end of the suite. The agent opened the door and handed Jet her travel bag before stepping back and speaking his first and only words to her.
“Inside. He’s expecting you.”
Jet nodded and entered the room, which offered a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea through an oversized picture window. The door closed behind her and a figure beckoned from the far end of a large conference table.
“Come. Sit over here. Don’t be shy – I won’t bite.”
The speaker was an older man, late sixties, perhaps early seventies, with a crown of tight, steel-gray curls framing a long, heavily-wrinkled face, decades of stress and impossible decisions carved into it with indelible creases that gave him the appearance of a beleaguered Shar Pei. Only his hazel eyes, dancing with a keen intelligence from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses atop his aquiline nose, hinted at the unstoppable intellect and strength of will that permeated the room like a physical force.
“Please. Sit. I trust your flight wasn’t too taxing,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly, worn by countless crises and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
Jet took a seat and swiveled to face him. “Well, here I am.”
“Yes, indeed. I won’t bother to thank you for coming, seeing as it wasn’t entirely voluntary, but I want you to know that I do appreciate it.”
“What’s done is done. Have you made any progress with the situation since we last spoke?”
“Regrettably, nothing concrete. But I’ll update you on what’s transpired, and how we’re planning to move forward. Feel free to interrupt whenever you have a question. Would you like something to drink? Water?”
“No, thank you.”
The director leaned back in his chair. “Our people have confirmed that the bomb that went off in Somalia was of Russian manufacture. I won’t bore you with how. The Russians are of course denying it vehemently, but that’s to be expected, and nobody believes them. For our purposes, it’s unimportant, other than that it confirms what we’ve suspected, or rather, feared, for some time: The two Russian RA-115 devices that we were told were in Iraqi hands have finally surfaced, and contrary to all the expert opinion, are functional – or at least one was, which means we need to assume the other is as well. That they could still be a danger was considered an impossibility; but as luck would have it, the rumors of their inoperability turned out to be misguided wishful thinking.”
“Which leaves you with one more nuke floating around,” Jet said, her tone flat.
“Exactly. I suppose the only good news is that it’s not in the hands of Al-Qaeda or Hamas.”
“But you don’t seem relieved.”
“No. Because the organization we believe has it is ultimately just as dangerous, if not more so. Have you ever heard of The Council?”
“No.”
“They’re a shadow group of very wealthy, very powerful ultra-nationalists, who have a political ideology that’s incompatible with the real world. We’ve heard rumblings about their existence for twenty years, and frankly had put it in the same category as the Illuminati or the Templars. It turns out that was also wishful thinking. I won’t belabor how we got from point A to where we are today, but the group is very real, and we believe they’ve joined forces with the three operatives who were sent into Iraq to find the weapons, but who claimed to have come out empty-handed. Except we now believe that was a lie. We’re convinced that they located the nukes and got them out during the chaos of the invasion.”
“But that was a decade ago. Why would they have waited until now to detonate one, and why in the most desolate stretch of coast in the world?”
“All we have is conjecture, but we think there must have been technical hurdles to be surmounted to render the bombs operable. They were built in the mid-eighties, so they’re relatively primitive by contemporary standards. Crude. But the radioactive material –
“Inside. He’s expecting you.”
Jet nodded and entered the room, which offered a panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea through an oversized picture window. The door closed behind her and a figure beckoned from the far end of a large conference table.
“Come. Sit over here. Don’t be shy – I won’t bite.”
The speaker was an older man, late sixties, perhaps early seventies, with a crown of tight, steel-gray curls framing a long, heavily-wrinkled face, decades of stress and impossible decisions carved into it with indelible creases that gave him the appearance of a beleaguered Shar Pei. Only his hazel eyes, dancing with a keen intelligence from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses atop his aquiline nose, hinted at the unstoppable intellect and strength of will that permeated the room like a physical force.
“Please. Sit. I trust your flight wasn’t too taxing,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly, worn by countless crises and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
Jet took a seat and swiveled to face him. “Well, here I am.”
“Yes, indeed. I won’t bother to thank you for coming, seeing as it wasn’t entirely voluntary, but I want you to know that I do appreciate it.”
“What’s done is done. Have you made any progress with the situation since we last spoke?”
“Regrettably, nothing concrete. But I’ll update you on what’s transpired, and how we’re planning to move forward. Feel free to interrupt whenever you have a question. Would you like something to drink? Water?”
“No, thank you.”
The director leaned back in his chair. “Our people have confirmed that the bomb that went off in Somalia was of Russian manufacture. I won’t bore you with how. The Russians are of course denying it vehemently, but that’s to be expected, and nobody believes them. For our purposes, it’s unimportant, other than that it confirms what we’ve suspected, or rather, feared, for some time: The two Russian RA-115 devices that we were told were in Iraqi hands have finally surfaced, and contrary to all the expert opinion, are functional – or at least one was, which means we need to assume the other is as well. That they could still be a danger was considered an impossibility; but as luck would have it, the rumors of their inoperability turned out to be misguided wishful thinking.”
“Which leaves you with one more nuke floating around,” Jet said, her tone flat.
“Exactly. I suppose the only good news is that it’s not in the hands of Al-Qaeda or Hamas.”
“But you don’t seem relieved.”
“No. Because the organization we believe has it is ultimately just as dangerous, if not more so. Have you ever heard of The Council?”
“No.”
“They’re a shadow group of very wealthy, very powerful ultra-nationalists, who have a political ideology that’s incompatible with the real world. We’ve heard rumblings about their existence for twenty years, and frankly had put it in the same category as the Illuminati or the Templars. It turns out that was also wishful thinking. I won’t belabor how we got from point A to where we are today, but the group is very real, and we believe they’ve joined forces with the three operatives who were sent into Iraq to find the weapons, but who claimed to have come out empty-handed. Except we now believe that was a lie. We’re convinced that they located the nukes and got them out during the chaos of the invasion.”
“But that was a decade ago. Why would they have waited until now to detonate one, and why in the most desolate stretch of coast in the world?”
“All we have is conjecture, but we think there must have been technical hurdles to be surmounted to render the bombs operable. They were built in the mid-eighties, so they’re relatively primitive by contemporary standards. Crude. But the radioactive material –
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