by Ken Hansen
“Tomadus, you have a conflicted soul. You often suspect the worst of those who love you the most, yet you are blinded by those who love you the least.”
“The First Consul trusts me and I trust him. Do you know how many times he has helped me? How many times he has helped us both?”
Isa closed his eyes slowly and then reopened them.
Tomadus pulled his lips together and exhaled hard through his nose. “You are in danger, Isa. We must change the story. We tried through the broadcast, but we need more. We must convince them you are sincere. The First Consul and I believe you can right the ship if we do it at once.”
“Right the ship? Are you sure you do not seek to destroy the boat?”
Tomadus shook his head. “You do not understand. The Abh Beyth Diyn and the Grand Imams apparently still believe you to be a fraud. The First Consul has confided this in me. He believes, I believe, you must convince them you actually believe in what you say. If we can turn them, the First Consul can keep the Emperors on your side.”
“What do you believe, Tomadus, about me?”
Tomadus checked for the creature, but it did not stir. He did not know what he believed, and everything had become so confusing since the Adin miracle. “What does it matter? We believe—”
“We?” Isa interrupted.
“The First Consul and I believe that if you were put to the test and passed, you would win them over. It would make all the difference. Your mission could continue. You could even return to Tetepe.”
“It is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’”
Tomadus bit his lip hard. Now he is God? “They are not looking for miracles, Isa, only your sincerity. Think of it like when God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar. God did not go through with it, nor shall they. If you do not back down in the face of their adversity, you shall win. We all shall win.”
“And what would I ‘win’?”
“Stop parsing my every word!”
“Then what adversity do you anticipate?”
Tomadus lowered his voice, “I don’t know exactly. They will probably threaten to harm you, but the First Consul will control the proceeding. He has promised you will not come to harm. I know you think your fate remains inevitable—that you must follow the same path as Jesus. You need not. I’m telling you we have the means to change what happened in that other world. Your mission will continue. Isa, think of the things you could accomplish.”
Isa closed his eyes, clasping his palms together for a few seconds. He opened them and stared for a few seconds into Tomadus’s eyes. “Do what you must. It seems your efforts are necessary.”
“I’m glad you finally see it,” replied Tomadus triumphantly.
Isa’s eyes misted over as he regarded Tomadus for several seconds. He bit his lip, turned and slowly walked away.
Chapter 89
“Damn it! The target is New York City. We have to move the UNGARD there now!” Huxley had blurted out his conclusion without any explanation. What had happened to his carefully crafted speech artfully leading up to that point? Well, it went right into the shitter as soon as Huxley had walked into Deputy Under Secretary Blount’s office. His boss had acted strangely, asking him a few surprising questions and seeming to probe for hidden answers. The oddity had forced his hand. It was almost as if Blount were revving up for one of his famous, torturous tongue-lashings. What the hell had Huxley done wrong now?
His lips lined and eyebrows raised, Blount crossed his arms and asked in a skeptical tone, “And how did you come by this conclusion?”
“It has been a long path, but the clincher came just before I hopped on the plane from Kabul. You know we have been trying to decipher the clues in Najwa’s phone contacts list. Well I did that, and it points conclusively to Washington as the target.”
“DC? Then why the hell are you telling me the target is New York City?”
“Because Pardus told me the whole contacts list thing was a sham. He was trying to misdirect the investigation to waste my time and convince me to ultimately focus our efforts on Washington.”
“You spoke with Pardus?”
“Not exactly. He spoke with one of his agents, whom I have now turned, and I was able to listen in on the whole conversation without Pardus’s knowledge. He did not specifically ID New York, but he told my informant to avoid the area a few hours north of DC if he wanted to be safe. Plus, the informant said he had previously referred to the target as ‘The Apple.’ Where else could it be?”
“I see,” said Blount. “Then you have identified Pardus?”
“No, not completely. My informant says he has a deep, resonant voice and speaks in English with an Arabic accent.”
