ADVENTURES THROUGH TIME (2025 Edition) by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

‘’Quite true, Major. There is certainly a mystery about her here. What kind of attitude has she shown up to now?’’

‘’She has been very cooperative and most polite to date, sir. She stated that her visit here is meant to secure interviews with various government officials in Tehran. She even proposed by herself that we assign to her a female minder as a close escort during her stay in Iran, which I would say would be a very good way to ensure that she does not spy on us. I also believe that she could be quite useful to us by doing her interviews under close supervision. The Israelis and Americans have been able to paint a one-sided portrait of us for too long, in my opinion. Laplante is a well-known and respected war correspondent and could pass our messages to the Western public better than if we did it ourselves.’’

‘’Again, I agree, Major. I will send you within two hours a female agent who can be trusted completely, to be assigned as a minder for Laplante. Once she has arrived, let Laplante leave the airport with her, but keep close contact with our female agent. Consider Laplante your priority case from now on: there are too many weird things happening around her, while her work here could benefit us greatly politically and

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diplomatically. Report to me immediately if you learn something new about her and about the reasons why the Israelis are after her.’’

‘’I will certainly do that, sir.’’ said Hossein before hanging up. He was thoughtful for a long moment, trying to figure out why the Israelis were so interested in her. Unable to think of anything plausible, he then got up from behind the desk and left the office to return to the interrogation room.

He found Nancy still waiting patiently in her chair, apparently calm and unconcerned. Hossein secretly admired her assurance and aplomb: up to now he couldn’t help liking her, even though she could potentially be very dangerous. He had however read her file in detail and had seen in it a pattern consistent with what his first personal impression had told him of her. She had repeatedly proved to be a tolerant and honest woman who understood the subtleties of the Middle East better than most and who was not afraid to call things for what they were, even if it contradicted the views of her own government or of its allies. While that didn’t make her a friend of the Iranian regime, she had enough credibility with the international public and medias to be able to pass on Iranian official views without distorting them the way too many Western reporters did. In fact, her last known published article about the present conflict had been quite critical of Israeli actions and of the blind support Israel was getting from many American politicians and lobbying groups. She looked up at him with a questioning expression when he entered the room.

‘’So, Major, what do you have in store for me?’’

‘’Oh, nothing sinister, I assure you. A female minder should be here in a couple hours to escort you to a hotel. Then, you will be free to go around and do your things, as long as your minder approves of them. I will ask you to refrain from sending via satellite link or Internet any report until your minder has had a chance to vet them. You break that rule and we will be forced to expel you at once…or worse.’’

‘’That is quite amenable to me, Major. This is a country at war and I can understand your concerns about Iranian security. I personally think that this war is quite an unnecessary one, and have said so publicly in my articles.’’

‘’I know and I thank you for your comprehension, miss. By the way, the Israelis seem to decidedly have little love for you: they upgraded their arrest warrant in your name, to include in it the charge that you murdered two of their security officials. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’’

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To the complete surprise of Hossein, who had expected her to vehemently deny the Israeli charge, she simply nodded once her head and made a wry smile.

‘’I suppose that it was to be expected. While I don’t wish that to be published widely, the Israelis actually kidnapped me soon after my arrival in Israel and brought me to some kind of discrete safe house near Tel Aviv, where they were ready to torture me. I was however able to escape, killing two of them in the process. The way they did their things clandestinely, I would say that they did not want my kidnapping to become public knowledge and probably planned to kill me and make me disappear afterwards. I acted purely in self-defense and would do the same again if need be. The Israelis will however never admit their acts publicly and will try to make me look as bad as they can to justify their actions against me.’’

‘’And may I ask why they kidnapped you and were ready to torture you, miss?’’

‘’Yes, you may, Major. Simply put, they seemed to truly believe, for some unknown reason, that I was involved with terrorists. Maybe they misinterpreted some of my past visits and interviews to various people around the World, or got a piece of incorrect information about me. I frankly couldn’t say right now for certain.’’

‘’You do realize that this only paints you more as some kind of intelligence agent, miss.’’ remarked Hossein while his mind raced about the implications of this revelation. She however scoffed at that.

‘’With the way I am known publicly around the World? I would make quite a poor secret agent indeed, Major. This is reality, not some kind of James Bond movie. An effective agent is an anonymous agent, not someone whose face is seen on television news reports.’’

‘’You said that they were ready to torture you, miss? Why did you think so?’’ That brought a sarcastic smile on her face.

‘’Well, the fact that I woke up naked and tied to a chair in some kind of basement was my first clue. The second clue was the battery and electrical wires in a corner of the room.’’

‘’And you still managed to kill two Israeli agents and escape, miss? That does sound like a James Bond movie.’’

‘’They simply were overconfident and underestimated me, Major, the same way the Taliban did in Afghanistan.’’

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Hossein stared at her for a moment, while his two men exchanged befuddled looks. This was decidedly a potentially very dangerous woman, but also one he liked more and more. He would have loved to have an agent as skilled as her in his service.

‘’Well, this changes things a bit, I would say. Excuse me again for a moment.’’

This time, Hossein used a telephone at the nearby customs offices to call back his superior and tell him about Laplante’s confession. Taeb was left speechless for a moment by that.

‘’Decidedly, this woman is full of surprises. However, she could still be useful to us. That she has good reasons to be hostile to the Israelis can only be good for us. For your knowledge, I am sending you Lieutenant Farah Qalibaf as a minder for Laplante. She is both very capable and utterly reliable. She may not be able to take down Laplante in a straight fight but I do not expect our Canadian guest to become combative with us.’’

‘’To be frank, sir, I doubt that any of our agents could take on Laplante in a fair fight: she can be a very dangerous woman indeed. However, I believe her when she says that she is here simply as a reporter.’’

‘’I am starting to believe that as well, Major. Lieutenant Qalibaf should show up at the airport in about one hour, time for her to go pack a suitcase for a hotel stay with Laplante.’’

‘’I will be waiting for her, sir.’’

Hossein then hung up, satisfied. He knew Farah Qalibaf and regarded her as a competent, effective agent. She also happened to be the daughter of an ex-senior IRGC officer who was presently the Mayor of Tehran. As political reliability went, it was hard to do better than that.

Nancy was having a cup of tea with Mousavi, having been invited by him to go with her luggage to a personnel lounge, when a young woman dressed conservatively but in the Western style with jeans and a loose sweater showed up in the lounge, a small suitcase in one hand. She could have been said to be pretty but the severe, all business look on her face somewhat killed any attractiveness in her. Nancy’s first impression was that of a fanatic, something not surprising for a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. She still got up from her sofa out of simple courtesy, while Mousavi smiled to the newcomer and pointed Nancy to her.

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‘’Aah, Lieutenant Qalibaf! May I present you Miss Nancy Laplante, presently in Iran as a reporter on assignment for CNN?’’

Qalibaf gave a less than friendly look to Nancy before facing Mousavi again.

‘’I am ready to escort Miss Laplante to her hotel, sir.’’

‘’Good! Were you briefed about the latest developments about her?’’

‘’Yes, Major.’’ said the Iranian woman in a nearly dismissive tone. Not liking her attitude, Hossein got up on his feet and excused himself with Nancy before leading Qalibaf out of the lounge, cornering her in the hallway and speaking to her in a low, severe voice.

‘’Lieutenant, I understand that you may not like this Canadian woman for what she is but she could be useful to us to pass certain messages to the West. I would appreciate if you could at least try to be polite with her. Also, don’t be overconfident with her: she could easily break you in two if she decided to. Two Mossad agents did the same mistake that you were about to do and they are now dead.’’ Qalibaf gave him a nearly scandalized look.

‘’Aren’t we overestimating her, Major? I myself am highly trained in unarmed combat and pistol shooting…’’

‘’…and so are Mossad agents. Yet, if we can believe her, she killed two of them while tied up and naked. She is a highly experienced soldier and a World-class martial artist, so don’t presume too much about your own abilities. Besides, we need her good will, Lieutenant, so make an effort to be at least civil with her. Do you understand me?’’ Qalibaf hesitated for a moment but, seeing the warning look in Mousavi’s eyes, nodded her head once.

‘’Yes, Major, I understand. Do you have any special directive concerning her?’’

‘’Yes! She can film things around Tehran as she wishes but she is not to retransmit her video files or contact someone outside of Iran unless you have vetted them and are sure that she will not pass on classified or sensitive information. Filming daily life in Tehran or interviewing a government official is fine, but filming street protests against the regime or interviewing dissidents is of course a no-no. If you have any doubts about a report, contact me at once and withhold its transmission until I can make a decision about it. I however do not expect trouble of that kind from Miss Laplante. She is a highly intelligent woman and I believe that she fully understands the precariousness of her present situation here. One last thing: our intent is to use her to

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our profit, not to try to entrap her, so explain to her honestly how to do things around here in a way that won’t get her arrested.’’

Mousavi could then see on her face that she didn’t particularly like that last directive but she nonetheless nodded her head again.

‘’I will do that, sir.’’

‘’Good! You may now escort Miss Laplante to her hotel. She has already reserved a room at the Kowsar Hotel.’’

‘’I know it, sir.’’

‘’Then, I will let you with her. Send me at least one update per day about her activities, apart from reporting at once any significant event.’’ Mousavi then turned around and left Qalibaf to digest his directives. Sighing with contained frustration, the IRGC intelligence agent then went back in the lounge and looked down at Nancy, who was finishing her cup of tea.

‘’If you are ready, we can now go to your hotel, miss.’’

‘’And how would you like to be called by me? Miss Qalibaf or Lieutenant Qalibaf?’’

‘’Miss Qalibaf will do, Miss Laplante. I will lead you to the taxi stand.’’ Putting down her cup, Nancy then gathered her luggage and followed the Iranian woman out of the lounge.

The taxi drive to her downtown hotel was spent in silence, Qalibaf not being apparently inclined to exchange small talk with her. The trip was however useful to Nancy in that it gave her a glimpse of the daily life in Tehran. For one thing, car traffic was less dense than she had expected, which was quickly explained to her when she saw prominent signs at the gas stations she passed by and which reminded the citizens that fuel was rationed due to the war effort. In contrast, bicycle traffic was quite voluminous, with men and women of all ages pedaling around, often with a bag of groceries or other items tied to the rear rack of their bicycles. There were more signs in the storefronts of many shops, particularly grocery stores and supermarkets, that announced rationing on various food items, while long waiting lines often stood at the entrance of grocery stores. That reminded Nancy very much of London in 1940 ‘B’, when she was fighting World War Two on the British side. They finally arrived at the Kowsar Hotel, a six-story building situated at the end of a quiet side street near one of the main city squares of downtown Tehran. It was an aging establishment but its

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personnel proved at once both competent and courteous, a young bellboy putting at once Nancy’s luggage on a cart and escorting her and Qalibaf to the reception desk, where a smiling man greeted her in good English.

‘’Welcome to the Kowsar Hotel, miss. Do you have already a room reservation or do you want to book a room now?’’

‘’I already reserved a room by Internet from Lebanon. My name is Nancy Laplante. Here is my passport.’’

‘’Ah, yes, Miss Laplante. We have one of our best rooms for you, Room 504.’’

‘’Then, charge me for double occupancy, please. Miss Qalibaf is with me.’’ The receptionist gave a cautious, quick look at the Iranian woman, probably pegging her right away as a government official, before handing Nancy her room key, plus another key for Qalibaf.

‘’Here you are, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’Thank you, mister. Do you happen to have by chance a gymnasium or fitness room in the hotel?’’

‘’We do have a small gymnasium, along with a sauna, miss. Here is a pamphlet with the information about the various hotel services.’’

‘’Thank you again, mister. One last thing: do you have safety boxes here?’’

