Oath of Office

“Hey,” Foley said, acting incredulous. “I was a nice drunk. And except for interludes with Ed, my knees could have held an aspirin in place, they were so firmly closed during that portion of my career.”

“I meant the reputation for being a cowboy.”

Foley’s eyes sparkled with a grin. “I know. I just like to see you blush. My point is, having a superspy for a mother could not have made for an easy childhood. Just like here, intelligence work in Russia is a family business. Not too much of a leap to think mommy pushed him that direction.”

“His father?”

“An academic,” Foley said.

“One of those,” Ryan said, an academic himself.

“Anyway, if he was pushed into a career he didn’t want, it would explain his motivation for turning.”

“Or it could mean he’s an extremely sophisticated operative, setting a trap that will blow up in our face.”

“Maybe,” Foley said. “But they’ve been in Iran awhile now. I think it would have blown already if it was going to.”

“Let’s hope so,” Ryan said.

“Foley took a sip of her coffee. “Your son’s a smart guy, Jack. No one pushed him into this business. He’s got the genes for it, and the drive.”

She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment as if deep in thought.

“What?” Ryan asked.

“Doesn’t this remind you of the old days, when we were getting Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov out of the Kremlin?”

“They don’t make them like CARDINAL anymore,” Ryan said.

“I was thinking about that,” Foley said. “Maybe they do.”

56

Reza Kazem set the technical manual on the ground, weighting the pages down with a stone against the wind, and looked over the hood of the nearby missile transport vehicle at the approaching Bell 206. Kazem smiled serenely, not because he was happy to see the helicopter, but because he needed the practice.

Ayatollah Ghorbani could not help himself. Though he would stay in the rear of the aircraft, out of sight to the dozens of men working on the missile launcher and transport/erector vehicles, his presence was still a distraction of monumental proportions.

Kazem found Ghorbani to be a necessary evil, a means to an end. The cleric put on a pious face, issuing fatwa after fatwa, extolling the virtues of Iranian manufacturing while decreeing all things Western an abomination before Allah. He instructed his officers in the IRGC to utilize only Iranian-made helicopters such as the Shahed, while he trusted his own safety to nothing other than his personal Jet Ranger.

It was these little things that made Reza Kazem hate the man, but hate him he did.

He patted the sidewall of the huge tire on the missile transport truck as he watched the helicopter land at the edge of the rocky clearing a hundred meters away. No, it would not be long at all. He whistled over the two men he’d chosen to drive the gargantuan vehicle. They’d been eating soup from foam cups that they dropped on the ground immediately when he summoned them.

“You have the coordinates?” he asked once they’d scurried to him. Neither was yet thirty years old, the crystal surety of youth unmarred by the skepticism of age and experience.

“We do,” they said in earnest unison.

Kazem wondered what these earnest young dissidents would have thought had they known that the leader of the Council of Guardians, a man second only to the Supreme Leader himself, was on board the approaching helicopter.

“Take a squad of the others and move this truck to the caves,” he said. “Wait there until tonight, when the American satellite has passed overhead, and then proceed to the coordinates.”

The two men gave curt nods. “Yes, Agha Kazem,” they said, using the Persian honorific similar to “Mister” in the English-speaking world.

Ayatollah Ghorbani’s helicopter beat the air, throwing up a cloud of dust and gravel as it settled in. Reza Kazem sniffed, gathering up the patience he’d need to show deference to such a prig. On one side of the clearing, Dr. Sahar Tabrizi, the Iranian-born genius of astrophysics, checked and rechecked one of the two Russian missiles that had become her pet projects.

A genuine smile spread over Reza Kazem’s lips. Soon he would not need Ghorbani at all.

* * *

Major Sassani had kept the information about Nima’s satellite phone call close-hold rather than turn it over to close IRGC detachment. Too much information was lost when it passed between too many ears and mouths. He wanted to pay the girl a personal visit, to hear from her lips where Dovzhenko had gone.

The 324-kilometer journey from Herat to Mashhad via IRGC Dassault Falcon 20 business jet took less time than the drive from the airport to the neighborhood near the Shrine of the Imam where technicians had vectored Nima’s probable location. Sassani arrived less than three hours from the time he first heard of the young woman’s call with the satellite phone believed to be in the possession of the Russian traitor, Erik Dovzhenko.