With a polite nod, Elazar waved them to the two empty chairs left at one end of the conference table. He acknowledged Ayish with a tight, humorless smile. “So, Gideon, I understand you’ve brought us news of more trouble on the horizon?”
“Not just on the horizon, “Ayish clarified quietly. “This trouble is already nearly at our door.”
Flynn hid his astonishment. It was now clear to him that the older man operated with far more freedom of maneuver in his nation’s military and political circles than did his American counterparts in the Quartet Directorate. They had to work almost entirely on their own — without the U.S. government’s sanction or even knowledge. Which raised another question. How much about Four did these Israeli soldiers and civilians really know? Had Gideon Ayish blown the Quartet Directorate’s cover to his own people? Because everything he’d been told in his training indicated secrecy was essential to the group’s continued survival and success. Its founders had known from the very beginning that the official intelligence organizations in their home countries would never tolerate the existence of even a friendly private ally.
Elazar turned his curious gaze on Flynn. “And this is your young friend, the one who first reached out to you?”
Ayish nodded. “Mr. Flynn works for a friendly intelligence service,” he said carefully. “He is one of their most talented field agents.”
“Another of your remarkable web of contacts and confidential sources? Of whom it occasionally seems there is no end, Gideon,” the gray-haired civilian commented wryly.
Ayish shrugged with a slight smile. “I talk to people here and there, Avi. Sometimes they confide in me. It’s a gift.” That drew a murmur of laughter from the officers around the conference table.
Flynn kept a tight rein on his own expression. Ayish’s careful circumlocution answered his earlier unspoken question. Somehow, the Israeli professor had kept the details of the Quartet Directorate’s existence and real history secret, while still managing to exert far more influence than his nominal role as a think tank academic would suggest. Instead, his countrymen seemed to credit Ayish with cultivating high-level connections to other official Western intelligence organizations, connections that had been very helpful in thwarting past terrorist actions aimed at Israel. And equally plainly, his country’s political and military leaders seemed willing to “let Gideon work his miracles” unhindered by inconvenient questions.
That was a remarkably pragmatic and unbureaucratic attitude, Flynn thought with a touch of envy. It was probably one fostered by Israel’s past vulnerability in the midst of a sea of potential enemies. The United States — geographically vast, populous, and, for so long, secure behind her twin ocean frontiers — had always been able to survive a degree of sluggishness and inefficiency in its national security machinery. The people of Israel, penned in a country barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, could not afford the same luxury.
Elazar waited for the quiet amusement to fade. Then he turned toward Flynn. “Very well,” he said. “We are at your disposal. Please explain this danger that has Professor Ayish so worried.”
Flynn waited while Ayish handed over a USB drive containing the images they’d brought to back up his oral presentation. A junior officer fed the drive into a computer and pulled up the first photo in the series. It was a copy of Arif Khavari’s passport picture. “Our first inkling of trouble came in Austria, during a covert rendezvous with this man—” he began.
Over the next thirty minutes, he briefed them on what he and the other members of Four had managed to discover since that first, aborted contact with Khavari. His pictures of the missile convoy taken inside Iran generated intense interest — as did the revelation that Russia’s mercenary Raven Syndicate was working hand in glove with the Iranians to carry out the operation they’d code-named MIDNIGHT. Still, watching their reactions while he spoke, he judged his audience’s general mood to be focused and highly professional. While they were plainly intrigued by the intelligence he was sharing, it was also clear that none of them were especially worried by anything they’d heard so far. After all, Russian military cooperation with Tehran’s radical regime was nothing particularly new — although it was unusual to see the two countries collaborating so directly on a covert operation.
I bet that attitude changes completely in, oh, about thirty seconds, he thought calmly — as he steadily worked through the assumptions underlying the bombshell he was about to drop. Well, either that, Nick, or they’ll just decide you’re completely loco, he realized with an inward grin.
After he finished speaking, a shocked quiet descended on the command center. It lasted for what felt like an hour, but really couldn’t have been more than a few moments.
Elazar broke the silence. Carefully, he leaned forward. “Let me be sure that I understand you correctly, Mr. Flynn,” he said softly. “You believe this man Voronin has given Iran a nuclear weapon to use in MIDNIGHT? And that he has done so with permission from Piotr Zhdanov himself?”
“Yes, sir,” Flynn said firmly. “That’s correct.”
The other man digested that for several seconds before going on. “Judging by your accent, you are an American, not so?”
Flynn nodded again. “Yes, sir. I am.”
“Then may I ask what action your own government plans to take in this matter?” the Israeli civilian asked gently.
“None,” Flynn said bluntly, not bothering to hide his own anger and disgust. “Washington doesn’t want to rock the diplomatic boat with Tehran right now, especially since much of this is admittedly speculation.”
“Speculation which is also logical and quite reasonable, based on the available evidence,” Elazar interjected. “And not just some hardliner’s wild fantasy.”
“Yes, sir, that’s how I see it,” Flynn agreed. “Then again,” he admitted with a self-deprecating smile, “I may be a little biased, since this was basically my idea in the first place.”
Next to Elazar, Rafael Alon, the Israeli naval officer who commanded Shayatet 13, raised an eyebrow. Three gold stripes on his shoulder boards showed that he was a Sgan aluf, or deputy champion — the equivalent of a commander in the U.S. Navy. “And yet your superiors have approved your sharing this information with us?” he asked skeptically. “Despite their own reluctance to respond?”
“My immediate superiors did okay this meeting,” Flynn said carefully, sticking to the literal truth. Fox was his boss, after all. That much of what he said was accurate, even if it avoided the fact that neither of them actually served in the official U.S. intelligence community. “But under the circumstances, none of us saw much point in pushing things too far up the political food chain.”
Out the corner of his eye, he noticed Ayish manfully maintaining a very straight face at this bit of deliberate misdirection. Again, what Flynn had just said was also quite literally true. The only thing left out was that the Quartet Directorate avoided contact with U.S politicians under any circumstances — and not just in this special case.