by David Bruns
She stood up. “Can I help you clear, Marje?”
Marjorie was already stacking plates. “No, I insist. You two kids run along and I’ll be in with coffee and pie in a minute. Have a Baileys ready for me.”
Liz followed Brendan into the study. She could detect a familiar scent in the air, like a lost memory. “Are you wearing Old Spice?” she asked.
Brendan blushed and gave a nervous chuckle. “It was a gift from a friend at work. He swears it’s the only way to get women.”
Liz turned on the gas fireplace and took a seat on the sofa. “Is that what you want, Bren? To get women?”
Brendan set a shot of Baileys on the side bar for Marjorie. “Can I get you something?” he asked.
“How about an answer to my question?” The words came out more sharply than she’d intended, causing Brendan to look over. She softened her tone. “Why didn’t you come to the wedding, Brendan? I sent you an invite, but it came back marked ‘return to sender.’”
Brendan busied himself at the bar. “I was deployed, I think.”
“I checked. You were in the States. That really hurt me, Bren.”
He looked at the fireplace, refusing to meet her gaze. The flickering light played across his features, casting his eyes in shadow.
She patted the cushion next to her. “Come over here, Bren. Please.”
The leather on the sofa creaked when he sat, the sound loud in the small room.
Liz’s heart thundered in her ears as she slid a few inches closer to him. “Why did we let it get so difficult, Bren?” she whispered. “We were good for each other, and then we just walked away . . .”
Her hand was a fraction of an inch from his, so close she could feel the heat from his fingers. One twitch of his hand and he would be touching her.
“We just walked away, Liz?” His hand moved away. She almost reached out and grabbed his fingers. “It was what you wanted, remember? ‘You’re a SEAL, I’m a Marine, we’re going different places . . . and we’re not going to get there together.’ I believe those were your exact words, right?”
Liz sat back as if she’d been slapped. “I meant—”
“I know exactly what you meant, Liz. And you got exactly what you wanted—”
“I don’t love him, Bren,” Liz interrupted.
“What does that mean?”
She slid her left hand under her thigh to hide the rings. The enormous stone seemed to bite into her flesh. “James. He’s a good man, and he’s good to me . . . but I don’t love him.”
“So you’re getting a divorce?”
The question stopped Liz cold. What was she going to do? The thought of hurting James just because she was broken inside didn’t seem right. “I—I don’t know. I thought since you were through with Amy, maybe we could—”
“You don’t know anything about my relationship with Amy.” His voice was hard, with a bitter edge. “We’ve spent a grand total of three hours together in the last decade. People change, Liz.”
“It’s all my fault. I know that now,” she said in a small voice. “I just hoped we could start over.”
“Liz, I’m your friend, I’ll always be your friend, but I am not about to break up a marriage.”
Her phone, sitting on the cushion between them, rang. The soft light illuminated his face from below. She kept her eyes locked on him, afraid that if she wavered for even a second, he would be gone. The phone rang again. She knew from the ringtone that it was James.
“Are you going to get that?”
Liz’s eyes went blurry with tears. She snatched the phone off the sofa and stood to face the fireplace.
“Hi, honey,” she said in as bright a tone as she could manage. “I’m right in the middle of dinner here. Could I call you back in an hour?”
“No problem, sweetie. Talk to you later. Have fun.” James hung up.
Brendan was gone, she could feel it. Liz leaned both hands against the mantelpiece and let the flames dissolve in tears.
CHAPTER 30
National Counterproliferation Center (NCPC), McLean, Virginia
09 April 2015 – 1400 local
The Iranians were telling the truth.
Don sat back in his chair and surveyed the stacks of reports arranged in neat piles around him. The master spreadsheet on his laptop accounted for every gram of fissile material that had ever been bought, refined, enriched, or disposed of by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The IAEA had been through every Iranian nuclear facility and verified anything that was verifiable by measurement.
