Oath of Office

2

The President of the United States set a white porcelain coffee cup on a wood coaster at the edge of the Resolute desk. There were those who thought Jack Ryan surely drank from the skulls of his defeated enemies, but in truth, the academic and former Marine much preferred his coffee from a chipped ceramic mug, the interior of which was richly stained from the many gallons of brew that had gone before. He’d make the switch to that mug later in the day, but the first meeting in the Oval Office with a newly minted Cabinet official necessitated the fancy White House china to go with the requisite photo op.

With the photographer gone now, Ryan had moved around to the front of his desk to sit in one of the two Chippendale chairs, across from Mark Dehart, the secretary of homeland security. The upholstered couches and chairs in the middle of the Oval were more comfortable, but they had a way of swallowing people up. Ryan had met with Dehart briefly once before, immediately following the last White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That off-the-cuff meeting had taken place in a tiny Washington Hilton anteroom not much larger than a phone booth. It was a bit of an ambush — as interviews with the Commander in Chief often were. Dehart hadn’t had the time or the space then to be nervous, but he appeared downright unflappable now. His eyes sparkled with intensity at this first official sit-down with his new boss. Ryan liked that. People who were comfortable in their own skin were more likely to offer honest critiques and advice. And honest critiques from within one’s own camp were in short supply when one was arguably the most powerful person on the planet.

This morning, Ryan had blocked out a full twenty minutes with his new DHS secretary. It was an eternity as Oval Office meetings went, especially when the purpose was just a friendly chat.

Ryan gave an approving nod. “I apologize for taking so long to have you in for a visit.”

“You’re a busy man, Mr. President,” Dehart said. He was a fit sixty-one years old, lean, with the hungry face of a triathlete and the crow’s-feet of a born smiler. A crisp white shirt accented a deep tan, as if he’d spent any vacation time from his previous job as a congressman plowing fields on his old John Deere tractor. Dehart was born of Pennsylvania Dutch stock; his father and grandfather before him had been dairymen. He had used the “milk money” he’d earned to pay his way through undergrad at Penn State and then for a master’s in biology from Carnegie Mellon. A scientist at heart, he was a deep, analytical thinker with a farmer’s work ethic. He was honest and well liked by most. In the Machiavellian world of D.C. politics, that meant there were plenty of people who wanted to see him crash and burn because he made them look bad.

Dehart shifted in his seat. He wasn’t nervous, he just preferred to be up and doing rather than sitting and thinking about doing. “Frankly, I was surprised the confirmation went through,” he said. “I don’t know why, but Senator Chadwick really has it in for me.”

Ryan gave a slow shake of his head. As chair of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee of the Senate, or “cardinal,” Michelle Chadwick wielded enormous clout.

“No, Mark,” Ryan said and sighed. “Her fight’s with me. She just happens to have a scorched-earth policy when it comes to battles, political or otherwise. Honestly, I think I could put her name forward for a nomination and she’d disclose some sordid affair just to make me look stupid for trying to appoint her.” Ryan took another sip of coffee to wash the taste of Michelle Chadwick’s name out of his mouth, and then set the cup down to wave away any lingering thoughts. “Anyway, you made it aboard. Are you ready to hit the ground running?”

Dehart smiled. “I am indeed, sir.”

“Had a chance to read your briefing books?”

As secretary of homeland security, Dehart was responsible for, among other things, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service.

“I’m about two and a half feet down the three-foot stack of folders,” Dehart said, completely serious.

“Take it from me,” Ryan said. “Briefers are like cows, they add more to the pile every day.”

Dehart grinned. “The manure simile occurred to me, Mr. President. But my mother called this morning to warn me to keep my flippant remarks to a minimum, first time in the Oval Office and all.”

“Sage advice,” Ryan said. “So you’ve read enough to get a feel for what’s ahead of you… ahead of us. Tell me what scares you.”

Dehart inhaled deeply, and then glanced over at the presidential seal in the middle of the Oval Office carpet. He measured his words carefully before looking Ryan in the eye. “Three things, Mr. President.”

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Which three things?”

“Any three, sir,” Dehart said. “If they all happen at the same time.”

Reza Kazem did as he’d been instructed, more or less. The Russians were, after all, experts in tradecraft. He couldn’t see anyone but knew they were with him every step of the way, watching for signs of a tail.

The twenty-seven-year-old Iranian had spent four years at Georgetown earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and had no difficulty navigating in Washington, D.C. He’d certainly been here long enough to know that there were spies and, more important, counterspies behind every tree and under every stone.

At just under six feet tall, with olive skin and a full head of dark, wavy hair, Kazem did not stand out in a crowd in Iran or Washington — until one looked at his eyes. Deep green, the color of the sea in a gale, they’d garnered him plenty of female attention during his time at Georgetown. A dreamer at heart, he often forgot to eat — especially now, with so much on the line. This gave him a gaunt appearance, which American girls also appeared to like. He enjoyed football — what the Americans called soccer — and ran two miles every morning to stay in shape. He was not particularly strong in a physical sense, but that didn’t matter. People didn’t bend to his will because he muscled them. He simply told them what he wanted, looked at them with his stormy-sea eyes — and they did it.

