Countdown to Midnight

Twenty-One

Miranda Reynolds, the head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, wondered if she ought to mark this down as a red-letter day in the imaginary diary she’d didn’t actually keep. High-ranking officials in the Agency had learned the hard way that even the most personal of records might be subject to subpoena by busybody Congressional investigators determined to cause trouble. In the circumstances, it was safer to rely entirely on your own memory, she thought cynically — unless, of course, you needed to jot down a pro forma protest of some questionable, or even outright illegal, order from a superior… at least as a measure of limited protection against possible future prosecution.

Nevertheless, she probably should find some permanent way to memorialize this meeting. Since his appointment, Charles Horne, the new director of Central Intelligence, had made it clear that he preferred working with his senior subordinates through a web of toadies and underlings. And yet here she was, summoned to his private office for an emergency intel briefing from Philip Demopoulos, who ran the Agency’s Directorate of Analysis. Whatever else was going on, she guessed that was a sign the DCI didn’t want any other potential leakers — or witnesses, maybe — to hear what they were going to discuss.

For now, she sat quietly in one of the two chairs placed in front of Horne’s desk. Demopoulos, wavy-haired with a trim, graying goatee, occupied the other. She thought he seemed on edge, which probably meant he suspected his news would not be welcomed.

Slowly and methodically, Horne sorted through the sheaf of photographs he’d been handed by Demopoulos shortly after they all sat down. Although he said nothing at first, his thick lips compressed in obvious annoyance as he fanned them out across his desk. They showed what appeared to be a convoy of military trucks and other vehicles on a road somewhere. Canvas-shrouded shapes of some sort were tied down on some of the flatbed trailers shown. His fleshy face reddened slightly while he studied them.

At last, he looked up at Demopoulos. “What’s all this supposed to be, Phil?” he demanded, indicating the photos.

“We believe those are the separate stages of a large missile or space rocket,” the other man said carefully. “One the Iranians shipped by road to the Bandar Abbas area several days ago.”

Horne frowned. “How do you know that?” He tapped one of the pictures. Beyond the line of trucks, it showed a barren, rocky wasteland with sharp-edged mountains rising in the background. “For God’s sake, these images could have been taken almost anywhere in Iran. The whole damned country’s almost nothing but desert or arid, mountainous wilderness.”

“The digital file containing those pictures was sent to us by a well-informed source we’ve always found reliable,” Demopoulos explained. “And we’ve confirmed the geolocation data provided with every photo. There’s absolutely no question that these images were, in fact, taken along a stretch of highway not far north of Bandar Abbas.”

Horne’s frown deepened. “Ah, yes, your mysterious ‘reliable’ source,” he said heavily. “The same one, I recall, who tried to sell us the bullshit story about that oil tanker Tehran was supposedly retrofitting for some nefarious purpose a while back.”

Demopoulos let that pass.

Reynolds grimaced. She’d assigned a small team to discreetly uncover where Demopoulos really obtained his gems of raw intelligence from inside Iran. So far, to her intense irritation, they’d come up mostly empty-handed. All anyone in the Analysis Directorate could tell them was that their chief’s eyes-only source was code-named GLASS ISLE. One of her more literary-minded subordinates had rather hesitantly suggested this could be a veiled reference to the Isle of Avalon in Arthurian legend, the place where King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, was forged and where the gravely wounded king was said to have vanished into legend — but where the hell was that type of mythological gobbledygook supposed to lead her?

As it was, her efforts to dig into Demopoulos’s activities were already sliding dangerously close to what her colleagues in the Agency would consider spying on another directorate. And that was strictly taboo. Inhouse investigations were supposed to be the sole purview of the CIA’s Office of Security. Power struggles occurred, but they were ordinarily waged within strict bureaucratic limits. No one wanted to risk a messy, knives-out fight inside Langley. Not one that might leak to the press and Congress and make the CIA as a whole look bad, anyway.

