46

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

The best spies were women.

Richard Stephens not only believed this to be true, he’d made it his bedrock policy from the moment he’d been tapped by the president to serve as director of Central Intelligence. The number of women serving as clandestine officers in the Agency had jumped by 32 percent over the past several years. The number of female analysts had jumped by an even more impressive 41 percent. Those recently hired in the science and technology directorate were fewer—only 19 percent so far—but Stephens was pushing his personnel division to recruit far more aggressively.

Women, in Stephens’s view, generally processed and assessed mountains of data better than men. They had the patience and capacity for the very kinds of multitasking the Agency desperately needed. And, he’d always reasoned, who was more likely to successfully approach and engage a target in a foreign country—most of whom were men—than a woman?

Far and away, Stephens regarded Dr. Martha Dell as his best hire. Now fifty-seven, Dell had grown up in the projects outside of Atlanta. She was responsible for helping gather secrets from all manner of foreign governments, but particularly from the enemies of the United States. She also made sure that the commander in chief and all senior policy makers in Congress and throughout the U.S. government had the most timely and accurate interpretation of those secrets as possible.

In Stephens’s estimation, Dell had been born for Agency work. Graduating first in her class from Georgetown University in national security studies, she’d gone on to earn her master’s degree in Russian-Sino relations from Oxford and not one but two PhDs from Stanford, both dealing with aspects of Chinese foreign and military policy. Fluent in Russian and Mandarin—as well as Arabic, which she’d picked up after finishing her postgraduate work—she’d been recruited to the CIA in her late twenties and spent six years in the field, running agents and training future spooks. Over the past two and a half decades, she’d served in a range of highly trusted Agency positions, all within the National Clandestine Service. Most recently, she had been promoted to the Agency’s deputy director.

That, and she was a wonder to behold with a Glock 9mm.

At 11:17 a.m. Eastern time, Stephens and his security detail pulled into Langley after a long morning at the White House and headed to his spacious corner office on the seventh floor. A moment later, Dell entered through a side door, carrying a black leather notebook and a folder marked TOP SECRET in red. This she tossed onto Stephens’s desk, then picked up a remote from his desk and turned on a bank of TV monitors on the far wall as she took a seat across from him.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Stephens instructed his number two.

This was the director’s standard opening line with everyone on his staff. As always, Dell was ready.

“The Iranian president is about to break the news of the Supreme Leader’s death in a live address on state television,” she replied, finding the right channel so they could watch the speech together. “Don’t ask me who the Assembly of Experts is going to choose to replace Ayatollah Ansari. I have no idea. Nobody does.”

“Fair enough,” said Stephens. “What else?”

“The Israelis have taken out two more power plants, shutting down electricity for more than a million people in southern Lebanon,” Dell noted. “I called you in the car but couldn’t get through.”

“I was on the phone with the Jordanian GID.”

“And?”

“The pasha says the king wants us to pressure the Israelis to de-escalate this thing, and fast.”

“He’s worried it’ll ignite a Palestinian explosion in the territories?”

“Exactly.”

“Did they have any warning this was coming?”

“None,” said Stephens.

“Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“Very,” Stephens agreed, turning to hand Dell her coffee in a large mug bearing the CIA seal. “What’s going on with the ground campaign?”

“The Israelis are in the process of sending some ten thousand more combat troops into southern Lebanon and in the process mobilizing twenty-five thousand reservists to go in with them, though I suspect they’ll actually end up sending in more.”

“Battle tanks?”

“At least a hundred have crossed the border already, and two hundred more will within the hour. The Israelis are laying down withering artillery fire. They’ve launched hundreds of sorties and have hit dozens of known Hezbollah strongholds.”

“How far north are they pushing?”

“We’ve seen no strikes above the Litani River.”

“Nothing in the Bekaa Valley?”

“Not yet.”

“Beirut?”

“No, thank God.”

“And the hostages?”

“Nothing yet,” said Dell. “But we’ve activated our assets. NSA is prioritizing all Hezbollah communications.”

“And?”

“We’re picking up the same confusion 8200 is—Hezbollah leadership isn’t just fighting the Israelis; they’re fighting each other. No one seems to know who authorized the initial attack or why. And no one seems to know where the hostages are or who actually grabbed them.”

There was a knock on the door, and Stephens’s executive assistant entered with mugs of freshly brewed coffee.

“You don’t buy that, do you?” Stephens continued, nodding his thanks to his assistant before she turned and left the room.

“Honestly, I don’t know what to believe,” Dell replied. “The whole thing is odd.”

“It’s spin, Martha,” Stephens said. “Propaganda. Agitprop. Fake news. Don’t get distracted.”

“What if it’s not?”

Stephens took a sip of his coffee. “What are you saying, that a Hezbollah unit went rogue and launched an attack on their own?”

“It’s possible.”

“Anything’s possible, but how likely? Why take such a risk? If a Hezbollah unit isn’t acting under Sheikh al-Hussaini’s orders, or under Tehran’s, then whose? These aren’t exactly the most creative strategists in the world. Someone has to be directing them. Someone has to be paying them. And it couldn’t just be a Hezbollah commander on the take, right? He’d have to have the entire unit in on it. Who do you know that has the juice to flip an entire Hezbollah special forces unit and get them to start a full-blown war with Israel?”

“I don’t know,” Dell conceded. “But I’m working on it.”

“Good. Now I’ve got something else for you.”