Cold Shot (13 page)

Another long pause. “Is that what you were doing in here all afternoon?”

Jon shrugged. “I had three hours to kill after Kyra left. Figured I might as well get smart on these people. Heaven knows you don’t have anyone else down here to go through this stuff.” He smacked a pile of papers he’d stacked next to the computer.

“Yeah.” Marisa was reluctant to agree, but there was no denying the truth. She smiled. “Back in Iraq, you always did clean out the Rangers and the Deltas with those betting pools of ours,” she admitted. “I presume you’ll be wanting satellite imagery of the factory in Morón?” she asked.

“That would be marvelous,” Jon said.

“Heaven help
you
if you’re wrong and we lose those trucks,” the chief of station warned.

“We’ve already lost those trucks, unless there’s a satellite overhead. So if they’re at Morón, I’m going to look like a big freakin’ hero.”

“You’ll deserve it,” Marisa admitted. “Any idea who those two civilians were?”

Jon brought up the video, cued the soldiers’ entrance into the warehouse, then began stepping through it frame by frame until he got a still frame with good lighting, the men’s faces identifiable in the car lights.

“I know this one—” Marisa pointed at the man with the cigar. “That’s Andrés Carreño, head of SEBIN.” She took off her headset, patiently wrapped the cable around the muffs, then cursed and threw it across the room.

“Problem?” Jon asked.

“Kyra told you about that night she got shot?”

“Not in detail.”

“Carreño was the double agent she was supposed to meet. He almost got her killed,” Marisa told him.

“Does she know?” he asked.

“I asked her. She evaded the question but I don’t think we can take the chance. If he’s involved, she’s done with this operation.”

“Headquarters will override you,” Jon said.

Marisa frowned and stared down at him. “Why?”

“Because I know who this one is.” Jon pointed at one of the men on the screen, the shorter, fatter man of the trio. Marisa stepped forward, leaned in, and saw that Jon was pointing at the man who had given Carreño his orders. “And when the president finds out who that is, he’s going to order us to stay on the target.”

CIA Operations Center

Jacob Drescher pressed the F9 key on his keyboard, forcing his in-box to reload. The list of field cables didn’t change and he fell back in the chair, trying not to sigh in frustration. The rest of the night shift did not need to hear his exasperation.

He looked out over the bullpen. All heads were down except for two officers standing by the coffee machine, reloading on caffeine and quiet gossip, and one heading into the annex room to wrestle with a photocopier. As a rule, Drescher preferred the quiet because that meant a quiet world beyond the fence at Langley. Tonight he knew better and the incongruity was quiet torture, but he refused to take it out on his people.

He looked at the clock. Barely a minute had passed. He pressed F9 anyway.

The list changed, a new entry at the top.
There we go.
Drescher double-clicked the cable and it filled the screen. He scrolled past the addresses and endless crypts and code words to the part that really mattered, and that bit he read in silence. Then he read it again.

This just turned into a bigger mission,
he thought.

Director Cooke was at home but he doubted she was asleep. Drescher picked up the phone and dialed. “Madam Director, this is the Ops Center. Going ‘secure voice.’” He pressed the button that encrypted the call.

DAY FOUR

CIA Director’s Office

Cooke stared at the iPad, disgust drawn across her face. “You’ve confirmed their identities?” she asked.

“I woke up some senior analysts in the wee hours. Once they got enough coffee in themselves, they called it,” Drescher confirmed. “The White House is going to want to see this.”

“I know,” Cooke said, resigned. She looked up and Drescher watched her stare at the ceiling. “Call the Multimedia Production Group,” she said. “I need one of their video specialists for an hour.”

The Oval Office

The White House

Washington, D.C.

AHMADI, Hossein;

DOB 09 Jun 1960

(Individual) [NPWMD]; list of affiliated organizations follows:

ADVANCED INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY CENTER

(aka AICTC), No. 5, Golestan Alley, Shahid Ghasemi St., Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; Website www.aictc.ir [NPWMD].

