Part 34 (1/2)

Secure Strategic Support Command (SSSC) Forward Base DAGMAR Jordan.

Fouad Al-Husam waited nervously at the end of the spare concrete corridor. To his right and left, Forward Team army officers from the UK and the United States stood at parade rest, looking a.s.sured in a way he did not feel and possibly would never feel.

Here, in the distant reaches of the Jordanian desert, Fouad had learned just three days ago the details of multilateral logistics support for the insurgents occupying Riyadh, Jeddah, and Mecca. What most of the world regarded as a spontaneous Muslim rebellion against corrupt Saudis now took on the more focused appearance, perhaps even the reality (how could he know how much he was being told?) of a channeled flood of Muslim anger, fed and in some cases incited by other nations in a concerted effort to allow political change while maintaining world oil supplies.

As he had guessed long months ago.

Some called it a controlled burn to prevent much of the world from going up in flames.

Even the Chinese and Indians had secretly signed on, in hopes of maintaining the fuel supplies they desperately needed to keep their white-hot economies growing. The Russians alone, after initial tacit support, had growled back into their caves, angered by this finesse on their plans to marginalize the European Union and the United States.

But the ultimate truth of it was, Muslims were killing Muslims with weapons supplied chiefly by non-Muslims. With the direct aid of Egypt and Turkey-both of whom had once controlled access to Mecca-and to some extent Jordan, a Provisional Hijaz authority was being established in Saudi Arabia, consisting largely of troops from Yemen, Oman, and-fulfilling perhaps the greatest irony of this unpromising century-Iraq.

What Fouad had learned in the last ten days had the effect of both enlightening and corroding him. Muslims were not in charge of their own destinies. They had lost that option centuries ago, really.

In Iran, Muslim rulers still had a modic.u.m of dignity and control but that meant little: Iran was a nation certifiably going insane, with clerics ordaining the shootings and bombings of thousands of protestors, mostly young students; defying international pressure; and moving their few nuclear weapons into positions where they could be launched against Israeli, Turkish, or European targets.

The West's best and last hope: that most of those weapons were a bluff, and that the single working nuclear weapon in their possession had somehow been triggered at Shahabad Kord within Fouad's own sight.

The madness that had begun in last century was coming to a head and he was at that head, sitting on an erupting boil of foulness beyond anything even his father or grandfather had conceived of.

'Here come the boys,' said the British colonel on Fouad's left, and smiled a.s.surance. 'Your best and brightest, I'd say.'

'The boys' walked in four ranks of five down the hall with rhythmic step and young, stern faces. They were the first of what some were calling-offensively, in Fouad's opinion-the Janissaries, after the Balkan Christian children who had been raised to serve Turkish masters under the Ottoman empire. All had been selected by BuDark case officers from an original roster of one hundred candidates. When Fouad had heard of the program that had brought these former orphans to the United States, he had not believed such things possible; now he knew their inevitability.

The ranks of handsome and beardless brown faces approached to within ten feet, then paused with something less than military precision and mimicked the officers before them. Like him, they were officers in BuDark, ostensibly a non-military operation. They stood at parade rest. A few Adam's apples bobbed. Eyes flicked.

Fouad smiled briefly, then held a frozen expression he hoped conveyed neutral dignity. These men, he was told, would look up to him. He had seen combat; they had not. He spoke many languages. They knew two or at most three. He was blooded. He had killed. They had not. But their combat training exceeded his own. When they realized this, they would be tough to command, and Fouad was not looking forward to such a challenge, but there was no choice.

The die was cast.

Each of these young men had been brought from Iraq or Afghanistan during the Coalition War. They had been handselected from orphans found in various cities and in the countryside, adopted by serving military officers into their own families, and raised in special circ.u.mstances. They had been educated in schools in Virginia, Georgia, and California. They had earned the equivalent of high school diplomas and then bachelor degrees in many fields, but they had also received training at Fort Benning, with emphasis on special ops.

An even more select few were still in training at elite Strategic Support bases in Turkey and when they were fielded one of them would likely replace Fouad. But for now, for the next five or six months, this team was his to work with. All part of a grand experiment.

Fouad surmised they had an even chance of being sited in Iran to gather HUMINT, human intelligence. But they had an equal chance of being placed in one or two key positions in or around Mecca. He had already been briefed about that option.

The young Muslim men darted their eyes across the line of solemn white faces and then-as predicted-focused on Fouad.

