Kilo Option, page 28
He went inside and threw on a pair of slacks, a light V-neck sweater, and a pair of moccasins.
Frances had driven up to Nice to do some grocery shopping at the Super-marché, and wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. If she returned early she would see the car in the driveway and take the proper precautions.
He took out his Beretta 9mm, checked the action, and went outside around front where he took up a position by the stone fence. From there he could see the road to the right and the turnabout and parking area to the left.
Only a few people knew that he and Frances were here. Although he’d not shared with Hughes his hunch that there must be a leak at a high place in the NSA or the CIA, his suspicions had deepened the more he thought about the coincidences leading up to his arrest at Bandar-é Emn, the incident at the hotel, and the attack on the island.
Someone who had known his moves had transmitted them to the enemy. Paranoia? He thought not. Someone on his own side wanted him dead.
He stepped a little farther into the shadows beneath the grape arbor as a dark blue Renault with deeply tinted windows topped the hill and came through the gate, parking in the turnabout.
Ben Lewis levered his bulk out of the small car and studied the front of the house as if he were looking for something. He wore an open collar shirt and an ill-fitting brown checked suit. He seemed nervous.
Lane stuffed the pistol in the waistband of his slacks at the small of his back, stepped out of the shadows, and walked up to the driveway. Lewis turned around, startled.
“I heard the car, but I had no idea who was coming,” Lane told the NSA Russian Division director.
“You look better than I thought you would. How are you doing?”
“I’ve felt worse.”
They shook hands.
Lewis glanced again at the house. “Is Commander Shipley here this morning?”
“She’s shopping,” Lane said. “Won’t be back for another couple of hours. Any word on Yernin’s whereabouts?”
“He’s either back in Ukraine or hiding in Iraq. But we figured out how he escaped.”
“He took the helicopter from the air force base.”
“Yeah, but the best part is the limestone caverns beneath the house. The Greek garrison used them for storage. Thing is that the cave system connects with the air base.”
“Nobody knew this?” Lane asked sharply.
“The archaeologists did, and so did Kuwaiti security,” Lewis shrugged. “But no one thought of it.” Lewis looked at the house a third time. “Can we get out of the sun? I’m hot and tired and I want a drink.”
“It’s only nine thirty in the morning.”
Lewis grinned ruefully. “I’m suffering from jet lag. Besides, the hour of the day never stopped you.”
“True,” Lane said, leading the way.
Lewis wasn’t himself, and there was an oddness between them. They’d known each other for years, but for the first time Lane could not read the man. Lewis was hiding something.
They sat in the shade by the pool. Lane brought out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two glasses and poured them each a shot. Lewis downed his immediately, and Lane poured him a second.
“There was a lot of blood in the cave,” Lewis said. “But by the time they get a hundred yards, where they hid in one of the side chambers, the blood has stopped.”
“They?”
Lewis nodded ponderously, the small whiskey glass lost in his meaty paw. “He had help. We found a second set of footprints in the dust. Same pattern sole as the other commandos wore.”
“Iraqi?”
“Almost certainly, although none of them carried identification. It was a pretty expensive operation for them. Hussein doesn’t have that many troops left. Meant he wanted to stop you in the worst way.”
“Pretty expensive for us too, Ben,” Lane reminded him. “Starting with Lieutenant Commander Stein, and including Norfolk, Richmond, the train, the two men at the hotel in Kuwait City, and then the island, the body count is high.”
“Would have been higher without you,” Lewis said, looking Lane directly in the eye. “The president knows what happened out there, the risks you took, and he sends his sincere appreciation.”
“It’s not over.”
“No,” Lewis said glumly. “In fact it’s just beginning. It’s the reason I came.” He looked up from his drink. “Have you been watching the news? Tom says you always refuse to when you get like … this.”
“No news, just music.”
“How about Commander Shipley?”
“What’s happened, Ben?”
“There’s been a massacre at a place called Nukhayb in the Syrian desert about a hundred fifty miles southwest of Baghdad. Twenty-five hundred men, women, and children were gassed to death with Sarin eighteen hours ago. We don’t have all the details yet, but it was almost certainly done by Hussein’s troops. The story is that the townspeople refused to house some of Hussein’s people so he retaliated.”
“Just like Hamma in Syria,” Lane said. “He’s made his point. He still has weapons of mass destruction and he’s not afraid to use them. He wants to be back in Baghdad.” He focused on Lewis. “What are we going to do about it?”
Lewis shook his massive head. “The Western alliance is sick of the fighting. So long as Hussein confines his antics to within Iraq’s border, we’re going to stay out of it. At least that’s our official position. The only one we can take under the circumstances. OPEC is threatening to cut back on oil deliveries to us if we make any overt military move out there. Meanwhile Sirak’s new government in Baghdad is screaming bloody murder. They want our help and want it now.”
“We’re not interested in a blockade for fear that OPEC would carry out its threat?”
“No, the president would never authorize such a move. Cowboy tactics, he’d call it. The situation is too explosive, and the stakes are going to take another quantum leap soon.”
