“There are my rascals; how’s school?” he inquired, or tried to. Helen intervened.
“There will be plenty of time for catching up,” she chastised them all. “Your uncle is tired. It’s been a long trip. Let him relax for a while.”
“All right mom,” they relented, returning to doing what they were doing. Welcome home Uncle Slade!”
“Now Helen,” Slade softly chided, “You know I don’t mind. I miss them too you know; don’t tell them that of course! I don’t want them to get soft.”
She turned him by his shoulders and pushed him toward his bedroom. “You need to go relax and get washed up. You know the routine. Let me welcome you home, you’ve done your job, let me do mine.”
Slade’s room was like stepping back in time. A few hours before he’d been holed up in a mud and brick hovel with death all around him. Now he was in a period wall papered gentleman’s room furnished with dark wood, twin leather chairs and bronze fixtures. Everything, absolutely everything, was in its place. Helen took her job seriously.
Walking into his closet, Slade opened a hidden panel in his wardrobe. The rack of suits and sundry other clothes swung aside to reveal a flat black panel. Slade pressed his hand against it and a red light came on, scanning his face. The combination fingerprint, facial recognition scan and retinal scan opened up the inner panel.
Inside was a small arsenal of weapons. Storing his sidearm, he undressed, heading for the shower. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was done as a comfortable Victorian era cottage. It wasn’t overdone; it was tasteful.
Stepping into the shower, Slade allowed the hot water to seep into his sore muscles, letting it wash away the last vestiges of Iraqi sand as well as the even deeper, hidden stains of blood and death. He purposefully turned his mind back, away from the last mission, thinking of home; recalibrating himself to domestic life.
It was a careful but necessary balancing act. It was easy, tragically easy to get lost in Slade’s world. The adrenaline rush, the power, it was addictive. It was a simple thing to lose that sense of right and wrong when your entire working life revolved around doing wrong so that right would triumph. He’d seen it happen. So he turned that thought process off and thought about home, hearth and family.
Turning off the shower, Slade dried off and dressed in comfortable clothes that had been laid meticulously on the chair at the foot of the bed. He opened the door onto the back porch and sat down on the porch swing, looking out over the tree lined acreage to the slow moving river.
Helen brought him his drink and the kids joined him, filling him in on their lives since he was last home.
Jeremiah Slade was content, swinging idly on his porch, sipping his gin and tonic with a sedate smile on his face. He purged his mind of the images of burned children, slaughtered civilians and the red blossom of vaporized blood resulting from his bullet when it slammed through the fevered brain of a jihadist.
When those thoughts threatened to creep back into his mind a single word dispersed them. It was Helen, calling, “Dinner!”
CHAPTER 12: The Daily Brief
Normally the president took his daily intelligence briefing remotely by iPad. That allowed Oetari to read the report at his leisure, which meant that more than half the time the President of the United States simply blew off the report and depended on the world performing according to his view of it.
The insistence of Director Gann briefing the president in person on the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 666 was both irritating and surprising. The president walked past the directors of the CIA and FBI and toward the Oval Office with Chief of Staff Jeffries, Ms. Carrabolla and Freddy Waters in tow.
Director MacCloud stiffened as Freddy passed him. Freddy, for his part, turned beet red. “Come in gentleman, come in,” Oetari said, but then his secretary interrupted him.
“I’m sorry sir but President Ataturk of Turkey is on the line. Do you want to take the call now or later?
“I’ll take it now,” the president told her. “Excuse me gentlemen.” The president entered the Oval Office alone and closed the door. He put the president on speaker. “Mustafa my friend what can I do for you?”
“Oetari my friend, salaam,” Ataturk said using the common Muslim greeting.
“Salaam,” Oetari replied politely.
“We have a problem Patra, a very large problem.”
“I’m listening,” the president said, knowing what to expect.
“It is the assassination of my nephew,” Ataturk told him gravely.
“I understand Mustafa,” Oetari said quickly, trying to sooth the sensitive situation. “No one regrets the action more than I. Yet how could I, how could even my troops have known that he would be there with the ISIS people, Al Qaeda and Iran? Not only did we have no way of knowing but there was no possibility of expecting such a thing. Regardless, you have our heartfelt condolences.”
“I know you are sincere in that Patra, and you are right, there is no way to expect that Turgut would be there — he was an impetuous boy, always impatient for the next great thing,” Ataturk sighed. After a pregnant pause his voice dropped down a grave octave. “However, you know our people. You understand our people.”
“I do,” Oetari said quickly.
“Then you understand the emotions involved. My family has been attacked. My relative has been attacked. My family demands Qissas, the law of equality in punishment; a life for a life. That presents a problem.”
“Surely that is for a premeditated killing Mustafa,” replied the president, who having grown up in Muslim society knew the customs well. “This was an accident.”
“Your sniper sending a bullet through young Turgut’s eye was no accident,” the president said bluntly. He sighed audibly, and then with a still serious but more understanding tone, said, “Put yourself in my place. No matter how much guilt Turgut deserves for putting himself in harm’s way do you really think in the present atmosphere that my family, or my country, will view this in any other way?”
“What about forgiveness?” Oetari asked. “The United States will pay the Diyah, blood money, to wipe away the Qissas.”
“Again, do you really think anyone in the Islamic world is in a forgiving mood right now?” Again there was a long pause. When Ataturk spoke again there was a heavy sense of gravity. “If this were a personal situation it would be solvable; I can control my family. However, this is more. It is a political situation. The Islamists faction is much stronger than the secular factions in the Grand National Assembly.
“Normally the Constitutional Court would intervene with any anti-secular party — they are no longer doing so. There are now Islamists on the bench and the secular judges are, quite frankly, frightened. The Islamists and jihadists are a problem in my country.”
“Is that why your tanks are sitting on the border with Syria and watching ISIS slaughter the Kurds?” Oetari snapped, irritated at being lectured by a fellow president.
“What do I care about the Kurds?” Ataturk replied bluntly. “They are a problem here as well. Let ISIS kill them, and then we can kill ISIS.”
“So you will help against ISIS?”
“After the Kurdish problem is solved — yes. However, we first have to solve this problem with Turgut’s assassination.”
Oetari paused, but finally asked, “What is it you want?”
“I want the name of the man who pulled the trigger.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of sending your people after him are you? Convict him in absentia. He will never go to Turkey — would that satisfy you?”