36
“Would you bet your life on it?” Lambert asked. “Would you bet a war on it?”
Fisher considered the question. His gut instinct said, “Yes,” but Lambert’s point was well made: Lives were at stake — many thousands of lives that would be lost in a war that would not only forever change the Middle East but also America’s place in the world. Decisions of this gravity weren’t made on instinct.
“My life — yes,” Fisher replied. “A war… No.”
Fisher was convinced there was a game being played here, and that all the pieces had yet to be uncovered. But who was the driving force? The case against Iran was seemingly solid: the FBI had three suspects in custody, all of whom were talking, laying a trail a evidence that pointed to Tehran. And what did he have to counter that? > A now-destroyed yacht and a corpse with vaguely Asian features.
After taking a dozen digital pictures of the corpse and then covering the grave again, Fisher had retraced his way through the forest to the main road. As promised, Elena had been waiting.
Wordlessly, she drove him to within a few blocks of the Exclusion Zone checkpoint. Their good-bye was awkward. Something had clearly grown between them over the past two days, but Fisher knew the situation was impossible. He briefly considered trying to take her out with him — CIA be damned — but he quickly quashed it. If they were caught, she would be imprisoned and, at best, he would be detained for questioning. There was too much at stake and too little time. In the end, all he could do was promise to talk to the CIA on her behalf. She’d simply nodded.
“So why the hesitation?” Lambert asked now.
“You mean, why am I not playing the good soldier?” Fisher replied. “Why don’t I just take my marching orders and march? You know me better than that, Lamb.”
“I do. And I also know how much you hate politics.”
“When this started, you told me the President wanted all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted before he pulled the trigger. Consider this an i without a dot.”
Pushing through the Situation Room’s door, Grimsdottir said, “Colonel, there might be something to that.” She sat down at the conference table and slid a manila folder across to Lambert. “I managed to pull a good chunk of data from the hard drive Sam brought back from Hong Kong.”
Lambert studied the folder’s contents for a few moments. “Give it to me in English.”
“First of all, I found traces of Marcus Greenhorn all over the hard drive. I think I’m starting to learn his tricks. There was no virus, but he’d written the code for the CPU’s built-in firewall. Too bad he’s dead; I wouldn’t mind going up against him again.”
A phone at Lambert’s elbow trilled and he picked up. He listened for a moment, said, “Escort him up,” then hung up. “Tom Richards.”
When Fisher had touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, his sample from Chernobyl had been taken by special CIA courier to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for anaysis.
“Before he gets here,” Fisher said, “I need a favor.” He explained Elena’s situation. “She’s burnt out, Colonel. Sooner or later she’s going to get caught.”
Lambert nodded thoughtfully, but Fisher could see the doubt in his eyes. While of value, the information Elena had been feeding the CIA wasn’t earth-shattering, and in terms of lives and resources, it probably wasn’t worth the risk of extracting her.
“I’ll look into it, Sam, but you know what they’re likely to say.”
“Pull some strings.”
A chime sounded at the Situation Room’s door. Lambert pushed a button on the table; with a buzz, the cypher lock disengaged. Tom Richards walked in and sat down. “I’m short on time, so I’ll get to it: The sample you brought back from Chernobyl is a perfect match with what we found aboard the
“Where does that leave us?” Lambert asked.
“The President is scheduled to speak to the nation tonight. An hour before that, he’ll be meeting with the ambassadors for the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The message will be simple: Either by negligence or complicity, Moscow and Kiev are each equally responsible for failing to properly secure the material used in the attacks.”
Richards’s words were clearly based on the talking points the public would hear again and again in the coming weeks from senators, representatives, and White House and Pentagon officials. This shot across Russia’s and Ukraine’s bow was as much an accusation as it was a warning: Don’t interfere in what’s coming.
The question was: Was it too late to stop the machine before shots were fired?
“Those are pretty broad strokes, Tom,” Lambert said.
“The evidence supports it. The material came from Chernobyl — probably sold by that now-retired Army area commander — and it ended aboard a ship set on a collision course with our shores and in the water supply of one of our towns. At last count, over four thousand people are dead in Slipstone. Someone’s going to answer for that.”
“You still haven’t answered my original question,” Lambert said. “Where does all this leave us? Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to assume the President’s order still stands. We’re still on-mission.”
Richards shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade, Colonel. I serve at the President’s pleasure.”
“As do we all. Now spare me party line, Tom. What’s the feeling at Langley?”
Richards closed his briefing folder and leaned back. “The case is solid. Almost airtight. But there’s a feeling on our side — on the Ops side — that we’re missing something.”
“Join the club,” Fisher replied.
“Here’s my problem. Taken together, the
Grimsdottir said, “Maybe Tehran wanted them caught. That leaves them the option to either deny involvement or claim credit, depending which way the wind is blowing.”
“We’ve thought of that,” Richards said. “In the end, though, all out speculation changes nothing. Countries have gone to war with less provocation and evidence. We’ve got the support of the Congress, the United Nations, and most of the world.” Richards checked his watch, then gathered his folder and stood up.
Lambert said, “Thanks for coming by, Tom.”
“My pleasure. Good work, all of you.”
After Richards was gone, Lambert said, “You heard the man: The clock is ticking. After the President’s address tonight, we’re on the eve of war. Have we got anything to suggest that’s the wrong course?”
Grimsdottir cleared her throat. “I might.”
37
“We’re all ears,” Lambert said.
“It’s ironic, really,” Grimsdottir said. “Whoever tried to erase the hard drive before it was returned to Excelsior did a decent job — or would have, if not for Greenhorn’s firewall. It protected not only a chunk of the drive for itself, but a buffer zone, too. That’s where I found this.”
She held up a computer printout that looked to Fisher like nothing more than a series of random numbers separated by colons, periods, and semicolons. There was, however, a highlighted portion that looked generically familiar:
