Flash Point

2

Sami Haddad slowed as he turned into CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He had worked there for only three years but it was already becoming old hat. He had the apartment, the badge, the cool job, and the respect that came from lowering his voice when he told people where he worked. This was the New CIA. The one with a website. The one that acknowledged its existence and allowed people to say that was where they worked. At least the analysts. It was only the spooks who went odd places and did unspeakable things who couldn’t tell people what they did.

He parked his ugly Nissan and slammed the door as hard as he could without being obvious about winding up. He listened for the telltale protest of the door with its trademark ping, the sound of a cheap, thin door. He wished his car would just die so he could have an excuse to buy another one. Until it broke he couldn’t justify a new car. His father would never approve. Only replace things when they need replacing, especially transportation. You don’t buy a car to make a statement or look good. That’s what his father said. Mr. Pragmatic, who drove an S class Mercedes. So Sami didn’t wash his car, or change its oil, or do any scheduled maintenance. He just waited for it to die, which it refused to do.

He walked to the building and held his key card in front of the red light on the other side of the window near the door. It recognized his card and let him in. The guard looked at him as he entered and nodded toward the X-ray machine and metal detector. All employees had to be checked every day. No exceptions. Too many people had too much against the Central Intelligence Agency to be sloppy about security.

“Morning,” Sami said, putting his briefcase onto the conveyor belt. He wondered, as he did every morning, whether the X rays affected his sandwich. Probably not. If anything, they probably killed some bacteria. He knew the rays didn’t affect the rest of the contents, the Arab newspapers, the Arabic dictionary, and the book he had taken home, The History of the Crusades.

Sami rode the elevator to the third floor and headed for his cubicle, where, like any good Dilbert, he put down his briefcase, took out his lunch to put in the refrigerator in the coffee room, turned on his computer, and sat down to work for the day. His mind immediately brought him back to where he had been the previous night at 9 p.m., the last time he had been at his desk. The very thoughts that had caused him to go to the Library of Congress and take advantage of the after-hours access that few ever used. He had checked out an obscure book on medieval Middle Eastern history and another on the Crusades.

He picked up the report that he had left on his desk. It was from the NSA. They had intercepted some communications they had found curious and sent them his way as they did many others in a given week. This was the only one he had kept.

It was from a very common transmitter, using ordinary voice codes that unsophisticated people used to allow themselves to think no one could figure out what they meant. But there had been a name that had been spoken in the signals. The name had created confusion at NSA, and caused them to make sure Sami was aware of it — he got all the unusual Arabic references.

Sami had a Ph.D. in Arabic studies from Georgetown, and was the son of a former Syrian diplomat. His father was a man who had found himself on the opposite side of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, and had left the service of Syria to stay in the United States with his American wife. Sami had been born in the United States and had only a passing knowledge of Syria, based mostly on visits he had made to his cousins. But he knew Arabic, and he knew how Arabs thought. That made him invaluable to the Agency and in particular, the Middle Eastern Section, in the subdirectory of Emerging Terrorist Organizations.

“You still looking at that NSA report? It’s not that long,” Terry Cunningham said. Cunningham was a fellow analyst with a Ph.D. in political science. His strength was having knowledge of everything that had happened in the Middle East in the twentieth century. He knew all the political groups, angles, and implications. Although he wasn’t perfect, his ability to predict what would happen next was uncanny. He also spoke passable Arabic.

“I’m worried,” Sami said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Talk to me.”

“A new organization. That goes way back.”

“Where?”

“I can’t really talk about it and make sense yet.”

“What do you have?”

“I need to think about this some more.”

“The boss is going to want to hear about it.”

“Not yet.”

“I want in.”

“When I’ve got something to say.”

“Sounds to me like you do.”

“Soon.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Cunningham said, heading out of Sami’s cubicle for his own.

“Don’t worry.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Tony Vialli asked Woods as they stood facing each other in the paraloft, where all the pilots kept their flight gear and hung their G-suits and dry suits. Vialli knew he was a hothead, but he also knew when he was right. He pulled the zipper on the leg of his G-suit all the way to the top, freeing the zipper, which he angrily pulled apart. “Well?” he asked, waiting for Woods to reply.

Woods was taking his flight gear off slowly, methodically. Sedge, Vialli’s RIO, and Wink were removing their flight gear and staying out of the discussion. Wink knew he was next. He and Woods were of virtually identical seniority in the squadron.

