On the wall opposite his desk was the sort of clock that shows the sun position for the entire world. He’d ordered it the very day he’d arrived—and to his surprise it had appeared literally overnight, instead of perking its way through five levels of procurement bureaucracy. He’d heard stories that the White House was one portion of the government that actually did work, and had not believed them the Harvard graduate had been in government service about four years now, and figured he knew what worked and what didn’t. The surprise was welcome, and the clock, he’d found from his work in the CIA Operations Center, was an instant reference, better than the array of regular clocks that some places had. Your eye instantly saw where noon was and could automatically grasp what time it was anywhere in the world. More to the point, you instantly knew if something was happening at an unusual hour, and that told you as much as the Signals Intelligence—SIGINT—bulletin. Such as the one that had just come in over his personal fax machine that was connected to his STU-4 secure phone.
The National Security Agency was in the habit of posting periodic summaries of activity across the world. Its own watch center was staffed by senior military people, and while their outlook was more technical and less political than his own, they were not fools. Ben had gotten to know many of them by name in addition to reputation, and had also learned their individual strengths. The USAF colonel who had command of the NSA Watch Center on weekday afternoons didn’t bother people with trivia. That was left to lower-level people and lower-level signals. When the colonel put his name on something, it was usually worth reading. And so it was just after noon, Washington time.
Goodley saw that the FLASH concerned Iraq. That was another thing about the colonel. He didn’t go using CRITIC headers for the fun of it, as some did. Ben looked up to check the wall clock. After sundown, local time, a time of relaxation for some, and action for others. The action would be the sort to last all night, the better to get things accomplished without interference, so that the next day would be genuinely new, and genuinely different.
“Oh, boy,” Goodley breathed. He read down the page again, then turned his swivel chair and picked up the phone, touching the #3 speed-dial button.
“Director’s office,” a fiftyish female voice answered.
“Goodley for Foley.”
“Please hold, Dr. Goodley.” Then: “Hi, Ben.”
“Hello, Director.” He felt it improper to first-name the DCI. He’d probably go back to work at Langley within the year, and not as a seventh-floor-rank official. “You have what I have?” The page was still warm in his hand from the printer.
“Iraq?”
“Right.”
“You must have read it twice, Ben. I just told Bert Vasco to get his ass up here.” CIA’s own Iraq desk was weak, both thought, while this State guy was very good indeed.
“Looks pretty hot to me.”
“Agreed,” Ed Foley replied, with an unseen nod. “Jesus, but they’re moving fast over there. Give me an hour, maybe ninety minutes.”
“I think the President needs to know,” Goodley said, with a voice that concealed the urgency he felt. Or so he thought.
“He needs to know more than we can tell him now. Ben?” the DCI added.
“Yes, Director?”
“Jack won’t kill you for patience, and we can’t do any more than watch it develop anyway. Remember, we can’t overload him with information. He doesn’t have the time to see it all anymore. What he sees has to be concise. That’s your job,” Ed Foley explained. “It’ll take you a few weeks to figure it out. I’ll help,” the DCI went on, reminding Goodley how junior he was.
“Okay. I’ll be waiting.” The line clicked off.
Goodley had about a minute during which he reread the NSA bulletin, and then the phone rang again.
“Dr. Goodley.”
“Doctor, this is the President’s office,” one of the senior secretaries said. “I have a Mr. Golovko on the President’s private line. Can you take the call?”
“Yes,” he replied, thinking, Oh, shit.
“Go ahead, please,” she said, clicking off the line.
“This is Ben Goodley.”
“This is Golovko. Who are you?”
“I am acting National Security Advisor to the President.” And I know who you are.
“Goodley?” Ben could hear the voice searching his memory. “Ah, yes, you are national intelligence officer who just learned to shave. My congratulations on your promotion.”
The gamesmanship was impressive, though Goodley figured that there was a file on the Russian’s desk with everything down to his shoe size. Even Golovko’s memory couldn’t be that good, and Goodley had been in the White House long enough that the word would have gotten out, and the RVS/KGB would have done its homework.
