The Scorpion's Gate (19 page)
“Maybe,” Rusty replied.
“I assume Ms. Delmarco told you it was my people who penetrated the Iranians here. That’s how we learned about their plan to hijack the LNG,” Rashid continued matter-of-factly. “From the penetrations we still have, we think they are planning an across-the-Gulf strike at the end of this month. We have to assume it is a strike on us, since an overt move against Bahrain would be an attack on the United States Navy.”
“And if the Shura believes that will happen, they will try to get nuclear warheads?” MacIntyre asked.
“Some would, yes,” Rashid replied. “And if the Americans think that Islamyah is about to get nuclear weapons, they would strike us?”
“Some would, yes,” Rusty echoed.
The two men in the dingy store-café stared at each other.
“Then we must stay closely in touch and think of ways we could stop these things if they were about to happen, perhaps later this month,” Ahmed said.
“Yes. We have also heard that something may happen this month. And on our calendar it is February, a very short month that is almost half over.”
They shook hands, almost warmly. Rusty emerged from the store to find the minivan gone and a Mercedes taxi waiting. He got in. “To the Ritz Hotel, sir, or the Ambassadors?” the driver asked in English.
As Ahmed bin Rashid emerged from the store into the dimly lit square, he was filmed by two men lying in the trunk of an old Chevrolet Impala across the street. They were U.S. military counterintelligence.
8FEBRUARY 12
The Homa Hotel
Tehran, Iran
B
rian Douglas woke to his wristwatch alarm at five-thirty. He dressed quickly in a set of old clothes he had bought years ago in Tehran. He had removed the labels, in case anyone asked how a first-time visitor had such clothing. On top of them, he donned a worn overcoat and a hat typical of the Tehran street in winter. He walked down the stairs from his fourth-floor room and exited by the door near the kitchen, avoiding anyone monitoring the lobby.
rian Douglas woke to his wristwatch alarm at five-thirty. He dressed quickly in a set of old clothes he had bought years ago in Tehran. He had removed the labels, in case anyone asked how a first-time visitor had such clothing. On top of them, he donned a worn overcoat and a hat typical of the Tehran street in winter. He walked down the stairs from his fourth-floor room and exited by the door near the kitchen, avoiding anyone monitoring the lobby.
The traffic had already started up, even before six o’clock, even before the sun. The green buses and orange taxis coughed their contribution to the day’s smog. The sky was low, heavy, and gray. The snow from three days before had turned to brown slush or short whitish walls where the plows had pushed it up. The air smelled wet and of diesel.
He walked quickly, checking discreetly to see if he had a tail, past the Brazilian Embassy. Then he turned and headed toward Park
Mellat and the Metro. The park dated from the 1960s, when it was begun as an English garden. Now its evergreen trees were a rare, pleasant sign of life in midwinter.
The Metro station looked like a concrete bunker from outside, but inside it was bright, clean, and filled with color. Modern art covered the walls in the ticket hall. The escalator down to the platform was enclosed in a brushed-steel tube, and the platform itself was broad and well lit. Few people were waiting for the train, but it came quickly. Douglas smiled as the cars’ arrival reminded him that the Metro trains in Tehran were emblazoned in red, white, and blue.
He went only one stop and got off at the major switching point for the three subway lines, Imam Khomeini Station. Its grandeur reminded him of Moscow’s palacelike subway. The magnificent new airport and the sparkling Metro were certainly unlike the beleaguered Tehran of the eighties and nineties. The oil wealth of the twenty-first century was beginning to be invested in modern infrastructure.
Now the morning rush was beginning in earnest. People moved quickly and in growing numbers. Douglas went up a stair to the main level. Shop stalls lined the hallway, selling flowers, pastries, tobacco, and magazines. He went to the last stall. As he bought a newspaper, he discreetly looked up at the men who ran the newsstand. The father was there. Still there.
Brian waited to pay the older of the two men behind the counter. With his head down, looking at the magazines, Brian Douglas asked in Farsi, “Do you have the
Baghiatollah Azam
medical journal?”
Baghiatollah Azam
medical journal?”
After a moment, the older man behind the counter spoke softly as he placed the change on the countertop. “No. For that you have to go to the university bookstore. Do you know where it is?” “Yes, thank you, it’s on Mollasadra,” Douglas said in a Tehran accent, and was quickly gone down the corridor and into the enormous crowd now filling the main hall of the terminal. A gray man among so many, he blended immediately and disappeared.
At eight o’clock, a groggy-sounding Brian Douglas answered the hotel’s wake-up call on the third ring and asked, in English, what the weather was like. At nine, he joined Bowers in the breakfast room.
Office of the Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon, Suite E-389
Arlington, Virginia
“
E
ver been in there before, Admiral?” the sergeant asked. Adams shook his head no.
