Now, with the increased staff of an incoming Vice President, they required even more room. A couple of motels a few miles away had been rented out full time, and now of course they were filled to overflowing with Federal personnel, Secret Service agents and the like, performing preliminary surveys of the island to determine the nature of the security systems necessary to install to protect the Vice President during his first term. The plan also called for the Government to build a couple of two-story outbuildings to house the 24-hour-a-day security team that would protect him and his family and staff whenever they were on site.
Phil Thuris was settled in one of the bedrooms in the lodge converted into an office, meeting with Tim Harcourt and six other senior staff to go over Dumaine’s upcoming schedule prior to leaving for the Caribbean holiday.
Phil, now a major honcho on the Transition team, went through the motions, doling out various tasks to the staff, but his stomach was churning, because he knew what came after the meeting was destined to be much more important than anything that occurred during the meeting.
Finally, when it was over, the aides scattered, but as Tim reached the door, Phil called out to him.
“Hey, Tim!”
“Yeah?”
“Grab me a Diet Dr. Pepper, willya, and give me a minute.”
Tim closed the door, went to a little mini-bar fridge in the corner and got a Dr. Pepper for Phil, brought it over and sat down across the desk. Tim was looking at his notes when Phil finally spoke.
“Bianca told me she had a little chat with you.”
This got Tim’s attention, the kind that’s usually described as “complete and undivided,” because now he looked up from his yellow legal pad.
“‘Little chat’?” he repeated.
“About Bill, yes.”
“Yes, Phil, we did have a little chat,” Tim leaned forward, a confident, even cocky, smile taking over his face.
“It’s getting later and later in the game, Tim, and I’d like for you to reconsider your position. That’s putting it nicely.”
Tim could barely contain his anger with Phil for his duplicity.
“Hold it right there, mister. I’d say we’re being as discreet—is that the word you want me to use?—as you and Bianca.”
“That’s a little different, Tim.”
“Oh? A little different, Phil? From what?”
“Let’s say,” Phil began, his voice rising as it got a little testy, “people would perceive it to be a little different.”
“Because I’m a fag sleeping with the Vice President-elect and you’re the campaign manager fucking the Vice President-elect’s wife?”
An awkward silence.
“It’s—” Phil started.
Tim laid his pen and pad on the desk, got up and paced around the room, hands in his pockets.
“I’ve given this quite a bit of thought,” said Tim.
“So have we.”
“Bill and I didn’t see any of this coming, the whole ‘him and me’ thing. It just—literally—it just happened.”
“That’s touching,” Phil said sarcastically. “Then make it un-happen.”
“You can be as cute as you like about this, Phil, but it’s the truth. I’m sure it was much the same way with you and Bianca.”
“Well...”
“But we’re not here to talk about you and Bianca, we’re here to talk about me and Bill.”
“Yes.”
“You really think it would be less of a scandal if the media found out about me and him, or they found out about you and Bianca?”
“That’s right,” said Phil.
“Well, listen up and listen good, Phil. You and Bianca had better get used to the idea of having me around, understand? If I get any more bullshit from either one of you, I’m going to Bill with this and he’ll put a God damn lid on it, see?”
Phil saw a light at the end of the tunnel.
“I find it hard to believe you haven’t told him yet.”
“I didn’t see any need for me to tell him you were sleeping with his wife, certainly not during the campaign, when he had enough crap to deal with already. The normal stresses were already enough for him—but me telling him about you and Bianca might have been too much. I knew we had to get through the campaign before you and I had this talk. I just didn’t know Bianca would have it with me before you did.”
“She always was quick off the mark,” said Phil with a smirk.
“I always thought I’d tell him after the election.”
“That’s what both Bianca and I thought you were waiting for,” mused Phil.
“But now that it’s over, I don’t see any point in telling him at all—” he looked at Phil in the eye, tossing the ball back into his court “—unless you and Bianca want to bring this to a head.”
“I tend to agree with you. Why get him stirred up when we don’t have to, especially with all that’s got to be done.”
“It’s not as if they’ve been sleeping together and he’d notice anything different in her manner.”
“No,” said Phil quietly. “None of that would change just because he got elected.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Tim.
Phil stood up.
Tim put out his hand.
“I hope that’s the end of it, Phil. I’ll keep your secret—and you and Bianca can keep ours.”
Phil nodded.
“Then that’s the end of it, Tim. Trust me.”
Tim nodded, smiled and turned away toward the door, his smile disappearing as soon as he turned his back.
Trust you, Phil? Thanks for the offer, but that’s the last thing in the world I’d do, he thought.
* * *
CHAPTER 45
In Tehran, Shahzad’s team was fast at work.
