Straits of Power

before.”

There was another long and uncomfortable silence.

The FBI head broke it. “This is all so circumstantial. Whorehouses, maybe- misguided Mossad assassins, a trade attache who might or might not be a trade attache, who might or might not have sent us a weird transmission, which might or might not be a fake, and who might or might not sincerely want to betray his own country….”

The CIA director stared across the table and told him, “In the spy-versus-spy business, circumstantial is often all you get. You said it yourself.”

“It’s not symmetric, as you’re perfectly well aware. Circumstantial evidence is enough to yank Reebeck’s clearance. It’s not enough to mount a big extraction job that could be a waste of time and lives, or a trap…. The Mossad activity, to me, is a throwaway. They could’ve been fooled by part of the same stratagem Mohr’s aiming to pull against us, his pretending to be so valuable. He might be in Istanbul, forward-deployed, because it makes him just accessible enough for the snare he’s setting to catch something juicy.”

Jeffrey had to admit that the FBI director had done his homework. Everything we know could be taken two ways. Everything. The CIA and FBI are deadlocked here.

The president shifted in his seat, to announce a change in subject. “Let’s tackle another wild card, the one that I don’t mind saying really scares me. The Israeli atom bombs planted in Germany. They’ve become severely relevant. Peapod claims he knows about German intentions in the Middle East, and Istanbul is on one doorstep to the Middle East. What’s the latest you’ve got on Israel’s rules of engagement for setting off those bombs? Their prime minister clams up every time I prod him for answers, then turns around and demands more arms, aid money, and loan guarantees. Same old same old, Israel’s stated official policy of nuclear ambiguity.”

“Nothing new to report, Mr. President,” the CIA director said. “The bombs are there as a deterrent. A deterrent is only effective if the other side knows you have the will to use it.”

The national security advisor corrected him. “Effective if the other side thinks you have the will to use it. There’s a difference between deterrence and retaliation. If Israel were really going down for the count, from a conventional or nuclear Axis assault, would they blow the bombs in Germany just for spite? Or would they fold, make peace, to prevent their own complete annihilation? Remember, Germany is a much bigger and more populated country than Israel, and this new regime is not anti- Semitic…. Germany would be hurt bad if ten tactical nuclear warheads went off, but their forces and command and control are dispersed throughout the occupied territories for exactly that reason. Israel, on the other hand, is the size of New Jersey. They haven’t much room to disperse. Hit a handful of cities and there’d be nothing left of the place.”

“That’s true, ma’am,” the CIA director said. “The problem is, this war is so different from the Cold War that all our old thinking and intell on Soviet thinking just don’t apply. We don’t know for sure if the Mossad sleeper agents in Germany who’d be told to set off the hidden bombs need a positive, specific, verifiable order to do so, or if they’re also held under a sort of dead-man’s switch. By the latter I mean that they need periodic ‘all’s well’ messages, and if those stop for too long, their prestanding instructions are to yank the triggers. Kablooey.”

The national security advisor looked dismayed. “With reliable covert comms from Israel to agents in Germany being so difficult, given German jamming and signals manipulation, an Israeli dead-man switch seems horribly reckless.”

“Yes, ma’am. But remember, this was all arranged before the war, as a sort of ultimate fail-safe against another Jewish Holocaust, using supposed cooperation with German authorities in the war on terror as camouflage. Israel naturally felt they could rely on their fighter-bombers with tactical nukes to take care of the Arab countries. Their Jericho ballistic missiles and submarine-launched Harpoon cruise missiles are also more than adequate for that, but only local in range. Our assessment is that with the bombs sequestered in Germany, predelivered, so to speak, over intercontinental distances, the Israelis might not have fully considered the specific conflict situation we find ourselves in now… and independent of that factor, they might really be that reckless, or paranoid, or vindictive, or whatever you want to call it. The bombs quite possibly are on a dead-man’s switch, with the Israelis locked into preexisting ROEs.”

