by T. Ainsworth
A yawn followed the memory. Jericho wondered if anyone the admiral contacted would really be able to get the freighter’s name. Even in the spy world, nothing worked quickly. She didn’t want Sorenson to be disappointed. With no other alternative but to wait, she began reading stacks of administrative and intelligence reports, performance appraisals, and directives. Each was stamped ASAP.
“Hey, Lainey…got some chicory?”
Herndon stuck his head through the door, knocking when he was already inside. Startled by the unplanned appearance, Jericho started to rise.
“As you were, Commander,” he said sweetly. “Keep your shoes off.”
Relieved, Jericho relaxed. Never wanting to appear casual, she worried that stockinged feet could be provocative to male staff, even an admiral with a father’s affection. Settling in her chair, her toes still groped for the shoes.
“You Southerners,” she said. “How about just regular coffee? Is that good enough…sir?”
“That’ll do,” he said, adding a broad grin. “And don’t you go worrying about your ol’ freighter. She isn’t upping anchor anytime soon. Tell you why.”
“Hold on, let me get Glen here. He deserves to hear this. Just temper your words, Admiral. Also, please don’t call me by my first name. The kid will get the wrong message.”
“Bring him on in. I love to share.”
Sorenson was visibly uneasy as he shook the admiral’s hand.
“Excellent job, Glen. Used your noggin. Commander Jericho speaks highly of you.”
Sorenson stood paralyzed.
“Could use you in navy intelligence. Ever think of signing up?”
“Sir, he’s all mine.” Jericho smiled at the admiral. “Glen, you can relax. This isn’t a firing squad. It’s about your freighter.”
The young analyst remained frozen. Closing her office door, Jericho motioned for him to sit. He waited until Herndon dropped in the closest chair. It released a worrisome groan.
The admiral’s ballpoint pen started clicking. “Glen, I got a call from a good sailor. Too bad they give them desk jobs. Known him since—”
Jericho politely coughed to break up what would become a prolonged monologue.
“Anyway your ship’s name is Shindu Sagar. Maritime commission’s already doing background. The tidbit came from a Brit frigate laying over for fuel. The crew was disappointed, as you might guess, as the sailors were hoping for liberty where…you know…the girls wear a little less and serve rum in coconuts.”
Jericho winced. Sorenson didn’t even venture a smile.
“There’s more to tell, ya’ll,” said Herndon.
“Not about shore leave,” she retorted.
“No, no, no! Just trying to tempt your Glen one more time about the navy!” Herndon laughed. “So this morning at about 0200, VHF starts squawking about a Mayday. Maybe twenty-one, twenty-two minutes later, a helicopter hammers over the frigate, rattling their bones. The Sea King’s heading out to get wet feet, and darn if the Brits don’t record the whole shebang!”
“Lucky break,” Jericho added.
“The freighter’s first officer’s hysterical.” Herndon continued, “Reports men overboard.”
“Men overboard?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Tres amigos.”
“Seriously?”
“How about those apples?” laughed the admiral.
“Three men overboard?” Jericho needed to say it herself to believe it. The ship was a lumbering freighter. “Calm seas?”
“Moderate at best. No weather.” His pen was clicking furiously. “Get this. One’s el capitano.”
Jericho raised an eyebrow to see Sorenson ready to explode with questions.
“The helicopter inspected the ship then spent an hour checking the wake. Patrol boats too! Can you believe that?”
“Would a garnet laser have shown anything, Glen?” she inquired.
“Yes, Commander Jericho,” he replied, “if we’d known. Could possibly have caught the splashes.” He felt a disturbing sensation that another question was coming.
“That IR image you studied. It was close to the Mayday, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am. The interval was narrow.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“I know,” the admiral said. “Maybe they just lost the oscars.”
Jericho translated for Sorenson. “A nickname for dummies thrown overboard to practice search and rescue.”
“Oh.”
“It may look that way,” she theorized, “but that assumption conflicts with logic and the facts.”
“Go on, Commander,” said Herndon.
“You wouldn’t dump bodies approaching a port, especially in normal swells, and call for search and rescue. You’d pitch them in deeper water. They’re begging for an inquiry, even if the victims are weighted to sink. They didn’t find them, did they?”
“Probably not,” said Herndon.
The clicking pen made Sorenson frantic.
“So you think the crew killed them and sounded the alarm to make it look like an accident?”
“That makes no sense either…especially that close.” She looked at Sorenson. “Glen, you’re confident the man hanging off the stern was alive?”
“Seawater washing over a dead body would cool it promptly, so I suspect he was…ma’am,” he added.
“Elaine”—Jericho glared at the admiral. Realizing what he had just said made him only grin more—“would you call a Mayday with a body dangling off your stern?”
“Strange, don’t you think?” Even to a senior officer she knew well, speaking rhetorically with her junior civilian analyst present was disconcerting.
“Unless you didn’t know,” Sorenson interjected. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“That’s what I think too, son,” said the admiral, unfazed.
“So where are the bodies?” Jericho asked Sorenson.
“We know where one was…or is. That leaves two unaccounted for,” said Sorenson, again adding, “ma’am.”
