For Honor, page 17
part #17 of Tom Clancy's Op-Center Series
McCord’s documents were approved with surprising speed. After his bag was examined and passed, he hurried curbside and provided the address to a bored-looking cabdriver. Or maybe he was just tired of sweating; it was still in the low eighties and the sun was long gone. Whatever relief came from the sea was not felt here, sandwiched between the José Martí International Airport terminal and trees of various sizes that lined the roads.
McCord settled into the yellow cab, an American classic—a Galaxie from the late 1950s, right before the Revolution. The car felt refreshingly solid. He gave the driver the name of the bar and the street and hoped he could find Dr. Bermejo before she left. He knew from the translated symposium program that she spoke English and Russian, and McCord had done a few years of Spanish, so communicating shouldn’t be a problem.
If she were there, he thought. She could have been paying and leaving.
That turned out to have been the case. The drive took ten minutes on streets with light traffic. The bar was a white brick building, old and halfheartedly refurbished. McCord gave the driver a generous tip, then asked how long he was on duty.
“Until nine A.M.,” the man replied. “But I will stay longer if needed.”
McCord thanked him, creating a contact on his cell phone for the company and the driver’s name. Then he went inside the bar. It had more indoor palm trees than clients at the moment, most of them men—a bus driver, a policeman, other civil servants, it appeared—who were sitting under slow-turning fans and drinking beer with late-night tapas.
McCord debated whether to take a stool, order a drink, and tell the bartender he was looking for his friend Dr. Bermejo. He decided against it, figuring that anyone who knew her would know where she worked and want to know why he was asking. He couldn’t very well show the photograph for the same reason.
He walked over to the restroom, found that it was empty, and decided to look around for where she might have parked. Avenida del Puerto was a very wide street on the coast, a collection of white buildings with worn façades brilliantly lit with modern, trendy signs. He watched the few women who were out; like the men in the bar they seemed to be workers who looked like they were headed toward a bus stop after a long day. As he walked, McCord was also busy formulating Plan Bs. He had a hotel room, also in this old section of the city, but he could not afford to spend days trying to catch the physicist outside Lourdes. For all he knew she did not leave very often.
That would mean getting inside, which would require planning—and time wasted.
Or—
In the distance, toward the water, he saw the fortress-style structure of the Comandancia General. He stopped, thought for a moment, then grabbed his phone and texted Williams:
Missed her. May be en route to office. Need car deets.
Williams texted back less than a minute later that he ordered the Tank to check. Lourdes had been under satellite surveillance since Op-Center had opened a file on it, which meant that they might be able to pick up workable images by satellite. Then he asked McCord what he intended to do with the information. The intelligence officer replied:
Tell cops she struck me leaving the bar.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Evin Prison, Evin, Iran
July 2, 7:34 A.M.
Parand was woken by a respectful knock on the door. She had slept fully clothed in her black abaya despite the summer heat and the meager relief that came through two open windows. It was essential, however, that she be ready, since she did not know when she might be summoned. Quickly pulling on her black hijab and slippers, she hurried to the door.
“They have found it,” said the visitor, a man in his middle sixties. He was smiling. “The two missiles appear to be intact.”
The woman did not realize how tense she had been until the joy of those words filled her body. The face of Dr. Sadeq Farhadi beamed even more when he saw her reaction.
“The helicopter is waiting to take you to the airfield,” he said. “You leave at once.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, recovering and embracing the urgency of the moment. She had been told—not in detail, but enough to sharpen her mind—that even though the numbers of people involved were small, the Americans or Europeans might get onto the undertaking somehow. “The numbers of their people watching is vast,” the prosecutor had told her.
Parand grabbed the small suitcase with her clothing and a large, solid briefcase with her equipment. The gray-haired Farhadi took both from her as she came to the door.
“I am most proud of you,” he stole a moment to say. “The prosecutor sends his personal greetings.”
“Thank you, Sadeq,” she said, flushing as she walked around him. Parand did not want compliments until the job was done. And even then, when the warheads were safely in Iran, her work would just be beginning.
The two left the room and hurried from the courthouse. As they stepped onto the asphalt of the parking lot, headed for the waiting helicopter, it was already ninety degrees at least. The wash of the rotors provided some relief, and it was cooler inside the small cargo area of the Italian-built Agusta-Bell 212. Farhadi helped Parand inside, then passed her luggage to her.
“‘Travel through the land and observe how He began creation,’” Farhadi said, reciting the twentieth verse of chapter twenty-nine of the Quran. “‘Then Allah will produce the final creation.’”
With a final smile of encouragement, he slid the door shut and ran off, as the helicopter took off toward Doshan Tappeh Air Base, southeast of Tehran. It was a unique experience, to rise and bank as they did, and Parand found it not entirely to her liking. She had intended to look back at the prison that had been her home for these many weeks, but the shifting patterns of sunlight and shadow were nearly as disorienting as the movement. She also felt the drumming rotors not just deep in her ears but along her spine. Other than a rickety lab stool, Parand’s world was solid and predictable.
