The Secretary of Defense looked down at his subordinate. “You fucked this all up. Nothing is working.”
“Don’t blame me. You gave me orders to set things up so you and your Saudi friends could get back in. Well, this was the best thing
that anyone could come up with. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, Henry, we need to invade!” Kashigian yelled at his boss. “We
just use the Big Lie. It’s worked before.”
Henry Conrad walked closer to the screen showing the image of the beaches lined with civilians, praying. “Don’t you see? There are
no nuclear weapons there. There are no Iranian invaders there.
There are no Chinese. And the chaos you promised me has turned into a fucking prayer rally! Do you think we can tell our constituency back home that we bombed a prayer rally?”
“Sir?” General Moore asked again.
“Fine, fine,” Ron Kashigian said. He turned to General Moore.
“The Secretary has decided to go ahead with the planned exercise with Egypt. But he will be returning to Washington to take care of
something that has just come up. So we need a COD flight to Cairo, where the 747 is parked.”
“Yes, sir,” the CinC replied.
“And I’ll need onward flight reservations from Cairo to Geneva for me,” Kashigian added.
“We can mount another wave, expand the beachhead,” the Iranian general said, looking up from the map.
“My brethren in Tehran say that our air force chief is refusing. He thinks his losses are already too high, unacceptable,” the cleric said, as though he were commenting on the weather.
“We can’t just leave them there,” the general insisted. “Oh, yes we can. We left many more Pasdaran and Basiji in Iraqi jails for over a decade. Many more,” the cleric said, gathering up his papers. “That war failed. So did this one. Accept it.”
“But we didn’t have nuclear weapons then,” the general said, moving to block the cleric’s exit.
“I told you the nuclears are only for defense. Not for you, Qods Force, Hezbollah, or anyone else,” the cleric explained. “If a nuclear weapon goes off in the United States, they will not hesitate to incinerate our entire country, and Korea, too, just for good measure.
“General, you must look at a longer time horizon. In 1986, we ended the war with Iraq without victory. By 2006, we had won, thanks to you and others. And we won without arms. We let the Americans do the dying for us. This operation today was too direct, too overt. Not subtle. But don’t worry, General, we will prevail. I have another plan. We will discuss it in Tehran. Join me there in a few days, after all of this… has been cleaned up.
“The long view, General.” The cleric glanced at the map, then back up at him. “Our day will come.”
“My word, she knew a lot of people,” Brian Douglas observed to Rusty as the two emerged from the memorial for Kate Delmarco.
“Well, a lot of those in attendance were reporters. That was one hell of a job of reporting. It took smarts and guts,” Rusty MacIntyre
said, walking down the stairs. “And it may have taken her life.” He thought of their night together, her smile, her scent — and guilt rolled over him. Had he been responsible?
“Oh, come on, don’t start that again. You saw the autopsy report, even though you probably had no right to. She had a heart attack, Rusty,” Sol Rubenstein added as he caught up with them.
“Ray Keller, her editor, doesn’t think so. He has three reporters on it,” MacIntyre told his boss. “He’s trying to get the FBI to look into it.” And I’ll make sure they do, he said to himself.
“Good luck to them and the Mets,” Rubenstein retorted. “You just should be glad that your own FBI thing is going away, now that it looks like Dr. Rashid is no terrorist — more like the next president of Islamyah.”
“He’s invited me back,” Rusty reported. “Ahmed is going to run in the national election.”
“And you’re going when?” Rubenstein asked.
“No time soon, boss.” he said. “Brian here is en route to a sailing vacation out of Virgin Gorda and he needs a crewmate. So, with your permission…”
Rubenstein laughed. “Oh, I suppose for averting a major war you two probably deserve a week off. Although I am not sure how Sir Dennis will view the two of you bonding, turning into some kind of Anglo-American version of I Spy.”
“I expect he’ll have to get used to it,” Brian said, grinning. “It’s his fault anyway. He introduced us.”
As they walked down the street toward Columbus Circle, Rubenstein asked in a fatherly way, “So, how’s Sarah? She going along to Virgin’s Girdle, too?”
Rusty looked across the street at the park and then back at Rubenstein. “No. No, she’s not. Sarah is saving Somaliland for ninety days.”
Rubenstein looked disappointed, not surprised. He started to say something, but the expression on Rusty’s face…No, better to leave it alone.
At the end of the park, they turned into the Time Warner Center, where they were due to have their delayed celebratory lunch. A television was showing CNN in the lobby.
“Hey, look at this. The President is holding a press conference,” Rubenstein said, walking over to the screen. As they approached, they could hear the audio:
“… will decide which of these unproven allegations should be looked into, but while the Attorney General is doing that, I just want to say that we are blessed to have Henry Conrad in public service. His Reconfig Program is changing the armed forces and saving the taxpayers billions of dollars. He has rebuilt bridges to our critical allies around the world, something that was very clear to me recently at the Asia Pacific summit. It was in Chile, Santiago…
“Look, the bottom line is that Henry Conrad is the best Secretary of Defense we have ever had. Now, what was the second part of your question…?”
“Unbelievable,” said MacIntyre.
“Best we ever had, huh?” said Rubenstein.
“I wonder if they serve Balvenie here?” said Douglas, and walked past the television into the restaurant.
The President was still talking.
Rusty looked out at Central Park, at the leafless trees, and thought of Kate, of Abdullah, of all those who had died so needlessly. And he promised them that he would fight back.