“In the water, I reckon,” concluded the admiral.
Jericho wasn’t satisfied. “Still, the mystery is why. It’s got to be something to do with those containers.”
Strangely, the admiral’s pen had fallen silent. His fatigued grin came from years of work and worry. “Maybe we need to...”
Jericho held up her hand to silence him. “Glen, would you excuse us, please? We’re going to be talking a notch above for a bit. Thanks for your insights.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am. Admiral…” He jumped for the door and left.
“Smart guy,” said Herndon.
“Mastered in optics and lasers.”
“Don’t lose him.” His pen started clicking again. “Lainey, I’m thinking we’ve got too many questions. I’d call this a hot item. Warrants a spot on this week’s nuclear agenda. Expensive resources have been wagered. You know Priscilla doesn’t like unhappy endings.”
“So you’re reminding me again to be prepared?”
Jericho knew the woman well. Priscilla Rushworth was her superior in every regard. The CIA Division Chief and Chair of the Nuclear Committee arrayed her appointment like the winning sash at a beauty pageant. The woman demanded answers to any question she asked.
“That obsessive nature of yours assures it,” grinned Herndon.
“I won’t grate her, if that’s what you mean. Just facts and our best estimates,” said Jericho.
With a wrinkled brow, Herndon lowered his head. “Every picture has a story, Elaine. Question is what is going on behind the camera. One thing’s for certain: it’s usually bad. Terrorism’s darn dirty. No uniforms. No honor. The vilest of devils.” A gloom brushed across his face. “I’ve lived too long, I reckon.”
The admiral saluted first as he walked out.
TWENTY-NINE
Virginia September 29, 2003
The civilian clothes were a welcome deception as she headed by train to the Foggy Bottom office
building in Crystal City. On permanent lease to the CIA, the name on the portico was fictitious, but the armed guards inside the doors were not. Jericho turned off her cell phone and handed it to an impassive woman at a desk who placed it in an envelope then gave her a claim slip like she had just checked her coat. Jericho’s credentials were reviewed and she walked through the body scanner.
“Tenth floor, ma’am,” the woman said.
Stepping from the elevator, she passed through another checkpoint into a sterile complex, impermeable to usable wavelengths. Overhead, surveillance cameras watched all activity. Cottrell Herndon was waiting when she came out of the washroom. Reflexively her arm came to a salute. He grinned.
“Stop, Elaine, you’ll scare the civilians.” Her arm fell.
“Sorry, Admiral. Habit.”
“That outfit flatters you,” said Herndon. “I bet it makes you want to muster out and work for one of those K Street think tanks. Burn those uniforms…”
“Cottrell, how about a simple hello and you look nice?”
A firm smile followed, but Jericho knew the admiral couldn’t help himself. He pestered her endlessly to get out in the world, removed from the drabness of dispassionate satellite reconnaissance. He meant well, but she wasn’t interested. America was at war.
“Okay,” he said, his smile answering hers. “Hello, you look nice,”
“That’s better.” Jericho laughed. “Keep practicing, Grandpa. Now, is there anything more I need to know for the meeting?”
“I hear Priscilla’s in rare form today.” He rarely missed an opportunity to chide the woman’s behavior. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, straight faced. “The room needs more estrogen. Maybe your sweetness will rub off.” He patted her shoulder. “Ready?”
“Of course,” Jericho said, heading inside the meeting room.
She found her name card.
Cdr. E. Jericho, USN
NGA Senior Analyst
Middle Eastern Division
Nuclear Committee
After preparing her remarks for the last four hours at home, she settled in the appointed chair. Her toes ached. When she noticed that the table skirt touched the floor, her heels came off. Her green eyes scrutinized the room, meeting the porous looks of other members. Seemingly wallpapered, there were more silent bodies—the true experts with immediate answers to anything asked. There were four women in the room, but just one counted.
The doors sealed shut.
A man spoke into the ear of a well-dressed woman whose makeup was applied with an engineer’s precision. Priscilla Rushworth’s slight smile didn’t fool anyone. Her pencil clinked against a water glass.
“Good morning,” she announced.
Silence came rapidly.
“We are secure,” she said, smashing a gavel on a sound block. A transcriptionist’s fingers danced on the keys as voice and video equipment created an additional record of the proceedings. The smile left. “This committee will come to order.”
Priscilla Rushworth was in charge.
Every meeting began with praise to the White House and Congress, a flattering remark offered about the intelligence community, always including the CIA, and concluded with the importance her committee played in America’s fight against terrorism. She never used notes. She didn’t have to. She knew her script by heart. They all did.
Controlling each agenda item with her insistent style, Rushworth goaded everyone for information. The owners of unfinished old business received a saccharin-coated verbal flogging when assignments slipped past the finish date.
Once, when Jericho passed two committee members speaking quietly to each other in the hallway, she overheard the words that summarized the woman’s personality: “The sweetest bitch you never want to meet.” Jericho understood the sentiment from their first meeting.
“NGA update,” Rushworth said. “Commander Jericho, please?”
There was just enough charisma in her voice to make Cottrell Hendon roll his eyes.
