He waited for me to speak first. I said the scripted words exactly as Bagheri had written them: “General Navid, a mutual friend sends his regards.”
He reached out then and shook my hand. “Welcome. Sit.” He pointed to the kitchen table. Very homey. I took my usual place with my back to the wall. I laid my digital voice recorder on the table. Navid served tea. He took the chair opposite me, his brown eyes troubled, but hardly conflicted. I would have given anything for a cup of really strong coffee, a dark roast with a good blast of cream. It was not to be.
I followed his lead, spicing the tea with honey and a cinnamon stick. Did I say very homey? It took a sip. Ghastly. Now it was my turn to wait, but I didn’t have to wait long.
Without preamble, Navid reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a gray memory stick. He placed the memory stick in my hand and wrapped his fingers around mine. The troubled look in his eyes vanished.
“Let me assure you of the moral dilemma this places me in.” His English, though heavily accented, was precise. “I am no fan of the United States of America. I provide this information for one reason only: to save my homeland from disaster. Perhaps with luck, your country can use what I’ve given you to prevent a nuclear holocaust. To do that, you’ll have to destroy the missiles on their launch platforms. Many of my fellow soldiers will perish.” Navid squeezed my hand and let go. “Good men will die. By giving you this information, I’ll be as culpable in their deaths as the pilots who drop bombs on them.”
“We could talk about where the blame rests until the cows come home, General. And there’s plenty of it to go around. But let’s not. I might get pissed off.” I held the memory stick between my thumb and index finger. “What’s on this?”
“First, let me explain Ahmadinejad’s strategy,” Navid said. “He knows, should he launch an attack, to expect immediate retaliation.”
“I think that comes under the heading of no-brainers, General.”
“But he’s hedging his bets by not expending his nuclear arsenal in one blow. He has twenty-one missiles in his strike force. These he has divided into three batteries of seven missiles each.”
Navid pointed to the memory stick. “That lists the targets of the first two batteries. The first battery will launch missiles against Tel Aviv and Israeli military bases.”
“Yes, I know. The attack takes place in two days.” He didn’t flinch when he heard this, nor did he ask where the information had come from. “I need confirmation. Two days from today. Yes or no?”
I waited. And waited some more. He looked at me, and all I saw was opportunity. I had no time for the anguish. Finally, he said, “Yes.”
“And Ahmadinejad thinks he’s going to get away with this.” I didn’t wait for an answer. “The second one of those nukes pokes its nose out of a silo, it’s over. Israel will know within seconds, and they’ll launch a counterattack seconds later.”
“Of course they will. But our missiles will be airborne by then. That can’t happen.” Navid lowered his hand and his expression turned more morose. “The targets of the second battery of missiles include the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet at Gaeta, Italy, and NATO bases around the Mediterranean and eastern Europe.”
I tucked the memory stick into a pocket. “And the last seven missiles?”
“The third battery is Ahmadinejad’s trump card. Those missiles are targeted at major cities within range.” Navid’s tone turned icy and foreboding. “Rome. Nuremberg. Munich. Istanbul. Vienna. Athens. And our president will settle scores against our Sunni brothers by wiping out Riyadh.”
I wanted to say, Never happen, except that it was happening. One madman’s definition of Armageddon and here it lay before us, as real as tomorrow. A nuclear inferno. Tens of millions dead. And for no other reason than to satisfy a murderous craving.
“Something else,” Navid added. “When Ahmadinejad launches his attack, he, the top mullahs of the Revolutionary Council, and the senior officers of the Military High Command will be in a secret underground bunker. The coordinates of the bunker are on the memory stick as well.”
The man had just signed their death warrants. Nicely done, General.
I said, “And you? You’re in the high command.”
“I’ll be at my post in the Air Defense Headquarters at Mehrabad.”
“That’s got to be a priority target for a retaliatory strike if ever there was one.”
“I won’t abandon my men,” he said.
Foolish, but honorable, I supposed. I tapped the memory stick. “None of this means a hill of beans without the launch-site locations, General. I assume they’re on here.”
He was already shaking his head. “The launch sites haven’t yet been selected. When I get them, I’ll relay them as fast as possible.”
Unfortunately, what he was saying made sense. The launch sites would remain hidden until the very last. So be it. I was prepared to give him a secure e-mail address, when he shook his head and said, “Not electronically. National Security will be monitoring everything but my pacemaker. I have already chosen a courier. My most trusted envoy, rest assured.”
A courier. His most trusted envoy. I didn’t like it and said so. He didn’t budge. “When I know, I’ll have our mutual friend set it up.” He meant Bagheri; and for me, just one more thing not to like.
He stood up and took my hand. “We’ll see you back the same way you arrived. Please take care.”
And just like that, the meeting with General Armeen Navid was over.
CHAPTER 25
When the job description says “collect intel,” there is also an unwritten sidebar that says, “Don’t think about it too much. Just deliver the goods and move on.”
I wasn’t all that good at the rules of the unwritten sidebar back when the bad guys were drug lords and cyber terrorists and arms dealers. Back then, Mr. Elliot and some other guys I never knew and never wanted to know were in charge of turning the intel into action; I rarely had the pleasure of taking down the criminals I’d set up. Now the bad guys were men with their fingers on the launch codes of Sejil-2 missiles with twenty-kiloton warheads in tow. Hard to be objective. Hard not to want to be the guy driving a stake into their hearts and stomping on their ashes.
The van delivered me back to the Grand Bazaar. I went to a cyber café on Green Square, prepaid for a connection, and downloaded the material from the memory stick directly onto my iPhone.
Then I opened a secure satellite link to the NSA. The files were text files and small. They transmitted in seconds.
No sooner had I unplugged the memory stick than my phone vibrated with an incoming call from Mr. Elliot.
I switched to the phone app, stood up, and walked toward the madness of the Grand Bazaar at seven thirty at night. Things were just getting started in corridors lined with shops selling everything from children’s toys and teak carvings to tripe and the spices to cook it in. I stopped to look at a copper urn and said into the phone, “Go.”
“The files came through,” Mr. Elliot said. The edge in his voice was as subtle as a blade of grass on a football field. I heard it. “I gotta say, the friggin’ hair stood on the back of my neck when I read the hit list. Bad.”
“Bad,” I agreed. I tried looking like a tourist engrossed in the abundance of Persian artistry on display, moved two steps to my right, and settled in front of a glistening silver platter. “You get The Twelver’s pond?” I meant Ahmadinejad’s bunker.
“He and all his fat-cat buddies. Definitely. Bluebird came through on that one. That’s a serious prize. Well done.”