The Red Cell André Gallo (essential reading .txt) 📖

“Time is the ingredient we are missing. Tell him he has ten days. No more.”

After the bodyguard put the computer away, Kazemi, rumpled and yawning, walked in. “I have been up all night, but I have the information we need,” he said then proceeded to provide the general with the particulars.

“We cannot depend on fifteen minutes,” Yosemani replied. “Maybe he was using the bathroom. So figure on ten minutes before the police react.”

“That is of course the safe thing to do,” Kazemi said. “However, there was an incident when the police were totally unaware a group of students had successfully hung a VW underneath the structure. It took them two nights, but the car was only discovered sometime during the day after their second visit.”

“Is that a true story?” Yosemani asked. “If that car had been loaded with explosives, I would not have to be here today. I would say it was a lot of luck on one hand and a lot of incompetence on the other. Successful operations need a generous amount of the first and as little as possible of the second.”

“Sir,” Kazemi said with some hesitancy, “I know you are bringing explosives for this job. But I wonder if we should not consider another alternative.” He waited for some encouragement before proceeding. The general only looked at him without a negative sign, so Kazemi continued. “There is a fascinating engineering concept called ‘Liquid Metal Embrittlement,’ which describes how mercury can weaken certain metals to the point of failure.”

“And you have seen this work?”

“Not exactly. But I studied it in school.”

“How much mercury? How long would it take? Are you sure it would work? If you have a specific operations plan, let me have it. If you do not, then keep this to yourself and enlighten our technical division when you go back to Tehran.”

“There have been many experiments. Perhaps the best known was performed at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.” Kazemi hesitated for a moment and said, “You are right, sir. I will try to collect the written data on this process and send it to our technical people.”

“Yes, but in the meantime, we will do it the old-fashioned way, with Semtex and thank Vaclav Havel. He declared shortly after taking over Czechoslovakia that the previous Communist regime had accumulated fifty years’ worth of Semtex for terrorist attacks. We thought he was advertising and we bought it.”

“About the timing,” Kazemi said. “We need not limit ourselves to ten minutes, sir. I have a way that will give us an additional ten or fifteen minutes.”

Yosemani stood to go inspect the garage. As he entered, a framed inscription announced, “Those who die with the most toys, win.” A rich man with a large ego but a sense of humor, he thought. Although he had never heard of him, he did remember his name: Penn, a misguided man who had put the Supreme Leader in the same category as world dictators such as Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, and Fidel Castro, all of whose hands he had shaken.

His mind had not stopped turning over the details of the operation he was about to undertake, which would open a new chapter in establishing his country’s rightful place in the world. The option he had been considering was to pull San Francisco’s law-enforcement units away from the Golden Gate Bridge via a decoy attack. He knew once the beehive of police and special units responded, they could overwhelm anything smaller than an army. His only trump card would be speed and surprise. But his reputation as a master of deception had been well earned. Rather than spread his few resources too thin by complicating his plan with a decoy operation, he would focus the enemy’s attention away from the bridge, much as the hated but devious and clever British had led Hitler to believe the Normandy invasion would take place up the coast from where it actually occurred.

As he strolled among the actor’s luxurious toys, Yosemani’s thoughts turned to the personal message he had received from the commanding general of the IRGC. The commander and the president, by orders of the Supreme Leader, had congratulated him on his foresight in planning to strike America’s homeland. His mission would be to wound the Great Satan immediately following the impending American missile strike against Syria, an integral part of the Greater Persian Empire.

40. New York Redux

Um al Ali took the elevator to the twenty-third floor, wondering why Khazaee had changed their meeting place from the apartment close to the U.N. building. She had not known the room number until the desk called his room. “Come on up. I’m in 2310.”

She knew the relationship had entered new territory when the Iranian focused on Islam, more particularly on Shiite Islam. While covering the twelve centuries between the Hussein martyrdom to the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Khazaee continually probed her own beliefs. The last time they met, he had quizzed her on her opinion regarding suicide bombers. Bob Trent, her CIA case officer, had simply told her to let her comments reflect her deep beliefs in her religion—but mostly she should listen.

She entered the corridor and slowed her steps. She stopped to find her compact and look at her reflection. The face looking back at her appeared tired and worried. Her lips were drawn tight and her eyes were blinking too fast. She put the compact away, stood taller, took a breath and walked resolutely toward 2310.

 She was also about to decapitate Syria’s intelligence organization.

She knocked on the door with a bad feeling she was in way over her head, that she was about to walk onto a minefield.

Khazaee opened the door for her and they entered the suite. There, she saw the gray-haired man who had attended their first meeting, sitting with a