Chapter 9
IRENE—HELP yourself.”
Stansfield gestured toward the open tea box before returning to his phone call.
Irene selected a chamomile blend, plopped it in a mug, and added water from the already-boiling kettle.
She took a seat as she waited for the tea to steep.
She tried to afford Stansfield a modicum of privacy by ignoring his side of the conversation, but this was an exercise in futility.
She was, after all, a spy.
“I understand and I share your sense of urgency,” Stansfield said.
His slight frown suggested otherwise.
Irene knew the director’s features almost as well as she knew her mother’s.
Though Stansfield was her boss, his importance to her ran deeper than mere work.
After her father was killed in Beirut, his close friend Stansfield had stepped into the vacancy with a deftness she hadn’t understood at the time even as she’d welcomed his presence.
Only much later in life did she learn that her diplomat father hadn’t worked for the Department of State at all.
He, like her, had been a CIA employee and his vocation had been responsible for his death.
Espionage ran in both her biological and adopted families.
Irene sipped her tea as her eyes wandered across Stansfield’s office.
The workspace reflected the man. Refined, yet simple.
Elegant, yet functional. An apt description for a career spy who could trace his espionage roots back to the founding of the OSS during World War II.
If there was a complaint that she would leverage about Stansfield’s decorating style, it would be that it was so…
sanitary. Of his personal life there existed not a trace, with the exception of a single framed photograph that graced his spotless desk.
A photograph pointedly positioned to face away from snooping visitors.
“I hear you,” Stansfield said, “but I’m not sure the president would agree.”
Stansfield’s calm, even tone normally served as a balm during sessions in the pressure cooker that was American politics.
Judging by the screaming coming from the other end of the line, it did not have that effect on the caller.
While Irene couldn’t make sense of the words, the speaker’s tone left no doubt as to his emotional state.
Anger.
“I don’t think that’s helpful,” Stansfield said.
A final burst of indecipherable yelling erupted from the handset. Stansfield calmly held the phone away from his ear. He needn’t have bothered. The caller fell silent. Stansfield frowned and pressed the phone back against his ear. “Hello?” With a heavy sigh, he placed the handset into its cradle.
“President’s chief of staff?” Irene said.
“Worse. The Israelis.”
Irene smiled.
Stansfield’s deadpan delivery made light of a much larger issue.
On paper, the Middle East’s sole democracy should find friendship, or at the very least common cause, with the leader of the free world.
On paper. In practice, the Israeli-American relationship had been sorely strained thanks to a man named Jonathan Pollard.
Only a few years earlier, Pollard, an American intelligence analyst, had been convicted of espionage for passing classified intelligence to his Israeli handlers.
The depth of damage done to US national security was enormous, made more so by rumors that the Israelis had in turn traded these secrets to the Soviet Union in exchange for the Communist Party granting permission for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel.
Whether this was true or not didn’t really matter.
Many in the intelligence community viewed Israel’s actions as an enormous betrayal of the goodwill America had shown the tiny nation.
Without President Nixon’s decision to provide military aid to the battered IDF during the Yom Kippur War, Israel may very well have been overrun by its Arab neighbors.
This national goodwill continued in the form of billions of dollars in military and other aid given to Israel by the American taxpayers.
For much of the intelligence community, Israel’s decision to pay Pollard to conduct espionage against America was the equivalent of a dog biting the hand that fed it.
Stansfield was much too practical to hold grudges, but that didn’t mean he relished talking with his Mossad counterpart.
“Mr. Rothenberger again?”
Stansfield dipped his head. “The man is insufferable. He seems to believe that the restraint Israel demonstrated against Iraq means that bygones are now bygones. I fear he has gravely misunderstood the president’s thinking.”
Irene sipped her tea as she digested Stansfield’s comments.
The war to evict Iraq from Kuwait had been a masterpiece of international diplomacy.
Over thirty-five nations had allied themselves with the US-led effort, including six Arab countries.
Ever the wily fox, Saddam Hussein had sought to disrupt this coalition along religious fault lines by launching Scud ballistic missiles into Israel.
The notoriously inaccurate munitions were terror weapons at best, but the damage they did was real enough.
More than one thousand Israeli civilians were injured and multiple people killed during the bombardment.
Still, it wasn’t damage to Israeli property or even dead Jews that had been Hussein’s real objective.
