Graham frowned as he listened to a familiar voice come over the earpiece.
His own.
‘We keep Michiko monitored,’ he heard himself saying, a voice from the recent past, ‘hope she slips up, contacts Sandbourne somehow.’
‘And if she doesn’t slip up?’ This voice was Clark Mason’s, and Graham realized – with a terrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach – that their phone lines must have been tapped. For how long, he didn’t know; and nor did he know what else Michiko, and presumably Bruce Vinson, and possibly a whole load of other people, knew about him and his relationship to Mason.
And not only Mason, he realized with mounting dread, but also the recently arrested Manfred Jones.
‘Well, then it becomes a bit more problematic,’ Graham heard himself say, ‘but not insurmountable. We’ll just bring her in for questioning, come up with some bullshit charge or something. She’s only, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? We’ll threaten her with deportation, she’ll shit her pants and give us everything we need.’
‘Why don’t we just go for that right away?’
‘Long term, it would be better if we had hard evidence rather than what some defense lawyer would probably deem to be a coerced confession. We could probably force it through if we had to, but it would be hard work, and not guaranteed. So we’ll keep the net open for now, and hope that she gives us something.’
‘Okay,’ Clark Mason – the Vice President of the United States himself – said, ‘but if we don’t get it soon, I’m happy to do it the hard way. That bitch is going to give us the Paradigm Group and the president one way or another.’
The line clicked off, but Graham had already heard more than enough anyway.
His destiny was clear.
He was fucked.
Bruce Vinson himself met Michiko outside FBI Headquarters, the door to his limousine open for her as she trotted happily down the steps, free just moments after Graham had listened to the message.
‘Did he take it well?’ Vinson asked with a smile.
‘About as well as you could expect,’ Michiko said as she slipped inside the car.
Vinson climbed in next to her and knocked on the glass partition to his driver, telling him to pull out into the traffic.
‘Good,’ Vinson said. ‘I hate to say it, but maybe you were right. Sometimes the direct approach is the best.’
‘So what happens now?’ Michiko asked.
‘Well, the president is going to make a few phone calls,’ Vinson answered, ‘and we’ll finally have that monkey off our back at last.’
‘And then?’
‘And then?’ Vinson repeated. ‘And then, we go back to work.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Michiko confirmed with a smile of her own.
At last.
Clark Mason had just finished listening to the same recording, in Ellen Abrams’ private study.
‘May I have a drink?’ he asked, and Abrams nodded, went to the cabinet and fixed him a Scotch on the rocks, just as he liked it.
‘Do you have anything to say?’ Abrams asked.
Mason drank half of the glass in one go, then wiped a hand across his top lip, shaking his head sadly. ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can say.’
Abrams shook her head too, and sat down opposite him. ‘I can’t say I’m not disappointed,’ she said. ‘I thought you might have been more grateful. After all, after the last time I could have thrown you to the wolves, you know.’
Mason knew it was true, but only to a certain extent; the scandal would have hurt her too, and her ‘sparing’ of him was due – in some part at least – for rather more selfish reasons.
But he knew that he was finally done. The videotape was one thing, but now they had him talking about attacking the president with the director of the FBI. There was also plenty of surveillance photos and recorded conversations with Jones, another man who was now absolute poison to be associated with.
‘What will happen to the others?’ he asked, sipping more slowly now at the second half of his Scotch, unsure if the president would be generous enough to get him another.
‘I’ve just spoken to Noah,’ Abrams said, ‘and requested his resignation. Turns out he’d already written it out. Cites health problems, desire to spend more time with his family. Effective immediately. His deputy, Heather Klein, will move up to the number one spot as of today.’
‘And Jones?’
‘We’ll let nature take its course with the colonel,’ Abrams answered. ‘There’ll be an investigation, a possible court martial. At the very least, he’ll be discharged from the military. Olsen’s found a new guy to take over, current commander of SEAL Team Six, Scott Murphy. Popular choice apparently. Cooper says he’d be happy for Murphy to take over permanently, if he doesn’t recover sufficiently to come back himself.’
‘That’s good news,’ Mason said miserably, unable to believe how quickly his plans had all come crashing down.
Abrams laughed. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, Clark,’ she chided. ‘I know you’re pissed. But there’s no longer anything you can do about it, I’m afraid.’
‘So what happens to me?’ he asked.
‘Like Noah, I suggest that you hand in your resignation,’ Abrams said. ‘You can cite whatever reason you want – health, family, personal issues, whatever. But it needs to be done. You’ve had your chances, and you’ve blown them. It’s over.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ he said sadly, a schoolboy taken to task by the headmistress.
‘You can leave it until next week though,’ she said. ‘I don’t want attention drawn away from the weekend’s events, and you’re still on to speak at the memorial parade here in Washington.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. At least he’d have the chance to make a final speech on the world stage; he’d have to make it a good one.
‘Thank you for your service,’ Abrams said, standing from her chair and offering Mason her hand.
Mason stood sheepishly, took the hand and shook it. ‘You play a good game, Ellen,’ he said, unhappy with the outcome of their battle but finally resigned to it. ‘All the best.’
