The Cassandra Conspiracy (26 page)

CHAPTER 24

October 19th

Parker had been driving his people at a fevered pace ever since the disappearance of Payton and the woman. His team tapped into every major credit card computer, looking for an airline, bus, or rail transaction with either name on it. They checked Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, and when they got done, he had them check each company again.

Parker’s resident computer expert, an import from Steiner Aeronautics who had performed special tasks for his boss and Wingate in the past, was counting on the fact that since the airlines used on-line transaction reporting, the information would flow back from the airport sales terminals to the main computers as each ticket purchase took place. Therefore, they wouldn’t have to wait for the slower batch processing.

The technical end of it was way past Parker’s understanding, so he left that to the experts. He had only one objective–to find those two before they did any real damage.

Parker was smoldering over the fact that in spite of all the equipment and high-priced talent, they still hadn’t a single lead on Payton or the woman. He watched as Steiner’s man, whom everyone referred to as the Wizard, cajoled the computers in their search. Suddenly, the second computer chimed, signaling a hit. The Wizard typed in a few more commands, and watched as the printer spewed out a fresh sheet of paper. Without looking at it, he meekly handed the printout to Parker.

Parker looked at the printout, walked over to the phone. A few seconds later he said, “London.”

Once they knew their quarry’s location, it didn’t take Parker’s organization long to zero in on Payton's general location. Through a contact in British immigration, owned body and soul by the Committee, he determined that the couple was staying in the Knightsbridge district. Now that Parker knew where they were, he needed only to determine what form his response would take.

In order to deal effectively with the threat Payton presented to the Committee’s plans, he needed to know why they had fled to London. If, as he suspected, Payton had somehow gotten wind of the assassination plans, it would have been better for the lawyer to remain in the States, where the resources were more readily available to deal with such a situation. Yet for some reason, Payton had run to ground in London.

Parker had already checked with Charles Wingate, who was as much at a loss why Payton would go to London as was his chief of security. Payton had run because he had picked up on the surveillance, either by seeing his pursuers once too often or finding one of the bugs. Nothing in Payton's background report pointed to London. He didn’t have any close friends there, nor any relatives. Then it dawned on Parker–Payton had to be planning a meeting. Whoever he was meeting, it was imperative the Committee finds out as soon as possible.

Now that he knew that Payton was staying somewhere in London’s Knightsbridge area,
Parker needed a plan. First he had to find out where the couple had holed up. Second he had to mount twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance on them. Third he needed to find out whom Payton was going to meet. Finally, Parker would have to minimize any potential damage resulting from the London trip. And he had to accomplish all this thousands of miles from his home base of operations.

Parker leaned back in his chair, placed his feet up on the edge of his desk, and pondered the makeup of the team he would deploy. Under normal conditions, he would lead the team in the field; Wingate however, refused to allow his chief of security to leave the country. Wingate didn’t offer any explanation why he’d flatly refused Parker’s suggestion, but that wasn’t uncommon.

Therefore Parker had to develop the ops plan for his people and find some way to effectively control them from the estate. He’d need at least four men. Six men would be better. This time, he’d err on the side of conservatism. Initially four of his people would be out walking the streets in Kensington looking for Payton and the woman. The other two he’d hold in reserve to continue the search when the first team was eating or sleeping. After they located their hotel and set up their permanent ops area, he’d reconstitute the full team. Two men would man the surveillance room, and two would be available for tailing the couple. Even if Payton and Janet Phillips split up, which they had already done once so effectively, he’d have a man available to follow each of them. The third team could rest or eat since their services wouldn’t be needed except in an emergency.

Provisioning the team was also a problem. Because time was of the essence, they’d be going in through the front door, flying from Baltimore to London. His men would have to clear UK customs, so weapons were out of the question. Wingate had yet to direct Parker’s people to eliminate Payton and the woman, and Parker wasn’t going to chance a major screw
-up because someone took matters into his own hands. Later, if he determined that they needed weapons, they could acquire them locally. Even with Britain’s strict gun laws, getting your hands on suitable weapons was not a major problem if you had the right connections, and the Committee did.

Parker’s bigger problem was how they were going to communicate with him at the estate.  They needed to be able to handle routine voice communications as well as being able to transmit hard copies including photographs. Parker tapped the Wizard again. “We’re fielding teams into England to aid in the search,” Parker told the man. “We need to be able to talk directly with our people in London. In addition, I want the capability of sending and receiving written and photographic material. What are my options, and what do you recommend?”

“If we had enough time, I’d recommend we use an encrypted satellite link, but we don’t. The link would allow you to talk directly with your men as well as to. . . ”

“What difference does it make what it’ll do if you’ve already ruled it out?” Parker broke in.

“I was just thinking out loud.”  The Wizard squirmed in his seat. He had never seen Parker get physically violent; and given their relative sizes, he didn’t want to.

“Without our own satellite link, we’re stuck with commercial telephone lines. But that doesn’t mean we have to use regular phones. I’d recommend portable computers, which we’d interface by modem to the ones in the other room. Encrypting the computer
-to-computer transmissions is a breeze, and the setup will allow us to send and receive photographs.”

“How long will it take you to get the equipment and load the required programs?” Parker asked flatly. “Remember, we need this stuff to work in London. Don’t forget the differences in power.”

“Most of the equipment we already have. I might have to make some changes to connectors and plugs, but it won’t be extensive. Give me three days,” the Wizard said using his handkerchief to remove a smudge from his Coke-bottle thick glasses.

