Reunion

1. “Slow down,” said McCaig. “The GPS says we’re close.”

Christine slowed car and squinted through the shimmering heat of the Central Valley. As they’d descended from the mountain, they’d had to put the convertible’s top up to keep out the blazing sun, and were running the air conditioner full blast.

“Seriously?” she said. “It’s just trees. More trees, just like the last ten miles. I’ve never seen so many freaking trees in my life.”

“Walnut trees, not that you care.”

“Care? I’ve seen enough walnuts to sink the Titanic.”

“Walnuts are delicious and nutritious. They press them for oil too, you know. Cosmetics and such.”

“You’re just full of fun farm facts.”

“When you grow up on a farm, there ain’t much else to do but learn about farms. And dream of getting away. Hey, right here. Stop here.”

She stopped the car and looked around. “Here? Zarrabian is camping in the middle of a big walnut orchard, hoping nobody will notice?”

“These old farms used to be a couple hundred acres—what one family could manage. Now they’ve all been bought up by huge agribusiness corporations. The little guys can’t compete any more and they’re all moving away. But they haven’t torn down all of the old farm houses yet. I’ll bet there’s a house back there. Cruise along this orchard. We may find the driveway.”

A hundred feet farther, McCaig pointed between the trees. “There it is! Turn here, between this row of trees.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, you can still see the gravel and some old tire tracks. And there’s a broken-off post there that was probably the mailbox. This is it.”

The car crunched down the old, weedy gravel driveway under a canopy of walnut branches. The light from the late afternoon sun barely penetrated, giving the impression of driving down a long tunnel.

A hundred yards along, a house emerged from the trees. Christine had been anticipating something like Dorothy’s home in The Wizard of Oz: an old single-story clapboard house with peeling yellow paint, ragged asphalt shingles on the roof, a drooping clothesline, and maybe a dead car or two in an overgrown yard. Instead, she found herself admiring a beautiful old Victorian-style home. A decorative sidewalk curved across a long-dead lawn to a huge oaken front door with a stained-glass window. On the right side of the house, a neglected rose garden had become a tangle of wild roses and weeds. To the left, two huge old orange trees, heavy with neglected fruit, shaded the house.

Christine stopped the car and shut off the engine. “Wow,” she said. “If this house were in San Francisco, it would be worth millions. Your buddy has good taste. Even neglected, this place is elegant. ”

“Yeah, but out here, it’s just scrap wood.”

They stepped out. “Holy crap!” she said. “It’s like a blast furnace out here!”

“Probably a hundred and five degrees,” said McCaig. “Makes the food grow. Sunshine and water.”

“What now? Just walk up and knock?”

“If he’s here, he knows we’ve arrived. Let’s just wait a minute.”

They leaned against the car and waited. Two minutes later, Christine grew impatient.

“Maybe we should honk the horn.”

“Bad idea. If there are farm workers in earshot, they’ll come to investigate.”

“Screw it. Let’s just knock.”

McCaig scanned the grounds, looked back down the overgrown driveway, and then back at the house.

“OK.”

When they’d walked a half dozen steps, a gunshot rang out and a chunk of cement exploded just a foot from McCaig’s shoes. He dived toward Christine, pushing her down onto the dead grass and shielding her with his body.

Zarrabian’s voice came from a window. “Stay where you are, Captain. Throw your weapon toward the house.”

McCaig raised his head and looked toward the house. “Goddamn it, Zarrabian. Didn’t you steal my gun once already?”

Christine struggled from McCaig’s grasp and sat up, brushing dead grass and leaves from her hair and jacket. “Just give him your gun!”

“Ms. Garrett’s advice is wise,” said Zarrabian.

“I’m retired!” said McCaig. “I don’t have one! I turned it in!”

Another shot rang out, this time blowing up a chunk of dead lawn a foot in front of McCaig’s face.

“Please, Captain.”

“Damn it!” yelled Christine. “Why don’t you two just whip out your dicks and we’ll see whose is the biggest?”

Another shot rang out, exploding more dirt and grass over both of them.

“OK, OK! Look, I really don’t have one!”

“Prove it!”

“But there . . . she’s . . .”

“Prove it!”

McCaig quickly stood, pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the ground, then held his arms up and spun around.

“Keep going, Captain!”

“What the hell, Zarrabian!”

There was an audible click of the gun being cocked.

“OK, OK.” He dropped his pants and did a pirouette, made clumsy by the pants bunched around his ankles. Christine noted he was a boxers man.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Thank you, Captain.”

McCaig pulled up his pants. As he was donning his shirt, Zarrabian emerged from the house, an antique hunting rifle aimed in their direction.

“You can get up, Ms. Garrett.”

Christine stood. McCaig glared at Zarrabian. Zarrabian looked back with indifference.

“This is not about you, Captain. Or you, Ms. Garrett. I am the one who invited you here.”

“Do you always shoot your guests?” asked McCaig.

“This antique rifle is quite accurate in spite of its age. If I had wanted to kill you, you would be dead. Surely you know that.” Zarrabian glanced at the sky, and then scanned the walnut orchards around them.

“So what the hell—”

“Please, quiet,” interrupted Zarrabian. “For just a minute more.”

They waited. McCaig cocked his head, listening carefully. The late afternoon air carried sounds from far off: a distant tractor, the faint hum of bees in the orchard, a car passing by on the road, the hoot of a distant barn owl. A flock of crows flew overhead, their harsh caws punctuating the quiet of the farmland.

After a long two minutes, McCaig broke the silence. “OK, I get it. You’re safe.”

“Yes, Captain. Thank you for your understanding.”

Christine’s eyes darted back and forth between the two men. “What the hell is going on here?”

“He was springing a trap,” said McCaig. “Or rather, if this had been a trap, he would have sprung it.”

“That is correct,” said Zarrabian. “If you had brought federal agents with you, they would have waited until we were inside, perhaps until nightfall, or even until you had left, and then made their move to capture or kill me. My gunfire just now would have forced them to act immediately to rescue you helpless civilians from the terrorist.”

“Won’t the neighbors call the police?” she asked.

“It’s unlikely,” said McCaig. “Here in the farmlands, gunfire isn’t a big deal. Three shots spaced ten seconds apart? They’ll probably think it was target practice, or maybe someone shooting at coyotes.”

“And if your theatrics had sprung a trap?” asked Christine. “Then what? It’s not like you could escape.”

“Then you would have become hostages, to ensure that I was taken alive rather than shot on sight, which is what I imagine your government hopes for. Please, we should go inside. But first, Ms. Garrett, can you park your car in the shed? Farm workers come by here occasionally, and we do not want them knocking on our door.”

A few minutes later, Zarrabian showed them to his room upstairs. “It is not much, but it is comfortable,” said Zarrabian, gesturing at his makeshift quarters.

The old house was more beautiful inside than out. Christine guessed from the grounds and garden that it had only been abandoned for a year or two. The roof was still keeping the rain out, and no windows were broken.

This wasn’t a house that had been abandoned. Whoever left this house had cleaned it with love and pride, hoping in vain that perhaps one day another family would move in and be pleased by the neat, empty rooms. She could imagine the old farmer’s children who had grown up here, returning from their city jobs after their parents had taken their final breaths, facing the sad task of cleaning out the last vestiges of their family’s century-long history. They’d swept out the last mote of dust, locked the door behind them, and handed the key to a realtor in a cheap business suit who worked for the faceless agribusiness corporation that now farmed this land.

That might make a great story, she thought. She filed it away in her brain for another day.

McCaig was examining the stack of electronics Zarrabian had assembled. Christine turned her attention back to Zarrabian.

“Colonel, I’m still pissed about my marine radio you tossed in the ocean and the phone you stole. And that shooting out there didn’t improve my mood.”

“I know you are joking to lighten the mood, Ms. Garrett, and as a reporter you are trying to put me at ease. I appreciate the gesture.”

“OK,” she replied. “Then what I’m really pissed about is that you blew up one of the most beautiful and critical bridges in America.”

“Indeed. We have some very serious topics that we must discuss.”

“Yeah,” said McCaig. “Like what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Please, Captain. Things are not what they appear to be. Two weeks ago I was a soldier sent on a mission in a war. My life was simple and orderly. Since then, the foundation of my mission has crumbled beneath my feet, and the ground now feels like quicksand.”

“Colonel, I told you I was going to arrest you. It was my sworn duty. I’m retired now, but I’m still a patriot and a former United States Marine. I can’t imagine why I shouldn’t bring you to justice.”

“So what is this ‘payback’ that you offer?”

“The payback is that I will listen to you. I am no longer a sworn FBI agent, so I’m not required to arrest you on the spot. I can give you one chance. You said things are not right, that I need to find out why. So I, that is, we,” he said, nodding toward Christine, “did some pretty serious digging, and we didn’t like what we found. It made me decide I’d give you this one chance.”

“That is fair. I appreciate—”

“Gentlemen,” interrupted Christine. “May I remind you that I’m a reporter? Unless you say otherwise, everything you say is on the record. Do you know what this means in American journalism, Colonel?”

“Of course,” said Zarrabian.

“It may be moot,” said McCaig. “I’ve got a bad feeling that by the time you publish this story, that will be the least of our worries.”

“OK, just so everyone knows,” said Christine.

“Besides,” said McCaig, “Ms. Garrett here seems to have a really big checkbook. It’s only fair that if she buys dinner, she gets to write about it.”

A hint of a smile showed on Zarrabian’s face.

“So talk,” said McCaig.

“I do not know where to begin.”

“Why not start with how you became a terrorist.”

“A terrorist? Captain, you insult me. After the unprovoked attack your country launched against mine, how can you say this?”

“Attack? What attack? Have economic sanctions become acts of war?”

“No, but launching cruise missiles at civilian targets is.”

“Colonel Zarrabian,” interrupted Christine, “why don’t you start from those events and just tell us your story?”

“Sure, and leave out the bullshit and propaganda, OK?” added McCaig.

“TJ, just be quiet. We’re here to listen. We can judge later.”

“Thank you, Ms. Garrett,” said Zarrabian. “You must forgive me if I retell things you already know. I have had little opportunity to use the Internet since I arrived, but what little I have learned tells me that American news is heavily biased, maybe even censored. Let me begin.

“About nine months ago, I was badly injured in the cruise-missile attack that your country launched against civilian targets in Iran.”

He stopped and looked back and forth between McCaig and Garrett. “I see by the looks you are exchanging that we have already hit a roadblock in understanding. Surely you know about these attacks?”

McCaig looked as though he were going to answer, but Christine beat him to it. “Of course, Colonel. As you say, the story may have been reported quite differently in each place. Please continue. You were injured by the cruise missile that fell—where?”

“Ms. Garrett, surely you . . . yes, right. I was in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, shopping with my family. I suppose I was luckier than the other thousand or so whose lives were ended by those five missiles.”

McCaig narrowed his eyes, but was silenced by a glare from Christine. “A thousand, you say?” she asked.

“The exact count is not known. Tehran was hit the worst, but the other four cities sustained terrible blows. The lost lives were an immediate tragedy, but the damage to our beautiful national treasures—bazaars, mosques, and even a library—will remind us of these attacks for centuries.”

He paused again. “You are being patient, but I see from your faces that your understanding of these events is quite different from mine.”

“That’s the understatement of the year,” said McCaig.

“Again, gentlemen, our first goal is to hear the story,” said Christine. “Yes, Colonel, our understanding is quite different. But we’re listening to your story. Please.”

“I was trapped under the rubble and suffered a severe blow to my head. I remember very little, just the explosion, dust, and confusion, and then nothing. They tell me I was, what do you call it, unconscious for two weeks?”

“In a coma?” said Christine.

“Thank you. In a coma. When I awoke, I was confused for several more weeks. I could not seem to clear my head. It was six weeks before I was released from the hospital, and for several more months I suffered from headaches and dizziness. I had recurring nightmares of the explosion, of seeing my . . .

“Even after my release I felt disoriented for a long time, as though I could not quite put my thoughts together.”

“You're better now?” asked Christine.

“What does it mean to be better? Yes, my mind is working again and my headaches are gone. But I have lost everything. My family, my future. I was sent on what is essentially a suicide mission, which I unexpectedly survived. Now I am a fugitive, apparently hunted by both your country and by my own. And you ask if I am OK?”

“Of course, Colonel. I meant to ask whether your injuries have healed,” she said.

“They have.”

“Please, continue.”

“Sometime during my recovery, I was given this mission. It was presented as a volunteer operation, but good soldiers don’t turn down ‘volunteer’ missions. Even so, no coercion was needed. I was a willing soldier.”

“I’m sorry,” interrupted McCaig, “but I have to ask. What on Earth did you think you could accomplish? Soldiers wage war, not acts of terrorism.”

“The idea of any country defeating the United States of American in an armed engagement is absurd. But even though America is the most powerful nation in history, America needs to be shown that actions have consequences.

“You know as well as I do, Captain, that the traditional rules of war no longer apply. National boundaries move, the enemy is often not even a nation, and there are never true victories any more. Wars do not end when treaties are signed. They just drag out over years and decades, shifting, surging and waning.

“This conflict started a century ago when the colonial era of America and the European powers was coming to a close. America wanted oil, and my country had it. This is just a continuation of that century-old conflict.

