The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (3 page)

On the film, he saw himself manipulating the probe. “What I am doing is adjusting the various frequencies to deliver a very specific thought into Ali's brain.”

“But how is this possible? How do you know these frequencies?”

The question came from one of the police officials. Of the people in this room, only Ghorbani might know the answer to that question. How he longed to tell them of Aeon, of the Wire, and of the power that this marvelous new alliance was conferring on the Islamic Republic. Instead, he said, “There has been a long study, and it's still continuing. Actually, it's most of what I do. We analyze the thoughts of test subjects, then create frequencies that will duplicate these patterns in other brains. For example, the thought that I am going to introduce into Ali's brain was originally derived from my own. I was the test subject, lying for hours in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine until we had recorded every electronic nuance of the thought that my brain was producing.” He watched the film for a moment longer. “Here,” he said, stopping the action for a moment. “The pulser is now operative. Ali is receiving the thought that his wife is not in America anymore. That she is in Iran, in custody. That unless he declares support for the revolution, she will be executed at once. Now, he knows for certain that this cannot be true. He spoke with her on a secure line in the American embassy just a short time before we picked him up. She is in America, and he knows this for certain. But watch.”

On the film, he withdrew the probe. Ali blinked. At first, he was confused. Then an expression of horror crossed his face. He sat up and cried out, “The Islamic Republic is the will of God! God is great, God is great!” Then he burst into tears and covered his face with his hands.

Ibrahim turned off the tape.

The silence in the room was again profound. All of these people were advanced in their understanding of his work, but they had never seen this. Until now, nobody had. But they understood the implications; he could see that from their rapt attention. The slight smile that had appeared on Ghorbani's face particularly pleased him. One day, this ferocious revolutionary, an expert in the arts of secrecy and government by compulsion, would be the head of the American Protectorate, governor of the United States.

One of the women present, Nadja Parandi, raised a hand. She was a skilled neurologist and, since the recent advances, an expert on brain implants.

“Professor, thank you for taking my question.”

“I am honored, Dr. Parandi. God willing, you won't stump me.”

There was a ripple of laughter. In the West, Iran was portrayed as a slave state for women. Ask this one, though. An able, loyal, and brilliant woman had a place in the modern Iran.

“I understand that most here will be government officials in the West after we have taken over. What I don't understand is how in practical fact this will be done. It's all well and good to show us how a man can be controlled under ideal conditions. But the Kremlin and the White House are hardly ideal conditions.”

She sat down and folded her arms.

Ibrahim was concerned by her question. If he appeared to be holding anything back, these powerful people would be furious. But he could not tell the whole truth. In fact, he did not know the whole truth.

He drew his thoughts together very carefully. If he said too much, Wahidi would be on him like a tiger. If he said too little, these people would come to distrust him. Someone, at some point, would have his head.

“The weak links in both missile systems are the national leaders. I think we all know that.”

“Respectfully, Professor, I submit that Vladimir Putin cannot be successfully subjected to this mind control technique, or any such technique.”

“I would agree, but we only need one of them, not both. The American is our target.” He was careful not to say “President Greene,” because the situation was more complex than that.

“Very well—so I thought. What of the practicalities? How do we implant him?”

She had assumed that it was Greene, which was what he had hoped would happen. Even among these trusted people, there had to be a level of concealment.

“We do have a program in place. It will lead in the direction we desire.”

“Which is?”

“The Islamic Republic, may Allah defend it, will become the most powerful nation in the world.”

“Thank you, Doctor. May I know when?”

She took her seat. Her face was totally devoid of expression. Unreadable. Before the treaty, the West had believed that Iran intended to build a vast nuclear arsenal, but Iran already had all the nuclear weapons that it needed—enough to destroy Israel once the United States could no longer defend it. The strike would be so quick and unexpected that Israel would not be able to return fire.

After he was done, he strolled across the campus, enjoying the stillness beneath the yew trees. It was a familiar sort of afternoon in Tehran—airless, the campus possessed of a silence that always seemed to him to reflect his own deep loneliness.

On the surface, he was a devout man, careful in his observances—but that was only the surface. Truthfully, like most educated people, he was an atheist. But he was also a patriot, deeply in love with Persia, its poetry and art and ideas, and the grandeur of its long journey across time. How little the English understood of a civilization so ancient, and the Americans, those grinning, immeasurably powerful children, bullies of the world—they understood, quite simply, nothing.

He reached the car park and went to his Toyota Avalon, sparkling blue and still smelling crisply inside of its newness. The revolution spared no expense for him, and he enjoyed the material advantages that came with his work. As he walked, alerts went to four cell phones in different parts of Tehran, and four operatives checked their weapons, put on their helmets, and went to their motorcycles. But Ibrahim knew nothing of them.

When he had first heard of the new technology and how it might be used, in the large office of Mohammed Wahidi of MISIRI, he had almost laughed aloud, it seemed so impossible.

“You cannot,” he had said. “To get in there—the White House—it would be difficult even if you weren't brown.”

Wahidi had simply stared at him in silence, which was most disconcerting.

“You are a loyal man,” he finally said. “Loyal and, from your papers we have read, one of the best-informed neuroscientists in Persia.”

“Thank you.”

“So you do the neuroscience and let us do the tradecraft. Best that you not even ask about it.”

“No, I can understand that.”

Wahidi had then leaned forward, radiating menace. If ever there existed a predator in human form, it was this man.

Wahidi had told him, then, the greatest secret of all, the one that he must never reveal. The awesome secret that, to any Persian, would have been profoundly inspiring:
They
had in their wisdom—in their infinite wisdom, the wisdom of gods—surveyed the nations of the world.
They
had seen and rejected them all, but for one: beloved Persia.
They
had seen that the Persians should be masters of the world.