Woods finally replied, “What?”

“That stunt,” Vialli answered instantly, knowing Woods was stalling.

“Cool your jets, Boomer. No harm done.”

Vialli glared at him and continued, “Scared the shit out of me, man. That’s harm to me.”

“Keeps you on your toes.”

“When I’m already skimming an overcast?”

“See? You weren’t even complying with Visual Flight Rules. Violating cloud clearance requirements,” Woods said as he hung his torso harness — the webbed harness they wore around their legs and chest and attached them to their ejection seats — on the hook with his name on it.

“I’m serious. You went IFR and then thumped me. That’s reckless, Sean. Someone could have gotten hurt.”

“All right. It won’t happen again. Let’s forget about it.”

Vialli didn’t say anything.

“Let’s go to the wardroom. I need a slider. Wink’s coming.”

“Aren’t we going to debrief the hop?”

“What’s to debrief? We did twenty intercepts and didn’t see anyone trying to attack the ship. Skip it. Wink’s already done the intel debrief at CVIC.”

Vialli hung the rest of his gear on his hook. He pulled his green flight suit and the T-shirt he wore under it away from his chest to break the seal his sweat caused and rolled up the cuffs twice, exposing his forearms slightly. He was still peeved, but not sure what to do about it. He didn’t want to turn in his roommate, section leader, senior officer, and best friend for a flight violation. That would be a breach of the unwritten rules. “I’m going to hit the rack. Too damn late for a greaseburger.” He walked toward the door of the ready room.

“You still want to go to Pompeii when we pull into Naples?” Woods called after him.

Vialli didn’t even slow down as he let the door close behind him.

Sami stared at the pictures of the Gaza attack. “I don’t know. How could I tell just by looking at pictures of dead people?” he asked, annoyed.

“Is there anything in your research to point to them?” Cunningham asked.

“I don’t have any research. I have a bunch of history which may be interesting one day or may just make me look stupid.”

“Talk to me, Sami. Bounce it off me.”

Sami didn’t want to talk about it yet. It was too easy to say too much. But he needed someone else’s input. “The oldest secret society in the world. But they disappeared a long time ago.”

Cunningham thought about it for a moment. “You’re thinking maybe not?”

“Maybe.”

“Because of one transmission?” Cunningham asked.

“That’s what started me thinking. Now I’m seeing other things I hadn’t noticed before.”

“You haven’t told anybody?”

“No reason to yet. I may be out of my mind.”

Cunningham sat on the corner of Sami’s desk. “Maybe it’s time.”

Sami wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to overstate it.

“Want me to set up a brief with the section head?”

“I think I’ll bring it up at our meeting this afternoon.” He glanced at the pictures again. “What did the Palestinians say about the weapons?”

“American-made M-60 machine guns, American TOW missile launcher.”

“Anybody trace them?”

“Actually, yes. Funny you should ask. The guns still had the serial numbers on them.”

Sami frowned. “Why would they do that? And they left them in the van? They didn’t care if anyone found them?”

“Nope. Like they wanted them to be found.”

“Could they trace them?”

“Yeah. Easy. United States Marine Corps. In Lebanon. After the barracks were blown up they were never found. There has always been a suspicion a bunch of weapons ended up with the Druze in Beirut.”

“Druze?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure Druze?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Haddad didn’t reply. He glanced at the NSA report. “The signals were from Lebanon, and the Druze… I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“Better bring it up at our meeting.”

Woods stood by the track in the Naples train station where he was supposed to meet Vialli, his reluctant co-tourist for the day. He had convinced his roommate to go with him to Pompeii. He glanced up again, scanning the crowd for Vialli, as he tried to open the triangular box of Toblerone chocolate he had just bought with Italian money, a piece of paper that had so many zeros on it it looked like monopoly money.

Woods checked the time. The big clock at the end of the track, past the engine, was five minutes behind his watch. Typical Italian efficiency. Can’t even keep their clocks right. He had been in the Naples train station dozens of times. This was his fourth cruise to the Mediterranean, two with his first F-14 squadron, and one other with this squadron, VF-103, the Jolly Rogers, the ones carrying on the decades-old tradition and name of the most famous fighter squadron in the Navy. Woods loved their whole image, the tails with skull and crossbones, the traditional pirate flag. He was proud to be a Jolly Roger. And with this squadron and the one before, he knew Med cruises meant going to Naples, one of the finest ports in the Med, and the home of the Sixth Fleet.