“You ask why I became a terrorist. Is the American technician steering a cruise missile to its target in my country not a terrorist, too? No, you say, because that man is sitting in an air-conditioned office in Nevada. You call me a terrorist only because I had to travel to your country to carry out my mission. The man in Nevada carried out his orders; I carried out mine. There is no difference.”

“Sure there is,” said McCaig. “Your cruise missile story is a big load of bull. The USA never did that! There was no attack.”

“TJ, shut up!” said Christine. “Colonel, can you excuse us for a few minutes? TJ and I would like to discuss a few things.”

“We would?” asked McCaig.

“We would.”

Zarrabian looked back and forth between the two of them for a moment. “You will not try to leave or contact anyone? I have your word on this?”

“We won’t,” said Christine. “My word. Yours too, right?” she asked, nodding toward McCaig.

“Yes, my word,” said McCaig. “We’ll be right back.”

Zarrabian nodded.

“Christ, TJ, can’t you just shut up and listen?” she said a minute later. They’d come out the side door of the old house and were standing between the two huge old orange trees, shielded from view in case a farm worker happened by. Above them, the sky was turning a deep orange in the setting sun.

“Wow, Valencia oranges. These are hard to find in the grocery store. Everyone likes navel oranges, but I’ve always preferred Valencias. I’ll bet these trees are a hundred years old if they’re a day. Planted when flavor was king, not whether the fruit could be picked green and shipped halfway around the world.”

“TJ, focus.”

“I’m blowing off steam.” He reached out and plucked an orange from the tree and sniffed it. “This story is complete cock-and-bull. The US attacked Iran with a barrage of cruise missiles? Does he think we’re fools?”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I don’t think so.”

“TJ, when the FBI fired you, did they make you leave your brain behind? I was watching you as much as I watched Zarrabian in there. The moment Zarrabian started talking about a bomb hitting the Grand Bazaar, you started rolling your eyes and staring at the ceiling. Why don’t you just whistle Dixie out loud so we’ll all know how bored you are?”

“I gave the man a chance to explain himself. I owed him that. I guess I hoped against all odds that the man who saved my life and the lives of my men would have a plausible excuse for turning terrorist. Something I could at least understand even if I didn’t agree with it. This story is so ridiculous it embarrasses me.”

“TJ, you’re way too wrapped up in this personally. You owed Zarrabian, and I think you actually liked the guy.”

“I did. He was . . . we spent a couple days together and talked. A lot. We were enemies, but also comrades, the way only soldiers can know.”

“And your personal feelings are interfering. You’re treating this like a family feud, when you should be treating it like an interrogation. You’re missing all the signs. You missed the main point.”

“OK, I’ll bite. What’s this main point I missed?”

“The point is, he believes it.”

“Then he’s a fool. How could he fall for this bull?”

“Exactly. How could he fall for this bull? TJ, what do you know about me?”

“Know about you? What’s that got to do with it?”

“Just answer.”

“You’re a really good reporter, hard-headed as hell, and a sailor with a no-holds-barred attitude who hates to lose.”

“Yeah, that ‘really good reporter’ part—do you know what that means? It means I’m very experienced at reading people and spotting liars. I even studied interrogation techniques: body language, head motions, eye direction, micro expressions, stress in the vocal cords, all that stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah. Spare me the lecture. This isn’t news to an FBI agent. I don’t need a litany of your credentials. It doesn’t make his story any more plausible. Those bombings just didn’t happen.”

“Don’t you see why that’s so important? Of course it never happened! But I think you’re pissed at the FBI, pissed at Zarrabian, and pissed at yourself. When you offered Zarrabian the payback, that was for you, wasn’t it?

“You need redemption. Your life’s gone to shit—first Cordo and now this. You hoped Zarrabian would give you some magical explanation that would make everything OK—would make you OK and would make the FBI wrong for firing you. It would make it OK that Zarrabian escaped and then held you at gunpoint and escaped again. And when his story turned out to be bull, your disappointment made you roll your eyes and turn off your brain and forget who you are. You’re an FBI agent, trained in investigation and interrogation. Be that guy, not the guy who was up in that room just now.”

He looked down at the orange in his hand, wondering when he’d peeled it. He split it and handed half to Christine. “Here, try this.”

“What the hell, TJ? We’re—”

“Just try it, OK?”

She pulled a piece off and tasted it. “Damn. That’s good.”

“OK, maybe I’m guilty as charged. You don’t give a guy much wiggle room, do you?”

“Not if I respect him. Or even if I don’t,” she said.

“I’m not buying his story, OK? It’s still bull.”

“Pure bull. No question. That bombing never happened.”

“OK, we’ll go back up there. And you’re right, my brain has been turned off.”

“And ask yourself this: Before this all happened, who was the man who saved your life? Would that man tell a long and intricate lie to a friend? Or even to an enemy?”

“No.”

“Exactly. And I hear in your voice when you say ‘no’ that there’s no room for doubt, that you know this man.”

“I thought I did.”

“You may still. So let’s go back up there. And remember what the real question is. It’s not about his story, it’s about why he believes it.”

“Christ. Why didn’t I see that? That’s part of this whole puzzle, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

“Sorry for the delay,” said Christine as they sat down again.

“It is no problem,” said Zarrabian. “A man who has had no company for days welcomes any excuse to delay the departure of visitors.”

“I think we’re going to be here for a while, Colonel,” said McCaig.

Zarrabian looked at McCaig with interest. “Ms. Garrett has said something to change your attitude, Captain. I hear it in your voice.”

“Let’s get back to your story,” said McCaig. He leaned forward, engaging Zarrabian. “We got sidetracked on the definition of a terrorist. I apologize for that; it was premature and irrelevant. We could argue for a week about that and never get anywhere.”

“That is true,” said Zarrabian.

“Go back to when your mission actually started. Tell me about your training, where you were, the equipment, that sort of thing. I know you won’t reveal secret information, but tell us what you can.”

“Of course. It is hardly a secret, and you could guess most of it without my help. Our training base was in the desert. We were warned not to leave the compound and get lost because we would die before we found our way back. It is no secret that the only place in my country like this is the . . . I don’t know the English name. The Great Desert in the center of Iran.”

“The Dunes of the Jinn?” asked Christine. She and McCaig exchanged a glance.

“Yes, that would be a good English translation. There was almost no staff, just four men. They rarely spoke to us. Secrecy was extreme. Supplies and equipment, even food and water, were delivered by a truck that parked at a gate, far from our quarters. Our staff driver would wait for the truck’s driver to leave, then drive it into the compound for us to unload. They would then leave the truck outside the gate. The next day it would be gone, presumably reunited with its driver. We saw no one else, ever.

“Our instructions were given to us by two senior officers via video and email on a closed computer network. Once they gave us the mission, we were expected to be independent and use our own initiative to create a plan and requisition the materials we would need. Fortunately, my team included competent men, and my engineering skills were useful.”

“That’s pretty extreme secrecy,” said McCaig. “Did you wonder why?”

“Asking why is not my business. I guessed that America’s NSA and CIA had proved their ability to spy just about anywhere. Extreme precautions were needed for a successful mission against America.”

“Makes sense,” said McCaig. “So can I jump ahead? It sounds like they gave you the target. Using the trucks that way, as a blockade on the bridge, was that your idea?”

“Almost, Captain. The trucks were my idea. I thought we would use the trucks to block the road and have cargo we could quickly unload to complete the barrier. One of my men, Ibrahim, suggested that we could make the trucks top-heavy and overturn them, blocking the roads in an instant.”

“That sounds risky,” said McCaig. “It would leave too much to chance. How could you practice the maneuver? I doubt even your government has the funds to buy dozens of trucks for you to crash. You had four drivers, right? And each would have to practice.”

“You have no doubt seen the computer simulation games that allow you to fly airplanes, starships, and other such vehicles?”

“Of course.”

“There are several that allow you to drive simulated trucks. The best ones are for European roads and trucks. I requisitioned and received two computers and two truck-simulator game packages, complete with steering wheels, pedals, and a gearshift.”

“Seriously? That sounds incredibly boring.”

“Never underestimate the love that boys have for machinery. Particularly large, powerful machinery that allows an unremarkable boy to feel remarkably strong and manly. Apparently these games sell well.

“The simulation of European trucks is quite impressive. You can easily lose yourself and forget that it is a game. The game’s trucks are modeled very closely on real trucks. When mishandled, they crash exactly as they would in real life.”

“So you used this simulator to practice crashing?”

“Initially we used the simulators to prove that a controlled crash was possible, that with exact speed control and a precise turns, a truck could be made to overturn and stop in nearly the same position every time.”

“You said the simulated truck was European. How did you know a Mercedes truck would behave like a Mack truck?”

“We knew it wouldn’t. We compared the Mercedes, Scania, and Volvo trucks that were built into the game with each other, and they crashed quite differently. On top of that, Ibrahim, the same man who thought of using trucks, suggested that if we made the trucks’ loads very top heavy, they would overturn more easily. The game had no provision for such an unsafe load.

“We explained what we needed to our superiors, and a week later plug-in software for the game arrived, what the boys called a ‘game mod,’ that added an American-made Mack truck, including a simulation of our top-heavy load. It was quite remarkable. I am sure you saw how well it worked.”

McCaig sat back, suddenly drawn out of Zarrabian’s story and back into the real world. “Yes, I’m sure you are quite pleased with your results.”

Zarrabian and McCaig stared at each other for a few long moments. Christine interrupted their visual showdown.

“Please, Colonel, continue. I have a question: Did you practice even once with a real truck, or just rely on your simulation?”

He broke eye contact with McCaig. “Yes, we were given one Mack truck, loaded top-heavy per our specifications, and also a large—what do you call the vehicle used to pull disabled vehicles?”

“Tow truck.”

“Of course. Forgive me, I forget English words that I rarely use. We were given a large tow truck.

“We first used the Mack truck to practice our driving skills until we were competent truckers. After that, we were able to crash the Mack truck. We used the tow truck to restore it to its wheels. After the second crash, the truck was in poor shape, and the third crash disabled it completely. After that, we used the overturned truck to practice our escape moves, to be sure we could get out of the vehicle quickly when it was on its side.”

“So one driver never got to try a real crash?”

“I was the driver who did not. The others assured me that the simulation was quite accurate, so I practiced extensively on the simulator game. When it came time to perform the maneuver on the real truck, my training was perfect.”

Christine looked around. The yellow-orange evening sunlight that had penetrated the old curtains was now gone entirely, and the only light was from a small battery-powered camping lantern that looked about the same vintage as the house.

“Guys, maybe it’s time for a break. It’s evening. I thought this visit might last an hour, but I think we’re going to be here for much longer. Maybe even all night.”

McCaig got up and yawned. Zarrabian leaned back on his steel folding chair, put his hands behind his head, and stretched.

“Colonel, what do you do for food here?” asked Christine.

“I purchased some supplies when I arrived, but they are almost gone. I am afraid I cannot feed you.”

“We’ll go buy something. Is there a town?”

“Not you, Ms. Garrett. You have appeared on television and might be recognized. This is not San Francisco or New York where such things are common. Captain McCaig must go.”

“No problem,” said McCaig. “Just make me a list.”

“Except that you must change your clothes, Captain. You will stand out among the farmers like a bull in a herd of sheep.”

A few minutes later, McCaig had exchanged his clothes for some that Zarrabian supplied: a long-sleeved blue-collar shirt, slightly wrinkled and threadbare around the cuffs, blue jeans, and high-top work boots. The boots were a bit tight but tolerable. He caught sight of himself in the bedroom’s mirror and was startled to see his father reflected back at him.

Christine handed him a small wad of money.

“Why, it’s payday!” said McCaig. “Me an’ the boys are goin’ for a beer!”

“Captain,” said Zarrabian, “I suggest you bypass the first town. It has only five hundred residents and one small grocery store. If you drive seven miles north you’ll reach Patterson. It is large enough that nobody will notice you.”

“OK, I’ll do that.”

“One more thing,” added Zarrabian. He handed a baseball cap to McCaig. McCaig put it on.

“Now your transformation is complete.”

Two hours later, Christine, McCaig, and Zarrabian sat on the floor around pizzas, salads, garlic bread, and a six-pack of cold sodas that were dripping with humidity in the evening warmth.

“Dig in,” said McCaig. “I got a veggie combo, a pepperoni, and a meat-lover’s special. I slipped the guy an extra couple of bucks to get extra garlic butter on the bread. It’ll keep the vampires away for sure.”

“Vampires?” asked Zarrabian.

“Never mind,” he replied. “Stupid folklore about garlic. I also got a couple bags of groceries and a case of bottled water.”

They were all silent for a few moments while they piled their plates with pizza, salad, and bread. Christine watched Zarrabian as he took his first bite of pizza. He closed his eyes for a moment, motionless, savoring the pizza. His eyes opened and looked into hers. She smiled back.

“Been a while, eh?” she asked.

“Yes. Thank you,” said Zarrabian. “It seems a lifetime ago. I have not had cooked food for quite some time.”

“A lifetime ago?” said McCaig. “More like another life entirely.”

“Indeed,” he replied.

They ate in silence. Twenty minutes later only two lonely slices remained in the pizza boxes, and they were surrounded by crushed soda cans, empty salad bowls, and paper plates full of pizza crusts.

“Shall we continue your story?” asked Christine.

Zarrabian wiped his mouth with a napkin, crumpled it, and gave it a little toss into one of the empty pizza boxes. “This brought back many memories of good meals shared with my fellow engineering students at Berkeley. No matter what happens in the next few hours and days, I thank you for sharing this meal with me. Please, let us continue.”

