Flash Point

by James W. Huston

“You still want to go to Pompeii when we pull into Naples?” Woods called after him.

  Vialli didn’t even slow down as he let the door close behind him.

  Sami stared at the pictures of the Gaza attack. “I don’t know. How could I tell just by looking at pictures of dead people?” he asked, annoyed.

  “Is there anything in your research to point to them?” Cunningham asked.

  “I don’t have any research. I have a bunch of history which may be interesting one day or may just make me look stupid.”

  “Talk to me, Sami. Bounce it off me.”

  Sami didn’t want to talk about it yet. It was too easy to say too much. But he needed someone else’s input. “The oldest secret society in the world. But they disappeared a long time ago.”

  Cunningham thought about it for a moment. “You’re thinking maybe not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Because of one transmission?” Cunningham asked.

  “That’s what started me thinking. Now I’m seeing other things I hadn’t noticed before.”

  “You haven’t told anybody?”

  “No reason to yet. I may be out of my mind.”

  Cunningham sat on the corner of Sami’s desk. “Maybe it’s time.”

  Sami wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to overstate it.

  “Want me to set up a brief with the section head?”

  “I think I’ll bring it up at our meeting this afternoon.” He glanced at the pictures again. “What did the Palestinians say about the weapons?”

  “American-made M-60 machine guns, American TOW missile launcher.”

  “Anybody trace them?”

  “Actually, yes. Funny you should ask. The guns still had the serial numbers on them.”

  Sami frowned. “Why would they do that? And they left them in the van? They didn’t care if anyone found them?”

  “Nope. Like they wanted them to be found.”

  “Could they trace them?”

  “Yeah. Easy. United States Marine Corps. In Lebanon. After the barracks were blown up they were never found. There has always been a suspicion a bunch of weapons ended up with the Druze in Beirut.”

  “Druze?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure Druze?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Haddad didn’t reply. He glanced at the NSA report. “The signals were from Lebanon, and the Druze . . . I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  “Better bring it up at our meeting.”

  Woods stood by the track in the Naples train station where he was supposed to meet Vialli, his reluctant co-tourist for the day. He had convinced his roommate to go with him to Pompeii. He glanced up again, scanning the crowd for Vialli, as he tried to open the triangular box of Toblerone chocolate he had just bought with Italian money, a piece of paper that had so many zeros on it it looked like monopoly money.

  Woods checked the time. The big clock at the end of the track, past the engine, was five minutes behind his watch. Typical Italian efficiency. Can’t even keep their clocks right. He had been in the Naples train station dozens of times. This was his fourth cruise to the Mediterranean, two with his first F-14 squadron, and one other with this squadron, VF-103, the Jolly Rogers, the ones carrying on the decades-old tradition and name of the most famous fighter squadron in the Navy. Woods loved their whole image, the tails with skull and crossbones, the traditional pirate flag. He was proud to be a Jolly Roger. And with this squadron and the one before, he knew Med cruises meant going to Naples, one of the finest ports in the Med, and the home of the Sixth Fleet.

  He had been through this train station leaving on a ten-day skiing vacation in Switzerland, and for trips to Rome, to Venice, and to Paris. He was comfortable traveling in Europe even though he didn’t speak any foreign languages. He had always taken advantage of the leave he accumulated to see Europe while in the Med. Few other officers did, so he often traveled alone.

  Woods took his wallet from his jacket pocket, pulled out a small, two-inch square sticker, and peeled off the back. He looked around to see if he was being watched. He reached behind him and stuck the zapper—a sticker with the Jolly Rogers logo on it—on the light pole against which he was leaning. He smiled to himself.

  Suddenly, he saw Vialli jogging toward him through the train station.

  Vialli reached him breathless. “Hey! Sorry I’m late. I didn’t think I’d make it at all. The boat I was on flamed-out. We had to do a mid-ocean transfer to another boat. What a flail.” He glanced at the train. “Did you get the tickets?”

  “Yeah. We’ve got to get on,” Woods said, stuffing the Toblerone box into his back pocket like a set of drumsticks and moving quickly to the train.

  They climbed up the stairs of a passenger car and walked down the hallway next to the compartments. Woods finally found an empty one, slid the door open, and they stepped in. Vialli closed the door behind him.

  They sat down next to the window across from each other. Each had two empty seats beside him. Vialli leaned his head against the top of the vinyl seat and closed his eyes. Woods stared out the window. Vialli could sleep anywhere. Nothing troubled him. He was unflappable. Woods was pulling the bent chocolate box out of his pocket when something caught his eye by the door. A face. Someone had looked into the compartment and then moved away. There it was again. Woods watched the door, and suddenly it opened quickly. A woman stepped in and closed the door behind her.

  She glanced at Vialli, who appeared to be sleeping, and sat down in the corner, on Vialli’s side, placing her knit bag on the seat between them.

  Woods, his mouth slightly open, tried not to stare—she was shockingly pretty—and nodded an acknowledgment. She smiled at him but didn’t speak. Woods kicked Vialli’s shoe, rousing him. Vialli sat up, baffled, looking at his squadron mate. Woods glanced casually at the woman, and Vialli followed the direction of his friend’s eyes.