No more, she thought as she tightened the chest harness and sat back hard against the seat. Now her entire body felt the propellers turning. Fortunately, this leg of the journey would only last a few minutes. From the military field, Parand would take a thirteen-hour flight on a military cargo jet to the remotest regions of Russia, where the temperature would be refreshingly at the opposite end of the scale. She had not experienced cold weather since she was a student at Oxford, and even that was nothing like what she’d find in Anadyr.
That is not all which awaits, she reflected contentedly as the helicopter leveled off and her insides settled and her thoughts turned to her father. She did not think he would understand. He was a patriot, to be sure, but he was also a Christian. Parand had come to see how the two were incompatible and how figures like Dr. Farhadi and Prosecutor Younesi were ultimately the true lamps guiding Iran into the future—
Not into the past.
In the end, whether or not she ever saw him again—and she hoped she did—Parand would pray for the general, that he not be among the unbelievers or the ungrateful, and that he would attain the forgiveness of Allah and the entrance to paradise.…
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Op-Center Headquarters, Fort Belvoir North,
Springfield, Virginia
July 2, 12:11 A.M.
January Dow had taken General Ghasemi to a new location, a safe house in Georgetown, to await further developments. Additional debriefing was not deemed necessary: either he had told the truth and it was everything he knew, or he was lying and would continue to lie. In either case, events would determine how and when he would be called upon.
Chase Williams sent Anne home, though he asked Aaron and Kathleen to stay after they finished looking for Dr. Bermejo’s vehicle; support in Cuba was virtually nonexistent and he did not want McCord out there alone.
A tired-looking Kathleen walked into his office with a hazy green image on her tablet. It showed a Rambler headed to the SIGINT station at the correct time.
“A Rambler?” Williams had said, more from astonishment than to clarify.
“That’s right,” she said. “And you’ll like this—it’s self-verified.”
“I don’t follow.”
She replied, “It’s a Rebel model from 1959.”
Williams grinned. “A sentimentalist,” he said. “Color?”
She flipped to a screen that compensated for the night-vision view. “Silver,” he said. “Get a glimpse of the tags?”
“First letters P3,” she said. “Rest in shadow, bad angle.”
“That should be enough,” he told her. “Great work. If McCord is planning on going to sleep, you’ll be able to head out.”
She thanked him, shutting the door behind her as Williams contacted McCord and texted him the information. It was ten minutes before he received a single word in reply:
Done.
He waited a few minutes more and then got in touch with McCord by phone rather than text. He didn’t think they’d be saying anything that would help the Russians. And if they were listening, part of him didn’t care. They had probably figured out, when diplomatic relations were restored, that the gauntlet for the hearts and minds of the Cubans had been thrown down.
“Safe to talk?” Williams asked. He could hear the roll of wheels, knew that McCord was likely out on the street, on concrete.
“Just left the police station,” he said. “Big place. Impressive. And they actually seemed interested in helping me.”
“Because they want Americans to come or Russians to leave?” he asked.
“I’d say both,” he replied. “Especially when it comes to athletics, which they seemed to respond to. I told them that I am here to row and could not afford to be injured.”
“Have you even contacted your colleague there yet?”
“Time enough in the morning,” McCord replied. “He wasn’t expecting me to come by until then anyway. The plan is for la policía to track the vehicle I described—the P stands for personal vehicle; that and the 3 should fix the specific Rambler Rebel. I’ll know in the morning when I come back.”
“That was good thinking,” Williams said.
“What happened while I was away?”
Williams told him—again, in the broadest terms—that Ghasemi had not leaked his location, but cracked and admitted that his daughter had been “Svengalied” by a theocrat.
“That’s a shame for him,” McCord replied. “The timing of his arrival—suggests something imminent?”
“That’s my takeaway. Even his escort was concerned, once she got past my playing bad cop with her boy.”
“Ivory tower chalk in her veins,” McCord grumped.
“True, but it keeps us honest,” Williams remarked.
“You still have no idea what this is about, other than where everyone’s profession points,” McCord went on thoughtfully.
“That, plus the fact that we have a nation very actively in the market for what we don’t want them to have,” he replied. “Listen, we’ll talk more tomorrow. You rest, I’ll think. You earned it.”
McCord was ominously quiet.
“You are going to the hotel, yes?” Williams pressed.
“Yeah, yeah … best to let this sit.”
Williams agreed. He ended the call and lay the phone on his desk. He walked back to the Tank and told Kathleen she could go home. She slumped, releasing the pressure, then grabbed her bag from under the desk.
“You did exceptional work today,” he said as she began closing her station down. “You made some impressive connections with this data. Others will notice.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “But the computer did the heavy lifting—”
Even as she said that, there was a ping. She and Williams exchanged looks. She sat down, switched the monitor from slumber mode, and had a look.
“Well, this is interesting,” she said.
“In a good way?”
“Not sure,” she said. “When I set up the scan to report on Dr. Bermejo’s financial activity, I wrote an add-on to give us information about anything that involved her.”