‘’We do, miss. You would like to secure your passport, I presume?’’

‘’Actually, I was thinking of something a bit bigger, if your boxes can accommodate it.’’

Nancy then put on the reception counter the padded carrying bag containing her satellite communications link unit and her satellite telephone.

‘’Would this fit in one of your safety boxes, by chance?’’

‘’Uh, not in our standard boxes, but we do have a number of individual safes which could take this, miss. Those safes are however much more expensive to rent than safety boxes.’’

‘’Well, CNN is paying for it. I will take one. However, put it in the name of Miss Qalibaf and give her the key.’’

Farah Qalibaf was taken by surprise by that and looked at Nancy questioningly. Nancy however preempted her question.

‘’What better way to control the transmission of my reports than to put my satellite link equipment in your custody, Lieutenant Qalibaf? Take that as a show of goodwill on my part.’’

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While pleased, Farah was still suspicious of her ultimate motives. Was Nancy hiding something else from her? The receptionist, his suspicions about Qalibaf now confirmed, kept his thoughts to himself and grabbed the padded bag, disappearing through a door behind the counter for a few minutes, then returning with a key that he handed to Qalibaf before presenting her as well a form.

‘’If you may fill this deposit form, miss. You have our safe number two.’’ Seeing that Qalibaf hesitated, Nancy filled the form for her with the precise description of the equipment contained in her bag, then let Farah sign the form. With this done, she thanked again the receptionist and headed for the elevators with Farah and the bellboy pushing her luggage cart.

Their room proved to be large and clean, although the carpet and wall tapestry were showing their age. The bathroom was also decent and fully functional. Farah noticed at once that there was however only one bed, albeit a large one. Most satisfied, Nancy quickly unpacked her things and suspended her clothes, while Farah did the same with her single suitcase. Once finished, Nancy smiled politely to the IRGC agent.

‘’Well, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind, I am going to pay a visit to your foreign ministry nearby, in order to register myself with their foreign media liaison office and to officially request interviews with a number of high officials.’’

‘’I see no problems with that, Miss Laplante. With whom are you planning to ask for interviews?’’

‘’First, with your foreign minister, then with the head of your atomic energy organization. Finally, if I am lucky, I would like to interview Ali Akbar Velayati, the senior advisor of your Supreme Leader.’’

Farah gave her a skeptical look.

‘’That is quite an ambitious program, miss. I won’t bet on your chances of getting those interviews.’’

‘’Well, I do have to justify my travel expenses to CNN, Lieutenant. However, my charm and good looks may just do the trick. Do you mind if I lug my camera around during our outing?’’

‘’Since your satellite equipment is under key, I see no problems with that. Just ask me before filming anything, though.’’

‘’Don’t worry: I will, Lieutenant.’’

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19:43 (Iran Time)

Room 504, Kowsar Hotel

Number 8, Shahid Malaee Avenue

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Nancy was reasonably satisfied with her day as she put away her precious video camera in its padded bag: her visit to the foreign ministry building had been less frustrating than expected and she had been able to register official requests for interviews with a number of high-level officials of the Iranian government. Now, she could only be patient and hope that her requests would be granted quickly, if at all. On her part, Farah Qalibaf had done her honest best not to be too intrusive or overbearing. Nancy’s impression was that, after initially acting according to a stereotyped view of her, Farah was starting to gauge her true side. While still not exactly warm with her, Farah had relaxed somewhat her stance around her and was much less confrontational now. Taking out one of her fitness training leotards, she started stripping off her day clothes while speaking to Farah, who had sat down in one of the padded chairs of the room and was watching her.

‘’I am going to the hotel’s gymnasium for a workout. Do you want to work out on your fitness as well, Lieutenant?’’

‘’Thank you but no. I will go with you, but only to watch. I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly while working out.’’

‘’Your loss.’’ said Nancy. She soon was down to her underwear, allowing Farah to examine her athletic body with professional curiosity. What Farah saw was quite impressive, she had to recognize: Nancy had the build of an Olympic-class gymnast, with long, well-shaped but also powerful legs and muscular arms and shoulders. While her breasts were large and apparently firm, her flat belly sported a proverbial ‘six-pack’ of abdomen muscles. Farah was however most attracted to the faint scars on her legs, buttocks and upper arms.

‘’Where did you get those scars, Miss Laplante?’’

‘’Oh, I collected them on various battlefields, either as a war correspondent or as a soldier. Those scars on my buttocks, legs and arms are mostly from mortar shrapnel fragments, while I got shot in five places and stabbed once in the left leg. Thankfully, none of the damage was permanent.’’

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Nancy then slipped on her leotard, a skin-tight light blue and white outfit, then slipped on a pair of athletic shoes and grabbed a towel and shower kit before looking at Farah.

‘’Well, I’m ready. Let’s go!’’

Farah got up and followed her out of their room, going down to the ground floor, where the gymnasium of the hotel was located. While it was nothing like what a typical good fitness club in Canada or the United States would be, the gymnasium proved adequate for Nancy’s purposes, with a number of exercise machines and a selection of weight-lifting equipment, plus an open area covered with exercise mats. Commensurate with the apparent low number of customers in the hotel, only two men were exercising in the gym when Nancy and Farah walked in. The men’s eyes immediately went on them, then concentrated on Nancy and her form-fitting leotard. She was secretly amused and pleased by that attention, in turn eyeing the younger of the two men, a tall Caucasian man with short blond hair and blue eyes. The two men then exchanged a few words in Russian in a low voice, commenting gleefully on her curves. Hiding a smile, Nancy put down her shower kit and towel on a window sill, then went to sit on an exercise bicycle located near the blond man. Discreetly cranking up the tension on the bike’s pedals to its maximum, she then smiled to the tall blond man, who was in his early thirties and was quite handsome, and spoke to him in Russian while starting to pedal her bike.

‘’Hi! My name is Nancy. And you?’’

Not believing his luck, the tall Russian smiled and answered her while continuing to pump the pulleys of his weight machine.

‘’I’m Dimitri, Dimitri Kutuzov. You are Russian?’’

‘’No, Canadian. I happen to be able to speak many languages fluently, but my mother tongue is French. I’m from Montreal.’’

‘’Ah, Montreal… I heard a lot of good things about that city. And what brings you to Tehran in a time of war, Nancy?’’

‘’I’m a reporter. And you?’’

Dimitri hesitated for a moment, put off a bit to learn that she was a reporter. However, the tempting sight of her chest, quite visible thanks to the wide cleavage of her leotard and to the fact that she was leaning forward on her bike, encouraged him to continue conversing with her.

‘’I’m an electronics engineer, here to help maintain some equipment in use here but produced in Russia by Almaz-Antey.’’

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‘’Oh, a maintenance contract, I see. You can find about anything anywhere these days, what with this global trend.’’ said Nancy, still smiling and playing the ignorant. In reality, her mind was reviewing some of the latest data, some of it highly classified, which she had seen as a Canadian military intelligence officer in the last months about Iranian known air defense missile systems. Almaz-Antey was in fact a Russian company that mainly produced the S-400 TRIUMF heavy air defense missile system, also known under the NATO designation of SA-21 GARGOYLE. The S-400 was described as one of the best, most lethal long range air defense missile system in existence, and was widely compared to the American PATRIOT and AEGIS missile systems. The problem here was that the S-400 was not known to be in service with the Iranian forces. If the Iranians had somehow managed to acquire in secret some S-400 batteries, then the Israeli Air Force would be in for a nasty surprise on their next air raid against Iran. That, however, was the Israelis’ problem, in her opinion. They had started this war by a first airstrike on Iran and, despite what many hypocrites had said since then, the Iranians had the legitimate right to defend their own territory. If the Israelis got burned during their next airstrike, then tough!

Farah Qalibaf, sitting on a chair in a corner of the gym and watching Nancy converse with the big Russian, was annoyed at first at being unable to understand what they were talking about. It however looked to her like a simple game of flirt, with the Russian obviously leering at Nancy’s body. Farah scowled at this fresh example of the immorality of so many of those unbelievers, but then reminded herself that Iranians were often no better. In fact, the higher some officials were, the more they seemed to acquire vices. If that Canadian wanted to chase after perfect strangers, then it was none of Farah’s business, unless she conducted herself indecently in public, something that would get her promptly arrested here in Tehran.

Nancy finally called it quits after nearly one hour of exercising at a rhythm and intensity that Farah found downright infernal. Both she and Dimitri then went inside their respective locker rooms to shower and change. Farah decided to wait in the gym for Nancy, getting up and walking a bit around to flex her legs. As she passed by the bike Nancy had used, she looked with curiosity at the tension mechanism of the pedals to see what setting she had used. Farah was stunned to see that it was at maximum tension: she had seen Nancy pedal away as if she was on a low setting. Getting up on

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the bike, Farah tried to pedal but let out a quiet swear word at once: even with all her strength, her legs could barely manage to make the pedals budge. With cold sweat breaking out on her forehead, she got off the bike and tried to visualize back Nancy’s actions around the bike. Maybe she had reset the bike after using it. As it was set, pedaling that bike at the speed Nancy was doing would have necessitated some monstrous strength and stamina. Farah suddenly felt much less sure about what to think of Nancy and debated in her mind if she should report this to Major Mousavi. She however decided finally to wait and see: her evidence was way too flimsy to bother her superior with such a trivial matter.

20:19 (Washington Time)

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 ‘A’

First Family suite, White House

Washington, D.C.

U.S.A.

President Obama had elected to watch the news on television from the lounge of his family suite, instead of from the Oval Office, mostly to help himself decompress after another stressful day. He had however invited his Vice-President, Hillary Clinton, to watch with him and his wife the exclusive interview that CNN’s Nancy Laplante had obtained from Ali Akbar Velayati in Tehran earlier today. That interview, when first aired in the late afternoon, had sent shockwaves through the State Department and the various international affairs think tanks in Washington. Now, Barak Obama could see for himself how skillful Laplante had been in that interview with the top international affairs advisor of the Iranian Supreme Leader. It was also evident that Velayati wanted to pass a particular message, it being that Iran was ready to stop all hostilities with Israel, as long as Israel reciprocated and at the condition that Iran could continue enriching uranium to low levels consistent with civilian use. The tone as well as the words of Velayati told Obama that this was more than just rhetoric. As the recording of the interview was over and as a panel of so-called political and international affairs experts started debating the interview from the CNN studios, Obama swiveled his chair to look at Hillary Clinton, who had served as his previous Secretary of State before becoming his Vice-President.

‘’What do you think of Velayati’s offer, Hillary?’’

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‘’That it puts the Israelis in a difficult bind.’’ replied the Vice-President, thoughtful. ‘’They started this war to stop Iran from possibly producing a nuclear bomb. Now, after a year of conflict that has cost them dearly in terms of both treasure, material damage and human lives, they are back to square one, with the Iranians still insisting on their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. If they refuse Velayati’s offer, they will be stuck in a war that they can’t really win short of using their own nuclear weapons. If they accept it, then the Israeli leaders will basically acknowledge that they ruined Israel for nothing by starting a fruitless war. Maybe it would be a good time for us to get in the middle and talk some sense to these Israeli leaders.’’

‘’And what would you tell them to do?’’

‘’To accept Iran’s terms, as long as Iran accepts in return to let back in United Nations inspectors, to prove that they are not producing weapons-grade uranium. The other alternative, basically continuing the war, would only result in more senseless losses for everyone.’’

‘’I would tend to agree with you, Hillary. This war has not been helping anyone, except maybe for weapons producers. I will…’’

Obama paused at that moment; his attention attracted to the television set and what one of the ‘experts’ in the CNN debate had said. That expert, who represented a very powerful Jewish lobbying group in Washington, was now nearly ranting in a furious tone.

