Free Divide and Conquer by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik, Jeff Rovin Page B

accepted it.
    “How have you been?” Thomas asked.
    “That isn’t important,” Moore said. “I’m not happy now. There was no reason for this to go down the way it did.”
    “Mr. Moore, you’re correct,” Thomas said as he released his hand. “In retrospect, we should have done this all differently. The question is, how do we fix it now?”
    Moore sneered. “You don’t get off that easily,” he said. “Your team mounted a small operation here and didn’t tell us. Your man says you were worried about security risks and other factors. What do you think, Mr. Thomas—that the Azerbaijani are wet-wired into the system? That we can’t conduct a surveillance without them finding out?”
    Thomas walked to an armchair across from Williamson. “Mr. Moore, Ms. Williamson, we had a short time to make a quick decision. We made a bad one, a wrong one. The question is, what do we do now? If the Harpooner is here, can we find him and stop him from getting away?”
    “How do we bail you out, you mean?” Moore asked.
    “If you like,” Thomas conceded. Anything to get this out of reverse and moving ahead.
    Moore relaxed. “It isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “We’ve found no trace of the boat Mr. Battat says he saw, and we have a man watching the airport. No one who fits the description of the Harpooner has left today.”
    “What about working backward?” Thomas said. “Why would the Harpooner be in Baku?”
    “There are any number of targets a terrorist for hire could hit,” Moore said. “Or he may just have been passing through on his way to another republic or to the Middle East. You know these people. They rarely take a direct route anywhere.”
    “If Baku was just a layover, the Harpooner is probably long gone,” Thomas said. “Let’s concentrate on possible targets in the region and reasons for hitting those targets.”
    “The Nagorno-Karabakh and Iran are our biggest concerns,” Williamson said. “The people in NK have voted themselves an independent republic, while Azerbaijan and Armenia are both fighting to claim it. The whole region will probably explode when Azerbaijan gets enough money to buy more advanced weapons for its military. That would be bad enough for both nations, but with Iran just fifteen miles to the south, it could end up being quite an explosion. As for Iran, even without the NK situation, Teheran and Baku have been gnawing at each other for years over access to everything from offshore oil to Caspian sturgeon and caviar. When the Soviet Union watched over the Caspian, they took what they wanted. And not only are there problems, but the problems overlap,” Williamson added. “Sloppy drilling by Azerbaijan has caused a quarter-inch-thick oil film in parts of the sea where Iran fishes for sturgeon. The pollution is killing the fish.”
    “What is the oil situation, exactly?” Thomas asked.
    “There are four major oil fields,” Williamson said. “Azeri, Chirag, Guneshli, and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and the Western Consortium members that underwrite the drilling are convinced that international law protects their exclusive rights to the sites. But their claim is based on boundaries that are defined by fishing rights, which both Iran and Russia insist do not apply. So far, the arguments have all been diplomatic.”
    “But if someone perpetrated a new action somewhere,” Thomas said, “such as an embassy explosion or an assassination—”
    “There could be a disastrous chain reaction reaching into a half-dozen surrounding nations, affecting oil supplies worldwide, and drawing the United States into a major foreign war,” Williamson said.
    Moore added sarcastically, “That’s why we like to be kept informed about covert actions in our backward little outpost.”
    Thomas shook his head. “Mea culpa . Now, can we all agree to look ahead instead of back?”
    Moore regarded him for a moment, then nodded.
    “So,” Williamson said, looking down at her notes. “As I