“Well, Roger reported her car to the police. Maybe they just ID’ed the owner and have a notice out for—”
“It’s not that, sir,” Kathleen interrupted. She was waiting for the computer to translate the police report. “They’ve arrested a custodian from Lourdes wanted in connection with a fire intentionally set at the SIGINT station. Seems a guard from the facility was on a bus going home, smelled smoke on the man, recognized him, made a fuss, and the police came.”
“How is Dr. Bermejo tied to this?”
“They found her home phone number in his shirt pocket,” Kathleen read. “In her own writing.” She looked up. “They’ve just gone to collect her.”
Williams had to get McCord on this. He hurried back toward his office. “Do you mind not going just yet?” he asked over his shoulder.
“I didn’t really think I was,” Kathleen said pleasantly to herself as she sat back down.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Havana, Cuba
July 2, 12:11 A.M.
Adoncia had parked and shakily lit a cigar. Her face illuminated by the match, she realized she should not have had one Bucanero, let alone three cans.
But how often does one get to celebrate the successful evacuation of a fellow freedom fighter? she thought.
“¡Viva la revolución!” she said to the skies, her teeth on the cigar limiting the volume. She was glad for that; the other former SIGINT workers who lived her were old in spirit and body and rarely awake to see in a new day.
Tired but feeling utterly fulfilled, she had just unlocked the door when the phone rang. She considered not answering it until she realized that it might be Enrich. She couldn’t imagine why he’d be calling her since she had only recently left him. Now that he was safely away, perhaps he wanted to thank her again.
“Hello,” she said, surprised that her voice was so low, so gruff. Was it always?
“Dr. Bermejo,” a voice said, “this is Alejándro at the main gate. Two police officers are on their way to see you.”
It took a moment for her brain to process the message. “Are you certain they want me?”
“They asked for you by name, and for directions to your apartment.”
“Ah,” she said. Then she uttered something that was a cross between a hmmm and a sound of self-reproach. “My driving. Can’t you just tell them I’m sorry? I rarely imbibe. Not even in the old days. Especially in the old days. Fidel would not—”
“Doctor, they are already on their way.”
“Well, fine. Fine.” She half replaced, half dropped the receiver. “Police do not frighten me. They cannot frighten me.”
She fell into the nearest chair, the one in which she had been sitting to talk to Enrich. The cigar plopped to the carpet and she quickly retrieved it, put it in an ashtray on the table.
“No one ever visits except Russians,” she said. “Now in just a few hours, a Cuban arsonist and police—”
Through the buzzing haze of the beer she wondered whether this was about the janitor. She swore.
I hope it is my driving, she thought, suddenly sobered as she saw the twin beams of car headlights play through the window on the opposite wall. They were followed by a single blue light and the loudly audible squeal of brakes. Old, forgotten sensations returned from her student days, meeting in classrooms to discuss politics, Marx and Engels, sedition, Revolution—
There was a hard knock on the door. She grabbed the cigar for moral support, blowing smoke as she rose.
“The dragon is unafraid,” she slurred around the cigar as she walked to the door.
Two older officers waited for her on the other side. Her eyes dropped to something glowing-white in the obliquely shining headlights, held at the side of one of the men.
“La mierda,” she said softly, recognizing it as the slip of paper she had impulsively given to Enrich.
“Dr. Adoncia Bermejo?” the other officer asked.
“Who else would be at her address at this hour, and looking like her?”
“We request that you accompany us to the station,” the man said, ignoring the impertinence.
Adoncia sobered further. She was not accustomed to anyone speaking to her so formally. It carried menace. She didn’t like it.
“Why?” she asked.
“We want to ask you about your activities this evening,” he said. “We would appreciate if you would come willingly.”
She nodded, unsure herself whether she was acknowledging that she understood or that she had agreed to go.
“You will arrest me otherwise?” she asked.
“Doctor, we would hope that will not be necessary,” the man said. His tone showed respect for her title, his quiet manner for her age. She appreciated that.
“All right,” she told him. She extended her arms at her sides. “After all, I’m still dressed for a nighttime outing, yes? Not like blessed Christ near naked on his cross.”
The men flinched visibly at that, but stepped aside to let her through.
“And now, like Moses, you are parted!” she went on as she shut the light and closed the door. “I have helped to free us all yet I am not free.”
The voice was still foreign to her ear and the bravado was false as she stepped into the lights of the police car suddenly feeling naked and vulnerable.
“I shouldn’t,” she blurted, suddenly stopping on her heels.
“Please, Doctor,” the same man urged.
“I am not a collaborator.”
The officers took her arms and gave a firm but respectful tug and Adoncia went along. Somewhere along the way she lost her cigar. She saw lights go on in other apartments and felt angry, then mortified in quick succession.
And then she thought about poor Enrich and began to sob. He hadn’t given her up—her own stupid overconfidence had—but in a way she was glad to be joining him. He had the courage to do something important, and a man like that should not face this alone.