'Welcome to Jordan,' Fouad said. They nodded as one but did not express emotion, though their feelings must have been running high. This was the first time they had been close to their homelands in ten years or more. Then, in Arabic, Fouad added-equally for the benefit of the officers around him-'It is our duty to preserve and further the splendid and blessed culture of Islam in a time of cruel trial. G.o.d is great.'

The young men echoed Allahu Akhbar Allahu Akhbar.

'Ultimately we serve no master but G.o.d and G.o.d willing, Islam will flourish in our modern world and with our help come to new order and power and achieve new heights. Our re-birth has begun.'

This had been taught to them all in the foreign schools-that the greatest glory of Islam was imminent, that the West was not an enemy but an ally. These young men, these anti-Janissaries, did not blink or show any signs that they lacked conviction.

The words tasted like gall in Fouad's mouth. But he knew, as his father had known, that this was the only way.

The rigid pale men at his sides who instructed and watched and judged were aware of the fragility. But their time had come, and these experimental weapons in the great cultural war had to be tested to prepare the way for later and even more important operations. Mistakes would be made. Let them be made now, that later they would not.

Fouad Al-Husam finally knew the real names of BuDark.

They were Savior.

And Betrayer.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN.

Private Home Maryland.

White House Chief of Staff Kelly Schein was a plump, homely woman in her late forties with goggling eyes and no chin and an abrupt way of speaking that rubbed much of the fur in the capital the wrong way. That did not matter much in the grand scheme. At the moment she was the second most powerful human being in the world, and still she was not happy.

She walked up the brick steps to the long porch of the Buckler mansion and glanced over her shoulder at a procession of three very serious and alert Secret Service agents, followed by Hiram Newsome and Rebecca Rose, who joined her at the beautiful antique cherry front door. They were among the first to arrive to this peculiar and unexpected soiree.

'I'm sure you'd all rather be at the White House,' Schein said. 'Unfortunately, it's full of sneaky little bugs. We just found them last week. n.o.body's confessed to planting them, big surprise. They're in the paint, for Christ's sake-tiny little flat transducers. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Someone with a debriefer hidden in a magazine could walk in and collect a week's worth of conversation. It's playing h.e.l.l with the President's schedule.' She looked up at Newsome. 'I sure hope you didn't know anything about this. Even for a giggle.'

Some at headquarters had pointed to Schein as the most serious opponent in the White House to Hiram Newsome's appointment.

Newsome shook his head. 'No ma'am. I don't have much time to read paperbacks any more.'

Schein gave him a second, dubious glance. 'National Security Director is coming with the President. Your cast will a.s.semble before the President gets here. You have half an hour.' Schein slipped the key into the large door. 'We move randomly from house to house in Georgetown for our most secure meetings. Isn't partisan spirit grand?'

'You're blaming the previous administration?' Newsome asked, his chin developing a few stubborn companions.

Schein smiled, showing large, even teeth, and put on round gla.s.ses. 'I doubt they were smart enough to know what was happening. Look at all the other messes they left behind for us to clean up.'

Rebecca followed Newsome into the s.p.a.cious living room. The house was quiet and a little chilly. She had pictured a meeting with the President in more formal, glamorous terms: the Oval Office or the Situation Room, stern generals burdened with tons of egg salad-or was it fruit salad? Decorations and campaign medals, anyway-a huge threat board-not a deserted mansion on a ten-acre estate, furnished with exquisite antiques.

A large, striking painting in earth-tones, blues and greens, and gold-an original, she guessed-hung in the foyer above the stairs leading to the second floor. To Rebecca, the emaciated and thoroughly naked woman in the painting resembled a concentration camp victim. She looked at the artist's signature in the corner, Klimt, Klimt, and turned away with a shudder. and turned away with a shudder.

Schein removed her coat and draped it over a high-backed chair. 'I have five reservations for your party at this clambake,' she said. 'Besides you two. Four agents and one civilian, I understand.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Newsome said.

'From all over the country,' Schein said. 'Some young, some old. I a.s.sume they've all pieced together bits of the puzzle.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Is that what FBI does best, put together puzzles?' Schein asked with a straight face.

'Sometimes,' Newsome replied, his eyes heavy-lidded.

'Why did the former director fire you, News?' Schein asked as she tried out a large leather chair. She moved up and down and around as if establis.h.i.+ng the height and comfort zone of someone taller. Newsome remained standing with his coat on, as if he might be asked to leave. He did not like her use of his nickname.

'Last minute attempt to lighten the lifeboat, I presume,' he answered.