Olivia found Ghaffari’s doctoral thesis to be vanilla, as if sanitized of its strongest insights and emotions. Its subject of youth rebellion and escape from home caught Olivia’s eye, but a quick online search showed the thesis subject’s prevalence among a small minority of Iranian doctoral students.
Based on the subject matter, she expected to read a tirade of protest. Instead, Ghaffari’s work was a sterile numerical analysis predicting the future exodus of Iran’s youth from homes to streets and violence. It bordered on macro-economics in its supplanting of passion with numbers, and she found the categorization of reasons driving the exodus — rebellion against conservatism, accepting the futility of economic disadvantage, and susceptibility to recruitment by organized radicals — to be stale.
The reasons that caught her attention by their omission were those that young women trampled by war often face — violence and sexual abuse. Having suffered both horrors herself, Olivia wondered if luck or foresight had spared Ghaffari during the Iran-Iraq War, or if she had repressed their damaging effect too deeply to reflect in her thesis.
Olivia read on, seeking evidence of Ghaffari’s psyche in her lectures and in the reviews thereof. She found mundane subjects supported by centerline arguments delivered in mechanical doses. Ghaffari seemed to seek and achieve career mediocrity, but Olivia sensed that an ugly truth concealed a greater ability with energies directed elsewhere. She wanted to know where.
A two-minute search through the CIA employee database and a five-minute walk later, she leaned against the desk of a tall man in his early twenties with acne marking a face glistening in permanent perspiration.
She recognized Matt Williams from pleasant smiles in the hallway and from occasional cafeteria sightings. She had never said a complete sentence to him.
“You’re an expert on Iran, right?” she asked.
Williams looked up, and his eyes opened with surprise.
“Yeah. What do you need?”
“Oh, my name’s Olivia, by the way.”
She extended her hand. His palm felt like sushi.
“Yes, I know your name. You’re sort of a legend. Olivia McDonald. I’m Matt.”
“What it’s like growing up as a girl in the eighties? Khuzestan province.”
“Geez,” he said, rotating his chair to face her. His arms reached behind his neck and he made no attempt to hide his joy of serving as an authority.
“Normally I’d say, life in Iran depends on the particular village, but if you’re talking in the eighties, Khuzestan province, during the Iran-Iraq War, or any of the other names it’s been called—”
“Yes,” she said. “During the war.”
“Then life sucked.”
“How bad could it suck?”
“As bad as it can get for a woman.”
Olivia stared at him with eyes that had seen a slave trafficker hold a knife to her throat while raping her. Williams took the hint, leaned forward, and assumed an air of business.
“Statistics obviously aren’t very good, but reasonable assumptions and reports of survivors indicate that it was hell. There were abuses of all sorts.”
“Namely?” she asked.
“Violence. Beatings. Rapes. Mutilations. Your subject was lucky to walk out alive.”
“My subject left the province at sixteen and eventually went to school at the University of Tehran. PhD in psychology. Her life turned out amazingly successful for what she might have gone through. I’m trying to figure out what that was and if it’s driving her now.”
“It’s obviously a male-dominated society, and there generally wasn’t much chance for women to rise in any social strata until the last decade or so, when they started becoming mainstream in the universities. Whatever she went through in the war might have forced her to turn away from family life in search of broader education.”
“Turning on family? That could lead to an emptiness on top of any permanent psychological damage from the war…”
Olivia felt a lump in her throat. Analyzing a potential rape victim hit too close to home. Williams picked up on it and rescued her.
“I’m no psychologist, but you are, and a damn good one I hear. It looks like you’re trying to figure out if this woman is damaged and taking it out on someone. My guess is that you’re on to something based upon her background.”
“Okay,” she said, recovering. “That makes sense.”
“Cool,” he said, smiling. “Can you observe her?”
Olivia contemplated Ghaffari’s proximity.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s a good idea.”
The next day, she drove to Norfolk and met a navy intelligence officer at the headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Commander Roger Sanders had been a helicopter pilot before joining the intelligence community. His lean, tall frame had hard, powerful lines, and he moved with precision as he walked in a starched white uniform to Olivia. A smile covered a face of soft features.
“Commander Sanders,” he said, extending his hand.
“Olivia McDonald. Pleased to meet you.”
She judged his mannerisms warm and casual for a naval officer. He had a deliberate ease and a sense that everything in his world was right.
“Director Rickets left orders with my boss to greet you personally and escort you to our Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” he said.
“That’s great.”
“Do you need a moment? You’ve had a long drive.”
“No, I’m good.”
Alone with Sanders behind the egg carton walls and shelves filled with special compartmented information publications, she sat in a Naugahyde chair and noticed that he seemed out of place. His eyes were compassionate, unlike those of the cold and stern stares she had seen from military personnel. She wanted to know him, but she denied herself the indulgence.
“Did someone explain my business to you,” she asked.
“Briefly. An Iranian professor of psychology engaged to the captain of a Burke-class destroyer. Possible questionable motives. Sounds interesting and less stressful than what I’ve been dealing with otherwise.”
“The Leviathan, you mean? I’m cleared for it, you know.”
“I know,” he said. “My boss told me you worked your tail off on that and that you’re on your present assignment as a sort of break from the action.”
“Yeah, that’s what Gerry thought was best for me,” she said. “I went with it.”
“Gerry? Director Gerald Rickets? You’re on a first name basis with him?”
“We go way back.”
“You’re more interesting than I’d hoped,” he said.
She watched a smile spread over his face and blushed.
“Look, Commander Sanders—”
“Roger, please,” he said. “Everyone calls me Roger. At least in private.”
“Okay, Roger. Call me Olivia, at least in private.”
“Deal.”
“Roger, how did NCIS bring Doctor Farah Ghaffari to your attention?”
“Oh yes,” he said, stiffening. “Very discreetly. She’s engaged to the skipper of the Bainbridge, who I know by reputation as a well-connected tyrant. I’m glad the guys in the bars are paying attention and noticed that she was on a mission to get married, but there’s no crime in husband hunting and latching onto the biggest fish.”
“Husband hunting exclusively for destroyer sailors?”
“I wrote that off as coincidence,” he said. “Well, sort of. I mean, guys from the destroyer community will hit the same bars. Same for the helo pilots, same for the fixed wing jocks, and et cetera for each community. She may have just been hunting by location. But to be honest, I didn’t give her much thought because the ‘Leviathan Incident’ hit right after NCIS told me about her.”