“I think we covered your training and planning pretty well, right?” asked McCaig.

“There was one important detail I want to mention,” he replied. “You recall discussing how my superiors gave me the mission, the target, but that my team and I were responsible for the plan?”

“Yes.”

“We changed the target.”

“You mean you weren’t supposed to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“Our original mission was to attack the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. We were given rough guidance that they wanted to blow the decks off one span of both the lower and upper levels so that both east- and westbound traffic would be halted for months. The economic damage would be severe.

“But our superiors also emphasized that we would have to be very flexible. Once our mission started, we would get no support. We were to use our own initiative to solve problems. We decided that even though the Golden Gate Bridge carries less traffic and would cause less economic harm to the region, it would be a far greater symbolic loss. And we realized than merely destroying the roadway would be temporary, because it could be repaired. We decided instead to attempt to destroy the bridge entirely.”

“Wow,” said Christine.

“Holy crap,” said McCaig. “Just what every boss wants: employees with initiative.”

They were silent for a few moments, taking in these new details. Then McCaig continued.

“Tell us about coming to America. In detail.”

“First let me ask you something. From your questions and the looks you give each other, it is clear that you have information you have not shared with me. What is it?”

Christine answered. “Colonel, you are right, we have learned a few things. Could you indulge us for a few more minutes? I would like to hear your story as you know it now. Then we will share what we have learned.”

“And you swear to me that you will not withhold anything?”

McCaig and Christine looked at each other briefly. He nodded.

“We swear,” she said. “So how did you get into the United States? How did you smuggle all those explosives in?”

“I can not say for certain. Again, it was extreme secrecy. My team was taken aboard a helicopter at night with darkened windows. We never saw the pilots. We flew for several hours, but since we had no cell phones or wristwatches, it was hard to know exactly how long or in what direction. We guessed that we landed somewhere such as Syria or perhaps Egypt, but for all I know it was Russia or Pakistan. When we emerged, we were inside a large hangar. There was no light coming in so it was probably still night. They fed us a light meal, told us to urinate, and then explained that we were to be smuggled into America in some cargo, and that it would be very claustrophobic. There were large shipping crates with their tops off, padded for a man to lie down, and air holes cut in the sides so we could breathe. We were put into the crates and then given an injection that put us to sleep.

“When we awoke, we were in an abandoned warehouse in California near the city of Stockton. There were cots, bedding, a refrigerator, and food. Outside we found four Mack trucks, loaded with our specified top-heavy load, and the white Ford van. Our explosives and weapons were in crates. We found a bag with enough cash to ensure we could carry out our mission.”

“Damn,” said Christine. She looked at McCaig. “It’s true.”

McCaig shook his head. “How can it be?”

Zarrabian looked back and forth between the two of them. “Is this the point where you share your knowledge with me?”

“Yes, Colonel,” said Christine. “But if you will bear with me for just one more question.”

He nodded.

“Tell me again about the lunar eclipse. You remember, the one you mentioned when you were on my boat.”

“What is to tell?” he asked. “I saw it.”

“It obviously made an impression on you. It must have been very beautiful,” said Christine.

“I can only repeat what I already said. The moon was very dark and blood red, rising over the sand dune. It struck me as a metaphor for my mission: in the shadows and bloody.”

“And you’re sure it was rising? It wasn’t setting?”

“No, Ms. Garrett. How could I mistake a rising moon for a setting moon?”

“Of course.” Christine’s brow furrowed. She hesitated. “It’s just that—”

“Colonel,” interrupted McCaig, “I’ll be blunt. That training camp where you and your men prepared? The one you said was in Iran’s Great Desert?”

“Yes?”

“It was in Arizona. In America.”

Zarrabian raised an eyebrow and the corner of his mouth turned up in a slight smirk. “Surely you are joking, Captain. That is absurd.”

“I know. Ridiculous. Yet true.”

“You are not joking? You actually believe this?”

“Colonel, if the story you just told us is true, we know it with certainty. The lunar eclipse, again, you’re sure of that?”

“Of course.”

“That it was rising?”

“Captain, please, how many times must you ask? Yes, I am sure.”

“Have you ever heard of Mount Hamilton and the Lick Observatory?”

“Of course. It used to be managed by the UC Berkeley astronomy department. Some friends and I from the Engineering department made a trip to Mount Hamilton one weekend to see the huge telescope. It is a magnificent work of mechanical engineering and lens grinding. Amazing precision.”

“Indeed. We stopped there on our journey this morning, and were given a tour by an old astronomer, a fellow named Wirtanen—”

“The same man who gave us a tour!” interjected Zarrabian. “He must be quite old by now.”

“Yes, but still very active. I learned today that Christine, Ms. Garrett here, grew up on Mount Hamilton. She has many friends up there, including Mr. Wirtanen. He was kind enough to explain the timing of the lunar eclipse to us—who could see it and where. He was one hundred percent certain about the timing. The only place in the world where a person could have seen the moon in full eclipse while it was rising was in the USA, Canada, or Mexico. And the only place where you could see it rising over a sand dune was in Arizona.”

Zarrabian stood abruptly and began pacing back and forth across the room, hands clasped behind his back. Christine and McCaig watched him and exchanged glances. After a few laps, Zarrabian stopped abruptly in front of them.

“I cannot deny that the facts as you present them lead to this conclusion. That my team trained here, in America. But other facts make this impossible. Surely you see this? It makes no sense. Iran could not possible create a military camp in the middle of the United States of America, surrounded by barbed wire and supplied with weapons, vehicles, and explosives. In a rural area such as the Arizona desert, large deliveries, explosions, and gunfire would be noticed. Your deserts are open to the public. Hikers, dune buggy drivers, motorcyclists, and bicyclists would have seen the camp. It is simply not possible. It would have been discovered.”

“Colonel Zarrabian,” said Christine, “we know this is hard to—”

“Please!” he interrupted. “Leave me for a time. I must think.”

“Of course,” said McCaig. He and Christine stood up. “We’ll give you a few minutes to yourself. We’ll be outside.”

Christine added, “Remember, Colonel. You are the one who told Captain McCaig that something was wrong and asked him to investigate.”

Zarrabian nodded. He resumed his pacing.

The half moon overhead provided enough light to see an old tractor trail that ran between two walnut orchards. Christine and McCaig strolled slowly in the warm night air.

 

“Pretty intense,” said McCaig after a few minutes.

“Uh huh,” Christine replied.

“What’s our next move?”

“This seems pretty good. He needs some time. We threw a lot at him.” She saw him nod silently out of the corner of her eye. They strolled on in silence.

Ten minutes later they came across a huge old barn. It was hard to tell the color in the pale moonlight, but Christine supposed it was a faded red, like most old barns. Its two-story structure had a classic Dutch-style roof—wide at the top floor and angling down steeply on the sides. They walked wordlessly up to the huge, gaping door, wide enough, she supposed, to permit a tractor or combine to park inside.

Through the door, she could see shafts of moonlight shining through hundreds of missing shingles. Shadows hinted of rusting farm equipment, piles of lumber, and an outline that looked like an antique tractor.

Christine suddenly gave a little screech and ducked as a huge, silent shadow swooped just inches over their heads. McCaig laughed.

“It’s just an owl.”

She was embarrassed. “It just, you know, startled me. I didn’t hear a sound!”

“Yeah, they’re like that. They have special feathers that evolved to fly in complete silence. Imagine how the mice feel. Just going about their business and bam! Your buddy’s gone.”

“What is this? I mean, I know it’s a barn, but . . .”

“A dairy barn.”

“How can you tell?”

She could see a bemused expression on his face in the moonlight.

“Everything in here tells you a story. You can sort of see,” he said, waving left and right, “along each side there are stocks and feed troughs for the cows. They’d come in here for milking.” He pointed to their right. “See that wicked-looking thing there with long tines? Sort of like an overgrown pitchfork or something?”

“Looks nasty.”

“That’s a Jackson fork. It went through a block-and-tackle to a railing at the roof-peak up there, and they used it to hoist bales of hay up to the loft. A place like this probably had thirty or forty cows, and they’d have to grow hay in the summer and store enough in the barn’s loft to last all winter. If a rancher didn’t store enough, he’d have to slaughter some of his cows, and that could cut his income for years.”

“Hard life,” she said.

“A good life. Until it wasn’t.”

She turned and started strolling back. McCaig looked at the moonlit barn for a few more moments, then turned and caught up with her.

“So what happened?” she asked as they strolled.

“Dairy farms were at the forefront of the agribusiness takeover. Way back in the thirties, before World War II. Used to be a farmer would milk his cows and sell it locally. Then they passed health laws about pasteurization, sterilization, bottling, and such. One guy on a farm like this just couldn’t afford the equipment. Most of them went under or sold out.”

“This is personal for you, isn’t it?”

“My grandfather. It broke his heart. He turned his hay fields into other crops—corn, beans, some garden vegetables. He did OK, managed to keep his head above water. But he was a rancher, not a farmer. Cows and horses were his thing. Dragging a plow behind a stinking tractor, back and forth across a field for twelve hours, that wasn’t his idea of a good time. Especially when the next morning he’d just have to get up and do it again.”

“Then your dad took over, right?”

“Not at first. My uncle farmed the place for a while. My dad went off to the war, learned to be a mechanic, and when the war was over he rented a garage in town and put out his shingle. Best mechanic in town. He could fix anything from a Ford Falcon to a wheat combine.”

“You remember those days?”

“I was pretty young when he finally closed the garage, maybe five or six, so I don’t remember much. Just the old shop, my dad talking to clients, and cars up on the rack. Stuff like that.”

“How’d he end up a farmer?”

“My uncle couldn’t handle the place. He was the nicest guy in the world, everyone loved him. But he didn’t have, I don’t know, energy? Initiative? Any sense of urgency about life. The farm started falling apart. Bills weren’t getting paid, and the crop yields were way down. I remember Grandpa coming into the shop one day while my dad was working on some car up on the rack. I was sitting on the workbench off to the side; I wasn’t allowed to go where they worked on the cars, so I liked to sit on the bench and watch. Grandpa came in and gave me a Popsicle. Then he and Dad had this talk, Grandpa begging him to come back and take over from Uncle Zeb.”

“Seriously? You have an uncle named Zeb?”

“Yeah, Grandpa was pretty biblical. Zebediah. My dad always figured he was lucky to get named John.”

“No kidding.”

“So anyway, Dad kept the shop open for a while, but turned out he was having trouble competing with a couple of car dealerships that had opened up and were taking his business. Cars were getting more complicated with electronics and computers and such. He’d spend weekends out at the farm helping Uncle Zeb, then back to the shop to wrench on cars. Did that for another year or so, but he started sending customers away, and finally he just closed up shop and we moved back to the farm.”

“What did your Uncle Zeb do?”

“Oh, he stayed on. Took one of the cabins down at the other end of the farm that used to be for the dairy foreman and fixed it up really nice. I think he was glad not to be in charge. He became a farm hand, but Dad gave him a share of the profits. He got married after a while, added on a bedroom, and next thing I knew I had a couple of cousins.”

“How come you’re not a farmer?”

“Nobody’s a farmer any more. Except maybe in the South—Texas, Arkansas, places like that. I hear there are still a lot of small family farms down there. They’ve organized into informal collectives. They share machinery, help each other when it’s time to harvest, that sort of thing. But here in California, it’s all about big corporations, huge high-tech machines, and cheap migrant labor.”

“And your family’s place?”

“Sold off. Just like this one. A hundred years of history, love, and sweat, and now it’s just one of ten thousand fields managed by a guy with shiny shoes sitting in some high-rise office in Chicago.”

“I guess there’s no stopping progress.”

“Nope.”

They walked on in silence for another minute between the rows of trees, the moonlight filtering through the leaves overhead. Christine suddenly ducked.

“What was that?”

“What?”

“I could swear some bird or something just about hit me in the dark!”

“Oh, no worries, they won’t hit you.”

“What are birds doing out at night?”

“It was a bat.”

“Ugh.”

“Be thankful. They eat mosquitoes.”

“OK, I’m thankful,” she said. “They won’t, like, land in my hair or anything, right?”

“Nah. The worst they’ll do is land on your neck and suck all your blood out.”

“Very funny. So how’d you get from the farm to the FBI?”

“I just sort of fell into it.”

“How do you ‘fall into’ one of the most elite law-enforcement agencies in the world?”

“After I graduated from high school, I sort of putzed around from job to job. I was a carpenter for a couple years, worked in a machine shop, then had a stint as a used-car salesman.”

She laughed. “You? Selling used cars?”

“Yeah, that lasted about a month. I sold exactly one car, to Uncle Zeb. I think he felt sorry for me. Anyway, I met this girl and was convinced she was Cleopatra or something, and we got pretty tight. She’d just graduated high school and thought she was headed for the university, so she got me an application, slapped it on the table, and told me to fill it out so that we could go to school together. I had good grades in school, and when I finally got around to taking the SAT test, I aced it in math and science. It just comes naturally to me.”

“You? Math?”

“Yeah, you’d never guess, right?”

“You’re a complex man, Agent McCaig.”

“Either that or confused. Sometimes you can mistake one for the other.”

“So you and your girl went to college together?”

“No. Funny thing was, I got in and she didn’t. Really pissed her off. She ended up getting in later to a different school. I never did hear much from her after that.”