MINISTRY OF DEFENSE LOGISTICS EXPORT

(aka MINISTRY OF DEFENSE LEGION EXPORT; aka MODLEX), PO Box 16315-189, Tehran, Iran, located on the west side of Dabestan Street, Abbas Abad District, Tehran, Iran; PO Box 19315-189, Pasdaran Street, South Noubonyand Square, Tehran, Iran [NPWMD].

PENTANE CHEMISTRY INDUSTRIES

(aka PENTANE CHEMISTRY; aka PENTANE CHEMISTRY INDUSTRIES COMPANY; aka PENTANE CHEMISTRY INDUSTRY COMPANY; aka “PCI”), 5th Floor, No. 192, Darya and Paknejad Blvd, Cross Section, Shahrak Gharb, Tehran, Iran [NPWMD].

JOINT IRAN-VENEZUELA BANK

(aka BANK MOSHTAREK-E IRAN VENEZUELA) Ahmad Ghasir St. (Bokharest), Corner of 15th St., Tose Tower, No.44-46, Tehran 1013830711, Iran [IRAN].

MALEK ASHTAR UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

(aka DANESHGAH-E SANA’TI-YE MALEK-E ASHTAR) Shahid Baba’i Highway, Lavizan, Tehran, Iran . . .

•    •    •

It was a long list.

“We have high confidence that the subject in that video is Hossein Ahmadi,” Cooke said. “He’s Iran’s version of AQ Khan. He’s currently in charge of the Iranian nuclear program and answers directly to the Iranian president . . . maybe to the supreme leader, but we’re not sure. The Iranian government has always been fairly opaque. But we do know that Ahmadi is the most serious nuclear proliferator in the world at the moment. He’s not in Khan’s league, but he still sells technology and nuclear fuel to lots of people we don’t like.” She set the iPad on the coffee table in front of the president. The video was frozen on the picture of the Iranian.

Rostow picked up the tablet and replayed the video. She could tell the precise moment he saw the SEBIN soldiers shoot their rifles into the cargo container. Rostow clenched his teeth and his eyes narrowed. “Do you think he’s shipping weapons of mass destruction to Avila?” The president of the United States had too little worry and too much relish in his voice for Kathy Cooke’s taste.

“We have no evidence of that, sir,” she corrected him. “One of our officers confirmed that the vessel was, in fact, the
Markarid
. She penetrated the warehouse in Puerto Cabello at great personal risk, where she collected the intel on Somali pirates that you saw and determined that Ahmadi and Andrés Carreño were on-site. Carreño even appears to be deferring to Ahmadi, which I’m fairly sure wouldn’t happen without President Avila’s explicit consent.”

“Those Venezuelans they executed . . . we don’t know why they were sick?” He’d watched the video four times. The sight of the Somali pirate in the bag had almost cost him the eggs Benedict the Navy stewards had delivered to the Oval Office that morning.

“No, sir,” the CIA director confirmed. “Our Office of Medical Services examined the video but couldn’t determine a cause for their condition.”

“Exposure to nuclear materials?” Gerry Feldman asked. The national security adviser flipped through the other pages on his own tablet. “Any chance the ship was smuggling chemical weapons? Or that the group just got food poisoning?”

“Ahmadi hasn’t been known to traffic in chemical weapons,” the director of national intelligence advised. Cyrus Marshall had stayed silent, as was his habit, letting his subordinate take the lead and offering his own comments at the moments they would have the most influence. “Every intel report we have on him says that he deals in nuclear technology and materials. Any chemicals that he smuggles are related to the nuclear fuel cycle. But if he is moving chemical weapons, then he’s branching out into new markets and that wouldn’t make me any less worried. And I doubt the Venezuelans would let Iranians shoot their own citizens over a case of food poisoning.”

“So these dockworkers”—Rostow tapped the iPad—“weren’t puking because of bad food. They were tossing up breakfast because they’d been exposed to something nasty, maybe even a significant radiation source. And these soldiers”—another tap on the iPad—“killed them and disposed of the bodies because they were
evidence
.”

“That seems likely, sir,” Cooke confirmed.

“And the Venezuelans didn’t have a problem with Ahmadi ordering them to shoot their fellow citizens on the spot?” Rostow asked, incredulous.

