War Drums. Don Pendleton

      “Why us?” Price asked. “I mean, the President has lifted the case from the CIA and pushed it our way.”

      “Plain and simple. The President wants Stony Man to handle this. He had a visit from the CIA special ops director, and from what he told me the U.S. is in a fix over this Iranian deal. Intel has Iran’s hard-liners pushing for their own nuclear capability in defiance of UN rulings. They’re doing their damnedest to refine weapon’s grade plutonium and intelligence sources say they have some underground development work on the technical side.”

      “Hardly a threat in the short term,” Price said.

      “No one is expecting them to suddenly have fleets of ICBMs targeting New York,” Brognola replied. “But the very thought of Iran having any kind of nuke is sending shivers all across the Middle East, especially in the direction of Israel.”

      “Those hard-liners have been laying it down pretty fierce,” Aaron Kurtzman pointed out. “They blame Israel for every problem in the region. I understand the rhetoric involved in politics. It’s all to do with psyching out the enemy, but in an area like the Middle East it’s very easy to start the fires.”

      “If Israel gets pushed too far it might use one of its own surgical strikes against Iran,” Bolan said. “Preemptive. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

      “Exactly. If that happens, we could end up with one hell of a conflict. But there’s more to it. The President has intel that points to Chinese involvement, behind-the-scenes courting of Ayatollah Muhar Razihra. He’s the man behind the belligerent criticism of Israel and the West. The Chinese are promoting themselves as the emerging political and market successor to the U.S. They have their eye on the future and Iran’s oil reserves. Iran as a superpower, wielding the strength of nuclear capability in the region means they’ll have clout. Beijing hasn’t been slow at seeing the benefits of wooing the Iranians. The country is oil rich. And oil is as important to China as it is to us. The Chinese are willing to work at this over the long term.”

      “What about the rest of the region?” Bolan asked.

      “Unrest. Negative feelings where it comes to Iran becoming nuclear. That’s another of the President’s concerns. We all understand the uncertainty in the region in general. All it needs is one country suddenly having a big stick they can use to intimidate other countries.”

      “What about Iran’s moderates?” Price asked. “Isn’t there a calming influence?”

      Kurtzman nodded. “Sure. There are government members who want to stay out of the nuclear club. They see the problems on the horizon. Right now they seem to be shouted down at every turn and the problem is they don’t have enough backing from the military or the religious community, which Razihra does.”

      “Aaron, put up those images I sent you,” Brognola said.

      Kurtzman tapped his keyboard and one of the wall screens lit up.

      “The guy on the right in the black robes is Ayatollah Razihra. He’s the big gun in the pro-nuke debate. His direct opponent is Nuri Masood, a government minister who argues against the program. That’s him in the middle. On the left is Dr. Shahan Baresh. He works under Masood, and he’s a skilled negotiator who does all the Iranian dealings with the UN and other groups trying to ease the tension. He spends a great deal of his time out of the country in meetings, seminars, doing his best to promote a better image for Iran.”

      “I’ve heard about Razihra,” Price said. “He’s not the kind of man you’d want standing against you.”

      “I imagine this is only part of the picture, Hal,” Bolan said.

      “Oh, yes.” Brognola tapped the file in front of him. “The CIA had a man infiltrated into a group that has been supplying the Iran Secret Service with conventional weapons and technical data on the construction and deployment of nuclear weaponry. This sweet bunch has even been negotiating with them to purchase this information and hardware. If the Iranians get their hands on this data, it gives them a jump-start on their development program. If they aren’t already up and running.

      “The CIA director had initiated the covert operation himself, choosing his own agent and keeping it close to his chest after getting the go from the Man. It appeared to be running pretty smoothly until a few days ago when the undercover agent was assassinated in London. Professional hit. Two shots to the back of the head. The agent was working under the name Harry Vincent. When Scotland Yard put the name through their system it went all the way to Langley and was red-flagged in the director’s office. The numbers clicked in and Vincent’s body was appropriated by the CIA’s London field office and flown back to CIA headquarters. The director did his best to keep the details under wraps, but the killing made him suspicious and he went straight to the President. He suspected he had a leak within the Agency. The President took over the covert operation and told the director he’d take care of it.”

      “He didn’t mention us?” Price asked.

      “How could he?” Kurtzman asked. “We don’t exist.”

      “Exactly,” Brognola agreed. “The President hinted the military would look into the matter and told the director it would be dealt with. I guess the director would have been relieved to have it taken off his hands. He’s going to have enough explaining to do over the Agency leak.”

      “So we pick up the slack again,” Price commented.

      “It’s what we do best,” Brognola said. “The director handed over all the intel his agent had gathered. His real name, by the way, was Carl Marchesse. Thirty-four years old. Native New Yorker. Joined the Agency when he was twenty-two and worked his way up through the ranks. Seems he showed a flair for undercover work early on. Worked a number of assignments that gained him a lot of brownie points. Five years ago he was recruited into a special ops section, specializing in the really down and dirty covert operations. He did well. When the Iranian operation was set up around five months ago, Marchesse was the man the director chose. He disappeared for a couple of months and when he resurfaced he was Harry Vincent. According to the director, he infiltrated the group suspected of providing the Iranians with weapons and data on nuclear weapons. The group’s headed by a Russian named Anatoly Nevski.”

      “If a double agent in the CIA ordered his murder,” Bolan said, “all that intel is most likely in his hands, as well.”

      “Unfortunately that’s probably true. Aaron, second file, please.”

      “The gaunt-looking guy is Dr. Gregori Malinski, a Russian nuclear physicist. After the Soviet Union collapsed he was more or less out of a job. He moved around and started to sell his knowledge on the open market to whoever would pay. Marchesse’s intel told us the Iranians had him working big-time on their nuke development. But he dropped out of sight some days ago. Nevski had brokered Malinski’s contract with Razihra and his military backers. From what Marchesse managed to pick up the Iranians are less than pleased about Gregori’s jumping ship. It could be he left them at a critical stage in the development. If the Iranians had people clever enough to develop their own nuclear weapons they wouldn’t have needed to buy Malinski.”

      “This is an old photo,” Kurtzman said. “The girl is Malinski’s estranged daughter, Sashia. She’s management in an international travel agency. Hops around all over the place. Right now she’s based in Paris. It might be that Malinski got in touch. It’s a long shot, but it could happen. It would be helpful for us if he did. But not so much for Razihra.”

      “And this is because…?” Bolan asked.

      “Malinski knows the location of the Iranian base where the nuclear development is taking place,” Brognola said. “Also, he’s just one of the equations in the picture.”

      “I get the feeling you’re about to tell me what I’m about to let myself in for.”

      “That’s my guy.”

      Kurtzman brought up more pictures. “This next batch show the members of the Russian syndicate Marchesse infiltrated. I mentioned