“So what, you studied criminology?”

“No, civil engineering. I did well, too. Then I joined the Marines. They like college degrees.”

“And you made captain. Pretty impressive.”

“Yeah, I suppose. I was just doing my job. My grandpa always said, 'If you’re going to do something, do it right. Never do anything halfway.'”

“And the FBI? How’d that happen? You studied engineering.”

“The FBI likes variety. They want smart people. Analytical people. My dad always said I was good at solving puzzles. Turns out he was right. I just had this instinct, like I could look at all the facts and think like the bad guys, and I’d see stuff that everyone else had missed.”

“You’re just full of surprises.”

“I’m just a regular G-man, making a living.”

“Drop the aw-shucks. It doesn’t work with me.”

He laughed.

Behzadi Jahandar crouched on the roof of the old eight-story brick building. He could feel sparks of excitement emanating from the four men of his team. There was a charge in the air. He felt it himself.

The long months of planning and training were finally going to pay off. At last, their target was real, moored against a dock less than a kilometer away, looming large across the waters of Boston Harbor.

Jahandar raised his powerful binoculars. The huge tanker ship seemed to jump toward him. He scanned it from bow to stern. It was exactly as planned.

The ship was monstrous—one of the largest ever built. Its cargo consisted of five huge, cryogenically cooled metal tanks filled with highly flammable liquefied natural gas. If released, the tanks’ contents would expand to over 150 million cubic meters of natural gas, a staggering quantity of combustible fuel.

His mission was to make that happen. His team was about to release the gas from this mighty tanker and set it free to burn in an uncontrolled and unprecedented conflagration.

Jahandar lowered the binoculars. The harbor in front of them was empty of ships. The dangers of these gas-tanker ships were well known. Once a natural-gas tanker was in Boston Harbor, no vessels could approach. A small flotilla of Coast Guard and police boats had escorted the tanker to its dock and then taken stations up and down the harbor. Any mariner foolish enough to approach within a half mile would be quickly intercepted and arrested.

America was awash in natural gas from its own wells, but it still had to sail these dangerous ships into the Boston Harbor to satisfy the enormous energy appetite of its northeastern cities. America was infatuated with capitalism, personal freedom, and small government, and had allowed an old building across the harbor to be converted into a public storage facility. Any citizen, for a hundred dollars a month, could rent a garage-sized storage space, put whatever he liked in it, and padlock the door. Nobody ever looked inside. Better yet, nobody questioned large trucks backing up to the loading dock, and the building’s elevators were suitable for heavy freight. All this less than one kilometer from the dock where the huge, heavily-guarded tanker was now unloading its cryogenic cargo of natural gas for a power-hungry nation.

The long months of training in the Great Desert, all their planning and practice, all of the waiting and wondering, had finally ended when they were loaded into a helicopter. Its windows were darkened, and a black curtain separated his team from the pilot. After several hours they had landed and emerged in a dark aircraft hangar. They were instructed to eat a light meal, and then each man was put in a large shipping crate and given an injection. When they awoke, they were in a rented storage locker on the eighth floor of this building. Exactly as planned.

Jahandar looked across the harbor again at the huge supertanker he was about to destroy. How had his life come to this? Jahandar considered terrorists to be misguided amateurs out to glorify themselves and humiliate their perceived enemy but offering no real victories. Terrorists made the front pages. Real soldiers had to pay the price when superpowers retaliated.

He was a real soldier. He’d been drafted into the Iranian army, and like so many of his friends he had gone willingly enough and done his duty. He enjoyed the rigorous, disciplined life. He’d spent his youth as a wild boy, defying his widowed mother and an uncle who tried his best to step into the role of father.

Once in the army, his Sergeant provided Jahandar with the discipline he’d needed all his life. He did well. When his eighteen-month conscription time was served, he re-enlisted as a professional soldier. He was never destined for greatness, but was promoted several times until he found his place, then settled into a career of solid competence. He was happy, his superiors were happy, and his family was well cared for.

But then . . . the scene of the Grand Bazaar of Tehran flooded his brain. Smoke, dust, screams, the roof collapsing on his beautiful wife, a great weight crushing his chest, darkness.

He shook his head to clear the vision. He glanced at his watch. It was time to get to work.

Christine and McCaig discovered Zarrabian lying comfortably on his bed reading a book. He sat up as they entered.

“You seem quite relaxed, considering what you’ve learned today.” said Christine.

“It is Steinbeck. His storytelling skill is remarkable. I find it clears my mind.” He set the book aside and gestured at two old folding steel kitchen chairs. “Please have a seat. While you were out I brought these in from the old tank house.”

Christine and McCaig sat down and shifted around a bit to get comfortable in the old straight-backed chairs.

“Do you have more surprises for me?” asked Zarrabian.

“There is a lot more to tell you,” said McCaig.

“I am confused by what you have already told me.”

“We are too.”

“You have given me facts that lead to contradictory conclusions. In such a case, either the facts are wrong or there is a conclusion that I have not considered. The facts cannot be denied, which means there is some conclusion that I have not considered.”

“Have you read Sherlock Holmes?”

“I have heard many references to this fictional detective, but I have not read the books.”

“Sherlock Holmes once said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Perhaps we are ignoring the improbable.”

“It is a wise quote. But now there is something you must see. Am I right to suppose your cell phones are turned off and you have had no contact with anyone today?”

“Of course,” answered Christine.

Zarrabian grimaced. “Then there is news that you may find unpleasant.”

He reached over and turned on the old television. “It will take a minute to warm the tube.”

“Where’d you get that old thing?”

“It was in the tank house. A teen boy had turned the second floor, under the water tank, into his gaming and party room. Unlike the rest of this house, nobody had cleaned it.”

He picked up a cartridge.

“Wow, is that a VHS video recorder?” asked McCaig.

“It is.”

“And it still works?”

“It seems to.” Zarrabian pushed a button. There was whirring and clattering, and the front of the machine popped open. He inserted the old tape cartridge.

“I recorded this while you were buying pizza and groceries and Ms. Garrett was downstairs making her notes.”

The television finally warmed up, and Zarrabian pushed the Play button. There were a few more clacks and whirs before a clear picture formed on the old television. President Oliver Whitman’s visage appeared, apparently in the middle of a news conference.

“. . . as you may have heard, the four trucks and van used by the terrorists on the bridge have been pulled from the ocean floor by salvage crews. Our teams of experts are scrutinizing every inch of these vehicles. They have already discovered significant information pointing back to the powers who were behind this bombing.

“We are doing everything in our power to restore normalcy to the San Francisco Bay Area. It will be years before the magnificent bridge, the symbol of the Golden State, can be rebuilt. Engineers are already hard at work inspecting the bridge and preparing plans to rebuild it to its original glory. I’m told that the North and South Towers were not significantly damaged. When the bridge is rebuilt, it will start with those two beautiful towers, still standing strong. They will serve as a symbol of America’s resolve and strength.

“This cowardly attack has damaged our bridge, but not our spirit. Our enemies will learn, once again, that America only grows stronger when threatened.

“Thank you.”

A chorus of reporters shouted, “Mr. President, Mr. President!”

“Just a couple questions. Julie.”

“Mr. President, there are rumors that the terrorist Zarrabian may still be alive.”

“There is no truth to these rumors. He was killed in the cabin fire near Guerneville and his body was positively identified. Yes . . . Bob.”

“Mr. President, it’s clear that you’re talking about Iran. You called this an act of war. If the evidence points that way, will you take this matter to the United Nations?”

“The evidence will speak for itself, and I won’t make premature accusations. The United States of America always has and always will retain the right to defend itself against acts of war and to retaliate when such acts are carried out against us. The United Nations is, of course, a place for dialogue and negotiation. But we will not subjugate our sovereignty nor our right to defend ourselves to anyone.”

The president looked around at the shouting press corps. “One more question . . . you, in the back, uh, Jason, is it?”

“Mr. President, it was pretty clear that Agent McCaig, the lead FBI agent on the case, thought Zarrabian was alive. Doesn’t his distinguished twenty-eight-year career in the FBI count for something?”

“As I’ve already said, the terrorist’s body was positively identified. I can’t comment on FBI internal affairs or personnel issues, but I understand that FBI Special Agent McCaig is being sought for questioning. I’m sure when he’s found he will put these rumors to rest.”

Zarrabian punched the Stop button on the old VCR. It whirred and clacked, and the president’s image disappeared, replaced by a broadcast news program. He turned the sound down.

“It seems you are a wanted man, Captain.”

McCaig leaned back in his chair. “Huh. So that’s how they want it.”

“They’re playing hardball,” said Christine. “That question was a fake. The reporter was a stooge.”

“What?” asked McCaig.

“When the president says he’s only going to answer a few questions, he selects senior reporters from the major outlets like CNN or the New York Times. If he wants to seem magnanimous, he might give some of the upstarts like Huffington Post a chance. But that reporter? I’ve never seen him before. Somebody planted that reporter and told the president to call on him.”

“So they want Captain McCaig to know they are after him?” asked Zarrabian.

“Exactly, that’s—”

“Hey, what’s that?” said McCaig, pointing at the television. “Turn up the sound! Jesus, turn it up!”

Zarrabian twisted the volume control.

“I’m Brent Atwood, reporting to you live from Boston Harbor, where a major terrorist attack has been stopped thanks to quick action by police and an anonymous tip from a citizen.”

Behind the reporter, two police helicopters were circling an old brick building that stood near the harbor’s edge. Their intense spotlights stabbed down on the building’s rooftop, illuminating the activities of a SWAT team.

“Our sources inform us that disaster was averted by mere seconds. Bob, can you zoom in on the ship?”

The camera panned a bit to the right and zoomed in, revealing a huge ship docked across the harbor.

“The terrorists apparently planned to blow up this ship, one of the largest liquefied natural gas tankers in the world, using anti-tank missiles. If they had succeeded, the fire would have consumed this ship and everything around for at least a half mile. Bob, can you zoom in on the damage? Yes, right there.

“As you can see, the terrorists fired at least one missile that found its mark. You can see the hole in the side of the ship as well as some smoke. Apparently it pierced the ship’s outer hull but didn’t penetrate the thick steel of the inner tank.”

Zarrabian broke in. “Behzadi Jahandar.”

“What?” said McCaig.

“Jahandar. The leader of the second team. I recognize this.”

“Second team? There were two?”

“Three.”

“Holy shit. I’ve gotta make a call,” said McCaig. He jumped up from his chair, agitated. “Where’s your phone?”

“You forget, TJ, you’re a wanted man,” said Christine.

“Doesn’t matter. This is too important.”

“There is no rush,” said Zarrabian. “The third team will not carry out their mission so close to the second team. It would dilute the impact.”

McCaig paced to the door, spun, and paced back. “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

“You said you understood that I will not compromise my integrity. You are still an American, though now a civilian, and I am still an officer of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.”

McCaig’s eyes narrowed. He put his hand on the back of his chair and leaned forward as though to say something. Then he straightened.

“Yes. Of course. You’re right. But I still have to call this in.”

“Please, Captain. Think about the consequences. If you make this phone call, our meeting must end, for they will know you are with me. And you must also know that the purpose of a terrorist act is to achieve the maximum impact. If the third team attacks now, it will be as though there was only one incident. They will not strike until the American public is tired of the news of this one.”

McCaig stared at Zarrabian for a long moment, and then finally broke his gaze and sat down. “OK, you're right. So another hour or two won’t matter,” he said.

“Pay attention, guys,” said Christine.

The television picture had changed to a shot from a news helicopter that showed the brightly lit rooftop. Four bodies were plainly visible, surrounded by blood. A fifth body was surrounded by SWAT members and medics. As they watched, a medical helicopter came into view and prepared to land on the rooftop. The reporter’s voice continued.

“. . . we don’t have official confirmation yet, but it looks like at least one of the terrorists is still alive and four are dead. We can see from our cameras on Chopper One that the medics are working frantically on him, and now an air ambulance has arrived. What’s that . . . ? I’ve just received word that we have confirmation. Four terrorists are dead and one is in critical condition but alive. His condition has been stabilized and he’s being flown to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, where he’ll be placed under heavy guard. Now back to our news headquarters. Dana?”

The picture switched to a news room. Dana Poindexter was on the screen.

“Thanks, Brent. I’m now joined on the phone by our advisor on security affairs, retired General Daniel Newman. Welcome, General Newman. Can you tell us what we know about the actual attack? What did they plan to do?”

“Thank you Dana. I’ve been in touch with two of my sources and here’s what we know so far. There were five terrorists. We don’t know yet what group they represent. They managed to smuggle a number of laser-guided anti-tank missiles into the United States and planned to use these to pierce the ship’s hull and the cryogenically cooled natural gas tanks. If they’d succeeded, it would have caused a massive gas leak and fire. Apparently they were only able to fire one missile before police got to the scene and shot them.”

“Colonel, that ship is huge compared to a military tank. Could an anti-tank missile actually penetrate a ship that big?”

“Absolutely. Don’t be fooled by the ship’s size. The hull of a ship like that is only one inch thick. And inside, the cryogenic LNG tanks are only eight inches of steel. A modern armored military tank has twelve to eighteen inches of hardened steel to protect the crew. A tank is a much harder target. A ship like that is no match for an anti-tank missile.”

“I understand they hit the ship with one missile. Why didn’t the natural gas explode?”

