The God's Eye View Read Online Free PDF

of NSA, especially during shirtsleeves summer, but Anders supposed the look had its merits—chiefly that it at least partly disguised the fact that once upon a time, Delgado had earned a reputation as a technology-savvy killer for various East Coast crime organizations, foreign and domestic.
    That had been ten years ago, when Anders had warned him about and ran interference with an FBI task force looking to put him behind bars. The warning had of course been part of a quid pro quo, and Delgado had proven enormously capable—imaginative, discreet, decisive. You told him who, you told him where, you gave him parameters about how. He never asked for anything beyond that, and he never failed to take care of the problem. If he had a shortcoming, it was that he enjoyed aspects of his work a little more than might be considered . . . desirable. But no one was perfect.
    Delgado sat. His breathing was regular, but there was some perspiration along a row of hair plugs that seemed to be struggling to take root.
    “You come from outside?” Anders asked.
    Delgado nodded. “Fucking murder out there. Like a hundred degrees. Remar said you wanted to see me right away.”
    Anders steepled his fingers. “We have a problem in Ankara. You’ll be leaving on a military flight from Andrews immediately. This one can’t be a suicide. Can you make it look like a car crash?”
    Delgado smiled. “You know I can, especially if it’s a newer model.”
    There was something about Delgado’s smile that always looked like a sneer. Well, the man wasn’t employed for his charm.
    Anders thought of the fancy European car he knew Perkins drove in Ankara. “New enough. If you can’t get inside yourself, I’ll have a Tailored Access Operations team as backup.”
    “I won’t need them.”
    “Probably true, but they’ll be available in case.”
    The TAO people were magicians. One team had been tasked with developing access to the checked baggage computer networks of every major airline. Now it was child’s play to cause a bag, or better yet a whole planeful of bags, to be temporarily “misplaced,” and, while the bags were missing, to replace a wheel or a handle or the heel of a shoe with a listening or tracking device. After a few hours, perhaps a day, the airline would discover its error, apologize, and send the bags on to their proper destinations. Airline incompetence was so universal that no one ever thought to question whether sometimes something else might be at work. Snowden had revealed a lot of these capabilities, but not all. Thank God.
    Delgado wiped a bead of sweat from his scalp. “The particulars?”
    “General Remar will provide you with an encrypted file on your way out. You can read it when you’re airborne.” He paused, then added, “You won’t be able to liaise with the local field office. The problem is the head of that office.”
    If Delgado was surprised by that, he didn’t show it. He simply nod ded and said, “Well, now I know why you want a car crash. Are you going to stick me with the freak, or do I get to operate alone this time?”
    “You’ll be on a plane together. It’s already waiting at Andrews. Manus will be in the region, but on something else.”
    As if on cue, there were three soft knocks on the door. Anders waited. If it was someone else, the person would leave. If it was Manus, he wouldn’t hear Anders’s command to enter.
    The door opened, the office beyond it briefly blotted out. Then Marvin Manus was inside, the door closed behind him. Delgado turned so that Manus could read his lips and enunciated extra loudly and clearly, “Well, don’t just stand there, genius. Sit.”
    Not for the first time, Anders wondered at Delgado’s animus. The smaller man had a mean streak, that much was clear. But did he also have a death wish? Delgado was formidable, yes. But Manus . . . Manus was something else, something elemental. Anders had rescued him fifteen years earlier, when Manus had just turned