“That does not narrow it down much. Who is your informant?”
“A former Afghan army hero, Abdul Saboor Anwari. He is on his way here. We need to protect him from Pardus. But keep Mayer out of it. I’m worried he may be helping Pardus…or worse.”
Blount put both hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Are you suggesting Mayer may be Pardus? Are you nuts?”
“No. Look, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t want to compromise the mission here. If we screw this up because of misplaced loyalties, there will be no way to reverse a nuclear explosion in Manhattan. I have plenty of reasons for my suspicions. Whoever put together the contacts list on that phone had way too much personal information on me—information I know Mayer knows, but not many others, not even in the CIA or Homeland. Pardus has to have an inside contact, plus Mayer’s been squirrely about this entire mission. I hate to say it, but it feels like he has given me too much rope—way too much for him given his personal style—and I can only think he is doing that to lead me astray. He can speak with a perfect Arab accent. He was the CIA intel agent in Afghanistan when shit went bad and Anwari’s brother was killed by a JDAM ordered by Anwari. Mayer also had Anwari stuffed in cold storage without even having someone interrogate him. That’s tough to understand when nukes are hanging in the balance. I was able to get to Anwari only after a specific plea.”
“Wait, you told Mayer you had turned Anwari?”
“No. But I had to tell him I was interrogating Anwari and trying to turn him just to get Mayer to agree that I could meet with him and release him.”
Blount sat back in his chair. “What if Mayer knew you turned him?”
“That was a risk I had to take. I was out of options. But look, if he is Pardus or his informer, they still don’t know if I turned Anwari. They just know I tried.”
“But the call with Pardus would be the clincher. Did Pardus ask about where he had been?”
“Yes, we expected that, but we had a good excuse. You cannot buy a phone in Afghanistan during the Islamic holiday—all the stores are closed. So he had dropped it in the toilet.”
“But if Mayer is involved, they would know he was lying. That would give him up.”
Huxley shook his head. “You might think so, but everyone knows about Pardus’s reputation for eliminating loose ends. It would be a death sentence for anyone from Pardus’s gang to admit to having been caught by the CIA. They would watch him after that, but they could not be sure without more. I told Mayer I might have to spring him and watch him awhile to find out anything. So he can’t be sure. The last thing is the voice. Anwari has heard Pardus’s voice. I just need to get a recording of Mayer’s voice in Arabic to Anwari and see if he IDs him.”
“Why would Mayer do this? He passed all of the psych and background tests years ago. Never heard he was disgruntled, so why?”
“That is the toughest question,” said Huxley, “but who the hell knows? He has made connections all over the globe and they don’t pay CIA operators that much. Why does anyone shit on his own country? Money? Maybe. Or maybe he likes the power. Some people just like to pull their little levers and laugh when they see nobody even realizes what little puppets they have become. I know Pardus cherishes his own cleverness. He undoubtedly is
arrogant as hell—just like Mayer. Still, I really don’t know. Nevertheless, we can’t risk taking a chance right now, not with nukes at stake. So we keep him out of the loop, okay?”
Blount grimaced, looked out the window and then back at Huxley. “What if Mayer’s voice doesn’t match Pardus’s?”
“Then I have one other principal suspect, and I’ll focus on him.”
“Who would that be?”
“Baqir Najwa.”
Blount raised both of his eyebrows and stared for a full five count. “I thought you said a few months ago that he died at Ramat David.”
Huxley shook his head slowly. “Turns out that was a dodge we missed because Aman was a bit careless. I just got a call from my contact there—they finally ran a blood sample against the DNA we had on Najwa from Gitmo and confirmed the body at Ramat was not his. No, Najwa is more heavily involved in this thing than I had originally thought—he either is Pardus or is working closely with the Leopard. I’ve heard his voice and it matches the voice Anwari described. If Mayer’s not our guy, then I’d bet on Najwa. The other possibility is Dracoratio—Esnanimen Kharun Udani. Anwari confirmed that alias. We’ve always seen him as the lieutenant, but I suppose he could also be Pardus himself. I doubt it, but it’s possible. If Pardus is none of the above, then your guess is as good as mine. Hell, he’s evaded our detection for ten years, would it surprise you if he had managed that again?”
