Pandora's Grave (21 page)

She nodded. “It’s a cave about eighteen kilometers north of the PJAK camp that Azad Badir has made his headquarters.”

“Clearly,” Kranemeyer stated, his tone insufferably calm, “Badir doesn’t want us to know our man’s exact whereabouts.”

“But
we’re
on his side,” Michelle replied.

He shook his head, a grim smile crossing his face. “Azad Badir is a canny old goat—hasn’t survived this long in that region by trusting anyone. Which, incidentally, is a good example to follow. Back-time the satellite to see if you have anything from the timeframe. He’s more than likely covered his tracks, but…” Kranemeyer shrugged. “See what you can find.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned back to his terminal just as the video uplink went live and the face of Harold Nichols filled the screen.

“Mr. Nichols,” the disembodied voice of Rebecca Petras began, “you’re on with Director Lay and Director Kranemeyer. I have been requested by Director Lay to oversee the debriefing from Operation TALON. Shall we begin at the beginning?”

The devil danced in the agent’s eyes, a faint sardonic smile flickering across his face. “That sounds logical.”

Four hours later, it was the face of Jack Richards before the camera as the debriefing continued.

Director Lay’s brow furrowed as the agent answered a question posed by Petras, and he toggled the voice-over-internet mike.

“Let’s go back, Richards,” he interjected. “You and Agent Sarami were tasked with blowing the base camp’s fuel supplies. Correct?”

A nod was the only reply.

“Yet, one of the tankers escaped. How did that happen?”

Richards hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with the direct question. “It was parked at some distance from the others—too far to rely on chain ignition. We had to blow it separately, and something went wrong with the charges. Simply put, we fouled up.”

Kranemeyer broke onto the live feed. “I am going to assume that in the interests of time, the tactical responsibility for the tankers was split between the two of you. Is that an accurate assumption?”

Another nod.

“Then, the tanker that failed to ignite, in whose area of responsibility did it lie?”

Lay could see the reluctance in Richards’ eyes. These men were like a brotherhood, and though a rookie, Davood Sarami was already far more accepted than a man like himself could ever be.

Finally the Texan’s eyes lifted to face the webcam, all emotion gone from their black depths.

“Agent Sarami’s.”

“Thank you, Agent Richards. Please continue, Rebecca.”

Rebecca Petras glanced from the clock on the wall back to the CIA officer in front of her. The debriefing had been going on for five and a half hours.

Davood Sarami was the only member of the NCS team that she had never met before, and she had studied his dossier during the helicopter flight up from Baghdad.

Overall, if she were going to find out anything irregular that had happened on the mission, the rookie would likely be her source. She had worked with Nichols in Basra back in ‘05, when she had first arrived on station and he was running spec-ops liaison with the military.

Technically, that put her in charge of his operation, but the two of them had never quite seen eye to eye on where the division in command fell.

They had hardly hit it off well back then and the hour-and-a-half long debrief of him she had just conducted had done nothing but convince her that the years had not changed him.

He was still as aloof and impenetrable as he had ever been, and Rebecca had little doubt but that he had told her exactly what he wanted her to know. Nothing more. Not that he would deliberately jeopardize national security, she believed, but his loyalty to his fellow team members might cause him to neglect certain facts. Perhaps.

Loyalty. The other thing she remembered about Nichols was his ability to command intense personal loyalty from those who followed him into battle. A useful asset, to be sure, but as she had noted in a fitness report back during the Basra days, it had its dangerous points.

She had known from the start of the debrief that nothing would be said by his fellow team members to reflect negatively on Nichols. She had hoped the new man would be another story, but so far it wasn’t working.

Her eyes flickered to the computer monitor at her side. A speech-to-text program was running on-screen, transcribing every word spoken during the debriefing for later review.

“Agent Sarami, you said earlier that you had lost your team radio. Could you elaborate more for us on the manner in which you lost it?”

