The Assassins Read online

  “Now, Joe,” the chief retorted, “you're not getting your blood up…making this personal, are you?”

  “No, sir,” Blackman replied, “these entries are all well after my runin with him in Iraq back in '98.”

  “Go ahead, then,” the British spy chief said. “What are the dates and who filed the reports?”

  Blackman continued, “If I may sir, we have to go back a little further.”

  When C nodded, the MI6 agent pressed on. “In August 2001 the Americans concluded that Komulakov was providing the Iranians with Soviet-era nuclear weapons and/or fissile materiel. In the spring of 2002—after the Americans were in Afghanistan—our Kiev Station reported that Komulakov was providing the Iranians with massive quantities of conventional munitions.”

  Again C nodded. “Go on.”

  “In April of 2003 our station in Damascus filed an unconfirmed report from an Israeli source that Komulakov had engineered the last-minute movement of Saddam's biological and chemical weapons out of Iraq, through Syria and into the Bekka Valley of Lebanon. Later that same year an American source—an Iraqi named Eli Yusef Habib who's apparently a personal contact of Bill Goode at Langley—reported again Komulakov's involvement in the delivery of a Soviet nuclear artillery round. This Habib fellow claimed that the Iranians were trying to reverse engineer the weapon.”

  C, listening intently, said, “That could be circular reporting, but continue.”

  “Well, after that there's very little on Komulakov except for these three brief entries. The first one is an unsubstantiated report from one of our sources—an Iranian defector. He claims that he was a driver for the Iranian Intelligence Service, and previously was the personal chauffeur for Qorbanali Darri Najafabadi and then for Ali Yunesi. According to this source, during 2005 and early 2006, Yunesi met frequently with Komulakov at the Hilton Hotel in Tehran.”

  “There's a Hilton in Tehran?” asked C incredulously.

  “Not anymore, sir,” Blackman hastened to clarify. “It was the Hilton Hotel, but now it's just a place where the Iranians put their ‘foreign guests.’ The place is actually run by their intelligences service.”

  “I see,” said C, somewhat nonplussed. “When did we interview this driver and where is he now?”

  “In April of 2006 during one of those appalling sandstorms they have out there, our boy apparently loaded up his entire family in Ali Yunesi's car and drove it across the border into Iraq.” Blackman consulted the file and continued, “When he got to Basrah on 16 April he drove up to the front door of the British garrison and asked for asylum. Our man Snipes interviewed him there.”

  “And where is our ‘car thief’ now?” asked C, genuinely amused by the audacity of the Iranian defector.

  “He's running an Indian restaurant here in London,” answered Blackman.

  “Well, Joe,” said the chief, “you may bring him in and sweat him a bit, but I don't see what this tells us about this morning's attacks in Saudi.”

  Blackman hastened on. “The next entry is a report from Venezuela. Over the last twelve months our ‘gate watcher’ at the Caracas airport has filed seven separate reports of Komulakov and several other Russians transiting through Caracas en route to and from Cuba.”

  “Cuba ! ” said C. It was more of an exclamation than a question.

  “Yes, sir,” said Blackman, pleased that he was able to surprise his boss twice. “And on his last trip in he was apparently accompanied by four males who appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. As of the 5th of last month, he was still there—unless he slipped out through a transit point other than Caracas.”

  “What the devil is he doing in Cuba with four Middle Easterners?”

  “Don't know, sir,” replied the MI6 agent, “and not too sure how we find out, but there is one final entry that may be relevant.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Two weeks ago Madrid Station reported on a ‘walk-in’ who claims he is a defector from the Cuban DGI. This individual insisted to our man Potts that he was with Castro last month and the old Stalinist was ranting about the Russians ‘playing games’ at their old Signals Intelligence site at Lourdes.”