‘’…that Laplante killed two Israeli security officials when they tried to stop her from illegally entering Gaza to conduct her interviews with those terrorists from the Hamas. Now, this new Hanoi Jane is kissing the butts of the Iranians in order to build for herself a reputation. Why should we even bother to listen to her reports?’’

‘’Wait a minute, Mister Feinstein!’’ countered another debate panelist. ‘’That accusation that she killed two Israeli officials has not been proved at all. In fact, the Israelis have up to now presented zero proofs in support of that ridiculous accusation or of the other accusation that she is a terrorist supporter. Are you going again to try to make us believe automatically everything that the Israelis are telling us?’’ As the debate in the CNN studios degenerated quickly into an exchange of hot words, Obama shook his head in frustration.

‘’When idiots don’t want to hear a message, they shoot the messenger. I am getting to be truly fed up with those Israelis and their arrogance and self-righteousness.’’ His wife, sitting beside him on a sofa, pressed his hand.

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‘’Could this Laplante have her reputation shot because of her reports from Iran? I do like the way she reports and analyzes facts.’’

‘’Some certainly seem to want to do just that, dear. CNN has defended her up to now, but there is no telling what more political pressure against her could do. Velayati’s proposed deal is actually quite acceptable, if the Iranians are truly ready to let back in UN inspectors. As for the Israelis, they would do well to accept it: they are now close to national bankruptcy because of the costs of this war and of the boycotts against them.’’

‘’I unfortunately believe that they are too stubborn to admit that they can’t win, Barak.’’ said Hillary Clinton. ‘’The problem is that, the longer this conflict drags on, the more chances that some mistake could be made around the Persian Gulf. That could then close off the tanker traffic, with heavy economic consequences for the United States.’’

Obama nodded his head at that. There had already been a number of incidents where confrontations between American warships and Russian and Chinese warships escorting tankers full of Iranian oil destined for China had nearly turned into shooting incidents. It would take only one stressed-out ship captain to do a fatal mistake and potentially start a war with China or Russia. That, in his mind, had to be avoided at all cost.

‘’We have put the safety and welfare of the country at risk, just to protect Israel from its own actions, for far too long, in my opinion. It is high time that those Israeli leaders understand that we will not support them unconditionally forever. Enough of their lies and bluster!’’

‘’Do you know why the Israelis are trying to smear this Nancy Laplante the way they do now, dear?’’ asked his wife. ‘’They never went that far with other reporters before.’’

The President exchanged a quick glance with Hillary Clinton before looking at his wife.

‘’Michelle, without getting into the details, which are highly classified, I can tell you that the Israelis seem to truly believe that she is connected with terrorists, which is actually false. They kidnapped Laplante when she arrived in Israel a few days ago and were ready to torture her and then make her disappear. Laplante managed to escape them, killing two Mossad agents in the process and saving at the same time a CIA agent who was being tortured by the Israelis.’’

‘’WHAT?’’ nearly shouted Michelle Obama. ‘’Why would these bastards torture a CIA agent?’’

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‘’Because that CIA agent was following Laplante in order to protect her. Michelle, Laplante works for us part-time, apart from being a genuine war correspondent. She is after all a military intelligence officer.’’

Obama hated to have to lie like this to his wife but, in fact, most of what he had just told her was the simple truth. Michelle looked back at the television set, where a picture of Nancy Laplante was being shown while the presenter reviewed quickly her career as a war correspondent and soldier. CNN was clearly still ready to defend her reputation, even though it was probably more to protect its own reputation at the same time.

‘’She works for the CIA? And she went to Iran? That takes an awful lot of guts.’’

‘’She has proven many times before that she has plenty of guts, Michelle. As for her reports from Iran, the two interviews she has already secured and done with high level officials there has certainly helped our specialists at the State Department analyze the present mindset of the regime. What these specialists are saying is that the Iranians seem to genuinely want an end to this war, but not at the cost of losing face in front of their people or of the World. Just by bringing out that mindset, Laplante has helped us greatly.’’

‘’She should get a medal for that. On my part, I certainly would love to meet her in person one day.’’

‘’That could be arranged, dear.’’ replied her husband, a smile appearing on his face.

08:01 (Iran Time)

Wednesday, November 27, 2013 ‘A’

Amir Abad District

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Nancy, still escorted around Tehran by Farah Qalibaf, was in a taxi heading towards the offices of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, where she was due to interview the head of the Iranian nuclear program, when a loud, sinister wail started to be heard all around the city. Farah was the first to recognize the sound and react, shouting from the front passenger seat.

‘’ENEMY AIR RAID! PULL OFF THE ROAD AND STOP, NOW!’’ The taxi driver obeyed her at once, while most of the other drivers along the avenue they were following took a few more seconds to react. Grabbing her camera bag before

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getting quickly out of the taxi, Nancy joined Farah and the taxi driver on the sidewalk, using the taxi as a partial shield and looking up at the sky. Having seen many airstrikes in her career, Nancy was the first to see something in the sky and point at it.

‘’THERE! FOUR AIRCRAFT APPROACHING FROM THE WEST AT MEDIUM ALTITUDE! FARAH, CAN I FILM THAT?’’

Farah hesitated only briefly: she still had Nancy’s satellite link unit under key at the hotel and she would have ample time afterwards to edit or censor her video recording.

‘’Go ahead!’’

Nancy then quickly took her camera out of its carrying bag and powered it on, along with its directional microphone, before pointing it skyward. Her practiced eyes then saw puffs of smoke rise from multiple points on the ground around the city. The puffs then became trails of smoke climbing fast in the sky, heading towards the four approaching condensation trails.

‘’SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES ON THE WAY!’’ She shouted to inform Farah. The Iranian woman, like the taxi driver and many other Iranians around them, anxiously followed the smoke trails, hoping for hits. On her part, Nancy suspected that the Israeli planes, as it could only be Israeli aircraft, had probably already launched their ordnance. Flying this high over a defended target could only mean that they were using laser-guided or GPS-guided bombs, or other types of guided air-to-surface missiles, and not simple iron bombs. Cheers went up around Nancy when a first Israeli aircraft contrail intersected with a missile smoke trail, resulting in an explosion. Judging from the range and speed of the missiles, Nancy thought that they must be S-400 missiles. A second Israeli jet exploded in the sky, creating more cheers. Then, a series of powerful explosions on the ground, to the North, silenced the cheers for a moment. Nancy could count a total of eight explosions, all tightly grouped.

‘’They had time to release their bombs, Farah, probably GPS-guided models. What do you think that they were targeting in that part of the city?’’

‘’Our nuclear research center.’’ answered Farah in a somber tone, still captivated by the duel in the sky. A third Israeli jet exploded, with the fourth and last one then diving steeply, barely avoiding the missile targeting it. The proximity fuse on the missile however still ignited its massive 190-kilogram blast-fragmentation warhead, peppering the F-15 fighter-bomber with shrapnel. Seriously damaged and with one engine on fire, the Israeli pilot still waited at the last moment to pull out of his dive, hoping to escape additional anti-aircraft fire by flying low. As it was starting to raise its nose, heading

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directly towards Nancy, who was filming its approach, the aircraft lost one of its ailerons and started spinning out of control. It overflew Nancy and Farah by only some twenty meters before plowing into the lower side of a large, six-story concrete building situated on the grounds of the University of Tehran campus. The remaining fuel aboard the doomed jet aircraft ignited inside the building, making balls of flames erupt from the lower windows of a section of the building. With Nancy still filming, Farah shouted in horror.

‘’THAT’S THE FEMALE STUDENTS DORMITORY BUILDING! MY YOUNGER SISTER IS IN THERE!’’

Stunned by grief, Nancy lowered her camera, contemplating for a few seconds the building, whose two lower floors were now nearly completely engulfed in flames, while Farah started sobbing. Taking a quick decision, Nancy put her camera back in its carrying bag, slung against her right side, and started running towards the burning building.

‘’COME, FARAH: WE MUST HELP THOSE GIRLS!’’

Farah didn’t dispute her and started running as well, following her. Nancy was however much faster than her and arrived near the base of the dormitory building with a good hundred meters of advance on her. She however could not approach further than about twenty meters from the façade, due to the searing heat of the flames. Running to the main entrance of the dormitory, she quickly saw that nobody could escape through there: the entrance hall as well as the base of the main staircase were on fire and thick smoke filled that space as well. Running to the other end of the building and then around it, with the hope of finding a secondary entrance or fire exit that could be used, she soon had to give up on that: what was not engulfed in flames was spewing a thick black smoke which would asphyxiate anybody within seconds. Farah Qalibaf joined back with her, breathing hard from the running, as she was returning to the front façade. Nancy gave her a bleak look.

‘’None of the exits are usable: they are either on fire or full of deadly smoke.’’

‘’But we can’t just watch and do nothing: there are girls visible at the upper windows, screaming for help.’’

‘’Show me!’’

Without another word, Farah ran back to the front of the burning building, Nancy close behind her, and pointed at a number of windows on the upper floors, where heads could now be seen. Some smoke was coming out of those windows as well but Nancy

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understood that the students were able to breathe if they kept their heads out. They would not however be able to survive very long, unless someone came quickly to extinguish this fire. Unfortunately, she knew from experience that a fuel fire like this one could burn for quite a while, apart from being very difficult to extinguish. Just spraying it with water would mostly result only in spreading the burning fuel. Scrutinizing the façade to see if there was a way to climb it, she noticed a number of steel pipes running down the walls at intervals and understood that they were rainwater drainage pipes coming from the roof. They appeared to be solidly anchored to the walls, at least from where she stood, and she could probably climb them by using opposition climbing techniques.

‘’I’m going to climb up, using those drainage pipes. Be ready down here to help the girls whom I will bring down, Farah. Here, sling on my camera bag and, please, don’t lose it.’’

Handing to the Iranian agent her camera bag, Nancy then ran to a pipe which passed close to the windows where girls were screaming for help and, ignoring the searing heat from the nearby flames, started climbing, her hands grasping the pipe and her feet pressed against the concrete wall on each side of the pipe.

Even knowing that Nancy was a superb athlete, Farah couldn’t believe how fast she climbed up the pipe, getting to the level of the third floor in less than a minute. By then their taxi driver, a somewhat obese man with a short beard, had joined Farah near the façade, breathing hard from the running.

‘’Can…can I help here, miss?’’

Farah gave him a nod of encouragement.

‘’Yes! We will have to help the girls that this woman will take out to safety. They will have to be led to a safe spot away from the fire.’’

The taxi driver looked up, in time to see Nancy step on a window sill where the heads of at least two girls were visible. With Farah also watching anxiously, Nancy spoke for a few seconds with the girls inside, then put one leg inside, time for a girl to climb on her back and cling to her. Then, with the teenager still clinging to her back, she stepped outside and reached for the drainage pipe, grabbing it and hugging it, so that the teenager could herself grab the pipe and slide down. The girl hesitated for a few seconds then, probably utterly terrified, but finally grabbed the pipe with both hands and let herself slide down, as if using a fireman’s sliding pole. With one girl on the way down, Nancy stepped again on the window sill to go load a second girl on her back. She

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repeated that process at that particular window a total of nine times, with girls in adjacent rooms of the same floor evidently going to that room from the inside. With nobody apparently left on that level, Nancy climbed quickly to the next upper level to do the whole process again. By the time that she had saved another fourteen girls stranded on the fourth floor and was climbing towards the fifth floor, a number of fire trucks were arriving with sirens blaring, while a large crowd was now watching the drama from the nearby sidewalks and streets. Farah, helped by the taxi driver, was greeting the sixteenth girl to slide down when a fire truck equipped with a telescopic ladder stopped near her and four firemen in rubber coats and hard hats jumped out. She turned around and shouted at the senior fireman in the lot while flashing her IRGC Intelligence Bureau badge.

