by Tom Clancy
It was just so outrageous. How did the newcomers expect to find out what they needed to, without lobbyists from the Network to guide and educate them—and didn’t they represent the people, too? Weren’t they paid to do exactly that? Didn’t they tell the elected representatives—worse, these new ones weren’t elected, they were all appointed, many of them by governors who, in their wish to get reelected themselves, had bowed to President Ryan’s impassioned but utterly unrealistic televised speech. As though some new religion had broken out.
At the parties in Chevy Chase, many of them worried that the new laws these new senators would pass would be ... laws, just like the ones produced by the system, at least in their power if not in their wisdom. These new people could actually pass new laws without being “helped.” That was so genuinely new an idea as to be ... frightening. But only if you really believed it.
And then there were the House races, just about to start around the country, the special elections required to repopulate the People’s House, as everyone liked to call it, which was Disneyland for lobbyists, so many meetings all in one convenient complex of buildings, 435 lawmakers and their staffs within a mere twenty acres. Polling data that had been reported mainly in local papers was now being picked up by the national media in shocked disbelief. There were people running who had never run for anything before; businessmen, community leaders who had never worked the system, lawyers, ministers, even some physicians. Some of them might win as they spewed forth neo-populist-type speeches about supporting the President and “restoring America”—a phrase that had gained wide currency. But America had never died, the Network people told themselves. They were still here, weren’t they?
It was all Ryan’s doing. He’d never been one of them. He’d actually said more than once that he didn’t like being President!
Didn’t like it?
How could any man “person” to the Network Establishment in the new age of enlightenment—not like having the ability to do so much, to pass out so many favors, to be courted and flattered like a king of old?
Didn’t like it?
Then he didn’t belong, did he?
They knew how to handle that. Someone had already started it. Leaks. Not just from inside. Those were little people with lesser agendas. There was more. There was the big picture, and for that, access still counted, because the Network had many voices, and there were still ears to listen. There would be no plan and no conspiracy per se. It would all happen naturally, or as naturally as anything happened here. In fact, it had already begun.
FOR BADRAYN, AGAIN, it was time on his computer. The task, he learned, was time-critical. Such things often were, but the reason was new in this case. The travel time itself had to be minimized, rather than arranged in such a way as to meet a specific deadline or rendezvous. The limiting factor here was the fact that Iran was still something of an outlaw country with surprisingly little in the way of air travel options.
Flights with convenient times were astoundingly limited:
KLM 534 to Amsterdam left just after one A.M., and arrived in Holland at 6:10 A.M. after an intermediary stop;
Lufthansa’s nonstop 601 left at 2:55, and got to Frankfurt at 5:50;
Austrian Airlines 774, leaving at 3:40 A.M., arrived in Vienna nonstop at 6:00 A.M.;
Air France 165 left at 5:25 A.M., arrived at Charles de Gaulle at nine A.M.;
British Airways 102 left at six A.M., stopping en route, arriving at Heathrow at 12:45 P.M.;
Aeroflot 516 left at three A.M. for Moscow, arrived there at 7:10.
Only one nonstop to Rome, no direct flights to Athens, not even a nonstop to Beirut! He could have his people connect through Dubai—remarkably, Emirates Airlines did fly out of Tehran into its own international hub, as did Kuwait’s flag carrier, but they, he thought, were not a very good idea.
Just a handful of flights to use, all of them easily observed by foreign intelligence services—if they were competent, as he had to assume they were, either they’d have their own people aboard the flights or the cabin staff would be briefed on what to look for and how to report it while the aircraft was still in the air. So, it wasn’t just time, was it?
The people he’d selected were good ones; educated for the most part, they knew how to dress respectably, how to carry on a conversation, or at least to deflect one politely—on international flights the easiest thing was to feign the need for sleep, which most often wasn’t feigned anyway. But only one mistake, and the consequences could be serious. He’d told them that, and all had listened.
Badrayn had never been given a mission like this one, and the intellectual challenge was noteworthy. Just a handful of really usable flights out, and the one to Moscow wasn’t all that attractive. The gateway cities of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and Amsterdam would have to do and one flight each per day. The good news was that all five of them offered a wide choice of connections via American and other flag carriers. So one group would take 601 to Frankfurt, and there, some would disperse through Brussels (Sabena to New York-JFK) and Paris (Air France to Washington-Dulles; Delta to Atlanta ; American Airlines to Orlando; United to Chicago) via conveniently timed connecting flights, while others took Lufthansa to Los Angeles. The British Airways team had the most options of all. One would take Concorde Flight 3 into New York. The only trick was getting them through the first series of flights. After that, the whole massive system of international air travel would handle the dispersal.
Still, twenty people, twenty possible mistakes. Operational security was always a worry. He’d spent half his life trying to outfox the Israelis, and while his continued life was some testimony to his success—or lack of total failure, which was somewhat more honest the hoops he’d had to leap through had nearly driven him mad more than once. Well. At least he had the flights figured out. Tomorrow he would brief them in. He checked his watch. Tomorrow wasn’t all that far away.
