relatively strong. But so were the economies of many other nations and alliances. The Eurodollar was strong, and the new South American League and their SAL currency was growing in power and influence. Central America and Mexico were talking about a new confederacy. Canada was being tempted to join the European economy. Those unions, those nations, did not face the kind of suspicion