End of Enemies

6

The President, DCI Dick Mason, and National Security Adviser James Talbot sat in the Oval Office reviewing the president’s daily brief. Classified top secret and tightly restricted, the PDB offers the president a condensation of what’s new in the world. Over the years, presidents have varied in how they got the PDB’s information. The current president liked to read the PDB personally and in an informal setting. Shirtsleeves, coffee, and bagels were usually the order of the day.

Dick Mason watched the president put down his bagel. He knew which section his boss was reading: a transcript of the Iranian prime minister’s most recent speech to a group of senior Pasdaran officers. The Pasdaran, also known as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, was one of Iran’s deadliest terrorist exports.

The CIA had long believed the prime minister was being influenced by the current ayatollah, which in itself was unremarkable, but the content of this particular speech contradicted the call for reconciliation he’d been spouting for the past eight months. In Mason’s eyes, this meant that while Iran’s goals remained unchanged, their methods were leaning more toward the covert.

“This is an accurate translation, Dick?” the president asked, running his finger along the text. “ ‘At every turn we lure the Great Satan into our traps, and then crush him under our heel like a squirming beetle. We have countless allies, more than there are stars in the heavens, and when the sky rains fire, our enemies will be pushed into the sea.’” The president looked up.

“It’s accurate, sir. But to be fair, we couldn’t expect him to talk nice about us in front of a group of fanatical Pasdaran officers.”

“How much is just talk and how much is real?”

“Not an easy question, Mr. President Islam is more than religion for them; it influences every aspect of their lives, including government. The U.S., along with the rest of the nonbelievers, are evil incarnate. Failing to set us straight jeopardizes their own souls. For them, that’s serious business. The only change we can likely expect is a heavier reliance on covert action. Same goes for Syria and Sudan.”

“Define covert,” said James Talbot.

“Increased use of surrogates, front groups, political interference. In short, deniable operations.”

The president was silent for a few moments. “Okay. Next topic.”

“Still Iran,” said Mason. “Latest estimates have their oil exports down four percent in the last six months, but production itself hasn’t changed. Same with the peripheral industries.”

“Where’s it going?”

“Into diesel production, then storage. This could mean a lot of things, but the clearest analogy we have is the Iran-Iraq war, we saw this same trend in the years prior to it Iran was stockpiling for tanks and trucks and the like.”

“Are you telling me something, Dick?”

“Not necessarily, sir. As I said, there could be any number of reasons. We know next month they’re conducting an army exercise outside Hamadan. They’ve done it at this time every year, four years running.”

“Did they stockpile for previous exercises?” asked Talbot

“No. The point is, though, we’ve got nothing to suggest they’re on the warpath. It does bear watching, and we’re doing that”

“Jim,” the president said to his national security adviser, “OPEC’s meeting in Bahrain next week. Talk to State, see if the Saudis will do a little probing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, Dick, what’s next?”

“Syria.”

“Good news or bad news?”

“Good news and undecided news, sir. Routine ELINT shows the Golan is still stable, no changes. But yesterday the NPIC caught a side-lobe image of what looks like a group of Syrian APCs, tanks, and even a few companies of airborne troops making a drop a couple hundred miles south and east of the Bekka.”

“An exercise?”

“It appears so. It’s an odd mix of forces: elements from the First Armored Division and the Seventh and Ninth Mechanized, which will probably be replacing their counterparts in the Bekka in a couple months. It’s a routine rotation, but we’ve never seen them exercise this close to a changeover period. The other elements are remnants from the downsized Golan Task Group — the Third Armored and Tenth and Eleventh Mechanized. On the upside, the Dar’a Task Group isn’t involved; all its units are accounted for.”

“Pretty big exercise,” said Talbot. “They moving in any particular direction?”

“It’s early yet, but it doesn’t look like it. We have no idea about the mission or duration, but it matches previous exercise profiles, if a little larger. The other interesting thing is the commander in charge: General Issam al-Khatib.”

“How do you know he’s in charge?”

“He was at the site.”

“So?”

“We photographed him.”

Both the president and Talbot glanced up in amazement.

“Khatib was formerly in charge of the Saraya and Difa Defense Companies, about twenty-five thousand special forces soldiers, until it was re-formed into Unit five sixty-nine, ostensibly a regular armored and mechanized group,” Mason said. “He’s also part of Assad’s inner circle, fanatically loyal, and an Alawite to boot.”

“Alawite?” said Talbot.

“Assad’s religious sect,” Mason explained. “It’s a Muslim minority group, but it has key members in positions of power in both the government and the military. After Khatib left the defense companies, we lost track of him for a year. There were rumors he was attached to Air Force intelligence, which handles terrorist liaison: recruitment, training, supply, that sort of thing.”

“Is that significant?” asked the president

“Maybe, if it’s true. Like his father, Bashar Assad has always placed someone from his inner circle in those kinds of roles. It could have been nothing more than a career builder. At any rate, wherever Khatib was, he’s in the desert now.”

The president said, “So, bottom line?”

Mason paused. His boss wanted a prediction. Like most laypeople, the president didn’t recognize the difference between capabilities and intentions. In the intelligence community the rule was: Never talk about intentions; talk about capabilities. Talk about what the enemy can do if he decides to do it. Intentions were, after all, products of the human brain, which is an unpredictable organ at best

Mason smiled, spread his hands. “Syria is conducting a military exercise.”

The president smiled. “Okay. Jim, any statements from Syria?”

“No, Mr. President”

“Let’s let ’em know we’re curious. Have State handle it and do it quick, before the Israelis get nervous. Dick, your boys will be paying close attention, I assume?”

“We’ve retasked the bird to include the exercise area in the Golan sweep.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“One thing, sir. SYMMETRY.”

“The Beirut operation.”

“Yes.” Mason briefly explained their loss of Marcus.

“Damn it! How in hell does something like this happen!”

“It just does, sir. Not often, but it does happen. Especially in Beirut”

“So I’ve heard. What are we doing?”

“We’ve ordered the network to go quiet and we’re working the product. Maybe Marcus was onto something we missed. Also, we’re checking OpSec—”

“OpSec?” asked Talbot.

“Operational security. That includes all the communication and cover procedures we had in place: dead letter drops, safe-call locations. As far as who took him, we’re stumped. No ransom, no body… nothing. No one is taking credit for it, either. That worries me. Usually, they can’t wait to let the world know they’ve snatched someone.”

“Suppose this isn’t a routine kidnapping. Suppose somebody took him for a reason,” Talbot said. “What then?”

“If they’ve got him, he will talk. How long he holds out is the only question.”

“And the network?”

“We’d have to assume it’s blown.”

The president took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Dick, we’ve got a lot riding on this thing — on that whole damned region — and SYMMETRY is part of the big picture. You know that.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Then fix it, Dick. Whatever it takes, fix it.”