When her phone rang Violin jumped and dropped her cell but she darted out a hand and caught it before it struck the floor.
Bad nerves, good reflexes
, she thought as she punched the button.
Story of my life.
“Hello, Mother.”
“I was in an important meeting, girl,” growled Lilith. “There had better be a good reason.”
No hello, no inquiry about her safety. Another part of the story of her life.
“I know you probably haven’t had time to read my field report,” began Violin, “but the mission was scrubbed.”
“By you?”
“By the client.” Violin waited for a reply, got none, so she took a breath and plunged in. “You were correct, Mother, Rasouli was looking to hire an independent hitter, but we were wrong about the target. Rasouli wasn’t gunning for Charles LaRoque.”
“Who was the target?”
“President Ahmadinejad.”
“
What?
”
“It wasn’t a kill. He wanted a near miss. Something to scare him and shake things up.”
Iran was involved in a very discreet internal war between Ahmadinejad and Rasouli. In public they were friends, happy and smiling for the press, always shaking hands, clearly men with a shared agenda. In truth Ahmadinejad was losing favor and losing ground and was trying to repair his position by removing key political opponents. A near assassination might wipe the smug smile off of Ahmadinejad’s face, and do so publicly. If the president showed fear—and there would be hundreds of press cameras to record every expression that crossed his face—the perceived weakness would greatly strengthen Rasouli’s position.
Lilith grunted. “What do you infer from that?”
Her mother was not asking for advice or an opinion; this was a test. It was always like that with her.
“There are two clear possibilities,” said Violin, who had been preparing her answer since Rasouli contacted her. “Both possibilities are tied to Rasouli’s political aspirations and to the offer made to him by LaRoque.”
“Tell me.”
“The first is that Rasouli is going to accept the position of Murshid and sign the Holy Agreement with LaRoque and the Red Order. Ordering a hit on Ahmadinejad would be a demonstration of his commitment. Also, he’s been very vocal in denouncing the mosque bombing and the spate of assassinations. By now he must know that the Red Order is behind all of that, and yet he hasn’t said anything. That in itself could be a message to LaRoque and the Order that he can keep their secrets.”
“And the other possibility?”
“If Rasouli is
not
going to sign the Agreement, then it’s likely he was going to use the bungled assassination attempt to begin the process of exposing the Red Order to the world. He would need to do this in a big way—so big, in fact, that LaRoque would not dare to have him killed. Exposing the Order could be orchestrated into a rallying cry to unite all of Islam against the West. Pretty easily, too. It would emasculate European power in the Middle East, and by association irreparably damage the United States. And it would give religion itself a shot in the arm if Rasouli exposed who and moreover
what
the Red Knights are. The Catholic Church, the Upierczi, the Inquisition … that could spark a true jihad that would put Catholicism and probably all Christians in the crosshairs. Islam has never been truly unified against the west, but this could do just that.”
Lilith made a small sound that might have held an ounce of approval. “Which scenario do you think is most likely?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Violin, though she hated to show uncertainty. “The first serves Rasouli directly, and his profile paints him as severely ambitious. The second would make him a hero of Islam, and although that would give him more power, it would tie him more securely to the ayatollahs. Rasouli would be a hero of the faith, and he’d have to live that role. His psych profile, however, suggests that his personal faith is more political than actual. He’s never a fundamentalist unless the cameras are rolling.” She took a breath. “We need more information before we can decide how he’s playing this.”
“Yes.”
“We do have
some
new information that might give us a fresh perspective,” continued Violin. “When Rasouli scrubbed the hit on Ahmadinejad, he offered me a bonus to provide security for a meeting with an American agent.”
She told her mother about the meeting in the coffee shop and about trailing Captain Ledger to his hotel.
Lilith was silent for a while and Violin could almost hear the wheels turning. It had taken Arklight seventeen months of careful work to get the right credentials in place for Violin’s team of shooters to be considered “first choice” for quiet political hits. It meant actually doing some hits, though luckily none of them had been saints. Far from it.
