“They have a quorum, but they still might send the draft resolution down to committee,” Victoria Collins said.
“They won’t do that—not with almost continuous images of San Francisco being played on TV,” the President said. “What’s the latest straw poll?”
“The war resolution is evenly split,” Collins replied. “Repealing Posse Comitatus…still three to one against.”
“But that was before San Francisco,” Robert Chamberlain reminded her. “They might change their votes now. There was a nuclear bomb planted right in downtown San Francisco, for God’s sake!”
“They see enough National Guard troops in their cities, airports, and bus terminals now—they might think that’s plenty,” Collins said uneasily.
“I’m done waiting around here,” the President said resolutely. “Where do we start, Robert?”
“Task Force TALON is back at their base in New Mexico, sir,” Chamberlain replied. “They’re investigating several possibilities. The FBI is interviewing tollbooth operators to see if anyone can identify Pavel Khalimov, but we’re fairly certain that he was involved in the bombings in San Francisco.”
“Be sure TALON is fully reconstituted and ready to fight,” the President said.
“Does that mean I get control of the unit back, sir?”
“Damn right it does. I don’t want them on the backside of the power curve any longer—I want them right up front, wherever the investigation takes them. Get them moving, Robert. Find Zakharov and destroy him. Wherever it leads them, whatever it takes—find him and destroy him. They get anything they want: aircraft carriers, bombers, tankers, transport planes, troops, the works. But they find this Zakharov guy and destroy him.”
“Yes, sir,” Chamberlain responded. “It will be my pleasure—my extreme pleasure.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dumyat, Egypt
Two nights later
It had not taken as long as he thought it might, but it was still well after 9 P.M. when Yusuf Gemici closed the last accounts receivable file on his computer and secured it with a password. He took a last sip of thick, strong Turkish coffee, popular in Egypt and around the Middle East, and was ready to start shutting the computer down when a gentleman and a lady came through the outer office door. The secretary—his slutty but very cute sister-in-law—was long gone for the day, so he rose and went out to the reception area. This was an intrusion, sure, but he wasn’t yet rich enough to turn away customers, especially those who looked well-off enough.
“Ahlan wa sahlan,” Gemici said in Egyptian Arabic. “Misae el kher.”
“Ahlan bik,” the man said in response, in stilted but passable Arabic with an American accent. “Enta bititkallim inglizi?”
“Yes, of course, I speak English,” Gemici replied. “Welcome to my place of business. How may I be of service?”
“I apologize for the late hour,” the man said. The woman, who had been unobtrusively hanging behind the man, walked off and began looking at the pictures of cargo vessels on the walls in front of the secretary’s desk.
“Not at all. Please come in and sit.” The man came into Gemici’s office; the woman stayed outside. “I am Yusuf Gemici, the owner of this business. I shall make coffee, unless you prefer water? Juice?”
“Water, min fadlak.”
“Of course. You Americans are not accustomed to ahwa turki.” He retrieved bottles of mineral water from a small refrigerator next to the secretary’s desk, along with a bowl of half-melted chips of ice and a couple small glasses. The woman stayed outside, as a woman who knew her place should always do. “I do not forget how much you Americans like your ice cubes.”
“Shukran,” the man said.
“Afwan.” Gemici kept the door to his office partially open. The woman was still looking at the pictures of various ships on the wall—she hadn’t said a thing, unusual for a Western woman. “We do not see many Americans here in our little city, except for the oil workers and tourists taking the felucca tours. Have you been on the Mouth of the Nile tour?”
“No, not yet.”
Gemici gave the man his business card after scribbling some Arabic on the back. “My brother runs the Timsaeh tour company. The best boats on the Mediterranean. Show him this card and he will get you a bottle of Omar Khayyam wine for your sunset cruise.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Pleasantries over, Gemici leaned back in his chair expansively. “How may I help you, sir?”
“My company is in the process of negotiating a sale of newly designed natural-gas metering equipment to the Egyptian General Petroleum Company,” the man said. Gemici’s eyes widened. The Egyptian General Petroleum Company was Egypt’s second-largest petroleum consortium, with an immense presence in the area because of its development of several natural-gas fields near Port Said, on the other side of the Gulf of Dumyat. “The Point Fouad project is ready to expand, and my company has a contract to provide new equipment to be shipped from Newark, New Jersey, to Dumyat.”
“Very excellent,” Gemici said. “I am glad you chose us. We have a very fine vessel to move your equipment.” He stood and went over to a large photograph of a ship on his office wall. “My pride and joy: the King Zoser, named after the man who united the two desert kingdoms into one nation which became Mi?r, or modern-day Egypt,” he said. “She is fast, reliable, efficient, fully inspected and certified by the U.S. Coast Guard, and specially designed to safely and securely handle outsized and delicate machinery such as computerized field equipment. We require very little handling equipment at the pier, so we routinely go into smaller ports which is often much more convenient for our clients. We can even offload outsized equipment directly onto offshore platforms if necessary without the use of helicopters.”
“The crew is especially important to this shipment, sir,” the man said. “To cut costs, I would like to know if the crew has any experience handling equipment such as ours. We would like to avoid sending a number of engineers on the ship if at all possible.”
“But of course!” Gemici said. “As I said, we specialize in serving the oil and gas exploration industry with safe, secure, and professional transportation support.”
“Excellent,” the man said. “In fact, I believe it was one name in particular from your company that came very highly recommended: Gennadyi Boroshev.”
Gemici kept his smile in place, but he could feel sweat start to pop out around his collar and in the soles of his feet. “I am sorry to inform you, sir, that I do not know of any such man. He does not work for my company.”
“Then maybe you can tell us where to find him, Mr. Gemici.” The woman had come into the office, followed by two younger men with obvious gun bulges under their sportcoats. He noted the shades in the windows in the outer office were all closed and the lights turned out. The woman held up a wallet and showed a gold badge. “Special Agent Kelsey DeLaine, FBI,” she said. The men with her closed the rest of the blinds in Gemici’s office and started going through his file drawers. “Gennadyi Boroshev. Where is he?”
Gemici closed his eyes as his heart sank through his chest into his bowels. Shit, he knew this was going to happen. But he still motioned to the agents rifling his file cabinets. “Do you not need a search warrant to do that, Special Agent DeLaine?”
“Do you want me to get a warrant, Yusuf?” Kelsey asked. “Would you like me to call the Mubahath el-Dawla? I’m sure they’d want to know what you’re up to.” The Mubahath el-Dawla, or State Security Investigations, was the Egyptian internal intelligence force, the secret Gestapo-like unit that provided information to the President and the Ministries of the Interior and Justice—any way they could, in whichever way the ministries wanted it, or so their reputations suggested.