  “Now, Joseph,” the chief interrupted, “I know that Cuba isn't exactly the part of the world where you've spent most of your time and I don't mean to be pedantic, but nearly all of these so-called DGI defectors are doubles. They're well trained at what they do—they can even pass a polygraph. Remember how badly they snookered our friends at Langley? What was it, back seven or eight years ago, when seventy-five or so of their ‘Cuban defectors’ turned out to be double agents? They even held a press conference to show how the Americans had been duped!”

  “Yes, sir,” continued Blackman, “but there were two bits of information in this defector's debrief from Madrid that caught my attention. When Potts was chatting him up, the Cuban claimed that he was present when Castro was howling at his brother Raul about why the Lourdes site once again had a Russian general at it—and he even named the general.”

  “Komulakov?”

  “Yes,” said Blackman.

  “Hmmm,” was C's response.

  “And there was one more thing,” Blackman added. “The Madrid defector said that Castro was on a bit of a tear because the Russians had not informed him that there were four Iranians living at Lourdes.”

  C sat bolt upright in his chair. “Iranians? At Lourdes? Why?”

  “Don't know, sir,” Blackman replied.

  C, staring off into the distance, said, “Where is this Cuban defector now?”

  “In a safe house in Madrid. Potts is waiting for instructions.”

  Rising, C looked at his young protégé and said, “Send Potts a cable and tell him to get to Gibraltar with this Cuban right away. I want Potts to come with him. Ring up the RAF and tell 'em I've authorized a special air mission. When they get here, put the Cuban on ‘the box’ and let's see what the polygraph wizards tell us about how truthful this Cuban is. By the way, what do you think, any sign of the Russian's fingerprints or MO on what transpired this morning in Saudi?”

  Blackman was standing now as well. He stopped shoveling papers into the Komulakov folder, looked directly at the British Intelligence chief, and answered thoughtfully, “None that I can find .…” Then he added, “But then, that's the way he would have done it.”

  C connected the dots: “If those earlier reports about Komulakov and his involvement with the Iranian nuclear weapons are true, and these more recent entries about Cuba check out, our American friends may have more trouble closer to home than they think.”

  PENNSYLVANIA

  AVENUE

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Situation Room

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  The White House, Washington, DC

  Monday, 15 October 2007

  0815 Hours Local

  Perry, are you saying that we have no idea whether a single member of the Saudi royal family survived and is still alive?” the President asked his Director of National Intelligence, interrupting his brief.

  “That's correct, sir,” the DNI replied, looking extremely uncomfortable as he consulted his notes. “There appears to be widespread anarchy and looting in Riyadh, Jiddah, and Medina. A group calling itself the ‘Islamic Brotherhood’ has apparently taken over several broadcast facilities and made the claim that the House of Saud has abdicated the throne.”

  When the DNI finished it seemed as though all the air had been sucked out of the Sit Room. Jeb Stuart, the National Security Advisor, seated to the right of the President, looked around the table. Everyone was seated in exactly the same chairs they had occupied less than twenty-four hours earlier. The men had changed their shirts and ties, and the two women were wearing different business suits. Only Gen. George Grisham, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared the same—wearing a khaki shirt
and tie with the Marines' forest green blouse. But even he looked as grim, frustrated, and fatigued as the rest of them.

  “Well, who's in charge in Saudi Arabia? Do we know if this was a coup?”

  Once again Straw had to admit, “We just don't know, Mr. President.”

  The President leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table. “It seems to me that it'd be almost impossible that every member of the royal family was in Saudi Arabia yesterday morning when all that hell broke loose. There had to be a good number of them out of the country. Have we checked in Monaco? Have we asked the Italians, the French? How about the Swiss?”

  “Yes, sir, the CIA has queried every base and station since yesterday afternoon when we got the word on the assassinations in Riyadh,” Straw responded. “We have some solid but quite a few unconfirmed reports of killings outside of Saudi Arabia. And thus far we're unable to confirm the location of any surviving member of the royal family.”

