The Scorpion's Gate

by Richard A. Clarke

  His head ached. His back hurt. He hailed a taxi.

  9

  FEBRUARY 13

  The Grand Bazaar

  Tehran, Iran

  “I’ve never smelled so many different aromas at once,” Bowers said as he and Brian Douglas walked down the packed, narrow aisle between two rows of stalls. “Jasmine, cumin, roasting nuts, incense, coffee—it’s overwhelming.”

  “Yes, it certainly is,” Douglas replied, filling his lungs. “I think we need a good supply relationship with someone here. Look at all the pistachios. They’d love this in Joburg.” Douglas had not noticed surveillance when they had left the hotel, or in the Metro, but the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS)—or VEVAK, as they were known in Persian—was very good, and the fact that he could not see a tail did not mean there was not one.

  They wandered up and down aisles, asking questions in English, sampling foods, examining prints. At the end of one aisle they noticed a sign pointing to toilets. “You go on a bit,” Douglas urged Bowers. “My gut is about to erupt. Something we ate last night. Or

  the water. I’ll catch up.” Passing down the side aisle toward the toilets, Douglas moved quickly, stepped behind a high pile of boxes, and opened a back door into the rear of a carpet stall. The older man from the Metro newsstand was sitting on a pile of carpets, sipping tea. A pipe sat next to the tea. The room was barely lit by the single bare lightbulb that hung from the canvas ceiling. A radio played loudly. Douglas locked the door behind him.

  “So you return” was the older man’s greeting. He did not move from the carpets.

  “Thank you for meeting me, Heydar. It has been too long,” Douglas said, moving to sit on the lower pile of carpets opposite the man.

  “A long time in which many were killed. Tortured first. Praise Allah, they did not give up my son’s name. But if they had, how would you have helped us get out, when you had already severed all contact?” Heydar Khodadad had aged. The lines in his face were etched. His eyes were deep in their sockets.

  “They did not give you up, Heydar, because they did not know your name, or your son’s.” Douglas was speaking Farsi, quickly, fluently. “I compartmented things precisely so that if this sort of thing happened, if some of you were discovered, the others would be safe. You were safer here, acting innocent, than if we had tried an extraction. I severed all contacts so that the VEVAK could not connect you to me, to the network. But you did get the money, yes?”

  The older man nodded, yes. “Moteshakkeram.” Thank you.

  “How is Soheil?” Brian asked, helping himself to a glass of tea from the pot sitting on an electric coil.

  “My son is safe. He hates what he does, the people he works for, but what else can he do? If he quits, they will suspect him, think him disloyal.” Heydar was opening up. Brian refilled the older man’s glass and listened as he went on. “They are so cynical, these people. They loosen up a little to let off steam, make it look a little more free, pretend to have elections. Still it is all run by those you do not see and their mullahs. They line their pockets. They play their games, in Lebanon, in Iraq. They build their bombs, while the people have to pay a treasure to live, for housing, for hospitals. Without your money, my wife might have died. The public medical care is a joke.”

  Douglas was pleased to see that Heydar’s attitude toward the Iranian government had not changed. He hoped the same would be true of his son’s.

  “So, Soheil. You will want to see him again, yes? Not an old newspaper seller. You would put his life in danger again? And if they are following you or Soheil, will you be able to do more to rescue us than you did for Ebrahim, or Yaghoub, or Cirrus?” Heydar ticked off the names of British assets who had disappeared into VEVAK detention cells, men who no doubt had died painful deaths.

  “Heydar, the VEVAK never found me. They penetrated because one of the circle was sloppy, not me. I have been doing this for twenty years in Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia. I am not still alive because I am careless. I am still alive because I am good at this. Soheil can pick the place he thinks is safest.” Brian was not the polite diplomat here, or the diffident South African. This was a man who had recruited agents in dangerous places and gotten them to do risky things.

  “Tomorrow night,” the news seller said flatly. “I told him you were here, that you had given me the meet signal. I told him not to see you. No good can come of it. But he insisted to see you. Here is the address. Ten tomorrow night.” He handed Brian a slip of paper. “Now go.”

