Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2)

by André Le Gallo

  “I wish you had chosen someone else,” Marshall responded. “I always gave Steve considerable leeway when he was growing up and he always took it. He’s way out of my control now; he’s been making his own decisions for years. Of course, I would be much happier if XYSENTINEL was a tested agent and Steve had diplomatic immunity. We didn’t even have time for a full debriefing, if you recall? He received a message to come back to Iran immediately. He already had informed al Quds that he was aborting the plan to assassinate you.”

  With a tight-lipped smile Deuel said, “Yes, I do recall. The hit team is being inter ... debriefed right now. We don’t do interrogations any more. That’s only for petty criminals, not for foreign agents on assassination missions.

  “Maybe I’ve been here too long.”

  “Mousavi definitely thinks so,” Church replied chuckling.

  A helicopter was circling for a landing on the CIA campus Helipad. “There is always the chance that SENTINEL had a change of mind on his way back,” Marshall said, his eyes following the chopper. “It’s conceivable that he spilled his guts to Mousavi who’s now waiting for the agency to get a case officer on the ground. With no diplomatic passport or immunity, what is to stop Mousavi from executing Steve if he arrests him?”

  “Is that what you think? I think that Mousavi’s boys are probably all over the personnel of the American Interests Section to either catch them spying or to prevent them from spying. Steve will have less visibility if he has no connection to the official American presence. The basic judgment comes down to your recruitment of SENTINEL. Is he a controlled agent? Is he ours? Or did he agree to your pitch just to get out of the country?” Gradually losing altitude as it approached, the helicopter had disappeared around the side of the building toward the landing pad. Church and Deuel sat down on chairs in front of Deuel’s desk.

  “I’m confident that his agreement was sincere. Naturally, stuff happens after the recruitment that can change the agent’s mind. Buyer’s remorse. Our ace in the hole is that part of the deal concerns his family here. If he changes his mind, he knows we can send his son and family back to Iran. I know he doesn’t want that. SENTINEL has a lot riding on this operation, on both sides of the equation. He has much more to gain if he stays true to us. His life is not worth much if he reveals our little conversation ... Mousavi will have him killed, ‘Pour encourager les autres’,” Church said, referring to the execution by the British of an admiral who had not done his utmost in an encounter with the French navy in the eighteenth century.

  Deuel said nothing, looking at Marshall and rolling his cigar in his fingers.

  Church, trying to stay objective and personally removed, said, “The bottom line is the answer to the usual risk-reward equation. How important is the information that is likely to come out of this operation?”

  “Extremely important. We’re under pressure from the White House and from Congress. Decisions are being made about Iran as we speak. Unfortunately, based on very little hard information. We’re getting some reporting from foreign intelligence services. Some have a dog in the fight. Their information could be accurate but it’s also meant to influence us.”

  “I’m still troubled, and Kate even more, about the lack of diplomatic immunity for Steve. She and the kids were in Tehran with me during the Revolution. They and the other U.S. Embassy dependents were eventually evacuated. The American Embassy was the last embassy to take its families out of the country. Kate concluded that Washington cared more about not wanting to offend the Shah—the State Department feared that an evacuation would be interpreted as a lack of trust in him and thus weaken him further--than about the safety of American dependents. In a word, she, the kids, and all the other American families were hostage to politics. I need to tell her what we as a government will do if Steve is arrested.”

  Deuel looked at Church directly for a moment, leaned forward and, looking directly into his eyes, said, “It won’t happen. If it does, tell Kate that I will do everything in my power to get him out. No, tell her that I will go to the president and convince him to do everything in his power to get Steve back.”

  Their gazes still locked, Church absorbed Deuel’s commitment and said, “Thanks Wally. We go way back, all of us. I know that she trusts you and your word will mean a lot to her. It won’t make the time that Steve is in harm’s way go by faster but it’ll help. Thanks.”

  Wally Deuel pushed a button on his intercom. “Mary, please call the others in.”