‘’GET THAT LADDER UP TO THAT FIFTH FLOOR WINDOW, QUICKLY!’’ The fireman didn’t dispute her order and got two of his men to deploy at once their ladder. They took less than two minutes to do so and, with one fireman wearing a breathing apparatus climbing up first to go inside the fifth-floor room and help the students there, teenagers soon started coming down in good numbers. To Farah’s joy and relief, her sister was one of the teenagers to come down the ladder. They exchanged an emotional hug for a long moment before Farah stepped back to look with concern at her sister, who was coughing.

‘’You better go see a medic to get some oxygen, Leila. Where is the woman who climbed up the pipe?’’

‘’She…cough…went to check the other rooms on the floor to see if there were…cough…other girls. She disappeared in the smoke.’’

‘’I’m sure that she will make it. Follow that man: he will bring you to the assembly point for the evacuees. I will see you later.’’

‘’I will need to thank that woman, Farah: she was incredibly brave.’’

‘’I know. Now, go!’’

She smiled and nodded to the taxi driver, handing Leila to him, then looked up again. Girls were still coming down the ladder from the fifth floor, but she could see many more girls waiting anxiously on the sixth floor, their heads hanging out of windows in order to breathe despite the smoke still coming out of their rooms. Nancy Laplante was the second last to come out of the fifth-floor window, carrying a limp girl in her arms and climbing down cautiously with her precious load. The fireman on that floor then came out and stood on the ladder’s basket while it was raised to the level of the sixth floor.

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Farah and a fireman greeted Nancy when she stepped off the ladder, to then help delicately lay the unconscious student on a stretcher that was carried away at once to a waiting ambulance. Farah eyed Nancy with both concern and admiration: the

Canadian’s face and hands were blackened by smoke and her clothes were covered with soot, while she coughed hard repeatedly.

‘’What you did was admirable, Miss Laplante. Many of those girls would have died without your help.’’

‘’I did…cough… what had to…cough…be done, nothing…cough…more.’’

‘’Come, friend. Let me guide you to a medic. You need to breathe some oxygen.’’

Nancy stared at Farah for a moment after hearing her use the word ‘friend’, then smiled to her.

‘’Thanks, Farah!’’

When she climbed down from the fire truck, she shook the hand of the taxi driver, smiling to him.

‘’Thank you, mister. You…cough…are a good man indeed.’’

‘’It was a pleasure, miss.’’

She nodded her head, then took out her wallet to pay for the taxi fare, but the driver politely refused.

‘’Thank you but no, miss: you already paid me by saving those girls.’’ Farah, like Nancy, nodded approvingly at that. The trio then let the firemen do their work and went to a grassy area where a number of firemen and paramedics were treating or checking out the evacuees. Farah thanked a last time the taxi driver, actually slipping discreetly a good sum of money in his hand and firmly pressing his hand closed so that he could not give it back.

‘’Consider this as the thanks of the government for your exemplary show of civic responsibility, mister. And thank you again.’’

Next, Farah led Nancy to her young sister Leila, who was being given some oxygen by a medic. Both women sat on the grass besides the teenager, with Farah pointing Nancy to Leila.

‘’Leila, I would like to present you Miss Nancy Laplante, a reporter on assignment for CNN whom I am escorting during her stay in Iran. Miss Laplante, this is my sister, Leila.’’

Leila grinned on hearing Nancy’s name.

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‘’Nancy Laplante, the one who shot all those murdering Taliban extremists in Afghanistan a year ago? All the girls in my dormitory saw the video of you on YouTube.’’ That made Nancy smile weakly, as cough still raked her.

‘’Nice to see that I…cough…am known around here, Leila.’’ She then looked at the dormitory building, where over thirty firemen and six fire trucks were battling the flames still coming out of the lower floors.

‘’I am afraid that…cough…many will have died in there. I…cough…wish that I could…cough…have done more.’’

‘’You did all that one could do, miss. What caused that explosion and fire, by the way? I was about to go down to leave for the cafeteria when the whole building shook.’’ Farah took on her to answer her sister.

‘’The Israelis did another airstrike on us, probably targeting our nuclear research reactor, but our defensive missiles shot down four of their planes. One of those planes then crashed into your building. Miss Laplante filmed the whole thing. Oh, that reminds me.’’

Farah then handed back to Nancy her camera bag and smiled to her.

‘’While I can guess that your planned interview with Doctor Davani will most probably be rescheduled because of this raid, I believe that there will be no official objections to you transmitting your video showing those Israeli planes being shot down.’’

‘’Including that jet crashing on the dormitory building?’’

‘’Including that part as well. I however doubt that you will be allowed to film the damages, if any, at our nuclear research reactor.’’

Nancy gave Farah a critical look.

‘’With at least eight smart bombs falling on it, I suspect that your reactor must be seriously damaged now. Let’s hope that no radiations will leak out: the center is surrounded by residential suburbs.’’

‘’Well, we will see. Let me just go make a couple of phone calls. Leila, I will leave you with Miss Laplante for a moment.’’

Getting up from the grass and walking to a spot where she could make discreet calls, Farah took out her cell phone and called first Major Mousavi. She took a couple of minutes to tell him what just happened, getting a pleased reaction from him.

‘’Four Israeli planes shot down? And Miss Laplante has that on video? We will do more than simply let her retransmit that: we will probably broadcast that video

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ourselves on national television. That bit about her helping to save university students will certainly help her reputation with our leaders. I must say however that this is totally in character for her, according to what we know of her.’’

‘’Well, you should have seen her climb up that drainage pipe, Major. She showed incredible strength, balance and endurance then, apart from proving her bravery. Uh, do we have news about what happened to our nuclear research center, sir?’’

‘’Unfortunately, yes. The main reactor building has basically been totally destroyed, according to the visual report of one of our people. There are many casualties among the personnel of the center. Thankfully, all the nuclear fuel had been taken out a few days ago, in order to conduct some needed major maintenance. In that, we were very lucky.’’

‘’Do you think that Miss Laplante will be allowed to film our research center after this airstrike, sir?’’

‘’Hum, well, normally I would say no, but what she just did and the fact that she will provide us with a film of those Israeli planes being shot down may just tip the balance in her favor. I will go see General Taeb right away to report this to him. I will keep you informed about the decision he will take concerning Laplante. I suppose that she will now go back to her hotel to clean up and change, Lieutenant?’’

‘’Most probably, sir, but she will need first to get some oxygen: she inhaled quite a lot of smoke while inside that burning building.’’

‘’Decidedly, she is the kind of enemy that I could respect. Once at your hotel, review with her the film of that Israeli attack and then contact me to give me your assessment of it.’’

‘’I will do that, sir.’’

Ending that call, Farah then composed another number, calling her mother and taking a few minutes to tell her that Leila was safe and to reassure her. Her mother, who had just heard on the radio that the university campus had been bombed, nearly broke out in tears of relief and thanked her, promising to pass the word to Farah’s father, who was already in his office in downtown Tehran.

Closing her cell phone and pocketing it, Farah returned to where Nancy and Leila were sitting. She was pleased to see that a medic was giving oxygen as well to Nancy.

‘’Good news, Miss Laplante: your video of the Israeli airstrike will most probably be approved. It may even be shown on our national television.’’

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‘’Uh, don’t be offended by that, but I hope that I will be able to send it to CNN first: after all, it is paying me to produce exclusives for them. Well, then we should go back to the hotel, so that I could clean up and then review and edit my film with you.’’

‘’I certainly am looking forward to watching your video, Miss Laplante.’’ said Farah, meaning it.

Much later that day, as she was entering the restaurant of her hotel for supper, followed by the ever-present Farah Qalibaf, Nancy found an apparently very happy Dimitri Kutuzov having a drink at a table while waiting for his food. She smiled to Farah and spoke in a low voice.

‘’Do you mind if I go sit alone with that tall, handsome Russian, Farah? You can always watch me from a couple of tables away.’’

‘’Feeling like flirting tonight, Nancy?’’ replied Farah, smirking.

‘’Hey, I have to keep up with my reputation as a feminist libertine and immoral unbeliever, no?’’

That made the Iranian agent chuckle.

‘’Go ahead and have fun, Nancy. You deserve it today.’’

‘’Thanks, Farah.’’

Nancy was actually quite happy with her own day, even though she regretted all the deaths from the Israeli airstrike. Her video report of the airstrike had been edited, vetted and then sent to Atlanta via the Internet this morning, while the official Iranian government news agency had bought from CNN the right to use Nancy’s video. Then, in the afternoon, Nancy had received the authorization to go film the site of the Tehran nuclear research center, where she was able as well to interview the head of the Iranian nuclear program. Again, her report had been quickly vetted and transmitted to Atlanta. From what Christiane Amanpour had told her in a later exchange of emails, her reports from Tehran had resonated like the ringing of church bells around Washington and the rest of the country, while Israeli officials were said to be livid at this proof that their vaunted air force was far from invincible. Nancy however couldn’t care less right now about what those Israeli politicians felt. For one thing, the fact that Israel had conducted such a raid, at the risk of releasing a radioactive cloud in the middle of a large city like Tehran, had certainly grated on her. Also, the Israelis were not showing any signs of backing down from painting her as a terrorist supporter and a murderer. Tonight, she

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was firmly resolved to enjoy her professional successes. She thus walked with a slow, sexy gait to Dimitri’s table, stopping near the Russian and smiling down at him.

‘’Good evening, Dimitri. Do you mind if I sit at your table?’’

‘’But, not at all, Nancy.’’ replied the engineer, not believing his luck. ‘’Please, sit down.’’

‘’Thank you!’’

Once sitting, she pointed his glass, still half full of vodka.

‘’You are celebrating something, Dimitri? You actually look quite happy tonight.’’

‘’That’s because I am happy tonight, Nancy. The equipment my company sold to Iran has had its first operational success ever today.’’

‘’Really?’’ said Nancy, her smile changing to a grin. ‘’You must tell me about that, but not before I order a bottle of champagne for the both of us.’’

‘’Champagne? Wow! Your day must have been very nice.’’

‘’Indeed! I was able to film this morning the downing of four Israeli F-15 fighter-bombers over Tehran by surface-to-air missiles. My video report back to CNN is said to be creating shockwaves in the United States.’’

Dimitri opened his mouth at her words, while his eyes reflected glee.

‘’By God! I must get a copy of your video for my company.’’ Nancy then bent forward, showing her cleavage while giving him a warm look.

‘’Well, what are you ready to do to me tonight in order to get that copy, my dear Dimitri?’’

07:28 (Iran Time)

Saturday, November 30, 2013 ‘A’

Restaurant of the Kowsar Hotel

Tehran

Nancy was finishing her breakfast in the company of Farah Qalibaf in the restaurant of their hotel when Major Hossein Mousavi showed up, accompanied by two burly men in cheap suits. Seeing Mousavi marching resolutely towards her table, Nancy couldn’t help feel dread: maybe she had outlived her usefulness in the eyes of the Iranian senior leadership. Mousavi stopped in front of her and scrutinized her with cold eyes, noting how she had tensed up. He then flashed her a smile.

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‘’Ha! Gotcha, Miss Laplante! You thought that I was coming here to arrest you, right?’’

Relief washing over her, Nancy looked up at Mousavi, returning his smile.

‘’I must say that you were quite convincing, Major Mousavi. You must love cat and mouse games.’’

‘’I certainly do, miss. But you can relax: I am here actually to do you a big favor. My government is intent on passing a message to the West, using a messenger that it can trust: you. I will ask you to go get both your camera and your satellite link equipment: we are going on a helicopter trip.’’

Farah, who had no clue what was going on, exchanged a glance with Nancy, then got up from the table.

