Free Operation Desolation by Mark Russinovich

alterations were certainly beyond Estancia’s ability. The man was a moron.
    Suddenly Herlicher collapsed in his chair. Now he remembered. He’d performed a final copy edit, then had sent at once. There had been no delay.
    There’d been no time for anyone to sabotage his report. None. Maybe, maybe, I really am losing my mind.

4
    LONDON, UK
WHITEHALL
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE
RESEARCH GROUP FOR FAR EAST AFFAIRS
5:33 P.M. GMT
    Lloyd Walthrop was still angry with Herlicher. The man had called and left a voice mail and now had sent by e-mail an explanation Walthrop refused to read. The German was a cretin. Walthrop had always taken him to be a weasel but until now he’d assumed the man would deal with him honestly, at least until it was in his interest not to.
    He’d first met Herlicher the previous year at a Madrid conference on the state of the Iranian economy. It was an area of official mutual concern. At the time he’d seemed a mild-mannered, if a bit paranoid, German bureaucrat. The only thing notable about him was that he worked for UNOG in Geneva. Even that wasn’t especially significant until he’d let drop that his primary duties were with the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs and that he served on the committee tasked with producing any United Nations’ status reports and recommendation on Iran’s nuclear program. That had caught Walthrop’s attention, as he assumed it was meant to.
    Walthrop had been pleased at the contact. Since then, they’d exchanged e-mails and reports but in recent weeks he’d impatiently waited for a new nuclear report. Herlicher had been assigned its actual writing and that struck Walthrop as a coup for himself.
    Though officially assigned to the Foreign Office, the key aspect of Walthrop’s job was to gather intelligence from the various branches of the UK government and to funnel it to those who needed to know. Occasionally he acquired an interesting tidbit from an EU source and when he did, that was so much frosting on the cake. Unofficially, he’d been asked to pay special attention to the imminent UN report on Iran.
    According to his sources, the situation there was coming to a head. More than one national intelligence agency was reporting that detonation of an atomic device in the Iranian desert was forthcoming. There was serious talk of meaningful international action. Iran had flaunted the UN inspectors and sidestepped sanctions for too long. His reading of the current state of the world was much as it had been just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Desert Storm before it: Something was going to happen.
    Some of what Walthrop did was presented officially, though confidentially, but the greater part found its way to the necessary hands through informal back channels. From time to time he was called on to brief leaders in Parliament and the office of the prime minister. It had long been this way in British intelligence. He’d attended the right schools, knew the right sorts, and over the decades had demonstrated his loyalty and judgment. Outside certain circles he was unknown, and he very much preferred it that way.
    He’d wondered at first if Herlicher had known his true position in the UK government but over the following months realized he did not. He’d targeted Walthrop for no other reason than he worked in the Foreign Office. But once Walthrop had indicated an interest in the German’s work, the two had formed the sort of bond that existed between colleagues possessed with mutual needs. The Brit wanted to know what UNOG was going to report before it became common knowledge while the German was looking for a leg up in Brussels. One hand washed the other.
    Walthrop turned back to the foolscap on his desk and reworked his report with a pencil. He knew it was all quaint, very archaic; his assistant chided him about it from time to time, but he simply couldn’t think straight on one of those