He had been through this train station leaving on a ten-day skiing vacation in Switzerland, and for trips to Rome, to Venice, and to Paris. He was comfortable traveling in Europe even though he didn’t speak any foreign languages. He had always taken advantage of the leave he accumulated to see Europe while in the Med. Few other officers did, so he often traveled alone.

Woods took his wallet from his jacket pocket, pulled out a small, two-inch square sticker, and peeled off the back. He looked around to see if he was being watched. He reached behind him and stuck the zapper — a sticker with the Jolly Rogers logo on it — on the light pole against which he was leaning. He smiled to himself.

Suddenly, he saw Vialli jogging toward him through the train station.

Vialli reached him breathless. “Hey! Sorry I’m late. I didn’t think I’d make it at all. The boat I was on flamed-out. We had to do a mid-ocean transfer to another boat. What a flail.” He glanced at the train. “Did you get the tickets?”

“Yeah. We’ve got to get on,” Woods said, stuffing the Toblerone box into his back pocket like a set of drumsticks and moving quickly to the train.

They climbed up the stairs of a passenger car and walked down the hallway next to the compartments. Woods finally found an empty one, slid the door open, and they stepped in. Vialli closed the door behind him.

They sat down next to the window across from each other. Each had two empty seats beside him. Vialli leaned his head against the top of the vinyl seat and closed his eyes. Woods stared out the window. Vialli could sleep anywhere. Nothing troubled him. He was unflappable. Woods was pulling the bent chocolate box out of his pocket when something caught his eye by the door. A face. Someone had looked into the compartment and then moved away. There it was again. Woods watched the door, and suddenly it opened quickly. A woman stepped in and closed the door behind her.

She glanced at Vialli, who appeared to be sleeping, and sat down in the corner, on Vialli’s side, placing her knit bag on the seat between them.

Woods, his mouth slightly open, tried not to stare — she was shockingly pretty — and nodded an acknowledgment. She smiled at him but didn’t speak. Woods kicked Vialli’s shoe, rousing him. Vialli sat up, baffled, looking at his squadron mate. Woods glanced casually at the woman, and Vialli followed the direction of his friend’s eyes.

“Hi,” Vialli said to her, no longer baffled and wasting no time. He brushed his hair back with his hand.

She looked past him out the window at the gray Naples morning. The train had picked up speed and was rocking softly sideways. She sat quietly with her hands on the armrests at her side. She wore a dark blue, loose-fitting flowery cotton dress, and had long, brown curly hair. Her dazzling light brown eyes had streaks of green and yellow in them. An even tan accentuated her outdoor, fit look. Vialli thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

“Are you Italian?” Vialli asked.

She glanced at him momentarily, then turned her eyes back to the window. The door suddenly flew open and the conductor came into their compartment. The train rocked, and the conductor leaned against the door to steady himself and free both hands. Addressing the woman in Italian, he stuck out his hand for her ticket. She smiled, handing the conductor her ticket with her left hand and speaking to him so rapidly that Vialli couldn’t recognize any of the ten Italian words he knew.

She had a lovely smile, and her eyes sparkled as she joked with the conductor. He took the rest of the tickets and left the compartment.

Vialli shifted his gaze from the door to the woman, feeling his stomach tighten as he watched her. Woods studied Vialli and could tell his friend was about to do something rash. He tried to get his attention to discourage him. No luck.

“Do you speak English?” Vialli asked her.

Again, she didn’t respond, not even to acknowledge that he had spoken. “Sprechen-sie Deutsch?” he asked.

Woods wondered what Vialli planned to do if she answered him, since Vialli didn’t speak German. He leaned forward and gave Vialli a raised-eyebrow look.

Vialli gave him a look back, a “What?” look.

The woman transferred her gaze from the tranquil Mediterranean to her fellow traveler. “Nein,” she replied coolly, finally.

“I don’t speak Italian,” he said, happy to have gotten some response.

She gave him a cool smile and crossed her legs. She reached into her bag, pulled out a paperback book, and began to read. Vialli sighed audibly and looked out the window at the scenery he had seen so many times from the other side, on the sea. Suddenly he turned his head back toward her and looked again at the book she was reading. Hemingway. In English.