Jericho presented data regarding her division’s most recent intelligence estimates, concluding with a summary and update on the status of the elusive freighter that was suspected of transporting elicit materials out of South Africa.
“Madame Chair,” said Jericho, “my analyst tracking the ship surmised her next port of call after Yemen was Abbas. Now, those first two containers offloaded in Mukha might’ve been empty or had their contents moved”—Jericho was speculating, something she tried to avoid in a formal briefing unless there was no choice—“We know Iran is pushing hard to go nuclear, and we believe the ship still had the other two containers aboard when she got there.”
“So you’re suggesting they were delivered to Iran?” Rushworth asked.
“We have no specific image confirming that, but two containers that were visible before the stop in Iran were no longer present in the later downloads.”
“Thank you, Commander Jericho,” Rushworth said, “for the work you’ve done.”
Herndon audibly sniffed.
“Thank you, Madame Chair, from my whole team.”
Rushworth ignored the rejoinder. Jericho saw Herndon wink at her from across the table.
“Richard Fields.” Rushworth motioned to her personal assistant. “More thoughts?”
“NSA is emphatic that the containers from South Africa held maraging steel for centrifuges,” he replied. “The reason two of containers went inland in Yemen is unclear.”
And it makes no strategic sense, thought Jericho. She had visited Yemen during a tour on the Horn of Africa Joint Task Force Command. The country was rural, and the common people barely literate. Al Qaeda only had a small presence there. Why would that country be a nexus for nuclear materials?
Cottrell Herndon spoke without waiting for the nod of approval from Rushworth. She couldn’t prevent him, and the admiral wouldn’t stop if she tried.
“Maybe the two boxes had surface missiles in them, bound for Oman. Nailing a tanker in the straits would send oil prices to the moon. Nice little run-up for the crude market would make people in the know very rich.”
Rushworth’s impatience was noticeable. “I don’t like guessing,” she replied.
Jericho interjected quickly. “I recommend we survey from the Yemeni highlands east to hunt for—”
“Order it,” Rushworth said tersely, pointing to an air force attaché. “And, you may sit down, Commander Jericho.”
Jericho returned to her seat as the door opened and a messenger handed Fields an envelope. He read its contents twice before speaking. “Seems we’ve got fresh intelligence.”
Rushworth loathed information revealed this way—things she couldn’t review prior. It made her capacity to immolate the committee members more difficult.
“Richard…if you please…” Her politeness veiled irritation.
“Thank you, Madame Chair.” Fields reread the information before speaking. “Our sources report that this past July when the Sagar laid over in Houston, one of the crew was Jamil Sayyaf. If you recall, he’s been trying to secure a nuke for al Qaeda. A port guard confirmed his presence because he walked with a limp—a bullet injury that unfortunately missed a more vital spot—and used a black stick for support. The images over Berbera and Mukha suggests Sayyaf was—”
“Didn’t Houston detain him?” Rushworth interrupted.
“They didn’t know,” he replied.
“Oh, for God’s sake! That’s ridiculous!” Rushworth looked around the table, shaking her head. “Keep going,” she sighed noisily.
“Sayyaf wasn’t aboard the Sagar in Karachi, neither were three other men. But there are many pieces that we just don’t know at this point.” Fields looked at the document again, pausing to organize his thoughts. “As Commander Jericho stated, the ship stopped in Iran. I’d put my money on the hypothesis that Sayyaf and the other two containers got off there—then one of the commander’s analysts…his name is…” Fields shuffled through his papers. “I can’t find it,” he said.
/> “Glen Sorenson,” said Jericho proudly.
“Whatever,” said Rushworth. “Go on, Richard.”
The admiral saw Jericho’s face go red.
“So this analyst, Sorenson, sees a body hanging off the stern of this handy-size freighter as it’s turning into the Baba Channel. British sources confirm a Mayday—three men overboard. We get a search-and-rescue thing, but no bodies show up. All we do know is that the captain is missing, along with another crewman, and someone who we’ve just learned boarded in Houston.”
Jericho glanced at Cottrell Herndon. His eyes spoke clearly.
Behind the camera.
“That’s just great,” moaned Rushworth. “Do we have this someone’s name?”
“No,” replied Fields. “Not yet, at least.”
“Border and Customs?” The harassing began. “You know this?”
“No, but we’ll look into it.”
Rushworth searched for another victim through glasses that magnified her wrinkled eyelids.
“Transportation?”
The TSA representative said nothing.
“Coast Guard, aren’t you supposed to monitor boat traffic?”
“Madame Chair, we get hundreds of freighters—”
“Save it. HSA?” The chair then answered the question herself. “Never mind.”
Rushworth’s voice trumpeted out her nose. “Look…We are the Nuclear Committee of the United States of America, so I shouldn’t have to ask these questions. Is this someone a domestic asymmetric threat from a sleeper cell whose work was done—and if so—what was he up to, and what the frick happened to him?”
It was clear to Jericho that grace and patience were not Rushworth’s strong suits.
“We’ve got an opportunity to assess our thirty-billion-dollar intelligence overhaul.”
Nobody in the room moved.
“I want to know who he is or was—and what happened to those boxes.” Her raised fingers closed to a clench. “That’s two simple requests.”