The Scorpion's Gate (22 page)
“Maybe, just maybe, they are gonna give the Islamies nuclear warheads for the missiles they just sold them. Wouldn’t that be great, another nutty regime with terrorist ties and nuclear weapons? Can’t let that happen, Brad. No way, not on my watch. My predecessors watched the North Koreans, the Pakistanis, the Iranians go nuclear. The chances of one of those nukes showing up on Wall Street are getting too high.”
Finally, Admiral Adams got a word in. “I took the briefing on the Chinese navy and the sensitive intelligence about their plans. That’s a pretty good-looking fleet they’re sailing into the IO.”
Conrad shook his head. “Good-looking, yes, but inexperienced with blue-water combat. If I get the authority for you, can you put them on the bottom?” The Secretary leaned across the little table, almost into Adams’s face. The admiral thought he could smell the Heineken.
Adams paused briefly and then answered slowly, “If I can fire first and if I can find their subs, then I would have high confidence, assuming I had my battle group in the Indian Ocean and not bottled up in the Gulf.”
Conrad smiled broadly, liking what he was hearing. “CinCPAC has three subs tailing them in the South China Sea. So far, we know where their subs are and they don’t seem to know we know. Our subs will follow them into the IO and then they will be your assets,” the SECDEF said, clicking on one of the flat screens that showed a map with icons for ships scattered out along the Straits of Malacca. “Listen, Adams, your battle group and all of our Gulf assets will leave the Gulf and we will tell everyone you’re going to Bright Star in the Red Sea, but I want you to spread out a picket line to pick up their two battle groups. One may be heading to the Red Sea, the other to the Gulf. I don’t know how long it will take me to get you an execute order. It’s still on POTUS’s desk. Bunch of worry warts around him. New professor they got for Security Advisor...
“You won’t have any trouble carrying out this mission when you get the command from me, now, will you, Brad?” As he asked the question, the aircraft hit a pocket of turbulence and began to shake.
“Mr. Secretary, I have my orders from you to move the fleet and set up a picket line, and I can carry them out. For me to fire first, however, I will need an execute order from the National Command Authority. But if they go first, or if they get a few shots off with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, there may not be much of my fleet left. In either case, sir, it would seem that after such an exchange, nuclear or not, we will be in a war with China, which likely would go nuclear.”
Henry Conrad was silent for a minute. “You will get all the orders you need, Admiral. From the National Command Authority. As for China going to war with us, you let me deal with that. There is no way they’re going to be that stupid. We could eliminate their nuclear missiles in minutes and then fry their economy’s infrastructure, send them back to 1945. They know that.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Adams replied.
Conrad stood up. “Good, good. Now go get some shut-eye, if you can snooze on this bucking bronco.” The Secretary of Defense put his arm around Admiral Adams’s shoulders and escorted him to the door of the suite. “You see what it says on the door, Brad? NCA. National Command Authority. That’s a power that the President shares with the SECDEF. One of my predecessors tried to get rid of the title, and the CinC’s title, too, the regional commanders in chief. I brought them back. CinC. It has a nice ring, like CinCPAC.” Conrad winked at him. “CinCPAC Adams. That would have a nice ring, wouldn’t it? You’ll do a good job out there for me, Brad, won’t you?” Conrad slapped him on the back and turned away, walking back into the NCA suite.
Adams started to make his way back to his bed in the aft cabin, holding on to the wall as the plane continued to buck. In the narrow passageway between the two conference rooms, he stood aside to let a civilian come forward. As the aircraft shook again, both men were thrown against opposite walls. “Admiral Adams,” Under Secretary Kashigian greeted him.
“Mr. Secretary,” Adams replied, surprised that the man would recognize him.
“Did you enjoy your visit to Tampa? Great places to eat there. Although sometimes they’re too spicy, too hot. See you in Turkey, Admiral.” Kashigian headed off toward the National Command Authority suite.
10FEBRUARY 15
Fruits of Persia, Limited
Dolab district,
Tehran, Iran
“
I
will not give you red nuts,” Bardia Naqdi insisted. “If you want them red, you must do that yourself.”