  Steve, Thérèse, and Radu walked in and joined the director and Marshall who had moved to a sitting area to the right of the director’s desk. Steve and Marshall smiled at each other. In spite of the cool temperature dictated by federal energy-saving measures, Radu wiped the perspiration from his face.

  Deuel looked at Steve and said, “We appreciate your willingness to do this Steve–although I understand that Thérèse volunteered you.” He smiled slightly. “Tell me, what is the thing that is most likely to go wrong?”

  “The moment of truth will be when I meet SENTINEL. There is no plausible cover,” Steve said looking away from his father and at the director. “This will be a black operation. I don’t know what kind of surveillance Canadian businessmen get in Tehran. If caught together, there’s damn little plausible cover story that would get this Canadian out of trouble. That works for SENTINEL as well.”

  Deuel looked around, “Thérèse?”

  “Steve will have help,” she said. “We agreed to send Kella, who was with Steve when he took al Khalil down. She’ll handle the communications. Steve will have absolutely nothing with him that could be construed to be spy gear. Plus, Kella’s communication device will be concealed.” Thérèse briefly met Steve’s gaze. “Further, she’s not going to be handling the agent so there won’t be any reason for anyone to suspect her.”

  Deuel’s eyebrows bristled, “I do remember Kella. What I don’t know is that she’s a CIA officer.”

  “She’s not,” Thérèse replied.

  In a lower voice, as if concerned that members of the Fourth Estate were listening, Deuel said, “More fuel on the fire on the outside-contractors issue. Wait ’til the press gets hold of this. Are you now a contractor with a big salary?” Deuel looked at Steve.

  Thérèse stepped in. “Neither Kella nor Steve is being paid, sir.”

  Deuel smiled, “Steve, I thought you’d be a tough negotiator. You’re a pussy cat.”

  “Government pay is not worth the accounting requirements, sir,” Steve replied with a grin. “Besides, West Gate will continue to pay me.”

  As they all got up, Thérèse said, “One more thing. We received a signal from SENTINEL last night—a phone call to a controlled number in Basra, an area where al Quds is very active, to the tune of over three million dollars a month. He’s ready for a contact.”

  Deuel looked at Steve with raised eyebrows. Steve said, “I’m good to go, sir.”

  Marshall heard his son’s reply and looked at him with a grim smile. It was the only possible answer. Marshall then looked at Deuel in a reminder of his commitment.

  He pushed the thought to the back of his mind that Steve, like Yazdi, was also a Knight, nimble in the early moves of a chess game, but often sacrificed for an advantageous exchange.

  11. Tehran: Hotel Tehran, Chamber of Commerce Breakfast

  Speaking English with a heavy German accent, Steve’s breakfast companion on his right said, “I’ve been here a year and there’s no end in sight. I came by myself at first thinking this would take four or five months. My wife will join me next month. The bureaucracy is difficult. It’s going to take a long time for the Iranian workers to be able to meet minimum standards.”

  Hans Brauer represented a German tire company owned by a larger American firm. He lowered his voice, “There’s always someone looking over your shoulder. They even follow you around sometimes. I just noticed but maybe they are watching for long time. Just like East Germany.”

  Steve, aka Christopher Breton, had lan
ded at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport a few days before and was living his cover, fitting in with the foreign business community, such as it was. He turned to the man on his left, an Iranian, “What ministry are you with again?”

  Wearing shaded glasses that he pushed up on a thin nose, the Iranian said, “Yes, my name is Ali, Ali Pakravan. I have been with the chamber of commerce for many years. I help foreign investors meet the right people. I have many friends and much family in important offices. Perhaps I can help you?”

  They exchanged business cards.

  Steve, in business mode, explained his reason for his Tehran visit, to interest large Iranian companies in controlling their energy expenses. “We have our own in-house patented technology that we sell to other companies. Our main product is to survey large manufacturers where temperature control is key and then make recommendations for improvements. We often make the follow-on installations ourselves. We have privileged relations with companies in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Japan, wherever we find the expertise and innovation to keep us in front. A large percentage of our business is related to large computer rooms that need to be kept at a constant cool temperature.”