“Well, somebody has to answer the phones, Minister.” Gamesmanship could go two ways. Golovko wasn’t really a minister, though he acted as such, and that was technically a secret. It was a weak reply, but it was something. “What can I do for you?”
“You know the arrangement I have with Ivan Emmetovich?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Very well, tell him that a new country is about to be born. It will be called the United Islamic Republic. It will include, for the moment, Iran and Iraq. I rather suspect that it will wish to grow further.”
“How reliable is that information, sir?” Better to be polite. It would make the Russian feel bigger.
“Young man, I would not make a report to your President unless I felt it to be reliable, but,” he added generously, “I understand you must ask the question. The point of origin for the report does not concern you. The reliability of the source is sufficient for me to pass the information along with my own confidence. There will be more to follow. Do you have similar indications?”
The question froze Goodley’s eyeballs in place, staring down at a blank spot on his desk. He had no guidance on this. Yes, he’d learned that President Ryan had discussed cooperation with Golovko, that he’d also discussed the matter with Ed Foley, and that both had decided to go forward with it. But nobody had told him the parameters for giving information back to Moscow, and he didn’t have time to call Langley for instructions, else he would appear weak to the Russians, and the Russians didn’t want America to appear weak at the moment, and he was the man on the spot, and he had to make a decision. That entire thought process required about a third of a second.
“Yes, Minister, we do. Your timing is excellent. Director Foley and I were just discussing the development.”
“Ah, yes, Dr. Goodley, I see that your signals people are as efficient as ever. What a pity that your human sources do not match their performance.”
Ben didn’t dare to respond at all to the observation, though its accuracy caused his stomach to contract. Goodley had more respect for Jack Ryan than he did for any man, and now he remembered the admiration Jack had often expressed for the man on the other end of the phone. Welcome to the bigs, kid. Don’t hang any curveballs. He ought to have said that Foley had called him.
“Minister, I will be speaking to President Ryan within the hour, and I will pass your information along. Thank you for your timely call, sir.”
“Good day, Dr. Goodley.”
United Islamic Republic, Ben read on his desk pad. There had once been a United Arab Republic, an unlikely alliance between Syria and Egypt doomed to failure in two respects. The separated countries had been fundamentally incompatible, and the alliance had been made only to destroy Israel, which had objected to the goal, and done so effectively. More to the point, a United Islamic Republic was a religious statement as much as a political one, because Iran was not an Arab nation—as Iraq was—but rather an Aryan one with different ethnic and linguistic roots. Islam was the world’s only major religion to condemn in its scripture all forms of racism and proclaim the equality of all men before God, regardless of color—a fact often overlooked by the West. So, Islam was overtly designed to be a unifying forc
e, and this new notional country would play on that fact with its very name. That said a lot, enough that Golovko didn’t even need to explain it, and it also said that Golovko felt that he and Ryan were on the same wavelength. Goodley checked the wall clock again. It was nighttime in Moscow, too. Golovko was working late—well, not all that late for a senior official. Ben lifted the phone and hit #3 again. It took him less than a minute to summarize the call from Moscow.
“We can believe anything he says—on this issue, anyway. Sergey Nikolay’ch is a pro from way back. I imagine he twisted your tail just a little, right?” the DCI asked.
“Ruffled the fur some,” Goodley admitted.
“It’s a carryover from old days. They do like their status games. Don’t let it bother you, and don’t shoot back. Better just to ignore it,” Foley explained. “Okay, what’s he worried about?”
“A lot of republics with ‘-stan’ at the end,” Goodley blurted out, without thinking.
“Concur.” This came from another voice.
“Vasco?”
“Yeah, just walked in.” And then Goodley had to repeat what he’d told Ed Foley. Probably Mary Pat was there, too. Individually, both were good at what they did. In the same room, thinking together, they were a deadly weapon. It was something you had to see to understand, Ben knew.