They
.

He got in the car and turned it on, listening to the quiet hum of the engine coming to life. Such a car as this could not be built in Iran—not yet, but that would come. It would all come.

As he drove toward the city center, the four motorcycles converged on his route, moving through the traffic with easy efficiency.

This evening, Ibrahim planned to attend a reading of new poetry. The revolution watched the poetry movement very carefully. There was protest in it, but it was also true that the very soul of the revolution—of Persia herself—was there.

He turned on the radio, then lit up one of the wonderful American cigarettes it was his privilege to smoke: a Camel, richly flavored and powerful. Iranian cigarettes were much milder, and being steadily made more so by the government, in the interest of health, he assumed.

But health was for tomorrow. Either he would live or he wouldn't. In any case, this was his last carton. Next week, he would stop.

The narrow streets of the old city were, as always, choked with traffic. Thus it was that he failed to notice the fact that motorcycles had come up on both sides of his car. Perhaps it was also a bit of arrogance, his having been educated at MIT and Cambridge. He'd had the chance to stay in the West, but the revolution had drawn him home, that and the call of Persia herself, the sorrowing, glorious nation that was the true center not only of the human past, but of mankind's future.

These thoughts, half-formed, were drifting through his mind when the snarl of a motorcycle engine finally intruded into the cool, quiet interior of the Avalon.

Many people in Tehran had bodyguards. Many had armored cars. On the theory that such things would only draw attention to him, he'd been given neither.

Seeing the two motorcycles, he knew at once that he was in peril. Frantically, he hunted for the button on the steering wheel that would activate his cell phone.

Then he saw the motorcyclist on the driver's side, anonymous in his gleaming black helmet, slip a hand into his leather jacket. Ibrahim jammed on the gas. The car burst forward—but struck a lorry, causing its cargo of onions to come cascading out over his hood.

His desperate attempt to get out of the trap hadn't mattered, though. He had been dead before his car struck the truck. His body remained behind the wheel, sitting stiffly, eyes open, face strangely rapt. He looked like a judge officiating at a complicated trial.

In the driver's-side window there was a neat hole, and on his temple a steady runnel of blood. By the time the furious driver of the truck had come storming back to confront the fool who had rammed him, Dr. Josefi's collar and the arm of his shirt had turned dark red. The soaked sleeve clung to his skin, outlining his muscular arm. He had been trained in martial arts. He had been trained in defensive driving. He had been trained to drop down below the line of the window at the first sign of trouble.

He had not, however, been trained to never be surprised.

The motorcyclists were gone, absorbed in the twisting streets and the unending stream of traffic. They would go on about their business as soldiers in the enormous Western espionage system that wound through Tehran, an ever-changing tangle of suspicions and discoveries.

From Paris to Berlin to London to Langley, Virginia, the news had already been flashed: Dr. Ibrahim Josefi, an important nuclear engineer with an as-yet-unknown brief, was dead. The Iranian nuclear program—the one running off treaty—had been set back yet again—how far they would determine as soon as Josefi's exact role became known.

They would never find out, would never understand the breathtaking peril he had represented—which was greater than even he knew. In fact, his work was part of a much larger plan, one that no human being would support, no matter how extreme his or her views. Not Josefi, not Ghorbani—none of them.

Iran's new ally was like that—far more clever than any human being could ever be.

A fool had completed his fool's errand, as had the fools who had killed him. The real plan, terrible beyond human understanding, now began to unfold in earnest.

 

CHAPTER THREE

SECRET SERVICE
director Forde arrived at 716 Jackson at four in the afternoon. He found the president, Mrs. Greene, and Cissy in the parlor. The president was drinking and pulling on a cigar. He was dressed in what he had been wearing when they'd been evacuated: jeans and a white polo shirt. Cissy wore a tan and rust sweater and Lorna a green silk suit. They sat close together, huddling like people in a storm.

“Sir,” Forde said, speaking softly, “the situation is under control.”

“Meaning?”

“The entire house has been searched. There is nobody in it who might pose a threat. It's safe to return.”

“So you caught the perp?”

“No sir, not yet.”

“Then it's not safe to return, so don't tell me that.”

“The White House is safe—I'll stake my reputation on it.”

“You've got a lot of guts, then, or you're a moron, because what you've just told me is that a murderer got in and out undetected. Until you can come to me with an identified criminal, I'm not going back there. I hate all that old stuff, anyway. ‘Don't sit in this chair, don't drop crumbs on that rug'—Jesus, give me a break. I sat through a Dolly Madison chair just yesterday. I'm sick of the place, I hate it and I'm not going back.” He flashed a big smile. Not a nice one, though. “Let's turn it into a museum.”

As he railed, Forde glanced at Lorna. She called the shots, wore the pants, ran the country, however you wanted to put it. But she did it from behind the mask of the southern belle. Her smile was sweet, but her stick struck hard. You most definitely did not want it to connect with you.

“If we suddenly leave the White House,” she said, “it calls attention. Right now, that's the last thing we want.”

“There's been a murder, Lore, there's gonna be attention!”

“We're not calling it a murder and we're not calling it a suicide, Bill. As far as the world is concerned, it was an accident, nothing more. There will be some attention, but nothing we can't handle. As long as we don't do an Eisenhower, this will hang in the news cycle for six hours tops.”

“What's an Eisenhower?”

“He went out to some airbase in California and disappeared for a few hours. It was international news for a week. If we leave the White House, it's international news for a week. If we do it because of a suicide, we're in trouble for a month. Inevitably, it comes out that the suicide was really a murder and we go down in flames. It was an accident; the building clearance was a routine precaution. So let's get our tails back where we belong.”