NOT EVERY INSIDER agreed. Every group had its cynics and rebels, some good, some bad, some not even outcasts. Then there was also anger. The Network members, when thwarted by other members in one of their endeavors, often took a philosophical view of the matter—one could always get even later, and still stay friends—but not always. This was especially true of the media members who both were and were not part of it all. They were, in the sense that they did have their own personal relationships and friendships with the government in and out people; they could go to them for information and insights, and stories about their enemies. They were not, in that the insiders never really trusted them, because the media could be used and fooled—most often cajoled, which was easier for one side of the political spectrum than the other. But trust? Not exactly. Or more exactly, not at all.
Some of them even had principles.
“Arnie, we need to talk.”
“I think we do,” van Damm agreed, recognizing the voice that had come in on his direct line.
“Tonight?”
“Sure. Where?”
“My place?”
The chief of staff gave it a few seconds of consideration. “Why not?”
THE DELEGATION CAME just in time for evening prayers. The greetings were cordial and modest on both sides, and then all three of them entered the mosque and performed their daily ritual. Ordinarily, all would have felt purified by their devotions as they walked back out to the garden. But not this time. Only long practice in the concealment of emotions prevented overt displays of tension, but even that told much to all three, and especially to the one.
“Thank you for receiving us,” Prince Ali bin Sheik said first of all. He didn’t add that it had taken long enough.
“I am pleased to welcome you in peace,” Daryaei replied. “It is well that we should pray together.” He led them to a table prepared by his security people, where coffee was served, the strong, bitter brew favored in the Middle East. “The blessings of God on this meeting, my friends. How may I be of service?”
“We are here to discuss recent de
velopments,” the Royal Prince observed after a sip. His eyes locked in on Daryaei. His Kuwaiti colleague, Mohammed Adman Sabah, his country’s foreign minister, remained quiet for the moment.
“What do you wish to know?” Daryaei asked.
“Your intentions,” Ali replied bluntly.
The spiritual head of the United Islamic Republic sighed. “There is much work to be done. All the years of war and suffering, all the lives lost to so many causes, the destruction to so much. Even this mosque”—he gestured to the obvious need for repairs—“is a symbol of it all, don’t you think?”
“There has been much cause for sorrow,” Ali agreed.
“My intentions? To restore. These unhappy people have been through so much. Such sacrifices—and for what? The secular ambitions of a godless man. The injustice of it all cried out to Allah, and Allah answered the cries. And now, perhaps, we can be one prosperous and godly people.” The again hung unspoken on the end of the statement.
“That is the task of years,” the Kuwaiti observed.
“Certainly it is,” Daryaei agreed. “But now with the embargo lifted, we have sufficient resources to see to the task, and the will to see it done. There will be a new beginning here.”
“In peace,” Ali added.
“Certainly in peace,” Daryaei agreed seriously.
“May we be of assistance? One of the Pillars of our Faith is charity, after all,” Foreign Minister Sabah observed.
A gracious nod. “Your kindness is noted with gratitude, Mohammed Adman. It is well that we should be guided by our Faith rather than worldly influences that have so sadly swept over this region in recent years, but for the moment, as you can see, the task is so vast that we can scarcely begin to determine what things need to be done, and in what order. Perhaps at a later time we might discuss that again.”
It wasn’t quite a flat rejection of aid, but close. The UIR wasn’t interested in doing business, just as Prince Ali had feared.
“At the next meeting of OPEC,” Ali offered, “we can discuss the rearrangement of production quotas so that you can share more fairly in the revenue we collect from our clients.”
“That would indeed be useful,” Daryaei agreed. “We do not ask for all that much. A minor adjustment,” he allowed.
“Then on that we are agreed?” Sabah asked.
“Certainly. That is a technical issue which we can delegate to our respective functionaries.”
Both visitors nodded, noting to themselves that the allocation of oil production quotas was the most rancorous of issues. If every country produced too much, then the world price would fall, and all would suffer. On the other hand, if production were overly restricted, the price would rise, damaging the economies of their client states, which would then reduce demand and revenues with it. The proper balance—hard to strike, like all economic issues—was the yearly subject of high-level diplomatic missions, each with its own economic model, no two ever the same, and considerable discord within the mainly Muslim association. This was going far too easily.
“Is there a message you wish to convey to our governments?” Sabah asked next.
“We desire only peace, peace so that we can accomplish our tasks of restoring our societies into one, as Allah intends it to be. There is nothing for you to fear from us.”
“SO WHAT DO you think?” Another training rotation was completed. Present at the final review of operations were some very senior Israeli officers, at least one of whom was a senior spook. Colonel Sean Magruder was a cavalryman, but in a real sense every senior officer was an intelligence consumer, and willing to shop at any source.
“I think the Saudis are very nervous, along with all their neighbors.”
“And you?” Magruder asked. He’d unconsciously adopted the informal and direct mode of address common in the country, especially its military.