“This looks to me like a big deal,” Goodley observed.
“Looks that way to me, too,” Vasco said over the speakerphone. “Let us kick a few things around. Be back to you in fifteen or twenty.”
“Would you believe Avi ben Jakob is checking in with us?” Ed reported, after a background noise on the line. “They must be having a really tough day.”
For the moment it was just irony that the Russians were both the first to check in with America (and that they were doing so at all), and that they were the only ones calling straight into the White House, beating the Israelis on both scores. But the amusement wouldn’t last, and all the players knew that. Israel was probably having the worst day of all. Russia was merely having a very bad one. And America was getting to share the experience.
IT WOULD HAVE been uncivilized to deny them a chance at prayer. Cruel though they were, and criminals though they had been, they had to have their chance at prayer, albeit a brief one. Each was in the presence of a learned mullah, who, with firm but not unkind voice, told them of their fates, and cited scripture, and spoke to them of their chance to reconcile with Allah before meeting Him face to face. Every one did—whether they believed in what they did was another issue, and one left for Allah to judge, but the mullahs had done their duty—and then every one was led out into the prison yard.
It was a sort of assembly-line process, carefully timed so that the three clergymen gave each condemned criminal exactly three times the interval required to take each out in his turn, tie him to the post, shoot him, remove the body, and restart the process. It worked out to five minutes per execution and fifteen minutes for prayer.
The commanding general of the 41st Armored Division was typical, except that his religion was something more than vestigial. His hands were bound in his cell before his imam—the general preferred the Arabic term to the Farsi one—and he was led out by soldiers who a week before would have saluted and trembled at his passage. He’d reconciled himself to his fate, and he would not give the Persian bastards he’d fought in the border swamps the least bit of satisfaction, though inwardly he cursed to God the cowardly superiors who had skipped the country and left him behind. Perhaps he might have killed the President himself and taken over, he thought as his handcuffs were looped to the post. The general took a moment to look back at the wall to gauge how good was the marksmanship of the firing squad. He found strange humor in the fact that it might take him a few extra seconds to die, and he snorted in disgust. Russian-trained and competent, he’d tried to be an honest soldier—nonpolitical, following his orders faithfully and without question, whatever they might be—and therefore had never been fully trusted by his country’s political leadership, and this was his reward for it. A captain came up with a blindfold.
“A cigarette, if you please. You may keep that for when you sleep later tonight.”
The captain nodded without expression, his emotions already numbed by the ten killings done in the past hour. Shaking a cigarette from his pack, he put it into the man’s lips and lit it with a match. That done, he said what he felt he must:
“Salaam alaykum. ” Peace be unto you.
“I will have more than you, young man. Do your duty. Make sure your pistol is loaded, will you?” The general closed his eyes for a long, pleasurable puff. His doctor had told him only a few days before that it was bad for his health. Wasn’t that a joke? He looked back on his career, marveling that he was still alive after what the Americans had done to his division in 1991. Well, he’d avoided death more than once, and that was a race a man could lengthen, but never win, not really. And so it was written. He managed another long puff. An American Winston. He recognized the taste. How did a mere captain ever get a pack of those? The soldiers brought their rifles up to “aim.” There was no expression on their faces. Well, killing did that to men, he reflected. What was supposed to be cruel and horrible just became a job that—
The captain came over to the body that was slumped forward, suspended by the nylon rope that looped around the handcuffs. Again, he thought, drawing his 9mm Browning and aiming from a meter away. A final crack put an end to the groans. Then two soldiers cut the rope and dragged the body off. Another soldier replaced the rope on the post. A fourth used a gardener’s rake to move the dirt around, not so much to conceal the blood as to mix dirt with it, because blood was slippery to walk on. The next one would be a politician, not a soldier. The soldiers, at least, died with dignity for the most part, as the last one had. Not the civilians. They whimpered and wept and cried out to Allah. And they always wanted the blindfold. It was something of a learning experience for the captain, who’d never done anything like this before.