  “That's an awful lot of people. I can't begin to imagine the logistics of carrying out an assassination plot of such magnitude. Do any of our embassies have anything?” the President asked, turning to Helen Luce, his Secretary of State.

  “I went personally to the Saudi Embassy here in Washington last night and, after a fifteen-minute wait, was finally admitted,” she began. “Their Deputy Chief of Mission told me that they've had no communications with the ambassador since he left for Riyadh toward the end of last week. The DCM also told me that Prince Bushir was supposed to have headed back here on Sunday morning, but it's pretty clear that they don't know where he is either—or even if he's dead or alive. And everyone at their embassy here is in a major state of panic.”

  “How about our embassy over there?”

  Referring to a sheet of paper in front of her, she tried to bail out the DNI as she responded: “As Perry said, Riyadh is still locked down. The Marine Security Guards who were in the standoff yesterday at the Marine House managed to break through to the embassy last night with one killed and all seven others wounded. All of our people and their dependents are accounted for and are inside the compound. Communications are still out all over the country—they're getting word back to us via portable satellite feed.”

  Consulting her notes again, Luce continued, “Our Counsel General in Monaco reports that one of the royal yachts is in the harbor there. Embassy Rabat believes that two aircraft belonging to the Saudi royal family are in Morocco and that one of the royal yachts is in Casablanca. A royal Saudi aircraft is at Lucerne, Switzerland, and there is another in Kuwait City. Our Counsel General in Palma, Majorca, indicates that a yacht belonging to a Saudi royal was in port yesterday. Athens is checking on two other yachts that have been in and around the Greek islands, and we have an unconfirmed report that another is or was at Port Louis, Mauritius. Supposedly two other yachts have been operating between Cabo San Lucas and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. And we have a report that a Saudi yacht is in port in Colon, Panama—”

  “Good grief,” interrupted the Chief Executive. “How many royal yachts are there?”

  “At least twenty that we know of,” the DNI responded, glad to have an answer to at least one of the President's questions.

  “Are any of the princes or royal family members with any of these boats or aircraft?”

  Straw instantly regretted his zeal. Shaking his head, he quietly answered, “We don't know, Mr. President.”

  “Look,” began a clearly exasperated president. “I've got to address the nation in less than two hours. The statement we issued last night saying that we're looking for the perpetrators, announcing a three-day bank and financial markets holiday, as well as our plan to release oil from the SPR won't hold 'em off until noon. The Congressional leadership is also demanding action. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the TV networks are after my scalp for ‘hiding in the Oval Office.’ It sounds like Jimmy Carter hiding in the Rose Garden during the Iran Hostage Crisis.”

  Every eye in the room was focused on the Chief Executive. He continued: “It took us less than twelve hours after the 9/11 attack to confirm that it was bin Laden and get a pretty good fix on where he was. Five days later we had our first Special Ops teams in Afghanistan. Twenty-four days later we had Marine boots on the ground in Khandahar. We need to do at least as well this time. That means we have to find out who did this and get moving. We also need to be clear about the situation in Saudi Arabia, and I need to be able to reassure the American people that we're doing all we can to restore our energy supplies.”

  The DNI swallowed hard and nodded. Dan Powers, lips pressed into a thin line, looked from the President to the DNI. When Straw said nothing, the SecDef cleared his throat and said, “Mr. President?”

  “Yes, Dan,” responded the clearly agitated Commander in Chief.

  “In accord with your guidance last night, we've prepared a tentative Op Plan to move U.S. troops into northeastern Saudi Arabia and secure about 75 percent of their oil infrastructure.”

  As usual, the SecDef was speaking without the aid of notes or briefing cards. He continued. “We don't think that U.S. forces entering the country will encounter substantial resistance. But even if we don't have any significant armed opposition, that's not going to get the oil flowing again anytime soon. As the DNI indicated, it appears from the ‘overhead’ imagery that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of Saudi production has been destroyed. And according to Sam, that's not the only problem in their oil patch.”

