Cross finished his prepared statement and offered a personal comment. “In addition to our military, I want to express my personal appreciation for my advisors who stood with me when difficult decisions had to be made, and for retired Army Colonel Cameron Warfield, who uncovered this situation in Tokyo and played the key role in bringing it to a successful end.”
Warfield couldn’t believe his ears. For the first time he could remember, he was embarrassed. Fleming whooped and hollered and grabbed him around the neck. “My hero!” she hooted. “My man saved the world. You’re famous, War Man.”
“Hey, you act surprised!”
They were still laughing when Warfield’s line rang. It was Cross. “Hope you didn’t mind me blind-siding you.”
“Don’t tell anyone, but it was a case of being in the right place at the right time,” Warfield said.
“Some wise man said luck dwells at the intersection of preparedness and opportunity,” replied the president.
In the Oval Office the next morning, Cross told Warfield he’d done him a disservice by calling his name on national television. “Destroyed your anonymity.”
Warfield laughed. “Yeah, had a few calls on my voicemail this morning. Friends, army buddies, people from my home town, including the mayor; he wants to do a parade or something. Macc Macclenny. CNN. NBC. Fox News. U.S. News & World Report. Washington Post. No Hollywood producers yet, and that’s the call I stayed up all night waiting for.”
Cross turned serious. “Look, Cam. I want you to stay on the job. There’s plenty to do.”
Warfield wasn’t sure he wanted that and it showed on his face.
“Don’t decide now,” Cross said. “After you get through the debriefings take a few days off and then call me.”
Later that morning Warfield listened to the tape made in the Sit Room during the last minutes before Yoshida was shot down. He played a certain passage several times and wrote something in his notebook. Then he met with representatives from several agencies of the intelligence community to give them the details of his time in Tokyo. Their congratulatory comments after the meeting reminded him that before now he wouldn’t have gotten as much as a hello from most of them.
Later that day Warfield got a call from Abbas Mozedah in Paris. He razzed Warfield for being a glory seeker, then congratulated him. Warfield laughed it off.
“Got an update about Ms. Koronis,” Abbas said. “Her brother Seth’s long-time mistress Suri? She left him. Escaped, I should say. Seth’s group’s now calling her a traitor of God. We’re sheltering her here in Paris. Suri’s talking to us some.”
Then he dropped a bombshell on Warfield. Suri claimed Ana Koronis didn’t know about Seth’s involvement in terrorism when she first went to stay with him after the deaths of her husband and son. After a few months, Suri clued Ana in. When Ana confronted her brother he acknowledged knowing about the terrorist abduction of her husband and son but tried to justify the attack to Ana, although he said he wasn’t involved himself.
According to Suri, Ana was depressed and furious. Seth persisted, charging that without America, there would be no turmoil in the Middle East and innocents on both sides wouldn’t have to die. Similar to the prosecutor’s hypothetical scenario in Ana’s trial, Seth told Ana she had a role to play in this war: Return to America, take advantage of her status and position and assist the cause from there. After all, this was her homeland he was fighting for.
But the similarity ended there. Suri said Ana stormed out of the room and returned to the U.S. days later.
Warfield was skeptical. “Did Seth know about her trial? That she’s in prison now?”
“Suri says yes.”
“He could have saved her from that if all this is true.”
“He had no use for her after she rejected his agenda. This man has no warm blood, no humanity. He does not meet the definition of a human being, Cameron.”
“Why did Suri leave him?”
“Afraid of him. Seth’s brother-in-law Hassan was one of Seth’s henchmen. You remember I told you Hassan believed Seth murdered his wife, who was Hassan’s sister. Suri knew it could happen to her as well.”
“Yes. You said Hassan was going to kill Seth when he knew for sure.”
“Seth hasn’t survived this long by chance. One of his bodyguards suckered Hassan into believing the bodyguard was going to betray Seth, so Hassan hooked up with him and told him of his own plan to kill Seth. Soon after that, Seth summoned Hassan to his headquarters on the pretense of a planning meeting. When Hassan sat down at the table, Seth stood up behind him and swung a machete like one of your baseball bats. Lopped his head off clean and had it stuffed and mounted. Suri says it hangs on the wall in the room where he meets with his associates as an example to would-be traitors.”
Warfield shuddered at the image. After a moment, he said, “Could be a setup, Abbas, this story of Suri’s.”
“I was able to cross-check some of it after she asked us for protection. I think she is straight. We are trying to get all the information we can about Seth but she is going slow. She is afraid for her life. It comes out in bits and pieces. But I admit I cannot say with certainty she is truthful.”
“Not much to go on and it won’t get Ana out of prison. Even if Suri’s telling the truth, how could you prove it?”
“Listen to this, Cameron. She speaks of a meeting that I think could have been related to Petrevich — his escape from Russia with the uranium. Seth had made his needs known to a CIA source he had been working with but that source fell out of sight.”
“Hell, that could be Harvey Joplan!” Warfield said
“Maybe. When someone else came along instead of the CIA source he knew, Seth was skeptical and sent one of his men to meet with this replacement.”
“When did it happen, this meeting?”
Abbas checked his notes. “April twenty-two last year.”
“Prior to Habur gate then, sure.” Warfield thought about it. If the meeting actually was before Habur gate, it could’ve set up the Petrevich transfer. After Joplan was killed, and after prosecutors in Ana’s trial presented evidence she had the opportunity and motivation to be Seth’s accomplice, Warfield had stopped thinking in terms of another mole: He was then satisfied it was Ana who provided the CIA database to Seth. But if Suri’s information was factual, maybe Ana was innocent. That led Warfield back to one of his earlier theories: That Joplan revealed the name of his contact to his killer, who could have been planted in the Atlanta prison by someone who knew there was profit in the information Joplan had agreed to tell the feds.
Warfield now believed there was a good probability the mole was still operating in Washington, but he wasn’t quite ready to share this. Chances were too great that this American spy was in the intelligence loop and would be tipped off. “I’m coming over to meet with Suri,” he said.
“I thought you would.”