“It seems that Carreño did, though he didn’t argue the issue very hard,” Cooke said. “The audio we were able to extract was faint, so the transcript isn’t complete, but what we did get suggests that Ahmadi overrode him.”

“Hossein Ahmadi is no small-time operator, Mr. President. Ahmadi wouldn’t come to Venezuela for some shipment of guns or even minor nuclear tech. He could delegate that to somebody else,” Marshall said, not looking up from the computer on his lap. “If he’s down there, wielding that kind of influence, then President Avila is serious about either putting together his own nuclear program or becoming a supplier to Ahmadi. The Venezuelans are sitting on top of huge reserves of uranium in the Roraima Basin and they were giving the Iranians mining access as far back as ’09.”

“Could they be putting together a program just to build some reactors for power?” Rostow asked.

“Hugo Chávez announced back in 2010 that his government was taking the first steps toward building a ‘peaceful nuclear program,’ as he called it,” Cooke admitted. “They’d signed an agreement with the Iranians two years prior to cooperate on developing nuclear technology. But both countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and shooting dockworkers doesn’t inspire confidence that they’re trying to comply.” She shifted on the couch and set her tablet back on the low table that sat between her and Rostow.

“And your people didn’t pick up on Ahmadi making any visits down there before?” Rostow asked her.

“Unfortunately, sir, our entire operation in Venezuela was gutted eighteen months ago by the former chief of station.”

“That was the Michael Rhead fiasco?” Rostow asked.

“Yes, sir,” Cooke confirmed. “We were able to convince President Stuart to remove him, but not before he’d exposed several of our people to the SEBIN. As a precaution, we had to transfer most of our people out of country and start a review of every asset we had. We didn’t know which Venezuelan assets we could trust. We’ve been rebuilding but we can’t just replace the entire case-officer corps en masse
and it’ll take years before we can rebuild our asset networks. Until that happens, our coverage down there will be spotty at best.”

“I understand, but your people caught this and that was no small feat given what you’re working with,” Rostow said. The man sounded sympathetic and Cooke started to wonder whether she hadn’t misjudged him. “Your team is still on-site?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kathy . . .” he started, then paused for dramatic effect, she thought. “Do your people know where the
Markarid
cargo is now?”

“No, sir, not for certain. We have a possible lead but we need time to run it to ground. We suspect it could be somewhere at the CAVIM ordnance factory in Morón.”

“If that’s correct, I take it you’d agree that we need to know what Ahmadi has shipped to that facility?”

Cooke carefully parsed the words and looked for hidden meanings. She found none. Still she spoke with caution. “If we can confirm that’s the destination, it should be a priority target, sir,” she concurred.

Rostow nodded, smiling. “Your officer is still in the field?”

“Yes, sir. We’re going to task her to conduct surveillance—”

“I don’t think surveillance will cut it,” Rostow said. “Ahmadi isn’t going to leave that cargo sitting out in the open for every satellite in orbit to see. We need somebody to get inside that facility.”

Cooke froze, alarmed. “Sir, we have very little intel on the CAVIM facility beyond just the general layout and none on the interior of any buildings on-site. Trying to send a team in blind would be exceptionally dangerous. There would be a very high probability of failure.”

“How much time would you need?” Feldman asked.

Cooke turned to the national security adviser.
You should tell him that this isn’t a smart idea,
she thought, and then had to suppress a tiny smile.
I sound like Jon. “
Months, at least. A year would be better.”

“Months?” Rostow asked, clearly not liking the answer. “Kathy, we don’t have months. If the cargo is there, Ahmadi could move it at any time.”

“Sir, that one officer is the only field officer we have in-country. We don’t even have a Global Response unit that could pull her out if she got in trouble. We have no insiders to feed us intelligence on security, floor plans, nothing. Even under optimal conditions, an operation like this takes—”

“I don’t want to hear months, Kathy. I don’t even want to hear weeks. Ahmadi could be on a plane out of the country tonight. We need to know what’s inside that facility and we need to tie Ahmadi to it.”