‘All the best, Clark,’ Abrams replied.
And then he smiled sadly, turned on his heel, and was gone.
6
Mark Cole no longer sat within the confines of the subterranean interview room.
Instead, he sat ensconced behind Mohammed Younesi’s desk in the man’s own private office, accessing the spymaster’s computer.
This was what Cole had been aiming for, but even he had been surprised; he would have been happy simply to have been brought up out of the basement level, but there had been no guarantee even of that.
Back downstairs, Cole had asked for access to a computer connected to the internet. Younesi had just laughed, claimed that there were no such connections down there; and so Cole had asked to be brought upstairs, to show the man what he wanted to share.
Younesi, though suspicious, had finally agreed; and – professionally paranoid like so many others in his line of work – had decided that he wanted to look at whatever information Cole had to share all by himself, with no prying eyes, hence the invitation to his own private office.
The Iranian wasn’t taking any chances though – Cole was still handcuffed, and Younesi aimed a Colt M1911 .45 ACP pistol at him as he worked, while outside the office he had another four armed guards stationed with submachine guns loaded and made ready; at Younesi’s command, they could be in the room and firing within a couple of seconds.
Cole knew that he’d been given an opportunity too good to pass up, and his mind raced as he considered what he was going to do with it. He had a chance to access Younesi’s files, but how was he going to do it without being discovered, without Younesi realizing what he was up to?
‘So show me,’ Younesi said expectantly, and Cole understood why the man had brought him here. It was fear, plain and simple – fear of his plan failing, fear of his plan being found out by British intelligence, by th
e United States. Fear that the second attack wouldn’t succeed, that the first attack would be blamed on Iran. And what would happen then? All-out war would be a possibility of course, and Younesi surely had no stomach for such a thing – for it would inevitably lead to Iran’s total defeat and subjugation.
It had been a high-stakes game that Younesi had involved himself in, and a win – a successful operation – was only worthwhile if the hand of the Iranian government remained undiscovered.
So the chance – however slight – that Cole had something that suggested Younesi’s secret could be exposed, was enough to make that man throw caution to the wind in order to protect himself and the operation.
Cole assessed the situation quickly. There were four armed men outside the room, and Younesi had a gun to his head. The man was stood behind him, so that he could look over Cole’s shoulder to see what he was doing, could ensure that he was not accessing restricted files. Cole himself was handcuffed, although he was not secured to the chair in any way.
Cole had a story worked out to sell to Younesi, how MI5 had worked out what he was up to and had agents waiting for Iranian personnel in London. His plan was to check Younesi’s files as he pretended to access those of MI5 and the FBI. But with Younesi looking over his shoulder, that made his initial plan untenable, while at the same time offering a different – and perhaps, on reflection, even better – alternative.
Cole fired up the computer system, showed Younesi what he was doing as he forced his way into the mainframe of the Security Service’s home network.
Back when he had been a ‘contract laborer’, an independent agent under Hansard, his old boss had insisted that all of his personnel were capable of planning their own missions, including getting hold of their own intelligence. As a result, they had all received specialized training in computer hacking, both from experts at the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and from civilian – often criminally convicted – cyber-hackers.
This meant that, while several leagues removed from the skill-set of his daughter, Cole was more than capable of accessing most of the things he wanted to; and the MI5 mainframe, while relatively well-guarded, was hardly an impossible target.
Cole heard a helicopter outside and moved reflexively, the aircraft sounding dangerously close to the building. He looked outside, saw the black chopper veer upward.
Younesi smiled at his reaction. ‘Helipad on the roof,’ he laughed. ‘Despite your country’s flagrant anti-Iranian propaganda, we are not peasants, you know.’
Cole ignored Younesi’s comments and turned back to the computer, searching quickly through files, reports, attachments, and eventually brought up copies of both the MI5 investigation, and notes on the parallel investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police.
‘Ah,’ he said, opening up the file on Javid Khan, purposefully keeping the font-size restricted. ‘Here we are.’
Younesi, already having come steadily closer to see what Cole was doing, and how he was doing it, now bent his head in close to try and read the words on the screen, having instantly recognized the file photo of Javid Khan.
‘What is it?’ Younesi asked, leaning forward. ‘What does it say?’
Cole could feel the cold steel of the Colt’s barrel near his shoulder, Younesi’s mind and attention no longer on the weapon but instead on the screen on his desk.
And in the next instant, Cole took advantage of Younesi’s distraction, turned and grabbed the pistol straight out of the man’s hand, stripping it out of Younesi’s grasp with one slick movement, his own hands still cuffed together.
An instant later, before the intelligence officer could yell to the men outside, Cole dropped the gun and thrust his hands straight out toward Younesi, striking him in the throat with the tips of his extended thumbs.
Younesi gasped for breath, staggered back clutching at his damaged larynx, eyes bulging; and then Cole was up out of the chair, kicking the man in the groin and doubling him over before sending a knee crashing up underneath his jaw and knocking him out cold.
As Younesi fell backward, Cole rushed to catch hold of him, not wanting his body to make a sound as it landed that would alert the guards outside.
