The Ares Decision

49

Dave Collen looked haggard as he fell into one of the chairs facing Drake’s desk. The redness of his eyes suggested that he’d been up for at least twenty-four hours straight, and his expression implied that the time hadn’t been as productive as it needed to be.

“We still don’t have any details on what happened to Smith and his people during their arrest beyond the fact that they were taken to an old military base and released eight hours later. It could be nothing more than some soldiers happening to witness Smith pulling a knife on Sabastiaan Bastock—”

“Quite a coincidence,” Drake said. “And it doesn’t explain why Bastock seems to have ended up dead.”

“I’m not buying it either, but the people we have watching them don’t have access to that base. We have no way of knowing what happened there.”

“And after they were released?”

“They picked up a vehicle at the black market and drove north followed by some of Sembutu’s men. No stops to speak of until they got to a farm owned by Noah Duernberg. They spent the night there and then headed deeper into Bahame country. That’s where we lost them.”

“Is there any link between Duernberg and the parasite?”

“None that we know of. He’s the second generation in that house. His father was a doctor by training and was loosely connected to Idi Amin.”

“A doctor? Is it possible he had experience with the infection?”

Collen shrugged helplessly. “He’s been dead a long time, and record keeping in that part of the world isn’t exactly state-of-the-art.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, isn’t there?” Drake said, starting to lose control of his frustration.

“I told you before we got rid of Brandon that it was going to partially blind us in Uganda.”

“Do we at least have someone we can we send to Duernberg’s farm to look around?”

Collen shook his head. “That’s where the news gets worse. After Smith and his people left, the farm was burned to the ground with Duernberg in it. His wife and child were in an apartment in Kampala trying to work out a way to emigrate. We sent people there…”

“And?”

“They found them in the bathtub with their throats slit.”

Drake ran a hand over his mouth and it came away slick with sweat. Duernberg knew something, and someone wanted to keep it quiet. But who? Bahame was the obvious answer, but was it the correct one? The fact that Smith and his team had been taken to a military base and were now being followed pointed in another direction — Charles Sembutu. Could there be a connection between him and the Iranians?

Collen seemed to read his mind. “Larry, we’re losing control here. This started as an exercise in spinning data. Now we’ve got an American team lost somewhere in the jungle, an old doctor’s family murdered, and one of our most dangerous operatives sniffing around to the point that she has to be dealt with. I think it’s time we consider going to the president with what we’ve got.”

“Are you getting cold feet?” Drake said, the volume of his voice rising in the soundproof room. “Were you only in this as long as there was no personal risk? As long as—”

“Bullshit, Larry! I’ve been with you from the very beginning, and I’ve been the only one getting his hands dirty. You’re not stuck trying to find reliable people to track Smith through the damn jungle. And you sure as hell weren’t in Brandon’s bedroom when he died. But we’ve lost track of one of our top microbiologists and the world authority on parasitic infections. What if Bahame has them? Jesus, what if Omidi has them? Then we may not be looking at an unsophisticated infection that would be relatively easy to control. We could be looking at something that’s been weaponized.”

Drake opened his mouth to reply but instead took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Dave. I didn’t mean to question your commitment.”

“I guess tempers are running high,” he said, forcing a smile.

Drake nodded. “I agree that the risks — to us and to the country — are higher than we hoped. But I disagree that pulling the plug will change that. What would Castilla be able to do? Go after Bahame? He already took out our best team. Make our suspicions public? That will just turn into a bunch of political posturing that’ll give the Iranians even more time to work on this thing and cover their tracks. Khamenei’s losing his grip — he knows that better than we do. He’s going all-in on this. He doesn’t have any choice.”

Drake paused to let Collen respond, but the man just stared at the ground.

“Here’s what I propose, Dave. We initiate another shake-up of our bioterror response system — throw a bunch of new scenarios at them, including one that quietly approximates a worst-case scenario for this parasite being weaponized. That way we’ll have something that can be implemented quickly if the Iranians manage to refine the parasite before they release it. Casualties will be worse than our estimates but should stay within the three quarters of a million that we considered the high side of acceptable. In the end, though, I doubt we’re going to see that kind of sophistication. My hunch is that Smith and his team are dead.”

His assistant nodded silently.

“Do you agree?” Drake prompted.

Collen finally met his eye. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Larry. You’re right. We always knew that taking down the Iranians wouldn’t be easy, but…”

“We hoped it would be easier than this,” Drake said, finishing his thought.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Randi Russell. Where do we stand with her?”

“The news is better there. She’s locked down tight — physically and electronically — and she doesn’t seem to have done anything at all since contacting the TSA.”

“No more follow-up on Brandon’s death with her FBI contact?”

“Nothing.”

“Has she made any more attempts to get in touch with Smith?”

“Not after the second call to Fort Detrick.”

“So you’re confident she’s gotten nowhere?”

“All I can say is that I’m fairly confident she doesn’t know anything more than whatever was written on the piece of paper Brandon put in her pocket.”

“Do you think she’s given up? Should we step back from our plans to deal with her?”

Collen shook his head. “If it was anybody else, I’d say we should reassess. But Randi Russell never gives up. Once she gets her teeth into something, she doesn’t let go until she’s satisfied. My take is that she’s hit a dead end and this is just a pause while she figures out her next move.”

“I agree. Now’s the time to do this — before she gets hold of some loose end we missed. Have you contacted Gohlam?”

“Everything’s set. We’ve given him all her details and he’s waiting for the go-ahead.”

Drake drummed his fingers on his desk, fixing for a moment on the closed door to his office. Padshah Gohlam was an Afghan mole living in Maryland on a student visa. The CIA had known about him since the beginning and let him into the United States to try to ferret out his contacts. They’d managed to crack his communications system, which allowed Collen to impersonate his Afghan handler while circumventing the agency’s surveillance. As far as Gohlam knew, he was being activated to take out an American operative responsible for the deaths of countless jihadists across the globe.

It was a seemingly perfect scenario. Not only would there be no reason for anyone at the agency to be suspicious of Gohlam’s motives; they would be very anxious to sweep their failure to control him under the rug. Randi Russell would disappear and the details of her death would be swallowed by a black hole of administrative ass covering.

“Do it.”

“To be clear,” Collen said carefully, “you’re telling me to give him the signal to take out Russell.”

Drake nodded. “Do it now before she figures out a way to bring all this down on top of us.”