I
will not give you red nuts,” Bardia Naqdi insisted. “If you want them red, you must do that yourself.”
“That will add greatly to our costs,” Simon Manley replied. “You must teach the South African market to eat them in their
natural color. Do you know who it was that started dying them red? Huh? It was the Americans, not the Persians, not us.” Naqdi slapped the table.
natural color. Do you know who it was that started dying them red? Huh? It was the Americans, not the Persians, not us.” Naqdi slapped the table.
Brian Douglas, playing the part of Simon Manley, looked at his business partner for a decision. “Well, Bowers, do you think we can educate our market to want natural?”
“I do, Simon. The South African consumer is very healthconscious these days, and if we tell them the red is dye, they won’t want it,” Bowers replied, looking up from his ledger of notes of the day’s discussion. “But it does raise the issue of aflatoxin, which as you know is a carcinogen. The EU has had problems with your pistachios exceeding the fifteen parts per billion limit.”
Naqdi threw both arms into the air. “Allah, save me! We Persians have been eating our pistachios for five thousand years of recorded history. Longer before that. Do you see us all falling over of your afla? Pistachios are for lovers. They were the Queen of Sheba’s aphrodisiac. When young lovers sit under a pistachio tree at night and they hear the nuts open, it ensures they will live a long life together, long and healthy, Mr. Bowers.”
“Very well, but we shall want written into the contract that we are not liable for any foodstuffs rejected by South African authorities on health grounds,” Bowers said while making another notation in the ledger.
Douglas looked at his watch. It was almost nine-thirty at night. “Right, then. Shall we go over the list for the first shipment? One thousand kilos of pistachios kernel, hulled, five hundred kilos peeled, five hundred kilos of sweet and bitter almonds, half and half, one thousand kilos of sultana raisins, two hundred kilos of dried figs. Twenty percent payment by wire upon contract signature and eighty percent upon our being notified by an agreed-upon freight forwarder that the shipment is in transit. Bale?”
“Bale, yes, thank Allah it was not more, I would have had to order in breakfast,” Naqdi joked, pointing at the remnants of the dinner they had consumed earlier in his conference room.
“Then we shall expect a contract brought round to the hotel in the morning?” Bowers asked, closing his ledger and rising from the table.
“Yes, and we shall expect a wire transfer to our bank by the end of the day,” Naqdi replied, walking the two South Africans to the door.
“The very next day at the latest,” Simon Manley assured, shaking Naqdi’s hand.
Naqdi opened the door out onto the balcony that overlooked the darkened warehouse, filled with piles of sacks and crates. The pungent smell of mixed fruits hung in the still air. The cool of the vast space helped to revive the men, who had been talking and smoking for almost six hours.
“Can you find your way back downtown?” Naqdi asked at the door to the street. “It is a chore. Some street signs are missing. Some lights are out. They do not look after this district, despite the fact that we are the ones out here who are earning foreign currency.”
“We have a map,” Douglas assured him. “And we made it here, after all.
Salaam.
”
Salaam.
”
Bowers and Douglas crammed into the small hire car that they had procured through the hotel. As Bowers started the engine, Douglas unfolded a large street map and began examining it under the pinlight of a small flashlight. Naqdi walked back into his empire of nuts and dried fruits.
Bowers checked the car’s mirrors. There were no other cars on the street. No one else in this industrial neighborhood working at night. “All right, navigator,” he said to Douglas, “you got us here. Let’s see you get us back. Which way?”
For ten minutes they took turns down potholed streets, twice ending up at dead ends. If anyone was watching, they would have seemed lost. If anyone was watching, they might have been revealed by the U-turns and driving in circles that Bowers managed. At the end of it, they found a main road, but mistakenly drove northeast instead of northwest toward central Tehran. As they passed a sign indicating that they had entered the Doshan Tappeh district, they stopped again and examined the map. If anyone was listening, the discussion conformed to the erratic driving.
