“You can’t figure a way around it?”
“Somebody’s always watching. No matter how good you are.”
“How’s your girlfriend?” asked Dean.
Karr’s face flushed. He’d met Deidre Clancy during their last mission in Europe several months before. She was the daughter of the American ambassador to Great Britain and one of the most beautiful women Dean had ever seen.
After Lia, of course.
“She laughs at all my jokes. There’s something in that,” said Karr.
“There’s a lot in that,” said Dean.
“You ever been married, Charlie?”
Dean smiled — not at the memory of his own marriage but at the fact that Karr was thinking about it.
“Didn’t work out,” Dean told him. “Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work out for you. Probably would be pretty good.”
“What happened?”
“Long story.”
“We got time.”
Karr was right, but Dean didn’t feel like talking about his marriage. He glanced across the street at the restaurant where the UN people were meeting with Lia.
It wasn’t a thing to talk about — wasn’t important at all, just a passing mistake. Fortunately, it was one without many consequences — they hadn’t had kids, and no money to squabble over. Just something best forgotten.
“So?” prodded Karr.
Dean changed the subject, provoked by another billboard proclaiming Vice President Imberbe as THE HERO OF THE PEOPLE.
“You think of yourself as a hero, Tommy?”
Karr laughed. “I think of myself as a mathematician.”
Dean stared at him. It was hard to know with Karr how sincere he was being. “A mathematician?”
“That’s what I went to school for. I’m just a big geek.” Karr laughed. “I’m not old enough to be a hero. Heroes are the guys in the reviewing stands at the end of the parade.”
“Yeah,” said Dean.
Karr gave him a look. “Ah, you’re not old enough to have served in Vietnam. I know your war record’s phony.”
Coming from Karr, the joke somehow felt like a great compliment, and Dean laughed along with him.
44
Rubens’ car had just turned off the highway when the phone that connected him directly to the Art Room began to ring. He pulled the phone from his pocket and flipped it open, carefully placing his thumb at the side where it could be read by the unit’s biometric security device.
“Rubens. What is it, Ms. Telach?”
“The Peruvian rebels have issued an ultimatum threatening Lima. Their military is on full alert.”
“I’ll be down as soon as I arrive,” he told her.
By the time Rubens made it to the Art Room forty minutes later, the analysts had prepared a fresh report on Peru’s military, showing where its various units were deployed. Satellite photos revealed that two battalion-sized groups of soldiers and materiel had been dispatched to the central Andes where the rebels had been active in the past. A much larger force had gone to the south. Logically, this did not make much sense, and the analysts concluded that the military might be thinking of using the alert as a pretext to settle a local score.
Rubens noted that no reinforcements had been sent to the Amazon and northeastern areas of the country — the ones with the heaviest activity. The forces there were widely spread out. They were also under the command of the general who had warned the CIA earlier that the rebels were planning something.
Either the general staff wanted him to fail or didn’t care if he succeeded. The briefing showed that his force was undermanned to begin with — he wasn’t trusted, probably because of the prejudice against natives.
The UN election committee was alarmed about the developments and had sent several messages back to the UN Security Council, in effect asking for direction. So far they had not received an answer.
Rubens put in a call to the White House and got through to the chief of staff; he gave him a quick update. He also called the secretary of state and the U.S. ambassador to the UN, neither of whom was available to take his call.
Ordinarily, Rubens would have called Hadash first. But he didn’t want to talk to the national security adviser from the Art Room. Rubens wanted to speak someplace where he felt free to ask why Hadash hadn’t told him he was quitting.
As he started to leave, though, it occurred to Rubens that delaying was exactly the wrong thing to do. For one thing, he would be letting a personal consideration interfere with his job — a gross violation of his responsibility. And second, he didn’t particularly want to talk to Hadash about his resignation. He didn’t know what to say.
Rubens pushed the buttons and sent the call through. Most likely, he thought, Hadash would be sleeping and he would have to leave a message with an aide. But the national security adviser’s voice came right on the line.
“George Hadash.”
“George, this is Bill Rubens. The rebels in Peru have issued a threat against Lima. The military has mobilized. They’ve sent a sizable unit to the south, though their intentions there are not clear. The city itself is quiet.”
“Yes, I know. The CIA briefed me a few minutes ago.”
“Very good,” said Rubens. It was the CIA’s job, after all — but he felt as if they were interfering somehow. “Our mission is proceeding.”
“You haven’t accomplished it yet?”
The question stung Rubens, as if he had failed somehow.
“We’re moving at a prudent pace,” he said stiffly.
“I see,” said Hadash, his voice unusually cold.
Rubens wondered if he had misread his friendship with Hadash all along. Perhaps the fact that it had started as a teacher-student relationship had always colored it; maybe Hadash still thought of him as an eager but untempered young post-grad.
So be it. There was nothing he could do to change it now.
“I will keep you informed,” he told Hadash.
“Thank you.”