“Well, first of all, Dana, natural gas doesn’t explode, it burns. If those tanks had been penetrated, it would have caused a fire so large and so hot that buildings a half mile away would have caught fire. There would be heat damage as far as a mile away. The reason it didn’t cause a fire, ironically, is that the ship’s outer hull was too weak. That missile more or less passed right through the ship’s outer hull without stopping and then exploded harmlessly between the outer hull and the inner tank.”

“So you’re saying these missiles are useless against a ship?”

“Oh, far from it, Dana. These are precision-guided missiles, and the terrorists had quite a few of them. The first one blew a harmless hole in the outer hull. They would have kept firing one after the other into the same spot on the ship. Those missiles are incredibly powerful. A few more shots and they would have penetrated and ruptured the inner tank. This supertanker had five separate, sealed LNG tanks, and the terrorists had enough missiles to puncture all five. Thirty five million gallons of liquefied natural gas would have caught fire. It would have sent flames a thousand feet into the sky and burned for hours, and the heat would have destroyed the entire Boston LNG terminal. That terminal is critical to the entire New England area. It would have been an economic catastrophe for New England.”

“Thank you Colonel. That was retired General Daniel Newman, speaking to us by phone from his home.”

“Turn that off!” said McCaig. “We’ve heard enough.”

Zarrabian reached over and clicked the old TV off. An uncomfortable silence filled the room. McCaig glared at Zarrabian, who looked back calmly.

“OK,” said Christine. “We need to get this rolling again. You guys can stare at each other later.”

McCaig broke eye contact and stood up, then started pacing around the room, hands clasped behind his back.

Zarrabian turned to Christine. “I believe you have more revelations for me.”

McCaig grunted. “Huh. Seems you had a few of your own.”

“TJ, we have a long list of things to discuss,” said Christine. “That news just added one more, and truthfully, it’s not as interesting as the conundrum we’re already in.”

McCaig stopped pacing. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be surprised that there was more than one attack planned. That’s not nearly as baffling as the facts we’ve already uncovered.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Colonel,” said McCaig, returning to his chair, “was that guy—what was his name?”

“Jahandar.”

“Yes, Jahandar. Was he at the same training camp as you?”

“Yes.”

“And this third team?”

“Yes.”

“How many men total?”

“The third team is still active. You know I cannot reveal anything about them.”

“OK, ballpark. Your team, Jahandar’s team, and the third team. Must have been fifteen guys, maybe twenty. Not more. Right?”

Zarrabian said nothing.

“OK, whatever. I’m going with fifteen guys. All out in the desert in Arizona. But all of them thought they were still in Iran training on their home turf. Am I right?”

“We all believed we were training in the Great Desert.”

McCaig shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” said Zarrabian.

Christine broke in. “Colonel, there are a number of things that don’t make sense. We’ve already told you the biggest, but that's only half of the puzzle.”

“There is more?” asked Zarrabian.

“Much more. You said American news reports about the cruise-missile attack on your country were, what did you call it? I think you said, ‘heavily biased, possibly even censored.’ Is my memory correct?”

“Yes, Ms. Garrett.”

“Colonel, it’s not that we have a different view. Those attacks on your country simply never happened.”

“Of course they happened! I was there. I was badly injured. My family . . .” Zarrabian stopped and blinked.

“You went to college in Berkeley. You know a little of America’s recent history: Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, things like that?”

“I have read about these. How are they relevant?”

“And you know I’m a reporter with many friends and connections in the news industry?”

“Of course.”

“Colonel,” she said, “it is utterly impossible that America launched even one cruise missile against your country and destroyed some of the most famous landmarks in the world, and yet not one person in America has heard about it.”

“But . . .” he said, then hesitated. “I was there.”

“Colonel,” said McCaig, “I know—”

“These are lies!” said Zarrabian. “This is not possible! I was there. I witnessed it with my own eyes! This is a trick!”

“What about the eclipse?” asked McCaig. “We couldn’t have made that up. We asked you over and over if you were sure of the details, to the point that you were annoyed.”

“It could be a trick,” said Zarrabian. “A simple trick. How do I know you even visited this astronomer, Wirtanen? You could be lying.”

“Colonel,” said Christine, “To what purpose? Why would we trick you? You came to Agent McCaig with your doubts in the woods in Marin. You took a huge risk to confront him. Why? Because you already knew something was wrong. It turns out it is much worse than you imagined. But please, this is the truth.”

“Colonel,” said McCaig, “we are not liars, and you should know better! Use your head, man! You’ve got to—”

“Please, be quiet!” interrupted Zarrabian. “For a moment.”

He sat rigidly for a long minute, staring at the floor. His head made barely perceptible movements, revealing an inner turmoil. Zarrabian buried his face in his hands for a moment, then lowered them. His brow furrowed deeply.

Christine and McCaig glanced at each other but said nothing. Zarrabian slowly reached back and removed a thin wallet from his pocket. His hands were trembling. He opened the wallet, stared at its contents for a moment, then carefully removed a photo. Christine could see the figure of a young girl, maybe six or seven years old.

Zarrabian stared at the picture for another long minute. Finally he looked into Christine’s eyes.

“Could they . . . could it be?” he asked.

She looked over at McCaig, who subtly nodded toward the door.

“We’ll give you a few minutes to collect your thoughts, Colonel,” said Christine.

Zarrabian nodded.

Christine sat down on an old front porch swing. To the west, the half-moon had sunk low in the sky, lighting the porch and swing with a pale glow.

“What the hell is going on here?” she asked.

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“I thought we’d get some answers. I don’t know why. I just figured when we told Zarrabian what we’d learned, he’d fill in the puzzle pieces and we’d have a whole picture.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking her way. “Good metaphor.”

“Analogy.”

“Whatever. It’s a puzzle, and there are too many missing pieces.”

“And this new terror group in Boston. What’s that mean?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“You said that already.”

“It’s still true.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Christine watched a pair of bats, now plainly visible in the rising moonlight, swoop back and forth across the yard and down the rows of walnut trees. Whenever they drew near, she could hear their tiny chirps.

Christine broke the silence. “Whitman’s sure beating the war drums. That guy scares me.”

“And his cronies. I always figured our president isn’t really the one running the country.”

“You and a lot of other people. I got to meet him once. One of those meet-and-greet the local press events during his campaign.”

“Guess I missed that show.”

“TJ, do you even watch TV?”

“Not much.”

“I’ve never met anyone as unimpressed by fame as you.”

“We all have jobs. Some of us are good at them. Some of us do it quietly with no cameras and bright lights pointing at us. I don’t know why a reporter gets more respect than me. And neither of us gets a tenth of the respect your colleague gets, the news anchor on your station. Dana Poindexter? Is that her name?”

“Yes.”

“She does her job, you and I both do ours. But we could die tomorrow and maybe our dogs would miss us.”

She laughed. “I don’t have a dog.”

“Me neither. So what was he like?” asked McCaig.

“Whitman? It wasn’t an interview. But I’ve heard he’s hard to interview, like he’s always giving canned answers. It’s hard to break him out of the script and get any candid responses.”

“In other words, a good politician.”

“His chief of staff, Patterson, is scary. He totally gave me the creeps.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing you could put your finger on. I just wanted to wash my hand after he shook it. I saw him whisper some stuff to the president, and I swear the president looked like a little kid being lectured on good behavior.”

“Listen, there’s something we need to know, and I want to call my sidekick, Agent Bashir,” said McCaig.

“Like, on the phone?”

“Yeah.”

“No way! They’ll be out here in two minutes. Don’t even think it.”

“I’m not stupid. I bought a pay-in-advance cell phone when I was in town. It’s untraceable. One call, and then we toss it.”

“I don’t know, TJ. He’s obviously going to know it’s you. What’s so important that you'd risk it?”

Omar Bashir’s eyelids drooped. His chin sank slowly toward his chest. His breathing took on a heavy, even pace. Gravity finally won and his head fell forward, startling him awake. He shook it. Had to stay awake. After all this work, it wouldn’t do to be nodding off the very moment when a delivery was made.

He reached over to the center console of the unmarked FBI car, picked up his coffee, and took a sip. Yuk. Cold. Outside it was dark and wet. The San Francisco fog had come in with the sunset, wiping out the dusk with its damp tendrils and making Bashir hunch down in his car seat in a futile attempt to stay warm.

It was a crappy old car, a twenty-year-old white Toyota Camry with tinted windows and sun-damaged paint. Completely inconspicuous. He’d been parked in this neighborhood in various vehicles, ranging from this piece of junk to an old four-wheel-drive GMC pickup. But whatever the vehicle, the job was the same: sit and watch. Stay awake. Be alert.

This wasn’t what he’d imagined the day he got his acceptance letter from the FBI. That had been about the most exciting day of his life. Sure, everyone knew that boring days were inevitable. Most agents rarely drew their guns, and a typical arrest was the result of hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours of investigation and surveillance.

But this? Interminable. He’d been watching this place all day long for three days.

Yesterday he’d figured it out. It was retribution. For being McCaig’s partner.

Bashir had been walking down the hall to his office when Special-Agent-in-Charge Smith had come around a corner. Bashir had nodded politely and said, “Evening, sir.” But Smith had planted himself directly in front of Bashir.

“Special Agent Bashir! How is your new assignment going?”

“It’s fine, sir.”

“What have we got you doing?”

“We’re surveilling a suspected hacker, sir. He lifted about a hundred thousand credit cards' numbers and passwords from online stores, but the judge wouldn’t give us a search warrant just based on his IP address. We’ve been documenting deliveries to his house.”

“Anything you can use?”

“I hope so, sir. So far I’ve photographed delivery trucks bringing a new sixty-inch TV, a new fridge, a whole living room set, and a box that we believe had an expensive new computer and gaming console. Way beyond what he could afford on his wages.”

“That’s pretty tedious stuff, Bashir.”

“Yes, sir, it takes patience.”

“Lots of long hours in the car, Bashir? Seems like it will never end?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Must get to you.”

“No, sir. It’s part of the job.”

Smith laughed out loud, then clapped Bashir on the shoulder. “Good boy! Tedious is just part of the job. That’s good. You keep it up.” He brushed past Bashir, clapping him one more time on the back for good measure. Bashir looked around. Several co-workers in the hallway and side offices looked away, pretending they hadn’t seen.

Good boy? Boy? Bashir hadn’t been so humiliated since his freshman year in college when his girlfriend had broken up with him in front of a dozen friends, making absurd claims about his lack of sexual prowess and the diminutive size of his genitals. It was obvious to everyone she was lying, but they laughed nonetheless.

As Smith walked down the hall and disappeared around a corner, Bashir had an epiphany. He knew. Smith hated McCaig. He hated McCaig with a passion. And Bashir was caught in the crossfire.

He sighed and brought his attention back to the present. Still no deliveries today. Fifteen more minutes and his replacement would arrive. He had to pee. It would have to wait.

Bashir reminded himself that he was good at patience. Anyone who had grown up in Palestine had to learn patience. Patience for long lines, patience for bad food, patience for peace that never came, patience for answering the questions of soldiers who had no business being in his country, and patience for the militants who didn’t want peace.

He had patience. Smith was just a bump in the road, something to get past. It might be a week, it might be a couple years, but Smith would be gone some day, and Bashir’s career would get back on track.

A loud ringtone from his phone made him jump. That was odd—nobody was supposed to call him here. He glanced around to double check that the suspect wasn’t in sight, then pulled out his ringing cell phone. The display showed a phone number he didn’t recognize. Probably a wrong number. He started to put it back in his pocket, but then hesitated. Maybe it was important. He answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” said McCaig.

“Boss! I mean Agent, uh, Mr. McCaig!”

“Call me TJ, OK? How are you, Omar?”

“Oh, gosh, boss. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I mean, yes I should. You need to turn yourself in, TJ. You’re wanted for questioning by the FBI.”

“Is that right?”

“I’m sorry, uh, yes, sir. Please tell me your location and I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

“You done, Omar?”

“Sir?”

“Let me know when you’re done with the bullshit. You’ve done your duty, OK?”

“TJ, you’re wanted for questioning! What the hell is going on? I’m an FBI agent. I can’t just yak with you on the phone. I’m already in the ice box with Smith because of you. You know I have to do my job!”

“OK, that’s good. And what do you do with the suspect who is on the phone? Just hang up?”

“Uh, no. Right, I try to keep him talking as long as I can. The longer he talks, the more chance he’ll make mistakes and reveal something regarding his whereabouts or activities.”

“Excellent, Omar. So keep me talking. I need a favor.”

“What? No way, TJ.”

“You just shut up and let me talk, like you said, OK?”

“OK, but I can’t do you any favors. You know that.”

“This is the point where in the movies the old guy says, 'hey, we were partners; you know me; everything you’ve heard is false; I saved your life and you gotta trust me.'”

“You never saved my life.”

“I would have. Anyway, save me the time, just pretend I made that speech, OK? I really need something, and you’ll be doing the right thing, and I really can’t explain.”

“Boss, I—”

“See, you still call me boss. We did have a good thing going, Omar. I’ve had a lot of partners, and you’re one of the best. That’s not flattery, just fact. The world’s changing, and you’re the new face of the FBI. That’s why I need you.”

“So, assuming for argument’s sake I said yes, which I’m not going to say, what is this favor you need?”

“That’s the spirit! Keep me talking. Whatever I ask you, you’ll have more to go on about what I’m up to.”

“Well?”