  Sam Browning, the Energy Secretary, picked up without losing a beat. “I went over to the Pentagon with some of my folks last night and looked carefully at those satellite shots. Whoever did this knew precisely what they were doing. In addition to the physical damage to the infrastructure elsewhere, it looks like they also took out the stabilizing towers at Abqaiq, Al Jubayl, Ad Damman, and Al Qatif. They're all gone. That means no ‘de-sulfurization’ for whatever oil we might be able to recover—but it also means that there's undoubtedly a serious downwind drift hazard.”

  “Drift hazard? From what?” the Secretary of State asked.

  “From a hydrogen sulfide gas plume. In fact, by now, it may well have already killed thousands. But even after it dissipates, anywhere that it combines with moisture it forms sulfur dioxide—it's like pouring sulfuric acid on metal. Everything out there that's corroded will probably need to be replaced.”

  At this point, the SecDef picked up again. “What this means, Mr. President, is that if we put troops in, they're going to have to go with full MOPP—gas masks, chemical suits—just like the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And if we take in any civilian oil techs with us, they'll have to live and work in the same equipment.”

  “For how long?” interrupted the President.

  “It depends on atmospheric conditions,” his Energy Secretary interjected. “It could be anywhere from several weeks to several months. It argues strongly for us to use some of your emergency powers to fund a couple of pilot ‘coal-gasification’ plants. My people tell me that we have the technology that can convert low-sulfur coal into gas at break-even costs when oil is more than eighty or ninety dollars a barrel—which is what they're predicting it's going to be for a good while.”

  “Where would we do this?” the Chief Executive asked.

  “In West Virginia and southern Virginia,” Browning replied. “Virginia Tech, down in Blacksburg, has been working on this for years. When I talked to them last night, they were confident we could even be producing home heating oil, diesel, and gasoline in some quantity inside of eight to ten months.”

  As the Energy Secretary was talking, General Grisham slipped a note to Dan Powers, who read it and looked back at the general for confirmation. Grisham nodded affirmatively. Powers slipped the note into his side pocket and finished listening to the plan offered by Sam Browning regarding the feasibility of converting American coal to other fuels.

  “Well, this problem isn't going to go away anytime soon. So do it, Sam,” said the President. “
Get the wording for the Emergency Executive Order from Jeb—and make sure we include this in my ten o'clock statement.

  “What do you recommend I say about our military options, Dan?” the Commander in Chief asked, looking at his watch.

  “We'll continue planning,” the SecDef responded. “We've already alerted the 82nd Airborne and the 2nd Marine Division. We can get them there fastest. We've ordered the MPS—Maritime Prepositioning Ships—vessels to get underway from Diego Garcia and steam north.”

  “How's all this going to be coordinated over there?” the President asked.

  Powers gestured to the man sitting behind him in the Marine uniform and said, “General Grisham is leaving for CENTCOM Forward HQ at Doha, Qatar, this afternoon. When he gets there tomorrow morning we'll look at what forces we can pull out of Iraq. He has some initial ideas, which he'll finalize when he gets to CENTCOM.”

  General Grisham offered the ideas he'd presented to Dan Powers earlier. “We can probably use the armor elements of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and 1st Cav,” he said. “There may be some political issues in play if the Kuwaitis won't give us transit rights from Iraq to Saudi Arabia. But rather than complicate the situation we can move across the Iraqi desert and cross into northern Saudi Arabia there.”

  “I'm not sure I should be that detailed in my talk at ten this morning,” the President suggested.

  Powers shook his head. “That's just so you know that we're working on something. I agree that you not get into those specifics. You might just say something like, ‘We're positioning our military forces for contingency operations as necessary.’ That's probably too nebulous for the press, but it should hold 'em for a few hours while we try to get a handle on just what's happening in Saudi Arabia.”

  “OK, Dan,” the President said. “Anyone have anything else to add?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the SecDef. “There is one good piece of news—but I'll let George tell you since he discovered it.”