Kilo Option, page 18
Wires, the thought crystallized.
Battery cables.
Something like a battering ram slammed into him, causing every muscle in his body to contract violently, ten billion fireflies exploding in his head, a gigantic hand pressing down on his chest, stopping the flow of air to his lungs, grasping his heart in an excruciatingly painful grip.
A moment before he lost consciousness he remembered seeing the same thing happen to a pond of fish when someone tossed in a pair of electrical cables. The fish hadn’t had a chance.
24
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
It was a few minutes before eight Tuesday morning when Tom Hughes parked his Range Rover in his slot and took the elevator up to his third-floor office. He’d spent a restless evening here at the complex, and a sleepless night at home with Moira and the girls fussing over him.
They hadn’t heard from Lane yet. Communications in and out of Tehran were spotty at best. And no one wanted to upset any applecarts just yet by shouting something from a rooftop for everyone to hear. Still, Hughes was worried. Something in his gut told him that all wasn’t right with his friend.
Switching on his lights, he laid his briefcase down on his desk, took off his jacket, and sat down. His office looked out over the operations center, which was starting to come up to speed for the day.
The hand-delivered night reports were already on his desk, and the summaries of electronic activities over the past eighteen hours were available on his monitor as soon as he was ready for them.
By ten he needed to have his first read on the overnights ready for Ben Lewis, who would in turn kick everything upstairs to Director Roswell.
Bertie Drogan, the day shift comms chief, came to the door. “Glad you’re here. You’ve got an incoming that I was about to transfer.”
Hughes looked up. “Is it Bill?”
“No, it’s a woman. Maybe Frances Shipley. The call originated from Tehran.”
“I want an exact ID and location. We’ve got her voice prints on record. I want to make sure she’s not under duress.”
“Gotcha.”
Hughes picked up his secured line, which scrambled telephone signals both ways even though one side of the conversation came from a nonen-crypted phone.
“Yes?”
“Tom Hughes?”
“That’s right. Who am I talking to?”
“Frances Shipley. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, I do,” Hughes said. The woman was under pressure, he could hear that much in her cultured voice. But he didn’t think she was speaking with a gun at her head. “Are you calling from a secure place?”
“For the moment it is. But this phone line is undoubtedly being monitored.”
“It’s all right, I have a back scramble on you, so we can talk. Are you calling about our mutual friend?”
“He should have been back by now, but there’s been no word.”
“He gave you this number to call under a certain set of circumstances?”
“Yes. He told me to call you if he wasn’t back within twenty-four hours. It’s nearly five in the evening here, and he left early last night.”
Drogan came to the door.
Hughes held a hand over the telephone and gave the comms chief a questioning look.
“It’s Frances Shipley. She’s under strain, but I’d say she’s not being forced to speak.”
“Is her line being monitored?”
Drogan nodded. “We’re handling it okay. She’s at the Laleh.”
“Mr. Hughes?” Frances said.
“I’m here. I was just checking on something. Now I want you to tell me everything you know. Did William tell you where he was going and why?”
“The base at Bandar-é Emn. He was going to check for radiation.”
“Did he have any trouble in the city?”
“Not that I know of. But we have a tail here, and all our rooms are bugged, so once he left I had no way of knowing for sure.”
“How was security at the base?”
“Very tight. The faction fight between the mullahs and the SAVAK was evident, Mr. Hughes. And if Bill is caught up in the middle of that, he won’t have a chance.”
“I understand. Did William give you any other instructions? Anything he wanted you to do, or anything he wanted you to tell me?”
“Just that if he wasn’t back within twenty-four hours I was to call you because he needed help.”
“What else?”
Frances hesitated a moment before answering. “He told me, all of us, to get out of Iran.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re in danger.”
“Have you come up with any indications, no matter how slight or fanciful, that Iran has got nukes aboard their subs?”
“No.”
“Any chance you’ll come up with anything like that in the near future?”
“No.”
“Anything that you or your team can do right now to help William?” Hughes asked relentlessly.
“No, goddamn you,” Frances flared. “But I won’t simply abandon the man.”
“I suggest that is exactly what you must do, Ms. Shipley,” Hughes advised gently.
“No—”
“Please listen to me, because he is my friend too. If he is in trouble, we’ll take the steps to get him out of there. Something you and your team are simply not equipped to handle.”
“I don’t like it,” Frances said in anguish.
“Neither do I. But getting yourself and your team into trouble would do nothing but compound the issue.”
“I could speak with my government.”
“And explain to the Iranian government why a British intelligence officer working for the UN is attempting to help an American intelligence officer doing something illegal in their country.”
Frances was silent for an interminable second or two. “I see your point.”
“Get out of Iran as soon as possible and let me attend to William’s rescue.” Hughes forced a chuckle. “Assuming, that is, that the guy needs any rescuing. I’ve seen him do some amazing things.”
“I hope you’re right,” Frances replied solemnly.
So do I, Hughes thought, but he didn’t say it. “Call me when you’re out, dear.”