When he looked up, Telach was standing a few feet away, waiting to speak to him and pretending not to have overheard his conversation.
“Where are we with the mission?” he asked, eager to move on.
45
Hernes Jackson spent most of the day finding indirect ways to get information about Iron Heart. While the report didn’t mention them, Jackson guessed that there would be NSA intercepts related to the operation. His new clearance allowed him to search through files using time and location as search terms, and with a little help from an NSA librarian he managed to network considerable information about the weapons dealer who had acted as the go-between and arranged the “sale” to Brazil. Jackson’s interest in history as much as his State Department background helped him play detective; he felt as if he were reconstructing a time and place a hundred years before by bringing together information from dozens of sources, just as a good historian would do.
While the CIA’s report had made Iron Heart seem like it was a sting operation from the start, it wasn’t — the Brazilians were already involved when the CIA’s plant entered the picture. Aside from the fact that he was Russian, he wasn’t identified anywhere. This was not unusual. The agency went to great lengths to protect its foreign “assets,” and the identity of a particularly valuable one was generally so restricted that only two or three people knew who he was.
The “asset” in this case was very important and had been before Iron Heart. By cross-referencing some of the CIA people involved and looking at unrelated reports, Jackson concluded that the agent had been set up in business or at least helped by the CIA around the time of the conflict in Bosnia, possibly as part of a program to stop underground weapons sales to the government there.
Jackson was so involved in his work that by the time he broke for lunch it was after three. The small lounge room was empty, but he discovered that he could order something at a computer terminal at the side of the room. The result was like something out of the Star Trek science
fiction series — within a few minutes a metal window near the terminal hissed and opened; his sandwich was packed on a tray inside.
After lunch, Jackson turned his attention to obtaining information about the military units that had backed up the finale of Iron Heart. Again, he had to work obliquely, reading between the lines and patching things together based on inferences and educated guesses. He was at a bit of a disadvantage in dealing with the Department of Defense records (accessed over a special hard-wired link to a military Web-like network called SIRNET, for “Secret Internet Protocol Router Network”), not because he was unfamiliar with the database system but because he didn’t understand half the abbreviations. And he wasn’t sure exactly what sort of protocols covered different situations. Was it normal, for example, that a U-2 spy plane had undertaken ten sorties over the crash area? And if so, why did they begin six hours after the bomb had been found?
Jackson knew several military people he could call for background, but he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to or not. Not wanting to bother Telach or Rubens too much, he did some more searches and discovered that the “package” that was deployed followed almost exactly the pattern that would be followed in the case of a “broken arrow” incident — the loss of a nuclear weapon by a U.S. asset.
Interesting, considering that the operation had begun after the warhead had been recovered at the airstrip by the CIA’s paramilitary team.
“You’re still here?” asked Marie Telach, entering the room unannounced.
“Still digging,” said Jackson, looking up.
“It’s past nine. You ought to go home.”
“I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Anything interesting?”
“I don’t know,” said Jackson. “I haven’t really figured it out yet.”
“Well, go home and get some rest. We may need you to be fresh tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” he said, turning around to sign out of the system.
46
Calvina and Rosa had arranged to meet at the bus station at 10:00 p.m. Wednesday. The journey was complicated — they had to travel to Nevas, a small city far in the north of Peru northwest of Santa Cruz on the Rio Marañón. That journey alone would take two days. Once there, they would meet a person who would give them some type of exam and tell them what to do next.
Calvina’s cousin had been very vague about what the job called for; she claimed not to know the specifics. Calvina guessed that something illegal was involved. Most likely she and her cousin were to carry drugs to the United States. Calvina decided that if it was all right with Rosa, it was all right with her.
The thing that puzzled Calvina was why it would be against the law. There was no commandment against taking drugs, and none of the sins that she had been taught involved them. Drinking too much, yes — but even that wasn’t a mortal sin, as the priests would readily attest. So why would taking drugs be wrong?
She put the thought out of her mind as the bus she was supposed to take was called. Where was Rosa? There was only one bus per week to Santa Cruz, where they would take other transportation to Nevas; if they missed it, they would have to wait seven days.
Worse, if Calvina missed it, she would have no place to go. She had already left her mother a note explaining that she wouldn’t be back. To return home now…
If she didn’t leave now, she would never be able to get away. Ever.
“Calvina!”
The voice that called her was not her cousin’s, but Calvina turned anxiously, expecting to see Rosa. Instead, she saw Rosa’s friend Maria, who lived two buildings down.
“Your cousin gave me this to give to you,” said Maria, pressing an envelope into her hands. “She’s sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
Maria shook her head. Instead of explaining, she turned and began walking away.
“Maria! Wait!”
The announcement that her bus was leaving in another minute stopped Calvina from following. She opened the envelope. There was money, a bus ticket, and a note.
I’m sorry. Go for both of us. The Blessed Virgin be with you.
Calvina stared at the words, reading them over and over. “Senorita?”
