Andrew Britton Bundle

by Andrew Britton

  “The director stepped out to make a call,” Harper informed them. “The man himself is about to walk in here, so I’ll make this quick. Judd just railroaded us.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kealey asked.

  “Apparently, the Bureau has a source with strong ties to the Iranian government. This man predicted the attempt on al-Maliki, as well as the assassination of Nasir Tabrizi. They’ve been feeding this information to the National Security Council for weeks.”

  Naomi shook her head, trying to see all the angles. “If they knew, why didn’t they pass the warnings along? Why did the attacks still take place?”

  “The information was passed along. The Iraqis just didn’t act on it in time. Both attacks occurred earlier than anticipated, and in different places.”

  “Is the president buying this?” Kealey asked doubtfully. “We don’t have much to implicate the Iranians.”

  “He wants to. He’s been looking for an excuse to hit Iran ever since Senator Levy was killed last October.”

  Both Kharmai and Kealey considered that for a moment. The previous year, the United States had formed an alliance with France and Italy to limit European oil exploration in Iran, the goal being to curtail the funds working their way into the regime’s weapons program. In response, the Iranians had formed a partnership with al-Qaeda to destroy the nascent alliance. They had started by targeting Senator Daniel Levy, the Senate majority leader and Iran’s most vocal opponent on the Hill. Levy had been a close friend of the president and one of his most ardent supporters. While the Iranian regime was never concretely linked with that attack—or those that followed—it was widely believed that the new hard-line regime had played a decisive role.

  “So where do we stand?” Naomi asked. “Am I still doing the briefing?”

  Harper opened his mouth to answer the question, but never got the chance. The door to the right of the fireplace swung open, and Director Andrews walked in, followed immediately by President David Brenneman.

  The president walked over to Kealey first and extended a hand. “Ryan, it’s good to see you again. I wish it could be under better circumstances.”

  “I feel the same way, sir, but we’ll find who was responsible.”

  “Yes, I don’t doubt that we will.”

  Listening to this strangely familiar exchange, Naomi was stunned. Here was yet another surprise: Ryan had met the president at least once before. But when? Her mind began ticking off the possibilities, but David Brenneman was already crossing the carpet toward her. He looked older in person, she thought, although it might just have been the strain of the past few weeks. He was tall—at least six feet four—and trim, with neat silver-brown hair and strong, handsome features. Despite the anger clouding his face, he looked presidential. She felt her mouth go dry as he offered a hand. She accepted it, painfully aware of how damp her own palms were.

  “Naomi, I’m pleased to meet you. It should have happened before now…I know you played an important role in last year’s events. The country owes you a debt of gratitude, young lady.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she managed. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

  She instantly wished she’d limited her response to a polite nod, but the president didn’t seem to notice her embarrassment. He gestured to the table and said, “Let’s get started, shall we?” They all took the appropriate seats, Brenneman at the head of the table. “Ms. Kharmai, I understand you’ve stumbled onto…excuse me, discovered, some interesting information regarding today’s attack in Paris.”

  “Yes, sir.” She started to rise, but Brenneman waved her back into the seat.

  “Unless you need the screen, we can do this in comfort,” he said. “Please proceed.”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Naomi flipped open her briefing folder, took a deep breath, and did her best to steady her jangling nerves. “Sir, let me start from the beginning. You see, the story does not begin with the bombing of the Babylon Hotel, but rather with the shipment of weapons through Anthony Mason to ports in the Middle East, where they were collected by none other than Will Vanderveen. At that time, he was using the name Erich Kohl. Over the next six months…”

  She spoke for twenty minutes, detailing the links between Rashid al-Umari, Arshad Kassem, Anthony Mason, and Vanderveen. She also addressed the possible Iranian connection. Watching her from across the table, Kealey could not help but admire her poise and the way she managed to tie everything together. It was strange to listen to her speak to this audience; for the first time, he was acutely aware of her East Midlands accent, which had never seemed more out of place than it did in this room.