Deputy Under Secretary Blount sat back in his chair and rested his chin on his clasped hands, his eyes focusing and refocusing on different parts of the room.
Huxley cocked his head. The old man’s trying to decide whether to tell me something. He wondering if I’m going off the deep end again?
Blount leaned forward and nearly whispered to Huxley, “You won’t have to worry about Baqir Najwa anymore, nor do we need to provide any protection to your informant.”
“Why?” Huxley asked weakly.
“Because they were both found this morning in a prayer room in Dubai International Airport with 9mm bullets in them.”
Huxley swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions inside. He’d let Anwari down. The man’s blood was on his hands. “How?”
“We don’t know with certainty yet, but it looks like they were both shot by the same gun.”
“Murder-suicide? Anwari had no weapon. He’d been on a plane.”
“Najwa did and so did the shooter.”
“The shooter wasn’t Najwa?”
“No,” said Blount. “It was Ken Mayer.”
Huxley’s jaw dropped.
“That’s right,” Blount said. “He was found dead alongside the others. Looks like Mayer shot Anwari first in the head execution style and then shot Najwa in the gut just as Najwa was pulling out his own pistol. Apparently Najwa had the last say and killed Mayer with a shot to the head. Najwa tried to get up a few times, crawled across the floor but bled out in the prayer room. That’s just the preliminary report. No witnesses. Nobody heard any shots. Bodies were discovered early this morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this right away?” asked Huxley.
“Given Mayer’s involvement, I had to see what you knew first. We’re still trying to figure this out.”
“If you are right on the sequence, it seems that I was right about Mayer. Anwari was unarmed. Mayer must have executed him as a loose end, and Najwa saw a hair too late that he was next. That suggests Mayer was either Pardus or his agent.”
“Sounds about right,” nodded Blount.
“What about Dracoratio?”
“What about him? He wasn’t there,” said Blount with a note of authority.
“Oh, but he was.” Huxley showed Blount the last text he had received from Anwari.
“Crap!” Blount chewed on his bottom lip and shook his head for a few seconds. “So he may still be engaged.”
“No doubt. And as the second in command, he will still be moving to deploy the nukes.”
“And you’re sure he’ll try to take one of the warheads into New York City?”
Huxley leaned forward, placing both palms on Blount’s desk. “If we don’t stop him. I saw Anwari’s face and heard his inflections. He was smart, but he was no great actor. He believed New York was the target. He was a loose end, so Pardus killed him. It all fits. No, the clues were the ruse, not Anwari. Washington’s the red herring. New York’s the target. The only risk is if they figured out I discovered the truth, then they might try to change the location. But I suspect that would take time to plan. For now, there is only one choice: we move the UNGARD from the Chesapeake Search Zone to the New York Bay Search Zone. We’ve had the Continuity of Government plan in place for a few weeks now to help DC. We raise it up a level or two. Anyway, in the meantime, just in case we are wrong, the Coast Guard searches every boat, every pleasure craft—hell, every raft and log—that gets within 15 miles of the Chesapeake’s entrance, and we hope they can find the warhead. But Pardus’s plan points to New York. We don’t tip our hand there.”
“They have two nukes. Why not both New York and Washington?”
“I think the other is targeted for Rome. Just a hunch, but it’s the only thing that explains the cardinal.”
“Cardinal?” asked Blount.
“Yep, a former Catholic cardinal, Armondo Fine, is mixed up in this. He would seem extraneous if Rome is not a target.”
Blount raised his eyebrows. “You tell the Italian authorities?”
“Well, I hinted as much to a Carabinieri lieutenant, but I figured the official warning should be made by you or the State Department, given our confidentiality commitment to Pakistan.”
