Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 10

President Paul Porter let the moment of silence go on good and long. He wanted them to move beyond shock. He wanted them angry, like he was.

In the wake of the pandemic, a lot of people had changed how they viewed death. Some had suffered such tremendous loss in their personal lives that they had just become numb.

The President had suffered too. He had lost friends and acquaintances, trusted confidants and cabinet members.

He had been forced to rebuild his team quickly. Everyone he had selected had come highly recommended. Some of them he had known before, some were completely new to him.

Many of them were second- and even third-stringers plucked from different agencies — seat fillers until a more formal team could finally be assembled.

Because of his leadership and handling of the crisis, the President was enjoying the highest poll numbers of his career. Even Congress, also stocked with seat fillers who had been appointed by their state governors until the next election, was working with him.

The President knew, though, that there was a limit to all the goodwill. He also knew that bad forces remained marshaled against the United States. The business of being President, of protecting the country, didn’t stop, no matter how badly he needed to catch his breath.

Porter looked around the table, and when he felt enough time had passed, he called the meeting of his National Security Council to order. The first person he looked at was his CIA Director. “What do we have?”

Bob McGee hit a button on his laptop and the screens around the Situation Room lit up with crime scene photos. They were stamped with the logo of Turkey’s General Directorate of Security.

“The Turks believe that up to ten terrorists may have been involved in the attack on Secretary Devon and his team. According to witnesses,” said McGee as he advanced to a new photo, “these three were struck and killed by the lead vehicle in the motorcade. They have been identified as Abdullah Özal, Ahmet Çiçek, and Hüseyin Tüzman. One worked in a pharmacy, one was a schoolteacher, and the third lived at home with his parents.”

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs interrupted him. “Are they wearing GoPros?”

“They are,” replied the CIA Director as he zoomed in on one of the dead terrorists and the camera mounted to his chest.

“Where’s the footage? Have the Turks shared it with us yet?”

“These cameras didn’t have SD cards. Everything was wirelessly uploaded in real time to the cloud. The NSA is already chasing it.”

“But we should expect another video,” said the Secretary of State.

McGee nodded.

“Has any group claimed responsibility? Do we know who we’re dealing with?”

“Shortly after the attacks, multiple photographs were posted to social media showing Tüzman, and maybe Çiçek, fighting in Syria.”

“So it looks like ISIS?”

Once more, the CIA Director nodded.

“How the hell did they know the motorcade route?” the National Security Advisor asked. “How does a group like ISIS get their hands on that kind of intelligence?”

“There’s obviously a leak.”

“Obviously.”

“And we have to assume that it could be connected to what happened in Anbar,” interjected the Secretary of State.

“We’ve considered that,” McGee replied.

Everyone waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.

President Porter cleared his throat and said, “In four days, we have had twenty-two Americans brutally assassinated. One of them used to sit in this very room with us. We will not slow, we will not sleep, we will not stop until the people responsible have felt the full force of our wrath. If we have to turn over every damn rock in the Middle East until we find them, we will.

“But while we’re turning over rocks, I want to discuss a broader strategy. For every ISIS Muslim fanatic we kill, two more pop up to take his place. How do we defeat them?”

“We deny them territory,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs responded. “Without territory there’s no caliphate.”

“And how do we do that?” the President asked.

“Bomb the hell out of them and send in ground troops.”

“That’s exactly what they want us to do,” said the Secretary of State. “We’d need a sustained force of five hundred thousand troops at least.”

“To wipe out less than fifty thousand jihadists?” replied the Chairman.

“No, for the decades of occupation afterward.”

“How do you figure?”

“ISIS is a creation of Sunni Islam. Part of its appeal is that it’s a pushback against the growing Shia influence in the region. That influence is backed by Iran. You’re going to end up with twenty-five million Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis looking for protection. If we don’t fill that role, they’ll run back to ISIS, or something even worse.”

“If ISIS is a creation of Sunni Islam,” said the President, “how do we get the Sunnis to destroy it?”

“You want Frankenstein to kill his own monster?” the National Security Advisor asked.

Porter nodded.

“You’re asking for a complete reformation of Islam.”

“Christianity has had one. Judaism too. Why not Islam?”

“Because Islam sees Mohammed as the perfect man and the Quran a perfect copy of a perfect book in Paradise. They have no history of criticism or self-examination. The word Islam itself means submission. And the word Muslim means one who submits.”

The President leaned in, challenging his adviser. “So you’re saying Muslims are somehow different than Jews or Christians? That they’re intellectually incapable of reform?”

“What I am saying is that the so-called ‘radicals’ are the ones practicing their faith exactly the way Mohammed wanted it practiced. The moderates are the ones who have contorted it.”

“The moderates are the majority, though. How do we push them to reform?”

“I don’t know that you could,” his adviser replied.

“That’s a cop-out. If you could wave your National Security wand and have it done in a day, how would you handle it?”

The man thought about it for a moment and said, “Every time we have been hit by a terrorist attack, we tighten our security. That means Americans wake up the day after an attack and have less freedom. It has been the knee-jerk of every administration since 9/11. Instead of eroding Americans’ civil liberties, I’d put the pressure on the Muslim nations themselves.”

“How?”

“They profile like crazy. They have no problem with it. In fact, behind closed doors, they laugh at us for being so resistant to it. I say we turn that around on them.

“The American public would be shocked to know how many foreign nationals from Muslim countries have overstayed their visas. We pause all visas for the next twelve to twenty-four months while we hunt them down.”

“Do you know what an outrage that would be?” the Secretary of State demanded. “Do you know how badly that would damage relations with our allies in the Middle East?”

“We’d do a carve-out for diplomats,” the National Security Advisor replied.

“It doesn’t matter. They’d still go ballistic.”

“Would the plan hurt well-intentioned, moderate Muslims? Yes. But that’s the point. You and I can’t reform Islam. Only the moderates can, and they need to be pissed off enough to get off their asses and do something about it.”

“But the only people these pissed-off moderates are going to be pissed off at,” the Secretary of State countered, “is the United States.”

The National Security Advisor shook his head. “Not all of them. Not the smart ones. The ones with business dealings here, and there’s a lot of them, will see this for what it is. They know who the radicals in their own families are. They know which mosques are preaching radicalism. They know who is funding it. That’s where their ire will be focused. When they start coming down on the radicals in their own midst, that’s when reform will be on the horizon.”

“Or so you hope.”

“That’s the beauty of having a magic wand, I don’t have to hope. I just wave it.”

“That’s ridiculous. In fact, the entire idea is ridiculous,” the Secretary of State replied. “You’d be giving ISIS exactly what they want.”

The President, who had been jotting notes with his Chief of Staff, suddenly looked up and said, “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“How we defeat ISIS,” Porter answered. “We give them exactly what they want.”