“The thought had occurred to me, Jack,” Foley said. “And honestly, none of us would blame you. Though that wouldn’t make it the right thing to do.”
Ryan stifled a chuckle. “My old man always said that handling anger was like climbing stairs. Everyone gets winded, no matter how good a shape you’re in. It’s how fast you recuperate that matters. I might get hot, but I won’t boil over.” His eyes narrowed. “I promise you, if I use force against François Njaya and his military, it will be overwhelmingly violent… but completely dispassionate.” He waved her toward the door. “Now go keep the Hostage Response Group in line until I get there. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Alone, Ryan turned to look past his own reflection in the center window behind his desk and onto the South Lawn. He shied away from the spot when anyone else was in the Oval, particularly the White House photographer. The whole look was too derivative of JFK, but it was a good thinking spot, damn it.
Apart from the comparison of climbing stairs to getting angry, Ryan’s father had always encouraged him to take a hard look at what he was angry at and admit to himself that it was most usually himself. The plain truth was that Njaya, for all his gloating, was right. Ryan was in a bad spot. The influenza, the flooding with attendant public health issues in the southeast, this business with Michelle Chadwick, and now an embassy under siege, all added to an already full threat board. The United States had many enemies that would love nothing more than to sit and watch her torn apart — and then swoop in to pick up the pieces…
“One thing at a time, Jack,” Ryan said to his reflection. He had capable hands working on the influenza epidemic and the flooding. Secretary Dehart was on his way to Louisiana to provide a firsthand report. That left Cameroon — with a diplomatic security agent literally hiding in the weeds, and two MQ-9 Reaper drones hovering over station.
“Unmanned aerial vehicles,” Ryan said. Low and slow, but they did the job.
Some argued that UAVs sanitized war… made it too easy for politicians. If they saved American lives, then Ryan had no problem with them. Ordering Americans into harm’s way could never be sanitized. Every bomb dropped, every trigger pulled, did damage, on both ends of the weapon. Ordering multiple deaths, or even one, should never be an easy thing. Some people needed to die, but Ryan was not a man to drag it out. Jack Ryan was no shrinking violet; he’d rather be done with it — whatever it was.
Adin Carr crouched behind the rusted box of an old semitrailer beside the man he should have been protecting. Together, they watched a squad of four soldiers, armed with French FAMAS rifles, escort Mrs. Porter into a dilapidated warehouse on the western edge of the city. They’d put a cloth bag over her head and tied her hands behind her back for the move. The apparent leader of the group, a man with a bald spot that looked like an appealing target, gave her a shove that sent her to her knees. Carr had to grab Ambassador Burlingame to keep him from rushing into the open.
“Patience, sir,” the DS agent whispered.
“I thought you said you wanted to act,” Burlingame said. “So let’s act.”
“We will, sir,” Carr said. “But we have to be smart about it. These guys outgun and outnumber us. Good chance we get Mrs. Porter killed if we go in without a plan and some backup. As much as I’d like to go in with guns blazing, we need to call in and let Ops know where she is so they can send the cavalry.”
“Who do you think?” Burlingame asked, eyes locked on the warehouse. “FBI Hostage Rescue, Navy SEALs?”
“You know that old story about FBI HRT being formed?”
Burlingame shook his head.
“The FBI director watched a demonstration of Delta, saw all their gear, and noticed they didn’t carry any handcuffs. When he asked why, one of the Delta guys said, ‘We put two rounds in their forehead. We don’t need handcuffs.’ The FBI went on to create the Hostage Rescue Team, but they carry handcuffs.”
“In that case,” Burlingame said, watching the guy with the bald spot yank Mrs. Porter to her feet, “I’d just as soon they send Delta.”
25
Erik Dovzhenko’s windshield wipers had no intermittent setting. They simply worked when they felt like it, wiping away enough rain now and then that he could mostly see to drive.
Dovzhenko rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger as he drove, trying to clear the fog from his head. He’d fled straight from Maryam’s apartment toward Imam Khomeini International Airport, pounding on the steering wheel, screaming at the windshield in between his attempts to call Kashani and warn her.
No answer.
Highway 7, the main north-south freeway through Tehran, was still relatively busy for the late hour, and he floored the Tiba’s sluggish accelerator in an attempt to merge with the river of red lights and thumping traffic. In the end, the driver of a crane truck, much like the ones used to hang the students, took pity and slowed to let him on.
He’d never met the woman, but he’d heard Maryam’s side of the conversation when they spoke on the phone, and knew this to be the correct number. The IRGC would eventually get it from Maryam’s phone records. Such information would not have been difficult to obtain in Russia. Dovzhenko imagined Iran would not be much different. The Persians were meticulous in their recordkeeping. He smacked the steering wheel again, hard enough to hurt his hand. One could not run from a cancer as pervasive as the Sepah. They had connections in every government office, most every business, and, through the interconnecting circles of Iranian society known as dowreh, to most families as well. There were IRGC fingers in every pie.
There was no point in going back to his apartment. Dovzhenko had what he needed — his Russian diplomatic passport and money. The rest he could buy or steal.
It was better that he keep moving, to get out of Iran as quickly as possible. That meant abandoning his post. He could feign illness.
Dear Comrade Chief of Station, I am much too ill to continue working, because my dissident Iranian girlfriend was murdered by our corrupt allies.
No. Spies did not call in sick.
And this business with General Alov, whatever it was, complicated matters — a high-ranking member of the GRU general staff meeting with the very people trying to overthrow the ruling mullahs. People had been shot for stumbling into situations that were far less strange.
Dovzhenko knew it was time for him to leave. Not just Iran, but the SVR. Russia. But defection was not easy. Even forgetting the emotional trauma of leaving his country behind, the Americans would not trust him. They would see him as a dangle — a double agent meant to provide misinformation. And anyway, what would he have to offer? The Americans would want someone they could use, not a burned spy who’d been caught up in an affair with a dead Iranian dissident.
A horn blared, pulling him from his anguished stupor. He looked sideways and caught the flash of white teeth in the headlights as the driver of a black sedan cursed and shook an angry fist. Guilty, he saw IRGC operatives everywhere. His hands convulsed on the steering wheel, startled that they had found him so quickly. Then the black sedan sped up, just another driver on Highway 7, pissed that Dovzhenko had drifted into his lane.
The Russian wiped his face with one hand while he kept the Tiba steady with the other, settling deeper into the seat as he focused on the road. He could not afford to have an accident now, or to get stopped by a traffic policeman for erratic driving. But he could not stop. A dog like Parviz Sassani would be relentless in his pursuit. Going to ground, even for a moment, to think, to make a plan, would only do half his job for him.