EVIL DEEDS

EVIL DEEDS, PART II, Chapters 4-9

CHAPTER FOUR

Bob rubbed his eyes. The glare from the overhead fluorescent lights in the Langley conference room were starting to get to him. “All right, where are we going wrong? We haven’t come up with a thing.”

Tanya Serkovic tapped her fingernails on the tabletop and swiveled back and forth in her chair. She gazed around the room at each of the others. “I think we’re approaching the problem from the wrong angle,” she said. “We’re wasting our time talking about assassination squads. Besides, the Serb leader is impossible to isolate.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Frank Reynolds interjected. “But it sure as hell would be illegal.”

“Yeah, right, Frank,” Tanya shot back. “As I was saying, we need to change our approach.”

“Well, we could catch him with an intern,” Raymond Gallegos offered. “On second thought, forget it! Clinton’s already done that, and it didn’t hurt him a bit.”

Groans and half-hearted laughs.

“Let’s get serious, guys,” Bob said. He got up from his chair and walked over to the blackboard. “Tanya’s right. Let’s look at the problem from a different angle. If we can figure out a way to destabilize the Serb regime . . ..” He let the thought hang while he returned to his chair.

Deep in the bowels of the Central Intelligence Agency complex at Langley, Virginia, Photographic Intelligence Analyst Rosalie Stein inspected the contents of a file. News articles, agent-in-place photographs and reports, and satellite photographs were scattered on the table in front of her. She’d worked through the articles and reports first, but had come up with nothing new. The satellite photographs –  hundreds of them – hadn’t been touched. Like leaving dessert until last. She knew analyzing them would be tedious, but it was the part of her job she loved the most.

The National Reconnaissance Office had satellites passing over Serbia sixty times each twenty-four-hour period. Most of the pictures transmitted by the “eyes in the sky” were of scenery, rooftops, and traffic. The definition of the photographs was amazing. Anything that emitted a heat signature – living things, vehicle engines, and smokestacks – could be spotted in the dark by infrared (“IR”) satellites. During daylight hours, the synthetic aperture radar (“SAR”) satellites sent back shots that were so clear individuals could be identified.

Rosalie had to analyze each photo slowly and carefully. She never knew what she might find. After eleven hours, the images were starting to blur. She swept her dark red hair away from her face, while she leaned over and stared at the pictures, searching for something – a clue, an anomaly. Some of the photos revealed Serb military units in the field. But most, as usual, were of open space, or of one Serb town or another. Lots of scenic views. About to call it a day, she glanced again at one last picture, and suddenly shoved all the others aside. She reached for her magnifying lens.

The tension in the room was becoming thicker than the oppressive Washington humidity. Tanya and Frank had, off and on, been at each other’s throats over the past two hours. Raymond sat slouched in his chair, his face in his hands. Bob glanced at his watch. “It’s eight-fifteen. Let’s wind this–.” The telephone interrupted him.

Raymond answered it. “Who . . . Stein, you said?” He listened for several seconds, then covered the mouthpiece and looked across at Bob. “It’s someone from Photographic Analysis. She claims she’s got something to show us.”

“Tell her to come right up,” Bob said. “What do we have to lose?”

“Got lost!” Rosalie apologized when she rushed, blushing and breathing heavily, into the room fifteen minutes later. “Rosalie Stein, Photographic Analysis,” she announced. “I’m new.”