“Something else happened?” Lane asked, his cool blue eyes steady now that he knew why Lewis had come to see him.
“Two subsea SS-N-sixteen nuclear missiles have disappeared from the Black Sea Fleet’s stockpile at Sevastopol. Nobody knows where or how, nor can they pinpoint the date closer than two weeks ago.”
“How’d we get this information?”
“Joyce Katarian.”
“Then the information is solid, but those missiles could be anywhere by now.”
“That’s what we figured.”
“They wouldn’t do Hussein any good out in the desert even if they could get them there.”
“Technical Services says they can be modified to launch from a land-based facility,” Lewis said. “They’ve got a ten-thousand-mile range. Intercontinental.”
“They’d have to be programmed first.”
Lewis looked startled. “That’s true.”
“Do we know if those particular missiles still held specific target programs?”
“According to the last SALT treaty, all their missiles, and all our missiles, were targeted harmlessly out to sea.”
“If you believe that, I have some land three hundred miles due east of New York City I’ll sell you.”
“We can try to find out,” Lewis said lamely.
Lane fixed his penetrating gaze on the Russian Division director. “Let’s cut to the chase, Ben. Why’d you come to see me? What is it you want?”
“Roswell sent me to talk to you. No one else knows a thing for the moment. Not even the president or his people.” Lewis met Lane’s gaze. “Even Tom Hughes isn’t in the loop this time.”
“I’m listening.”
“Saddam Hussein is a madman, and he won’t stop until he’s regained power, probably embroiling the entire Middle East in a war the region would take fifty years to recover from.” Lewis wiped a hand across his sweaty brow. “Maybe longer if his people are smart enough to drop the missiles down a couple of oil shafts in Kuwait, or maybe Saudi Arabia. It would contaminate oil in the region for ten thousand years.”
“The Syrian desert is a big piece of real estate. Lots of places for him to hide.”
“We know where he is,” Lewis said softly.
“How?”
“The National Reconnaissance Office found what they believe is his camp.”
“You’re a little far afield from the Russian Division, aren’t you, Ben?”
“I’m in because of the Ukrainian connection.”
“If we know Hussein’s whereabouts, why don’t we take him out? One stealth bomber could make a surgical strike. We nearly did it with Gadhafi and we didn’t have such sophisticated equipment.”
“This administration doesn’t do things that way.”
“Bullshit, Ben. You came here to ask me to sneak into Hussein’s desert camp and assassinate the man. What’s the difference, except that I’d probably not make it back out of the desert alive?”
“You’re deniable,” Lewis said.
Lane sat back. “Ah, a refreshing dose of honesty. If I try but bungle it, the White House can claim I was unhinged because of what happened in Kuwait.”
“Something like that.”
“What if I succeed? How do I get out of there? Hitchhike?”
“In that case we’d get you out. There’d be so much confusion in the aftermath that it would be relatively easy to extract you.”
Lane got up and walked over to the edge of the patio. The morning mist was finally beginning to burn off, revealing the vast Med which seemed to go on forever.
“We can set you down on the desert within ten miles of his current camp. We can give you all the equipment you need, radios, GPS navigators, weapons, land mines, LAWs rockets, whatever.”
Ever since he was a kid, Lane had hated war and violence; he’d joined the military because he figured they were the only class of people who could hate war more than he did.
When he got out of the service he hid himself behind a desk under the guise of analyst. If killing had to be done, he’d be the man to tell them who, when, where, how, and most importantly, why.
“Nobody knows all the details except us, and no one ever will,” Lewis assured him. “But the president believes in you, and so does Roswell.”
Lane thought of a line he’d read years ago when he was in school. He forgot where it came from but the sentiment had stuck with him.
It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.
He could feel Lewis’s eyes on his back, staring at him, waiting for an answer.
“All right,” he said.
“You’ll cross the border from northern Saudi Arabia. We’ll brief you in Riyadh.”
“I want Tom in on this.”
“Absolutely not,” Lewis said harshly.
“Tom will backstop me or I won’t go,” Lane replied without turning. Lewis capitulated after a hesitation. “But the British will be kept out. That means Commander Shipley.”
“Agreed.”
A chair scraped against the tile, and Lane sensed that Lewis had gotten up. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”
“Okay,” Lewis said.
After a few moments Lane heard the car start up and head back into town, and then the hilltop was silent again except for birdsong.
He remembered the end of the quotation from school. It had been presented at a military academy’s graduation in Michigan in the late 1800s. It was just as true now as it had been through the ages.
War is hell.
40
THE FRENCH RIVIERA
Lane, carrying the heavy bag of stones on his back, made it to the bottom of the hill and was halfway back up when he heard the Peugeot start up the switchbacks.
The noon sun was hot for this time of the year, and the air desert dry this far above the sea. He pushed himself to the limit. The strain on his muscles felt good to him. It was as if he were punishing himself for agreeing to go ahead with something that went totally against his grain.