“I … ran a search with Oracle on Ledger,” ventured Violin. “In case he was a traitor or a suspected agent of the Red Order.”
“And—?”
“He works for St. Germaine.”
She heard a sound that sounded like a gasp; but that was impossible. Mother was far too controlled, too cold, to have such a human reaction.
“Mother—?” she prompted gently.
“Follow Ledger,” barked Lilith. “Find out what Rasouli gave him and what he knows. I don’t care how you do it, you find out.”
Before Violin could say another word the line went dead.
Violin stared at the device for several seconds, totally confused by her mother’s reaction. She set the phone down as gingerly as if it were a sleeping scorpion. Then she bent to her sniper scope and studied Joseph Ledger with intensified interest.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Warehouse
Baltimore, Maryland
June 15, 1:05 a.m. EST
“Why is it bullshit?” demanded Aunt Sallie.
“Let’s conference in Bug,” said Circe, and a moment later the bespectacled young man was peering at them from a screen next to the one showing Aunt Sallie.
“Here’s the problem,” began Circe. “I’ve done extensive work on damaged and partial documents. If you look at the history of recovered writings, from cartouches on Egyptian stelae, the Dead Sea scrolls, to things like this flash drive, the information gaps are random. They’re determined by chance, by exposure to elements, and other factors.”
Bug nodded agreement, and Rudy could tell that he was already on the same page as Circe.
Auntie peered over her glasses. “That’s not what you’re seeing here? So what am I missing?”
“It’s the inventory,” answered Circe. “We have two clear JPEGS of nuclear devices and several other ‘damaged’ image files. That gives us the type of device and establishes that they are already in place. We have field notes from an operative with a Geiger counter. Not a tape or digital recording of the counter, but personal observation notes that look like they were transferred from a phone text message. We have a list of targets, which is naturally compelling but also weirdly precise, considering that Rasouli has no verifiable ‘source’ for any of this. There’s more, but that’s my first impression.”
“Wow,” said Rudy. “You got all that by looking at this for twenty minutes? You always impress me, my dear.”
“No,” interrupted Circe, “that’s just it, this is too fast. Too easy. It’s like we’re being handed too much too soon.” Again, Bug was nodding along with everything she said.
Rudy frowned. “Isn’t that was Rasouli was trying to do?”
“Yes,” conceded Circe, “and I might have been less suspicious if the drive was intact. What troubles me is the fact that the drive was damaged and yet there are a lot of very key pieces here.”
“Exactamundo,” agreed Bug.
“It doesn’t make sense, though” Circe said, then quickly corrected herself. “No—it
does
make sense, but only if the person placing those files on the drive
knew
that the drive would be damaged.”
“Yup.”
“No, that’s wrong, too,” murmured Aunt Sallie. “Damage from moisture is random. Does this mean that the files were added after the flash drive was removed during the autopsy?”
“I don’t think so,” said Bug. “In fact I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.”
Rudy asked, “Admittedly I don’t know what I’m talking about, so forgive me if this is a foolish question, but … we can’t actually be certain that the drive was really swallowed by Rasouli’s agent, can we? So, could the moisture damage have been deliberate?”
Bug grinned so hard his face looked ready to explode. “Bingo!”
“Okay, boy genius,” said Aunt Sallie, “tell us.”
“I could do it,” said Bug. “In fact I’m really, really, really sure that someone else who is almost as smart as me did exactly that.”
“Almost as smart?”
Bug sniffed. “If I did it, no one would ever have figured it out.”
“Arrogance is a serious personality flaw,” said Rudy, but he was smiling.
“The whole package here is a little too cute,” said Bug. “Either Rasouli thinks we’re pretty dumb, which isn’t likely; or he thinks we’re really smart. I’m going with that, because layer after layer he’s giving us useful stuff, but stuff only we’d figure out. I mean, I’d buy the whole ‘this was damaged’ business if there were more bits of useless junk, but there’s hardly any of that. Almost everything we have is useful in some way.”
“Which is statistically improbable,” added Circe.
“Why the subterfuge?” mused Rudy. “If the drive was deliberately damaged, should we infer that Rasouli is double-crossing us in some way?”
