by Marc Cameron
59
Reza Kazem looked away, stifling a smile when Ayatollah Ghorbani had to grab his beard with both hands to keep the rotor from blowing it across his face. The cleric glared at Kazem as he climbed aboard the Jet Ranger, as if the physics of wind and helicopters were all his fault.
The tour around the missile site had been a quick one, with Kazem answering questions when he could and deferring to those with more expertise when he could not. General Alov of the Russian GRU followed along with his hands clasped behind his back, his face set in a smug scowl, as if he already knew all the answers but could not be bothered to voice them. Apparently satisfied, if not actually happy, Ghorbani had turned toward the helicopter without so much as a word. The Mashhad protests were going late into the evening, and he’d made it clear on his arrival that he wished to look at them from the air.
The Bell Jet Ranger lifted off with the pilot and four passengers—Ayatollah Ghorbani, General Alov, Kazem, and his trusted lieutenant, Basir. The pilot had served in the military with Basir and, though Ghorbani was unaware of the fact, was part of Kazem’s inner circle.
Kazem and Basir faced aft, while the Russian and Ghorbani were seated facing forward, with the cleric knee-to-knee with Kazem.
The Bell 206 had a top speed of 120 knots, and Ghorbani, his scowling brow the very picture of impatience, insisted the pilot wring out every last knot. They flew in low, two hundred feet over the crowds that had massed in the open area where Navvab Safavi Expressway passed under the Imam Reza shrine. A skirmish line of police and Basij militia against a knot of protesters along Kawthar wall, both sides attempting to use the arched entryways as temporary redoubts. Men and women of all ages had taken to the streets, but the protesters were, by far, youth in their teens and twenties, sick of the present situation. These same young men and women who were often shown on the worldwide media shouting “Death to America!” just as often chanted “Death to Repression!” or “Death to Unemployment!”
The Basij militia—many of them the same age as the student protesters—were particularly brutal in their tactics, answering hurled insults with batons and bullets. Ghorbani took a macabre interest in the action and directed the pilot to move closer to the areas with the most violent confrontations.
“How many do you think?” Ghorbani mused over the intercom, his black turban pressed against the Plexiglas as he peered down at the melee. The cloth headdress necessitated that he wear his earphones wrapped around behind his neck rather than over the top like the rest of those on the helicopter.
“No more than four or five hundred,” Reza said. It was common practice for Ghorbani’s advisers to downplay the size of a demonstration—or anything negative for that matter.
“Nonsense,” the cleric said. “There are at least two thousand people down there. All of them are angry because they feel they have lost control.”
General Alov raised an eyebrow at the insight but said nothing.
“That is true,” Reza said.
Ghorbani’s head snapped around. “I know what is true and what is not. The government of Iran is ordained of Allah. That truth is absolute. We would put the two thousand presently below us to the sword to protect it—even ten times two thousand if need be.” He returned the forehead of his turban to the Plexiglas, gazing downward. “That will not be necessary. The Americans will muster immediately after the first missile hits Bagram—but they will be unsure of who to blame. A stolen Russian missile launched by Iranian dissidents will create enough tension they will not counterstrike with nuclear weapons. They will, however, be very likely to attack a few facilities with conventional weapons. President Ryan will suspect us, no doubt,” Ghorbani said. “But absent any definitive proof, the targets will be for show more than anything. And if there is anything our people hate more than misunderstood policies of their own government, it is the interference of the United States. President Ryan’s show of force will only give the Iranian people a common enemy.”
Kazem bowed, as one should when he is subservient—but this was the last time.
“I have seen enough,” the cleric said, prompting the pilot to turn toward the missile site. Ghorbani was customarily cold, but his voice now grew even more icy. “I could not help but notice, Reza, that you have Sahar Tabrizi on your staff.”
There was no question there, so Kazem did not respond right away.
“Who is Sahar Tabrizi?” General Alov said, suddenly concerned at Ghorbani’s tone. Russia had a great deal on the line here after all. “If there is some . . . how shall we say it? A fly in the ointment, I need to know about it.”