First, there were the briefings at the Ministry necessary for all the people who had to know what was going on for everything to happen properly. High-level officials, to secure the proper clearances and orders. Low-level officials, to get the actual planning executed.
Then there were drills and strategy sessions conducted with the personnel of his handpicked commando team assembled from the VASAK Unit.
Word seeped out slowly from the top to the lower levels that a big operation was underway, but as with all such third- and fourth-party information, it changed slightly each time it was passed on.
So by the time Khalid Yazd, a low level official in the Air Ministry, met with a couple of his drinking pals over beer at a far corner of the Grand Bazaar in the Shah-Saf Café, the information that he passed on as idle gossip was watered down even more.
Of course, Khalid Yazd had no idea that one of his buddies, Yousaf Arak, was a low level CIA operative, about the lowest level one could be and still be considered part of an espionage ring.
They ordered Holstein, a non-alcoholic beer produced by Behnoush ever since all alcohol was banned after the Revolution in 1979, but the owner of the café knew his regulars, and brought them what looked like draft beers, already poured. (Only they knew they were really drinking Carlsberg smuggled in.)
Highly valuable information often begins by looking (to the casual observer) like any other kind of useless information. After they drank three Carlsbergs each on Khalid Yazd’s lunch break, Yousaf Arak slipped out of the Shah-Saf Café and moved through the bazaar, fitting right in with his black beard and his traditional shalwar kameez.
He moved rapidly through the bazaar, waving to friends and other merchants he knew, till he came to the other end of the teeming marketplace, where anything you could imagine was sold: everything from slaughtered rabbits to American dollars exchanged on the black market.
Yousaf Arak wove his way through the bazaar till he turned a corner at the far end and went into a shop selling cell phones. It was quiet this time of day, so it was no problem leaning over the counter to tell his friend, Umar Biruni, a CIA handler and one rung up the ladder, about his meeting with Khalid Yazd.
Yousaf Arak th
en washed his hands of the whole affair, and put it out of mind.
An hour and a half later, Umar Biruni helped his two workers load a Peugeot van with goods to deliver to his other store across town, as well as to other businesses. As was his habit occasionally, Umar Biruni decided to make the trip himself, telling his two workers to watch the store till he got back.
He crawled heavily up into the Peugeot and drove through Tehran until he arrived at the British Embassy in Ferdowsi Avenue, the Union Jack flying high above the building, a strong contingent of Royal Marines guarding the fortified entrance.
His papers were checked, but the guards knew him—he made at least one delivery a week at the Embassy—and he was waved through without a lot of ceremony.
Biruni parked in his usual spot and went inside the Embassy, speaking to a soldier at reception, whispering really. The soldier made a phone call and a low level diplomat came out to greet him, leading him into a private office where Biruni conveyed the information he had picked up from Yousaf Arak.
The low level diplomat escorted Biruni back out into the lobby and Biruni went to the next stop on his delivery schedule.
Umar Biruni then put the whole affair out of his mind.
Within the hour, the low level diplomat prepared a cable to Whitehall and transmitted it to London, along with twenty other pieces of intel, and then, except in the deeper recesses of his mind, forgot all about them.
When the signal was received in London, it was just as casually forwarded to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, marked MOST SECRET/URGENT, along with 180 other messages that hour.
* * *
CHAPTER 46
Governor Douglas Mowbray was now rather grandly styled President-elect Mowbray, and since he did not have a residence in Washington (having been Governor of Pennsylvania), he put up for a few days at the posh Willard Hotel until the Government could clear Blair House for him. From his parlor windows in Blair House he would be able to look across Lafayette Square to the White House, his next residence.
At the Willard early one morning, he had a breakfast meeting with Dumaine and Phil Thuris, preparing for the Transition. Also at the table in the sitting room of the lavish suite was Mowbray’s chief of staff for the Transition, Henry Westmoreland, and Sidney Eismann.
“I’ve never had eggs that tasted this good,” said Mowbray, “and we had a pretty good cook at the Governor’s Mansion.”
“It’s the truffle oil,” said Dumaine.
“Wait’ll you taste the eggs at the White House,” laughed Phil.
For some reason, everybody thought that was very funny.
Dumaine had been protesting about his little trip to St. Barts.
“But there’s so much to be done.”
“Nonsense, Bill. You’ve got those two little girls that you haven’t spent time with for months. You and Bianca need to unwind. Gloria and I took two days off and just slept. Feel fine now.”
He got up and went to a desk in the corner where he opened a box of cigars and took one out.
“Still, Doug, I feel like I ought to be here with you.”
Mowbray rolled the Montecristo in his hands.
“Henry, will you open that window.”
“The smoke doesn’t bother us, Doug,” said Dumaine.
Mowbray lit the cigar and went over to the window where he blew the smoke out the window when he drew on the cigar.