“Zarrabian has a family. A wife and daughter, about six or seven. Find out if they’re alive.”

“Has a family? Not had a family? I thought he was dead.”

“Well, sure, that’s what your government says.”

“Is he alive?”

“Nice try, Omar. No, I’m not going to reveal anything. Assume that if somebody had information to the contrary, and thought there was a chance that it was important, he might or might not want to know. About the family.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly.”

“OK. But look, you don’t have to say anything for me to figure out one thing for sure.”

“What’s that?”

“That this is important. Right?”

“No, I’m just curious.”

“Bullshit. I mean, sorry, bad language. It’s just that you’ve disappeared, everyone seems to be after you, and you’ve taken the trouble to find a burner phone, am I right?”

“No comment.”

“You went out and bought a cheap by-the-minute burner phone in case they’re tracking your phone.”

“So what if this is important? Would that change anything?”

“Boss, you know I’ve gotta report this conversation. Geez, I’d be in big trouble if I didn’t. I could, probably would, lose my job!”

“I know, Omar. I’m expecting you to. Because whoever turned me from a good guy to a bad guy is going to wonder why the hell I want to know about Zarrabian’s family, and will think I know something they don’t know, and so they’ll dig around and find the answer. The only question is, will you let me know?”

“No. In the first place, once I tell them, they’ll be tracking your phone. So you’re going to toss it, right? And in the second place, what makes you think they’ll tell me what they find? And in the third place, that would be revealing details of an investigation in progress. I can’t do that!”

“Nonsense. If she’s alive, that’s hardly a state secret, right? Dozens, hundreds, of people in Iran already know. You’d just be adding one more. Me.”

Bashir thought for a moment. “I suppose. But—”

“Craigslist. You know, the ‘Rants and Raves’ section where people can spout off about anything they like and probably nobody reads it? Post something there. Give it a title I’ll recognize and I’ll find it. But make it obscure, OK?”

“I don’t know, boss.”

“It’s important, Omar. Really important. Craigslist-dot-org, 'Rants and Raves,' San Francisco. OK?”

“I really don’t—“

“So here’s the part in the movie where the tough old cop says something profound to his young sidekick and the young guy goes rogue and says he’ll help. Pretend that just happened.”

Bashir didn’t say anything.

“If you stay quiet, I might hang up.”

“Boss, I don’t know what to say. I’m pretty confused. You can’t be the bad guy. I just know it. But—”

“Exactly. Just remember that: I am not the bad guy. And here’s something else I’m going to tell you. This is important too. I know it will sound like mumbo-jumbo vague-speak, but there’s something wrong. I can’t tell you more than that, but if you don’t trust anything else I say, trust that. Zarrabian really did blow up our bridge. Beyond that, nothing is what it seems. OK?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means keep your eyes open.”

McCaig cut off the call, opened the back of the cell phone, and removed the battery.

“You should have been a psychologist, TJ.”

He gave a short laugh. “All agents are psychologists. The ones worth their salt, at least. Probably like you reporters. Come on, let’s head back upstairs.”

When they returned to the room, Zarrabian had switched off the old camping lantern and opened the curtains. He was silhouetted in the window by the moonlight. He turned at the sound of their footsteps, pulled the curtains closed, and clicked the lantern on.

“Enjoying the view?” asked Christine.

“I have spent much of my life outdoors, and do not enjoy the small spaces in which I have been living the past few days.” He gestured at the chairs, sat on the bed and continued. “Captain, forgive me for prying, but I could hear your voice through my window. It sounded as though you made a telephone call.”

“No worries. I purchased a prepaid phone while I was in town getting food. I took out the battery after my call was done. It can’t be traced.”

Zarrabian said nothing. McCaig waited a minute and then broke the silence. “I hoped to get information about your family.”

Zarrabian nodded. “You understand that this news you bring me is very difficult for me to accept.”

“I’d think you’d be a pretty happy guy,” said McCaig.

“Of course, Captain. I could not have hoped for more. But—”

“Come on, TJ,” interrupted Christine. “Don’t be dumb. Think for just two seconds, or is that too much effort? What this means. About why the colonel agreed to his mission.”

McCaig leaned forward and put his forehead on his palm. “I’m an idiot. You’d have never done this mission, would you?”

“Captain, please,” he replied. “You of all people know the answer to that question.”

“I know. Lucky Luckner. All that soldier stuff. You and me, we’re the old school.”

“Lucky Luckner?” asked Christine.

The men looked at each other. McCaig nodded.

“Baron von Luckner,” said Zarrabian. “Also called ‘The Sea Devil.’ Have you not wondered why Captain McCaig and I share an odd bond of trust?”

“I assumed it was some male-bonding thing; he saved your ass and you saved his so you’re blood brothers or something,” she replied.

“As a woman who makes a living investigating people’s lives, you might find the true story more interesting,” he continued. “It came via a book. Captain McCaig’s team captured me during a covert spy mission in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. His team was in my country illegally.”

“He said it, not me,” said McCaig.

“TJ, that is, Captain McCaig,” she replied, “told me some of this story. Now I’d like to hear your version.”

Zarrabian continued. “America was not at war with Iran, so Captain McCaig refused to kill me even though I was a great inconvenience. Some of his team questioned his decision, but he was quite firm. Shortly after he captured me, the Iraqis bombed the site. We were trapped in a basement deep underground for several days. Since I was in charge of the site, I knew the buildings well. There was an escape route through a tunnel to the next building, but I was reluctant to reveal it to Captain McCaig and his team. I hoped that Iranian forces would arrive, release me, and arrest the Americans.

“After two days, our water ran out and it became clear that rescue was unlikely. The Captain and I struck a deal: he would release me unharmed, and in return I would show his team the escape route. I promised to wait six hours before reporting his presence so that his team had time to leave the area.”

“So who is this Sea Devil guy and what’s he got to do with any of this?” asked Christine.

“During my student years at Berkeley, I spent a great deal of time in the library. I would sometimes read military history to rest my mind from equations and formulas. One book became a favorite, Count Luckner, The Sea Devil, by the English author Lowell Thomas. It is a fascinating story, and very well written.”

“Coincidentally,” said McCaig, “one of my favorites too. My dad had an autographed copy that my grandfather got when Count Luckner was touring the United States after World War One.”

“OK, so you read the same book. Some sort of sea story?”

“No,” said McCaig. “Well, yes, a sea story. Count Luckner was a German captain in World War One who commanded the last wooden sailing ship ever commissioned for a navy. He managed to capture fourteen other merchant ships without a single loss of life. All in a wooden sailing ship. It really pissed off the British. He was known for treating his prisoners well, following the rules, and being incredibly clever and persistent.”

Zarrabian continued, “It was his sense of duty and honor, his insistence on following the rules of war, that led to his capture. He lost his ship on a reef but sailed thousands of kilometers across the South Pacific using one of his ship’s small ten-meter launches. He drew suspicion in one of the harbors where he stopped, and the police came to investigate. Luckner had enough guns and ammunition to easily overpower the ship and police who captured him, but these were civilian police, not soldiers, and they did not know who Luckner was.”

“So?” she asked.

“The rules of war at the time were quite clear. Luckner and his men were disguised in civilian clothes. It was considered dishonorable and cowardly for a professional soldier to engage a civilian police force while in disguise. If there had been time to change into their uniforms before the police arrived, they would have defended themselves. But the police were on top of them without warning, so Luckner surrendered and turned over his weapons without a shot being fired.”

“So this Luckner guy . . .” she asked.

“Count Felix von Luckner,” said McCaig.

“Count Felix von Luckner, this Sea Devil guy, put honor over his own safety and Germany’s victory?”

“Exactly,” said McCaig. “It was a different era. Today terrorists target civilians.”

“As do countries,” added Zarrabian. “The United States, for example.”

“We don’t target civilians on purpose,” said McCaig.

“One hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed by American bombs. Do you think they care whether it was on purpose or—what is that horrible term you use? Collateral damage?” asked Zarrabian.

“A hundred thousand?” said McCaig. “That’s propaganda.”

“Then your own government is the propagandist. That is the official civilian death toll published by the United States.”

“Maybe for the whole war,” said McCaig.

“No,” said Zarrabian. “Those are civilians, mostly women and children, who were killed directly by American bombs. According to your own government.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that,” said McCaig.

“Very few Americans do. Why is that? Most independent analysts put the number much higher. Some say as high as three hundred thousand,” added Zarrabian.

“Can we please get back on track?” said Christine. “So you both thought this Sea Devil guy was a pretty good guy, and what, you bonded over him?”

“Not exactly,” said McCaig. “The guy was sort of a braggart and probably exaggerated his exploits a bit. But it was a starting point for some very interesting conversations about war, politics, honor, and the morality of soldiering. It was very unexpected to find that my captive was such a deep thinker and so widely read.”

“And, conversely, my captor,” said Zarrabian.

“And that’s why,” continued McCaig, “by the time we parted, I trusted the colonel to keep his promise. And when he held me at gunpoint in the woods in Marin, he trusted me to keep my promise, and later to trust my payback message.”

Christine shook her head. “Men are peculiar creatures. But since you mention the cabin at Marin, I’ve been trying to figure that one out. What the hell happened out there, Colonel? Who was the dead guy?”

“An assassin. That is all I know.”

“Sent by whom?”

“I do not know. There are true coincidences in life, yet most things that appear coincidental are not.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“I used your phone, Ms. Garrett, to send a coded message to my consulate in San Francisco. The message included the location of the cabin where I would be hiding and a request for instructions. Immediately afterwards, I discarded the phone by throwing it into the Russian River, and I made my way to the cabin. A few hours later, the assassin arrived. He knew exactly where to find me.”

“Wow. Were you expecting something like that? How did you escape?”

“Mostly luck,” he replied.

“Don’t let him fool you,” said McCaig. “I’ll bet luck had little to do with it.”

“So the burnt body found by the police was your assassin?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re saying Iran, your own country, sent him?”

“Given these facts, I can find no other logical conclusion.”

“Why? Why would Iran send you here and then try to kill you?”

Zarrabian looked down. They had to strain to hear his words. “I do not know.” After a silence, he looked up again. “We must think of it as another piece in this puzzle. When we finally solve the puzzle, it will make sense.”

“Famous last words,” said McCaig.

“I believe this expression indicates doubt,” said Zarrabian.

“It does,” answered Christine. “I hope you’re right, but life is sometimes a tangle. Like somebody took two puzzles and threw all the pieces together, then stirred.”

“Indeed,” said Zarrabian. “Now you must forgive me, but I am getting very tired. Even though I have had no activity today, it has been . . .” He paused.

“Emotional?” said Christine.

“I have dedicated my life to serving my country. Yesterday I was a hero, a determined leader on a dangerous mission who struck a blow deep in the heart of the enemy’s own country. Today today I learned that I was merely a pawn in a game being played by that enemy. No, it is not even that good. I was a pawn used by criminal conspirators trying to trick my own country. I have betrayed my country in the worst way possible. I have betrayed everything I believed in.”

“It isn’t betrayal unless you did it on purpose,” said McCaig. “And it isn’t shameful unless you were stupid or lazy. You were neither.”

“I appreciate your thoughts, Captain. But it does not change the facts.”

“We should be going,” said Christine.

“What are your plans?” asked Zarrabian

“We can’t exactly stay in a hotel,” said McCaig. “She’s too famous. Around here it would be like Elvis showing up.”

“So we can’t go home, because we’re wanted,” said Christine, “and we can’t stay at a hotel.”

“When you have eliminated the impossible,” said Zarrabian, “whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“What’s that got to do with sleeping?” said McCaig.

“You must stay here. There is a bed in the tank house, as well as several blankets and pillows. Miss Garrett, you can sleep out there. Captain McCaig can share my quarters.”

Christine’s mouth turned up with a hint of a smile. “You are trying to bribe the reporter.”

“I would have volunteered without his help,” said McCaig.

“I don’t like it, Jack,” said President Whitman. “I don’t like it one bit. Not one little bit.” He paced back and forth behind his desk in the Oval Office, chewing on a fingernail.

“Mr. President, it’s time,” said Patterson. “This is the second terrorist attack on American soil. Are you going to wait for a third? A fourth? We’ve got to show the Iranians that nobody can attack America and get away with it.”

“Jack, I know you’re a soldier, but do you really understand the price of war?” asked the president. “It just makes me sick to think of all those women and children, grandmas and grandpas—it’s not just soldiers who die. Innocents get killed, too.”

The president continued his pacing. Erica Blackwell closed her eyes for a moment while the president’s back was turned. This was such bullshit, babying Whitman. Christ, the man could barely wipe his ass without help. Put the toilet paper roll on upside down, he’d probably have to get someone to explain it to him. It made Blackwell sick that this athlete-turned-politician was president while the real brains that ran this country had to do it behind closed doors. Blackwell’s accomplishments would be the envy of any president, but history would give it all to Oliver Whitman.

The president stopped and turned as though to speak, but Patterson spoke first.

“Iran has been insulting us, raising oil prices, and spreading Islam since they kicked Shah Pahlavi out, Mr. President. He was a good guy. He was on our side. The Shah was trying to drag that country kicking and screaming into the modern era, and those Islamic radicals, that Ayatollah guy, dragged them back down. Now we finally have our chance to put things right.”

“I know, I know, Jack. We’ve been over this. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“My apologies, Mr. President” said Patterson. “It’s just that we’ve come so far. This thing is in the bag, sir. The American public is hopping mad. They’re out for blood. This is our moment.”

