―However, if you don‘t mind,‖ Liss continued, ―tell me something about yourself.‖
―You mean my bio, my curriculum vitae?‖
Liss showed his teeth briefly. ―Tell me something about yourself I don‘t know.‖
Clearly, he meant something personal, something revealing. And it was at this precise moment that Marks realized that Willard had been in discussions with Oliver Liss before this morning, perhaps for some time. “It’s already rebooted,”Willard had said to him, referring to Treadstone. Once again he felt blindsided by the quarterback of his own team, not a good feeling to have at a meeting with the import of this one.
He shrugged mentally. No use fighting it, he was here, he might as well play out the string. This was Willard‘s show, anyway, he was just along for the ride. ―One week shy of my first wedding anniversary I met someone—a dancer—a ballet dancer, of all things. She was very young, not yet twenty-two, a good twelve years my junior. We saw each other once a week like clockwork for nineteen months and then, just like that, it was over. Her company went on tour to Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw, but that wasn‘t the reason.‖
Liss sat back and, drawing out a cigarette, lit it in defiance of the law. Why should he care?Marks thought acidly. Heis the law.
―What was the reason?‖ Liss said in an oddly soft tone of voice.
―To tell you the truth, I don‘t know.‖ Marks pushed his food around his plate. ―It‘s a funny thing. That heat—one day it was there, the next it wasn‘t.‖
Liss blew out a plume of smoke. ―I assume you‘re divorced now.‖
―I‘m not. But I suspect you already knew that.‖
―Why didn‘t you and your wife split up?‖
This was what Liss‘s information couldn‘t tell him. Marks shrugged. ―I never stopped loving my wife.‖
―So she forgave you.‖
―She never found out,‖ Marks said.
Liss‘s eyes glittered like sapphires. ―You didn‘t tell her.‖
―No.‖
―You never felt the urge to tell her, to confess.‖ He paused reflectively. ―Most men would.‖
―There was nothing to tell her,‖ Marks said. ―Something happened to me—
like the flu—then it was gone.‖
―Like it never happened.‖
Marks nodded. ―More or less.‖
Liss stubbed out his cigarette, turned to Willard, and regarded him for a long moment. ―All right,‖ he said. ―You have your funding.‖ Then he rose and, without another word, walked out of the restaurant.
It‘s the oil fields, stupid!‖ Moira slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. ―Good God, why didn‘t I see that all along, it‘s so damn obvious!‖
―Obvious now that you know everything,‖ Humphry Bamber said.
They were in Christian Lamontierre‘s kitchen, eating roast beef and Havarti cheese sandwiches on sprouted-wheat bread Bamber had made from the well-stocked fridge, washed down with Badoit, a French mineral water.
Bamber‘s laptop was on the table in front of them, Bardem up and running through the three scenarios Noah had inputted into the software program.
―I thought the same thing the first time I read Israel Zangwill‘s The Big Bow Mystery.‖ Humphry Bamber swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. ―It‘s the first real locked-room mystery, although others as far back as Herodotus in the fifth century BCE, believe it or not, toyed with the idea. But it was Zangwill who in 1892 introduced the concept of mis-direction, which became the touchstone for all stories of so-called impossible crimes from then on.‖
―And Pinprick is classic misdirection.‖ Moira studied the scenarios with mounting fascination and dread. ―But on such a massive scale that without Bardem no one would be able to figure out that the real reason for invading Iran was to confiscate their oil fields.‖ She pointed at the screen. ―This area—Noah‘s target area, Shahrake Nasiri-Astara—I‘ve read a couple of intelligence reports about it. At least a third of Iran‘s oil comes from there.‖ She pointed again. ―See how small a geographic area it is? That makes it both vulnerable to an assault by a relatively small force and easily defendable by that same small force. It‘s perfect for Noah.‖ She shook her head. ―My God, this is brilliant—demented, horrific, unthinkable even, but decidedly brilliant.‖
Bamber went and got another bottle of Badoit out of the fridge. ―I don‘t understand.‖
―I‘m not yet certain of all the details, but what‘s clear is that Black River has made a deal with the devil. Someone high up in the US government has been pushing for us to do something about Iran‘s fast-progressing nuclear program, which threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East. We—and other right-minded governments—have been making noises in the correct diplomatic channels for Iran to cease and dismantle its nuclear reactors. Iran‘s response has been to thumb its nose in our faces. Next, we and our allies tried economic embargoes, which only made Iran laugh because we need their oil, and we‘re not the only ones. Worse, they have the strategic option of closing down the Straits of Hormuz, which would have the effect of shutting down oil shipments from all the OPEC nations in the region.‖
She got up and put her plate into the sink, then returned to the table.
―Someone here in Washington decided that patience was getting us nowhere.‖
Bamber frowned. ―And?‖
―So they decided to force the issue. They used the downing of our airliner to go to war against Iran, but they‘re also apparently running a side mission.‖
―Pinprick.‖
―Exactly. What Bardem is telling us is that under the chaos of the ground invasion, a small cadre of Black River operatives—with the full consent of the government—is going to take over the oil fields in Shah-rake Nasiri-Astara, giving us far more control over our economic destiny. With this Iranian oil, we‘ll no longer have to kowtow to the Saudis, the Iranians, Venezuela, or any OPEC nation, for that matter. America will be oil-independent.‖
―But the oil field land-grab is illegal, isn‘t it?‖
―Duh. However, for some reason that doesn‘t seem to be concerning anyone at the moment.‖
―Well, what are you going to do now?‖
That was, of course, the billion-dollar question. In another time, another place she would have called Ronnie Hart, but Ronnie was dead. Noah—
she was quite certain it was Noah—had seen to that. She missed Ronnie now, more than ever, but the selfish reason for her emotion shamed her, and she turned away from the acknowledgment. That‘s when she thought of Soraya Moore.
She‘d met Soraya through Bourne, and liked her. That they‘d shared a past hadn‘t bothered her in the slightest; she wasn‘t the jealous type.