“You yourself said to get the best,” Kazem said. “Hitting the desired target with a missile of foreign manufacture—”
General Alov cut him off. “If you miss,” he said, “it is not the fault of the missile.”
“I was going to say,” Kazem continued, “hitting a target with a missile of foreign manufacture from our Iranian mobile launchers required I find someone better than the best. Dr. Tabrizi is a brilliant physicist and engineer. She is integral to my plan.”
“I am well aware of her so-called brilliance,” Ghorbani said. “But there is a certain instability that comes with her genius . . .” His voice trailed off and he looked up from the window again. “And what do you mean by your plan?”
“This is all nonsense,” General Alov said. “You could lean these missiles against a large tree and they would hit what you told them to hit, so long as you plot the correct firing solution in the command-control system.”
Reza gave a nod to Basir, who grabbed General Alov by the collar with one hand while he popped the seat belt with the other. At that moment, the pilot dipped the helicopter sharply to the left, making it a simple endeavor for the powerful Iranian to dump the unsuspecting Russian out over the desert. The general was so surprised by the action, he managed only a startled grunt before he disappeared out the open door.
Ghorbani’s face immediately turned ashen, the desired effect.
“What have you done?”
Reza nodded at the empty seat. “An unfortunate necessity,” he said. “It was important that you see our commitment so you will listen.”
Ghorbani leaned forward and banged his fist on the pilot’s seat. “Return to Mashhad at once!”
“I’m afraid that cannot happen, most benevolent one,” Kazem said, almost but not quite sneering. “Are you aware of Dr. Tabrizi’s most noteworthy hypothesis?”
Not one to be intimidated, even by cold-blooded murder, the cleric glared across the interior of the helicopter. “Of course I am. It is insane.”
“I must respectfully disagree,” Kazem said. “She is eccentric, to be sure, but she is far from insane. You see, with the help of two Russian missiles and Dr. Tabrizi, you and I are going to change the world.”
* * *
—
Jack Ryan, Jr., stood behind Ysabel, looking over her shoulder at Yazdani’s computer while Dovzhenko pulled up the eBay site where he’d stashed the photograph of Maryam and the other Iranian dissidents. Ysabel touched the tip of her index finger to her friend’s face and then pressed it to her lips. Dovzhenko leaned in—to comfort her or to be comforted, Jack couldn’t tell which.
“I suppose Sassani’s actions make sense,” Dovzhenko said. “General Alov would not want me to know of his interaction with members of the protests.” He shook his head. “But I still do not understand why he was there in the first place. He is too well known to be working undercover. And I cannot picture a scenario where Moscow abandons Tehran in favor of a new regime.”
Yazdani stepped closer, peering down at his computer screen. “Perhaps I can help you with that,” he said. “From what I saw, Moscow has not abandoned anyone. Reza Kazem is supposed to be the leader of this Persian Spring, but I do not think that is the case. I think they are all working together. The only people who have been abandoned are tho
se who fell under Kazem’s spell.”
Jack nodded. “So Russia sells nuclear missiles to Iran through a dumbshit arms dealer in Portugal, but since they are supposed to be stolen and going to a dissident group, Russia and Tehran get to skate out from under the blame—even though the whole world knows the story is bogus. Pretty slick, when you think about it.”
“I have no idea where they got the missiles,” Yazdani said. “But they are Russian and they are nuclear. But this conspiracy does little to answer your question about the targets.”
Ysabel touched the screen again, this time pointing to a stocky woman in her mid-sixties who stood talking to one of Maryam’s three friends who’d been hanged in front of Dovzhenko. She wore no headscarf and her shoulder-length hair was flat black, as if it had been spray-painted. “I think Sahar Tabrizi could be our answer.”
Jack leaned in, wincing, from the throbbing pain in his ear. “Dr. Sahar Tabrizi? Didn’t she have some cockamamie theory about satellite Armageddon?”
