Our Sacred Honor

by Jack Mars

  Trudy shook her head again, more forcefully this time. Then she rolled her eyes. “Because if it gets out that you’re the President’s boyfriend, or whatever you are to her, you will become a household name overnight. That’s going to lead to newspaper and TV coverage. Which is going to lead to people digging into your past. Just for fun, a few days ago I decided to see how hard I would have to work to come across classified information about you, to which I’m not supposed to have access. Do you know how hard it was? Not very hard at all.”

  “Trudy, you’re an intelligence agent, trained to dig up information.”

  “Reporters are trained to dig up information.”

  Luke shook his head. “Not like you.”

  “And what if an intelligence agent decided to leak the information to the press?”

  Now he really looked at her, as if seeing her for the very first time.

  “What are you saying, Trudy? That you would—”

  “No. I would never do that. But I have to tell you something that you don’t seem to realize. Not everybody loves you, Luke. Some people think you’re bad news.”

  Luke sat and chewed on that for a moment.

  He glanced around at the crowd. A young man—short, balding, dressed in a suit that seemed too big for him somehow—wound his way through the crowd. He glanced down at his telephone, then made his way over to Luke.

  “Mr. Montgomery?” he said. His accent said he was an American.

  Luke nodded. “Yes. I’m Mr. Montgomery, and I’m with the State Department.”

  “I’m Steve Becker. I’m your liaison from the embassy. Are you and your team ready for your first meeting?”

  Luke looked at the light, which was now filling the sky. Trudy had just given him an earful—in all his worries about shielding Gunner, and not letting his identity become too well known, he had never considered all the things that might leak out. Would he want Gunner to know these things?

  Absolutely not. Not like that. One day, he might choose to tell Gunner himself. Then again, he might not. Also, declassified information about the events of his life, the actions he had taken part in, the opinions and recommendations that had been added to his file over the years, might raise questions about his fitness as a father.

  And what about Susan? Did he want her to know these things?

  She was the President. She could access that information any time she wanted. But something told him that she had chosen not to do so.

  What if it was thrown in her face?

  Luke didn’t want to think about it. He stood.

  “We are more than ready for our first meeting.”

  * * *

  They didn’t go to the embassy.

  And they didn’t go with Steve Becker. The driver was an Israeli—he wore a yarmulke, black pants, and a black vest over a white dress shirt. In marked contrast to Becker, his clothes were well tailored to his small, muscular frame.

  He took them in a black SUV to a nondescript, squat, two-story cinderblock warehouse in an industrial district near the far eastern edge of the city. The neighborhood was a wasteland of similar warehouse-type buildings, fenced-in empty lots, and tract homes. A sign hung on the warehouse, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English letterings.

  Resnick Quality Meats.

  Nice. They were meeting at a slaughterhouse.

  As they entered the gate to the yard around the warehouse, a corrugated steel door slid slowly open, allowing the car to enter the building. The SUV pulled into an empty chamber. There was nothing at all in the warehouse. No refrigeration units. No freezers. No cars or trucks parked. Just a large, two-story space, which looked like it had been swept clean with a broom. There was a small office that overlooked the warehouse, but there was nothing in there, either, and the lights were off.

  “No meats here,” Ed said.

  “No.”

  The driver got out and opened the rear door. “Gentlemen,” he said, “and lady. Please come with me.”

  Next to the empty office was an elevator. The door was open, and instantly the elevator began to drop rapidly into the Earth. Within seconds, they reached their destination. The door slid open without a sound.

  It opened to an operations control room, a conference room much like the Situation Room at the White House, or the new one at SRT headquarters. Several men in uniforms stood there along with a few in street clothes. All of them stood ramrod straight, and stared at the newcomers with hard eyes. Luke stared back at them.

  He tried to imagine what they were seeing as they watched the cream of American espionage arrive. He saw alarm bells ringing in their minds when they looked at Mark Swann. Luke almost turned and glanced back at Swann himself.