Kazem had taken a cab from his hotel to the Metro station at Tysons Corner, where he boarded the Silver train toward Largo Town Center. As instructed, he got off the train at Rosslyn, taking the impossibly long escalator up to street level, where he walked two blocks east to a Starbucks. It was early, and he had to wait in line with all the other morning commuters to buy a cup of coffee and a slice of lemon cake, which he ate outside the doors on the street. The sidewalks teemed with people wearing earbuds, carrying newspapers, drinking coffee, but no one looked anything like an intelligence operative, Russian or otherwise. Whoever was out there must have been highly skilled. Kazem finished the lemon cake — which was moist and as good as anything he’d ever had in Iran, though he hated to admit it — and retraced his steps to the Metro station. This time he took the Orange train that ran parallel to the Silver. At L’Enfant Plaza, he changed to the Blue Line, where he retraced his journey yet again, this train turning south as it sped across the Potomac, through Foggy Bottom — where the State Department was headquartered — and bypassing Rosslyn altogether. Above ground now, Kazem stood, holding on to a steel bar above his head, the train packed shoulder to shoulder. He caught a glimpse of the endless rows of white stones on the hillside at Arlington Cemetery, and the expansive parking lot of the Pentagon. He was indeed in the belly of the beast.

Kazem exited the train at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, returning again to ground level and walking east on 15th until he reached the Crystal Gateway Marriott. He made his way through the hotel lobby and down a long, sterile-looking tile hallway into the Crystal City Underground shopping area, redolent with odors of starched shirts and polished shoes — where he was finally supposed to meet his contact.

He pushed his way through the crowds of freshly showered government workers and uniformed military personnel arriving via Virginia transit trains on their way to the Pentagon or one of the myriad other offices in this little corner inside the Beltway.

Kazem found who he was looking for outside yet another Starbucks across from a restaurant called King Street Blues.

She sat at a small, black metal table, situated among a half-dozen other identical tables. Even though she was seated, he could tell the woman was tall, and willowy thin — a long-distance runner often seen jogging on the paved trail along the Potomac between Arlington and Mount Vernon. Amber hair curled slightly at her shoulders, framing high cheekbones and a prominent, but still attractive, Slavic nose. Her charcoal-gray business suit looked expensive, though Reza had never concerned himself with things like women’s fashion. Contrary to the rules of tradecraft, he knew his contact’s name — or at least the name under which she’d registered at the embassy — Elizaveta Bobkova, first assistant to the Russian economics attaché in Washington. Reza also knew Bobkova worked for SVR, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. More specifically, she was assigned to SVR’s Political Intelligence Directorate, Iran Department.

He had met her face-to-face once before, at the national zoo, after going through a similar surveillance-detection run. This morning, two cups of coffee and two slices of lemon cake sat on the table in front of her — exactly what he’d ordered in Rosslyn, the signal that all was well.

Bobkova waved Reza over with a flick of her long fingers, the nails painted bright red. She certainly wasn’t trying to remain unnoticed. She smiled broadly and gestured to the chair opposite her.

“I trust your journey went well,” she said as he sat down.

Kazem slid his backpack between his feet.

“It did,” he said. He eyed the lemon cake. The brisk spring weather had made him ravenous. “May I eat this?”

Elizaveta nodded, and then took a sip from her cup, smudging the dark plastic lid with a darker half-moon of lipstick. “You are remarkably beautiful,” she said. “Do you know that.”

Kazem took a bite of lemon cake, just as moist as the one in Rosslyn, and let the comment slip by. He needed this woman, so he decided not to say what he was thinking. “Thank you for meeting me,” he said.

“Did you see anyone behind you?”

Kazem shook his head. “I did not.”

“I thought you might have noticed some of the men who work for me,” the Russian said. “They are bumbling imbeciles, all of them.”

Kazem knew different.

He said, “Am I to infer from this meeting that your superiors have agreed to help our cause?”

“In a way,” Bobkova said. She took another drink of coffee, then swirled the cup around, sizing him up. “As I am sure you are aware, my country has been a remarkable ally of the present regime, but we are certainly not averse to what is happening now. This insurgency, this… Persian Spring, as it has been called, is quite… remarkable.”

Kazem stifled a smile. He’d lived in the United States long enough to know that she was overusing the word.

“Our cause has a groundswell of support,” Kazem said. “Demonstrations beyond Tehran — Qom, Isfahan, east to Mashhad and as far south as Bandar Abbas, and countless other cities. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram — the government blocks them all, but we find ways around.” He waved his hand as if that were old news. “But you do not care about this. Will Russia provide what we need?”