“What if you are wrong and they are also targeting Washington?”
Huxley shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Why would they lead me to the District if they plan to target it? Could be another city, but DC seems pretty damn unlikely.”
“OK if we are going to get the UNGARD moved, I’ll need you to help me convince the Under Secretary, then the Secretary and the President.”
“Of course.” Huxley got up to leave his boss’s office, but then turned. “Was there anything else in the prayer room in Dubai—any other clues that might help?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Oh, there was one quirk.”
“What’s that?” Huxley asked.
“Anwari had a picture of a young family in his hand. We haven’t ID’d it yet.”
“His brother’s family. Saw it at Chapman. He probably grabbed it to comfort his distress.”
“I doubt that, since Anwari had ripped the picture down its middle, right through the man’s face.”
Chapter 90
Huxley looked around at the three officers with the mic’d aviation helmets. The sound permeating his own helmet—the constant vibration and the thwack, thwack, thwack of the Jayhawk—nearly took him back to his days in Afghanistan years ago. But this was no Black Hawk. There were no rugged mountains below. The Coast Guard whirlybird sped over the cool waters of the Atlantic, taking him farther from the Staten Island Coast Guard Station where he had spent a few weeks waiting for this one ride out to sea.
Those weeks had passed without Dracoratio blowing up any cities—at least not yet. The UNGARD ships had moved into the Atlantic about twenty miles out of the New York Harbor. The Coast Guard had also begun individually harassing every boat captain and crew on their way to the Chesapeake—from large container ships to smaller pleasure craft. The higher levels of the COG (continuity of government) plan had sprung into effect. Huxley had moved into a dingy little temporary office on Staten Island, waiting for the call that the UNGARD had found its prey. Nothing for two weeks.
Well, nothing except an outpouring of complaints about the Chesapeake searches that had already hit the national news. The official word was that the Coast Guard was testing a new search protocol. The unofficial response from many of the private vessel captains was that the government could take their new search protocol and shove it. And the politicos were no different. They
had work to do and were tired of staying out of Washington to meet the additional security precautions triggered by the COG. In New York, only the UNGARD had changed. They could not allow the terrorists to realize they had learned the truth. It was the only chance to get those nukes back before they were used somewhere in the world. It was a risk, but everyone at DOD had verified the UNGARD would work. They had better damn well be right.
Huxley knew that for the purposes of this mission he was what the Tier 1 door bangers (the SEALs) would call an REMF—in less vulgar terms, rear echelon non-essential personnel. He waited for the mission anyway because doubt kept creeping into the conclusions he and Blount had reached. Everything fit, but a little too snuggly. He had spent the time reviewing reports, waiting for others, and obsessing about the remaining holes in his case. The Dubai Airport shootout seemed to convince his boss and the CIA boys that Mayer had gone rogue. All the forensics evidence—from powder residues to bullet trajectories to blood splatters—seemed to confirm the original story. But Pardus had led Huxley through the maze far too deftly for this thing to end so simply and stupidly. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw Deputy Under Secretary Blount asking him again: Why? Why would Mayer do this?
Then the CIA had found a comforting answer. They had searched Mayer’s home and uncovered a hidden number and key, which led them to a safe deposit box in a Swiss bank holding 2 million Euros in cash. So it was the money after all, or at least that supplied the official motive for the reports. But Huxley could still smell the stench of a decaying investigation. If Mayer had been Pardus, he would have had infinitely greater resources. If he had been working for Pardus, would he really have kept the account number and key in his apartment? And in either case, who is willing to destroy a couple of cities for a few million Euros? You would have to be an awfully greedy and callous son of a bitch to do that. Sure, Mayer was an asshole, but even he didn’t seem so greedy he wouldn’t mind killing millions of people at less than a dollar a pop. Maybe there was more money somewhere else. But could a sane person put any price on a few million heads? A good solid motive for Mayer would end Huxley’s self-interrogation, but nothing emerged to remove the subtle hint of deception.