“Mr. President,” said Blackwell, “do you remember Reagan’s most famous moment?”

“Of course. ‘Tear this wall down.’ It was a magnificent moment. He helped reunite all of Germany. Everyone knows that.”

“Sir, this could be the beginning of a new era in the Middle East. And you’re going to be the president who was at the helm.”

“Well, I—”

Blackwell’s phone rang. “Hello? . . . Crap. You sure? . . . Did we get to question him? . . . Damn!”

She jabbed her finger hard at her phone, ending the call.

“What was that, Erica? Bad news?” asked the president

“That guy we captured alive from the Boston attack?” she said.

“Jahandar?”

“Yeah, that one. He died before we could question him.”

“Does that matter?” asked the president. “I mean, we have his body and the other four, and we can prove they’re from Iran.”

“Well, Mr. President, Iran is denying everything, and we wanted to keep Jahandar alive long enough to get something. There were too many doctors and staff at the hospital who saw him die, so we can’t pretend he regained consciousness. All we have is that he’s from Iran, like the other guys, but no direct evidence linking the Iranian government.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means,” said Patterson, “that you’ll be seen as a bold leader when you give the order to retaliate against Iran. And that you’re going to be the president who set things straight in the Middle East.”

Whitman sat down at his desk and leaned on one elbow. His fingers drummed on the desk nervously.

“Mr. President,” said Blackwell.

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “I can’t see any way out of it. Erica, Jack, you’ve both been great. I don’t know what I would have done without you. These are hard times we’re in, aren’t they? But at least we’re in it together.”

“Good morning,” said Zarrabian as Christine entered. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes, very well, thank you,” said Christine.

“Good,” said Zarrabian. “Please, have a seat. I have put out the breakfast rolls that Captain McCaig brought us. Let us eat.”

They sat and reached for rolls and bottled water.

“I’d kill for a cup of coffee,” said McCaig.

“Bad figure of speech,” said Christine. “There’s too much of that going around.”

McCaig just grunted as he bit into his roll.

“So I’ll start it off,” said Christine. “We talked a lot. Now what?”

“I would like to know, Captain McCaig, if you still intend to capture me momentarily, or if our time here in this old house has convinced you to wait a bit longer,” said Zarrabian.

“I’ll wait until after breakfast,” said McCaig. “Coffee might make me even more patient.”

“Be serious, TJ,” said Christine.

“Captain, Ms. Garrett, I must be blunt for a moment,” said Zarrabian. “You have been very cordial to me, and more importantly, very honest. I believe I have done the same. Yet we are enemies, under the traditional white flag right of truce right now. Please do not forget that when soldiers lower the white flag, the truce ends and battle commences—men who minutes earlier sat together peacefully at a negotiating table will resume their deadly fight. Captain McCaig, if you intend to capture me, it will not go well.”

“White flag,” said McCaig. “That’s fair. And when the white flag comes down, each side allows the other to retreat safely before the battle starts again. That’s international law. I doubt most lawyers would say international law applies here, but this is between you and me. I came here under a truce, and I’ll leave under a truce. But make no mistake, Colonel. The moment we’re out of the driveway, I’ll be on the phone.”

“Of course, Captain. And I will be gone.”

“So what now?” asked Christine. “Are we at an impasse? I’m sorry, Colonel, but I can’t see how your story changes the fact that you committed an act of terrorism.”

“If America declared war on Iran and sent a soldier to fight, would you call him a terrorist?”

“Of course not, but . . .” said Christine.

“What if the soldier’s superior officer lied to the soldier, and there was no war? Would that soldier now be guilty?” asked Zarrabian.

“I don’t know. I suppose not,” she replied. “I see where you’re going with this, Colonel. You’re saying your country lied to you, but that you were following what appeared to be lawful orders during a time of war.”

“Exactly.”

“Your story won’t hold up. There is no hard evidence. TJ, that is, Captain McCaig, has good reason to believe you are honest. In court, you have nothing.”

“And you have nothing for your news story either, Ms. Garrett.”

“I have a great deal, Colonel, but it is all pieces that don’t fit together. Even so, I have more than anyone else. Simply sitting here with you is a dramatic news story, particularly since you and I had our earlier encounter on my boat.”

“Listen, I’ve been thinking. I have a theory,” said McCaig. “Don’t shoot me down on this right away, but just hear me out, OK? It’s going to sound crazy.”

“Like everything else. How could it be worse?” said Christine.

“What if this entire operation were the work of someone in America? Some secret group, probably with fingers in the military and in Washington, and with a lot of money.”

“But Zarrabian’s not an American, nor was anybody on his team.”

“No. But what if—and don’t ask me how, because I don’t know—but what if Americans somehow fooled Zarrabian and his team, and the other two teams, into mounting these attacks on America.”

Zarrabian frowned. “You mean a group of Americans somehow pulled this off with no help from my government?”

“Exactly,” said McCaig.

“That makes no sense, TJ,” said Christine. “You’re just trading one set of mysteries for another.”

McCaig leaned forward and looked intently at Christine and then Zarrabian. “Go with me on this one for a minute. Take it as a hypothesis and see where it leads.”

“I do not see how it solves anything,” said Zarrabian. “You want us believe that Americans kidnapped more than a dozen professional soldiers and tricked them? Or bribed senior Iranian military leaders to carry this out?”

“Something like that.”

“It solves nothing, Captain. And most of the previous mysteries remain.”

“You’re thinking like a soldier,” said McCaig. “You’re contemplating the logistical problems. Iranians in Arizona or Americans kidnapping Iranian soldiers, both are hard to believe.”

“Neither makes sense,” said Zarrabian.

“Think about the politics, not the logistics,” said McCaig. “In law enforcement we ask, cui bono? It means, ‘Who benefits?’ If you can figure out who benefits, you can usually find your criminal. Once you know who benefits, it’s much easier to figure out how they did it.”

“It’s the same in journalism,” said Christine. “Cui bono? That tells you where your story is.”

“And these acts of terrorism are clearly intended to provoke military strikes against Iran. So who benefits from a war with Iran?” asked McCaig.

Zarrabian glanced at his wristwatch. “This is interesting, but I must interrupt this discussion. Before you awoke, there was an announcement. The president is giving a speech this morning. It will start in a moment. Shall we watch?”

“Of course!” said Christine.

“OK, but keep thinking about my theory,” said McCaig. “I’m not going to let this one go.”

Zarrabian reached over to the old television and turned it on. It took a few moments to warm up.

“Wow,” said Christine. “That’s the Rose Garden, not just the press room. And, OK, this is going to be something big.”

“Why?” asked McCaig.

“There’s the VP, Helena Marshall Burns,” she said, then leaned closer and squinted at the old television screen. “It’s hard to make people out on this old television, but I think that’s Erica Blackwell on the right, and next to her is Jack Patterson, the White House Chief of Staff. And, yes, that’s Senator Platte, and Congressman Pearce—he’s the house speaker. And I think that’s Senator Nolan, the Majority Leader.”

“Is this significant?” asked Zarrabian.

“This is huge. The vice president, the two majority leaders of Congress, the president’s national security advisor, and the senator in charge of military spending,” said Christine. “It doesn’t get bigger than this.”

President Whitman emerged from the back and walked quickly to the podium.

“Good morning. As most of you have heard by now, a group of terrorists tried to attack a natural-gas supertanker in Boston Harbor yesterday. Thanks to a vigilant citizen who telephoned an anonymous tip, and to the quick and effective response of the Boston Police SWAT team, the terrorists’ plot was halted with only minor damage. The BPD SWAT team shot all five of the terrorists and took control of their weapons. Four terrorists died immediately. The fifth, apparently their leader, was flown to the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, where surgeons performed emergency surgery. However, his wounds were too severe and he died early this morning.

“If this attack had succeeded, it would have been a calamity of massive proportions. The terrorists were stopped after firing just one missile, which caused only minimal damage. If not for the fast response of the Boston Police Department, they would have ruptured all five tanks of the supertanker, releasing seventy million gallons of liquefied natural gas. The flames would have soared thousands of feet into the air. Buildings a half mile away would have caught fire, and buildings up to a mile away would have been damaged. Thousands of innocent civilians might have been killed. Boston Harbor, one of the great shipping ports of our country, would have been badly damaged. The natural-gas supply to industry and to residences on the East Coast and the Midwest would have been disrupted, costing billions in lost productivity and lost opportunity.

“This was not a ragtag band of Islamic radicals with homemade bombs. These were professionals. They were well equipped with the deadliest anti-tank missiles available. They were able to get five heavily armed men and a thousand pounds of military equipment across our borders undetected. They selected their target carefully, and had accomplices who provided access to a building from which they could launch their attack. They knew the shipping schedule for Boston Harbor.

“There can be no doubt: this is the work of a foreign government. This was an act of war.

“The United States of America will not sit by idly while our enemies attack with impunity. Those who conceived, planned, funded, and executed this crime will be held accountable. No matter where they go, no matter where they hide, we will find them. The world will know that those who attack America will face severe and just retribution.

“Thank you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”

The president turned and shook the hands of the gathered senators, congressmen, and his own staff. As he shook Blackwell’s hand, she leaned forward, hands still gripped, and said something in the president’s ear. He nodded and smiled, gave Blackwell’s hand a final shake, and walked into the White House. The White House scene was replaced by Dana Poindexter’s face.

Zarrabian clicked the TV off. “This is terrible news,” he said. “War is almost inevitable.”

“Awful,” said Christine.

“Did you watch Blackwell and Whitman?” asked McCaig. “He may be the president, but to look at their body language, you’d swear it was Blackwell running the place.”

Zarrabian looked baffled. “You just listened your president announce a near-certain war. Why are you concerned with the relationships between a president and his staff?”

“Relationships are at the bottom of everything,” said Christine. “That speech we just heard? The president didn’t write that. Just about everyone in Washington knows that Blackwell, Patterson, and a couple others are the ones who really run the country. They got him elected, they set foreign policy, and they pull all the strings. They just put Whitman up there to be a pretty face and to do the rabble rousing.”

“Rabble rousing?” said Zarrabian. “I believe this means generating anger in the public so that they will support the president’s actions.”

“Exactly,” said Christine. “And Patterson and Platte are finally getting their wishes.”

“What is that?” asked Zarrabian.

“They’re both war mongers,” she replied. “Platte was in the Senate during both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and was one of the most vocal hawks. That’s slang for—”

“I know, one who favors military action over political solutions,” said Zarrabian.

“Exactly. During the Iraq war, Senator Platte even suggested that America should push on into Iran and Syria, that we should just clean up the whole place. And Patterson is even worse. He’s never been a politician, but he’s a so-called military expert on TV interviews. Any time a terrorist farts, they call him up for an analysis; his stock reply is, 'We should have bombed them, and we still should.'”

“I thought I heard that Senator Platte is Patterson’s uncle,” said McCaig.

“He is,” said Christine, “And their family is from Texas. They’re not oil men, but their cronies are. Plus their family has ties to construction companies, defense contractors, shipping interests—companies that make the big bucks from wars.”

“Wow,” said McCaig, “I also heard that when Patterson was between jobs, after the army but before he became Whitman’s big dog, he was at some ultra-conservative think-tank place. He ran the place while the resident scholars wrote white papers advocating military action against Iran.”

“He did,” Christine confirmed. “They maintained that with minimal surgical strikes on oil facilities and seaports, combined with propaganda, bribery, and political pressure, we could topple the Islamic government and make room for a friendlier regime, one that would be pro-West and business friendly. They got a lot of attention, too.”

Zarrabian shook his head. “You Americans. Do you have any idea how offensive such statements are to the rest of the world?”

“Patterson and Platte are probably as happy as the proverbial pig in the manure pile,” said Christine. “They’re finally getting what they’ve always wanted.”

“Ha!” said McCaig. “Maybe Lieutenant General Patterson is our guy. He’s such an ass, I wouldn’t put it past him to come up with a conspiracy like this.”

Christine’s brow furrowed. “Lieutenant General John Patterson, the president’s chief of staff, a terrorist?” She laughed. “You’re kidding, right? The White House itself?”

“Well, probably not the president himself—Whitman is a pretty good guy. He’d never let his team do anything like this. But this is what I’m talking about. Not Patterson, but think of other guys like that. Someone with fingers in the military, and with ties to oil and military contractors.”

“I don’t know, McCaig,” said Christine. “Your theory is growing on me, but it’s just so . . .”

“It explains everything!” said McCaig. “Who benefits from war? It sure as hell ain’t Iran. Iran’s going to get its ass kicked. Sorry Colonel, but it’s true.”

“I am realistic, Captain,” said Zarrabian.

“It’s the guys who make bombs and planes and ships,” said McCaig. “The guys who sell oil, and the guys who build new bridges, roads, and power plants after the USA bombs the country back to the Stone Age. Billions and billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars. Who benefits? Those guys!”

Christine shook her head. “You’re saying that a bunch of industrialists and politicians are starting a war? Like that James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies? It makes a good movie, McCaig, but seriously?”

“Ms. Garrett is right,” said Zarrabian. “This conspiracy you are proposing is very hard to believe, especially here in America.”

“Just go with me on this theory for a few minutes,” said McCaig. “Assume this was carried out by a group of American politicians, industrialists, and a few military men. To start with, why did they train Zarrabian and the others in Arizona? Because their the whole operation was an American operation.”