Westmoreland motioned to a waiter standing by.
“I think we’re out of coffee. Call down for some more, okay?” The waiter poured what was left of the coffee in the three pots that came up with breakfast and put through a rush order for two more pots.
Dumaine got up and moved casually to the window where Mowbray was puffing on his cigar and trying to blow it out the window, but the breeze was against him and the smoke came billowing back into his face. You could tell he loved the smell of it. Dumaine pulled up a chair next to him, as the others slowly left their chairs at the breakfast table and gathered around the two leaders.
“Maybe just five days,” Dumaine was saying. “Then I’ll come back.”
“Take the whole week, Bill, all right?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Doug, I’m just too excited by all that’s going on to think there’s any way on earth I’ll be able to relax in St. Barts.”
“I feel the same way, sir,” said Phil.
“You guys wanna come back in five days, well then, come back in five days, but we’ve got an excellent team here. The minute you and Phil get back, I’ll take a couple of days and so will Henry here. Gloria and I’ve been invited to spend a little time at the President’s estate down in Miami.”
“That ought to be a treat,” said Bill.
“I’ve always wanted to see that St. Clair Island of his. I was in South Beach for a convention a couple of times, but I didn’t know St. Clair at the time. Now I’m in line to succeed him. Quite an honor.”
“Nobody ever thought St. Clair would turn out to be a one-term President,” said Westmoreland, shaking his head dolefully.
“Listen,” Mowbray said with a gruff laugh, “I’m more surprised than he is that he turned out to be a one-term President, let me tell you.”
“He certainly was surprised,” said Dumaine. “That first meeting we had with him was a little… tense.”
“Yeah, but he’ll get over it. He’s really a very gracious man—for being a politician,” said Mowbray with a twisted smile. After a pause: “And I’m convinced the reason he became a one-term President is because he fought us on the nuclear arms issue. He thought the people weren’t sufficiently afraid of the threat.”
“Bill, you did a great job with that issue throughout the campaign,” said Westmoreland.
“Hard line, hard line, hard line,” said Mowbray. “It was as if we, the Democrats, had stolen the hard line Republican thunder and used it to strike them down. Like Zeus from high atop Mount Olympus.”
“Of course, our policy won’t be as hard line as our rhetoric,” said Sidney Eismann casually, his hands in his pockets as he swayed back and forth on his heels, looking at the floor. He noticed a sudden silence engulf the room, then looked up at everybody looking at him. “Uh, will it?”
Another puff of smoke out the Willard window, and back again into the President-elect’s face.
“I do not know the answer to that question, Sid. If we do as we say, and go after countries for selling nuclear arms or harboring terrorists—no matter what country they’re hiding in, the way we went after bin Laden in Pakistan, well—we might generate an awful lot of enemies. But again—we’ll discuss all this at a later time. How far to go.”
Dumaine got up and shook hands.
“Well, you all know how I feel about that issue,” he said.
“The whole country knows how you feel,” said Westmoreland with a laugh.
“I’ll be getting outta here then, Mr. President-elect.”
“You have a great trip, Bill, and I can’t wait to get you back here in Washington and get this Transition up to speed.”
“All right then,” said Bill, and he turned to leave.
The last thing he heard Mowbray say just as the door closed was, “I wonder if I can smoke my cigars in the White House.”
* * *
CHAPTER 47
Shahzad had overseen everything essential to the operation, personally. All arrangements were made in a matter of hours through Venezuela’s secret police, the Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención (or DISIP), after General Akbary himself had cleared the way through the DISIP chief, General Ricardo Hernandez.
In South America, Venezuela was one of the few countries Iran worked with closely.
Within thirty-six hours of getting the green light, Shahzad was aboard a special flight to Caracas that carried most of his team and all of the special equipment they would need to complete the operation.
After the long flight, they landed at Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda Air Base, a military
airport outside Caracas closed to the public.
They were greeted by General Hernandez himself and a couple of dozen of his lackeys, all dressed in somewhat frightening black uniforms that gave Colonel Shahzad the impression of uniforms that might have been worn by the Nazis, somewhat like Gestapo hand-me-downs.
Shahzad and his commando unit were quickly bundled off into transports that took them to a Venezuelan Navy ship, a Mariscal Sucre-class frigate named the General Soublette. Shahzad was amused to learn the “official” name of the Venezuelan Navy: they called it the Armada Bolivariana, or the Bolivarian Armada. General Hernandez had represented the General Soublette as their finest ship.
On the ride over, the inordinately curious General Hernandez did his level best to pry information out of Shahzad, but Shahzad was having none of it. It came down from the very top: that DISIP was to render whatever aid Venezuela’s Iranian allies required for a special secret mission: no questions asked.
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 17