The admiral was 170 miles away in the Norfolk yards, and Ramshawe’s home telephone was patched through to the Australian embassy. Behind those great wrought-iron gates on Massachusetts Avenue, the young Aussie assistant to the director was having dinner with his fiancée, Jane Peacock, daughter of the ambassador.
Jane handed him the phone, heard him snap I’ll be there, and groaned. Jimmy kissed her and said, “I’m sorry, really sorry. But this is important.”
“It always is,” she replied. “See you tomorrow?”
“No worries,” he called, as he headed for the stairway. “We’re going out. Pick you up at 1900.”
“When the hell’s that?” she muttered. “Nineteen hundred! Jesus, what does he think I am, a midshipman?”
On his way around the Beltway, heading east toward the Parkway, Jimmy called the Big Man and told him to stand by for a call in thirty minutes on a more secure phone from his office. When he arrived, he was immediately informed that Admiral Morris was on his way in by helicopter from Norfolk. The breakthrough in Guantánamo Bay was the last piece in a long-running jigsaw puzzle.
All of the Western world’s intelligence agencies knew of the astonishing defection of SAS Major Ray Kerman during a pitched battle in the Israeli city of Hebron in the summer of 2004. They knew he had found some reason to kill two of his colleagues, and then had vanished.
Over the next five or six years, there were a number of daredevil attacks by the warriors of Hamas, involving highly trained troops and even submarines. The West suspected there was only one man capable of leading such sophisticated adventures, and it plainly had to be the work of Major Kerman, who was, even by SAS standards, a brilliant operator.
However, no one ever knew for sure. The name General Rashood surfaced every now and then, and informers referred to him by name, but no one ever found out who Rashood was, or anything about his background.
Admiral Morgan and Jimmy Ramshawe were darned sure he was Major Kerman, and a couple of times the U.S. military came within an ace of catching him. But he always got away, and still no one was ever certain of his true identity.
They were now. The transcript of the interrogation in Guantánamo made it quite clear that the question had been put to the terrorist Salman in an unambiguous way. Major Kerman and General Rashood were one and the same. Better yet, there was now an address, Bab Touma Street in Damascus, a street that ends at the Bab Touma Gate, the eastern approach into the city through the ancient Roman wall.
The last line of the communiqué from Guantánamo stated that in answer to the question What number Bab Touma? Salman had replied, within a hundred meters of the Gate. And that was enough. That was actually plenty. The CIA would take it from there. The important thing was that General Rashood was right now living the last few weeks of his life. There would be no mistakes. The reign of the world’s most lethal terrorist was drawing to a close.
Jimmy Ramshawe called Admiral Morgan on an encrypted line. He told him Admiral Morris was on his way. Arnold did not hesitate. “I’ll be right over,” he said. “Gimme forty-five.”
“No speeding, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to send someone to get you out of the slammer.”
“On this little mission, young Jimmy, anyone stops my car, the whole goddamned police department will be looking for new jobs tomorrow morning.”
The likelihood of any Washington cop pulling over the admiral’s White House limousine (for life) driven by a White House driver (until he was late) was remote. In all the many years Arnold Morgan had served his nation, only one cruiser had ever dared to take such an action.
The popular story goes that the driver, overtaken by Admiral Morgan’s car, which was making about 105 mph around the Beltway, switched on his lights and siren and came screaming up behind him, muttering, “I don’t care who’s in that car, I’m pulling the crazy sonofabitch over and he’s going to pay the biggest fine. I might even have him jailed for three months.”
When the two cars came to a halt, the policeman took one look at the figure glowering in the back, and the blood drained from his face. He just said swiftly but sheepishly, “Oh… er… good afternoon, sir… I just wondered if you needed an escort.”
The admiral just growled, “Sure, if you can keep up… NOW HIT IT, CHARLIE!” And the big limo hurled gravel as it squealed off the hard shoulder, leaving the cop in a cloud of dust, cursing his bad luck.
Forty-four minutes after Jimmy’s phone call, Admiral Morgan, who had once been the director of the NSA, came thundering into the Ops-2B Building, under escort by two young guards who were both on the verge of nervous breakdowns, so urgent did the Big Man’s mission appear to be.
Which office, sir?
“The goddamned director’s office, of course. Where d’you think I want to go, the mail room?”
One of the guards went white. The other tried to turn away, but he caught the sly wink the admiral gave him. At the hallowed door of the director of the National Security Agency, one of them stepped forward to tap on the door. But the admiral just grabbed the handle and opened it, strode across the room, and sat down hard in the director’s big executive chair, which had once been his.
He always sat there when he visited Admiral Morris. It seemed, in its way, correct for the most respected man who had ever worked in U.S. military intelligence to be sitting right there. Admiral Morris considered it an honor. In lighter moments, even the President of the United States often asked Admiral Morgan if it would be okay for him to sit behind his desk in the Oval Office. It had been a standing joke between them ever since Arnold Morgan had swept him to power two years previously.
The door opened again, and this time Lt. Commander Ramshawe came through. “Admiral Morris has landed, sir,” he said. “He’ll be here in five.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“Arnie, there are twenty-eight thousand people currently employed at this agency. Every last one of ’em knows you’re here.”
“Would that include the guys who bring the coffee?”
“Yessir, it’s on its way, nuclear hot with buckshot the way you like it.”
“Outstanding,” replied the admiral. “Now tell me about the little Arab who caved in under interrogation.”
“Well, it seems the Guantánamo guys got their lead from Reza Aghani, the one who got shot at Logan and went to Bethesda. He knew only a little, and took his orders from Ramon Salman, the Commonwealth Avenue guy who we picked up in New York. That confirmed Hamas.
“And then they went right to work on Salman, broke him down without laying a finger on him, and he confessed he worked for our old friend General Rashood, aka Major Ray Kerman. Once he’d gone that far, he apparently told the guys the precise whereabouts of the general, some side street in Damascus, and I guess that’s what we’re here to discuss.”
“Was that who he called in Damascus, the night before the Logan bomb?”
“Damn right it was. And he admitted it.”
The door opened again, and Admiral Morris walked in followed by the waiter. Admiral Morgan stood up and clasped his hand. “Good to see you, George,” he said, and for a few fleeting moments the ex-nuclear submarine commander from Chevy Chase stood and smiled at the former carrier battle group commander. They were two old warriors, friends for thirty years, patriots, and both still capable of cold fury at any threat to the United States.
“Arnie,” said Admiral Morris, “am I right in thinking we’ve got this Rashood character cornered in Damascus?”
“Well, not quite. But at least we know where he lives, which is a darned sight more than we have ever known before.”