She saw a look of surprise flicker across the young man’s face. It was an old interrogation trick. Move past a topic as though it was unimportant, and then return to it unexpectedly. And despite what everyone might wish, debriefing was very much like an interrogation.

“I don’t really know. I remember having it as I descended into the canyon toward the helicopter to rescue Colonel Tancretti, but that’s all I remember. Both of us were knocked to the ground by the explosion of the helo’s fuel tanks and the headset was gone when I regained consciousness.”

“So you believe that you lost it sometime either during your rescue of Colonel Tancretti or the subsequent explosion?”

“That is correct.”

The snare was set. Now to coax the quarry within. Rebecca lifted her gaze to look coolly into the young agent’s eyes. “According to Agent Nichols, he attempted to contact you while you were in transit to the crash site, prior to the explosion, and you did not answer. Is that an accurate statement?”

Once again the look of surprise, this time not unmingled with hurt. “I don’t understand how I could have missed a transmission—although I suppose it is possible—perhaps I had already lost the radio by that time.”

At that moment, the rabbit was well within the snare. “Perhaps,” Petras began hesitantly, springing her trap, “you would give us your assessment of Agent Nichols’ performance on this mission?”

Director Kranemeyer sighed wearily as Petras escorted the Iranian-American agent from the room in which the debriefing had taken place and turned to face the camera once again. He reached for the cup of coffee on his desk and made a face. It was cold.

“I could have told you it was pointless to try that tack,” he spoke into the mike, addressing Petras.

Her head came up from her monitor. “I would beg to differ, Director. Someone betrayed this mission, either deliberately or through an inadvertent breach of protocol—either way, it is imperative that we find the person responsible.”

“It is also imperative that we don’t waste time attempting to crucify the man responsible for salvaging the mission from disaster,” Kranemeyer replied heatedly. “I’ve read your dossier, Petras. I know you and Nichols have a history back to Basra, but now is neither the time or place to be satisfying personal grudges.”

There was not a flicker of reaction in her eyes as she stared back into the camera. “My report will be filed with the DD(I) in the morning.”

“When will the hostages be debriefed?” This time it was Director Lay asking the question.

“Sir,” Rebecca Petras responded, “it is currently well past four in the morning here—and no one has had any sleep. The hostages have been taken into protective custody by Colonel Foreaker’s Marines and I hope to interview them tomorrow—later
today
,” she corrected herself.

“Thank you, Ms. Petras. Please forward the tapes to my office when you complete the interviews. And make sure you contact your counterpart at the Australian consulate to notify them of Rachel Eliot’s rescue.”

“Of course, sir. Petras out.”

Early morning

The camp

Thomas rolled onto his side, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of his cell as he came awake. What time it was, he had no idea, but he felt rested, so it must be near dawn.

He swung his legs off the cot and sat up, his bare feet brushing against the cool earth of the floor.

Something had gone wrong—that was about the only thing of which he was sure. Perhaps the man who had met him was not even the CIA’s contact. Perhaps they had been compromised. Perhaps—the questions were endless.

Could he have imagined himself here fifteen years ago? Hardly, he thought, a sardonic grin crossing his boyish face. A desert cell, rugged tribesemen?

No, back then the Middle East’s only importance to him had been what it did to the oil futures. He had been the manager of a Wall Street investment firm in those days, a true
wunderkind
in the eyes of some. Certainly no one could have denied that he had a knack for the market and his pioneering market trading website had raked in subscribers by the thousands in the late ‘90s.

By the age of twenty-two, he had been a multimillionaire, a fortune built on a shrewd grasp of both the market and information technology. Shrewd enough to survive the bursting of the Dot-com bubble when so many of his competitors had gone under. A young man of unbelievable potential, with a bright future ahead of him.

That bright future had choked in the dark clouds of ash rising from the Trade Center Towers. In Asia on a business trip at the time of the terrorist attacks, Thomas had returned to New York to find many of his colleagues dead, the Fortune 500 company he had built his life upon in shambles.