“You’re an idiot! You’ve got us totally turned around, Simon!” Bowers’s angry voice rang loudly in the car. “You’re less than worthless. After almost screwing up the nut deal, now you can’t even get us back to the hotel.”
“You couldn’t have done that deal alone, Bowers,” Simon Manley replied. “And you probably won’t be able to find your way back to the hotel alone either. But we’re going to find out!” With that, Brian Douglas as Simon Manley grabbed an overcoat and hat from the backseat and got out of the car, slamming the door. He began walking down the street, eastward. Bowers waited for several minutes, then performed a U-turn and slowly headed away. He watched the side streets and his mirror for any sign of surveillance, and saw none.
Douglas walked for twenty minutes, his hands thrust into the Iranian overcoat, the hat pulled low on his head. The snow piles by the side of the road were higher here than in downtown, and whiter. He thought of other nights in the cold, of Mosul, of Baku, where his Iranian network had started to unravel. At 10:10, he stopped at a bus waiting shelter, and at 10:14, he was rewarded by the arrival of a green city bus. Douglas paid the fare and walked past the seven passengers to sit near the rear door. At 10:29, the bus came to the end of the route in the suburban town of Doshan Tappeh.
There were some signs of life around the bus stop. Lights were on in two cafés, and a small market appeared to be open. Douglas entered one of the cafés and ordered a tea and a baklava at the counter. No one followed him inside. Glancing through the window, he could see no sign that anyone was outside. No car had arrived in the little square after the bus. At 10:42, Douglas left the café, putting the appropriate small tip on the counter and wishing the man behind the counter good night.
Leaving the café, he turned left out of the little square and then left again down a side street. Still no tail. At 10:54, Brian Douglas turned a corner into a residential neighborhood and immediately pushed on the gate of the first house around the corner. It was unlocked and opened into an ill-lit white stucco corridor. Halfway down the corridor that led through to the backyard, Douglas turned the knob on a door to the right.
“Punctual as always,” Soheil Khodadad said, striding toward the British agent, across the brightly lit living room.
“Glad you have some heat, Soheil. I was beginning to become numb.” The men shook hands warmly.
“Please, sit here by the fire. I made tea. My wife is at her mother’s or you would have a meal,” Khodadad said, taking the overcoat and hat. “Father was not pleased to see you again. He called you an apparition of the spirit that comes to take you when you die.” The Iranian looked fit and maybe forty as he sat in a chair surrounded by books and magazines. “But I am very glad to see you. We have a lot to talk about. And I didn’t know how to reach you. You should spend the night. Go back into town on the bus in the morning with the commuters. If you walk down the streets here later tonight, it will look odd.”
Douglas agreed. He also noticed that the phone line was disconnected from the wall jack. The curtains were down. A radio played a talk program by the window. An old hunting rifle was over the mantel. “We thought it was safer, after Baku, after the arrests of the others, that we just cut off all communications with you for quite a while,” Douglas said softly, settling into the chair opposite Khodadad. “As I told your father, the others did not know you, so you were safe. But those of us who used to come in to meet you and the others, those that went to the drops and the meets in Dubai, and Istanbul, and Baku...we were possibly known. If I had thought you had been in any danger, we would have gotten you out. Somehow.”
“Well, it is good that you did not try. I am under no suspicion. In fact, I have been advanced thanks to my friends from the Madras Haqqani.” Soheil chuckled.
“You went there for a while, am I right? The theological school in Qom?” Douglas tried to recall the details from Khodadad’s file.
“Yes, I went there. For two years before going back to university. It is where VEVAK, our Ministry of Intelligence and Security, recruits many of its people. My friends from there are now rising to the top of middle management in VEVAK. And so when they needed someone in the Foreign Ministry to be the liaison with VEVAK, they found the deputy director of research in the Foreign Ministry. Me.” Soheil spread his arms wide. “You are looking at the director of Department 108 in the Ministry, chief of liaison to VEVAK.”
Brian Douglas laughed. “Your promotion into that job would have got me a bonus if I were still running the network. That’s amazing. Department 108 is one of those mysterious places we have heard about but never really understood. And now you’re running it?”
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