a Turkmen terror network?” Carl Lyons interjected. “Please tell me the answer isn’t what I think it is.”
“Sorry.” Brognola shook his head. “It is. The bomb used in the attack was, according to our analysis after the fact, the very same bomb the Iranians have developed. Once intelligence services identified the three dead terrorists, the Man gave us the go-ahead to move on this.”
“So we’re hitting Iran?” McCarter asked.
“Unfortunately,” Brognola sighed, “nothing is ever that simple.” He waited while Price cued up several more images: pictures of men dressed in formal suits, as well as one man in paramilitary garb.
“This,” Brognola said of the latter, “is Nikolo Ovan. He’s essentially a warlord. His ultranationalist party has swept to power in the last year and seized control of Turkmenistan, militarizing it and terrorizing the Turkmen people. Ovan fancies himself the next Stalin or something. He’s motivated, intelligent, and very, very brutal. His leadership of Turkmenistan threatens the stability of the entire region.”
“Recent discoveries of new, more extensive deposits of natural gas,” Price said, causing a map of Turkmenistan and its neighbors to display on the screens, “have made Turkmenistan more economically powerful than it has ever been. Our intelligence sources tell us Ovan is negotiating with his neighbors, particularly Iran, to build a pipeline to them and trade in sales of the gas.”
“I take it he doesn’t want Euros,” Hawkins said.
“No,” Brognola said. “Ovan wants weapons, specifically weapons of mass destruction. He’s been able to purchase enough of them to get them into the hands of the terrorist network he’s building. Bad as that is, it could become much, much worse. The CIA tells us that Ovan wants to negotiate a steady supply of these bombs. That, coupled with the buying power a pipeline deal would give him, would make Ovan a real player on the world stage. We can’t allow that.”
“Ovan hates the West,” Price said. “He’s a socialist who sees everything about the Western, capitalist world as evil incarnate. His state-controlled television station broadcasts a steady stream of invective and propaganda against the Western world in general and the United States specifically. We know he’s been in talks with several dictators of minor countries to see whom he can bring aboard his terror network, too.”
“Make no mistake,” Brognola said, “Ovan is in this for the long term. He’s not just some kill-crazy tin-pot dictator, the type that rises and falls over the course of a summer. He has real plans for something like long-term domination of his region and ultimately the world through terror and violence. If he’s allowed to implement them, he’ll be that much more difficult to stop.”
“So we’re hitting Ovan?” Lyons asked impatiently.
“Again, it’s not that simple.” Brognola shook his head. “The two men you see here with Ovan,” he went on, indicating the men in suits, “are candidates for the presidency of Iran.”
“This,” Price said, causing one of the pictures to glow brighter, “is Khalil Khan. He’s the moderate candidate. A series of increasingly turbulent uprisings has prompted calls for yet another election in Iran. The hard-line incumbent, Mohammad-Hossein Magham, is doing everything he can to squelch the press, including attempting to cut off access in Iran to certain social networking sites on the internet, blocking all but Iranian-controlled news media in the country and threatening those news outlets that don’t side with him or who dare even to report on the dissidents. Our CIA assets in Iran report that Khalil Khan has a very good chance of winning, if he lives to see election day…and if Ovan doesn’t influence the election otherwise.”
“It’s almost a repeat of the Ahmadinejad-Mousavi election,” Brognola said. “Khan’s a pro-Western moderate who wants to bring his country into the modern world and improve its human rights record. Magham’s a dictator who’d just as soon crush the dissidents and run the country like a prison camp, but he’s sensitive to world attention and media coverage. He doesn’t just want to run the country—he wants people to acknowledge that he’s right to run the country.”
“Enter Ovan again,” Price said. “We have covert intel that says Ovan’s terror network is led by two men. These are his sons, half brothers Karbuly and Ebrahim Ghemenizov.”
The secondary screens displayed images of a large, bearded man with wild eyes and a thin, balding, sallow man whose eyes shared the other’s slightly unstable look. “We have reason to believe Karbuly is heading up the domestic terror network that directed the actions of the three dead terrorists in New York,” Price said. “There are unconfirmed reports that Karbuly has been spotted at multiple locations here in the Northeast United States. We think the botched attack, in which the terrorists either set their bomb incorrectly or perhaps used a defective weapon, was the opening salvo in Ovan’s long-range plans to hurt the West as he jockeys to better his economic and strategic position worldwide. From the terrorist chatter we’ve intercepted, we also think he’s trying to show the Iranians just what he can bring to the table. They hate us, too, remember, and if he can show the hard-line Iranian government that he’s a real force to be reckoned with, they’ll be eager to cut a deal with him.”
“Ebrahim Ghemenizov is half Iranian by birth,” Brognola said, “and the CIA places him in Tehran. Their people believe that Ovan, through Ebrahim, has been behind several terrorist attacks on supporters of Magham.”
“But Magham’s the hard-liner,” James said. “Why would Ovan hurt the candidate who’s more likely to sell him the weapons?”
“It’s true that Khan would put a stop to the weapons program,” Price said, “or at least we hope he would. Magham is behind the program. But he’s also working in complicity with Ovan to help stage the attacks on his own supporters. The idea is to create, and spread through the media, the idea that Khan’s followers are violent murderers who cannot be trusted. So far the tactic is working. Those few polls we can get that aren’t skewed by Magham’s government show that, while he’s still running behind Khan, the moderates’ lead has diminished since the attacks began.”
“On the world stage, meanwhile,” Brognola said, sounding especially weary, “the Man is worried that we can’t simply hit Ovan and cut this off at the source, because all of the evidence we have is covert intelligence. We can’t afford to point to any more satellite photos of WMD factories that turn out to be anything but…and we can’t afford to move against Turkmenistan in an official capacity, not even as a black operation, unless we can turn public opinion against Ovan and show the world he’s got his hands in the terror attacks in Iran. If his involvement is exposed, the Iranians will scream bloody murder about the interference, and Magham’s fate will be sealed. That’s especially true if his own involvement in the plot is outed.”
“So what are we doing?” Lyons asked.
“A WMD-equipped Ovan would be a nightmare for us all,” Brognola said. “His terror network, at this point, quite possibly rivals al Qaeda. But more years of hard-line rule under Magham does no one any favors, either. We need to expose the terror link in Iran and do what we can to ensure an honest victory for Khan, while putting a stop to Ovan’s terror network and removing him from power.”
“Oh, is that all?” McCarter snorted, half grinning. Brognola rolled his eyes fractionally but ignored the comment.
“Gadgets, working with Aaron, Akira and our friends at the CIA who provided the sample bombs,” Brognola said, “have performed extensive analysis on the bombs, and there’s a vulnerability we can exploit. The devices have a unique electromagnetic signature that changes as they
