“No, they don’t.”
Anders, who seemed to have grown uneasy with the direction of the conversation, cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mr. Talab. I know you’ve got something to leave with us and must go shortly. So we won’t waste any more of your time.”
Talab nodded to Fatima, who snapped open the black briefcase by her high-heeled shoe. “I leave you this, gentlemen,” Mr. Talab said. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate its dire importance. I thank you for your time and wish you good fortune.”
Fatima handed him a DVD disk in a plastic case. Talab stood, flattened the hem of his jacket, and passed it to Anders.
“Thank you, Mr. Talab. We greatly appreciate all you’ve done.”
At the door, Crocker saw Anders hand Talab a white envelope stuffed with what he assumed were U.S. dollars. Under circumstances like these, where the American side had very limited access, intel could be worth a lot of money.
Money, he reminded himself, invited treachery. And treachery, he understood, often resulted in death.
Chapter Three
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
– H. L. Mencken
Hours after he got the order to deploy to Istanbul, Crocker took Holly out to her favorite restaurant, Il Giardino. They sat in the atrium under a giant ficus tree wrapped in tiny white lights. A fire danced in the wood-burning pizza oven in the corner. As they sipped fresh Frascati wine and Andrea Bocelli sang “Con te partirò” over the stereo, Crocker gently broached the subject.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“Busy,” she answered quietly. “We’re completing a cybersecurity assessment of the embassy in Kiev.”
Holly’s job title was security threat analyst at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). DS played a vital role in protecting 275 U.S. diplomatic missions and their personnel overseas, securing critical information systems, investigating passport and visa fraud, and protecting the high-ranking foreign dignitaries and officials visiting the United States.
“The Russians can’t help snooping, right?” Crocker asked.
“With Putin in charge, you know it.” She glanced around to make sure no one was listening and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Everything in and out of there is heavily encrypted. But we’re constantly updating security. It’s a very high-tech game of cat and mouse.”
Because of the analytic nature of her job, Holly was able to work remotely and spend only a few days a month in D.C. When in the capital she stayed with her colleague and occasional rowing partner, Lena. Lena’s husband, a young navy ensign, had died when al-Qaeda hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Crocker was proud of Holly and the work she did. He was about to say something to that effect when the waiter arrived to announce the specials. Holly ordered the pollo alla Sorentina; Crocker chose the veal piccata.
She looked radiant in the gentle overhead light, and emotionally fragile.
He winced slightly and said, “Jenny’s back in school and seems to be doing well. You’re back at work handling important assignments. And I’m sitting on my butt feeling useless.”
Holly’s mouth tightened. “You’ve been training nonstop and working out.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same. You know that.”
“Tom…” She bit her bottom lip as if she knew what was coming, and reached for her glass.
He plunged in. “I’ve talked to the guys on my team, and they feel the same. It’s been three long months.”
“Manny, too?” She was referring to his right-hand man, Joseph Mancini, whose brother had died from a cartel assassin’s bullet.
“Yes.”
“And Davis?”
John Davis, the team’s comms expert, had been badly wounded in Mexico. He’d spent the better part of the past three months convalescing at home.
“He says he’s tired of playing daddy and real antsy to get back.”
“Playing daddy, Tom? Really? So, what are you trying to say?”
“It’s time for us to go out again.”
She ran a finger along the rim of her wineglass and sighed deeply. “When?”
“We leave in the morning.”
“How early?”
“0400.”
She nodded solemnly, but he could see that she was steaming inside. “Okay.”
Throughout dinner she’d remained uncharacteristically quiet as he talked about possible vacation spots for the summer and plans to build a new house. Even when they returned to the bedroom of their temporary apartment and made love, her mind seemed elsewhere.
Part of him wanted her to get mad at him and tell him what she was really feeling. But they both knew, and understood, that there was no middle ground. He did what he did, and that wasn’t going to change until he got too old to do it, or dropped dead.
He awoke at three, quickly showered and dressed. He thought Holly was still sleeping when he kissed her goodbye.
When she turned and looked up, he saw that she had been crying.
He leaned over and said, “I’ll call you when I can. The security team will keep a constant eye on you and Jenny. So there’s no reason to worry.”
“I know, Tom.”
“I love you.” He kissed her again.
She nodded sadly and said, “I love you, too. Be safe.”
The four Americans pulled their chairs into a semicircle around the TV to watch the video Mr. Talab and his assistant had left behind. Before slipping it into the VCR, Anders explained that it had been shot outside the city of Idlib by a twenty-two-year-old Syrian engineering student named Hassan.
“When?” Crocker asked.
“When what?”
“When was it shot?”
“About a week ago,” Janice answered.
“Where’s Idlib?”
“Northern Syria, about 120 kilometers from the Turkish border.”
“Any more questions before we start?” Anders asked.
“Yeah,” Akil said as he bit into an apple. “Why are you showing us this?”
“You’re about to find out.”
Filmed at night using an infrared filter, the video showed a half-dozen uniformed men carefully offloading five-foot-long stainless-steel canisters from a truck and carrying them down concrete steps into a tunnel. The video was grainy and jerky, and lasted about two and a half minutes.
When it ended Crocker asked, “What did we just watch?”
“Those were members of the Syrian National Defense Force, the Quwat al-Difa al-Watani,” answered Anders. “It was formed in 2012, following massive defections from the army and air force, and is made up of Assad loyalists. It’s a special militia filled with members of the country’s minorities-Alawites, Druzes, Armenians, and Christians-and modeled after the Basij militia in Iran.”
“What were they carrying?”
“We believe the canisters contain sarin gas.”
As the former WMD officer on ST-6, Crocker knew more about sarin than he cared to. He’d searched for it in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi and in Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. He knew that it remained in an odorless, tasteless liquid state below temperatures of 150ºC. In order to maximize its potential as a weapon, it was usually dispersed from a canister attached to a rocket or missile into droplets fine enough to be inhaled into the lungs. The sarin that reached the ground would eventually evaporate into vapor. Once it entered the body through the eyes or skin, it shut off the nervous system, causing involuntary muscles like the diaphragm to stop functioning. It had been discovered by Nazi scientists, who dubbed it Substance 146 and found it to be hundreds of times more deadly than cyanide. A variation of insecticides using organophosphate compounds, sarin could be made relatively easily using more than a dozen recipes. One recipe used isopropanol, known as rubbing alcohol. Another involved mixing methylphosphonyl dichloride with hydrogen or sodium fluoride.
In 2012 the United States and other countries had tried to block sales to Syria of the chemicals used in the manufacture of sarin. By that time, however, the Assad regime had already stockpiled large amounts of them.