  No matter. Swann wasn’t a hard case like these men were. Neither was Trudy. But Ed Newsam would more than make up for whatever Swann and Trudy lacked in the hard case department.

  A man, Luke guessed in his fifties, wearing a blue business suit, stepped up and offered Luke his hand. His skin was tan. His hair was impeccably neat, not a strand out of place. His teeth were blindingly white. Luke knew that his comrades called him the Model for his good looks and the way he presented himself. He was the director of the Mossad, in English, “The Institute.” It was the Israeli intelligence agency, this country’s version of the CIA.

  “Luke, I’m Efraim Shavitz,” he said.

  “I know,” Luke said. “I’m Luke Stone, as I see you’ve guessed. This is Trudy Wellington, my science and intel officer, this is Mark Swann, my technology officer, and this… well, this is Ed Newsam. Weapons and tactics.”

  Shavitz shook hands with each person in turn.

  “We are here,” Luke said, “to do whatever we can to help.”

  Shavitz nodded. “Good. Shall we begin?”

  He indicated four seats at the long rectangular table, all in a row. Luke and his team took their seats, Swann immediately opening his laptop and Trudy placing her tablet within reach on the table in front of her.

  “As you know,” Shavitz said. “We are at war, and the very survival of our country, and our people, is at stake. It has become apparent that the Iranians have provided Hezbollah with new weaponry—Iranian-made and possibly Russian-made—that is nearly as advanced as our own. We are well used to the towns and cities of the north being targets of rocket attacks from Lebanon. We are well used to the towns of the south being targets for rocket attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. But we cannot allow Hezbollah to possess advanced missile systems. We will scorch the very Earth to keep this from happening. We will destroy Lebanon utterly, leave not one building or tree standing, if need be, to root out the location of these weapons.”

  He gazed at Luke and his team, his eyes like those of an eagle, perhaps trying to discover if there was any doubt in their minds about the need to do this.

  A middle-aged man in a military uniform halfway down the table spoke up. He had a flattop haircut, clean-shaven face, and chiseled features. He reminded Luke of the nickname often hung on US Marines back home—jarhead.

  “We are surrounded by seven countries within a hundred miles, all of whom would see us destroyed. That doesn’t even count the various terrorist and militia groups. We must—must—have military superiority. We cannot have advanced weaponry on our borders, in the hands of our enemies. Do you understand?”

  Luke nodded. “Of course.”

  “Good,” the man said. “Sometimes the things we hear from across the ocean… the newspaper reporting, the easy rhetoric that gets thrown around… it can seem that we have no friends.”

  “Oh, we’re your friends,” Mark Swann said.

  The man gazed at Swann for a long moment.

  “I cannot tell you enough how encouraging I find that.”

  “Can we continue?” Luke said.

  “Of course,” Shavitz said. “At the head of the table is Dr. Abram from the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. He is one of our foremost researchers into the Iranian nuclear threat.
Dr. Abram?”

  The man stood. He was clearly not a military man. He was overweight—portly trending toward obese—and wore thick glasses that tended to slide to the end of his nose. His hair stood up in thick tufts on either side of his head. Behind him, the large monitor screen came to life. A map of Iran appeared. The man picked up a pointing stick from the table. This was going to be a real university-style lecture.

  “Agent Stone, my other American guests,” he said, “welcome. As you must know, despite international sanctions, Iran long ago developed the medium-range ballistic missile capability to reach Israel. It is likely by now that they have developed the capacity to reach major cities in Western Europe, should they desire. It is not entirely out of the question, though they are unlikely to announce such a thing, that they have the ability to reach America.”

  Luke glanced at Trudy. She gave a small head shake, as if to say, “Not a chance.”

  The professor noticed the head shake, said nothing.

  “In any event, what they have not done, perhaps until now, is develop the ability to build nuclear warheads that might ride on such missiles. That missing piece has led them to refrain from using their missile capacity because they know that any counterattack from Israel, Europe, or the United States would be completely devastating to them.