‘’I will go get her equipment from the hotel’s safe, sir.’’

‘’Thank you, Lieutenant. By the way, you will be coming with us as well.’’ Nancy rose from the table as well after wiping her mouth clean and gave a cautious look at Mousavi.

‘’Since you love cat and mouse games, I suppose that it will be pointless for me to ask where we are going, Major?’’

‘’You have that right, Miss Laplante.’’ replied Mousavi, grinning. ‘’Make sure that you have spare batteries and memory cards for your camera, miss: you may be filming quite a lot on our coming trip. Bring as well your little tripod, so you can do a sitting interview.’’

‘’You are decidedly poking my curiosity, Major. Well, I will go to my room then. I won’t be long.’’

True to her word, Nancy was back in the hotel lobby six minutes later, her camera bag slung over one shoulder and her laptop bag over another. She had also taken the time to change quickly into a nice, embroidered chador, in anticipation of an interview with a probably very senior Iranian official. Farah was close behind her, carrying her satellite link unit and her satellite telephone. The group loaded up in two official cars which then drove to the Doshan Tappeh airbase, situated in the eastern suburbs of Tehran. There, they boarded a waiting Mi-8 HIP helicopter which headed South after taking off. As they were flying at medium altitude, Mousavi shouted at Nancy to be heard above the rotor noise.

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‘’Since we are intent on passing a message through you, I will ask you to do your comments on camera in English, Miss Laplante. The officials you will meet at our visit sites can speak English anyway.’’

‘’Understood. You said ‘sites’. We are visiting more than one location?’’

‘’You will be visiting in succession three separate sites, miss. Don’t ask yet which ones: I will let you be surprised.’’

Nancy was by now convinced that something very big was coming but didn’t insist and instead watched the view outside the helicopter.

After about one hour and a half of flight, with Nancy estimating the distance flown to be about 300 kilometers, what looked like a large industrial complex in the middle of the arid Iranian landscape appeared ahead in the distance. Nancy was now suspecting where she was going, having seen in the past satellite pictures of a similar facility. She looked at Mousavi with a surprise that was not faked.

‘’The Natanz nuclear fuel enrichment complex? You are going to let me film it?’’ Mousavi nodded his head, not surprised that she had recognized the complex so quickly: after all, she was a military intelligence officer.

‘’We will do better than that, miss: we will give you the grand tour of our centrifuge halls and fuel processing lab.’’

‘’But spies would kill to be able to have such a look. Why do you do this for me, Major?’’

Mousavi looked at her gravely, measuring his words.

‘’What I am going to tell you is for your ears only, as I am not supposed to tell you this. Promise me that you will not repeat this to anyone.’’

‘’You have my solemn word, Major. Thank you for your confidence.’’

‘’You are welcome, miss. We are going to give you access to our secrets because we need peace, badly. This war and the economic sanctions against us are killing the economy of my country. On the other hand, we need to develop our nuclear power network, in prevision for the day when our petroleum reserves will start to dry out. We do not intend to do like those Arab Gulf states which are selling away their oil and spending their profits on luxuries as if there is no tomorrow. We are a proud people and we will not stand to be told by others what we can or cannot do. The fears some have about us planning to produce nuclear bombs are unjustified and, if I may say so, quite hypocritical, considering that Israel already has plenty of nuclear weapons and has not

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signed the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, contrary to Iran. You have spoken to many Iranians up to now, both high-level officials and common citizens, miss. Do we appear to you to be a suicidal, irrational people?’’

Nancy eyed Mousavi, sensing his motives and discreetly reading his mind telepathically. She could see only genuine worry in his thoughts. She thus nodded somberly her head once.

‘’I believe you, Major. It is true that, if Israel chose to, it could erase most of Iran with its nuclear-tipped missiles. So, you would be ready to sue for peace, on the condition that you could continue producing low-enriched uranium for electricity production purposes?’’

‘’That is the gist of it, miss, although other, more senior officials will tell you in more detail what we want. Just keep your mind as open as your eyes.’’

‘’I always do that, Major.’’ replied Nancy soberly. She now realized how important this assignment could become, not simply in terms of personal professional success, but in terms of aiding the cause of peace. However despicable many past actions of the Iranian government had been, this offer appeared to her both fair and legitimate and could also be the only reasonable way out of a war that was proving to be as pointless as it had been costly to all involved. If this could help bring back peace, then she would be most proud to contribute to it.

With the express permission of Mousavi, Nancy took out her camera while the helicopter was still approaching the Natanz complex, filming an overall view of it from the air. She now could see distinctly the numerous anti-aircraft guns and missiles positioned around the facility to defend it from air attacks. She also noticed and filmed what looked like six large bomb craters over what she knew to be the location of the two underground centrifuge halls of Natanz. Some surface buildings had also been hit by bombs and either completely destroyed or heavily damaged.

‘’I see that the Israeli Air Force has tried at least once to shut down this facility, Major.’’

‘’They actually tried twice, the last time being last Wednesday, at the same time that they struck our Tehran nuclear research center. It however cost them a few planes. The director of the complex will be able to tell you more about that in a few minutes.’’

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Once on the ground and out of the helicopter, her group was picked up by two cars which then drove to the heavily protected vehicle access entrance to the underground part of the complex. Nancy was careful to film that part, along with anything else that would support the legitimacy and authenticity of her future report about this visit. She finally stepped out of her car with Major Mousavi and Farah Qalibaf inside an underground garage, where five men were waiting for them. Three of them were armed and wore the uniforms of the IRGC, while the two others were civilians wearing white lab coats. Mousavi presented one of the civilians to Nancy, speaking in English.

‘’This is the director of the Natanz complex, along with his head nuclear physicist. You will excuse me if I don’t give you their names, but too many of our scientists have been murdered abroad by Israeli agents while they were attending scientific seminars and conferences. Gentlemen, this is Miss Nancy Laplante, on assignment for CNN, previously known as Captain Laplante, of the Canadian Army Intelligence Branch. She recently retired from the Canadian military.’’

The director nodded in understanding, while the three armed IRGC men eyed Nancy with fierce suspicion. It was obvious to Nancy that those three disapproved of her visit, but had most probably been told to put up and shut up. She shook hands with both scientists and, more cautiously, with the IRGC officers.

‘’I am honored that I was considered worthy of seeing and filming your installations, gentlemen. I certainly intend to stress your present openness when I will present my report to the public.’’

‘’That is indeed one of the main reasons for your visit here, miss.’’ said the director. ‘’Since you have another site to visit later on, we will go straight to what is of interest to you here. If you will follow me, we will go to our two underground centrifuge halls.’’

As they walked to four small electric golf carts waiting nearby, Nancy asked a question in English to the director while filming him on the move.

‘’Mister Director, I saw from the air that at least six bombs exploded on the roofs of your centrifuges halls. Did they penetrate or caused damage to the halls?’’

‘’No! Apart from a number of lamps broken by the shock waves, we did not suffer any damage to the halls. A number of surface support buildings were however hit and heavily damaged. As for the Israelis, they lost three aircraft in their last attack. You

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will be able to see their crash sites from the air on your way out. Major Manousheh will show to Major Mousavi where the crash sites are on his map.’’

‘’Did any of the pilots eject?’’

‘’I didn’t see for myself, but I was told that nobody parachuted out, miss.’’ answered the director. Nancy discreetly scanned his mind, to find that he was telling the truth. The same could not be said however about the said Major Manousheh, whose thoughts betrayed him. Nancy then knew that one Israeli pilot had been captured alive and had been transferred since to Tehran for interrogation. She felt sorry for the pilot, who was certainly facing some very harsh interrogations, if not to say tortures, with his future fate pretty grim indeed. Such treatment of prisoners of war was unfortunately way too common in the Middle East, but there was nothing she could do about that.

The four carts rolled along a wide tunnel for maybe a hundred meters before stopping in front of a set of heavy armored doors guarded by two soldiers. Stepping out of the carts with the others, Nancy kept filming as they walked through the now opened steel doors, entering a huge, brightly lit hall which measured about 250 meters long by 100 meters wide. Nancy sucked her breath in at the sight of the thousands of cylindrical tubes set at the vertical and interconnected by small pipes. A strong humming noise came from the tubes, which Nancy recognized as centrifuge units meant to enrich uranium. The director of the facility then spoke up for her benefit while she filmed the hall slowly from left to right, so that the number of centrifuges could be counted later on.

‘’As you can see, this centrifuge hall is perfectly intact and functional and was not damaged by the Israeli penetrating bombs. You will excuse me if I don’t say how much overhead protection there is above our heads, miss.’’

‘’That is quite understandable, Mister Director.’’ said Nancy, still filming. ‘’May I walk around the hall a bit?’’

‘’Please do, miss.’’

Not stopping her filming for even a second, so that nobody could easily say later that parts were censored out, she started walking slowly along a narrow lane made between two rows of centrifuges, counting her steps as she went. The hall proved to be full to capacity with centrifuges, with a total of 5,000 of them just in this single hall, if she counted right. Returning to the waiting director, she pointed at the multitude of pipes running overhead.

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‘’I suppose that these pipes collect the enriched gaseous uranium to some processing lab, Mister Director?’’

‘’That is correct, miss. We have 5,000 centrifuges in this hall, plus another 5,000 centrifuges in a second hall, which we will go visit next. We will then visit the uranium processing lab, where the gaseous uranium deemed sufficiently enriched is returned to solid state and molded into fuel rods compatible with our civilian reactors. Before you ask, we do not enrich uranium to more than five percent of Uranium 235. We will prove that to you later.’’

Already having some footage that the CIA and other intelligence agencies would kill to obtain, Nancy exited the hall and got back on one of the carts, which then rolled to another set of guarded armored doors. There, she visited and filmed another centrifuge hall similar to the first one, which was also intact and fully functional. The crux of her visit to Natanz however proved to be the uranium processing lab and its adjacent uranium fuel storage vault. There, the head physicist explained to Nancy while she filmed the process used to turn the enriched uranium into fuel pellets to be used in nuclear reactors. She was able to film every part of that lab, then was shown the heavily shielded vault where the fuel pellets produced in the complex were stored while awaiting shipment to nuclear power plants. The director of the complex then made a signal and a technician wearing a protective suit approached them, a small but seemingly heavy cylinder in his hands. The director took the cylinder and ceremoniously presented it to Nancy.

‘’Miss Laplante, I am now handing to you a sample fuel pellet in its protective container, sample which you will be able to carry with you out of Iran, so that international experts can examine it and see for themselves that it is not weapons-grade uranium.’’

Nancy only hesitated for a second before shaking her head.

‘’I appreciate your gesture, Mister Director, but you don’t have only to convince me: you want actually to convince other governments of this. They could claim that this sample was chosen among your stocks of low-enrichment uranium. Thus, I would rather not take it. I would however suggest that you let me choose by myself the sample that I will carry away. That way, others may be more inclined to believe that it truly represents what you produce here.’’

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The Iranians around her were speechless for a moment, some apparently incensed by her skepticism, while others thought her argument over. Both the director and the head physicist finally nodded their heads at her suggestion.

‘’You do have a valid point, Miss Laplante. I will have a protective suit readied for you right away.’’

The director gave a few quick orders in Farsi to a technician, who then nearly ran away. The man was back two minutes later with a protective suit, complete with gloves and mask, which Nancy quickly donned in an adjacent locker room. Before stepping inside the shielded uranium vault, Nancy gave her camera to Farah.

‘’Can I ask you to film me through the viewing port of the vault while I’m inside, Farah? It would add credibility to my report.’’

Farah threw a look at Major Mousavi, who nodded, then accepted the compact video camera, which she had seen Nancy operate many times.

‘’Alright, Miss Laplante: I will play cameraman for you.’’

