The Counterfeit Agent

by Alex Berenson

  He turned toward her, flipped her the box. She caught it, pure reflex.

  “I don’t want to die,” he said again.

  “But do you want to be a father? A real father this time, present.”

  He didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

  “Enough to walk away from an operation that’s too dangerous.”

  He nodded again. Though he wasn’t sure he knew what those words meant.

  “I don’t believe you. But okay.” She set down the box. “I’ll give you thirty days. If you truly believe you’re ready to be a father, you come back to me with this.”

  “You’ll say yes?”

  “If I believe you.”

  So he stowed the diamond in his suitcase and they went for a swim. Neither of them wanted to be in the suite anymore.

  2

  PHILADELPHIA

  They’d warned him.

  His friends. His advisors. Even the Post reporter who covered the CIA. Every last one told Vinny Duto that he held far more power as Director of Central Intelligence than he would as a new senator. That he’d be at the bottom of a deeply hierarchical institution. That his clout would vanish so quickly that he would wonder whether it had ever existed.

  Still he’d left the seventh floor to run for the Senate. He knew something they didn’t. The President was tired of him, the way he controlled Langley. The slights piled up slowly. His meetings with the big man started late, ended early. A budget request that should have been waved through instead took months of meetings. The National Security Advisor demanded preapproval for all drone strikes.

  Duto decided to jump before the slow leaks started and he read about the agency’s failures on the front page of the Times. He could have hung on for another year or two, but ultimately he would have lost. He might be the most successful DCI ever, but he was no match for the President.

  He didn’t discourage the inside-the-Beltway pundits, who said he was making a Senate run to position himself for his own grab at the White House. If not in the next election, then the one after that. He’d still be young enough to be a credible candidate. Younger than Reagan. And in the back of his mind, Duto hoped the conventional wisdom was right. But he didn’t delude himself about the odds. He wasn’t a natural campaigner. In Pennsylvania, he could run as a relatively conservative Democrat, but he wouldn’t have that option in a national primary. No matter. He had years to decide. Meantime, he was glad to leave on what seemed to be his own terms.

  —

  He’d won easily. But he hadn’t realized that life as a senator would be so mind-numbingly boring. As DCI, he’d regularly faced life-or-death decisions. Four senior AQAP operatives are meeting at a madrassa in Yemen. Can we waste them without blowing up a room full of kids?

  Now, instead of ordering drone strikes, he listened to lobbyists and his fellow lawmakers drone on. Worst of all were constituent meetings. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had thirteen million residents. Sometimes Duto thought every one of them was lined up in his office foyer, waiting for a handout. The Harrisburg mayor begged for $27 million for a highway extension—and reminded Duto that Harrisburg had gone 70-30 for him. The president of Penn State hoped for an $11 million earmark for a new dairy-science building, and wondered if Duto wanted tickets to his box at Beaver Stadium. A roomful of wig-wearing cancer patients from Philly asked for an increase in the National Institutes of Health budget. In that case, Duto sympathized.

  His chief of staff, Roy Baumann, insisted that he press the flesh. Baumann was firmly in the all-politics-is-local camp: People don’t know how you voted on specific bills, much less care. They care whether the turnpike’s safe and the economy’s decent. They know you can’t do much about any of it, but they want to think you’re trying. And you’re not like ninety percent of these gasbags. People want to meet you, hear your stories. Nothing important. Like, did Osama bin Laden really have porn in his safe house, or did we just put that out to discredit him? After a year or two you can disengage. I don’t recommend it, but I can’t stop you. But for now you say yes. Yes?

  Thus Duto had said yes to lunch with the head of the Philadelphia hospital workers’ union, Steve Little. Duto didn’t like Little. Little had endorsed his opponent in the primary. I’ll remind him of that, Baumann said. This lunch is peaches and cream. Best friendsies. Little was a trim black man with a perfectly tailored suit and shoes a Wall Street banker would have envied. Duto wondered if Little charged his clothes to the union. Probably—

  “Senator.”

  “Yes?”

  Little was shaking his head. “I lose you there? On the Medicare HMO issue? You looked glazed. I know it’s esoteric, but these are huge numbers.”

  Duto’s phone buzzed. A number he’d never seen before. A 502-2 prefix. Guatemala City. He sent it to voice mail. The phone buzzed again. Some instinct left from Langley told him to take it. “I’m sorry. Excuse me, Steve.”

  He walked outside. “Hello.”

  “Remember me, comandante?”

  Only one man had called him that. “Diecisiete?” The man’s name was Juan Pablo Montoya, but Duto would always think of him as Seventeen.

  “None other. Did you miss me?”