“I understand, Mr. President, but—” Kathy started.

“No ‘buts,’” Rostow interrupted. “I’ve read the CIA mission statement. ‘We go where others cannot go, we do what others cannot do.’ It’s time to live up to that. I know it’s dangerous, but I need your people to find a way in there. If the Iranians are moving nuclear material or weapons of mass destruction into this hemisphere, we need to know now and we need to stop them.”

There it is,
Cooke realized.
He wants his own “thirteen days in October.”

“Gerry, amend the presidential finding,” Rostow said, ending the discussion. “The CIA has forty-eight hours to determine whether the
Markarid
cargo is inside the CAVIM facility. No ‘best guesses’ or ‘high-confidence’ estimates. I want some confirmation with hard evidence and I don’t care how you get it.”

“Sir,” Marshall protested, finally intervening. “That’s not real—”

“Cy, we’re talking about possible weapons of mass destruction here. I’m not going to put the national security of the United States at risk because CIA wants to be cautious. The debate is over. Kathy, if you can’t get behind this, you can resign.”

And there’s the trap,
she thought.

Cooke considered the options, then made her choice.

She balled her fists and put them on the couch to push herself up. “Mr. President—” she began.

Marshall put his hand gently on her knee, stopping her from getting up. “We’ll get it done, Mr. President,” he assured Rostow, cutting her off.

Rostow turned his head and stared at the DNI with a poker face that Cooke was sure he used to mask frustration. Then the president smiled at her and Marshall and nodded, cool. “Thanks for coming. I want daily reports from you personally on this until further notice,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” the DNI replied.

•    •    •

The Oval Office door closed behind them and Cooke and Marshall started for the West Wing entrance, brushing people aside as they marched through the building. Cooke refrained from cursing the president only because she was moving through hostile territory and anything she said would be reported.

They reached the West Executive Avenue entrance and Marshall pulled the foyer door shut behind him.

“What was that?” Cooke demanded before the door clicked.

“You’re not going to fall on your sword on this one,” Marshall told her. “I’m from Oregon so I got to follow Rostow up close when he was governor back home. This is what he does when he wants to clean out an agency. He gives them an impossible tasking for reasons that will sound good to the public, and if they refuse, he fires everyone who protests and replaces them with his people. If they try but fail, he fires them for incompetence and does the same thing.” Marshall stopped talking to catch a breath, then leaned against the wall. “Kathy, as long as you’re at Langley, you can act. This president thinks CIA is responsible for half the evil in the world, so if you quit, he’ll have a clear path to putting in a hit man who’ll pull out the long knives and gut the place. It’ll take the Agency twenty years to recover. It’ll be like ’76 when Jimmy Carter put in Stansfield Turner.”

Cooke nodded and slumped. “He fired eight hundred field officers in one night. They called it the ‘Halloween massacre.’”

“And Rostow wouldn’t bat an eye if it happened again,” Marshall replied, agreeing with her sentiment. “But they like you on the Hill. If you’re holding the office and acting in the best interests of the country, he can’t just dump you without drawing political fire. So, can you get a team down there?”

“Even if I could, they wouldn’t be any better prepared to penetrate the factory than the one person already on-site,” Cooke replied. “One person, a dozen, it doesn’t matter, they’re all likely to get captured or killed.”

“Get back to Langley and work on the problem. I’ll help any way I can.”

“Thanks.” She pushed open the door and walked out to the parking lot.

•    •    •

Feldman closed the Oval Office door behind the CIA director and the DNI, then turned back toward the president and leaned against the wall. “I thought you had her.”

“I
did
have her,” Rostow groused. “Did you see her face? She was going to resign and Cy stopped her.” The president threw himself back into his chair and gritted his teeth. “I’ve squeezed her for all the political capital she’s worth. Earned me plenty of goodwill with Congress, especially the intel committees, and the feminists were ready to throw me a party. But we need a clean break from Harry Stuart . . . get our own man in her seat, someone who knows how to take orders.” The president grabbed the iPad off the table and started the video playing again. “What do you think about this?” he asked, smacking the tablet.