The sounds of the car came closer, and Lane tried to go faster, as if he could outrun it; the human body versus the machine.
It wasn’t possible, he knew. Human flesh was frail after all, the heart easily stopped with just an ounce of steel-jacketed lead and a few grains of smokeless powder.
Not much with which to end the genius of, say, an Einstein or a Mother Teresa. Or the evil of a Hitler or a Hussein. Who made the choices? And who could say if the choices once made were the correct ones?
“Cute buns,” Frances yelled from the open car window as she passed, and disappeared around the next switchback above.
He waved and smiled, but it didn’t help his morose mood. Since his divorce, he had avoided serious entanglements. Frances was a trained British secret service operative, yet he thought of her more as a woman than as a spy who knew how to use a gun. He thought of her more as a woman, smaller and weaker than he was, with needs and desires different than those of a British navy commander. Feminine. Soft. Rounded.
He strove to protect her, not nurture her as a partner in the business. If he were to continue on his present course, could he afford the luxury of such a relationship? Or would thinking about her take away his edge? It happened in the sixties and seventies during the height of the cold war when both sides were burning up agents almost as fast as they could be produced and shoved out into the field. Those with wives and families back home seemed more susceptible to capture than loners. But the family men seemed better able to resist their interrogators than the single men. It was a trade-off.
She was waiting for him by the pool when he reached the house. She’d changed into a bikini, and had laid out an ice-cold crockery pitcher of sangria and two glasses. She looked as if she’d been lounging around the house all morning instead of shopping in the heat.
“What about the groceries?” he asked at the patio door. Given the circumstances, the mundane concern seemed silly.
“The stuff that’ll rot is in the fridge, the rest can wait,” she said brightly. “Take your shower and come sit down, I have something to tell you.”
“Important?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now, shoo.”
Lane took a cool shower, then put on a pair of swimming trunks and a light terry-cloth jacket, and joined her by the pool.
She poured him a glass of wine and smiled at him expectantly. “I’ve been officially detached to your shop for as long as I’m useful.”
Lane stared at her. “Who did you see this morning?”
She studied his face, and hers fell. “Bradley Morgan. He gave me the green light.” She reached out and touched his hand. “What is it, darling?”
“I’m leaving in a few days, and you’re returning to London.”
“I’m working for you now.”
“No you’re not. I’ll talk to Roswell and have him arrange your transfer home.”
She looked even more closely into his eyes. “Someone came here this morning while I was gone, didn’t they? It wasn’t Tommy, because he would have stayed. Nor was it Roswell, because there would have been a lot of fanfare, security in town, that sort of thing. I would have noticed that. So it must have been Ben Lewis. Am I right?”
Lane said nothing.
“Don’t treat me this way, William. Was Ben Lewis here?”
“Yes.”
“They found out something about Yernin. He’s still alive, and they want you to go after him again. Is that it?” A wild look came into her eyes.
“That’s part of it,” he lied. “But you’re no longer involved.”
“The bloody hell I’m not!” she shouted. “It was me he was after, as well as you.”
“I want you to go home, Frannie.”
“I’m a trained intelligence officer, damnit, not some helpless female … if ever there was such a thing. I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“Why?” she cried in anguish.
He had to look away for a minute, hardly able to face his own emotions, let alone her eyes.
“Because I couldn’t stand to see you in harm’s way again,” he said.
“It’s part of the job,” she countered softly.
“Because if it came down to it, I would sacrifice the mission before I’d let anything happen to you. No matter the consequences. And this time the job is too important for that kind of a consideration.”
“Then it’s not just Yernin they’re sending you after, is it?”
“Go home, Frannie.”
“Why?” she cried again. “The truth!”
“Because I love you.”
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
“Is he still at the British safe house in Saint-Tropez?” Bill Townsend, asked.
“Yes, but he doesn’t know it belongs to the SIS,” Tom Roswell replied. He was alone in his Fort Meade office, speaking to Townsend via encrypted television-telephone.
“Are the British monitoring what’s going on up there?”
“They would be, except that someone disconnected the circuitry,” Roswell said. He could see the concern on the national security adviser’s face. If this blew up on them they’d lose a lot more than their jobs. “Ben Lewis went over and talked to him.”
“He agreed to do it?”
“Yes he did.”
“He knows why we want it done this way? The deniability factor?” Townsend sat forward, his face looming large in the tiny screen. “We can’t have another debacle out there, Tom. You know this. OPEC is getting its act together again, and they’re looking to the Far East for markets, which means we could be shit out of luck if anything goes wrong.” He sat back. “Jesus Christ, even the Kuwaitis want us to get the hell out. Can you imagine that? The ungrateful bastards!”
“Nobody is in love with Hussein. Especially not now.”
Townsend laughed humorlessly. “Since when has love had anything to do with anything in the Middle East? It’s the leader who’s feared the most who gets the most respect. And right now everybody out there is quaking in their desert sandals for fear that the crazy bastard will somehow get his hands on nuclear weapons.”
