Oath of Office

Pugin raised his arms high above his head as if he’d just scored a goal. “And… they are done.”

Bobkova shook her head in disgust, as much for her thoughts of Dudko as this operative with the hairy ears.

Pugin rolled his chair away from the table and pointed his pencil at the session data that was now scrolling down his computer screen. “I told you she would be hungry.”

Bobkova walked over and bent down to get a better look. Pugin’s cologne was actually quite nice once it had a chance to wear off a bit — or perhaps she was just nose-blind to it.

“See, a table for two at a Morton’s steakhouse.” Pugin made a note of the login and password she used for the reservation website. They would use it to try and gain access to Chadwick’s other applications.

Bobkova watched in real time as Michelle Chadwick — or possibly her carp-lipped boy toy using her phone — made seven-o’clock dinner reservations in Crystal City. Bobkova knew the place well. Morton’s steakhouse faced the street but had another entrance inside the underground mall. Her meeting with Reza Kazem had taken place across from the Starbucks in the very shadow of the restaurant. She often ran along the Mount Vernon Trail, which followed the Potomac across the street.

Bobkova folded her arms, pacing the length of the hotel room several times as she thought through the particulars of this location.

There would be enough people to offer the right amount of panic and melee, making the killing highly visible — as Dudko had instructed. There were several other restaurants in the vicinity — seafood, tapas, noodles, even a place that specialized in bison. Some diners would drive, but many would come and go via the Metro, funneling them right past Morton’s to reach the terminal. The crowds would at once provide the necessary witnesses and cover their escape.

Bobkova had studied the security cameras in the Crystal City Underground in advance of her previous meeting with Reza Kazem. Then, she’d wanted to be seen, but such preparation was a habit. She’d send Gorev to check the area again and disable the camera directly in front of the restaurant on Crystal Drive.

Ideally, Bobkova would have liked a little more time to build her file, but Dudko insisted she rush things. Bobkova was smart enough to see what he was up to. Certain news stories were already being written, little flames that thousands of Internet bots would fan into a larger fire across the Web, “liking,” tweeting, sharing, commenting. Monday-morning drive-time radio loved a good conspiracy. More tweets would follow, many of these from real people, helped along by the bot army. One story would bolster another until even the most cynical began to doubt their convictions.

Mundus vult decipi—the world wanted to be deceived.

Senator Chadwick would die tonight — and the American people, or at least a substantial portion of them, would blame the man who she accused of having his own assassination squad, the man who stood to gain the most peace from her death: President Jack Ryan.

41

Reza Kazem sat behind the wheel of the stolen Fath Safir — Iran’s answer to the Jeep CJ 4x4—and shielded his eyes from the sun as the gigantic plane crabbed into a stiff wind over the makeshift airstrip. A woman in her fifties sat in the passenger seat, hunched over a small notebook in which she made frequent notes with a pencil she kept behind her ear. She wore red lipstick and dark eyeliner, but the pencil appeared to be her only jewelry. A lock of steel-gray hair escaped the scarf and blew across her face, but she left it there, engrossed in whatever she was doing. She hardly ever spoke, except to herself — with whom she carried on many lively conversations that she noted in her little book.

Overhead, the Il-76’s engines screamed as it came in on final approach. Carved out of the desert in the valley east of Mashhad, the runway provided an adequate, if not ideal, landing spot for the Ilyushin. The strip was fifteen hundred meters — a thousand meters short of what the airplane would need to take off again had it been loaded to maximum weight.

Reza Kazem didn’t care about that. In a short time, it would be some seventy-four thousand kilograms lighter.

The woman in the Safir’s passenger seat looked up suddenly at the sound of the engines, startled from her stupor.

“Tell your people to take great caution putting the missiles inside the launch tubes.”

Kazem drummed long fingers against the steering wheel. “Two hours and thirty-six minutes until the next American satellite passes overhead. It is better the Great Satan does not see what we are up to, don’t you think?”

“This is true,” the woman said, her voice dripping with condescension. “But the great accuracy we require will be lost if the components are damaged even in the slightest way. Secrecy will not matter if we cannot hit what we are aiming at.” She went back to her book for a moment, then suddenly looked up.

“Do you shoot?”

Kazem nodded. “I have, on occasion, fired a weapon.”