For Honor by Jeff Rovin

Author:Jeff Rovin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Op-Center Headquarters, Fort Belvoir North,

Springfield, Virginia

July 1, 4:49 P.M.

“The word you’re looking for is ‘nowhere.’”

Chase Williams did not say that with malice or even impatience; it was simply a fact.

He was standing in Aaron Bleich’s office in the Geek Tank with Anne Sullivan, Paul Bankole, and Op-Center’s operations director Brian Dawson. The three had just seen everything Bleich and Kathleen Hays had pulled together on the Ghasemis, the Bolshakovs, and Operation Anadyr.

“We’re still working on Corps General Heydar Najafabadi,” Bankole reminded his superior. “He was part of the Iranian team buying secondhand Russian guns for anti-Saddam Iraqis in 2001, and one of those suppliers may have been this man Bolshakov.”

“Bolshakov did not deal internationally,” Anne reminded him, looking at his tablet.

“He may have sold to Russians who sold to Tehran,” Bankole said.

“All of that may be true,” the director agreed, “but that doesn’t tie these threads together now.” He shook his head, not at the team but at the situation. “How is it possible that we know so little about so much?”

“Because we’ve gone digital on a world that was still largely analog,” said Brian Dawson.

The forty-year-old operations director said it matter-of-factly, which was how the six-foot four-inch charmer said everything. Nonetheless, the former West Pointer and Fifth Special Forces Group commander had the training and field experience to be taken very, very seriously.

“Anyone have a suggestion as to next steps?” Williams asked.

“Kathleen is going through digitized newspaper microfilm files now,” Bleich said. “She’s looking for anything on the Russian or that Cuban physicist.”

Williams sighed. It wasn’t a criticism; it was a logical step. But it was most likely a very, very small step. Anne looked at Williams with her every-scrap-helps expression but he wasn’t buying. It was why they made a good pair at the top: impulse and patience in balance. Right now, though, Williams did not like the idea that he felt—felt, did not know for sure—that Tehran had time to play a waiting game but Washington did not. Despite the efforts of four top officials, there was no guarantee they’d gotten any useful information from General Ghasemi. A stalemate made it a win for Iran.

“How about—” Dawson said, thinking aloud, “—how about bringing General Ghasemi here?”

The four other people crowded into the office stood quite still. It appeared, to Dawson, as if he’d triggered some kind of conservation of energy equation: the body must not move so the brain can.

“What does that get us?” Anne asked.

“Ghasemi’s reaction to something unexpected,” Dawson said.

“I like it,” Bankole added thoughtfully. He looked at the others. “If the general’s here to defect, as he says, then this will just be another place he’s being shuffled to, held, interviewed at. But if he’s here to try and figure out what we know or suspect, how we work, he may be as inquisitive as we are.”

“It’s not bad,” Williams agreed.

“You realize that January Dow would come with,” Anne pointed out.

“We get along fine,” Williams said.

“That’s not what I meant. She’s going to leap at that opportunity.

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