“Possibly,” said Bug. “At the same time, I don’t think he knows enough. By fragmenting the data he has, it tells us a lot while at the same time
possibly
disguising all that he doesn’t know.”
“Why go to such lengths?” asked Rudy. “He reached out to us for our help.”
“Politics,” suggested Aunt Sallie. “He’s an ambitious little bastard. Maybe he found a way of strengthening his position within Iran, or maybe within Islam, while still removing a possible threat to his country. The less specific he is with us, the easier it could be to spin the actual outcome in his favor.”
“That’s cynical,” Rudy said.
“Hell, we do it all the time. Spin control is the second most important tool of statecraft, and probably the third most important weapon of war after big guns and strong allies.”
“It’s also devious,” added Rudy. “Very much the Hugo Vox model.”
Circe sighed. “Yes.”
“Do we trust the information?” asked Auntie. “
Can
we trust it?”
“Do we have a choice?” muttered Circe.
Chapter Thirty
Golden Oasis Hotel
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:42 a.m.
I kept expecting the woman to call back, but she didn’t.
Violin.
I went into the bathroom to pack my toiletries. Ghost came and sat in the doorway, watching me in case I happened to discover a beef bone in my shaving kit.
As I puttered around, I tried to make some sense of the pieces of the mystery I had, but it was like trying to assemble one picture with pieces from four different puzzles. There was the hikers thing. That’s why I was here in Iran. There was no intention or even possibility of any interaction with the Iranian government. I don’t think I had ever spoken Rasouli’s name aloud before today; until now it was only a name in news stories and in a handful of CIA field reports that crossed my desk.
Before Rasouli, there was not even a whisper of rogue nukes. I mean, sure, everyone knows about Iran’s nuclear project—which is not even a “leaked” secret. Iran was behind the first press stories. They wanted the fear of it to give them leverage. What the general public didn’t know was that their program was about eighteen months ahead of the timetable predicted in the press, and that the whole thing had been kicked off with technology sold to them, and overseen, by the Russians. The Cold War was far from over—it simply had a new mailing address.
The CIA analysts were convinced to a high degree of confidence that Iran already had nuclear bombs. Maybe ten of them. But those bombs would be much smaller than the unit in the photo. They would be tactical nukes built into warheads. It was a scary fact of political life, and it’s why the United States did absolutely nothing in direct support of the various waves of antigovernment unrest. And, it’s why they let the hikers rot for a year. If it wasn’t for the danger posed by leverage on Senator McHale, Echo Team would never have crossed the border.
So … okay, look at that. The hikers were collateral in the nukes thing; but the nuke in the picture isn’t an Iranian nuke. It was probably of Russian manufacture, in whole or part, but the Russians were sharing a sleeping bag with Iran and if Rasouli wasn’t lying, then this bomb was positioned as a threat
against
Iran.
“So whose nukes are they?” I asked Ghost.
He wagged his tail because that’s what dogs do. They’re too polite to interrupt.
Blowing up the Mideast oil field was a pointless act of destruction. Where was the advantage? How did that make a political statement useful to anyone involved in either the oil wars or the religious pissing contest?
And Violin? Who and what was she?
The fact that Rasouli knew Hugo Vox made all of my math fuzzy. This whole thing could be a Seven Kings beach party, in which case trying to sort through the lies to find the truth would be like trying to pick fly shit out of pepper.
I sighed. I had way too many questions and so far … not one single answer.
Ghost suddenly turned at a sound and then trotted into the other room. I didn’t hear a knock, but Mr. Church’s asset was due any minute. Maybe Ghost heard him on the stairs.
I reached for a clean shirt and was pulling it on when I suddenly heard two sounds that chilled me.
The first thing I heard was Ghost letting out a single savage bark of warning.
Then I heard a sharp yelp of pain. The sound was instantly cut off.
Chapter Thirty-One
Golden Oasis Hotel
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:53 a.m.
I came out of the bathroom at a dead run and slammed into a figure in dark clothes and a hood.