“Do it by tomorrow. That’s all,” Parker said dismissing the man.

The Wizard got out of the room as fast as he could. It was going to be a long night.

Parker was satisfied that he had the
mission’s basic framework down. He went over his notes another time to see if there were any gaps in his logic. He’d make it a point to stress that his men were to remain in close contact with him the entire time they were out of the country. If the conditions changed, then at least he’d be the one to call the shots. His field team would consist of the four full-time security men from the estate plus two of the four men on loan from Steiner Aeronautics.

Parker meticulously instructed his six subordinates about what he expected of them when they got to London. With six experienced men in London, little could go wrong. Parker divided the men up into three teams of two men each, and briefed them in the military style he had learned in the Army. First Parker told them what he wanted and what their objectives were. He went over what they could and could not do, and under what circumstances. He briefed them on all aspects of logistics in England. Finally, he went over the methods and frequency of their communications with him.

After he was certain that the men knew their mission goals, he had the team conduct a reverse briefing. He told the them that they were to brief him from the ground up. It was a variation of the old theme of first telling it to them, making them write it down, and then having them brief it back to you. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it worked. It had to work now.

Once
he was sure that each man knew the team’s objectives, had memorized the complete descriptions of both Payton and Phillips, and understood what the limitations of the operation were, Parker dispatched them to London. By this time tomorrow, he’d have three squads of operatives looking for Payton. Meanwhile, he’d continue to push the Wizard until the man came up with a charge receipt, or credit check, or anything else that pinpointed Payton's location. With any luck at all, they’d find them.

.   .   .   .   .   .

All six team members hit London on the fly , working around the clock and hoping to spot Payton or Janet before they were able to set up the meeting that had brought the couple across the Atlantic. The harder Parker drove them, the more frayed their tempers became. If they didn’t find them soon, the whole operation would come unhinged.

It took Parker’s men less than a day to spot the couple, and then they were lucky. Janet needed to buy some cosmetics, and she wasn’t about to run all over London when she knew Harrod’s would have exactly what she wanted. It was a quick walk from the Hyde Park Hotel across Kensington to the giant retailer.

Parker had told his men that they should keep a close watch on those places where the two of them were likely to go, paying special attention to the purchase of necessities. His words rang true, as the Wingate operative spotted the attractive woman. Although her face was etched in the man’s mind, he took no chances. He compared the woman standing at the counter less than a dozen feet away to the picture he carried in his pocket. They matched!

Parker’s man thought briefly about using the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. But the Harrod’s crowd was thick, and he didn’t want to chance having some store cop getting in the way. Instead he watched carefully as Janet paid for her merchandise,
and then slipped in behind her as she made her way toward the escalators.

When Janet Phillips left Harrod’s for the hotel, she had company. Intent upon making it across the busy thoroughfare, Janet didn’t notice that she was being followed.

The security team member tracked her into the hotel and around to the lift to ensure that she had not spotted him and was in the process of trying to shake the tail. Once she entered the lift, and had gone up to the room, he broke off the surveillance as instructed, and reported in to the rest of the team.

The team’s plans were straightforward. As soon as they spotted their quarry, they would set up full-time surveillance on the couple until they led them to
whomever it was that they were meeting in London. Although they had been instructed not to take any overt action concerning Payton and the woman, they had a green light to eliminate whomever they were meeting.

Once they knew for sure where the couple was staying, a single phone call from the Committee’s upper echelons cleared space for the security team in an office suite directly across from the Hyde Park Hotel. They quickly set up shop. After the evening rush hour died down, they moved their surveillance equipment into the suite.

Not willing to chance another screw-up, Parker instructed his men to establish visual as well as audio surveillance of the hotel. The team leader knew that sooner or later the two of them would have to leave the hotel together. He’d use that time to bug the room. The visual surveillance was another matter.

Each person entering or leaving the hotel would be photographed, using the special digital imaging camera developed under a Pentagon contract by Steiner Aeronautics. The state
-of-the-art camera, which looked like any other thirty-five millimeter, had a custom-made zoom lens that ensured the final photographs would have a resolution comparable to that of a regular thirty-five millimeter print. The camera was state-of-the-art digital. The combination of electronics and optics gave the surveillance team the ability to capture head and shoulders shots of each person entering or leaving the hotel.

Each memory card held only slightly under two hundred images. When one card became full, it was exchanged for a fresh one. The image-laden card was then taken back to the Savoy Hotel for transmission to the States.

Normally sending that much data over regular telephone lines would have resulted in interminable delays, but the Steiner engineers had added special compression software to the data transmission program, reducing the amount of digital data going back across the link to the States by over fifty percent. Once they were received and decrypted by Wingate’s computer at the estate, the images would be digitally reconstructed and displayed.

The Hyde Park is a small hotel. With all their deliveries taking place through other entrances, Parker figured they could handle the number of possible targets, consisting basically of the hotel’s guests and any visitors. If the team snapped a photo of the same person twice, they simply eliminated it from the data sent to the States.

The area around the main entrance was well illuminated;  there was more than enough light to satisfy their needs. They set up the camera, pointing its zoom lens through a hole in the blackout curtain. The hotel’s main entrance was at the top of a marble stairway high enough up from the street for anyone coming or going to be a snap to photograph. From their position, they had a clear view of the entrance, unobstructed by pedestrian traffic.