“You may count on it, Mr. Hughes,” Frances said, and she hung up.
Hughes put the phone down. He and William had discussed this possibility and their options, none of which was wholly satisfactory. But the prize was worth the gamble.
He met Ben Lewis in Thomas Roswell’s office. “It’s about as bad as it gets,” he told them.
“Have a seat, Tom,” Roswell said. “Have we received word about Bill Lane?”
“Indirectly,” Hughes said, settling heavily. “I just got a call from Frances Shipley, with the UN team over there.”
“She’s the one who brought the discrepancy in the Bandar-é Emn strike photos to our attention, isn’t she?” the NSA director asked Lewis.
“Yes, sir. She’s a very capable woman. British intelligence.”
Roswell turned his penetrating gaze back to Hughes for a moment, then opened a desk drawer and switched off the room’s recording devices. Next he phoned his secretary and instructed her that they were not to be disturbed for anything short of a national emergency. He looked like McNamara, square-jawed, thick eyelids, and heavy black hair. In personality and temperament, however, he was anything but a politician. He directed the NSA with as firm a hand and as strong a grasp of geopolitical realism as any man who’d ever sat in his chair, or in the chair of the director of the CIA in Langley, and he didn’t care about popularity polls.
“All right, lay it out for us,” he said.
“It’s possible that William has been arrested by the Iranian authorities. SAVAK, hopefully, but possibly the religious leadership at Bandar-é Emn.”
“How certain are we?”
“We think he started out for the base. According to Commander Shipley, those were his plans. He instructed her to call me in the event he didn’t return within twenty-four hours. He hasn’t shown up, so she telephoned. The call was secure.”
“He made no other rendezvous or contact points? Nothing by radio?”
“No, sir. Nothing. The presumption is that he’s been arrested.”
“Or killed,” Lewis added.
“No,” Hughes interjected sharply. “Not killed. They would have made something out of it. A dead body is only as useful as the publicity it generates. Whereas a live body is a strong negotiating element.”
“Which is why you’re here. To ask that steps are taken to negotiate his release—if he has been arrested, and if he is not dead.”
“We sent him, Mr. Director. On the president’s orders,” Hughes flared again.
Roswell’s gaze never wavered. “He understood the odds. And you know how long it took for us to secure the release of the hostages in the eighties.”
“They didn’t know as much as Bill Lane, if you want to reduce it to those terms. They got the publicity, deservedly so, but William could cause this agency, and certainly this administration, a great deal of harm that might take years to recover from.”
Lewis tried to interrupt, but Roswell held the Russian Division chief off.
“Point taken, Tom. What do you suggest we do? Send in the marines?”
“If need be.”
“Or something else?”
Hughes girded himself, thinking of Moira, which always gave him strength.
“I mean no disrespect, Mr. Director.”
“None taken,” Roswell replied evenly.
“What were your plans in case William’s mission ran into trouble?”
A niggling smile played at the corner of the director’s mouth. “Take advice from my staff, and make my recommendations to the president.”
Hughes glanced at Lewis. His boss was nonplussed. But he’d never known Lewis to back down when his support was needed. Like now. His expression at the moment, however, seemed to be saying: You’ve got the rope, careful you don’t hang yourself with it.
“Assuming William is alive, and until I see his body with my own eyes I’ll assume he is still alive, then he is definitely a negotiable commodity. His value to the Iranians, of course, will depend upon two things: Have they equipped their submarines with nuclear weapons, and has William discovered this fact?”
“If both conditions have been met, then Lane would be better off dead—in the Iranians’ view,” Roswell said.
“Not if our offer to them for his release is so compelling they couldn’t possibly turn it down.”
“What might that be, Tom?” Roswell asked mildly, his eyes hooded now.
“The raid on Bandar-é Emn was not staged by the Israelis. We know this for a fact. Either it was ordered by Tehran for some as-yet-unknown purpose, or it was ordered by Saddam Hussein.”
“To what end? He didn’t hurt the Iranians.”
“For the same reason we sent William; for the nuclear question. If Hussein has the information, he could use it to bargain with us. And probably be successful.”
“And if it were an Iranian disinformation plot?”
“Then William’s incursion wouldn’t be so meaningful. The key is Saddam Hussein.”
“We’re listening,” Roswell prompted.
“SAVAK undoubtedly knows who they’ve got by now. They know who he works for and what he does. If he got into the sub pens and got close enough to the submarines to check them out with a Geiger counter—which I’m sure he did—they know he’s good at what he does.” Hughes hesitated for a brief instant. “They would know that whatever assignment he was given, he’d carry it out with great zeal and professionalism. If he set out to do something, anything, he would have a very good chance of succeeding.”
“Get to the point.”
“Something that we and the Iranians would most like to see now, and in fact would like to have seen for several years, William can give them.”
The director’s office was silent. Outside, the morning was gray. It promised to snow again.
“Saddam Hussein,” Hughes said.
Roswell looked puzzled. He spread his hands. “What?”
“If the Iranians release William, his next assignment will be to assassinate Saddam Hussein.”