The bottom line was that the Iranians were telling the truth: their program was for peaceful nuclear power generation. Yes, there had been some additional enrichment of material—significant enrichment, in fact, up into the early 2000s—but the Iranians had come clean about that, too. It seemed all the recent posturing in Congress and in Israel, all the dire warnings about the threat of a nuclear Iran, had been pointless.
He switched screens on his laptop to where his report was in draft form. He’d long gotten over the fact that his work ended up on the President’s desk, but this one seemed like a moment in history to Don.
In a way, it was. Since the Iranian nuclear negotiations had been extended in November 2014, his report might be the proof the President needed to bless the pending P5+1 deal with the Iranians. A “green light” assessment would not play well with the hawks in Congress or in the DOD. Heck, most of the CIA was against dealing with the Iranians—but this was one instance where Don was grateful for Clem. True, the guy was an asshole, but in this case, he was Don’s asshole and had been offering the needed cover from those who wanted to influence the outcome of Don’s report.
It had been Clem’s idea to put Don—and all his data—into a secure conference room, complete with his own printer and supply of Diet Cokes. The large table gave him the chance to spread out all the various reports and charts so he could cross-reference them easily. He couldn’t imagine doing this project back in his tiny cube.
He turned back to the report, updating the Executive Summary with his findings, then moving to the detailed final section where he inserted his Excel tables. In the final analysis, he was able to account for every known transaction of raw material and each enrichment step, within an acceptable margin of error.
But what about unknown transactions?
Don’s eyes drifted to the thick file on the floor beside his chair. While all the other folders in the room were stiff and new, with gleaming classification stickers, this one was weathered with age and overstuffed. The faded Top Secret sticker was partially torn. Across the body of the folder, he’d written ROGUE in block letters with a black marker.
That’s what Don had taken to calling it, the Rogue File—his explanation of what had happened to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons. He was tempted to add a section to his report on the possibility that Saddam might have moved nukes to Iran in the days before Operation Iraqi Freedom. A footnote, maybe? Anything to let these people know that there was another potential threat out there.
He shook his head. Apart from being career suicide, this would guarantee that his report would be filed in the deepest, darkest hole the intelligence community could find. No, if he wanted to make a claim like that, he needed hard proof.
Don pushed the laptop back and dropped the file in front of him. It made a satisfying thud on the conference room table. He flipped open the cover and found himself staring at the 8×10 photo of the Blade, aka Alizera Mogadaham, most certainly a false name. While they didn’t know his real identity, they were familiar with his handiwork. Don placed the picture to one side and looked at the next one: a Persian knife, called a pesh-kabz. He studied the wicked edge of the curved blade and the ivory handle worn satiny smooth with use.
The Blade had surfaced during the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War. They knew he was a Quds officer, and his specialty was interrogations—using a knife. Don had seen pictures of a few of his suspected victims and they turned his stomach. Even experienced case officers chose to l
ook away. By the end of the war, Don was told, even the threat of bringing in the Blade for an interrogation was enough to garner useful intel from an Iraqi victim.
The faked Iranian diplomatic passport photo was the only known picture of him. Whatever he’d done after the Iran–Iraq War, he’d kept a low profile. Using facial recognition matching, they’d been able to tentatively place him in Helsinki in June 2005 for reasons unknown, and Brendan had run across the Blade in Iraq twice: once during the 2007 raid and again at the Iraqi MOJ in November 2011. As far as they knew, that was the extent of the agent’s travel outside of Iran. The CIA had classified him as a low-level operative, not worth spending resources on at this time.
Don studied the sharp jawline, the noble nose, and the dark eyes devoid of expression. It was a handsome face, but the deadness in the eyes made him seem unfriendly. He recalled Brendan’s description of the man, his love of Marlboro cigarettes, and the beautiful knife he carried. Not a lot to go on: a handsome Middle Eastern–looking guy with unfriendly eyes, who likes to smoke and carries a knife. He sighed as he restacked the contents of the folder. He closed the cover and rested his hand on it for a moment.
