He put his arms around her and said, “Nothing that a little time, rest, and tender loving care won’t fix.”
“Oh, Tom.” They kissed. She felt delicate and tender in his arms. He wanted to make her better, and protect her, and wash away all the guilt and anguish that clouded her soul.
Gently, he pushed her back onto the bed, lay down beside her, and held her hand. Another hungry part of him wanted to make love to her, but he knew the time wasn’t right.
In the morning when Crocker got out of the shower, Holly was gone. Lying on a chair by the bed he saw a book called Healing after Loss. The subtitle read: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief.
Twenty minutes later he arrived at ST-6 headquarters and found Sutter sitting in the same uniform he’d worn the day before, his stockinged feet on the desk, reading a document as he sipped from a mug of coffee with a trident on it.
“Captain?”
He looked up and set the mug down on his desk. “Sit down, Crocker. How many times have you seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia?” he asked in his backcountry drawl.
“I don’t know. Half a dozen. Why?”
“Fascinating story, on so many levels. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I streamed it twice on my computer. The different tribes, the desert, a hero wrestling with his own internal demons. Kind of reminded me of you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Inspired me, too. One highly motivated man can make a difference, especially if he understands the culture of the people he’s dealing with,” Sutter said as he tossed the document he was holding at him. “Read this.”
Crocker caught it and quickly scanned the two-page report on Scimitar, which had nothing to do with tribes or the desert, but briefly described a group of twelve young Iranians who had been working clandestinely with the CIA to help sabotage the Iranian government. The report didn’t mention what they had managed to accomplish so far or their capabilities. Their leader was a man named Ramin.
Sutter asked, “What do you think?”
“Interesting. But what did you mean about me wrestling with my personal demons?”
“Oh, that.” Sutter smiled, scratched his jaw, took a long drink of coffee, and picked up another document from his desk. “Remember the psych evaluation I told Doc Petrovian to administer to you? Well, he concluded that you’re a combination of an aggressive PT and an introverted intuitive.”
“What do you mean by PT?” Crocker asked.
“It stands for personality type,” Sutter answered. “Don’t get all worked up. What he’s saying is that you display the characteristics of an ideal leader, but you’re also conflicted.”
“Conflicted how?” Crocker asked, starting to feel defensive.
“It means you like being able to dominate and command others and exercise power, but you also like to stay in the background until you feel the need to take over. So you like being part of a traditional power structure, but you’re also someone who primarily trusts his intuition, which makes you a loner and a rebel. You’re active and adventurous, but you also need time alone to sit back and observe the world and make associations.”
“Petrovian said that?” Crocker asked.
“Sound like you?” Sutter asked back.
“Kind of.”
Sutter got up and refilled his mug from a stainless-steel urn behind his desk. “Forget about the psychological profile for the time being.”
“Sir-”
“I need you to do two things. One, select three men to go with you into Iran.”
“Only three, sir?” Crocker asked.
“Yes, three. Don’t fight me on this. I want you to consider carefully what you’re going to need in terms of operational specialties, personal characteristics, and language skills.”
“I still don’t know the specific mission.”
Sutter leaned back and yawned. “I won’t be able to tell you that until it’s approved by the president.”
“When’s that likely to happen?”
“Today. Tomorrow. Figure another four hours after that, we’ll want you to deploy.”
Crocker stood at attention. “That soon, sir?”
“Yes, that soon.” Sutter rose and handed him a blue notecard with a name written on it. “Here’s the second thing I need you to do.”
Crocker read the name and asked, “Who’s John Smith?”
“Some deep, deep black-ops guy Donaldson says you need to coordinate with.”
“When and where, sir?’
“Turn over the card.”
On the other side Crocker read “Williamsburg Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia,” and “Twelve thirty p.m.” He’d attended a wedding reception there once.
“Today, sir?”
Sutter nodded. “By the way, Doc Petrovian told me some of the other people with your combination of personality traits include Al Capone, Fidel Castro, and Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m thinking of sending someone over to your house to see what you store in your freezer.”
“I hope that’s a joke, sir.”
Sutter laughed.
He entered the spacious white lobby of the Williamsburg Lodge-a sprawling two-story colonial-style inn a block or so from the historic center. At the front desk he asked for Mr. Smith.
“Is Mr. Smith a guest here?” the thin male clerk with stiff brown hair asked.
“I don’t know. But he asked me to meet him here.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Mansfield.”
The clerk turned, consulted a computer screen, whispered to an older clerk, then returned and said, “Mr. Smith is waiting for you in the Golden Horseshoe Grill.”
“Where’s that?”
“Take that hallway straight back, past the big fireplace. You’ll see the entrance on the left.”
“Thanks.”
Entering the room, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light. The walls were paneled with walnut. Old wagon wheel fixtures hung from the ceiling. A man with a white apron stretched across his big belly polished glasses with a white towel behind the bar.
“John Smith?” Crocker asked.
The bartender shrugged and nodded toward a big man in the darkness at the end of the bar as if to say, try him. The man he indicated had gray hair to his shoulders and was speaking on a cell phone.
“John?” Crocker asked.
The big man nodded and pointed a finger at the lounge, which was empty except for three elderly couples, two of whom were seated together. Crocker selected a table in the far corner by a window that overlooked the golf course. It was overcast outside. Two men passed in a golf cart, one wearing a pink sweater and green pants.
“What are we doing here?” Crocker heard a deep voice ask.
He looked up and saw the big man standing behind a chair on the other side of the table.
“John Smith?” No way that was his real name.
The man sat. He had huge shoulders, no neck, and a very strong and unusual face-large hooked nose, high cheekbones, a prominent forehead with thick black eyebrows. He looked like a Bedouin chieftain, despite the straight gray hair, which Crocker realized was a wig, and the mustard-tinted glasses that hid his eyes.
“You play?” Smith asked, setting his BlackBerry on the table and nodding toward the course.
“Never.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“You?”
Smith smiled without showing any teeth. “I do a little of everything. You want me to play golf, I play golf. You want to play tennis, I play tennis. You like to dance the mambo, I learn to do that, too.”
Crocker said, “Lou Donaldson asked me to meet you.”
“Louie the doughnut, yeah. I let him think he’s my boss.” Smith twisted his mouth and lifted his eyebrows, a set of facial contortions that seemed to express the complex feelings he had about him. “You want to hear about Scimitar?”
“Yeah.”
The young waitress arrived. Crocker ordered a steak sandwich with fries. Smith told the waitress he was fasting and only wanted a glass of water with a twist of lemon. Then he leaned over the table and said in a low voice, “Whatever you’ve heard about Scimitar, I’m afraid to say, is probably an exaggeration. I’m the only one who has actually met and worked with these people. They’re real, and they have provided us with some good intel. But they’re not much.”