TEHRAN
Frances Shipley sat with Terry Reilly at a window table in the hotel’s Tiare Polynesian restaurant staring out at the smoldering city thirteen floors below. The Iranian capital in winter always seemed to be on the verge of an all-out conflagration. Smoke rose from tens of thousands of charcoal braziers, and there seemed to be a deadly air of volatility hanging over the vast metropolis, ready with the slightest spark to send them into instant firestorm.
They were leaving in the morning. The final warning from Tom Hughes coming on the heels of Bill Lane’s disappearance convinced even Reilly that it was time to bail out. Frances didn’t want that. None of them did, but she especially felt as if she were deserting Bill.
“Bloody hell,” she murmured.
Reilly reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I know, darlin’. But staying here won’t help him. We can pull a lot more weight across the border.”
Frances looked into his intelligent, loving eyes. He was a good man, and it’d been grand with him. But seeing Bill again in Fort Meade had rekindled feelings she thought she’d buried long ago. She cared for Reilly. But she knew now that she was in love with Bill Lane. And had been from the first day she’d seen him.
Reilly read something of that from her eyes. “He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. And now that his people know he’s in trouble, they’ll send help.”
Frances looked bleakly at him. He was trying to help, she knew that. But it didn’t stop her from being sick with worry. Lane was a macho pig and a son of a bitch. But he was her son of a bitch, and she was sorry she’d let him go.
What if he was dead? She turned that thought over in her mind as she looked down again at the city. No, she thought. Somehow, by whatever telepathy, she knew for certain that Lane was alive, but in trouble.
Part of her wanted to remain in Iran, to return to Bandar-é Emn and demand Lane’s release. But another, more intelligent, part of her knew that Reilly was right. They could do more for Lane from outside Iran’s borders.
The restaurant was crowded, the hum of conversations creating a pleasant undertone. It suddenly stopped.
“Shit,” Reilly said half under his breath.
Frances turned around as six men, two of them in civilian clothes, the other four in uniform and armed with rifles, came across the restaurant. They looked serious.
Reilly got to his feet.
“Captain Terrence Reilly?” one of the civilians asked stiffly.
“What do you want?” Reilly replied evenly.
“Are you Captain Reilly?”
“Yes.”
The civilian turned his gaze to Frances. “Are you Commander Frances Shipley?”
“Yes, I am,” Frances said, rising. “Who are you?”
“You and your team are under arrest. Please come with us without trouble.”
“I want to know who the hell you are before we go anywhere. Are we being kidnapped? We’re here under the authority of the United Nations—”
“You are here spying on Iran for the United States,” the civilian shouted, spittle flying from his lips. He pulled out a pistol. “You will find out soon enough who we are.”
“Easy does it,” Reilly said holding his hands up palms out. “Where is the rest of our team?”
“They are being taken into custody at this moment.”
“May we be allowed to contact our embassies?”
“It is not permitted.”
“Sanctions,” Frances said, looking the Iranian in the eye.
“What?”
“We came here to help, is this how you repay us?” She glared at the man. “Maybe another few years of international sanctions will get your attention.”
“Either come with us now, or we’ll shoot you right here,” the other civilian said emotionlessly.
Frances glanced at Reilly, who gave her a smile. “All right,” she said.
Yernin sat at the corner table in the Tiare Polynesian with Aleksandr Sorokin, a Ukrainian intelligence officer working in Iran under double cover as a Russian journalist. Neither the Iranians nor the Russians knew his true identity.
They watched as the two UN inspectors were led away. Since Lane had disappeared, the woman was to have been Yernin’s lead.
“Who was the man with her?” Yernin asked.
“An American marine captain. He’s on the FIRFINTEL team with Commander Shipley,” Sorokin replied without hesitation.
Yernin gave him a penetrating look.
Sorokin pursed his thick lips. “I’m a journalist. It’s my job to know things. You would be surprised what the FIS pricks tell me.” The FIS was the renamed Russian KGB.
“Did you recognize the Iranians?”
“SAVAK. But I would like to have been a little bird over there to hear what that was all about. They didn’t seem very happy.”
“Have we got anybody inside SAVAK?”
“We don’t, but my Russian friends do. I think I can find out why they’re pissing around with the UN. Should have just kicked them out.”
“I want to know about Lane,” Yernin corrected the portly intelligence officer.
Sorokin glanced at the doorway. “Do you think that Lane has been arrested, and has implicated the UN team?”
“He hasn’t been seen since yesterday, and now this,” Yernin said thoughtfully. “If there is a connection, I want to know about it. That and about Bandar-é Emn.”
“There has been no word as yet, Colonel,” Sorokin admitted uncomfortably. Yernin’s reputation, as shadowy as it was, demanded a great deal of respect and even more caution. He was to be told the truth, no matter how disagreeable. “In fact, our resources down there are not good just now. Even since the … incident. The stupid bastards let themselves walk into a trap.”
“We didn’t stay to help. Instead we turned tail and ran.”