‘’Thank you! You may start filming now.’’

Accompanied by an Iranian technician also wearing a protective suit, she then entered the vault and looked around at the hundreds of leaden containers inside the shielded room before starting to walk slowly among them. Stopping beside a container she had chosen totally at random, she pointed it to the technician.

‘’Can you please collect a pellet from that container for me, mister?’’

‘’Right away, miss.’’

The technician opened the container and, using a pair of long pincers, extracted from it a cylindrical uranium pellet and put it in a lead transport tube, sealing it. He closed the container, then gave the sealed tube to Nancy.

‘’You now have a fifteen-gram pellet of 4.9 percent enriched uranium, miss. This lead tube will allow you to safely carry it without risks of irradiation, as long as you don’t open it.’’

‘’Thank you very much, mister. How much radiation will the sealed tube emit?’’

‘’Only four milli grays a day, miss, not enough to be significant for your health but enough to be detected with a Geiger counter.’’

‘’Then this will be perfect. Thank you again. I am now ready to come out.’’

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Nancy followed the technician out of the vault and went first to the locker room to remove her protective gear, then returned in the lab, the precious sample tube in one hand. There, she bowed her head to the director.

‘’I am sure that my viewers will appreciate your openness today, Mister Director. May I have something to mark this tube properly?’’

‘’Of course, Miss Laplante.’’ Said the director, who then quickly got a sticker label, a felt pen and a radioactive warning sticker. Gluing the warning sticker first on the tube, he then applied the label and wrote the date and the words ‘enriched uranium’ and ‘Natanz complex, Iran’ on it. He smiled while giving back the tube to Nancy.

‘’Here you are, Miss Laplante. Please don’t lose it.’’

Nancy laughed briefly at that while accepting the tube and putting it inside a pocket of her coat.

‘’Now, that would be truly embarrassing. I will guard this with my life, Mister Director, I promise. I will have to arrange for an official of the International Atomic Energy Agency to be ready to take custody of this sample once out of Iran, though.’’

‘’We can contact the IAEA on your behalf to arrange such a handover, miss. We know how to contact them, believe me.’’

‘’I do not doubt that for a second, mister. What now?’’

‘’I believe that we are now finished for your visit to Natanz, miss. Major Mousavi will now escort you back to your helicopter, which will then transport you to another uranium enrichment facility, near Qom, where the same procedure as here will be repeated.’’

Nancy couldn’t help snap her head towards Mousavi.

‘’But nobody has had access to that site before, not even the IAEA.’’

‘’That’s right, Miss Laplante, although I suspect that you once did examine spy satellite photography of that underground complex as a military intelligence officer.’’

‘’I effectively did, Major.’’ confessed calmly Nancy, making more than one Iranian stiffen. ‘’Today seems to be truly a day of revelations, wouldn’t you say?’’

‘’It certainly is, Miss Laplante. If you may now follow me out of the plant: we still have a lot to show you.’’

Nancy had a hard time believing her luck as she accompanied Mousavi and Farah Qalibaf out of the underground installations, the precious uranium sample tube in her pocket. This was going to make one truly explosive report.

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Taking off in their freshly refueled helicopter, they headed towards the Northwest and Qom, but Mousavi had the pilot do a short detour first, making them pass over the site of an airplane crash. Already guessing what it was, Nancy filmed the site, zooming in particular on a piece of tail that bore a registry number which was still readable, as Mousavi explained.

‘’This is one of the three Israeli aircraft which were shot down while attacking Natanz. We won’t have time to go film the two other crash sites, but I hope that this will be enough to convince the West that the Israelis can’t do as they please over our territory.’’

‘’Well, I certainly recognize this as being the remains of a F-15, an aircraft type not in Iranian service. The tail registry number should be enough for me to identify it formally later.’’

After a fifty-minute flight, the helicopter landed again, this time on a pad at the foot of a rugged and denuded hill, near a heavily reinforced cave entrance. That visit to the secret Qom uranium enrichment facility was very similar to that in Natanz, except that this facility proved to have even more centrifuges than Natanz. A bit over an hour later, Nancy was out of the facility, a second uranium sample tube in her camera bag, and their helicopter took off yet again, this time flying towards the nearby city of Qom, one of the holiest sites in Iran. The suspicions she had then about what she was going to do there quickly turned to incredulity when, after landing in Qom, a car took her, Farah and Major Mousavi to a secluded and closely guarded residence near the city’s Grand Mosque. She looked at Mousavi as a cleric came to lead them inside.

‘’It can’t be! The Supreme Leader never gave interviews to reporters, as a matter of principles.’’

Mousavi acknowledge her remark with a nod, replying with utmost gravity.

‘’That is why you are being made to be the first to interview him, Miss Laplante. Our message needs to be taken seriously by all, and cannot be dismissed without grave consequences. I know for a fact that you do not agree with much of his views, but be polite and respectful, for your own sake. If he gets angry with you, then there is no telling what could happen to you, and I then won’t be able to help you further.’’ Nancy didn’t get angry at that advice and didn’t take it as an attempt at intimidating her: Mousavi was simply giving her some common-sense advice and it would be only prudent for her to heed it. She was indeed far from home…or from any truly safe

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location for her, and now would not be a good time to demonstrate her powers or abilities.

06:25 (Iran Time)

Sunday, December 01, 2013 ‘A’

Departure lounge, Mehrabad International Airport Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Nancy exchanged a last kiss on the cheek with Farah Qalibaf when the lounge’s loudspeaker announced that the boarding for her plane to Ankara was starting.

‘’I am happy to have known you, Farah. And say goodbye to your sister Leila on my behalf.’’

‘’I will. Try not to let the Israelis catch you.’’

‘’Ha! I’m actually more worried about all the critics in the United States who will not like my report and will try to brand me as a stooge of Iran.’’

‘’I can see your point, Nancy. Still, be careful.’’

‘’I will, Farah. Maybe we will see each other again, hopefully not while pointing guns at each other.’’

‘’I hope not as well: you would then most probably win that duel, knowing the way you shoot.’’

Nancy grinned at her reply.

‘’That’s one way to look at it. See you, Farah.’’

Picking up her (very) precious camera bag, which contained the two uranium sample capsules, plus the bag for her satellite link unit and a small travel bag, Nancy walked to the boarding gate, showing her ticket to the air hostess there and following the other passengers towards the waiting Iran Air Airbus A-320. Seventeen minutes later, the airliner was starting to roll towards the main runway, followed from the airport’s observation lounge by the eyes of both Farah Qalibaf and Hossein Mousavi. The latter spoke in a low voice as the airliner was taking off.

‘’I hope that she will be able to convince enough people in the United States and Europe to take our offer seriously and at least lift some of the sanctions against us.’’

‘’I believe that Nancy will do her honest best, sir. Not because I think that she supports our cause, I am not that naïve after all, but because she truly wants to see peace return to the Middle East.’’

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‘’Some past Western philosopher supposedly wrote that, after having good friends, the next most important thing to wish for is to have good enemies. I guess that Captain Laplante would be one such good enemy.’’

‘’Quite right, sir, quite right.’’ replied Farah, sounding regretful.

14:36 (Standard Eastern Time) / 23:06 (Iran Time) International Arrivals Hall, Terminal 1

John F. Kennedy International Airport

New York City, U.S.A.

Having either flown or waited in airport lounges for over sixteen hours today, Nancy was dead tired and quite fed up of being inside a plane when she was finally able to step out of the Air France Airbus A-340 which had brought her from Paris, her last transfer point on her long journey from Tehran. She was however also happy and satisfied, having been met at the Ankara International Airport by a heavily escorted representative of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. That representative, after proving to Nancy who he was, had taken custody of her two precious Iranian enriched uranium samples and had given her in exchange an official IAEA nuclear material transfer receipt. As for her equally precious video reports of yesterday, she had sent them via satellite link to CNN last night, after spending many hours in her hotel room editing them and adding English translations to them where needed. She however still had the original video files with her, both in her laptop and on USB flash drives, in case the transmitted copies later proved incomplete. From what she had been able to gather from the news flashed on radio and television reports she had seen in Paris, her video reports were already causing a mighty steer, both in the United States and in Europe, apart from causing untold embarrassment and rage in Israel. She definitely would be persona non grata in that latter country now, but she couldn’t care less about that. Right now, she only wanted to get to a hotel in New York, so that she could have a long night of sleep before flying to Atlanta, where CNN was anxious for her to appear in a scheduled evening panel interview with a number of media commentators and international affairs experts. That panel interview already promised to be both

challenging and passionate, as her prediction to Farah Qalibaf that some in the U.S.A. would try to discredit her was coming true. She was however ready and eager to confront her critics and to paint them as the hypocrites they were.

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Emerging with other passengers of her flight in the arrival hall of Terminal 1, Nancy suddenly had a bad feeling at the sight of the abnormal number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and of Port Authority Police officers present in the hall, many of them waiting behind the customs reception stations and staring at the gate she had just emerged from. One ICE agent then pointed her from fifty meters away and spoke in his portable radio. Four burly Port Authority policemen immediately converged on her, one hand on the grips of their pistols and with hard looks on their faces. Nancy then understood with a pang of anger and frustration that her name probably was still on the American official no-fly list, where the Israeli accusations against her had landed her.

‘’Miss Laplante, step out of the line and raise your hands, NOW!’’ shouted one of the policemen, drawing and pointing his pistol at her. Nancy, not wanting to start a fight for such a stupid reason, obeyed at once and took three steps away from the other passengers while raising high her hands, her three bags still slung from her shoulders. She glared at the nearest policeman approaching her.

‘’This is all a mistake, officer. There is no need to point a gun at me.’’

‘’Just keep quiet and obey our orders and nothing will happen to you, miss. Now, move towards the customs station number six, and keep those hands up.’’ Fuming, Nancy walked slowly towards the said station, careful not to do any movement that could be misinterpreted. Adding to her anger was the fact that a few passengers and onlookers were filming the scene now with the help of their cell phones. Her critics were probably going to have a good laugh at her expense when they would see those recordings on YouTube. As soon as she was at the designated station, two more policemen came to her and pushed her against the counter, making her spread her arms and feet before patting her down for weapons and explosives. Finding nothing suspicious, they took away her three bags, which were immediately searched by ICE agents, while Nancy was pushed towards a nearby customs interrogation office. A senior ICE agent pointed a chair set near a small table, opposite another chair.

‘’Empty your pockets on the table, then sit down, Miss Laplante.’’ Becoming mighty pissed by now, Nancy glared at the senior agent.

‘’Are you all terminally dumb or what? Interpol has rejected the Israeli

accusations against me two days ago. I am simply a reporter returning from an assignment for CNN to the Middle East.’’

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‘’Who told you that Interpol has cleared you, miss?’’ asked the ICE agent, visibly skeptical.

‘’An Interpol agent whom I met at Ankara Airport, after arriving from Tehran.’’

‘’Well, according to the United States no-fly list, which overrules other international lists, you are still flagged as a suspected terrorist supporter and murderer. Now, empty your pockets on the table and stop arguing.’’ Keeping to her the pungent words she had in mind, Nancy proceeded to empty her pockets, putting her things on the small table. The ICE agent picked up at once her passport and sifted through it, then looked severely at her.

‘’You may sit down now, miss.’’

Once she was sitting, the agent showed her the entry and exit stamps in her passport.

‘’These stamps show that you entered officially in Israel on November 21, but never officially exited it, while you entered Lebanon on November 23 and then left for Iran the next day. Why didn’t you leave Israel through an official departure point, miss?’’

