White Sea Rising by MJ Kephart

Author:MJ Kephart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Action & Adventure, Thrillers & Suspense, Political, Spies & Politics, Thriller & Suspense, War & Military, Thrillers, Military, Thriller, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 0996109803
Publisher: Defiant Books
Published: 2014-05-12T23:00:00+00:00

22

THE CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was beautiful in the morning sunlight. The massive oak trees shaded grassy quadrangles set off by diagonal sidewalks connecting the neo-gothic buildings. Today, the paths were mostly devoid of people, since the undergrads had departed for their summer break a month ago.

Sada found a visitors parking lot just down the street from the famous Old Well and walked across the street to Phillips Hall.

If her life had turned out differently, she would have spent more time in a place like this, albeit one with palm trees lining the sidewalks. Her father—her real father—had been a professor at Tel Aviv University. But her mother’s choice had been different, and so Sada found herself growing up in the barren Judean desert, an unhappy teenager looking for the first opportunity to escape the life of the religious kibbutz.

After her dereliction of duty, or so her superiors would deem it, she might be returning to the farm on the outskirts of Petah Tivka, north of Tel Aviv. If it hadn’t already succumbed to real estate developers. Maybe she’d find the old grove where her grandfather had raised Jaffa oranges, the ones he’d let young Sada pick and eat straight from the tree. She would find a man who was not a soldier and raise her own daughter in a life full of soft sunshine and sweet oranges.

Shaking off the brief idyll, she walked up the broad steps to the brick and stone edifice, and entered a wide hallway with classroom doors opening off each side and a broad stairwell leading to the upper floors. Sada was looking for a directory for the faculty offices when an elderly gentleman walked down the hallway toward her, rifling through a stack of loose papers.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I might find Karim Hoveyda?”

The man beamed. “Ah, Karim. I’m not sure if he was coming in so soon after getting back. But if he did, he’d go straight to the TUNL.”

“The ‘tunnel’?”

“T-U-N-L,” the man explained, “the Triangle Universities Nuclear Lab. It’s located on Duke’s west campus. It’s a facility shared between ourselves, Duke, and N.C. State. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Oh, thank you,” Sada said, smiling. “My name is Susan Howell. I’m a freelance writer. I wanted to meet Karim and see if he was interested in telling his story.”

Sada listened to the directions and thanked the professor. After the twenty-five minute drive northeast on U.S.15, Sada found herself cruising past the Duke campus. Another prestigious institution of American higher learning. Iranian higher learning, as well, she thought. How many scientists and engineers employed by the IRGC, Hezbollah, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and other organizations with purposes antithetical to the values of the West had graduated from the West’s top universities?

After stopping at a visitors center for a campus map, Sada pulled into a small triangular parking lot outside a dark, squat building fabricated with slabs of concrete stacked one upon the other, like a child’s wooden blocks.

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