If Hood were looking for order, Coffey was holding too tightly to it. Not all the answers were found in law books. Sometimes they were found in people. And he knew that this was a team of good people.

Hood was right when he said he would trust in their civilized qualities to keep abuses from happening. That thought made Coffey proud, and that pride was what had lifted his spirits.

The challenge was great. But there was one thing more important than that. Something they could not afford to forget.

The challenge was far from hopeless.

TWENTY-EIGHT - Over the Pacific Ocean Saturday, 2:22 A.M.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Over the Pacific Ocean Saturday, 2:22 A.M.

Surprise was a wonderful but dangerous thing.

Whether giving or receiving, surprise was short-lived, explosive, and directed. Wielded deftly, it was an intelligence operative’s greatest tool. It was also valuable as “incoming.” Knowing there might be danger behind a door or around a corner or even at the other end of a telephone kept an agent sharp. Being unready for it could be lethal. Bob Herbert had learned that in Beirut. Since then, he had no trouble ramping up to high alert.

That zero-to-sixty acceleration was one of the qualities Bob Herbert cherished most about intelligence work. He did not have to know what time it was. He did not necessarily have to know where he was. All Herbert needed to know was who or what the target was. Once he had that goal, exhaustion, discomfort, and even lust slipped away. If he had not gotten into the intelligence game, Bob Herbert felt that he would have made a helluva chess grand master.

Matt Stoll got the colonel’s home phone number for Herbert. Stoll did not even have to slip into the North Korean People’s Army classified phone directory. The number was attached to an intelligence research file included with the North Korea Advisory Group Report to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999.

“I’ve learned to search our own government databases before going to others,” Stoll said.

If the number didn’t work, Stoll said he would take the next, longer step to get it.

Herbert would have preferred verification up front. But he also wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. He had suffered through a traditional bomb attack. If the Beirut terrorists had possessed nuclear material, he and thousands of others would not be alive today.