‘’Maybe because I was tired of getting kidnapped and stripped naked for torture by Israeli agents, mister? For some reason I do not know, the Israelis falsely believe that I am a terrorist, but refused to tell me why they are accusing me and were ready to make me disappear without any due legal process. What was I supposed to do? Let them torture and then kill me? And don’t tell me that the Israelis would never do that, or I will call you ‘sucker’.’’

‘’Miss, the Israeli security services do not arrest people on a simple whim. They had to have good reasons to arrest you.’’

‘’Oh, really? Have you been following the same Middle East news as me in the last few years, mister? And what could justify having them trying to torture me? I am an ex-Canadian military intelligence officer with an exemplary service record. Is that counting for nothing or are you ready to swallow anything the Israelis tell you, without question?’’

‘’We have only your word that they supposedly wanted to torture you, miss. Besides, you met a number of persons classified as terrorists and human rights abusers while in Lebanon and Iran.’’

‘’I am a reporter and I was on assignment to analyze the present conflict in the Middle East, you ninny! If I only interviewed people there who are as clean as a whistle, then I would never be able to interview anybody. Come down from your pink cloud, mister!’’

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The ICE agent was about to shoot back at her when someone knocked on the door, making him snap his head and shout angrily.

‘’WHO IS IT?’’

One of his agents stuck his head in, an apologetic look on his face.

‘’I’m sorry to interrupt you like this, sir, but there is a CIA agent here who insists that we are making a mistake with Miss Laplante. He has with him an executive order…signed by the President.’’

Before he could say more, someone behind him pushed him, forcing the door wide open before stepping inside. The senior ICE agent glared at the tall, powerful man wearing a dark suit and sunglasses, while Nancy stared at him with disbelief.

‘’Dean? What are you doing here?’’

‘’WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?’’ shouted the ICE senior agent before the man could answer Nancy. The newcomer gave a contemptuous look at the ICE man and showed him a badge and identity card holder.

‘’I’m Special Agent Dean Price, of the CIA, and I’m here to put a stop to this Keystone Cops circus. Miss Laplante’s name was supposed to have been removed from the no-fly list since last Friday. Why did you still arrest her?’’

‘’We had no such word about her name having been removed from the list, mister. Now, I will need more than your word before I can lend credence to your claim.’’ Dean Price took out an envelope at those words and threw it on the table, replying in an icy tone to the immigration senior agent.

‘’Then, maybe you will believe the President of the United States, mister, or do you think that you can overrule an order from him?’’

Now unsure of himself, the ICE agent took the envelope and extracted from it a folded sheet of paper. Reading it made him snap his head up to look at Price with surprise.

‘’Who is Miss Laplante, to warrant such high attention, mister?’’ Instead of answering him, Dean approached Nancy, who was still sitting on her chair, and gave her a leather badge and card holder.

‘’Here, Nancy. I brought you your CIA badge, now that you are on friendly territory…at least in theory.’’

While Nancy hid her surprise as best she could, the ICE agent eyed Dean with utter incredulity.

‘’This woman is a CIA agent?’’

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‘’Yes, and you are not going to publicize that fact, or you will face accusations of outing a serving intelligence field agent, which is a federal offense, mister. Now, you will release Miss Laplante at once and tell the idiot at DHS who is in charge of updating the no-fly list to do his job properly and take out immediately Nancy Laplante’s name from the list. You will also cancel immediately any advisory circulating with her name on it. If that is not done in the next four hours, then the President himself will have your head on a platter, along with that of that DHS dodo. Am I clear, mister?’’ The ICE agent swallowed hard and nodded reluctantly.

‘’It will be done, Special Agent Price.’’

‘’Good! Let’s get your luggage, Nancy.’’

Nancy didn’t question him then, too happy to be able to get out of this morass. Grabbing and pocketing back her things on the table, she looked at the ICE agent.

‘’I want my three carrying bags back, with everything that was inside them.’’ The ICE man clenched his teeth, then looked at a junior agent.

‘’Get her three bags, Winslow.’’

‘’Yes sir!’’

As the junior agent hurried out of the room, Dean retrieved the President’s executive order none too politely.

‘’Just in case one of your chumps doesn’t get the message, mister.’’ He then left the room with Nancy, leaving a frustrated and flustered ICE man behind.

Dean brought Nancy back to one of the customs stations after she got back her three bags, ordering the immigration officer there to stamp her passport before leading Nancy towards the luggage carrousels on the lower floor. Nancy waited until they were riding down the mechanical staircase before looking with some amusement at Dean.

‘’Me, a CIA agent? That is a good one, Dean. Thanks for getting me out of that shit, anyway.’’

‘’It was a pleasure, Nancy.’’ replied Dean, smiling to her and also admiring in passing her cleavage. ‘’I enjoy making those assholes at DHS, TSA and ICE look like the morons they are. This said, you must now realize that your personal situation is quite, uh, delicate, if I could say.’’

‘’No shit, Sherlock! A presidential executive order with my name on it? I was just doing my job as a CNN reporter over there, in the Middle East.’’

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‘’I know, Nancy. In fact, I must tell you that you did a bang-up job as a reporter, especially in Iran. Our analysts in Langley are drooling over your footage taken inside the Natanz and Qom uranium enrichment facilities.’’

Nancy gave him a cautious look at those words.

‘’I do hope that someone understood that the reason the Iranians let me film all that was to pass the message that they are ready to negotiate a peace, Dean. That was the main reason for my report, not to provide some strategic intelligence to the United States.’’

‘’Don’t worry about that, Nancy: I can assure you that President Obama is working on that aspect of your reports. He did sign an executive order about you, remember.’’

‘’Why am I thinking that there will be a price asked in return.’’ said Nancy, sounding a bit discouraged. ‘’What’s next, Dean?’’

‘’Next, we pick up your luggage before taking a government helicopter which will bring us to Langley. My boss is impatient to talk with you there.’’

‘’If this is about the powers I demonstrated in Israel, or about the reason that made the Israelis kidnap me, then don’t expect me to say much, Dean. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or unfriendly, but there are things at play concerning me that could have tremendous negative impacts here if too many people learn about them.’’ Dean gave her a side look, a slight smile on his lips.

‘’And you think that I can’t keep a secret, Nancy?’’

‘’You know that I’m not worried about your discretion, big guy. It is about the thousands of American officials and politicians who would mismanage that information for their own purposes that I’m worried about.’’

‘’And my boss understands that, Nancy, believe me. Your case is presently known by only a grand total of eight Americans, including the President and Vice-President, and we intend to keep it that way.’’

Nancy couldn’t help sigh with relief then.

‘’Thanks! I feel a bit better now.’’

They didn’t speak further until Nancy’s luggage started to appear on the luggage carrousel assigned to her flight. Dean gave her a questioning look when she picked up as well a large cylindrical parcel wrapped in brown paper.

‘’What the hell is that, Nancy?’’

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Nancy gave him an innocent smile while loading the parcel on her luggage cart.

‘’A very nice Persian rug that I received as a gift from the mayor of Tehran, after I helped save one of his daughters from a burning building.’’

‘’Ah, yes: that was when an Israeli plane crashed inside the Tehran University campus, wasn’t it?’’

‘’Correct! By the way, your analysts may be interested to know that the Iranians now have a few S-400 air defense missile batteries in service, including one around Tehran.’’

‘’We were kind of suspecting that, Nancy. How do you know about that?’’

‘’Oh, I bedded an Almaz-Antey Russian engineer who was staying at my hotel in Tehran.’’ she answered nonchalantly, attracting an amused look from Dean.

‘’You are decidedly the same wild Nancy I met in Texas. We should renew our relationship.’’

‘’Well, relationship may be a big word for a three-night stand, Dean. How about becoming official fuck friends?’’

‘’That will do.’’ replied Dean, grinning. ‘’Tonight, maybe?’’

‘’If it saves me the price of a hotel room, why not? You will have to prove to me that you haven’t lost any of your energy and know-how, though.’’

‘’Come on, Nancy! I’m Dean Price, the darling of the CIA secretaries.’’ Nancy grinned, then patted discreetly Dean’s crotch.

‘’Then, I am looking forward to you proving your case tonight, big guy.’’

16:08 (Standard Eastern Time)

Director’s office, CIA headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Nancy, out of ingrained military training, came to attention after entering David Petraeus’ office at the CIA headquarters.

‘’You wanted to speak with me, General?’’

Petraeus, sitting behind his word desk, nodded once his head and showed her one of the four swivel chairs set in front of him.

‘’I certainly did, Captain Laplante. Please, sit down. You too, Mister Price.’’ Waiting for Nancy to sit, Petraeus then pointed two other men already sitting in the office. One was a big man pushing fifty and with a receding hairline. The other was a tough-

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looking man in his late twenties or early thirties who sported a short goatee and whose eyes were as cold as ice.

‘’May I present you Assistant Director for Operations Julian Moore, along with one of his top field agents, Mister Erik Johnson?’’

‘’Pleased to meet you, gentlemen.’’ said politely Nancy, smiling to Moore and Johnson. While Moore returned her smile and nodded his head, Johnson’s face stayed impassive, him simply nodding. Pegging him as a controlled, calculating man, Nancy then returned her attention on the Director of the CIA.

‘’I believe that I owe this meeting to what happened around me in Israel, is that correct, General?’’

‘’That is correct, Miss Laplante. Our rookie agent which you met there told us a few rather fantastic things about you after being saved by you. By the way, I thank you sincerely for helping our agent, miss.’’

‘’It was my pleasure, General. I would however have done the same to help anyone being tortured like she was. I hate with a passion anyone who uses torture, for whatever reasons. I have to say that it was also in my personal interest to kill those Mossad agents, as they were about to plug my nipples to their electrical wires. Since your time and that of Mister Moore must be quite precious, let me tell you right away what I am willing to tell you about me. First, I am what my official biography and military file says about me. I was born in Montreal in 1982, have been orphaned since the age of sixteen and entered the Canadian reserve officers’ university program at seventeen, completing a degree in international affairs and graduating as a reserve military intelligence officer. I also took a job as a war correspondent for the CONFLICTS magazine, working for it until 2012, when it went out of business. What my file doesn’t reflects is that in October of 2012, just after I had returned from reporting in Afghanistan, two scientists from the 34th Century kidnapped me to use me as a guinea pig for their experiments on time travel. Their experience however turned sour very quickly and they got killed accidentally, leaving me marooned in England in the year 1940, along with my car and most of my computer and electronic equipment.’’ Despite what he knew already, Petraeus couldn’t help exchange a shocked look with Moore, while Johnson stayed unflappable in appearance. Nancy however continued speaking after a short pause.

‘’Stuck in the past, I was faced with a cruel dilemma: to get involved in World War Two and try to shorten it, thus saving millions of lives and preventing untold misery but

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also changing history in the process, or refuse to get involved. I could not decide at first, until a powerful mind intruded in my head, filling me with images of what kind of horrors were in store for that war. That same powerful spiritual entity would later manifest itself to me again, but I will tell more about that later on. My mind made, I started actively helping the British to win the war, becoming a secret advisor to Prime Minister Churchill and also participating in a few military raids against Occupied Europe. Before someone here objects that the history of the World War Two doesn’t reflect that, it is because my involuntary arrival in 1940 split the historical timeline, creating a new parallel branch of history, from September 1940 on. That branch in essence duplicated the whole planet, at the least, and its inhabitants at the time. Since then, that branch of history, which I call ‘Timeline ‘B’’, has been following its own evolution.’’

‘’What happened to you after that, miss?’’ asked Julian Moore, devoured by curiosity. ‘’How did you manage to come back to your original time?’’