“How? Why? This sounds insane.”

“Because any supposed change to the ROEs might’ve been defined as a sign of German tampering, and thus as a reason to detonate before the deterrent power was lost.”

“Jesus.”

“This raises the stakes to a whole new level,” the president said. “It seems to me it’s bad all ways, whatever Israeli A-bomb ROEs apply inside Germany. And it’s bad all ways if the Germans’ next move is attacking through Israel. Either nuclear detonations do break out, starting in the buffer zones of Libya’s and Egypt’s deserts, and ending in the middle of major population centers like Cairo and Tel Aviv and Frankfurt. Or the fighting stays nonnuclear, and if Germany wins, they impress and intimidate the neutral Muslim nations and we lose the Persian Gulf oil. Lose the oil and our war effort is crippled.”

“If Plan Pandora has something to do with attacking Israel,” the CNO said, “as combined Allied intelligence strongly does seem to suggest, then it’s aptly named. The Germans are taking a mind-boggling gamble, whatever they do.”

“I’d have to concur,” the army chief of staff said. “Our own read on signals intercepts and satellite recon is that the Afrika Korps is building up for a major strike eastward soon.”

“The NSA’s best interpretation,” the DCI added, “is that Plan Pandora is somehow wrapped up in German designs on conquering Israel by a modern blitzkrieg that isn’t far off on the calendar. Pandora appears to not mean the entire offensive, but something unconventional that would aid or assist it. We warned Israel, of course, and they said contemptuously that they’re way ahead of us, they’re digging in, and their ambassador plans to squeeze us for stepped-up shipments of fighter jets and fuel.”

“You didn’t mention Peapod?”

“Of course not. There’s proven lethal distrust between Israel and any purported German defectors. We do know they kill them on sight, on the presumption that it’s safest to assume they’re always double agents, or the contact meet is a lure to abduct or murder Mossad people. We’re sure that’s why Klaus Mohr went through all this rigamarole to contact us, when Israel is geographically much closer. We also know better than to try to convince Israel of Mohr’s sincerity, given Israel’s posture plus the fact that we aren’t convinced about him ourselves.”

“Okay. But if you’re right about German intentions,” the president said, “the wider implications are even worse. If the Persian Gulf states and Turkey stay aggressively neutral or go fully Axis, we haven’t got a prayer of invading Germany on a broad land front. Lose that land bridge up through the Balkans into Europe’s underbelly, and our one survivable way to topple the Berlin regime without resorting to nuclear arms would be hopeless….”

The president sat back and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Still looking upward, he said to the room at large, “I’m beginning to think the only way to find out what’s really going on and what to do about it would be to extract Klaus Mohr and see what happens and what he tells us, ASAP.”

“We’ve already considered that option,” the army chief of staff said, jumping in at once, as if he’d been waiting for this opening all along. “We propose sending a Delta Force team cross-country. Make contact with Mr. Peapod-Mohr, liberate him from the clutches of his employers with as little fuss as possible. Wangle our way past Turkey’s high-tech counterinfiltration and refugee snaggers with tech of our own, and bring him out.”

“Staging from where?” the president asked.

“We have assets in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”

“What are the odds of success?”

“Hard to quantify, Mr. President. It’s about three thousand miles, round-trip.”

The chief of naval operations harrumphed. “And that’s just from Riyadh to Istanbul and back to Riyadh.”

The army chief of staff’s response was icy. “With no available bases or overflight rights, with Turkish airports under relentless surveillance, and with travel-documentation checking and fingerprinting so rigorous, we can’t exactly take a scheduled airliner to Istanbul, or send Nighthawk choppers to whisk Mohr away. He’d be much too closely watched by his own people for him to hop on a plane, with or without our help.”

The CNO made no attempt to conceal his skepticism. “Overland? Crossing Turkey’s frontier through the most chaotic parts of Syria, Iraq, and Iran? Hidden in hay wagons or decrepit pickup trucks,