* * *
—
“About the time of the revolution,” President Jack Ryan said, “there was a brilliant astrophysicist named Sahar Tabrizi teaching at the University of Tehran. She was loud and eccentric and believed women were as smart and capable as men—just the sort of academic Khomeini liked to send to the dungeons of Evin Prison. I believe she fled to teach at a university in South America.”
Visitors to the Oval Office customarily dropped their smartphones in a basket out by Betty Martin’s desk, but Mary Pat had retrieved hers so she could use it to do research in real time, thumb-typing almost as fast as Ryan could talk.
“There’s a Sahar Tabrizi who is the dean of the physics department at University of Chile,” she said.
“That’s her,” Ryan said. “Do me a favor and see if she’s traveled to Iran in the last few weeks or months.”
Several intelligence agencies routinely kept tabs on the international travel of scientists deemed capable of furthering nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons programs. As an astronautical engineer, Tabrizi fit the bill. Mary Pat made two calls, before CIA gave her the nod.
“That’s affirmative, Mr. President,” she said. “Tabrizi flew into Tehran twenty-five days ago.” She sighed. “I gotta ask, Jack, would you care to enlighten the rest of us hairy unwashed heathens who don’t keep up with the world’s preeminent rocket scientists?”
“Are you familiar with the Kessler syndrome?”
“A doomsday scenario involving satellites,” Burgess said. “Conceived by a NASA scientist in the late seventies.”
“Correct,” Ryan said. “Donald Kessler postulated that objects in low earth orbit would eventually become so dense that they would begin to collide, causing a cascading event that would form a large debris field that would render low earth orbit uninhabitable by satellites.”
“Wait a minute,” Arnie van Damm said. “The International Space Station is in low earth orbit.”
“It is indeed,” Ryan said. “As are most of our surveillance satellites.”
“So,” Mary Pat prodded. “Dr. Tabrizi . . .”
“She takes the hypothesis to the next level,” Ryan said. “Where Kessler thought the number of satellites would domino, leading to a much higher frequency of strikes, Tabrizi theorizes that there is a single satellite in low earth orbit that, if destroyed, would create so much debris that the Kessler syndrome would be greatly accelerated. The collisions would continue to cascade, until everything in low earth orbit is destroyed in a matter of weeks.”
“Thankfully, “Burgess said, “our GPS and communication birds wouldn’t be affected.”
“True,” Ryan said. “Those satellites are much higher, but Tabrizi believes that the debris field would be so dense travel through low earth orbit would be like flying through a shotgun blast.”
“I’m not a rocket scientist,” Scott Adler said, “but you don’t think that’s overstating it a little?”
“Could be,” Ryan said. “But the KH satellites are each roughly the size of a commuter bus. I’ve seen what a speck of dust can do to a window of the Space Station. Forty thousand pounds of space junk has the potential to do a hell of a lot of damage. And, with each successive collision, we get more space junk. So, no, if Dr. Tabrizi’s calculations are correct, we’re not overstating it at all. Let’s have a look at that photo of General Alov and the protesters from our asset in Iran. It’s a good bet those three young men were executed because they saw Tabrizi with Reza Kazem.”
Mary Pat continued to do research on her smartphone. “It looks like she identified a single satellite that would start this chain reaction.”
“Yep,” Ryan said. “She calls it ‘Crux.’”
“Crux,” Mary Pat mused. “Which satellite is it?”
“That’s the problem,” Ryan said. “She never said.”
60
“Why?” Ghorbani asked. “What you do makes no sense.”
“On the contrary,” Kazem said. “It makes all the sense in the world.”
“But Reza,” Ghorbani said, trying a conciliatory tone, though Kazem knew full well the cleric would be happy to see him gutted at the moment. “If Tabrizi succeeds, then everyone will be harmed. Russia will be furious, but we have satellites as well—and we hope to have more, to eventually be on par with the West.”
“And we will be,” Kazem said. “In a matter of weeks instead of the decades that it would have otherwise taken.”