IT HAD TAKEN a few days to get things organized, but they were all now in separate houses in separate parts of town—and once that had been accomplished, the generals and their entourages had started worrying about it. Separately quartered, they’d all thought, they could be picked up one by one and jailed preparatory to a return flight to Baghdad, but it wouldn’t really have mattered very much. None of the families had more than two bodyguards, and what could they do, really, except to keep beggars away when they went outside? They met frequently—every general had a car assigned—mainly with the purpose of making further travel arrangements. They also bickered over whether they should continue to travel together to a new collective home or begin to go their separate ways. Some argued that it would be both more secure and more cost-effective to buy a large piece of land and build on it, for example. Others were making it clear that now that they were out of Iraq once and for all (two of them had illusions about going back in triumph to reclaim the government, but that was fantasy, as all but those two knew), they would be just as happy not to see some of their number ever again. The petty rivalries among them had long concealed genuine antipathy, which their new circumstances didn’t so much exacerbate as liberate. The least of them had personal fortunes of over $40 million—one had nearly $300 million salted away in various Swiss banks—more than enough to live a comfortable life in any country in the world. Most chose Switzerland, always a haven to those with money and a desire to live quietly, though a few looked farther to the cast. The Sultan of Brunei wanted some people to reorganize his army, and three of the Iraqi generals thought to apply for the job. The local Sudanese government had also begun informal discussions about using a few as advisers for ongoing military operations against animist minorities in the southern part of that country—the Iraqis had long experience dealing with Kurds.
But the generals had more to worry about than themselves alone. All had brought their families out. Many had brought mistresses, who now lived, to everyone’s disco
mfort, in the homes of their patrons. These were as ignored now as they had been in Baghdad. That would change.
Sudan is mostly a desert country, known for its blistering dry heat. Once a British protectorate, its capital has a hospital catering to foreigners, with a largely English staff. Not the world’s best facility, it was better than most in Saharan Africa, staffed mostly with young and somewhat idealistic physicians who’d arrived with romantic ideas about both Africa and their careers (the same thing had been going on for over a hundred years). They learned better, but they did their best and that, for the most part, was pretty good.
The two patients arrived scarcely an hour apart. The young girl came in first, accompanied by her worried mother. She was four years old, Dr. Ian MacGregor learned, and had been a healthy child, except for a mild case of asthma, which, the mother correctly said, ought not to have been a problem in Khartoum, with its dry air. Where were they from? Iraq? The doctor neither knew nor cared about politics. He was twenty-eight, newly certified for internal medicine, a small man with prematurely receding sandy hair. What mattered was that he’d seen no bulletin concerning that country and a major infectious disease. He and his staff had been alerted about the Ebola blip in Zaire, but it had been only a blip.
The patient’s temperature was 38.0, hardly an alarming fever for a child, all the more so in a country where the noon temperature was always at least that high. Blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration were unremarkable. She appeared listless. How long in Khartoum, did you say? Only a few days? Well, it could be merely jet lag. Some people were more sensitive to it than others, MacGregor explained. New surroundings, and so forth, could make a child out of sorts. Maybe a cold or the flu, nothing serious. Sudan has a hot climate, but really a fairly healthy one, you see, not like other parts of Africa. He slipped his hands into rubber gloves, not for any particular need but because his medical training at the University of Edinburgh had drilled it into him that you did it the same way every time, because the one time you forgot, you might end up like Dr. Sinclair—oh, didn’t you hear how he caught AIDS from a patient? One such story was generally enough. The patient was not in great distress. Eyes a little puffy. Throat slightly inflamed, but nothing serious. Probably a good night’s sleep or two. Nothing to be prescribed. Aspirin for the fever and aches, and if the problem persists, please call me. She’s a lovely child. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Mother took child away. The doctor decided it was time for a cup of tea. Along the way to the doctor’s lounge, he stripped off the latex gloves which had saved his life, and dropped them in the disposal bin.