“This is proving to be… remarkably difficult…” Bobkova looked up as she spoke, flashing her toothsome smile at a passerby to her left.

Kazem followed her eyes to see a young man in a beige trench coat — like something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie — stumble over his own feet. The man came to a full stop for a brief moment. A new flood of commuters coming in from a recent train outside across Crystal Drive, loosed mumbled curses at the man’s stupidity, flowing around him toward the Metro station as a river flows around a boulder. The man, likely a few years younger than Kazem, had pink skin that looked as if it had been rubbed with salt. His hair was slicked with pomade. An impeccable navy-blue pinstripe suit was visible beneath the open trench coat.

The pink man licked full, carpish lips as he shot a furtive look back and forth from Kazem to Bobkova. An instant later the spell was broken and he disappeared into the crowd toward the Metro station.

“I think he recognized you,” Kazem said. This odd-looking man with scrubbed skin set his teeth on edge.

“Indeed he did,” Elizaveta Bobkova said.

“What?” Kazem said, astounded at the flippancy of this woman. “You have me spend two hours avoiding surveillance, when all the while you planned for us to be seen together?”

Bobkova patted the table and gave a knowing smile. “My job is one of intricate masquerades. The measures you took this morning were absolutely necessary. If you did not try to lose your tail, the FBI would believe our meeting was of no consequence.”

Kazem shot a worried glance over his shoulder. “That man was FBI?”

“Hardly,” Bobkova scoffed. “I met him at an embassy dinner a few nights ago. But he is the talkative sort. That serves our purpose well enough. You should be happy. This way the United States will want a piece of the action. I would not be surprised if they begin to airdrop suitcases of money to you at once. That is the way Americans handle things.” A mischievous grin perked her lips. “And anyway, it will drive them crazy trying to figure out the why of it all.”

Kazem shook his head as if to clear it. “I do not understand any of this,” he said. “But you are the expert. As to the other matter, what do you mean by ‘in a way’? We have been specific enough in our requests. Iranian intelligence is bad enough, but the Revolutionary Guard is ruthless. There are things we will need to combat their effectiveness. Technical equipment that is imperative to the movement. What does this mean that you cannot help us directly?”

“I can see why people attach themselves to your cause.” She was staring into his eyes again. “So very remarkable…” She whispered to herself, dreamily, before snapping out of the stupor. She coughed, sitting up a little straighter. “Anyway, I mean just what I say. The government of Russia can provide you nothing directly.” Kazem started to protest, but she raised her hand. “But I will send you the contact information for the men who can.”

Bobkova was obviously intelligent and wanted him to think she had more information than she actually did. The masquerade of which he was a part made her little games look silly by comparison. He pushed away the uneaten half of his lemon cake and looked hard at the woman. The poor thing had no idea what she was up against, what she had become a part of. Her arrogance was… well, remarkable, and it would be her undoing.

“This is just plain weird,” an FBI counterintelligence agent named Murphy said, taking a sip from his coffee cup at a table sixty feet up the corridor from Bobkova.

“’Tis indeed, Grasshopper,” the senior of the two agents muttered. This one’s name was Coyne. He’d been with the Bureau for seventeen years, eleven of those with the Counterintelligence Division. Hailing from Tennessee, he counted his southern roots as a badge of honor and an outward sign of his savvy as a hunter of men.

The two agents watched the Iranian and the Russian with their peripheral vision while they drank their coffees and chatted. They wore neck lanyards with color-coded badges that allowed them access to the Pentagon, like half the other people in the underground shopping mall.

“The Russians have always played patty-cake with Tehran,” Murphy said. “I don’t get it. Why would Elizaveta Bobkova be meeting with the leader of a group trying to topple the present regime?”

“And better yet,” Coyne said, “why did she park herself right where Corey Fite would see her during his morning commute?”

“Corey Fite?”

“Guy with the puffy lips,” Coyne said. “He’s Senator Michelle Chadwick’s top adviser and boy toy. No, Elizaveta’s a smart lady. A certified no-shit brainiac. She’s the queen of the maskirovka, the big show. Crystal City is the Serengeti Plain of counterintel officers. This place has more spooks per square foot than anywhere in the nation. We’re everywhere, either training or running real ops. There’s no way Bobkova holds a meeting down here if she wants to keep it secret. She wanted to be seen — for sure by Fite, probably by us.”

“Why?” Murphy asked. “What’s the angle?”

“Skullduggery and shenanigans, Grasshopper.” Coyne set his coffee down hard enough that some of it geysered out of the little hole in the plastic lid. “We got the apparent leader of what’s shaking out to be a viable Iranian coup sharing cake with a known Russian spymaster — who wants Senator Chadwick to be aware of the meeting. I don’t know if they taught you this at Quantico, but if the Iranians and Russians are involved, they are up to their treacherous asses in no good.”