Kate was waiting at the bar. “That’s all right,” she said, closing a book. “It gave me a chance to finish. Here, you might want to read it, The World at Night, by Alan Furst. All of his books are about Europe in the late 1930s, about how average people, little people, know that a war is coming but they can’t do anything about it. They all get swept up in it. Pretty convincing stuff.”
“Maybe I should read it,” Rusty said, accepting the book. He tried to guess her age and thought she was about his own age, give or take a couple of years. She had a presence, style.
“So that was you in the Jules Verne contraption thing that landed at the Navy base a little while back? You do have courage. Yes, you can see a lot from up here.” Delmarco slipped off her stool. “I’m starving. Let’s get a table.”
The maître d’, who seemed to know Delmarco, seated the two at a corner table, where they could see in two directions out to the Gulf. “I understand you did see quite a lot up here recently,” Rusty said as the waiter appeared with menus.
“Yes, just lucky, I guess,” Kate said, smiling innocently. “It was one hell of a story. You must have been on live with CNN for over an hour. But it wasn’t just luck, was it, and you didn’t just happen to be at the bar here. You were the one who called Captain
Hardy with word that the attack was under way.” Rusty put down the menu and stared at Delmarco.
“Johnny has a big mouth. That sort of talk could get me killed,
Mr. MacIntyre.” Delmarco’s voice had dropped an octave. “Don’t blame Captain Hardy, I just guessed and happened to be
right,” Rusty almost whispered across the table. “When Brian Douglas suggested you were someone I should see while I was out here, I figured you were more than the usual American foreign correspondent. And I was right about that, too.”
The waiter brought a small mezza of tabouli, hummus, olives, feta, and baba ghanouj to start. A U.S. minesweeper made smoke and pushed off from a dock below.
“Well, I figure Brian Douglas is more than the usual British Embassy petroleum whatsit himself, especially if he knows the deputy director of… What is your title again, Rusty?”
“Intelligence Analysis Center. We’re the writers, the sifters, not the spooks. Brian and I met at a petroleum research conference in Houston last year,” MacIntyre tried lamely.
“Right,” she said sarcastically. “Where is he, by the way? He hasn’t returned my calls in days. I need to return something to him.”
As she spoke, Kate Delmarco took a small reporter’s notepad from her bag and placed it on the table next to her.
“Well, since you’ve already seen through Brian’s intentionally thin cover, he’s in London for a week or so. So what is it you were hoping to tell someone in a Western intelligence agency?” MacIntyre saw no point in continuing the charade and hoped his candor would buy him some credit with a reporter who appeared to have very good sources.
“Well, that was frank. Which is more than I can say for Brian when it comes to his job. Thank you, Rusty.” She wondered whether she had given away too much about her friendship with Brian. She wondered how much he had told the American. “The reason I knew the attack was under way was that I was told so by someone tied to Islamyah intelligence. And the reason I knew him was that I was introduced to him by a Dubai real estate mogul, whom Brian Douglas suggested I should get to know. In short, our mutual friend Brian must know that Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid over at the Salmaniyah Medical Center here is the brother of the head of Islamyah intelligence.
So why couldn’t he just tell me that straight out?”
MacIntyre paused, trying to follow the connections. “As I said, I am not an operational type. I write analyses, or rather, I have a bunch of really smart people who write analyses based on the things that people like Brian collect. So I can only assume… But I think it has something to do with deniability. What would Dr. Rashid have done if you called up and said, ‘Can I interview you? You were just outed as a spy by the British’?”
“He would have freaked.” Kate laughed. “You’re right. Instead, with the Dubai guy as our mutual friend, he has become quite a source for me. I’ve seen him a couple of times since the tanker hijacking. He’s worried. That’s what I would tell the mysterious Brian Douglas if he weren’t off in London.”
“Worried about what? That the Brits and the Bahrainis know who he is and what he’d doing here?” Rusty asked.
“Lots of things,” Delmarco said, looking at her notes. “That the Shura Council in Islamyah may do something soon, something really stupid that will provoke the Americans. That it’s dominated by fundamentalists who will continue some of the mistakes made by the Sauds. That his sources that keep tabs on the Iranians here think something big is about to happen. He’s a very nervous man, our doctor. I wouldn’t want him keeping an eye on me in the intensive care unit.”
“I’d like to meet him,” MacIntyre said.
“No way. Do you want to get me killed? ‘Excuse me, Ahmed, meet my spy buddy from Washington.’ I’d never hear from him again,” Kate said, closing her notebook and placing her napkin on the table.
Rusty MacIntyre took the napkin. “It’s amazing they use paper napkins in a high-class place like this,” he said, and tore it into four pieces.
“What…what are you doing?” Kate stammered.
MacIntyre held the pieces of the napkin in his right hand, moved his left above it, and then, looking straight at Kate, said, “I must see Ahmed.” He then pulled the napkin from his right hand and handed it back to Kate in one piece. She gasped. He grabbed the napkin back, ran it through his hands, and repeated, “I must see Ahmed.” What appeared from his right hand was a napkin in the shape of a rose. “I don’t believe it,” the reporter said, accepting the paper rose. “Excuse the parlor tricks,” MacIntyre said. “I just wanted to get your attention. Kate, if Ahmed’s right and things are about to happen in Islamyah and Iran, there may be no more time for niceties.
Besides, Brian isn’t coming back for a few days. I need to do this now. Tell Rashid that I’m your editor from New York, tell him I’m your older brother, tell him—”
“Nice try. Older brother. I like that. I have you by five years at a minimum.” Kate thought for a moment. “If I do this and lose him as a source, you’ll have to do some other magic trick to make it up to me, with material at least as good as I got from Ahmed. Deal?” “Deal. See if you can get him to meet me tonight,” MacIntyre urged.
“I’ll try, but he works late at the hospital.” She took out her mobile. “Are you staying here at the Ritz?”
“No. I have the guesthouse at the American ambassador’s residence. It’s…safer,” Rusty admitted, blushing slightly. As Kate Delmarco called Dr. Rashid and left a voice mail for him, saying that they needed to get together tonight if possible, Rusty MacIntyre checked the PGP-encrypted e-mail on his BlackBerry.
There were three messages and only four people knew the account.
One was from Sarah. She had to go to Somaliland to do a refugee survey and would be back in D.C. in ten days. The neighbor kid would look in on the cat. One was from Brian Douglas, suggesting they meet at Jaipur, a “dive curry house” on Dubai Creek in three days, when he would be on his way back from his “shopping holiday,” meaning his trip to Tehran. Even using encrypted e-mail, Brian was careful.
The third message caused him to focus:
Rusty,
All right so I had to handwrite this and give it to Ms. Connor to send to you. The keyboard on this thing is too small. Anyway, here’s the story. Secretary Conrad’s DIA source in China now says that the Chinese troops will fly into Islamyah on the 28th, a day after the Chinese fleet arrives in several Islamyah ports. We still cannot confirm this with any other source, so Conrad may be making it up. Separately, one of the military guys on our staff says he learned from a friend in CENTCOM that the date for the Bright Star Exercise with the Egyptians has suddenly been moved up from March 15th to February 25th. I have no idea why. Be careful out there, but find out what you can and get your ass back here pronto. We may not have a lot of time. R.