there’s no way anyone could have survived that blast. The local fire officials found two bodies so far and I think they were lucky to find them. It’s too soon to begin looking at reconstructing this but we’ll begin that tomorrow if we can, certainly by the day after, and that will give us a better idea of what actually happened. Do we know if there had been any threats towards Bagheri? I mean, taking him out serves absolutely no purpose.”
“Ali Bagheri was our leading negotiator with the West regarding our nuclear ambitions. To think the Europeans would be involved in this? – totally ridiculous; certainly not the Russians or the Chinese. The Americans right now are simply out of the picture on the International front. That leaves the Israelis, who incidentally are not a part of the negotiations. I can easily see them trying to derail the negotiations to try and prove a point but even for them, this would be an extremely dangerous game.”
“Okay, well, I’ll get back over there tomorrow and see if we can begin to get to work reconstructing this thing to see just how powerful this bomb was, where it came from, and all that. I’ll keep you posted as things develop.”
“Do that. For the next few days, this is your first priority. Turn over everything else to Major Zarin.”
“I’ve already done that; see you tomorrow.”
VI
Several thousand miles away, Jim Carmichael received a phone call at home from his signals people. “Sir, we are receiving word of a detonation just outside of Tehran. From the looks of it, this happened within the hour.”
“Do we have any details on this as yet?”
“Sir, it’s conventional, but it’s huge. Brigadier General John Anderson out at Cheyenne Mountain called in the initial report. If they picked it up, it had to be big. Looks like someone took out an entire city block on the outskirts of Tehran. Preliminary reports are saying that the Israelis just took out Ali Bagheri.”
“What?!? He was leading their negotiating team in Bern. Why would they do that? What the hell are they thinking? Okay… Stonewall Jackson is supposed to be in Tel Aviv. Try and raise him. It’s what, about 5:00 a.m. over there? Keep trying until you get ahold of him. I’ll be in early in the morning, unless something else develops; keep me posted.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Jackson had not been with the Agency long enough to have the clout to call up the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and since he had seriously exceeded his orders, he figured he’d be better off starting with his own superior – and friend – James Carmichael. He had known Jim Carmichael for more than fifteen years now, dating to September of 2001. Jim had lead a CIA team – the Northern Alliance Liaison Team – that entered Afghanistan very soon after the assassination of General Ahmad Shah Massoud, known in Afghanistan as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud commanded the Northern Alliance and had been seeking the CIA’s assistance in fighting the Taliban for a number of years. The combination of his assassination on September 9th, 2001, and the attacks in New York and Washington D.C., two days later, ironically, cemented the deal for this assistance. Indeed, the afternoon of September 11th, the director of the CIA ordered the establishment of a team to support the Northern Alliance with all means necessary to defeat the Taliban and root out and kill Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts. The Clandestine Services Division jumped into high gear: Word quickly went out to the Army’s Special Operations Command looking for anyone from the Special Forces’ Fifth Group who would be willing to join the team – they’d still be active duty, just temporarily attached to the Agency. Thomas Jackson, then a bright, young and eager captain in the special operations community, had signed up as soon as word went out for volunteers. Two weeks after the World Trade Center collapsed, Carmichael, Jackson and the rest of the team was in Afghanistan and working in the Panjshir valley.
Stonewall knew his little trek into Tehran had stretched things more than a little but he also knew that Jim was not one to dwell on technicalities when one obtained the desired results – and Jackson knew he had just delivered. Now, he needed to get those results to those who could actually act upon them.
“Stonewall, where have you been? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you for the past several hours. Do you have any idea as to what is going on over there? It seems the Israelis have just assassinated Ali Bagheri, the deputy secretary of their Supreme National Security Council.”
“Jim, back up a bit. Ali Bagheri is out of the picture as far as Iran is concerned – because he just defected to the Israelis. I’ve been on the mission to pick him up in Tehran – I’ll tell you more about that later. The bombing you’ve seen was designed to make the Iranians think that Bagheri is dead; in fact, he’s sitting right here with me now.”
“Wait a minute; you were in Tehran?”
“I’ll explain later. The real issue is just how far along the Iranians are to achieving a nuclear bomb. Jim, they’ll have the bomb in the next couple of months. If I was a betting man, now that the Israelis have their source out of the country, they’ll be attacking any time; they may already have the strike force warmed up. They already have the EW planes forward deployed to Baku. Jim, the Israelis are attacking – it’s just a question of how soon.”
This was a lot of information all at once, even for someone as experienced as Jim Carmichael.
“Are you sure of this? This is way off of what we’ve predicted. And the Israelis; Tamir hasn’t even dropped a clue to me.”
“Sir, I’ve spent the last several hours talking with Bagheri. His information all checks out. There is no way any of this is disinformation; not from him. We grabbed his laptops, desk top computer and cell phone to verify everything but, sir, everything checks out. You’ll need to check with the Pentagon to see what assets we have in the region. As soon as we touch down in Tel Aviv the Israelis are going to be free to attack as they feel they have nothing left to lose.”
“Well, the extent of what we can or will do is beyond our call, but I’ll be getting this information up to the DNI, the national security advisor, the secdef, and the president as soon as we hang up. We have some resources in the area – we’ve kept a carrier in the gulf since ’03 and I know we have something in the Med, I’m just not sure what all we have there. Give me a call after you’ve landed and have had a chance to talk with Pardo. I know the Israelis have not been sitting on the sidelines diplomatically should they decide to attack on their own. No one in the region wants the mad mullahs of Iran to have the Bomb and all are content to let Israel do the heavy lifting. I know they have had some discussions with the Turks and it sounds like you know more than the rest of us about their relationship with the Azerbaijanis. Aside from that, I don’t know of anyone who would actually assist them with an attack but most in the region will certainly look the other way.”
“Okay, will do Jim. It’s about a two hour flight so I’ll give you a call later this afternoon or early evening my time; that should be right about noon on the east coast.”
“Okay, I’ll be expecting your call. Let me know what Pardo is thinking and just how soon the Israelis might go.”
“Sir, if I read this right, they’re already locked and loaded.”
“Yeah, that’s my thinking too. Let me know what you find out. I’ll set up the meetings with the White House, the national security counselor and the rest of the national security team for later this morning; if you can call back before, say five this afternoon your time, I’d have a little time to go over everything before I brief them.”
“Okay, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
* * *
“Ben, I know you probably don’t know the answer to this question, for obvious reasons, but just how soon do you really think the IDF will launch their attack?”
“Well,