“Well, if we accept this hypothesis,” said Zarrabian, “it also explains why our camp had almost no staff, just a couple drivers, and why our orders came by video link from just two superiors.”

“Damn, you’re right!” said McCaig. “Conspiracies have to be small or someone spills the beans.”

“Guys, you can’t be serious,” said Christine. “This would be a conspiracy like never before. We’re talking treason. Death penalty stuff. Politicians planning military attacks on their own country.”

“Unbelievable or not, the more I think about this, the more it makes sense!” said McCaig.

“And you think they could pull this off in secret?” said Christine. “Nixon’s Watergate conspiracy was just eight guys, and they couldn’t keep it hidden. Anyone plotting a conspiracy like this would need dozens of trusted conspirators in key government and military positions. They’d have to be men who had known each other for decades. They would have to trust each other one hundred percent.”

“Why would such men plot treason against their own country?” asked Zarrabian.

“They wouldn’t see it as plotting against their own country,” said Christine. “Not that I’m taking your side yet, McCaig, but many conservatives would see a war with Iran as long overdue.”

“Here is another puzzle piece that fits,” said Zarrabian. “It explains the problem of smuggling explosives and weapons into the country. They did not have to. They were already here.”

“It explains the targets, too,” said McCaig. He turned to Zarrabian. “Didn’t you say your original target was the Bay Bridge, and that you were supposed to just damage it? Something that could be repaired?”

“That was our mission, yes.”

“And your superiors made it clear you had to avoid civilian casualties? Some bull about how Iran wanted to show that it could retaliate without harming civilians? I’ll bet you liked that part.”

“It is true. I was not pleased about the prospect of targeting civilians, and might have rejected the mission if it involved the deaths of many citizens, even though America has no such moral guidelines when it comes to its wars. My team changed our target to the Golden Gate Bridge. We decided to destroy it rather than merely damage it. But we planned our mission carefully to clear civilians from the bridge before we destroyed it. It would have been much simpler to drive large explosive-filled trucks onto the bridge and detonate them immediately, but many would have died.”

“Wow,” said Christine. “They wanted to avoid casualties because they were bombing their own country.”

“It also explains why my country tried to assassinate me when I contacted them,” said Zarrabian.

Christine looked puzzled. “But if they’re really not involved in all this, why wouldn’t they try to keep you alive? Wouldn’t your story exonerate Iran?”

“They do not know my story,” said Zarrabian. “All they know is that a group of Iranian soldiers, including one high-ranking officer, disappeared or defected. They have no idea why or how. We represent a huge risk. The best way to eliminate that risk is to eliminate me.”

“You’re right,” she said. “Every new piece fits the puzzle.”

“There’s still a big one that doesn’t,” said McCaig. “How did those attack helicopters and the Harrier jet get there so fast? And wasn’t it amazing that an aircraft carrier just happened by at the right time?”

“Why is that a problem?” asked Christine.

“There are no military bases anywhere near San Francisco that have that sort of aircraft. Those three aircraft must have flown from a US Navy assault ship. It’s like an aircraft carrier, but for helicopters, Harrier jets, Ospreys, and anything else that can take off vertically without a runway.”

“OK, why is that a mystery?”

“It’s not a mystery so much as an amazing coincidence. First of all, you don’t normally fly fully armed military aircraft in domestic airspace on your typical sunny day. So those aircraft didn’t just happen to be there by good luck. Second, it’s very rare for one of those Wasp-class navy ships to be anywhere near our own coastline. They spend their time where there’s trouble.”

“So,” said Christine, “you’re saying it couldn’t have been a coincidence, that someone had to be sure the ship was there on the right day?”

“Exactly. Or make sure that the attack was on a specific day when the ship was already going to be near San Francisco.”

“Why is that a problem?” she asked. “If this conspiracy included a navy admiral, couldn’t he have changed the ship’s schedule on some pretext?”

“Not likely,” said McCaig. “Even an admiral can’t just order a ship around. Their missions are coordinated far in advance. A ship like that isn’t a single ship, it’s a whole carrier group. At least a half-dozen escorts.” He turned to Zarrabian. “Colonel, didn’t you tell me you changed just about everything about your mission? The target, the plan, and the date?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So how did they know when to be there? They couldn’t have a huge Wasp-class aircraft carrier sitting there for weeks.”

Zarrabian’s head dropped, and he stared at the floor. He mumbled something and shook his head.

“What was that?” said McCaig.

He spoke slightly louder. “Ibrahim. I was a fool. I didn’t trust my instinct. Of course, it all makes sense now.”

“Who was Ibrahim?” asked Christine.

Zarrabian looked up again. “He was the traitor. Strangely, he is also why I am still alive. You know, of course, that I was climbing on a rope below the bridge when the helicopters attacked my operation.”

“Yes, we have photos of you. Why on Earth did you climb down that rope just as the helicopters were approaching?”

“Ibrahim came to the training camp a few weeks after the rest of us arrived. He was reserved and spoke very little. We thought he was a strange man, but our private lives were of no concern. Our goal was to accomplish our mission. The only time he spoke more than a few words was when we changed our target to the Golden Gate Bridge. He became very angry and told us we were going against our orders.

“He also caused a delay. We would have been ready a week earlier, but Ibrahim made a mistake while testing the detonation electronics and damaged them, and we were forced to find a replacement part. I see now that it was no mistake.”

“Because it delayed the mission until the day the navy’s ship would be nearby,” said McCaig.

“That must be why. Then as we were preparing the explosives on the bridge, he suddenly disappeared. I needed every man. It was a chaotic time, because the Harrier had already been shot down and the helicopter gunships were in sight. We only had moments to complete our preparations. I saw a rope tied to the railing. It made no sense. When I looked over the railing, he was standing on a steel girder under the bridge, talking on a cell phone. I knew in an instant that he was a traitor, that it could not be a coincidence that he was under the bridge at the very moment the helicopters arrived. I had to kill him quickly to prevent any further communication with the enemy—I mean, of course, the conspirators in your government.”

“And now we know,” said McCaig. “He must have been giving out your plans and location the whole time.”

Zarrabian shook his head again. “He was taking cover. He knew the helicopters were going to kill us, because he was the one who called them in.”

“Wow,” said McCaig.

“One more question,” said Christine. “Who fired the missile at the Harrier jet?”

“It was Ibrahim,” said Zarrabian. “Why do you ask?”

“TJ and I reviewed videos of the Harrier. The pilot ejected just one half second after Ibrahim fired the missile. Nobody can react that fast, and the ejection sequence takes the pilot a couple seconds.”

“You mean . . .?”

“The pilot must have prepared to eject before the missile was fired. Ibrahim may have been waiting for a signal from the pilot.”

“Another piece of the puzzle,” said Zarrabian.

“All the pieces,” said McCaig. “They all fit.”

“No, there is still one more piece” said Zarrabian. “I was never kidnapped by Americans. I was in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, with my beautiful wife and my little girl. I saw them killed. I saw the Bazaar in ruins. I felt the weight crushing my chest, and I woke in a hospital badly injured. Yet you say this could not have happened. This piece of the puzzle is still wrong.”

Zarrabian looked at the floor. Nobody spoke for a long time. Christine finally broke the silence.

“Well, what’s next?”

McCaig looked at Zarrabian. “The white flag is still flying, Colonel. The terrorist is not in this room. He’s in an office in the Washington somewhere.”

“I believe it is more than a white flag flying between us, Captain McCaig. My enemy and your enemy appear to be the same man. Unless I am mistaken, we are now on the same side of this battle. Me to save my country, and you to save yours.”

“Senator, we intercepted a phone call from TJ McCaig to his former partner at the FBI,” said Patterson.

Blackwell saw a hint of a smile cross Senator Platte’s face.

“So you traced the call and have McCaig’s location? You’re about to capture the Iranian? I need some good news, Jack,” said Platte.

“No, sir,” said Patterson. “McCaig used a prepaid phone and then turned it off. All we know is that his phone call went through a cell tower somewhere west of Modesto in Central California.”

Platte’s half-smile disappeared. “What did he want?”

“He asked about Zarrabian’s family. He wanted to know if they are alive.”

Senator Platte stood up from his desk and walked slowly to his window, hands clasped behind his back. He gazed out the window for a long minute. “Jack,” said Platte without turning, then paused again.

“Sir, we’re not sure what this means. It’s probably nothing,” said Patterson.

Platte turned back. The bright sky behind him made his face dark. Even silhouetted, Blackwell could see a seething anger in his eyes.

“I promised your mother I’d look out for you, Jack. Lord knows why, but I did. I pulled strings, cleaned up your messes, called in favors. Do you realize where you’d be today without me?”

“Sir, I—”

“Nowhere, Jack,” said Platte. He raised his voice. “You’d be nowhere! Maybe working at some junior-level manager slot, a slobbering drunk, with an ugly wife and three disgusting kids!”

Platte leaned over Patterson and put his hands on the arm of Patterson’s chair, his face just inches from Patterson’s. His voice became soft and sinister. “I made you what you are today, Jack. A two-star general. Chief of staff to the president of the United States. Wealthy and respected. Do you know how much that cost me? Do you?”

“Respectfully, sir, I earned these stripes.”

“No you didn’t. You have no idea. No idea. Every time you fucked up, I pulled your ass out of the fire. Every time your career stalled under the weight of your ineptitude, I jump-started it. You have talent, Jack, but you fucked too many times. And now this!”

He pushed himself up and walked back to the window. “All these years, everything I did for you, and when I call on you to do this one thing and do it right, you fail me.”

“Uncle Dean, I think you’re making more of this than—”

“Don’t you ‘Uncle Dean’ me, Jack! I’m 'Senator' to you.”

“Sir, McCaig just asked one harmless question about Zarrabian’s family!”

“You see what I mean, Erica? You understand, don’t you?” asked Platte.

Blackwell felt surprising disgust at this family squabble. She’d always figured there was nepotism regarding Platte’s nephew Patterson—that was hardly news in Washington. But this? This was more than a little nepotism. It sounded like Patterson was little more than his uncle’s puppet.

Her mind spun back through the years: the campaign, the wheeling and dealing for political appointments, her surprise when Patterson’s name came up, strong endorsements of General Patterson from key party leaders, Whitman’s unexpected agreeability. None of it made sense at the time, but now it did—it was all Platte, wasn’t it? Platte had manipulated the campaign, the entire party’s machinery, Blackwell, and the president himself, to get his nephew on the president’s staff.

And now a single man, Senator Dean Platte, was in control of the Senate Armed Services Committee and seemed to be a puppeteer controlling the White House chief of staff. It was unthinkable. What sort of man could wield such power?

Platte was staring at her, waiting for her answer. She kept her face neutral and chose her words carefully. It was clear she’d underestimated Platte.

“I think McCaig’s question about Zarrabian’s family indicates that we have a big problem, Senator,” she said.

“Thank you. I’m glad someone else in this room understands the gravity of the situation. Can you please explain it to Major General Patterson here? He seems to be a bit befuddled by the implications.”

“Well, Senator, the only reason McCaig would care about Zarrabian’s family would be to reassure Zarrabian that they’re alive.”

“Exactly! You see, Jack?” said Platte.

“Um, well, yes sir, but—”

“And Erica, why might Zarrabian need such reassurance?” asked Platte.

“Because Zarrabian thought they were dead,” she said.

“And?” said Platte.

“Well, Zarrabian is the only one who thought they were dead. That means McCaig must have had a long conversation with Zarrabian. Zarrabian probably told McCaig everything about his mission, including why he turned into a terrorist. Since McCaig knows the Grand Bazaar of Tehran was never bombed, he’ll be digging for facts. And we still have nothing on how McCaig and Zarrabian met or what they know about each other.”

Platte turned to Patterson. “You see, Jack? Now that wasn’t hard, was it? It didn’t even take a general to figure it out.”

“Yes, sir. I think I see the problem. You’re saying that if that reporter Garrett is with McCaig—”

“We know she is, right?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, we’re pretty sure she is. So she’s digging into Zarrabian’s story too.”

“Exactly! See, you’re not quite as dumb as I thought! Now Erica, can you fill us in on the rest of this?”

“Well, Senator, I don’t think we have a catastrophe yet. There’s no hard evidence, just Zarrabian’s story. If he’s captured alive, he’ll either sound crazy or like he was fed propaganda by his own country. And we’re on track for military action against Iran. You’ve got the senators lining up, the public is hopping mad, and the president feels like he has no choice. We just have to be sure Garrett never gets on the air with this story.”

“What about McCaig?” asked Patterson.

“He’s nothing,” said Blackwell. “He’s already discredited himself because he knew Zarrabian and didn’t say so. He looks bad, and we can throw the book at him if he becomes a problem.”

“OK, thank you Erica.” said Platte, “So all is not lost. It’s just Zarrabian’s word on everything.”

“Yes, sir,” said Patterson.

“And he’s officially dead, so if Zarrabian were killed and the body disappeared, there would be no questions.”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” said Patterson.

“And don’t forget, Jack. Zarrabian is a terrorist. He kills people. If the three of them are together, well, McCaig and Garrett are taking a huge chance meeting with such a dangerous man.”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

“Do you? This isn’t just your career at stake. The people I represent are very powerful people, Jack. Very powerful. They don’t like mistakes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They don’t like loose ends.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You need to take care of this problem.”