Target Omega

CHAPTER FIFTY

The identity of the amphibian who had accompanied Julian Day to dinner at the Mayflower had nagged at Dwyer most of the night. Dwyer couldn’t match a name to the face, nor could he recall where he had seen the face before. But there was something about the man, some vague recollection rattling about in Dwyer’s mind, that told him that particular face shouldn’t be accompanying Day anytime, anyplace.

Now Dwyer had another puzzle on his hands. Earlier, he had dispatched a tactical team to pick up Olivia Perry at the Mayflower. The operation had gone smoothly, although several of the hotel’s night staff were frightened by the sudden appearance in the dead of night of half a dozen large, swiftly moving men.

Olivia had given Dwyer the flash drive that Garin had obtained from the Iranians. Dwyer had promptly awakened Matt and Ray, and they drove to a DGT facility just outside of Quantico. While Olivia remained at Dwyer’s place under the protection of the tactical team, a group of DGT technicians began analyzing the contents of the flash drive. At the same time, Dwyer ran the photographs of the frog through the DGT facial recognition system.

Dwyer’s technicians told him that a full forensics analysis of the flash drive would take a while, but it was clear that the device harbored a worm — an extraordinarily complex one. The FRS, however, returned a match in relatively short order, and when it did, Dwyer immediately remembered where he had seen the frog before: the Russian embassy on Wisconsin Avenue. He was Yevgeny Torzov, an ostensibly innocuous functionary in the Russian diplomatic corps. Only a select few knew he was SVR.

Dwyer pondered the possible reasons why Julian Day, counsel to the chairman of Senate Intelligence, would meet with Yevgeny Torzov. No matter how hard he tried, Dwyer couldn’t think of an innocent one.

Arlo led the national security advisor on one of his frequent strolls along the north side of the National Mall. It was not a daily stroll, the demands of the office being such that doing nearly anything on a regular basis was difficult. But Arlo and his master usually could be found somewhere along the path between the Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial four or five mornings a week.

The stroll provided Brandt an opportunity — uninterrupted by aides or conference calls — to sharpen his thoughts and shape inchoate theories. The exercise was a substitute for a cigarette habit long since vanquished. Now the only times he smoked were on celebratory or contemplative occasions. Even then, he indulged in a solitary Winston.

At the moment, Brandt’s focus was on, of all things, warehouses. Warehouses in Murmansk. Warehouses outside Vladivostok. Warehouses around Ust-Kamchatsk. Cavernous warehouses filled with inventory for which the market was, at best, static: standard generators, cables, transformers, capacitors, routers, distribution boards, circuit breakers, switchboards. Nothing advanced or cutting-edge. And, as Olivia had insisted, Brandt was beginning to sense there was something troubling about that. Something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. But something connected to the Russian-Iranian — sponsored UN resolution condemning Israel and to Olivia’s conversation with Michael Garin, both of which signaled major problems in the offing.

The night before, the UN General Assembly had voted to condemn Israel. Only the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia had voted against it. Germany had abstained. The resolution provided cover for Israel’s enemies and within hours the number of skirmishes between the IDF and Hezbollah had increased dramatically. Syrian troops were massing close to the frontier villages near the Golan Heights. Hundreds of rockets were being fired on Israel from southern Lebanon with deadly effect. Although most political pundits contended that full-scale war was unlikely, they were talking out of terminal ignorance. The National Security Council believed the probability of all-out war was greater than at any time since 1982. To lessen the possibility, the Pentagon ordered the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, to deploy ships to strategic locations throughout the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.

As troubling as Brandt found these events, they were dwarfed by what Olivia had told him. The information she had gotten from Michael Garin filled in the blanks in her hypothesis regarding Russian-Iranian cooperation on the UN resolution. In short, the latest crisis in the Middle East was about more than Israel. She and Garin believed the United States was also a target. And that nukes were involved.

The problem with the United States — as — an — ultimate — target hypothesis, however, was that all intelligence indicated that Iran didn’t yet have the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. And Brandt knew that the Russians would never do so.

Nonetheless, Olivia maintained that Russia and Iran planned to hit the United States in addition to Israel. And they planned to hit the United States hard. Precisely how they were going to hit the United States, and with what, Olivia didn’t say. But the Oracle, strolling in the warming morning air past some of the most recognizable monuments in the world, was in the process of formulating the answer. Before going to the president with it, however, Brandt needed more evidence. And he needed to consult with Olivia, the one person who probably was closer to the answer than he. Telling the commander in chief to prepare for one of the greatest threats to national security since the Cuban missile crisis required more support than the hunch of a man currently sitting atop the FBI’s Most Wanted list.