The act of looking at the Rogue File was oddly comforting, like visiting an old friend. Someday, the puzzle pieces in his mind would snap together and it would all make sense. He was sure of it.
He dropped the file to the floor and pulled his laptop back in front of him. For now, he had a report to finish for the President of the United States.
CHAPTER 31
USS Arrogant, Eastern Mediterranean Sea
13 May 2015 – 1910 local
“It’s happening again!”
Dot’s excited voice filtered up from the cabin. Brendan grunted in reply, loud enough for her to hear him. She’d been analyzing the Israeli signal for the last two hours and was over the moon about it, claiming this was “major SIG” material—whatever that meant.
He uncrossed and recrossed his ankles, keeping his attention on the spectacular sunset off the starboard beam. The weather in the eastern Med had been nothing short of phenomenal: a steady light breeze to keep the sails full, but not enough force to disturb the electronics in the mast.
Brendan dropped his gaze to his knees and looked away immediately. His left knee, perfectly smooth tanned skin, contrasted with his right, which was a mess of lumps and twisted scars that would never tan over. The more his tan deepened, the more his damaged limb stood out.
“They shut down.” Dot’s head appeared in the cabin entrance. She gripped the rails and vaulted herself up the stairs, landing on the deck with a thud. A wide smile creased her narrow face and a few strands of frizzy gray-blonde hair escaped the messy bun at the nape of her neck. Dorothy “Dot” Pendergrass looked like a mild-mannered geek—which she was—but Brendan knew firsthand that she was more than able to take care of herself in any situation. During their work-up phase for deployment, Brendan had insisted they all take a self-defense refresher. He’d chosen Dot as his partner and had ended up face-first on the mat in an armlock before he even knew what hit him. She finally shared with the team that she was a third-degree black belt in aikido. More than a little embarrassing for a SEAL, and a good reminder that looks could be deceiving.
Dot’s wiry frame quivered with excitement as she sat on the gunwale, blocking his view of the sunset. “It was spectacular! We didn’t even know the Israelis had that kind of low-energy phased array radar. This has major SIG written all over it.” Her voice was thin, and she had a habit of halting her speech in odd places, as if the words were getting stuck between her brain and her mouth. “These sailboats are pure genius, Brendan. Genius.”
Brendan had his doubts that the Israelis would share her enthusiasm, but he had to admit their trip through the Med proved the premise of the Feisty Minnow intel-gathering program. The working theory that Baxter had sold to ONI was that all countries, friend, foe, or anyone in between, held back on their use of specialized comms and other electronic signatures when US Navy vessels were in the vicinity. But would the same restrictions apply when they thought a pleasure craft was off their coast? Apparently not, from the material they had gathered just from sailing down the southern Med coastline. From Gibraltar, they’d been able to capture signals from Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, and of course Israel, all of which were sent back to NSA for processing.
That was when Brendan first heard the term major SIG, a subjective grade given to field data that “connected the dots” for the analysts. In this case, the signal was a new Israeli capability that showed the US ally had been very busy developing their own sensors—and not sharing their progress with their American friends.
Tomorrow they’d enter the Suez Canal and head for the Indian Ocean, where the real work would begin. He stood and hauled down the flag of the Maldives from the jack staff. For security reasons, the boat was registered in the Maldives, but it still bothered him not to have the stars and stripes flying over his command.
He grinned at Dot. “What do you say, Dot? Major SIG or not? I have a reputation as a spy boat captain to uphold here.”
“Give me another hour and I’ll let you know.” She stood abruptly and disappeared down into the cabin. Brendan shook his head. That was Dot for you: the Energizer Bunny of signals intelligence. Baxter had told him she was the best at what she did, and Brendan believed him.
“More coffee, skipper?”