Checking the door to see that the guards had indeed not been alerted, Cole then searched Younesi for a key for the handcuffs. Coming up empty, Cole took a pen from the man’s desk and, manipulating his fingers around, managed to open them with his makeshift lock-pick.
He then sat Younesi up in a spare office chair, cuffing his hands behind the chair back. He also removed the man’s tie and used it as a gag.
Cole slid a doorstop underneath the office door, just in case the guards got suspicious for some reason and tried to get in; it wouldn’t keep them out forever, but it was better than nothing, and a lot more silent than pushing across a bookcase to act as a barricade.
Flexing his wrists to try and get some blood flowing back into his hands, he then returned to the desk and sat back down behind Younesi’s computer.
He didn’t know how much time he had, but he was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be long.
‘So who’ve we got available?’ General Olsen asked Scott Murphy, the new commander of JSOC.
Murphy was in the Oval Office along with Olsen, Director of National Security Catalina dos Santos, Force One chief-of-staff Bruce Vinson, and Ellen Abrams. As a result of recent events, it had been decided to read Murphy in on Force One, make him a part of the team; indeed, his accepting the position as JSOC commander was predicated upon his understanding of the covert nature of Force One, and his role in supplying most of the personnel and materiel that the organization required, albeit off the books.
Murphy was keen to go ahead with the proposals; like General Cooper before him, he had suspected that such a unit existed anyway, and was pleased to now have a functioning role in making things happen.
‘From the lists of Force One-approved personnel you’ve given me, I’ve managed to get six of them there already – four of them were assigned to a training unit in Afghanistan, and two were helping out the police in Islamabad. I can have another twelve people there within six hours.’
‘Is that enough?’ Vinson asked. ‘Given what they’ll be up against?’
‘It’s not a combat operation,’ Olsen said. ‘It’s a rescue, and if it goes according to plan, they’ll never know we were even there.’
‘But is it enough?’ Vinson persisted.
Murphy shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But worst case scenario is that we’ll have six Tier One operators, and they’re worth at least a platoon of ordinary men.’
‘Transport?’ Olsen asked next.
‘I ordered two Black Hawks and a Little Bird over from a SOAR training base outside Kabul, should have arrived in Ashgabat within the last hour or so. Depending on how many guys we can get, we might not need the second Black Hawk, but we’ll see.’
‘Ashgabat?’ Abrams asked. ‘I wasn’t aware that we had military facilities in Turkmenistan.’
Olsen turned to the president. ‘It was established a few years back, a small air base to assist in refueling ops and processing supplies en route to Afghanistan,’ he explained. ‘We have a terminal for our use at Ashgabat International Airport, which is described as a ‘subsidiary support base’ rather than a military base, due to Turkmenistan’s perceived neutrality.’
‘But we can use it as a FOB?’ Abrams asked.
‘For a small op like this, it shouldn’t be a problem,’ Olsen confirmed.
‘Doesn’t Iran have some of the best anti-air defenses around?’ she asked next.
‘They do, but we’re working a way around that,’ Olsen said, looking over to Vinson.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘Michiko is in their systems right now, they’ll be completely down when our boys get the green light to go.’
‘But, even if we’re successful, couldn’t Iranian radar systems retroactively figure out where the choppers entered Iranian airspace, where they crossed the borde
r? How would the Iranian government react to Turkmenistan assisting us?’
Scott Murphy shook his head. ‘The newest Black Hawk designs are super stealthy,’ he said, ‘they won’t even show up on Iranian radar systems in the first place, even if their computer systems were up and running. Without their networks, the Iranians will have no idea where those birds came from, or where they went to.’
‘And even if they had an idea,’ Vinson added, ‘they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to prove anything.’
‘Okay,’ Abrams said next, ‘but we still haven’t heard from Mark, have we? We don’t know where he is?’
‘Not at the moment, ma’am,’ Vinson said. ‘Michiko has traced him as far as Tehran, but no further. Although we suspect that he’s probably being held at the headquarters of MOIS.’
‘We can’t really launch a rescue operation on that basis,’ Abrams said.
‘Indeed we can’t,’ Vinson said. ‘But if and when Michiko finds him, we want to have our men on standby, in position and ready to go.’
‘Understood,’ said Abrams, ‘consider the operation authorized.’ She turned to Murphy and smiled. ‘Thanks for your input Admiral, it’s good to have you on board.’
‘Good to be here, ma’am,’ Murphy replied. ‘Thank you.’
Abrams stood. ‘Right then, I’ve got a plane to catch. Thank you all for your time.’
Air Force One was ready and waiting to whisk her away to London.
Everyone else in the room thought she was crazy for still going – especially now that they suspected that Iran might have had a hand in the attack on that elementary school – but she was quick to point out that there was still no hard evidence.
But as they all trailed out of the Oval Office, they hoped they were wrong, and that this wouldn’t be the very last time they saw her.
7
Michiko had never been a fan of coffee. The gangsters that populated the offices of the Omoto-gumi back in Tokyo had drunk it by the gallon, in contrast to the normal Japanese taste in green tea – just one more way that they set themselves apart from their fellow citizens – and she had never wanted to follow their example.
PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller Page 27