She looked up. A bus company employee who had helped her earlier was standing nearby.
“You said you were going on that bus,” he told her. “Did you get your ticket?”
Not knowing what to do, she held up the one Rosa had supplied.
“Come. I will take your bag. Not very heavy, is it? But we had better run. The driver does not like to wait, and tonight he is running behind.”
47
Lia studied the map on the PDA as Chris Farlekas explained the situation. Telach had gone over much of the information the night before, but Farlekas tended to be anal-retentive when it came to mission prep — not necessarily a bad thing. Lia sipped her coffee, holding the sat phone as if she were using it to talk. The restaurant was empty except for an American couple in their early fifties several tables away.
“One of the cards is going to La Oroya. That’s a few hours away from Lima, up the mountains,” said the Art Room supervisor. “The setup there is very straightforward. They’re using a building that was a cafeteria for one of the mining operations two miles outside of the city; the voting machines were trucked there last week. Tommy and Dean will get there ahead of you. They’ll scout the situation, but we think that it’ll be the easy one.
“The second is going to a city just on the edge of the Amazon area in northeast Peru, called Nevas. As you can see on the map, it’s very far from the coast, and very isolated. There aren’t many roads in that area. The most reliable transportation is by air or boat. The UN will probably give you a helicopter; they hadn’t made a final decision yet.”
“Is this the jungle?” asked Dean. He and Karr were sitting on a park bench across the street.
“The edge really. The wilderness, the thick Amazonian jungle, is further east. This is definitely jungle. The area around Nevas is pretty primitive, and there are narco-traffickers all through that region. A lot of cocaine.”
“And we get to walk?” asked Karr.
“We’ll have a light aircraft standing by for you and Dean. You’ll be covered as businessmen looking for botanicals that may be of medicinal use.”
“New age nuts?” Karr laughed good-naturedly.
“There’s big money in botanicals,” said Farlekas. He didn’t sound like he was joking.
“How serious is the threat from the terrorists?” asked Dean. “There have been news reports about it.”
“Very good question. Opinions vary. You won’t be in Lima, which is their alleged target. We think it’s much more likely that the rebels will strike in the north if they strike anywhere. So we’ll have paramilitary teams in Ecuador standing by in case things get rough when you go to Nevas,” said the Art Room supervisor. The units could not be located in Peru, since that would have raised obvious questions with the Peruvians about what they were up to. “Their base is roughly three hundred miles from Nevas by air, which is just inside their range. At top speed, they’d be there within an hour and a half. Depending on the situation, we may have them in the air when you’re going in.
“But just for reference, most of the rebel activity has taken place to the east of the area you’re going to — fifty, a hundred miles away. And I have to tell you, the military has made no obvious move to deal with any threat over the past twenty-four hours; it may just be a false report.
“Let me show you the building up there,” Farlekas continued. “It’s a school with a clinic, some health offices, things like that. It’s one of the major, what would you call it? Civic services places in the city. They don’t have a video system there we can break into, so you’re going to have to plant flies. According to the instructions and the communications we’ve seen, the cards are kept in an upstairs room at the side, here.”
An X appeared on Lia’s map.
“I have to caution you,
though, this is not confirmed,” added Farlekas. “You may have to scout it before going in. We’ll keep working on it. Just for your reference, the voting machines up there are in a separate warehouse close to the river. Like I say, the security is very light; they’ve authorized funds for a total of a dozen people and sent only metal detectors up there.
“Lia, if you get to La Oroya this afternoon and then reach Nevas Friday, that will give us twenty-four to thirty-six hours of leeway,” said Farlekas. “That’s the schedule we’d like you to keep. One complication here is that sometimes the electricity goes off. They don’t have backup generators at either place, so that may be a pain.”
“I’m sure we’ll survive,” said Lia. “Are you going to be on all day?”
“Just until noon. Then Marie and the rest of the A team come on.”
“You’re the A team as far as I’m concerned.”
“Hey, thanks. Us Greeks have to stick together, right?”
Lia smiled. “We’ll keep you updated. Enjoy your breakfast.”
“Yeah, enjoy your breakfast,” said Karr. “Have some for me.”
* * *
Two hours later, Lia got into a battered Land Rover with Fernandez and set off for La Oroya as part of a convoy of election officials and equipment. There were crates of leaflets explaining how to vote, tables and chairs that were to be used by poll watchers, and enough odds and ends to fill four trucks. Another four trucks of soldiers had been detailed to escort them. Fernandez complained about this, saying that the rebels were forever making threats that no one took seriously. He seemed to think the soldiers were intended to somehow intimidate them.
After a few miles his complaints became too much and Lia told him that he seemed much more sympathetic to the rebels than to the government.
“I thought we were supposed to be neutral,” she said.
“Yes, to the extent possible. But I don’t trust the government,” he said. “The riot was a pretense for a clampdown and intimidation. I’ve seen it before.”
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