  “Hi,” Vialli said to her, no longer baffled and wasting no time. He brushed his hair back with his hand.

  She looked past him out the window at the gray Naples morning. The train had picked up speed and was rocking softly sideways. She sat quietly with her hands on the armrests at her side. She wore a dark blue, loose-fitting flowery cotton dress, and had long, brown curly hair. Her dazzling light brown eyes had streaks of green and yellow in them. An even tan accentuated her outdoor, fit look. Vialli thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Are you Italian?” Vialli asked.

  She glanced at him momentarily, then turned her eyes back to the window. The door suddenly flew open and the conductor came into their compartment. The train rocked, and the conductor leaned against the door to steady himself and free both hands. Addressing the woman in Italian, he stuck out his hand for her ticket. She smiled, handing the conductor her ticket with her left hand and speaking to him so rapidly that Vialli couldn’t recognize any of the ten Italian words he knew.

  She had a lovely smile, and her eyes sparkled as she joked with the conductor. He took the rest of the tickets and left the compartment.

  Vialli shifted his gaze from the door to the woman, feeling his stomach tighten as he watched her. Woods studied Vialli and could tell his friend was about to do something rash. He tried to get his attention to discourage him. No luck.

  “Do you speak English?” Vialli asked her.

  Again, she didn’t respond, not even to acknowledge that he had spoken. “Sprechen-sie Deutsch?” he asked.

  Woods wondered what Vialli planned to do if she answered him, since Vialli didn’t speak German. He leaned forward and gave Vialli a raised-eyebrow look.

  Vialli gave him a look back, a “What?” look.

  The woman transferred her gaze from the tranquil Mediterranean to her fellow traveler. “Nein,” she replied coolly, finally.

  “I don’t speak Italian,” he said, happy to have gotten some response.

  She gave him a cool smile and crossed her legs. She reached into her bag, pulled out a
paperback book, and began to read. Vialli sighed audibly and looked out the window at the scenery he had seen so many times from the other side, on the sea. Suddenly he turned his head back toward her and looked again at the book she was reading. Hemingway. In English.

  “You do speak English!” he said with a smile.

  “A little,” she replied without looking up as she found her place in the book.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said sitting up, energized.

  “Because you would have started talking to me and I wouldn’t have been able to read my book, which I have been looking forward to for a long time.” She returned to her book.

  “How did you know I’d start talking to you?”

  “Because you’re an American, and Americans always talk to strangers.”

  “How’d you know I was an American?” he wondered.

  She shook her head slowly, amazed. “Your haircut, your jacket, your shoes, your cord . . . what do you call them—corduroy pants. Your questions, and you’ve been staring at me since I came into this compartment.”

  Vialli grimaced. “Sorry . . .”

  She started reading again.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Vialli said. He checked his watch. The trip was only thirty minutes, and they had left Naples fifteen minutes before. He tried to concentrate on the countryside as the rails clacked rhythmically beneath him. He could see Mt. Vesuvius in the distance, the now-dormant volcano that had buried Pompeii centuries ago. You could see it from Naples for that matter, or from thirty miles out at sea, or from a hundred miles if the weather was clear and you were flying high enough. He couldn’t stand it. “Where are you from?”

  She placed a bookmark in her book and laid it on her lap. “The American conversation,” she said. “Where are you from, what do you do, where did you go to school. Right?”

  He looked at her directly, and she noticed his intense brown eyes under his dark brown hair. “Doesn’t hurt to be friendly,” he said.

  She relaxed slightly. “No, it won’t hurt. I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. “I live in a town in northern Italy called Trento. It’s just south of Austria.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “It is very pretty, and very old. A wonderful town.”

  “What do you do?”

  “See?”

  “Come on,” he said.

  “I am a schoolteacher, at least by training. I don’t teach right now. I’m waiting for an opening.”

  He nodded and looked out the window again, trying not to show that he was really focusing on her reflection in the glass.

  “What do you do?” she asked suddenly.

  He looked at her with surprise. “I’m in the Navy.”

  “The American Navy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you on a ship?”

  He nodded. “More or less. I’m a pilot—I fly off a carrier.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You’re on that big carrier in the bay.”

  He smiled and nodded. “That’s me. The George Washington. Largest class of warship ever built. Nimitz class.”

  “Is it really?”

  “Nothing else is even close. Some of the battleships were almost as heavy, but nothing nearly as big in every dimension.”

  “What do you fly?”

  “Do you know airplanes?”

  “Not really.”

  “Fighters. F-14s. Tomcats. You know, two tails, wings that move back and forth . . .”

  “I think I’ve seen them. I think we have them too.”

  Vialli shook his head. “No, only the U.S. and, unfortunately, Iran.”

  “What do we have that looks like that?”

  “We who? Italy?”

  She looked puzzled, then understood. “Yes. Italy.”

  “Nothing really. Just Fiats and those sorts of things. Gnats. Bugsmashers. Noisemakers. Nothing serious.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t belittle it . . .”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m sure Italy’s Air Force is truly formidable,” he said. He tried to get her to look at him, which she was reluctant to do. “Do you mind if I ask you your name?”