E
ver been in there before, Admiral?” the sergeant asked. Adams shook his head no.
“Biggest desk in Washington, maybe in the world. Goes back to the first SECDEF in the 1940s. Job got to him. Went loony, they say. Checked into Bethesda and didn’t check out. Jumped out the window from his room on the top floor of the tower. At least that’s what I heard.”
Adams was not really listening to the receptionist in the Secretary’s outer office. He was wondering why he was there. After the Bright Star planning conference in Tampa, he had flown to Washington to check in with friends in Navy Headquarters. It was always good to show your face there once in a while, to learn the corridor gossip, who was going to be promoted, who was getting what assignment. Now that he was a three-star admiral, his promotion options had narrowed. There was a chance that he would make it to
four-star, to head up one of the Unified Combatant Commands like Pacific Command, PACOM. The Commander in Chief Pacific, CinCPAC, was nicknamed the Viceroy because he was Washington’s proconsul in the Pacific. You needed to be more visible in Washington than he had been, however, to have a real shot at that job. You needed to have spent time on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on...
four-star, to head up one of the Unified Combatant Commands like Pacific Command, PACOM. The Commander in Chief Pacific, CinCPAC, was nicknamed the Viceroy because he was Washington’s proconsul in the Pacific. You needed to be more visible in Washington than he had been, however, to have a real shot at that job. You needed to have spent time on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on...
“Admiral Adams?” an Air Force officer asked, breaking Brad Adams’s self-assessment. “Major Chun, sir. Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Please come with me.”
Adams followed the young officer to a small, windowless office in what was apparently the second layer in the enormous suite that housed Secretary of Defense Henry Conrad and his immediate staff. Adams knew that the full Office of the Secretary was a small agency with over two thousand employees. They sat on top of a pyramid of over a million civilians and almost two million military personnel in the department. At the base of that pyramid were over five million “private sector” employees of defense contractors. The man inside these walls made decisions that affected every one of those eight million people, and many more beyond.
“Admiral, I am awfully sorry, sir, but it does not look like the Secretary will be able to see you this afternoon, sir. There has been a last-minute change in his schedule, happens all the time, he had to go to the White House this morning, and then his hearing with Appropriations got shifted . . .” Major Chun babbled from behind a small desk piled high with folders and stacks of papers.
“Major, stop,” Adams said softly, raising his right palm. “Back up, son. Why was I asked here in the first place? I was up the hill at Navy Headquarters at BUPERS when I get a call from an aide in the CNO’s office, all excited, saying I need to get my ass over here ASAP. Major, I have never even met the Secretary before or even been on the third deck of the E Ring.”
Major Chun rolled his eyes and laughed. “Admiral, I am just a butt boy around here. I do what the colonel tells me. He does what the milaide, General Patterson, tells him. And the general, sir, he does what SECDEF or Secretary Kashigian tells him. It all flows downhill, sir, if you will excuse my French.”
“Major, I haven’t always been an admiral. In another lifetime, when I was younger than you are now, I was flag aide to CinCPAC in Honolulu. Never saw the sun. Never went to the beach. Might as well have been in Kansas.” Adams smiled, remembering why he had always tried for ship assignments after that.
“Yes, sir, Admiral. Well, sir, all I know is that you were on the first schedule this morning, supposed to have an audience—I mean, a meeting with SECDEF. Just you two and Mr. Kashigian. But now there is no time left because he is flying out of here tonight for the NATO ministerial meeting in Turkey. So instead, I am supposed to take you downstairs to get a briefing and then manifest you for the flight to Turkey tonight. Guess you’ll talk on the plane.”
Adams’s mind raced. A private meeting with the Secretary of Defense could mean an interview for a four-star job, but the Navy had not nominated anyone yet. It was too early in the year. “Turkey, huh? Well, I was going to fly commercial back to Bahrain tonight, so I guess at least Turkey is in the right direction. What’s the briefing?”
“Not for me to know, sir, but it’s in a SCIF, in the bowels,” the major said, checking an e-mail on his computer screen. Special compartmented information facilities were vaults protected from physical or electronic intrusion. They were where extremely sensitive information was stored and where “you never heard this” briefings were given. “I’d better take you down there, Admiral. It gets a little scrungy once you go below the first floor.”
Major Chun escorted Adams down three flights on escalators. No one they passed seemed impressed to see a vice admiral. In Bahrain, he was a god on base and aboard his ships, but here he was just another three-star. They descended the next two flights by a dimly lit stair, reminding Adams that whatever flashy displays were in the corridors, this was still a building that had been quickly thrown up at the start of World War II.