  Naomi concluded by referencing Thomas Rühmann. “He’s actually an Austrian national, but accommodations have been made for him by some of his friends in the German federal cabinet. Though he’s listed on the boards of some of Germany’s most reputable companies, we’ve long suspected him of dealing arms to a number of governments and rebel groups. Needless to say, most of his customers are not people we want to see armed. The German government lets him get away with it because he’s done some work for them as well, but he’s also something of an embarrassment. They keep a close eye on him.”

  Brenneman nodded and said, “What do you mean by that? They protect him directly?”

  “In a way, sir. Let me give you an example. Three years ago, the State Department discovered that Rühmann was involved in the sale of two hundred Starburst man-portable missiles to Adnan al-Ghoul, a senior Hamas official. Incidentally, al-Ghoul has since been killed. Shortly after the sale came to light, State requested a formal audience through the appropriate channels. They expected full cooperation from the Germans, but the door was slammed shut in their faces. And that was then. Apparently, Rühmann has since enlarged his circle of influential friends, which makes getting access to him even more difficult.”

  “Why the wall? Why would they go to that length to protect him, and what did you mean about him being an embarrassment?”

  Kealey straightened in his seat and fielded the president’s questions. “Sir, do you remember the incident at Al Qaqaa in 2003?”

  Brenneman considered for a moment. “Vaguely. Refresh my memory.”

  “Al Qaqaa is a weapons storage facility located about twenty miles south of Baghdad. In 2003, it was reported that more than three hundred eighty tons of explosives, including HMX and RDX, had gone missing from the stockpile. That amounts to about forty truckloads. The New York Times was the first to break the story. Predictably, everyone started pointing fingers. The IAEA said that the material was accounted for in January of that year, and that U.S. troops were responsible for safeguarding the facility. The Pentagon turned the accusation around, but no one ever really took the blame. Some of the explosives later turned up, used in attacks on our troops, but most of it simply vanished. There was a lot of dispute afterward about what else might have been stored at Al Qaqaa.”

  “How does Rühmann fit in?”

  “Thomas Rühmann was in Iraq at the time, sir,” Naomi said. “In fact, he was the UN representative in charge of the last inspection at Al Qaqaa. That is, the last inspection before the explosives disappeared. Questions were asked, of course, but he resigned his post with the UN before his name came up, and his connections have since kept him out of the spotlight. Frankly, the Germans just want to forget the whole thing.”

  “Okay,” the president said. “So to summarize, Rühmann can be linked, at least indirectly, to al-Umari and Vanderveen, both of whom were responsible for the attempted assassination of the Iraqi prime minister.”

  “That’s correct,” Naomi confirmed.

  “But none of this can be tied to the assassination of Nasir Tabrizi in Paris, right?”

  “Not yet,” she agreed reluctantly. “We’re still looking at that angle, sir.”

  “And this is the only lead we have? Apart from the Iranian connection?”

  “Unfortunately, that’s all we have at this time.”

  “I coul
d call Chancellor Merkel directly,” Brenneman pointed out. “She can hardly refuse the request if I make it myself.”

  “Actually, sir, she might very well do just that,” Andrews put in. “At best, she’ll stall, and time is a factor here. The meeting at the UN is scheduled to take place on September sixteenth, coinciding with the opening of the General Assembly’s annual session. As you know, Prime Minister al-Maliki was the only member of the core Shiite group not scheduled to attend, the core being thirty-five key members of the United Iraqi Alliance. Nasir Tabrizi was on the other side, of course, but a moderating factor, nonetheless. From the Agency’s point of view, the fact that these men were specifically targeted is very troubling, and perhaps indicative of a larger attack here on U.S. soil. If the alliance is being targeted, we may be looking at more to come.”