  “If you don’t mind, I will talk to my uncle. He is a member of the Majlis, that’s our parliament, and has important connections.”

  “That’s great. You can find me at the Esteghlal Hotel.”

  “Very good hotel, Mr. Breton. I hope you stay in the West Wing, the traditional section. By the way, what do you think of our election?”

  “All I know is that there is a political campaign going on but, frankly, I’m not following it. I don’t know anything about your country’s politics.”

  The last thing Steve needed was to get involved in a heated political discussion with someone who probably would report every word to some bureau somewhere in the security apparatus. Besides, the candidates were already pre-approved by the system or they couldn’t run for office. In a way, the Iranian theocracy was very much like the atheistic communist regime of the old Soviet Union.

  Before boarding the plane in Washington, Steve had discussed the wisdom of being in touch with the Canadian Embassy in Tehran with Radu, and separately with his father. Finally, since a normal Canadian businessman would check in, Steve decided that he would also. The CIA would not reveal to the Canadians that Steve was on a CIA mission. As he made his way toward the exit at the end of the breakfast, Steve ran into Charles Mulcahy, the Canadian Commercial Attaché.

  “Christopher, I’m glad that you made it. A bit tedious but it’s necessary to make contacts, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely! Thanks for the suggestion. I did meet someone who might be useful.” Extracting the Iranian’s business card from his pocket, he read “Ali Pakravan, know him?”

  “Everybody knows Ali. He does know a lot people. He’s all over the lot, that one.” Mulcahy’s unspoken ‘but’ stayed in Steve’s mind as he left. However, he was too busy thinking about meeting with SENTINEL later that day, and he relegated questions about Pakravan to a dark corner.

  12. Washington: Four Seasons Hotel

  The Bourbon Steak Dining Room was a good venue for expense account lunches. A favorite of both the K Street business crowd and the senior grades of the federal bureaucracy, it was a self-congratulatory pilgrimage to prove one’s intelligence, judgment, honesty, fairness, loyalty, and hard work, as opposed to the deception, cutthroat ambition, and undeserved connections of the other clients.

  As usual, Radu had arrived early. He loved the atmosphere of an expensive restaurant and read menus as others might go through a book of favorite poems. Having ordered bourbon on the rocks, he was salivating through one of his favorite pastimes while fingering his worry beads. The Bourbon Steak dining room was not as intimate nor as upscale as he would like; the menu was rather pedestrian–Sausalito Springs Watercress? And the staff certainly wouldn’t know the difference between hollandaise and béarnaise sauce.

  However, its dark wood, hovering waiters, and executive-type clientele comforted him. From an independently wealthy family, Radu never equated his CIA salary as a metric of his social standing. A large inheritance from his schmecker Romanian grandfather, who had created a shoe empire begun in Middletown, New York and spread across the length and breadth of his new country, meant that, unlike his CIA colleagues, he did not have to endure slights from the bureaucracy to ensure his retirement.

  A fortysomething man in a seersucker suit and bow tie approached his table. As he sat he said, “Salaam Alaikum.”

  Radu responded automatically with “Alaikum Salaam.”

  Radu and Edward Colchester had met as students at the Foreign Service’s language school first in Virginia, and both had taken a second year at its Tunis campus. Eventually, promotions had made them professional counterparts; Radu headed the CIA’s Near East Division while Colchester was the State Department’s Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Middle East.

  Radu had begun his love affair with Arab culture as a teenager when his father worked in Riyadh, while Colchester’s Arab epiphany had occurred early in his career while serving in Beirut as a Vice Consul. His Palestinian girl friend had explained Israelis as a plague on her people. He had accepted the killings of the Marines and of the American Embassy staff in 1983 as inevitable consequences of a foreign policy hijacked by the American Israeli Political Action Committee. In the intimacy of their relationship, it had made perfect sense.