He’d hoped that the relentless missile barrage would provoke Israel into responding militarily.
This would have meant that the Muslim members of the coalition were siding with Jews against a fellow Arab nation.
The resulting firestorm would have splintered the coalition and turned Arab public opinion against the effort to oust Iraq from Kuwait.
In a shock to many, Israel had absorbed the waves of Scud missiles without reacting, presumably because of counteroffers from the United States.
Counteroffers that the Mossad’s director had interpreted as a blanket absolution for previous espionage sins, including those of Jonathan Pollard.
“Is the Mossad’s director expressing a general disdain for the state of things or does he have a specific complaint?” Irene said.
Stansfield smiled. “That is what makes conversations with my counterpart difficult. I think the issue he’s raising might be worthy of our attention. Unfortunately, the president doesn’t share this view.”
“Iraqi WMD?”
“Right again,” Stansfield said. “My Israeli friend believes that we should be exerting more pressure on the Iraqi regime to account for their weapons program. To prove that it no longer exists, and if the Iraqi’s can’t, we should intervene militarily.”
“Which the president has no appetite to do.”
“Exactly. Though I certainly understand Rothenberger’s motivation.
The Iraqis have demonstrated both the ability to develop chemical weapons and the willingness to use them.
It is certainly reasonable to fear that the next Scud that falls on Tel Aviv might be carrying mustard gas or nerve agents.
But enough about my Israeli friend. I believe you’re here to provide me with an update on Mr. Rapp. ”
“I am,” Irene said, tucking a length of auburn hair behind her ear, “but I have something Iraq-related first.”
Stansfield removed his glasses and began to polish the lenses. “You and the Israelis on the same day? That can’t be a good sign.”
“My topic is much more nebulous I’m afraid,” Irene said, spreading the images of the convoy on the table in front of Stansfield, “but perhaps no less concerning. An analyst who works with me has stumbled upon something unusual. Iraqi smugglers are changing their habits. I’d like to investigate further. ”
“How?”
“I want to stand up a small fusion cell to coordinate this effort across the intelligence community. I envision taskings to Damascus and Baghdad Stations.”
“Great idea. Loop in the Israelis.”
“Sir?”
“We’ll kill two birds with one stone. If something’s amiss in Iraq, I have full confidence in your ability to suss it out.
If not, we can still throw Rothenberger a bone while making him put his money where his mouth is.
If the Mossad is that concerned about the Iraqi WMD program, presumably they have assets in place and an ongoing operation to learn more.
Let’s see some of their vaunted intelligence product.
Who knows, you might even be responsible for helping our two nations chart a way out of the wilderness. ”
Irene nodded, schooling her features to bland acceptance even as her heart raced.
Standing up a working group to dive into Hannah’s discovery was one thing.
Running a joint operation with the Mossad was something else.
While she didn’t share the popular view that Israelis were more competitor than friend, she wasn’t na?ve to the fact that Israel was a tiny nation surrounded by countries that wished them ill.
When it came to the modern State of Israel, the axiom attributed to former British prime minister and statesman Lord Palmerston was never more true: There are no permanent alliances between nations. Only shared interests.
The Mossad’s interest in the Iraqi WMD program could be a shared national interest.
Or something else.
“Yes, sir,” Irene said. “I’m on it.”
“Very good. Now, let’s hear about the Orion team.”
“Nothing new from Mitch. He’s still in Verona verifying his target’s pattern of life.”
“And what of Mr. Hurley?”
Irene paused.
This was a trickier question. Her relationship with Stan Hurley was much better than it had been.
After a blown operation in Paris had exposed Hurley’s mismanagement of the Orion program and his unfounded bias against Rapp, and by extension her handling of Rapp, Stan had accepted responsibility for his actions.
As part of his effort to make amends, Hurley had spent several months immersing himself in training new assassins at the Lake Anna facility.
Reports from Dr. Thomas Lewis, the agency shrink assigned with monitoring the program’s progress, suggested that Stan was taking his team’s criticism to heart.
The selection program was just as rigorous, but he was no longer running it like a one-man dictatorship.
But, Stan Hurley was still Stan Hurley.
“Stan’s in the Middle East with a couple of Orion team recruits. It’s a training mission.”
Stansfield’s laughter echoed through the room. “You should know better. When Stan Hurley’s involved, there’s no such thing as a training mission.”