Homeland: Saul’s Game. Andrew Kaplan

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СКАЧАТЬ I think we need to continue this conversation,” General Demetrius said.

      “I was hoping you’d ask,” Saul said as a master sergeant grabbed the handle of his suitcase and pulled it after them outside the office toward the general’s waiting staff car.

      The C-­17 was bigger than any aircraft Saul had ever flown in. Both sides of its cabin aisle were fitted with rows of screens and electronics, which enabled the dozens of officers and men working at their stations to track the latest data from land, sea, and air operations from all parts of General Demetrius’s widespread command across the entire Middle East and South Asia. For several hours out of MacDill, an F-­16 fighter jet flew escort, then peeled off when they were well out over the Atlantic.

      Saul sat toward the rear, in an area of seats that were set in rows like business-­class seats in a normal passenger jet. He worked on his laptop, doing tradecraft, setting up basic drops, codes, locations, for Operation Iron Thunder. He used special CIA encryption software that was unique to CIA Top Secret Special Access files; it could not be decoded by standard NSA, DIA, or other agency decryption software, not even by other CIA decryption software.

      Two hours out, Lieutenant Colonel Larson, looking much more in his element in a Class-­A uniform, came and asked if Saul would like to join the general for coffee. Saul followed him forward past the men and women working at their screens, talking through headsets to their counterparts in various commands, to the general’s office. It was completely closed off. Inside was an office with a desk, conference table, armchairs, and a lounge area with a stocked bar, all of it modernistic and made of stainless steel; it had the odd feel of a men’s club for robots.

      General Demetrius was sitting in a swivel armchair, sipping coffee and reading a copy of the Economist, which he put down when Saul came in. He poured Saul a cup of coffee.

      “How do you take it?”

      “Milk and sugar; you take yours black, thanks.”

      General Demetrius swiveled toward him, hands on his knees like a sumo wrestler about to pounce.

      “You’re setting up a separate operation outside Langley, aren’t you? That’s what this little trip is all about, isn’t it?”

      Saul sipped his coffee.

      “Good coffee. I’m here so you could ask me that.” He looked around the partitioned office. “No bugs I hope.”

      General Demetrius shook his head.

      “You are worried. Who else knows about this?”

      “The director of the CIA; the vice president, Bill Walden. Took him by surprise, but he finally agreed. Facts are facts. The national security advisor, Mike Higgins. The president. Now you.”

      “Where are you going to run it from?”

      “I’ll be moving around. But I’ll have something in Bahrain,” he said. “The capital, Manama. For obvious reasons.”

      “Middle of the Persian Gulf. Not that far from Iraq. Or CENTCOM. Or Iran, for that matter. Like the real estate ­people say: location, location, location. Or do you have some thing or some one particular in mind, Saul?”

      “Both maybe. Manama’s a crossroads. A place where ­people come to do business, clean and dirty. And close enough to your headquarters in Doha, General, although I suspect you won’t be there that often.” He put down his coffee.

      “You know damn well I won’t be sitting on my ass there,” General Demetrius growled. “There’s a battle shaping up in Basra right this minute—­and we don’t have shit there.”

      “It’s not just IPLA. The Kurds, the Shiites, the Mahdi Army, the Iranians …” Saul ticked them off. “Abu Nazir is trying to light a match. There’s plenty of tinder lying around.”

      “How soon and where?”

      “I’ll let you know very soon,” Saul said, looking at the map of Iraq on the general’s laptop screen. “There are some things I have to do first.”

      General Demetrius looked at him.

      “Operation Iron Thunder?”

      Saul nodded.

      “Where do you start?”

      Stand in the fire of a blast furnace to get the answer in a place where there is no God, Saul thought, for some bizarre reason thinking of his father. “By sending my best operations officer into the enemy’s camp with a big fat target painted on her back,” he said.

      “What?”

      “Sorry. A stupid metaphor. We don’t just know we have a mole who’s feeding AQI, General. For the first time, we also have a lead that might help us nail who it is. There’s more. The Iranians. They may be also be getting intel.”

      “You’ve been reading my DIA reports. There’s something going on with the Iranians. The Shiites in Iraq have suddenly gone quiet. Too quiet. If our withdrawal from Iraq were to come under heavy enemy attack, it could be a bloodbath,” General Demetrius said grimly.

      “What if we were to come under attack from both sides, the Sunnis and the Shiites at the same time—­and they know everything you’re going to do in advance?”

      “You must be a mind reader. What the hell do you think has been keeping me up at night?”

      “I have a plan,” Saul said.

      “Iron Thunder.”

      “Exactly. I understand you play Go. Something of a fanatic, they say,” Saul said, taking a board and a box of black and white stones out of his carry-­on. “You can be black. If you like, I’ll take a modified komidashi.”

      General Demetrius studied him. “Are you hustling me, Saul?” He glanced at his watch. “Are you sure? The game’ll take at least a ­couple of hours.”

      “No,” Saul said, waiting for the general to play his first stone. “Not that long.”

       CHAPTER 9

      Tal Afar, Iraq

      15 April 2009

      It was raining, gray clouds bundled over the city. Brody followed Daleel and five of the others, weapons concealed beneath their robes, in a single file through the narrow street. They were going to the mosque for the noon Dhuhr prayer. The street was muddy, the pavement cracked and rutted. Every shop and building was battered, shot through with bullet holes from the heavy fighting that had taken place there two years earlier between Abu Nazir’s IPLA joined by elements of AQI and the U.S. 82nd Airborne.

      Although Tal Afar had been officially proclaimed a “Coalition success” and it was a majority Turkmen, not Arab, city, you could still hear the sounds of one or two rocket attacks and IEDs almost every day. But Brody wasn’t thinking about any of these things. He had a decision to make. His life depended on it.

      The young Turkmen woman in the makhbaz, the bakery shop where he bought the flat bread for some of the group, СКАЧАТЬ