  “However, we have been concerned for the past several months that they were racing to complete the development of this capacity. We believe they now have the weapons, and we believe they will launch as they indicate. Iran, for all its myriad other failings, is not a country that makes a lot of idle threats.”

  On the screen, icons appeared on the map of Iran. The professor pointed to each of them in turn. “Here you see Tehran, the capital city, located in the north central area of the country, just below the mountainous region of the north. Although there are dozens of underground military facilities in Iran, we believe there are just three such locations where the nuclear warheads could be located.”

  He indicated a red square with his pointer. “This is the massive military complex of Parchin, just east of the capital. Much of it is underground, and much is deeply buried. The Iranians claim that their facilities are as deep as five hundred meters, which would be impossible to penetrate with conventional weapons. However, because of the terrain, their technological limitations, and the ever-present threat of earthquakes, we believe this is not true. We think Parchin goes as deep as two hundred meters, perhaps a little more. That’s deep, but not impenetrable.”

  Trudy raised her hand. “Doctor, what do you base your suspicions on? Why would the nukes be at Parchin, say, instead of somewhere else?”

  Dr. Abram indicated two icons near the one for Parchin. They were the international symbol for radioactivity—three upright black triangles, embedded with three upside down yellow triangles.

  “These are the nuclear enrichment facilities of Fordo and Natanz. Fordo in particular interests us because it is just outside the Muslim holy city of Qom, where a great deal of archaeological activity has taken place. Both facilities can enrich uranium to a concentration of twenty percent, and in all likelihood to a weapons-grade concentration of ninety percent.

  “Iran is monitored very closely by international satellite surveillance, and of course the Iranians know this. In the normal course of business, materials from the uranium mines at Saghand and Yazd, which you see further to the south, are trucked to the enrichment facilities at Fordo and Natanz. This is witnessed from the sky on a regular basis. But both Fordo and Natanz, and especially Fordo, are close enough to the military complex at Parchin that you could build a tunnel and bring the enriched uranium, and potentially the nuclear warheads themselves, the rest of the way underground.”

  He let that sink in. A nuclear enrichment facility operating openly, but moving weapons beneath the earth to the missile sites nearby.

  “Parchin is the most likely suspect to house the Iranian warheads. We believe that they would have enriched enough uranium by now for eight, or possibly nine warheads. Not much, when counted against the thousands held by the Americans and the Russians, and also not much when counted against the number held by Israel—”

  “How many warheads would you say Israel has?” Swann said.

  Dr. Abram gave Swann a pained smile. “Enough, I suppose.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Ed Newsam said. They were the first words he had uttered since the meeting began. “What if the warheads aren’t there? What next?”

  The doctor nodded. “It’s a good question. We believe the next most likely military bases are located at or near the enrichment facilities at Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf coast, or Isfahan in the center of the country, in that order. Both are large enrichment facilities, both capable of producing weapons-grade material. Both are located near military bases. We believe the Bushehr facility is the more likely of the two because of its proximity to Saudi Arabia, just across the Gulf here. A missile attack from Bushehr would reach its target in Saudi Arabia, if that were the target, within a few minutes of launch, with essentially no warning for the targeted population.”

  “Your concern for the Saudis is heartwarming, Doctor,” Swann said.

  Abram smiled again, this time with a little more mirth than before. “Please understand. I don’t care about the Saudis. I would just as soon have a world with no such place as Saudi Arabia. But I must consider all contingencies. And missiles targeting Riyadh can very easily be retargeted to hit Tel Aviv or Eliat, or Haifa or Nazareth. I do like to think they would spare Jerusalem.”

  “Those bases look pretty far apart,” Luke said, indicating the map. “And we need to talk about how well fortified those places are. Can we get in? Can we get out?”