  Kealey instantly shot Harper a questioning look that said, What meeting? He didn’t notice that Kharmai had done the same thing, but Harper ignored both of them and turned to the president. “Sir, here is what it comes down to. I understand the Bureau has told you otherwise, but the Iranians have only been loosely implicated in the information we’ve gathered. Everything from our end points to an Iraqi mastermind. We need to talk to Rühmann, but we have no idea where he is. Nor do we know what name he’s using, and we’ve already checked the obvious.”

  “So you need to find him without going through diplomatic channels. I assume you’ve come up with a way to do that,” Brenneman said. He did not need to voice his displeasure that two of the country’s key agencies were at odds over who was responsible for Baghdad and Paris; the look on his face said that much and more.

  Naomi cleared her throat gently. “Sir, we know that Rühmann was stationed here in Washington for two years, beginning in ’98. He worked out of the German Embassy, commuting to the UN when necessary. It’s likely they have a record on him at the embassy, including a point of contact. It would be classified, of course, but we have a way around that little problem.”

  “And how do you propose to get this information?” Brenneman asked. His voice was dangerously quiet, as though he were daring them on.

  A hush fell over the room. Finally, Naomi took a deep breath and took the plunge.

  “We steal it, sir. We break into the German Embassy and steal it.”

  CHAPTER 26

  CALAIS • WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The drive from Paris to Calais took just under four hours, delayed by an overturned tractor-trailer on the A26. The second car, a maroon Audi with a slippery clutch, had been waiting in the parking garage on the rue Tronchet, as expected. After collecting it and wiping down the Mercedes, they followed the aptly named boulevard Périphérique around Paris to the A1, which became the A26 near Lille. They pulled off the main road just south of Amiens, following a rural road through a thick forest of black pine. The detour added twenty minutes and five brief stops to the trip, but gave Vanderveen the time needed to break up the G2 assault rifle and hurl the components deep into the trees.

  After producing the keys to the Audi in the garage, Raseen had climbed into the driver’s seat without a word. Vanderveen had nearly offered to take the wheel, worried that she was too tightly wound to handle the car with the necessary skill, but one look at her face told him that she needed the activity. She began flicking through the channels as soon as she started the engine, but the first report did not come through until they were twenty minutes outside of the city. The facts were sparse at best, but the Iraqi foreign minister was confirmed dead at the scene, along with a veteran CRS officer and two unidentified gunmen. Unsatisfied, she continued to scan the news channels. They were 40 kilometers outside of Paris when the story took on new depth, stoked by the rising body count and the death of a prominent American businessman.

  “Twelve dead?” Raseen seemed strangely unnerved by the possibility, as if realizing for the first time the scope of what they had started. “Is it possible?”

  “It’s possible,” Vanderveen conceded. The fact that 12 people—including 4 Americans—had died in the attack did not bother him in the least. In fact, it was a positive turn of events. American casualties would only serve to cloud the president’s judgment, provoking him into an emotional response when the assassins were identified as Iranian nationals. That much may have happened already; in a case such as this, enormous pressure would be placed on the French security service to come up with quick answers.

  Of course, the fact that the killers were Iranian would only lead to suspicion, nothing more. It was al-Douri’s asset in New York who would support the idea that Tehran was working behind the scenes to destroy the nascent Iraqi government and undermine U.S. policy in the Middle East. Once the accusation became public, the Iranian president would undoubtedly incriminate himself by veiling his denial of wrongdoing with his usual rhetoric. The inflammatory comments he had made in the past would only increase suspicion and remove any lingering doubts.

  Killing al-Maliki and Tabrizi was designed to do two things: first, to eliminate the most prominent supporters of the U.S. presence in Iraq, thereby weakening the Shiite-dominated parliament, and second, to fan the flames between radicals on both sides of the Shia-Sunni divide. The second goal had already been largely achieved, despite the fact that al-Maliki had survived the bombing in Baghdad.

