The Mingrelian by Ed Baldwin Read Free Book Online

documents showing their nuclear weapons development program and passing them to someone they trust in Tbilisi to pass to us. There are many in Iran who don’t want to get into the nuclear war game, apparently including some involved in the nuclear industry.
    “We’ve been getting very detailed technical data about their progress. STRATCOM doesn’t usually do this kind of espionage, but we have no choice, the CIA blew it, and we must know exactly how close the Iranians are to fielding a nuclear device.”
    “So, what do I do?”
    “You need to make contact with a man nobody in the CIA has ever seen,” Ferguson said. “The CIA code word for him is ‘The Mingrelian.’ That’s a tribe or clan in the Republic of Georgia that’s been prominent in the Caucasus since the dawn of civilization. Mingrelians were among the first Christians and remained Christian through Mongol, Persian and Turkish invasions. Their aristocracy maintained an independent principality along the coast of the Black Sea until the whole region was swallowed up by the Russian Czar in the 19th century, and then they became an integral part of Georgian society and culture. Though they’re prominent in government and business, they cling to the memory of their former glory and independence, and to the Mingrelian dialect as a second language. Other Georgians joke about it, but there is an undercurrent of suspicion of Mingrelian conspiracies in business or government.”
    “We know the contact is Mingrelian?” Boyd asked.
    “That’s how he signed his first communication to us. That’s all we know.”
    “Sounds like a lot of cloak and dagger stuff,” Boyd said.
    “It is. Our first communication from him was a note slipped to an embassy staffer at a large diplomatic function in Ankara last year. That note set up a dead drop in Tbilisi, and that’s how we got our information for a year. After the CIA debacle, he traveled to Armenia to contact a webmail account we had set up for him to use in case of emergency.”
    “Cautious fellow.”
    “With good reason,” Ferguson said. “The information he’s passing to us is so specific, it would identify the source within the Iranian nuclear program. We think it’s coming out through the People’s Mujahedin of Iran – it's called MEK in Farsi – a leftist Islamic revolutionary organization opposed to the radical Islam of the current regime.”
    “Linking the MEK with anyone in Georgia would tip the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, the VEVEK, to their only viable opposition. They could roll up the whole resistance movement in Iran.”
    “So an Islamic organization is giving up Iran’s nuclear secrets. Why?”
    “The whole nation is Islamic, but there are a lot of people there who take a tamer view of Islam. They want to get along in the world without galloping off on a jihad mission every time someone draws a picture of the Prophet, and they don’t want to die in a nuclear exchange with Israel or the United States.”
    “It could come to that?”
    “Hell, yes, it could come to that! Boyd, the Israelis have nukes with a hair trigger pointed at Iran. One missile shot over the Persian Gulf in their direction, and the fight’s on. Our president would get a call in the middle of the night just about the time the first nukes detonated. We’ve got treaties with Israel and other Persian Gulf nations that require us to support them. We’d be in it from the first shot. Then what happens?”
    “How does this information I’m supposed to get fit into that?”
    “If we or the Israelis are to have a chance to counter a first strike, or launch a pre-emptive strike we need to know just where their nukes are and how they’re being deployed,” Ferguson said. “Once they’ve got nukes, they’re going to be much tougher to deal with. They could threaten to take out Saudi Arabia or Turkey, staunch allies of ours, if we made a move in their direction. We’d have to take that threat