  Shavitz spoke up. “It is a difficult mission, but not impossible. There is an informant in Tehran. Naturally, he fears for his life. He will not communicate, except in person. We believe he can either get you the information you need, or put you in touch with people who can give you that information. In other words, if you can confirm the existence and location of the weapons from someone who has high-level access to intelligence, you may not need to infiltrate the bases themselves.”

  He paused.

  “Of course, what would be better than any of this is if you can secure proof that the entire thing is a hoax, and the weapons do not exist.”

  “It’s going to be hard to prove a negative,” Luke said.

  “Harder still is going to be getting out,” Shavitz said.

  “Tell me,” Luke said.

  “Time is of the essence,” Shavitz said. “The clock is ticking, and Iran could attack us at any moment. Whether they have nuclear missiles or not, Iran’s conventional missile arsenal is incredibly robust. We cannot let too much time elapse. We cannot wait until they attack us. Forty-eight hours after you enter Iranian airspace, you must be at the rendezvous point in the Caspian Sea port of Rasht.”

  “What happens if we aren’t?” Luke said.

  “If we haven’t obtained specific intelligence on the nuclear weapons by then, we will commence our own attack, which will be very comprehensive. Once it begins, we will not be able to get you out.”

  “You might even call the attack indiscriminate,” the jarhead from earlier said.

  “We will hit every military base, every known and suspected missile site, civilian and military infrastructure and communications, electricity, water supplies. The idea is to cripple Iran’s ability to respond.”

  Trudy raised her hand. “Uh, with all due respect, that’s a terrible idea. You will cause massive suffering among civilians, and you will never completely destroy their ability to respond. I’ve studied Iran extensively. It’s too big for what you describe. There are too many places to deploy their missiles. They’re too sophisticated. They hide everything, even from themselves.”

  Shavitz shook his head. “This isn’t my decision. The Prime Minister’s war cabinet has decided to give this mission a chance to work. But they will not wait forever. Too much i
s at risk.”

  “Forty-eight hours, though?” Luke said. “It sounds a bit arbitrary. It might take us a week to get in there and—”

  “You won’t survive a week in Iran, Luke. I wouldn’t even entertain that idea. They are on high alert. The police and the Revolutionary Guards are everywhere. Neighbor informs on neighbor. Anything out of the ordinary is reported. If you stay too long, they will catch you. Being captured in Iran is one of the most unpleasant things I can think of. The best thing is to get in and get back out as fast as you can.”

  Luke stared at Shavitz. It sounded like the Israelis weren’t fully invested in this—not if they wouldn’t give it the time it needed. Luke had been under deep cover in worse places than Iran, for longer periods, and survived.

  “Is the legendary Luke Stone worried?” a man in the corner said.

  Luke glanced at him. He was young, very fit, not big but wiry, with a close-cropped light-colored beard. He had a rude shock of yellow blond hair on his head—it looked fake, like he had poured it from a bottle. He also had blue eyes.

  He slumped insouciantly in his chair, away from the conference table. He was one of the few people in the room in neither military nor business-type dress. Instead, he wore a blue T-shirt, blue jeans, and an oversized pair of Timberland work boots, with the laces untied.

  “Could it be that the American is afraid?”

  Luke felt nothing about the man’s interruption. Emotions ran high sometimes, and maybe this was some young hot dog who had been passed over for the mission. In Luke’s experience, hot dogs and talkers might last a mission or two, depending on the abilities they brought to the table. But then they got killed. And sometimes, they took everybody else on their team down with them.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  The guy shook his head and looked away. “I don’t think so.”

  “We know that you like to work small,” Shavitz said. He indicated a spot on the map. “The plan is a night drop from high altitude along the border here with Iraq. The border is porous, with Kurdish and Shiite militias, as well as nomadic tribes passing back and forth all the time. There are a lot of air patrols in that region. You jump right at the limit of Iraqi airspace, and drift perhaps thirty miles east into Iranian territory, helped by prevailing winds.”