“A perfect record and only a week to go. It had to be here, huh.”
“That’s real helpful, Steve,” Tom said, unbuttoning his charcoal-grey suit jacket.
But he’s right, he thought. Back home, the advance detail would have been thorough. Local extremists and publicity-seeking whackos monitored. Pipe-inspection cameras poked into every cranny. Storm drains checked for explosives. The dumpsters removed. Manhole covers bolted, the public trash cans sealed. Then, on the day of her visit, scores of local P.D. would’ve been on the periphery and tried and tested counter snipers on the roofs. All vantage points covered. Discarded bottles and lumps of loose concrete removed within an appropriate radius. The Belgian Malinois bomb sniffers would’ve swept every inch.
“Corridor duty is as boring as those TV reality shows, ain’t it, Tom?” Steve said.
“Can’t argue with that.”
Tom watched Steve weaving his head in what appeared to be a figure of eight. “The hell you doing?”
“My doc said it’ll help with my headaches. Relieves neck tension.”
“Didn’t know you suffered from headaches,” Tom said, a little concerned that his friend hadn’t mentioned it to him before.
“They started a couple months back. Sometimes when I wake up at night, it feels like I’m wearing a vice.”
“Get it checked out again. You got a physical coming up.”
“Sure I will, Tom.”
A couple of seconds later, Tom coughed into his fist and gestured with his eyes. But Steve’s head was still animate. A stocky man with a weather-beaten face and short silver hair had entered the corridor from an elevator twenty metres behind Steve’s back. He carried a bundle of papers in a manila folder under his arm, and walked like an ex-military type. When the man’s footsteps became audible on the tiles, Steve stood ramrod straight. As he got closer Tom recognized him, and moved over to knock on the door before opening it.
“Thank you, son,” he said. He turned to Steve, gestured towards the clear wire spiralling down from his earpiece. “That wire attached to an iPod, Agent?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s good,” he said as he disappeared inside.
Tom closed the door, worried. He wondered if he’d missed something important in terms of the assessment. But the training his team underwent continually was based on repetition, the type that created confidence and long-term muscle memory. If an attack of whatever nature happened, be it a flung bag of flour or a multiple-armed assault, they would act instinctively, almost without conscious effort.
Steve sniffed. “The paper shuffler thinks he’s a comedian.”
“He’s a deputy director of the CIA,” Tom said, “and he ain’t here to tell Lyric a joke.”
Linda Carlyle looked up as the heavy door opened, hoping her rising sense of unease didn’t show on her face. The dimly lit room was fifteen metres square, the few pieces of furniture functional rather than decorative. Sitting at an oak desk, she lifted a pair of black-rimmed eyeglasses off her aquiline nose. For the past forty-five minutes, she’d been speed-reading a departmental report she’d commissioned on the near-past disputes between Iran and Pakistan; all of which had stemmed from Islam’s major schism. While Iran was ruled by Shias, Pakistan was Sunni dominated. In the nineties, they’d backed opposing sides in the Afghan Civil War, and had sponsored sectarian terrorism in each other’s major cities. Now they were on the brink of a conflict that could ignite the whole region.
“Good morning, Madam Secretary,” the deputy director said, walking towards her, his hand massaging the folded skin at his neck.
“You’re not harassing my boys, are you, Bill?”
“Sometimes I forget I swopped fatigues for a suit.”
Forcing a smile, she said, “Take a seat. I’ll be right with you.”
Deputy Director Bill Houseman, who had travelled to Islamabad with the secretary, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Under-Secretary of Defense, sat in a padded chair two metres from the desk and crossed his muscular legs.
Linda closed the marble-coloured lever arch file and tapped a remote. The room lit up. “So let’s have it,” she said, switching off the antenna-like arc lamp she’d been reading under.
“The switchboard operator just got a call. I think we should ask the head of your security detail to join us.”
“I’d like to hear what you have to say first. Please continue.”
“A threat has been made.” He clenched his teeth.
“I see.”
“The caller said the Leopards of Islam would ensure that the US Secretary of State never leaves Pakistan soil. We’re putting it down to a random individual. Low-level risk assessment.”
“And why’s that?”
Houseman cleared his throat, putting his hand to his mouth. “Because as a rule, the Leopards don’t make threats before an attack, ma’am.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better,” she said, shaking her head. “And the current situation here?”
“The Leopards are launching fresh attacks in Karachi, Bahawalpur, Lahore. The list goes on. There’ve been three bomb attacks in Islamabad in the past twelve days.”
“Is civil war on the cards?” she asked, fearing the worst.
“We have reports that Shia elements of the army are joining the insurgency, so it’s a possibility.”
“And the Leopards are definitely backed by Iran?”
Houseman nodded. “No question. But the Sunnis brought it on themselves. The atrocities against the Shia minority were bound to result in an armed response.”
“How serious is the Iranian threat?”
Houseman drew in an audible breath through his nose and shuffled his buttocks a fraction. “Satellite images and drone feeds show that Iranian Special Forces have already made incursions across the border. And there are three divisions of the Revolutionary Guard massed just four miles from the largest of Pakistan’s five provinces–”
“Balochistan.”
“That’s right. Our analysts believe that Iran is planning to occupy the port of Gwadar and help themselves to the huge resources of natural gas in the province if Pakistan becomes a failed state.”
“They’re hoping to take advantage of the chaos,” Linda said, leaning back in her chair and arching her fingers.
“They are, ma’am. But if the Iranians come over the southern border in force, the Pakistanis, despite their internal problems, are likely to go to war. They regard the Iranians as apostates.”
“It’s a mess.” She massaged her temples with her thumbs and forefingers.
“My view is we back Pakistan with muscle and–”
“That’s a decision for Congress.”