  Brian read the address, then took a match from the box sitting by the older man’s pipe. He lit the piece of paper and dropped it on the concrete floor. “Moteshakkeram,” he said, and left.

  Not until tomorrow night. He had wanted to be gone by then. He thought again about the cameras at the airport and brushed both hands across his bald head. Then he felt the modification to his nose. It was warm inside the bazaar.

  Aboard United States Air Force Tail Number 3676

  The National Airborne Command Post (E-4B)

  38,000 Feet above the North Atlantic

  “Brad Adams, it’s great to see you, buddy. I just heard you were on board back here.” The Air Force one-star was dressed in a tightfitting green jumpsuit. “Congratulations on the career, man. You can see mine has stalled out a little. Got to brigadier, but it looks like I’m going out that way. But this is my plane, so let me show you around. Sorry we don’t have better accommodations for a vice admiral, but the boss has taken the suite up front.”

  Adams had quickly checked the officer’s name tag, stitched onto the flight suit, and remembered George Duke from the year Adams had spent as an exchange student at the Air University in Alabama. They had both been on their way then, he to being a Navy captain and Duke to being an Air Force colonel. Their on-base houses had been back-to-back.

  “Don’t I remember your little girl was Shawndra? My Jackie had a big crush on her,” Adams said, getting up from the edge of the bed where he had been sitting in the aft of the aircraft.

  “Yeah, my wife wasn’t too happy about that interracial dating stuff. She’s old-fashioned. Well, little Shawndra made me a grandfather last year. Wow, that made me feel old. You wanna tour?” General Duke said, motioning toward the bulkhead door. Adams followed him forward.

  “This baby’s just been refurbished. It’s still a 747-200, but it’s been zero-timed. Airframe rehabbed. New engines, new comms, new computers. It used to be called Kneecap back in the Cold War, designed so we could run the nuclear war from up here. We could launch the ICBMs directly from this cabin. Still can, of course, but that’s not our primary mission. We are a ‘mobile crisis response’ asset. We still call this cabin the Battle Staff and I’m the director of the Battle Staff, but when we get used, it’s usually to fly in a FEMA team to a hurricane area and provide them with an office and communications until they can get things set up.”

  The Battle Staff cabin was filled with desks with multiple computer consoles, headphones, and microphones. The seats were like mesh cocoons dangling from the ceiling. The lighting was subdued, the cabin quiet, with just the noise of the air-distribution system and the hum of an aircraft at altitude. Only a few seats were occupied. Adams had seen much of the crew bunking out in the aft cabin.

  “We’re supposed to meet a KC-10 around now to get a drink. If you’ve never seen two jumbos mating in midair, I’ll get you upstairs for the refueling,” Duke offered as they continued to move forward in the long fuselage. They went through another door into a smaller room that looked as though it had been designed for briefings or conferencing. “We call this the Sit Room, because that’s all you can do here. No, really, it’s supposed to have been modeled on the White House Situation Room.” The room was devoid of people.

  “Very nice, George,” Adams said and followed the general’s cue, sitting down in one of the big leather chairs that were bolted down around the highly polished wooden table. “But tell me, why is SECDEF using this thing to fly to Turkey?”

>   “Well, we’re going to be flying anyway. If he weren’t using it, we’d just be doing lazy eights over Oklahoma for forty hours at a stretch. SECDEF is the guy this plane was built for. Unlikely that the President would use it. Even in a crisis he’d probably stay on Air Force One or go to a cave somewhere. SECDEF has all the authority the President has to order forces around, even to launch nuclear weapons. If anything comes up while he is traveling, better to have him on this than on some vanilla 757 with two satellite comm channels.

  “Besides, Brad, you should see people’s reaction to this thing. In Turkey, all the other NATO ministers of defense will come in Gulfstreams or some other executive jet. Our guy arrives in a big blueand-white 747 that says ‘United States of America’ in big letters down the side. It ain’t Air Force One, but it kinda looks like it.”

  “Well, I guess that makes sense. It’s also probably a lot more comfy up front than some plane we bought to take Congressmen around the world on junkets.” Brad laughed.