And he had thrown himself into the fray, working feverishly to reestablish the company and hire new people to fill the shoes of the dead. Yet the Street had lost its lure—the game no longer satisfied in the way it once had.

Nine months later, turning over the revived company to new management, he left Wall Street for good, a man adrift.

Thomas sighed, stretching in the darkness. Remembering. He had left Wall Street with no idea where he was going or what he wanted to do when he got there. All that had once satisfied him was empty, no longer fulfilling. Restoring the company had been one thing—he had owed that to his investors. Continuing on the Street was a different proposition entirely.

And then he met Bernard Kranemeyer at a Heritage Foundation dinner one snowy evening in Philadelphia.

He grinned at the memory. Kranemeyer had been anything but eager for Thomas to join the reorganizing Directorate of Operations. The Agency, he had found, had reservations about recruiting someone motivated largely by bitterness. And Thomas had fought serious doubts of his own. Before heading to the Farm that spring he had never fired a gun in his life. How fast that had changed…

The sound of a key in the door jarred Thomas back to the present, a bright glare nearly blinding his eyes as the light came on.

“Good morning, Mr. Patterson.” It was Sirvan, a plate of food in one hand and a 9mm in the other.

“I trust you slept well?”

Thomas shot him a look of disbelief, then accepted the plate and utensils. All plastic, he noted, not a one of them serviceable as a weapon. “Decently, thank you.”

“My grandfather wanted me to offer his sincere apologies for the way we have been forced to treat you.”

“Forced?” Thomas asked, his voice rich with irony. “I didn’t see anyone forcing you. Or perhaps I didn’t look hard enough.”

To his surprise, the young Kurd looked embarrassed by his retort. “The CIA director agreed to deliver a shipment of weapons to us in exchange for your safe return. My grandfather is a cautious man and believes we should keep you here until we have the proofs of your government’s good faith.”

“I see. So you’re not going to sell me out to the Iranians?”

“We discussed it,” Sirvan responded with an alarming frankness. “However, it is difficult to see what might be gained. To parley with them would be like juggling with scorpions, Mr. Patterson. No matter how carefully done, you will be stung in the end.”

Thomas chuckled. “I’m glad to hear that. Am I to stay here, then, until the weapons arrive?”

“No. Once you have finished your meal I will be happy to escort you around the camp. We have no objections so long as you do not stray beyond the perimeter. In which case, you will be shot.”

“Really?” Thomas’s eyebrows shot up. “And what would happen to your precious weapons in that case?”

“We would undoubtedly lose them, of course. But those are my grandfather’s orders, and they will be followed. Make no mistake of that.”

“Of course,” Thomas replied, shoveling the food into his mouth with the fork that had been provided him. “That is quite understandable…”

7:00 P.M. Baghdad Time

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

The knock came at the door just as Harry had taken a razor to the week-old beard enshrouding his face.

“A message for Harold Nichols, sir.” It was a young woman, one of the orderlies he had seen with Petras the previous evening.

“That would be me.”

“I’ll need you to sign for it, sir,” the brunette replied, extending the clipboard to him.

Harry took it, briefly scrawling his name across the cover sheet before reading the message beneath. When he had finished, he handed it back to her with a smile. “Give Ms. Petras my regards.”

“Of course, sir.”

Harry closed the door behind her and strode across the room to an adjoining door. He rapped hard on the wooden paneling.

“Yes?” came Hamid’s voice.

“Get everybody up and moving. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

8:25 A.M. Tehran Time

The base camp

Devastation. That was the only word Hossein could find to describe it. Even now, forty-eight hours after the commando strike, his soldiers were still repairing the damage.

And despite his confident words to Larijani the previous night, he was far from sure that Tehran would smile upon his part in it. More than likely, he would be relieved of command. And then…

He didn’t like to dwell upon it.

“Major! Major Hossein!” He turned to find a sergeant running across the plateau toward him, a satellite phone in his hand.

“Who is it?” Hossein asked, reaching out his hand.