Michael Walsh - Early Warning

“You mean nukes. A suitcase nuke?”

“Or two. Or four. Or, God willing, none.”

“How could they get them into the city so fast?”

Tyler wasn’t going to like this answer. “Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were there all along, waiting. You know how patient these people are. They’re still fighting battles from a thousand years ago, nursing grudges, plotting. For them, revenge is a dish that cannot possibly be cold enough.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maybe the devices-if they’ve got them and that’s a big if at this point-were already in Manhattan, secreted there and then activated before all our shields were back up. There’s a lot of places they could hide them: in hospitals, swimming pools-”

“Not a lot of swimming pools in Manhattan,” said Tyler, reddening. Seelye braced for what he knew would be the eventual eruption of Mount Tyler. Maybe this time, he thought, the president would keep his cool. Maybe this time he would control himself and his fiery temper. Maybe this time, he’d act like an adult. If not, they were all doomed.

“You’d be surprised, sir. There are lots of indoor swimming pools in the city. Any Y will do just fine. But that’s worst-case scenario, and the rest of it is barn-door stuff. The real question is, what are we going to do about this?” He gestured at the televisions.

From every angle, on every network, the extent of the destruction was awesome. Half the great intersection was afire, and 42nd Street was burning as well. Down the block, the wreck of the AMC theaters was plainly visible. Across the expanse of the square itself, heavily armed cops were engaging in a running firefight with an unknown number of assailants, and they were taking casualties.

“Has the governor sent in the National Guard yet?” asked Tyler. Hurricane Katrina had taught every succeeding president that one could stand too long on ceremony and chain of command.

“NYPD hasn’t yet called for military assistance, so the answer is presumably no. We’re monitoring the governor’s office and the official police communication channels, of course.”

“Of course.” Another bourbon and branch had materialized on a side table, but as much as he wanted another drink, this was no time to lose his faculties. “What’s the SIGINT chatter?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. If this was an al-Qaeda operation, they’d be shouting from the tops of their mud huts already. But everything’s quiet. Which means…”

Tyler arched an eyebrow.

“Which means,” continued Seelye, “that we’re not up against a group of terrorists. We’re up against something that can keep a secret, that holds absolute operational security. In other words, one man.”

“In other words, Emanuel Skorzeny,” said Tyler, one eye glued to the TV screens.

Seelye chose his words carefully; there was a play for him here, a chance to settle the oldest and most personal score in his book, but he had to be careful how he laid it out. “No, sir, I think not. He’s old, he’s taken a terrific financial beating, and he’s content to fly around all day in that airborne fuck palace of his, trying to put the pieces of his empire back together. I don’t think we have anything to worry about from Skorzeny at this point. Besides, he knows he exists at your sufferance, so why go out of his way to attract unwelcome attention?”

“Simple,” said Tyler. “Best reason there is: because he can. Look, he’s old, he’s mean, he’s ornery, and he’s guilty as sin. He’s already got his ticket punched straight to Hell, whether he believes in it or not…” Tyler thought for a moment. After all, it was he who had let Skorzeny off-in order to protect the CSS, Branch 4, and Devlin, to be sure. “Who then?”

Seelye tossed a couple of dossiers in front of the president. “This man,” he said. “Arash Kohanloo.”

Tyler ’s heart sank as he picked up the first manila folder, stamped SCI, eyes only. “Please don’t tell me he’s Iranian.”

“With a name like that, of course he is,” replied Seelye as the President leafed through the folder. “But he’s no ordinary Persian. He’s not one of the mullah’s thugs. He’s older, for one thing. He remembers a time before the Islamic Revolution. He attended the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, and went on to Yale. How the CIA missed recruiting him with that pedigree, I’ll never understand. Got a doctorate at the London School of Economics, then another degree at the Sorbonne. Speaks six languages fluently. For some reason the ayatollahs seem to trust him, and pretty much let him have the run of the planet, which means that whatever scam he’s running is enriching all of them and clearly serves their geo-political ambitions. He spends as much time looking after his private business interests in Macao, Goa, Dubai, Los Angeles as he does in Tehran. In short, he’s a sophisticated man of the world. Just like…”

Tyler put the folder down, took his eye off the TV, and gave Seelye his full attention. “Just like…?”

“Just like Emanuel Skorzeny, with whom he met in Macao within the past twenty-four hours.”

Tyler took a deep breath through his nose, held the air a moment, then expelled it slowly. Good; breathing exercises might keep him calm, at least for a while. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir. Skorzeny uses some pretty sophisticated hamming equipment, and of course he’s bought off half the air-traffic control systems in the world, but we can still track the old goat. Just waiting for the word from you for him to have an unfortunate aeronautics accident.”

“Well, just don’t let him have it over Iran, for Chris-sakes,” said Tyler. The United States was still having trouble living down its wipeout of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, near the end of the Iran-Iraq war-a purpose pitch and small payback for the hostage crisis that still inflamed anti-American sentiment, as if Iran needed any more reasons to hate the Great Satan. “Two questions: what’s this Kohanloo’s weakness?”

Seelye had been expecting those very queries. “I wish I could tell you he had some exotic vices, Mr. President,” he said. “That he raises tropical fish and uses them as an aphrodisiac for the little girls he kidnaps on school playgrounds, but no such luck. He’s a good Muslim. He doesn’t smoke or drink, conducts his financial affairs in accordance with Islamic principles, and in general lives according to Shari’a law.”

“So what’s his vice?” Tyler certainly knew from vices; in his view a man without a vice wasn’t a man at all.

“His vice is that, outside the caliphate, in the West, he does as the Romans do. He gambles at all the best London clubs, and there isn’t a reasonably attractive woman in the Western world he hasn’t tried to seduce.”

“And the Iranian security services let him get away with that?”

“I think the question answers itself, sir. He’s still kicking.”

“So how do we get to him?”

“At the moment, we don’t.” Seelye pointed back at the screen. “We have to see how this plays out. It might be a coordinated attack-and I think the evidence is clear on that point-but it might also be sheer coincidence, the timing of the DoS attack and the bombing. Probably it’s not, but stranger things have happened. But we’re not without certain, er, weapons.”

Tyler was already mentally calculating the amount of money the feds were going to have to send to New York, even assuming this incident got resolved quickly. He was also weighing the hit his reputation was going to take, and how much political hay that bitch Hassett would be able to make out of this once the fires were out and the victims were buried. “What weap-?”

Tyler was cut off by the sound of the intercom. It was Millie Dhouri, his private secretary. “Deputy Director Byrne is here, Mr. President,” said the disembodied voice.