Foreign Agent by Brad Thor Read Free Book Online

physical death, if it ever came, would be a relief.
    The CIA team and their women in Anbar was just the beginning. An appetizer. The next attack was going to be even more dramatic.

CHAPTER 9

    T UESDAY
    T URKISH R IVIERA
    R ichard Devon took one last look over the turquoise-blue Mediterranean and breathed in the air. Soon he would be inside a plane for ten hours, and he wanted to sear it all into his memory.
    He and his Turkish counterpart usually met at the air base in Incirlik, but Ismet Bachar, Chief of the Turkish General Staff, was on vacation near Antalya. Bachar had no intention of leaving, not even for the U.S. Secretary of Defense. So, Devon had gone to him.
    The Turkish Riviera was a part of the country he had never seen before. It turned out to be stunning.
    Bachar’s villa was positioned to maximize its breathtaking view of the sea. They had lunch on the terrace, surrounded by stone pots planted with lavender. The sun was bright and strong, but the breeze off the water made for the perfect temperature. Devon understood why his colleague didn’t want to break away to come meet him.
    While the Secretary of Defense looked like a doughy, fifty-five-year-old country club member who should have been spending more time on the treadmill and less time in the grill, Bachar looked like a Hollywood film star. He was tall and thin, with white hair that was perfectly trimmed. His handsome, angular face was tanned and sported a pair of black-framed glasses. Out of courtesy to his American guest, he had put on a suit, but no tie.
    It was like being in the presence of a Turkish Cary Grant.
    Though Devon had seen only a houseboy, he could imagine a bevyof bikini-clad women hidden upstairs, waiting for him to leave, so that whatever party he had interrupted could continue.
    For lunch, Bachar served Mediterranean swordfish with pomegranate and pistachio salad. He paired it with a 2008 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières Premier Cru. He was showing off. But considering how far Devon had come, and why, it was the least he could do.
    The Turks had the second-largest army in NATO and were an important American ally. Their military also took the threat of fundamentalist Islam seriously.
    Four times since Turkey’s founding, the Turkish military had stepped in to reduce the power of the Islamists in their country. Bachar was concerned that number five might be around the corner, maybe even before the next election.
    Turkey’s leader saw himself more as a sultan than a president. He was gathering powers to his office that didn’t belong. Other branches of the government, which should have served as a check, had done nothing to stop him.
    Of concern to the military was that their president was an Islamist. Of concern to the United States was that he was an Islamist, sympathetic to ISIS.
    Turkey had only been putting on a show of fighting ISIS. While its President allowed the United States to launch bombing runs from Incirlik, he ignored the men, money, and materiel flowing to ISIS across the Turkish border.
    When Turkish planes flew, they didn’t hammer ISIS positions. They hammered the Kurds who were successfully fighting against ISIS. The Turks didn’t want the forty million Kurds in Syria, Northern Iraq, and Western Turkey to unite and form their own sovereign nation.
    The Turks also hated the Syrian regime, which meant they hated Russia and Iran for propping it up. They no longer thought twice about bloodying the noses of the Russians or the Iranians. If a justifiable situation presented itself, they took it.
    Tossing lit matches into puddles of gasoline was a recipe for disaster. If the brinksmanship wasn’t deescalated, the world was going to war. All it would take was Turkey getting hit back and then citing Article 5 of theNATO charter— An armed attack on one member of the alliance is an at tack on all .
    The men spoke for more than three hours. Bachar played his cards close to his vest. For the time being,