The soldier let loose with a burst of full-auto gunfire, but it was aimed high, up into the air. Dean swerved past a clump of huge trees and bumped back onto the street, which, south of the roadblock, was nearly deserted.
He floored it as another burst of gunfire snapped after them. A white star appeared high on the rear windshield as a round struck the metal frame above it and ricocheted. Another round smashed Dean’s drivers-side mirror. On the right, he spotted the Dushanbe Fire Station, painted a startlingly bright shade of pink but with more traditionally red trucks parked inside the open bays.
“Passing the firehouse on my left!” Dean called. “Turning left!” He swerved the Hunter across oncoming traffic and ducked into a side street.
“That’s going to take you into a residential district, Charlie. A maze of narrow streets, lots of twists and turns. We’ll guide you …”
Dean decided that just maybe there actually
They
Rubens walked into a room dark with mahogany paneling and plush carpeting, dominated by a long, massive conference table, and found one of the last remaining openings. He noticed Debra Collins’ glance from across the table as he took his seat. He nodded at her, but she ignored him, turning instead to watch George Francis Wehrum taking the podium at the front.
Some of the people there were NSC staffers. The rest were a mixed lot of military officers from the Joint Chiefs and personnel from the NRO, the Department of Intelligence, the CIA’s Operations Directorate — that was Collins and the aide seated beside her — and the Department of Energy. The session this morning was a planned briefing by several U.S. government intelligence agencies for the NSC’s Presidential Advisory Staff.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming.” Wehrum was chief aide to ANSA, the advisor on national security affairs. His boss hadn’t arrived yet but was expected momentarily. “We have several important briefs on the agenda this morning. It’s going to be a long session. I will remind those present that information discussed in this room should be restricted to Top Secret and below.”
The National Security Council was comprised of about one hundred staff members working in one of the basement levels of the White House, a labyrinthine fortress with security almost as vigilant and as uncompromising as it was for the Puzzle Palace — with ID checks, a retinal scan, and a stroll through a brand-new backscatter X-ray scanner that could electronically peer through both clothing and hair.
Technically, the NSC was chaired by POTUS, the President of the United States, and its statutory attendees included the vice president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense. The senior military advisor was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the intelligence advisor was the director of national intelligence.
The meeting this morning, though, didn’t rate attendance by such high-ranking luminaries. Its purpose was strictly to serve as a session for presentations by various intelligence groups, briefing ANSA on several key situations or operational deployments.
Most of the people at the table were well known to Rubens, but at least there was now a new ANSA. The previous advisor on national security affairs had been Debra Bing, an unpleasant woman with political and personal power agendas that had often conflicted with a clear understanding of the information provided by the intelligence community. She hadn’t been fired so much as promoted sideways; she was over at Foggy Bottom now, working for the secretary of state.
Rubens could not imagine a better move for the woman.
The new ANSA was a retired Marine four-star general, John L. James. The President’s appointment of James had been a real shock to Beltway insiders; the current POTUS was
James was well respected by nearly everyone in town and was known as a team player. With the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the director of central intelligence, and the President’s chief of staff all battling with the NSC for presidential access, it would take a no-nonsense combat veteran as well as a diplomat to thread the labyrinth of Washington’s halls of power. Hell, the guy was a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. If anyone could handle the job,
Rubens knew a number of U.S. Marines, both active duty and retired. Charlie Dean was one. He wondered if the President knew just what he’d signed on for by appointing one as his advisor on national security.
“All rise,” Wehrum called from behind the podium. A moment later, General James strode into the room, followed by several aides and accompanied by Rodney C. Mullins, a congressman from New York and a prominent member of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubens had not been aware that Mullins was going to be present today.
“Sit down, sit down,” James growled at the room. He was known to dislike ceremony and protocol. “Sorry I’m late. The Honorable Mr. Mullins and I were held up in an Intelligence Oversight Committee meeting. Mr. Wehrum? What’s up first on the dog-and-pony show?”
“Sir … the Palestinian crisis. We have a report from the deputy DNI—”
“Let’s get on with it, then. What do you have for us, Mr. Scribens?”
Wehrum sounded annoyed by James’ bluntness — or perhaps it was by his dismissal of the briefing session as a dog-and-pony show, Pentagon slang for formal prepared briefings designed to please, rather than inform, high- ranking officers or civilians.
Rubens smiled inwardly. It was well known that Wehrum had expected to step into Bing’s shoes; she’d been grooming him as the next ANSA throughout most of her tenure, and James’ appointment must have been a bitter surprise. He took his seat, however, as Paul C. Scribens, one of four deputy directors of national intelligence, stood and walked to the podium.
It would be, as Wehrum had promised, a long session.
Ruebens wondered if Dean and Akulinin were clear yet, and back in contact with the Art Room.
The white-haired woman peering through the cracked-open door looked him up and down, then stared past him at Akulinin and Masha. The crack closed, Dean heard the rattle of the chain lock, and then the door opened again. “Did anyone see you?” she asked in accented English. She was an older woman with gray hair and eyes that might have seen too much. Dean guessed that she might be in her sixties. “Did anyone follow you?”
“Not that we could see,” Dean told her. “All the excitement is over in the center of the city.”
“Excitement is right. You three have kicked over hornets’ nest. Get in, get inside.”
They’d parked the Hunter inside a shed behind the Adkhamov safe house. The woman running the house, Tatyana Konovalova, was a transplanted Russian who’d been recruited by the CIA in Moscow back in the bad old days of the Cold War. When her husband had moved to Dushanbe in the 1980s, she’d come along — and continued sending in reports about Russian troops in the area during the disastrous Soviet war in Afghanistan. Her husband, Viktor, had been a civilian, an engineer working on a pipeline project in Kabul, at least until the Mujahideen had caught him and slowly skinned him alive. She still kept a small altar to the man, with candles flanking his photograph on a table in her small foyer.
She remained on the CIA’s payroll, the money brought by a messenger from the U.S. Embassy in town each