“You do speak English!” he said with a smile.

“A little,” she replied without looking up as she found her place in the book.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said sitting up, energized.

“Because you would have started talking to me and I wouldn’t have been able to read my book, which I have been looking forward to for a long time.” She returned to her book.

“How did you know I’d start talking to you?”

“Because you’re an American, and Americans always talk to strangers.”

“How’d you know I was an American?” he wondered.

She shook her head slowly, amazed. “Your haircut, your jacket, your shoes, your cord… what do you call them — corduroy pants. Your questions, and you’ve been staring at me since I came into this compartment.”

Vialli grimaced. “Sorry…”

She started reading again.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Vialli said. He checked his watch. The trip was only thirty minutes, and they had left Naples fifteen minutes before. He tried to concentrate on the countryside as the rails clacked rhythmically beneath him. He could see Mt. Vesuvius in the distance, the now-dormant volcano that had buried Pompeii centuries ago. You could see it from Naples for that matter, or from thirty miles out at sea, or from a hundred miles if the weather was clear and you were flying high enough. He couldn’t stand it. “Where are you from?”

She placed a bookmark in her book and laid it on her lap. “The American conversation,” she said. “Where are you from, what do you do, where did you go to school. Right?”

He looked at her directly, and she noticed his intense brown eyes under his dark brown hair. “Doesn’t hurt to be friendly,” he said.

She relaxed slightly. “No, it won’t hurt. I’m sorry.” She took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. “I live in a town in northern Italy called Trento. It’s just south of Austria.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is very pretty, and very old. A wonderful town.”

“What do you do?”

“See?”

“Come on,” he said.

“I am a schoolteacher, at least by training. I don’t teach right now. I’m waiting for an opening.”

He nodded and looked out the window again, trying not to show that he was really focusing on her reflection in the glass.

“What do you do?” she asked suddenly.

He looked at her with surprise. “I’m in the Navy.”

“The American Navy?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you on a ship?”

He nodded. “More or less. I’m a pilot — I fly off a carrier.”

“Of course,” she said. “You’re on that big carrier in the bay.”

He smiled and nodded. “That’s me. The George Washington. Largest class of warship ever built. Nimitz class.”

“Is it really?”

“Nothing else is even close. Some of the battleships were almost as heavy, but nothing nearly as big in every dimension.”

“What do you fly?”

“Do you know airplanes?”

“Not really.”

“Fighters. F-14s. Tomcats. You know, two tails, wings that move back and forth…”

“I think I’ve seen them. I think we have them too.”

Vialli shook his head. “No, only the U.S. and, unfortunately, Iran.”

“What do we have that looks like that?”

“We who? Italy?”

She looked puzzled, then understood. “Yes. Italy.”

“Nothing really. Just Fiats and those sorts of things. Gnats. Bugsmashers. Noisemakers. Nothing serious.”

“Well, you shouldn’t belittle it…”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m sure Italy’s Air Force is truly formidable,” he said. He tried to get her to look at him, which she was reluctant to do. “Do you mind if I ask you your name?”

She hesitated before she answered. “Irit.”

“What?” he said, leaning forward, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Irit.”

“That’s an odd name. Is it Italian?”

“What’s your name?”

“Tony Vialli.”

“That’s an odd name. Is it American?”

“Very funny. No such thing as an American name,” he said, “except maybe Sitting Bull,” he added. “No, my name is Italian, and my family, some time ago, I think my grandparents’ parents, came over to the States. I’ve heard they were from Genoa, but I’m not really sure.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Vialli.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Where are you going?”

She looked amused. “This train only goes to Pompeii.”

He nodded, trying to imply he knew that. “But are you going to see the tourist trap, where all the dead people are, or what?”

“Yes, I’m going to see where the dead people are. What else would I be doing there?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I figured there may be a town there too.”

“Not really.”

“So you’re playing tourist today?”

“Yes I am.”

“You want to come with us? With Sean and me? We can go to Pompeii together and see the dead people,” he said. He suddenly realized he hadn’t even asked Woods. “If that’s okay with you?” he said to Sean. “We’ll all go together.”

Woods stared at him, amazed.

She studied Vialli carefully. “I don’t really know you.” She leaned back against the seat as the train rounded a curve. She considered. “Why not.”