Lucky for him his innate paranoia forced him to back up everything, even his computer. No point in letting his enemies know he was on to them. He‘d shut down the laptop on which Bamber had uploaded the poisoned software and switched to his fully loaded second laptop, which was still running the previous version of Bardem.
He sat inside a canvas tent on a camp chair, much as he imagined Julius Caesar had sat, mapping out his successful military campaigns, centuries ago. Instead of a map of Gaul hand-drawn by Greek cartographers, he had a handmade software program analyzing this oil-rich part of the world running on his laptop. Caesar, a brilliant general in any age, would have understood instantly what he was up to, of that he had no doubt.
He had three scenarios running simultaneously on Bardem, all of them different in small but crucial ways. Much depended on how the Iranian government responded to the incursion-if they found out about it in time. That was the issue, really: timing. It was one thing to be on Iranian soil, quite another to start a military operation on it. The point of Pinprick was its small footprint, hence its name. Did an elephant even feel a pinprick?
You could be sure it didn‘t. Unfortunately, Noah couldn‘t be as certain that the Iranian government wouldn‘t feel Pinprick until Arkadin‘s force of twenty men had established their beachhead and begun redirecting the oil pipeline.
Because the objective of Pinprick had always been the oil in the Iranian fields here in Shahrake NasiriAstara. There was nothing else of value here, militarily or otherwise. That was what was so brilliant about Danziger‘s plan-the seizure of these rich oil fields under the cover of a larger military incursion by America and a sizable coalition of allies in response to Iran‘s alleged act of war against the United States and, indeed, all civilized nations. If the Iranians could shoot down an American passenger jet over Egyptian airspace, what would stop them from downing the jets of other nations that opposed their nuclear program? This had been the cornerstone of the president‘s argument to the United Nations, one that had proved so compelling that it had eaten through all the knee-jerk pacifistic, footdragging bullshit that usually infested the international body of navelgazers and do-nothings.
Through his machinations, Iran had been proven to be a true out-law nation in the eyes of the world. So much the better for everyone. The country‘s regime was a menace; if the rest of the world needed a bit of goading to get off their fat backsides and take matters into their own hands, well, that was the way of the world. One of Black River‘s specialties-one that set it apart from any other private risk management firm-was its ability to alter facts to create a reality that could be molded to a client‘s wishes. This was what Bud Halliday had asked of Black River, why the NSA was paying it a fortune through one of many blind trusts that could in no way be traced back to the secretary or anyone at NSA. So far as any paper trail was concerned-there was always a paper trail, electronic or otherwise, that was a given-Black River‘s client was Good Shepherd Holdings, PLC, on the Inner Hebrides island of Islay, which, if anyone cared to make the trek, consisted of a three-room office in a drafty stone building, where three men and a woman wrote and managed insurance policies for local distilleries throughout the islands.
As for the democratic indigenous group Halliday so heartily touted to the president, it and the meetings its leaders had with Black River personnel were a part of Pinprick. In other words, they were a figment of Danziger‘s imagination. Danziger had argued that the creation of the indigenous group was vital both to get the president moving further in the direction of war and as a reason to shovel virtually unlimited funds to Black River, to cover the massive expenditures for its partners: Yevsen, Maslov, and Arkadin, all of whom were paid by Good Shepherd.
One of Perlis‘s men entered the tent to tell him that Arkadin‘s plane would be arriving within fifteen minutes. Perlis nodded, silently dismissing him. He had disliked using Dimitri Maslov, not because he felt he couldn‘t trust him, but because it galled him that he needed Maslov to deal with Yevsen. Worse, Maslov had brought in Leonid Arkadin, a man Perlis had never met, but whose curriculum vitae in the shadow world of wet work was both impressive and worrying. Impressive because he‘d never failed to successfully complete an assignment; worrying because he was a wild card-in his own way, eerily similar to the late Jason Bourne. Both men had proved themselves unreliable at taking orders and sticking to the game plan they‘d been given. They were both master improvisers, certainly an element in their success, but also a nightmare for anyone attempting to handle them.
Thinking of the Russians caused him to consider the raid on Nikolai Yevsen‘s headquarters in Khartoum. He hadn‘t stayed around to find out who had staged it or what had happened, instead racing safely to the airport, where a Black River light transport was waiting for him just off the runway. When he‘d tried to contact Oliver Liss, he‘d gotten Dick Braun instead. Braun was another of the triumvirate who had founded Black River, but Perlis had never reported to him before. Braun wasn‘t happy, but then he already knew that the raid had been staged by a contingent of the Russian FSB-2 that, it turned out, had been on the trail of Yevsen‘s business for over two years. Noah also learned that Yevsen had been killed in the raid, a mildly surprising turn of events, but one that he, unlike Braun, welcomed. As far as he was concerned the arms dealer‘s death meant one less partner, one less potential security problem to deal with. He could neither fathom nor condone Braun‘s white-hot fury at Dimitri Maslov‘s displeasure. So far as Noah was concerned, the head of the Kazanskaya grupperovka was just another moneyhungry Russian thug. Sooner or later he‘d have to be dealt with-not that he said this to his boss; such a comment would only further inflame the situation. What neither he nor Braun knew was the identity of the American who had infiltrated the Air Afrika building immediately prior to the FSB-2
raid. It was too late to think about what the American might have wanted.
Unfortunately for Noah, Braun was fully briefed and, before Noah could ask him where Liss was, Braun asked him for an update on the situation with Humphry Bamber, to which Noah replied that Bardem was as secure as it had ever been.
— Does that mean he‘s been terminated? Braun said bluntly.
— Yes, Noah lied, not wanting to get into that thorny issue on the cusp of Pinprick‘s operational phase. He killed the call before Braun could interrogate him further.
Briefly, he felt a stab of concern at Oliver Liss‘s continuing absence, but right now he had more pressing problems, namely Bardem. Running the three scenarios again gave him a probability success rate of 98 percent, 97
percent, and 99 percent. The main military incursion, he knew, was going to take place on two pincer-like fronts: on the borders with Iraq and Afghanistan. One was far to the south, the other clear across the country, in the east. All three scenarios were the same, except in two crucial details: how long Perlis and his team had to secure the oil fields and redirect the oil pipeline before the besieged Iranian military got wind of what was happening, and what shape their military would be in once they became aware of the oil field takeover. Still, by that time Halliday would have diverted the American forces set to rendezvous with the nonexistent indigenous group to provide support and lock down the area.