Straits of Power

strongly motivate anyone, Jeffrey thought.

Jeffrey was positive Ilse wasn’t a spy. But he barely had a chance to open his mouth.

“And don’t stick up for your ex-lover. You let her get much too close to you, you let her get into your mind to learn all your preconceptions and blind spots and other vulnerabilities. She knows exactly what things you’re willing to risk your life for, and what you’d fall for in falsified reports. She fed that to the Axis, and they’re feeding it back and you swallowed it whole.”

Jeffrey sat there, confused.

The chief of naval operations spoke up. “Director, you’ve laid out one scenario. Everything you say is circumstantial. Ilse Reebeck was very thoroughly vetted in the beginning. At the moment she’s an indispensable member of Admiral Hodgkiss’s staff. Her whole family was executed on TV for resisting the Boer coup, for God’s sake.”

“Peoples’ feelings and allegiances change,” the FBI director retorted. “For all we know, deep down, she hated her family, and was glad to see them hang. Many agents are borderline sociopaths. Do you have any incontrovertible proof that she hasn’t turned, or been turned, since you cleared her?”

“No. Do you have any incontrovertible proof she’s a spy?”

“Not yet. Soon. And in the meantime, circumstantial is good enough for me. In counterespionage, circumstantial is sometimes all you get.”

The president cleared his throat. “Miss Reebeck’s current security status is not the main focus today, nor are Captain Fuller’s dating habits decisive to the agenda. His opinion that those two transmitted documents are real can’t just be ignored…. However, I emphasize that stronger verification is needed before any action would be justified.”

“The clincher,” the CNO said, “is that they were sent to us in one of our own most important naval codes. That was an invaluable tip-off for us, completely separate from the issue of Beck’s reports and Reebeck’s loyalty.”

The FBI director shook his head vehemently. “The Germans might have suspected that we’d soon realize the code was broken. They might fear we have moles planted in their intelligence apparatus. They could easily have passed on something seemingly priceless to us, which from their own point of view they believed we’d find out about quickly in any case.” He turned to the head of the CIA. “Am I not right?”

“Well, hypothetically. I can’t say too much about who we do or don’t have working for us where, for very obvious reasons. But we definitely have to remember that the Germans are seeing everything from a perspective that differs from ours. So yes, it’s possible that the feeding back of one of our own codes, to warn us it had been broken, could be a red herring.”

“In that case,” the FBI head declared, “the entire transmission is valueless.”

This point hung heavily in the air.

The president leaned forward. Everyone was immediately attentive. “To my mind, the scenario that the message is valid has still been neither proved nor disproved. What we’ve achieved is to put the different scenarios clearly out on the table.”

Everybody nodded, including the FBI director.

“All right,” the president said. “Let’s move on. The question of Peapod.”

The FBI director started in again, aggressively. “Wannabe defectors in time of war are a dime a dozen. All we really know about this guy is that he goes with whores.”

“He would still be useful to us,” the CIA director said. “We like to have our agents by the short hairs.”

The president chuckled at the unintentional play on words — sex and short hairs — and everyone else laughed. Jeffrey thought some of it sounded forced.

The national security advisor talked for the first time during the meeting — she was well regarded as a woman of few words. “I’m going to pose the question that has begged to be asked and answered since we came into this room. Is Peapod the same person who sent that transmission?… This then raises another question. Is Peapod then so priceless that, whatever it takes, we have to extract him, or is the transmission bait to help the Germans place a double agent in our midst?”

At first no one spoke. Those are the two big questions, all right, Jeffrey told himself.

“If he did have such high access,” the CNO thought out loud, “we’d want to keep him in place so he could give us even more. He says he knows important things about the upcoming German offensive, but insists on telling us in person. Only in person. That does seem a little odd.”

“What else do we know about Peapod?” the president asked the CIA director.

The DCI glanced at the people seated away from the table. “Aides, staffers, all of you out of here please.” The junior men and women left; the inner door was locked behind them.

“To answer your question, Mr. President, not much, except by logical inference and informed speculation. That plus the age-old spy-craft rule that it’s safest to assume things that seem connected aren’t coincidence…. If Peapod, who, on the understanding that this stays inside this room, uses the name Klaus Mohr, has truly done everything he seems to have done, he’s an exquisitely talented technologist. Klaus Mohr might not be his original name.”

“Even so,” the army chief of staff said, “our prewar files on persons who might pose cyberwarfare threats should contain something.”

“People like this Peapod, this Klaus Mohr, might have been identified, searched for, early on by the coup planners, and whisked into an underground where they could continue their work, almost as a form of national treasure.”

“You’re trying to say that their best technical minds were drafted into the conspiracy and hidden away, even given new lives?”

The national security advisor pursed her lips. “So it’s plausible, or at least conceivable, that Klaus Mohr, trade attache, is in fact someone else, and his job at the consulate is his disguise.”

The CIA director nodded. “That’s a good assessment, ma’am. Educated guesswork, intuition, hunches, lateral thinking, plain common sense, they’re squishy means of deduction but they’re effective tools in the hands of our capable analysts.”

The president spoke again. “Mohr’s presence in Istanbul, instead of somewhere else such as safe in Berlin, suggests he needs to be forward-deployed for a purpose.”

“Yes,” the CIA head replied. “Istanbul is potentially fatal ground. We know the Mossad is murdering people from the German consulate there.”

“Not at the embassy in Ankara too?” Ankara was the capital of Turkey, almost two hundred miles east and well inland.

“No, not in Ankara. Which says something, Mr. President. Istanbul is definitely Israel’s focus for their hit teams.”

“How’s Turkey taking all this?”

“They appear to not be reacting, and we can’t find out a thing about this from their government…. They’ve always had friendly relations with Israel…. Also, our brothel contact relayed that most of the people the Mossad killed were Peapod-Mohr’s subordinates.”

“You’re suggesting the Israelis have launched a campaign against whatever it is the Germans are up to?”

“That does appear to be the case, Mr. President. Even the Mossad would not be so aggressive on neutral soil without good reason. Or what seemed to them good reason.”

“Have we asked them?”

“Yes. They refuse to comment.”

The president grunted. “Not surprising. Israel always does look out for number one…. But you are telling us that the Mossad’s behavior seems to confirm that Mohr’s actual activities, behind his cover story, are perceived as a serious threat to them?”

“Yes.”

“Which seems to further validate Mohr as someone with crucial expertise, who needs to be close to Israel, on neutral turf, to do what the Germans want him to do.”

“Yes. At least, so the Israelis think. They’ve made mistakes before, though, killed innocent people