Ghorbani shook his head, curling his nose in a mixture of disgust and disbelief.
“You see,” Kazem pressed. “Iran depends on satellites for but a small portion of our military and civilian communications—and most of that to counter threats from the West. The United States is almost a hundred percent reliant on their eyes in the sky. Without their precious satellites, they will be blind. They will have no more will to stumble around in this portion of the world without their precious technology. I do not wish to serve as gas stations to the West as the Arabs do. We are better than that. This region has rightly belonged to a Persian Empire for seven thousand years. And this will return to us that history. All the so-called superpowers—Russia, China, the United States—will be rendered impotent. At worst, we will be given an equal playing field. At best, they will leave us alone.”
“The sooner I return to Tehran, the better,” the cleric said. “Or do you intend to throw me to my death as well?”
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Kazem said. “But I’m afraid you must remain our guest for a few more hours. Mark my words, O Guide of Emulation. This will be a boon for us and a hellish nightmare for the West.”
“Your mind is gone,” Ghorbani said. “You are as insane as the fool Tabrizi.”
“We will soon see,” Kazem said.
* * *
—
“I need the best astrophysicist in the free world,” President Ryan said. “And if he or she happens to be on the East Coast, so much the better. I’d like them in my office as soon as humanly possible.”
Foley stood. “On it.”
“I may know a guy,” Scott Adler said, though this sort of thing was well outside his wheelhouse. “I play poker with some guys from the poli-sci department at Annapolis. A couple of months ago one of them brought an aeronautical engineering professor—a real probability genius who cleaned us all out. I’ll have to make some calls to get his name.”
Foley was already thumb-typing again. “Dr. Randal Van Orden?”
“That’s him,” Adler said. “If that son of a gun is half as good at rocket science as he is at poker, he’s your man.”
“His CV is incredible,” Foley said, perusing her phone. “Turned down a job at NASA to teach at the Naval Academy. He’s the go-to guy when anyone has a question about satellites. And get this, he’s written papers on both the Kessler and Tabrizi theories.”
Six minu
tes later, Ryan had him on speakerphone.
“Dr. Van Orden, Jack Ryan here. We’re dealing with a significant problem and would welcome your expertise. I wonder if you would be willing to come to my office?”
“Without question, Mr. President,” the scientist said, sounding addled.
“I assume you have a security clearance,” Ryan said.
“I do,” Van Orden said. “My periodic work with NASA requires me to maintain a TS.”
“Top Secret is a little low for this one,” Ryan said. “But I’ll read you in when you get here.”
“Might I ask what the problem is in reference to?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t go into too much on the phone,” Ryan said. “But it has to do with papers you’ve written, specifically on Kessler and Tabrizi.”
“I see,” Van Orden said. “In that case, I have a young protégé here in The Yard who you will want to talk with. He did a recent paper on Tabrizi that was the best I’ve ever read.”
“An associate professor?” Ryan asked.
“No, sir,” Van Orden said. “A Youngster.”
A “Youngster” in Naval Academy jargon was a sophomore. “Midshipman Alex Hardy is a student of mine, and I have to say, one of the brightest minds in the field of aerospace and astronautical engineering. He personally designed the key components for the guidance system on the satellite we’re sending up next fall.”
“That might be problematic,” Ryan said.
“I assure you,” Van Orden said, “if you need answers, he will have more than I do—or anyone else, for that matter.”
Ryan said, “We’ll read him in as well. This is a matter of some urgency. I’ll have a car there to pick you up in . . .” He looked as his watch, then motioned to Mary Pat to get someone on the way immediately. “Shall we say thirty minutes?”
“We’ll be ready, Mr. President.”
Ryan’s hand hovered above the phone. “And Dr. Van Orden, I realize that you and Midshipman Hardy will have scheduled classes, exams and whatnot. I’ll square this with the superintendent. You may tell others with an immediate need to know that you’ve been summoned to the White House, but as far as anyone else is concerned, the purpose of your visit is classified.”