“Then Iran takes over, probably, or maybe runs Iraq like a puppet on a string,” Vasco said, flipping through the latest set of intercepts. “Goodley may be right. I’m read-
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ing this SiolNT stuff for the first time. Excuse me, Mr. President, but I’ve been concentrating on the political side. This stuff is more revealing than I expected it to be.”
“You’re saying it means more than I think it does?” the NIO asked.
Vasco nodded without looking up. “I think it might. This is not good,” the desk officer opined darkly.
“Later today, the Saudis are going to ask us to hold their hand,” Secretary Adler pointed out. “What do I tell them?”
Ryan’s reply was so automatic that it startled him. “Our commitment to the Kingdom is unchanged. If they need us, we’re there, now and forever.” And with two sentences, Jack thought a second later, he had committed the full power and credibility of the United States of America to a non-democratic country seven thousand miles away. Fortunately, Adler made it easier for him.
“I fully agree, Mr. President. We can’t do anything else.” Everyone else nodded agreement, even Ben Good-ley. “We can do that quietly. Prince Ali understands, and he can make the King understand that we’re not kidding.”
“Next stop,” Ed Foley said, “we have to brief Tony Bretano in. He’s pretty good, by the way. Knows how to listen,” the DCI-designate informed the President. “You plan to do a cabinet meeting about this?”
Ryan shook his head. “No. I think we should play this one cool. America is observing regional developments with interest, but there’s nothing for us to get excited about. Scott, you handle the press briefing through your people.”
“Right,” SecState replied.
“Ben, what do they have you doing at Langley now?”
“Mr. President, they went and made me a senior watch officer for the Operations Center.”
“Good briefing,” Ryan told the younger man, then turned to the DCI. “Ed, he works for me now. I need an NIO who speaks my language.”
“Gee, do I at least get a decent relief pitcher back?” Foley replied with a laugh. “This kid’s a good prospect, and I expect to be in the pennant race this fall.”
“Nice try, Ed. Ben, your hours just got worse. For now,
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you can have my old office around the corner. The food’s a lot better here,” the President promised.
Throughout it all, Aref Raman stood still, leaning against the white-painted walls while his eyes flickered automatically from one visitor to another. He was trained not to trust anyone, with the possible exceptions of the President’s wife and kids. No one else. Of course, they all trusted him, including the ones who had trained him not to trust anyone, because everybody had to trust somebody.
It was just a matter of timing, really, and one of the things his American education and professional training had conferred upon him was the patience to wait for the chance to make the proper move. But other events on the other side of the globe were bringing that moment closer. Behind expressionless eyes Raman thought that maybe he needed guidance. His mission was no longer the random event he’d promised to fulfill twenty years earlier. That he could do almost any time, but he was here now, and while anyone could kill, and while a dedicated person could kill almost anyone, only a truly skilled assassin could kill the proper person at the proper moment in pursuit of a larger goal. So deliciously ironic, he thought, that while his mission came from God, every factor in its accomplishment had come directly from the Great Satan himself, embodied in the life of one man who could best serve Allah by departing this life at just the proper moment. Picking the moment would be the hard part, and so after twenty years, Raman decided that he might just have to break cover after all. There was a danger in that, but, he judged, a slight one.
“YOUR OBJECTIVE IS a bold one,” Badrayn said calmly. Inwardly he was anything but calm. It was breathtaking.
“The meek do not inherit the earth,” Daryaei replied, having for the first time explained his mission in life to someone outside his own inner circle of clerics.
It was a struggle for both of them to act like gamblers around a poker table, while they discussed a plan that
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would change the shape of the world. For Daryaei it was a concept toward which he’d labored and thought and planned for more than a generation, the culmination of everything he’d ever done in life, the fulfillment of a dream, and such a goal as to put his name aside that of the Prophet himself–if he achieved it. The unification of Islam. That was how he typically expressed it in his inner circle.
Badrayn merely saw the power. The creation of a new superstate centered on the Persian Gulf, a state with immense economic power, a huge population, self-sustaining in every detail and able to expand across Asia and Africa, perhaps fulfilling the wishes of the Prophet Mohammed, though he didn’t pretend to know what the founder of his religion would or would not have wished. He left that to men like Daryaei. For Badrayn the game was simply power, and religion or ideology merely defined the team identities. His team was this one because of where he’d been born, and because he’d once looked closely at Marxism and decided it was insufficient to the task.
“It is possible,” Badrayn said after a few more seconds of contemplation.
“The historical moment is unique. The Great Satan”– he didn’t really like to fall into ideological cant in discussions of statecraft, but sometimes there was no avoiding it–“is weak. The Lesser Satan is destroyed, with its Islamic republics ready to fall into our laps. They need an identity, and what better identity could there be than the Holy Faith?”
And that was entirely true, Badrayn agreed with a silent nod. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement with the so-called Confederation of Independent States had merely generated a vacuum not yet filled. The southern tier of “republics” were still economically tied to Moscow, rather like a series of carts hitched to a dying horse. They’d always been rebellious, unsettled mini-nations whose religion had set them apart from the atheist empire, and now they were all struggling to establish their own economic identity so that they could once and for all separate themselves from the center of a dead coun-
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try to which they’d never truly belonged. But they couldn’t sustain themselves economically, not in the modern age. They all needed another patron, another guide into the new century. That new leadership had to mean money, and lots of it, plus the unifying banner of religion and culture Iqng denied them by Marxism-Leninism. In return, the republics would provide land and people. And resources.
“The obstacle is America, but you do not need me to tell you that,” Badrayn observed unnecessarily. “And America is too large and powerful to destroy.”
“I’ve met this Ryan. But first, you tell me what you think of him.”
“He’s no fool, and no coward,” Badrayn said judiciously. “He has shown physical bravery, and he is well versed in intelligence operations. He is well educated. The Saudis trust him, as do the Israelis.” Those two countries mattered at this moment. So did a third: “The Russians know and respect him.”
“What else?”
“Do not underestimate him. Do not underestimate America. We have both seen what happens to those who do,” Badrayn said.
“But America’s current state?”
“What I have seen tells me that President Ryan is working hard to reconstitute the government of his country. It is a huge task, but America is a fundamentally stable coun-try.”
“What about the problem in the succession?”
“This I do not understand,” Badrayn admitted. “I haven’t seen enough news reports to understand the issues.”
“I have met Ryan,” Daryaei said, finally revealing his own thoughts. “He is an assistant, nothing more. He appears strong, but is not. Were he a man of strength, he would deal with this Kealty directly. The man commits treason, does he not? But this is not important. Ryan is one man. America is one country. Both can be attacked, at the same time, from more than one direction.”
“Lion and hyenas,” Badrayn noted, then explained himself. Daryaei was so pleased with the idea that he didn’t object to his own place in the metaphor.
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“Not one great attack, but many small ones?” the cleric asked.
“It has worked before.”
“And what of many large ones? Against America, and against Ryan. For that matter, what if Ryan were to fall? What would happen then, my young friend?”
“Within their system of government, chaos would result. But I would counsel caution. I would also recommend allies. The more hyenas and the more directions, the better to harry the lion. As for attacking Ryan personally,” Badrayn went on, wondering why his host had said that, and wondering if it was an error, “the President of the United States is a difficult target, well protected and well informed.”