Avi ben Jakob, still titularly a military officer—he was wearing a uniform now—was deputy chief of the Mossad. He wondered how far he could go, but with his job title, that was really for him to decide.
“We are not pleased at all by the development.”
“Historically,” Colonel Magruder observed, “Israel has had a working relationship with Iran, even after the Shah fell. That goes all the way back to the Persian Empire. I believe your festival of Purim results from that period. Israeli air force pilots flew missions for the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and—”
“We had a large number of Jews then in Iran, and that was intended to get them out,” Jakob said quickly.
“And the arms-for-hostages mess that Reagan got into went through here, probably your agency,” Magruder added, just to show that he, too, was a player in the game.
“You are well informed.”
“That’s my job, part of it anyway. Sir, I am not making value judgments here. Getting your people out of Iran back then was, as we say at home, business, and all countries have to do business. I’m just asking what you think of the UIR.”
“We think Daryaei is the most dangerous man in the world.”
Magruder thought of the eyes-only brief he’d had earlier in the day about the Iranian troop movements into Iraq. “I agree.”
He’d come to like the Israelis. That hadn’t always been true. For years, the United States Army had cordially disliked the Jewish state, along with the other branches of the service, mainly because of the corporate arrogance adopted by the small nation’s senior military officers. But the IDF had learned humility in Lebanon, and learned to respect American arms as observers in the Persian Gulf War—after literally months of telling American officers that they needed advice on how to fight first the air war and then the ground war, they’d quickly taken to asking, politely, to look over some of the American plans because there might be some few minor things worthy of a little study.
The descent of the Buffalo Cav into the Negev had changed things some more. America’s tragedy in Vietnam had broken another type of arrogance, and from that had grown a new type of professionalism. Under Marion Diggs, first CO of the reborn 10th United States Cavalry, quite a few harsh lessons had been handed out, and while Magruder was continuing that tradition, the Israeli troopers were learning, just as Americans had done at Fort Irwin. After the initial screams and near fistfights, common sense had broken out. Even Benny Eitan, commander of the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade, had rallied from the first set of drubbings to finish his training rotation with a pair of break-evens, and come away thanking his American hosts for the lessons—and promising to kick their asses when he returned the next year. In the central computer in the local Star Wars building, a complex mathematical model said that the performance of the Israeli army had improved by fully forty percent in just a few years, and now that they again had something to be arrogant about, the Israeli officers were showing disarming humility and an almost ruthless desire to learn—ever signs of truly professional soldiers.
And now one of their head spooks wasn’t talking about how his forces could handle anything the Islamic world might throw at his country. That was worth a contact report to Washington, Magruder thought.
THE BUSINESS JET once “lost” in the Mediterranean could no longer leave the country. Even using it to ferry the Iraqi generals to Sudan had been a mistake, but a necessary one, and perhaps the odd covert mission was all right as well, but for the most part it had become Daryaei’s personal transport, and a useful one, for his time was short, and his new country large. Within two hours of seeing his Sunni visitors off, he was back in Tehran.
“So?”
Badrayn laid out his papers on the desk, showing cities and routes and times. It was mere mechanics. Daryaei looked the plans over with a cursory eye, and while they seemed overly complex, that was not a major concern for him. He’d seen maps before. He looked up for the explanation that had to come with the paperwork.
“The primary issue is time,” Badrayn said. “We want to have each traveler to his destination no more than thirty hours after departure. Thi
s one, for example, leaves Tehran at six A.M., and arrives in New York at two A.M. Tehran time, elapsed time twenty hours. The trade show he will attend—it is at the Jacob Javits Center in New York—will be open past ten in the evening. This one departs at 2:55 A.M., and ultimately arrives in Los Angeles twenty-three hours later—early afternoon, local time. His trade show will be open all day. That is the most lengthy in terms of distance and time, and his ‘package’ will still be more than eighty-five percent effective.”
“And security?”
“They are all fully briefed. I have selected intelligent, educated people. All they need do is be pleasant en route. After that, a little caution. Twenty at once, yes, that is troublesome, but those were your orders.”
“And the other group?”
“They will go out two days later via similar arrangements,” Badrayn reported. “That mission is far more dangerous.”
“I am aware of that. Are the people faithful?”
“They are that.” Badrayn nodded, knowing that the question really asked if they were fools. “The political risks concern me.”
“Why?” The observation didn’t surprise Daryaei, but he wanted the reason.
“The obvious question of discovering who sent them, though their travel documents will be properly prepared, and the usual security measures put in place. No, I mean the American political context. An unhappy event to a politician can often create sympathy for him, and from that sympathy can come political support.”
“Indeed! It does not make him appear weak?” That was rather much to swallow.
“In our context, yes, but not necessarily in theirs.”
Daryaei considered that and compared it with other analyses he’d ordered and reviewed. “I have met Ryan. He is weak. He does not deal effectively with his political difficulties. He still has no true government behind him. Between the first mission and the second, we will break him—or at least we will distract him long enough to achieve our next goal. After that is accomplished, America becomes irrelevant.”