  “No.”

  “Tenemos que hablar.”

  “Can we do it in English? It’s been a while.”

  “If you must. I promise you’ll want to hear this.”

  “One hour.”

  “Una hora, comandante.”

  3

  ISTANBUL

  Brian Taylor stood by the window in room 1509 of the InterContinental Hotel in Istanbul, looking at the dark water of the Bosphorus down the hill to the east. In twelve years at the agency, he had never been so excited.

  Taylor was the CIA’s deputy chief of station for Istanbul. His dream job, his dream city. He’d fallen for it backpacking across Europe at the end of the nineties. The last flash of American innocence, when taking a summer to drink cheap wine and run with the bulls still seemed adventurous. Taylor followed the usual route. He saw the sun rise over Montmartre, jumped off the rocks in Cinque Terre. He met his share of women. Always Americans. He never cracked European girls. Maybe if he hadn’t tried so hard . . . He had fun. Yet he felt he’d arrived a couple generations late. The cities were open-air museums. Even the beautiful couples walking along the Seine seemed to hold hands almost ironically. Like they were reenacting movies about Paris instead of living there.

  Then he found Istanbul. Its history stretched millennia, and it was as picturesque as anyplace he’d ever seen. Its giant mosques loomed over the Bosphorus, the mile-wide waterway that separated Asia and Europe. Yet it wasn’t a museum. It teemed with life. Shopkeepers and students hustled along its hilly streets. Gleaming white yachts sped past packed ferries and rusted container ships. The Turks were hardworking and silver-tongued, loud and showy. Taylor had grown up in a stuffy town outside Boston. He liked them immediately. He even developed a soft spot for the devious shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar. Those guys weren’t exactly trying to take advantage, he decided. They wanted to deal. They wanted drama. Any tourist who didn’t understand the game—which every guidebook explained in detail—deserved to be fleeced.

  Taylor expected to be in the city three days. He stayed three weeks, flying home the afternoon before fall term started. He knew his sudden ardor was silly, but was falling for a city more absurd than falling for a woman? Both required a willingness to suspend disbelief. Anyway, now he had what every college student wanted. A goal, and a path to reach it. He would learn Turkish, move to Istanbul after graduation. Turkey had eighty million people and a fast-growing economy. Big companies needed Americans who spoke the language. And the University of Massachusetts shared an excellent Turkish program with other colleges around Amherst. He expected his parents to push back. They didn’t. Dad: It’ll make you a lot more hirable than a history degree. Mom
: I always wanted to live somewhere exotic. Turkish was tough, but Taylor worked hard. By the start of senior year, he was nearly fluent.

  Then al-Qaeda attacked the United States.

  —

  Like his friends, Taylor was terrified and enraged and wanted revenge. Unlike them, he could help. Turkey shared borders with Iraq and Iran. The FSB, Mossad, and Revolutionary Guard all ran major stations in Istanbul. The CIA was badly outgunned. Just four agency officers spoke Turkish. By November, the agency had contacted language programs all over the country in search of candidates. With his 3.8 GPA and spotless background, Taylor jumped out. A recruiter invited him to Boston for a meet-and-greet. The remains of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. He never considered saying no.

  And he had never regretted his decision—not even during his ten-month posting to Iraq, when he’d left the Green Zone only four times. He’d spent most of his career at CIA stations in Istanbul and Ankara, the Turkish capital. Taylor knew he wasn’t a star case officer. The stars worked in Beijing or Kabul or Moscow. But he was reliable, dedicated, and a good fit for Turkey. Though he had joined after September 11, Taylor was something of a throwback. He disliked drones, preferred old-school spying, the careful recruitment of agents from government and business. Guys who lived in mansions, not mud huts. His best sources were mid-level officers in the Turkish army, bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance.

  So Taylor’s career progressed, and his social life, too. He made a habit of American twenty-somethings who came to town on two-year stints for multinationals. He replaced them easily enough. His years with the agency had given him an appealing air of mystery. His apartment had a killer view of the Bosphorus. Plus he knew every restaurant in town, and he always picked up the check. Case officers had practically unlimited expense accounts. No accountant at Langley would question a two-hundred-dollar dinner for “recruiting.”

  The CIA promoted Taylor to deputy chief of station in Istanbul on the eleventh anniversary of his hiring. He planned to stay three years, then head back to the United States. He was ready to settle down, have a family. He didn’t think he would ever be a chief. Taylor still believed in the mission, that in some small way he protected the United States. But he supposed that he’d become a careerist. September 11 had faded in his memory, along with everyone else’s.

  —

  Then the letter arrived.

