Doyle stepped off the sidewalk, into the doorway of a store that had closed. “Why do you think they’re doin’ it this way? You think if Conrad or the President went to the Congress and said let’s invade and occupy another Arab country, they’d get one vote for it? Shit, they’d more likely be impeached.” The Marine spat out a piece of the cigar. “That’s why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. We will just happen to have an invasion force off the Saudi coast when, hell, I dunno, somethin’ gonna happen. Maybe the Gypoes are in on it, too. Maybe they’re comin’ with us like in ’90, got me?
“But I do know this. I went into Fallujah with my brigade in ’04 and I saw what we did. You know the three-star Marine in charge of all of us jarheads in Iraq recommended against assaulting the city, ju’ know that? They didn’t have no WMD there. They weren’t hiding Saddam or Osama. When we went inta Fallujah the second time, we fuckin’ leveled the place. City a quarter million people, gone-ski. Did we fuckin’ think that would make us popular? No wonder you got Iraqis still trying to blow up your headquarters in Bahrain.
“You know, we were gonna pay for that whole little escapade by getting some deal for their oil. Wha’d they do? Blew up their own pipelines, storage tanks, the whole infrastructure. We go into Saudi, they’ll self-immolate, too. Then no one will have any fuckin’ oil. Move to Florida, that’s what I say. It’s nice here, in the winter.”
Doyle moved close to Adams and placed a finger on the admiral’s chest. “I still remember Dorian Dale, my G-3. His mom worked herself almost to death putting that man through Howard, her and ROTC. He coulda been the next Colin Powell, ’cept he got his head blown right off his shoulders in Fallujah, right off. Blood squirted all over. Why? Because some set of lunatics from a think tank escaped and took over the Pentagon, that’s fuckin’ why.” Doyle exhaled. “We can’t let that happen again. We gotta stop this shit, Adams. It’s our duty. It’s our duty to our troops. It’s our duty to our country as military men.”
Adams looked away, then back at his friend. “Bobby, all my life since I was seventeen I have saluted and followed orders, including some pretty stupid fucking orders. At this point in my life, if I tried to step out of line I would probably seize up,” he whispered. “We have a system in this country. The military is under civilian control. Maybe they make mistakes sometimes, but they get paid for looking at the big picture and some of them get elected. Nobody elected us.
“The President, Secretary Conrad, these are smart guys who see a lot more info than we do. Having a big exercise of Islamyah right now to scare them into not messing with us, that makes sense to me.
“Besides, Bobby, what you’re talking about sounds like doing something, I don’t know what, but something that violates the UCMJ. That’s not just giving up the next promotion, it’s giving up everything, not just for us but for our wives, family. I got both kids into Penn because of the legacy thing. That’s a hundred thousand a year worth of scholarships and loans.”
They stepped back out onto the sidewalk. Adams talked with his head down as they moved down 7th. He sensed Doyle was feeling let down. “Okay, Bobby, supposing you’re right about this invasion?” The admiral spoke carefully. “Does the CinC know? What could we do to stop it if you wanted to? You can’t even prove they’re gonna do it.”
“The CinC? Nathan Bedford Moore?” Doyle said sarcastically. “I don’t know what he knows or doesn’t know. But his number-one priority is number one. He sees Secretary Conrad making him the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He ain’t gonna buck the tide. Hell, he’s invited Conrad out to see the so-called exercise, be on the USS George H. W. Bush bobbing up and down in the Red Sea with the troops.
“I don’t know what to do, Adams. I plumb don’t know,” the Marine said, looking up at the admiral. “That’s why I had to talk to you: because you’re the only one I can trust about this, and I thought you’d know what to do.”
The admiral stared at Doyle without knowing what to say. Then he pulled out his half-finished Cohiba and threw it onto the brick street and ground it under his heel. He looked back at Doyle. “There was a motto over the gate at college. I think it was from Hannibal, the general with the elephants who almost beat the Romans. It said ‘Inveniemus Viam aut Faciemus.’ We will find a way, or we will make one.”
Doyle put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Well, buddy, you faciemus better.”
Across 7th Avenue, a civilian-looking couple kissed on the sidewalk. They were actually both master sergeants assigned to a littleknown unit from Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia, the 504th Counterintelligence Battalion.
“Well, I can see why they call it Table Mountain — it’s flatter than a flounder,” Brian Douglas mused aloud, looking out the top-floor window and stretching after the long flight from London. “Magnificently beautiful city.”
“That’s why I love this location, it has such a nice view,” Jeannie Enbemeena replied as she came back into the room with a handful of papers. She was a thirty-something, short, and highly attractive black woman from Natal who had been with SIS for six years. For two years she had been running the small South Africa regional services and support office for British intelligence, out of a Cape Town property with no obvious connection to the embassy in Johannesburg. “Never been here before, Mr. Douglas?”
“First time. I’m an Arabist, you know,” he said, taking the false documents that Jeannie handed him. “What do you do, Ms. Enbemeena, may I ask, when you are not creating legends and playing hostess for wandering Arabists?”
“I keep an eye on the Malay mosque down the street. We’ve tied some of the regulars there to an al Qaeda spin-off that was plotting to blow things up in KL and Singapore. The lot here did a small bombing spree two years ago at the American Express and Barclays”—she smiled—“but I went to school in Durban, and our boys there did a good job on your papers and back story. I would believe it. You are now Simon Manley, recently in the fruit-and-nut business and seeking a reliable and cheap source of pistachios. Where else but Iran, pistachio capital of the world?”
“And how does Simon the nutter get from here to there?” Brian chuckled.
“We fly you to just outside Durban on an air taxi we own, no questions asked. Then you will be driven to the main Durban airport, where you catch the once-a-week flight on Emirates to Dubai, have a two-hour layover in the duty-free, and then Iran Air to Tehran, where Marty Bowers meets you on the other side of Customs,” Jeannie said, reading from her notes.
“Marty who? Meets me? I am operating solo on this — no one from the Tehran station is even to know I’m in country!” Brian exploded at her.
“Cease fire!” she shot back. “Jesus, mate, don’t kill the waitress for the chef ’s faux pas. London told us to send someone from Durban base who could be part of your cover story, to be there just in case, precisely because you won’t be going into the embassy or seeing any one of the boys and girls who work at the station there. “Marty Bowers’s regular cover is that he runs an import warehouse in Durban. We’ve made him one of the investors and partners in Manley Fruits and Nuts. He will not get in your hair at all. He’ll probably spend most of his time as a tourist. London orders.” Her smile returned.