‘’What happened to me was that The One, the entity which had manifested itself to me just after my arrival, connected mentally with me again after I had spent five months in England. He then opened my brain to the souvenirs of my past incarnations, which covered 92 past lives spread over 9,000 years. That is one of the reasons I am such an incredible linguist, General. A few months later, after I was captured by the Germans and then horribly tortured by the Gestapo, The One manifested himself again to me to help me as I lay crippled in a military prison infirmary. The One then healed me in minutes and gave me a number of extraordinary powers, including touch healing, telekinesis and levitation. It also made me stronger and faster than any other human being, plus gave me the ability to travel through time.’’

‘’That was when you returned home, in 2012, I suppose?’’ suggested Petraeus. To his surprise, Nancy shook her head at that.

‘’Not yet, General. While I was being tortured by the Gestapo, a very brave woman from the future tried to save me and to bring me back to my time period, but was unfortunately captured herself and also tortured. Understand that this woman came from a pacifist civilization which had no weapons and knew nothing of war, which only made her attempted rescue more heroic. Once healed and empowered as a Chose of The One, I went to rescue her in turn, then returned to the future with her. That is the gist of my adventures, or misadventures if you prefer, in World War Two. As for my friend from the future, she since has convinced the global government of her day to

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curtail further time traveling attempts, in order to preserve the integrity of history and prevent potential disasters. That is my story in a nutshell, gentlemen.’’ The men around her were silent for a long moment, staring at her with a mix of incredulity and wonderment. Julian Moore was the first to speak again.

‘’So, even if the Israelis wanted to steal a time machine from you, they would come up empty-handed, is that it, miss?’’

Nancy smiled to him and put her index against her temple.

‘’Correct, Mister Moore. It is all in the head, as one would say.’’

‘’Including your power to make people burst out in flames from the outside?’’ said Petraeus. Nancy nodded soberly at that.

‘’I do not relish having to use that power, General but, after my awful experience with the Gestapo, you will understand that I have a particular hatred of persons who use torture.’’

‘’With your demonstrated military skills and bravery you showed in Afghanistan last year, the Nazis must have found you to be indeed a dangerous opponent, Captain.’’ Nancy made a ferocious smile at that.

‘’The Nazis nicknamed me ‘the She-Wolf’. As for the British, they gave me the Victoria Cross…twice.’’

Petraeus rose an eyebrow at that, clearly impressed.

‘’You earned the Victoria Cross twice? Very few could claim that, none of them women.’’

‘’Oh, I paid for them in pain and blood, General, believe me.’’ Erik Johnson then opened his mouth for the first time in the meeting.

‘’The man and the girl whose framed pictures were found in your suite by the Israelis, who are they, miss?’’

‘’My husband and adopted daughter from 1941 ‘B’.’’ answered Nancy, her face becoming very serious. ‘’In this timeline, they both died during World War Two. In Timeline ‘B’, I saved them, then brought them to the 34th Century, where they now live in safety. I alternate my time between this century and the 34th Century, so that I can both live with them and also continue my normal life here. Before you ask, my only goal here is to live my original life as a normal human being, using my time traveling abilities only to go visit my family in the future. I still don’t know how the Israelis got to learn about my ability.’’

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‘’Probably because of your visit to a Kyiv arms dealer in 1992, miss?’’ said Moore, looking at her severely. ‘’If you travel through time only to go visit your family, then why did you go to 1992 to illegally buy sixty AS Val silenced rifles?’’ Mentally swearing at her bad luck and at Victor Medveyev, Nancy stared back at Moore, unrepentant.

‘’As I told you, the civilization to which my friend from the future belonged had no weapons. The government of the Global Council, the entity which comprises all the Humans in the Solar System, needed weapons to equip a police force which could enforce the new laws about time travel. I did teach to and helped train that new police force, if you are interested to know.’’

‘’I certainly am, miss. And that time travel police force, what tells us here that it will not interfere in this time period, miss?’’

Resolved to cut this discussion right there, Nancy bent forward and spoke firmly to Moore.

‘’One simple reason, Mister Moore: the existence of the civilization of the Global Council rests on this history being untouched by irresponsible manipulations. If someone changes in a significant way the history of the 21st Century and of the centuries to follow, then the Global Council may very well vanish, to be replaced by something completely different. You will understand that nobody but a deranged person in the Global Council would want that. I have already said a lot, and am not going to say more about time travel or the future, for everyone’s sake. Now, if you have nothing else, I would like to be able to go get a good night’s rest: I had a very long and tiring day.’’

‘’I do have one last question for you, miss.’’ Insisted Moore. ‘’Can you prove to us that you really don’t need a time machine to travel through time?’’ Nancy eyed him for a moment, then disappeared from her chair without warning, to appear immediately behind Moore. Before the men in the room could do more than look stunned, she disappeared again in a flash, to appear next to Dean Price’s chair. A second later, she disappeared for a third time. The CIA men looked around them in confusion at first, until Erik Johnson pointed at the ceiling.

‘’She’s over your head, General, glued to the ceiling.’’

Petraeus looked up and saw Nancy, her back to the ceiling and her arms crossed, looking down calmly at him.

‘’I believe that this should convince you, gentlemen.’’

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She then disappeared yet again, to reappear in her chair as if nothing had happened. Now seriously shaken, Petraeus stared at her as if she was a witch.

‘’That…that entity you call ‘The One’, what is it, to be able to give you such powers?’’

‘’Some would call it ‘God’, General. It has followed and supported the evolution of Humanity for millions of years already. Each Human alive has a soul that is actually a tiny part of The One, a part which he sends to inhabit the fetus before its birth. That soul leaves the body after death, to return to The One for a period of cleansing before going to inhabit a new baby. The One has no interest in being worshipped in any way. In fact, its sole interest is to see Humanity progress and improve. As a Chosen, I promote his words of kindness, compassion and tolerance, plus I protect the innocents when I can. However, I do that as discreetly as I can, and sometimes without using any powers but my own humanity.’’

‘’Are there many, uh, Chosen like you, Nancy?’’ asked Dean Price hesitantly. She shook her head and gave him a slight smile.

‘’No, Dean. Chosen ones are rare indeed in the history of Humanity. Jesus Christ was a Chosen of The One. Here, in this century, I am the only one. The One chose me because I have a high level of empathy for others and because I showed a spirit of self-sacrifice and justice which pleased him, not because I was a talented soldier.’’

‘’So, you are comparing yourself to Jesus Christ, miss?’’ asked Erik Johnson in a sarcastic tone. That got him a hard look from Nancy, who spoke in a warning tone.

‘’Mister Johnson, I am frankly starting to dislike you. You are free to believe me or not, but don’t mock or insult me. I have been polite and have cooperated readily with your CIA up to now, so please cut the sarcasm.’’

‘’Nobody here means to mock you, miss.’’ Intervened quickly Petraeus, trying to avoid an unfortunate misunderstanding. ‘’You however have to admit that your story is a rather fantastic one.’’

‘’True! But it is also a true one, General. As a last point, I would like to emphasize again the point that I am here in this century solely to live my normal, predestined life. Talking of my normal life, I really should go find myself a nice bed for tonight: I am due to skewer some of my critics in a televised debate tomorrow evening at eight, on CNN, and I need to recuperate from all that air traveling. While I will not throw

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brimstones and fire at my critics, I expect the words to be sharp. I hope that you will watch it, General: it could be entertaining.’’

Petraeus smiled slightly at that: he had to deal with his own share of public criticism in the past.

‘’I will do my best to find some time to watch it, Miss Laplante. Mister Price will now escort you out and get you to a hotel. Again, thank you for your footage from Iran: you gave a lot for my analysts to work on…and for the President to ponder. Mister Price…’’

Both Dean and Nancy then got up from their seats and left the room, closing the door behind them. Petraeus sat back in his chair and digested for a moment all that Nancy had said, then looked questioningly at Julian Moore.

‘’What do you think of her story, Julian? She obviously didn’t tell us everything, but I would tend to believe what she was ready to tell us, even if it is a rather fantastic story.’’

‘’Well, General, her little game of jumping around the room is proof enough that she can travel through space and time by herself, without a machine. Her performance in Israel also was enough to convince me that she truly holds a number of superpowers. Overall, I would say that she could be extremely dangerous but that, in view of her past record and recent actions, she is unlikely to commit hostile actions against us, unless we provoke her the way the Mossad did with her. There is however the matter of this time police she spoke about. I am sure that there is a lot more to it than what she said.’’

‘’Probably, but her argument that any action by that time police or other time traveler coming to this century could endanger the existence of that 34th Century civilization is logical. It would be like if we went back to kill Stalin, for example. How would our world look like as a result of that? I wouldn’t even dare to guess, but it would certainly not be like the one we know.’’

‘’True, General. On that point, I have to agree that this time police is probably a good thing for us to have. History is certainly best left alone.’’

‘’What about that other, parallel history, that Timeline ‘B’ she spoke about, sirs?’’ asked Erik Johnson. ‘’If it really exists, and I would tend to believe it does, then it would mean that there is another United States out there. Shouldn’t we care about that?’’

‘’No!’’ replied at once Petraeus, his voice firm. ‘’This United States is already mired into enough of a complicated situation as it is. We will not double our worries by trying to guess what is going on in that other timeline. Our counterparts will have to deal

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themselves with their own problems. Besides, I suspect that if we intervened there, and we don’t right now have the means to even go there, that time police mentioned by Miss Laplante would then fall on our heads like a ton of bricks.’’

‘’Then, sir, I would suggest that we put Miss Laplante under close surveillance, to make sure that she doesn’t mess with our history.’’

Moore shook his head at that.

‘’That would be a bad idea in my mind, Mister Johnson. With her powers and her ability to travel at will through time, following her would be next to impossible, while trying to capture her would probably end up the way the Mossad experienced in Israel. I also don’t believe her to be a real threat to us, for the same reasons I believe that her time police will not come to change our history. Besides, she is now a very public woman, thanks to her reports from the Middle East. Being in the spotlight like she is now should ensure that she will not do something really stupid, unless she goes mad.’’

‘’There would be another way to ensure that she doesn’t become a threat to the United States, sir: we could simply kill her.’’

While Moore simply looked at him with some misgiving, it was as if Johnson’s words had sent a jolt into Petraeus, who pointed an angry finger at his action agent.

‘’Forget that idea, Mister Johnson! I may now be the Director of the CIA but I wore a military uniform for too long to condone the killing of an officer who proved many times her bravery and devotion on the battlefield, especially when that killing is meant simply as a preventative measure. You will not touch her unless you have a direct order from me to do so. Is that clear, Mister Johnson?’’

‘’Yes sir!’’ answered Johnson, straightening in his chair.

‘’Then you are dismissed. Julian, you may stay a bit more.’’ Moore waited for Johnson to be gone before looking at Petraeus with some misgiving.

‘’Johnson is one of my best agents, and a very dedicated one, General. He had only the good of the United States in mind, I am sure.’’

‘’Probably, but we will not sink morally to the point of killing Captain Laplante just because we don’t control her. There is also the matter of the possible retaliations from the future that would follow her killing. We…’’

A thunderous voice suddenly cut him off, resonating inside the heads of both men with such power that their whole bodies vibrated.

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’RETALIATION FROM THE FUTURE WOULD BE THE

LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES, GENERAL PETRAEUS.

LEAVE MY CHOSEN ALONE, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE.

THIS WILL BE MY ONLY WARNING TO YOU.’

Petraeus and Moore were left stunned into silence for long seconds. Petraeus finally spoke with a shivering voice, cold sweat running on his forehead.

‘’I…I think that this point is now decided, Julian. I will now prepare a short brief which I will deliver myself to the President tonight. I will keep you informed of the President’s reactions.’’

‘’And I will inform you at once if anything new about Laplante pops up, General.’’ Getting up from his chair, Julian Moore left Petraeus’ office at a slow pace. Once in the anteroom, he leaned against a wall and wiped his forehead with his left hand.

‘’God, I need a stiff drink right now.’’