The voice that floated up from the cabin was the polar opposite of Dot. Whereas Dot was all chaotic energy and abrupt conversations, Gabrielle Marchese lived her life slowly, as if she meant to linger over the enjoyment of every moment. She extended a half-full mug to Brendan, allowing her fingers to linger on his wrist when he accepted the cup. Her touch was deliberate—and electric. Gabby waved her hands for him to move his legs so that she could sit down.
She settled into the bench seat, turning to face him. Gabby was a beautiful girl, there was no doubt about that. Her soft, languorous speech betrayed her New Orleans origins, and in the light of the dying sunset her impossibly large brown eyes were fastened on him. Tendrils of dark hair framed her face, the rest cascading over the caramel-colored skin of her shoulders.
“Penny for your thoughts, skipper,” she said softly.
Oh, and she’d made it very clear that she was willing to sleep with him, so there was that. He mentally listed the reasons why this was a bad idea: she was nearly ten years younger than him, it was bad for crew morale, he would get fired, she reminded him of Liz . . .
The last one stopped him. He’d never really thought about it in those terms before, but it was true: Gabby was a softer, sultrier version of Liz.
Gabby, a civilian, had been a replacement for the Intelligence Specialist who had been diagnosed with jaundice a week before their departure. Due to her last-minute arrival on the boat, she’d only been on two shakedown cruises before they’d left Annapolis, and had been seasick both times—really seasick. But she’d gutted it out and followed through on every single duty assigned, even managing to cook a fabulous jambalaya in heavy seas. Eventually, her seasickness receded.
She kicked him playfully, and Brendan shifted his legs out of range. “Any of those biscuits left from dinner?” he asked.
“Sure.” When she got to her feet, her sundress clung to her hips. Underneath the thin material, he could see the outline of the bikini she’d worn topside that afternoon. Brendan caught his breath. Many more afternoons like that and his resolve about not sleeping with Gabby would be worn paper-thin.
To put his mind on more appropriate matters, Brendan checked his heading and made a minor adjustment to the mainsail. He laughed to himself. It was the kind of adjustment that he’d always teased Liz about on the sailing team, the kind of niggling change you made just to have something to do. He wondered what she thought of him after his sudden departure from Marjorie’s house after Thanksgiving dinner. It had certainly seemed like she was sending him signals—but she was married, for G
od’s sake.
Brendan gritted his teeth. He was better than that. Even if he did have feelings for Liz, she’d made a commitment to another man, and he wasn’t going to be the cause of a breakup.
The clock chimed eight times, the cheery tones ringing in the night air. The handsome brass chronometer, mounted next to the ladder in the cabin, had been a ship-christening gift from Baxter.
Scottie’s tousled head poked up from the cabin. “You ready, skipper?”
“C’mon up, Scottie. I’ll sit a minute more, but you can take the watch.”
Scottie scrambled up the steps, and made his way forward for a pre-watch inspection. Even though they were undercover and flying the flag of a foreign country, they were still a US naval vessel, and Brendan insisted they run watches according to Navy traditions.
He was pretty sure that Scottie and Maggie, the other analyst besides Dot, were sleeping together. Brendan didn’t actually have any evidence, just a feeling. Besides, was it really against regs? Scottie was in the Navy, but Maggie was a civilian now, a GS-11. He sighed. Add crew fraternization policy to the long list of things he should have asked Baxter about before they’d left on deployment.
As if on cue, Gabby’s sleek form glided up the stairs, shadowy in the darkness. She held out a plate, a disc of ghostly white in the dark. “One biscuit, sir. Buttered just the way you like it.” Her hand grazed his knee as she leaned over, and he felt his breath quicken.
“Can I get you anything else?”
CHAPTER 32
Estancia Refugio Seguro, Argentina
08 June 2015 – 1120 local
Through a gap in the drawn drapes, Rafiq could see a blindingly white slice of Argentinean winter sunshine. The gloom of the sickroom unnerved him, reminding him of Farid’s painful last weeks battling pancreatic cancer.