“Okay, so those photos were taken near Bandar Abbas,” Horne said finally. “But why is that supposed to be significant? The Iranians have hundreds of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in their arsenal, don’t they? So the fact that they’re moving one of them around by road is hardly an earthshaking development, is it?”

“Scale analysis indicates this missile or rocket is significantly larger than most of those in Iran’s arsenal,” Demopoulos said patiently. “Although we can’t be sure without getting a close look at the actual weapon itself, my experts tell me that it’s most probably a newly completed Zuljanah three-stage rocket — or a comparably sized missile of a brand-new type. One we’ve never seen before.”

Horne looked momentarily blank.

“Either way, this can’t be a routine redeployment,” Demopoulos told him calmly. “So far, the Iranians have only flown their Zuljanah rocket twice that we know of. Once in early 2021. And one more time last summer — from somewhere in the southern Caspian Sea. Probably off one of their fixed oil platforms converted into a launch site.”

“So?”

“There aren’t any Iranian missile flight test centers in the Bandar Abbas region,” Demopoulos said. “Which indicates this transfer isn’t related to a regular research and development program.” He leaned forward in his chair. “And there’s one more piece of evidence which suggests the Iranians have bigger plans for this rocket. We believe it was shipped to Bandar Abbas from the Shahrud Test Site, hundreds of miles away. But we don’t have a single image from any satellite pass over the past two weeks that shows this truck convoy on the road. Not one. That alone tells me Tehran has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep this movement secret.”

Horne frowned. “And I suppose you’ve got a theory about why that might be?”

Reynolds saw Demopoulos tense up. Interesting, she thought. Now we’re getting to the part of this briefing he’s sure won’t make the DCI very happy.

“The most reasonable conclusion is that they intend to smuggle this rocket out of Iran aboard the tanker they’ve been refitting for the past few months,” he said. “We got a good picture of the Gulf Venture on this morning’s KH-11 pass. The ship has moved out of the repair yard and is currently moored alongside a nearby pier loading crude oil into its remaining storage tanks.” He laid another photograph on Horne’s desk.

Reynolds studied it. The Iranian tanker was much larger than she’d expected, more than eight hundred feet long and over a hundred feet wide. The damned thing was as big as a battleship, she realized. A maze of piping, other mechanical structures, and what looked like several groups of chained-down, forty-foot-long freight containers covered its enormous deck.

Horne scowled. “Even assuming that this wild-assed guess of yours is correct,” he ground out, “what exactly are we supposed to do about it, Phil?” He shook his head. “The UN arms embargo on Iran expired years ago. Technically, Tehran is allowed to sell weapons to any legal government. The methods the Iranians use to ship those arms doesn’t alter the ultimate legalities involved.”

“Our best intelligence is that Iran’s missile programs are controlled by the Revolutionary Guards,” Demopoulos pointed out carefully. “Which makes smuggling a long-range rocket out of Iran a clear violation of our country’s independent sanctions against the IRGC. And that, in turn, makes the Gulf Venture a legitimate target for covert action, either to disable the tanker in port… or to seize the ship outright when it’s at sea. Plus, the chance to examine one of its most advanced missiles up close would open a goldmine of technical intelligence about Iran’s real military capabilities.”

There was a long, awkward moment of silence while Horne’s face reddened even further. Inwardly, Reynolds started a mental countdown to the explosion she saw coming.

“Have you lost your mind?” the DCI finally barked. “Do you seriously expect me to approve provocative action of that sort? Purely on the basis of what can only charitably be described as rumor and lunatic speculation? And at a time when this whole administration is doing its goddamn best to improve our diplomatic relations with the Iranians? I’m supposed to wreck a major foreign policy initiative being pushed by the president of the United States himself? And to do what, for Christ’s sake? Stop Tehran from sending some piss-ass country somewhere one lousy rocket?”