  She hesitated before she answered. “Irit.”

  “What?” he said, leaning forward, as if he hadn’t heard her.

  “Irit.”

  “That’s an odd name. Is it Italian?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tony Vialli.”

  “That’s an odd name. Is it American?”

  “Very funny. No such thing as an American name,” he said, “except maybe Sitting Bull,” he added. “No, my name is Italian, and my family, some time ago, I think my grandparents’ parents, came over to the States. I’ve heard they were from Genoa, but I’m not really sure.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Vialli.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “Where are you going?”

  She looked amused. “This train only goes to Pompeii.”

  He nodded, trying to imply he knew that. “But are you going to see the tourist trap, where all the dead people are, or what?”

  “Yes, I’m going to see where the dead people are. What else would I be doing there?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. I figured there may be a town there too.”

  “Not really.”

  “So you’re playing tourist today?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “You want to come with us? With Sean and me? We can go to Pompeii together and see the dead people,” he said. He suddenly realized he hadn’t even asked Woods. “If that’s okay with you?” he said to Sean. “We’ll all go together.”

  Woods stared at him, amazed.

  She studied Vialli carefully. “I don’t really know you.” She leaned back against the seat as the train rounded a curve. She considered. “Why not.”

  3

  As of right now each of you is a member of a special task force to track the attack on the Gaza border, and identify the group responsible. This one has the Director’s attention.” Joe Kinkaid, Director of Counter-Terrorism at the CIA, had them hanging on every word. This was the kind of assignment they all longed for. It could launch a career. Kinkaid’s unit had two hundred members. It was their job to identify and track all terrorist threats worldwide that might threaten American interests. He was overworked but he loved his job. He was one of the few people in Greater Washington who went home every night knowing he was making the world better for his children. In his mid-fifties, he was out of shape and didn’t care. What he cared about was that his mind was working at full speed, which it always was.

  Kinkaid pressed the space bar on the laptop computer sitting on the lectern and the screen in the front of the room lit up with the first slide of his presentation. The screen was blue with decorative red in the lower-right corner. In large white letters the slide said: gaza task force.

  “This task force is classified Top Secret. I expect it will go code word in the not too distant future. No one outside this room has a need to know about us or what we’re doing unless I say so. You know the drill.” He touched the space bar again, and the next slide came up. It was in outline form and provided him with the bullet points he wanted to be sure to make. “The Gaza attack occurred after dawn, about eight in the morning, local time. Stranded truck, turned around, doors burst open. Big firefight.”

  The next slide showed a photograph of the checkpoint. There were several bodies on the road near one side, and a burning APC across the fence on the Israeli side. The high-quality color photo had words on the bottom: secret, noforn, wnintel. Classified secret, not to be released to foreign intelligence or military, and a warning notice, that intelligence sources or methods were involved in the acquisition of the photo that made it more sensitive than the usual secret photo.

  “Note what we all know, and what we’ve all heard on CNN, that both Palestinian guards and Israeli guards were killed. This is different. I can’t think of any time someone has taken on the
Israelis and the Palestinians at the same time.”

  He touched his space bar. Another photo came up with the same inscription on the bottom. “Here is the van, and the weapons that were captured.” The photo was a close-up of the van as it sat in the alley. It was dark, but the weapons could be seen.

  A dark man in the back that Sami had never seen spoke. “They wanted them to be found.”

  Kinkaid looked at him quickly, agreeing. “That’s how I see it. These weapons are all lined up. Like they’re on display at a gun show.” He went to the next slide, which was a well-lit close-up of one of the weapons. “Here, you can even see the serial number on the M-60.” The members of the task force studied the photo. Kinkaid went on. “Not only are the guns neatly arranged, they were left in order—by serial number, lowest to highest.”

  The task force members were puzzled.

  The dark man spoke again. “They’re showing their escape went as planned. No hurry at all.”

  “What’s the point of that?” Sami asked, unable to remain quiet.

  “What indeed,” Kinkaid asked. “Any ideas?”

  “It’s a message,” the dark man said.

  Kinkaid replied, “Clearly.” Then to the others. “This is Mr. Ricketts. He is from the DO.” Directorate of Operations. Spies. The ones who do the covert operations. “Like a few others of you, he is not a regular member of my counterterrorism section. He had some time and I asked him if he would join us, at least until he had to go about other things. He graciously accepted. He brings a different perspective—the perspective of someone who has actually fired weapons and knows what to do with them, instead of the rest of us, who study them in cubicles.” He nodded to Ricketts. “So what’s the message?”

  “This op was easy,” he said, speaking with just the slightest hint of an accent, but not one that was identifiable. He rubbed his unshaved chin. He could pass for an Arab, an Egyptian, an Armenian, an Israeli, or even a Serbian. His dark, pockmarked face was chameleon-like, and changed when he wasn’t even trying. Sami was fascinated by him.

  Ricketts went on. “They were willing to tidy up, sip a spot of tea, and watch a movie before heading off. They are very good, and very well trained. They just wanted to be sure we knew that.”