Tom Clancy's op-centre_ mirror image - Tom Clancy [16]
Even so, he knew he wasn't being entirely fair to Hood. He had his den-mother side, as Ann had said. But the Director was a good man. He was well intentioned and, more important, he was a highly capable manager. And it was efficient to delegate authority internally to a group of relatively autonomous experts like Martha Mackall and Lowell Coffey II, Matt Stoll and Ann Farris. But more and more, Rodgers felt that OP-Center needed to be run by one man's will, like Hoover's FBI. It had to be run by someone who didn't consult with the CIA or the National Security Council before acting, but let other organizations know what he was doing after the fact. After defusing a war in Korea and the potential bombing of Japan, he had come to believe that Op-Center needed to be more aggressive on the world stage, rather than reactive.
Which is one reason it can't continue being anonymous, Rodgers thought. But there was time enough to do something about that something passive, like leaking information to the press, or something dramatic, like sending Striker on the kinds of missions that had made Israeli commandos so feared and respected. Missions that didn't have to be attributed to others' operatives, the way their recent attack on the missile site in North Korea was attributed to the South Koreans.
Rodgers and Hood had had this discussion many times, and the Director invariably pointed to their charter, which forbade adventurism. They were supposed to act like police, he said, not fifth columnists. But to Rodgers, a charter was like sheet music. You could play the notes as written and follow the composer's instructions, yet there was still a great deal of latitude for interpretation. In Vietnam he'd read and reread Edward Gibbons's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and something the author had written became Rodgers's credo that the first of earthly blessings is independence.
Fired up by Gibbons and by a dog-eared copy of George Patton's War As I Knew It that his father had given him, Rodgers served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He returned to the States and got his Ph.D. in world history from Temple University, after which he was stationed in Germany, then in Japan. He commanded a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf and spent time in Saudi Arabia before returning to the U.S. to try for a job at the Department of State. Instead, the President offered him the post of Deputy Director at Op-Center. He wasn't sorry he took the job. It was exhilarating to be involved in crises around the world. He still savored the aftertaste of his recent, successful incursion into North Korea. But he didn't like being anyone's sidekick, let alone Paul Hood's.
The computer beeped. Rodgers walked toward the desk. He punched Control/A to receive. Bob Herbert's round face filled the screen, transmitted by a fiber optic camera on top of the monitor. The thirty-eight-year-old National Intelligence Officer looked tired.
"Good morning, Mike."
"Hi, Bob," Rodgers said. "What are you doing here on a Sunday?"
"Been here since last night. Stephen Viens at NRO called me at home and I came in. Didn't you read my memo?"
"Not yet," Mike said. "What's up?"
"Why don't you check the E-mailbox and beep me back," Herbert said. "The memo has all the times and exact spellings, and the satellite recon--"
"Why don't you just brief me?" Mike said, dragging a hand across his face. E-mail. Beeps. Fiber optic conferencing. How the hell did spy work go from Nathan Hale unbowed to Matt Stoll's screensavers of Derek Flint dancing Swan Lake? Intelligence work should be physically exhausting, like lovemaking, not electronic voyeurism.
"Sure, Mike. I'll give you a rundown," Herbert replied, somewhat concerned. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Rodgers said. "Just a little out of sync with the late twentieth century."
"Whatever you say," Herbert responded.
Rodgers didn't bother