Obviously opting to try to save his career rather than take up the offer to argue openly with Horne, Demopoulos stayed quiet. A muscle twitched slightly at the corner of his mouth, though — revealing his inner fury at being lectured like a schoolboy by a man whose sole qualifications for the DCI job were his political connections.

The DCI’s heavy-lidded gaze slid to Reynolds. “What’s your view on this, Miranda?” he asked, with deceptive calm.

She shot a quick glance at Demopoulos. She could almost read the appeal for support in his eyes. Oh, hell no, she thought coolly, there was no way she was joining him at the chopping block. Not with Horne already starting to sharpen his axe. Besides, she was confident that the Analysis Directorate chief had let himself be played by whoever was really feeding him all this material about missiles and oil tankers and all the rest.

If she had to place bets, her guess now was that his private GLASS ISLE material had its ultimate origins in Israel. The Israelis were already locked in an undeclared war with Iran. Their small navy and commando units periodically carried out attacks against Tehran’s shipping, especially targeting its oil tankers and weapons shipments. To date, they’d been successful more often than not, but the logistical strain of carrying out a prolonged campaign so far beyond Israel’s borders had to be immense. Luring the U.S., with its much larger and more powerful Persian Gulf naval task force, into joining in against Iran would be pure profit for her counterparts in the Mossad. Well, she decided, going down in flames to help the Israelis out of a jam was definitely not part of her career game plan at Langley.

Firmly, Reynolds shook her head. “Even assuming there really is a missile hidden aboard that tanker, so what?” she asked caustically. “The interagency consensus — one shared by all of our closest allies — is that Iran’s nuclear program hasn’t been able to produce a working fission bomb yet, right?”

Reluctantly, Demopoulos nodded.

“So what’s the real threat here?” Reynolds continued remorselessly. “Does anyone here seriously believe that a single rocket, armed, at most, with a conventional high-explosive warhead — no matter how large — really poses some type of an existential threat to the U.S.? Or to any of our allies, for that matter?”

Gamely, Demopoulos tried to recover lost ground. “Conventional weapon or not, it’d be a hell of a black eye for the administration and for the Agency if the Iranians or one of their terrorist group surrogates managed to lob a warhead into New York or Washington or Houston,” he warned. “The kinetic impact alone could knock down a skyscraper and kill a lot of people.”

“Maybe so… if everything went right for them and wrong for us,” Reynolds allowed with an unconcerned shrug of her shoulders. “But how many times did you say the Iranians have tested their Zuljanah rocket?”

His mouth tightened. Plainly, he saw where she was headed. “Twice, so far,” Demopoulos said quietly.

She smiled sweetly back at him and then went ahead and stuck her metaphorical shiv right between his ribs. “And what happened on that second launch, Phil?”

“We think the payload vehicle malfunctioned on its way to orbit,” he conceded tightly. “Which apparently forced the Iranian launch crew to order it to self-destruct.”

Reynolds turned back to Horne, who wore an expectant expression on his florid face. “There you have it, Charles,” she said calmly. “I don’t believe this is a threat worth getting all worked up over.” Her shoulders lifted again. “Anyway, we have excellent coverage of the entire Western Hemisphere. If Tehran does ship this missile somewhere within range of the U.S., we’ll spot it soon enough. And, if necessary, we can always blow it up on the launch pad then — without unnecessarily upsetting our masters in the White House.”

From the pleased look Horne gave her, she knew she’d made her point. She almost felt sorry for Philip Demopoulos. He should have known better than to hope she’d back him up on this. Besides, if he’d bothered to share that private source of raw intelligence material with her first, she could have warned him off before it was too late. No, she thought coldly, this was all his own fault.

The head of the Analysis Directorate had played games to make himself look good… and instead all he’d managed to do was guarantee that the CIA’s risk-averse director would turn a blind eye to whatever the Iranians were planning. If she’d honestly believed this missile they were smuggling posed a real threat, that would have bothered her. As it was, Miranda Reynolds was just grateful she’d been given the opportunity to bolster her own standing inside Langley at Demopoulos’s expense.