  “Secretary Conrad loves it.” Duke beamed back. “He’s booked this bird for the next four weeks. We go from Turkey to Egypt. Then we are open-ended. Told to bring aviation maps and airport plans for the Arabian peninsula. How’s that for a definite destination?”

  “Well, if you get to Bahrain, look me up,” Adams said, thinking about locations on the Arabian peninsula. “I’ll give you a tour of my emergency command post. It’s a little bit longer, not as nice, but it floats better.”

  Major Chun entered the cabin. “Admiral Adams. The Secretary will see you now.”

  Chun led Adams forward into yet another conference room, then through another door that had the letters ‘NCA’ on it. “This is the National Command Authority suite, sir. Around the corner here is the Secretary’s office.”

  “Brad, Brad Adams, isn’t it?” Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad said, turning the corner into the narrow corridor. He thrust a hand forward. It was firm, callused. The Secretary was wearing an Air Force leather pilot’s jacket, a blue button-down oxford shirt, and tan khaki pants. He looked slightly like he should be at his fiftieth reunion from prep school. “Come on back. Dju eat yet? I was just about to chow down here. Join me, will ya?”

  The Secretary’s cabin was small, with a table for two, a king-size bed, and a wall of flat screens and telephones. One flat screen showed a map with a little white airplane moving slowly across it. Two others showed dark images of clouds—the view from the nose forward and the view immediately below the aircraft. Two dinners were set out on the table, being kept warm under metal covers.

  “Hope you like steak, Admiral. I’m a red-meat man. Don’t trust a guy who isn’t.” The SECDEF removed both covers, revealing two New York strip steaks with mashed potatoes. An Air Force steward appeared with two bottles of cold Heineken. “Salut,” Henry Conrad toasted.

  He talked as he ate, and carved up the big strip steak. “Sorry to dragoon you like this, but I ran out of time at the office. Got dragged off to the White House for some goddamned NSC principals’ meeting on Colombia. Like I give a shit about Colombia. The Middle East is a powder keg, the Chinese are stealing our lunch, and the National Security Advisor has to have a hurry-up meeting on Colombia because some of the State Department’s counterdrug guys got taken hostage and they want us to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.”

  Adams had grabbed a sandwich in the aft cabin earlier, but the steak was so good he was working his way right through it as he listened to this big, gregarious man. He could not remember having had a Heineken on board a U.S. military aircraft or ship before.

  “Now here’s the thing, Brad. The Chinese are coming on like gangbusters. Their economy has been white-hot now for almost two decades. Their economic espionage in our country has been fantastic. Stole every company’s recipes, formulas, designs. They created an automotive industry and are now exporting cars. Amazing. Their cars at home, plus their industry, are sucking down oil and gas like there’s no tomorrow. They’re importing as much oil as we are.

  “That was okay when most of the world’s reserves were Saudi and we had long-term deals to get it. Now the Chinese are after an exclusive, first-dibs deal for that oil. We’ve been paying through the nose for it since the coup there, ’cuz we gotta buy it on the spot market.” He spit out a piece of gristle. “But if the Chinese pull it off the market, we will be left with hind titty and paying top dollar.”

  The steward reappeared with cheesecake covered with raspberry sauce. Conrad passed him the empty steak plate. “So now we hear from this Chinese admiral the Aussies got that Beijing is gonna sneak troops into Saudi to be a kinda Praetorian Guard for these terrorists who have taken over in Riyadh. It will be damn hard for our freedom fighters to throw out the terrorists if they’re protected by the People’s Liberation Army!”

  Adams wondered who our freedom fighters were, but Conrad was on a roll and was not to be stopped for questions.

  “Not only that, but the Chinese are sending half their fuckin’ fleet into the Indian Ocean and probably to Saudi. That gives the Riyadh regime air cover, too, from the carriers. Maybe they plan to homeport one there to guard their sea lines of communication, their oil lifeline back to China. Who knows? Want some decaf to wash that down?” Without waiting for an answer, Conrad pressed an intercom and ordered the coffees.

  “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.

  10

  FEBRUARY 15

  Fruits of Persia, Limited