  Colchester’s mindset regarding the CIA had been chiseled in stone as Chargé d’Affaires in Sana’a, Yemen. The ambassador’s unexpected retirement had elevated Colchester from his Deputy Chief of Mission status. His ambitions had been seriously threatened when the CIA Chief of Station had informed him that one of his agents, an army sergeant reporting to the CIA on the political temperature of the military in this coup-prone region, had been arrested. The agent had identified him to his interrogators and, to avoid an official request from the Yemeni government for his expulsion, said that it would be wiser for him to leave. Absorbing the news that his career was going up in the smoke of CIA incompetence, tears had rolled down Colchester’s face. That he had eventually been named as ambassador to Ouagadougou and not to a more prestigious post was obviously the CIA’s fault.

  When the waiter had taken their order, Colchester turned his attention to Radu. “I gather that your boss made a request for a slot in our Interest Section in Tehran,” he said evenly. “You should have told me in advance, though it still wouldn’t have been approved. What is she smoking these days? I got blindsided.”

  “I agree it was a stupid idea, but the agency feels under a lot of pressure from the White House to produce on Iran.”

  “Doesn’t she get it? The reason we haven’t had a diplomatic presence in Iran for the last thirty years is because our last embassy was known as ‘The Nest of Spies.’ Is she a slow learner or what?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you of course, but don’t be surprised if LaFont doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  Adjusting his longish blond hair over his left ear, Colchester said, “She can keep asking. The answer won’t change. Our Chargé, Jeff Crossley, told me before he left that he would never allow the CIA to have a presence in his embassy. He wants to run an open office. He said he hoped that the Iranians had microphones in all the offices just to confirm that we have nothing to hide.”

  “Don’t forget that there are more ways to skin a cat,” Radu said picking up his worry beads from the table.

  “What do you mean? Is the agency on another out-of-embassy kick to handle agents? We all know that’s been a stupendous waste of time, right?”

  Radu wiped his forehead with his napkin while chewing on his New York Strip. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but if everything works, you’ll start seeing reports from us that will be sourced from inside the country. Of course, the byline won’t admit it, but you know how to read those, right? Our reports officers are not sufficiently imaginative to hide the coun
try where we acquired the information.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Colchester said bitterly. “We’re going to risk our relations with Iran, a major regional power with the capability for so much good in the region if we can only regain their trust. Why?” He pointed his finger toward Radu accusingly and knocked his wine glass to the table.

  “Shit!” Radu exclaimed, unable to move his bulk and his chair back quickly enough. The force of Colchester’s angry finger had projected a jet of red wine directly onto Radu white shirt. The white tablecloth and Radu’s dark pants absorbed the rest. Colchester’s angry frown had become an amused smile.

  Radu’s outburst turned heads in his direction. The waiter came and started to mop up the wine until the Maitre D’ arrived and led them to another table. He smiled reassuringly, “It is not a problem, Monsieur. These things happen. Enjoy the rest of your lunch. The waiter will bring your plates.” He went away rolling his eyes and smirking confidentially at the rest of the luncheon crowd.

  Colchester said, “I’d offer to pay your cleaning bill but you wear a suit only once before you replace it, right? Where were we? Oh yes, for the sake of running some half-assed operation in order to be able to tell the Congress at budget time that the agency is a player. Plus,” he continued, “In the middle of a presidential election in Iran, the price for getting caught is going to be even higher.” Colchester shook his head. Then, he added, “Although I guess I should assume that your agency is sponsoring one or more of the candidates?” He looked at Radu with questioning eyebrows.

  Radu nodded, “That’s a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ issue—above my pay grade. But back to the reporting the value of the operation. What we’re getting now—by the way, are you reading our stuff? ‘From a knowledgeable source with frequent high level contacts?’ What we’re getting now is good, really significant information on Iranian nuclear capabilities.”