  Everything they had done so far, however, served only to set the stage; success hinged entirely on the upcoming meeting at the UN. With the assassination of the core leaders of the Shiite alliance in New York, the National Assembly—the Iraqi parliament—would lose all credibility, and the country would fall into complete disrepair, giving al-Douri the perfect opportunity to snake his way back into power. Promises had already been made, money exchanged. The attack on U.S. soil would be immediately followed by an unprecedented wave of violence in Iraq, propagated by Syrian insurgents sweeping into the western half of the country. The violence would lead to desperation; that much was inevitable, and with the fear would come the search for established leadership, the search for a steady hand. A well-known Sunni candidate had already been earmarked for advancement, and with his ascension, al-Douri would return to the seat of power. He would be forced to wield his authority behind the scenes, of course, but it would be his nonetheless, and few would dare to oppose him. Memories were long in the Middle East, and the men who now represented U.S. interests would quickly fall back into line once the Baathists returned to the beleaguered capital.

  This much had been explained to Vanderveen days earlier, whispered while al-Umari’s body was cooling on the second floor of the house in Tartus. It was hugely ambitious, and the plan was strewn with obvious flaws. If the U.S. government took the bait and held Iran responsible, it could very well lead to open conflict. Troops would be pulled out of Iraq to support the offensive, but ultimately, the United States would gain yet another foothold in the region, however precarious. When Vanderveen had pointed this out, the Iraqi had waved it away with mild irritation.

  “How can things be any worse?” he had argued. “The Americans have already taken all that was ours. Let the Iranians suffer as well. That is their concern. Our opportunity is here and now, and it must be seized, whatever the consequences.”

  During this speech, Vanderveen revealed none of his doubts, which were as real as al-Douri’s monstrous ego. The former vice president was as irrational and narrow-minded as his peers, but he was not a man to cross. With al-Umari’s final contribution, al-Douri now had the financial ability to track him to the ends of the earth, and Vanderveen had no desire to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. None of that really mattered, though, because he wanted to go through with it. He had taken the money, but that was not a mitigating factor, and it did nothing to secure his allegiance; Izzat al-Douri had made him a wealthy man, but Vanderveen was no more indebted to the Iraqi than he was to the country that had trained him to kill. What pushed him on was not what he could buy with the money, but what he could accomplish with it.

  A total of twen
ty million dollars. He had not had much time to think about it since the agreement was struck, but now, as the Audi swept toward the lights of Calais, the sum rattled around in his head, pinging off the possibilities, illuminating the darkest corners of his mind. As the road narrowed and the buildings grew large around him, he was engaged in what had once been dreams. His dreams were as ambitious as any man’s, but they were not of the luxuries that the millions could buy. Instead, what consumed him was the memory of a warm September morning in 2001, and the knowledge of what one man had done with nothing more than time, desire, and a fraction of the sum that would soon be sitting in his numbered Zurich account.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Harper said.

  They were strolling through the National Mall, which was strangely deserted in early evening. The tourists had retired to their hotels, but the city’s homeless had yet to emerge from the shadows. Kealey felt conspicuous in the borrowed gray suit, and his feet were cramped in black leather loafers that were a size too small. Still, the air felt good after the claustrophobic atmosphere of the White House, cool with a slight breeze coming in from the east. They’d left the executive mansion through the southwest pedestrian gate, making their way down Pennsylvania, past his hotel. Naomi had disappeared without warning; but Kealey had seen Harper murmur a few words in her ear before her sudden departure. He briefly wondered what they had talked about, but now was not the time to bring it up. There were other things on his mind.

  The president had received Kharmai’s proposal with a healthy dose of skepticism, but to his credit, had listened carefully as she explained the need to break into the German Embassy, as well as how such a risky maneuver could be successfully pulled off. She had made a convincing case, but in the end, Brenneman had referred once more to the Bureau’s conflicting information, and announced his intention to contact the German chancellor on unofficial terms the following day. It was exactly what they’d hoped to avoid.