On the mezzanine level, Chun maneuvered quickly through a maze of narrow corridors. The five concentric rings that gave some logic to room numbers on the Pentagon’s aboveground floors all disappeared in the dingy subterranean complex. “I see why you call it the bowels, Major. Tell me, what’s it like working for the top dog? Lotta guys your rank would give their eyeteeth for a chance like you’ve got,” the admiral asked, trying to be informal with the junior officer.
“Well, sir, between you and me, they can have it. Only time I ever see the top dog lately is after eleven at night, when he sends all the other aides home and I get to hang around to close up after him. Sometimes he works till one
A
.
M
., making calls all over the country, all over the world. It’s gotten real crazy around here last few months. He’s driven, sir, but I don’t know by what. You can see it in his eyes. There’s a fire. He never relaxes. Even when he went golfing down in Houston last month with these big oil company execs, he was having me place secure calls on the satphone for him almost every other hole.”
A
.
M
., making calls all over the country, all over the world. It’s gotten real crazy around here last few months. He’s driven, sir, but I don’t know by what. You can see it in his eyes. There’s a fire. He never relaxes. Even when he went golfing down in Houston last month with these big oil company execs, he was having me place secure calls on the satphone for him almost every other hole.”
They arrived in front of a metal door. A camera looked down on them from the right of the door. On the left was a phone and a small aluminum box attached to the wall. The box had no top, and Major Chun placed his hand inside it and punched numbers onto a keypad hidden from the eyes of passersby. The door clicked open.
“Admiral, I will leave you here, sir, with Dr. Wallace, to get the briefing. If you could, sir, come by when you are done and I’ll have your orders and schedule ready for you to get on the plane tonight and be billeted in Turkey tomorrow,” the major explained, handing Adams off to a civilian who looked to be in his late fifties, with curly gray hair, rimless glasses, and an ill-fitting brown suit. Adams wondered if he would ever be able to retrace his route to the Secretary’s office, many stories above.
Dr. Wallace asked Adams to sign a paper in a folder with a cover sheet that read “Special Access Program, Eyes Only, Opal.” The paper had been prepared with Adams’s name, rank, service number, and date of birth already entered. “Now I can give you the briefing,” Wallace said, walking into a small theaterlike room off the vault’s foyer. There were three rows of cinema-style seating, but no audience. Adams chose the aisle seat in the second row.
Dr. Wallace walked to a podium and pressed a button, and the large screen came alive with an image of a yellow dragon on the deck of a Chinese junk. The dragon and the boat were set on a backdrop of loud red. The words “Special Access Program” and “Top Secret Opal” appeared. The civilian suddenly became animated, too, walking in front of the podium, folding his fingers into a pyramid. “We will now tell you everything we know about the Chinese fleet. And that is quite a lot.”
The screen showed video of a large aircraft carrier slowly moving in what appeared to be Sydney Harbor. The video was clearly filmed from a helicopter. “The
Zhou Man
arriving for a friendly port call last year in Australia. She was stripped down. Only a few aircraft on board for the visit. No nukes. A few antennae missing. Most of the electronics off. Nonetheless, a most impressive ship, wouldn’t you say, Admiral?”
Zhou Man
arriving for a friendly port call last year in Australia. She was stripped down. Only a few aircraft on board for the visit. No nukes. A few antennae missing. Most of the electronics off. Nonetheless, a most impressive ship, wouldn’t you say, Admiral?”
“I’d say she looks as big as the
Stennis, Reagan,
or
Bush.
Only newer. Sleeker,” Adams offered, beginning to understand what he was doing there. “As commander Fifth Fleet, I have not had to keep up with the Chinese fleet modernization, Dr. Wallace, but I do already know that it surprised us.”
Stennis, Reagan,
or
Bush.
Only newer. Sleeker,” Adams offered, beginning to understand what he was doing there. “As commander Fifth Fleet, I have not had to keep up with the Chinese fleet modernization, Dr. Wallace, but I do already know that it surprised us.”
Wallace sat down in the chair in front of Adams and turned sideways to face him. “Surprised some in our Navy, Admiral. Not me. I told them it was coming. You could see it. The Chinese bought the HMAS
Melbourne,
a steam catapult carrier, from the Aussies. Said it was for a maritime theme park. Then they got the
Varyag,
a sixtyseven-thousand-ton aircraft carrier, from Ukraine and made it into a casino.” A glint shone in the civilian’s eyes. “Our Navy experts said that Russia would never sell carrier technology to a competing Pacific fleet. Well, they didn’t. Ukraine did.
Melbourne,
a steam catapult carrier, from the Aussies. Said it was for a maritime theme park. Then they got the
Varyag,
a sixtyseven-thousand-ton aircraft carrier, from Ukraine and made it into a casino.” A glint shone in the civilian’s eyes. “Our Navy experts said that Russia would never sell carrier technology to a competing Pacific fleet. Well, they didn’t. Ukraine did.
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