  Almost half a year later, its details were etched in his mind. Noon on a Friday in early September. The consulate mostly empty as the long Labor Day weekend approached. Istanbul stuck in a heat wave, smoking like a kebab on a spit. Taylor’s office was air-conditioned, of course, but through its narrow bulletproof windows the men on the streets looked sullen and irritable.

  A knock on his door. His secretary, Alison. She carried an envelope, holding it by her fingertips. Like it was contaminated. Though the consulate scanned local mail for anthrax and other nasties. She handed it to him without a word.

  It was addressed to Nelson Drew, Associate Director for Citizen Services, United States Consulate, Istanbul. Taylor’s cover name and job. Inside, a single page of staccato laser-printed sentences.

  “Nelson.” You are spy. CIA. Real name Brian Taylor. Speak Turk/Farsi. I am Rev. Guard Colonel. “Reza.” I need to meet.

  Gran Bazaar 6 Sep 3 p.m. Ethcon Carpet.

  —

  Taylor felt like he’d gone to the doctor for a routine physical and been told he had an inoperable brain tumor. Impossible. The letter’s plain white paper burned his fingers. You are spy . . . He couldn’t be blown like this. But wishing wouldn’t erase the words.

  He handed the letter and envelope back to Alison. “Make a copy for me, one for Martha.” Martha Hunt, the bureau chief. “Bag the original and the envelope. Try not to touch them, in case there’re fingerprints.”

  Though he didn’t expect forensic evidence. Whoever had sent this was smart. And knew much too much about him. That he worked for the agency. His real name. Even that he knew Farsi. He’d learned the language working with Iranian exile groups in Ankara. He hadn’t liked the exiles. Most just wanted to hang out in Turkey on the CIA’s dime. They found excuses whenever Taylor proposed operations that would send them back into Iran. Still, every so often one had decent intel, so the agency tolerated them.

  Now that work had bitten him. As he’d assumed, some exiles were double agents spying for Iran. Still, he couldn’t imagine how they’d found his real name. He’d been careful. But he’d been stationed in Turkey for a long time. Probably the Guard had put the pieces together bit by bit. Finding the answer would be impossible. He’d left Ankara four years before. The exiles had scattered. What mattered was that his cover was blown. What if the Guard knew where he lived? Part of him wanted to get on the first flight home.

  But he knew he had to stay. The man who’d written this letter could be an enormously valuable source. The United States was desperate to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Washington had imposed sanctions and attacked the program covertly. Still, the Iranians hadn’t quit. Policymakers badly needed to know how close Iran was to a bomb. But the United States had few agents anywhere in the Iranian government, and none in the Revolutionary Guard. Instead, the CIA and National Security Agency relied on their usual technical wizardry. But Iran had buried its enrichment facilities to keep them from satellites, drones, and radiological sniffers. Following a joint American and Israeli attack on their computer systems in 2009, Iran’s scientists had removed the computers from their labs. They solved equations with calculators now, used plaster to model bomb designs. Still, they were making progress. After all, the American scientists at Los Alamos had designed the first bomb in the 1940s with slide rules and hand-drawn blueprints.

  Without hard evidence, the United States could only speculate at Iran’s capabilities and intentions. Some analysts thought Iran would finish its first bomb in less than a year. Others said five years was more likely. This Revolutionary Guard colonel might have the answers.

  If he was real. And not luring Taylor into a trap.

  —

  Martha Hunt was named Istanbul station chief four months after Taylor became deputy. She was two years younger than Taylor and didn’t speak Turkish. But he didn’t begrudge her the job. She had served three years in Kabul, two in Islamabad. When they disagreed, she was usually right. The fact that she was shockingly good-looking, tall and slim, with killer blue eyes, didn’t hurt. He’d never hit on her. He knew his league. She wasn’t in it.

  They met in the safe room beside her office. It had no windows and was swept weekly for bugs.

  “I don’t like it, either,” she said, as soon as he closed the door.

  “Hello, Martha.”

  “For all the obvious reasons. Who sets a meet in the Grand Bazaar? Must be five thousand security cams in there. But you’ve got to go.” She didn’t wait for him to agree. “We’ve got a week. Let’s use it. Get a camera to put eyes on the door. He’s dressed wrong, looks like he’s hiding a vest, you abort. He wants to blow himself up, not your problem. Meanwhile, you want to stay in the safe house until this is done, I’m fine with that.”

  “I’ll stay put. Can’t give up that view.” No way would he let Hunt think he was scared.

  “You have a view? I hadn’t heard.” A joke. Taylor’s apartment was a minor legend.

  “Come on over sometime, see for yourself.” He snorted, so she’d know he was kidding. Though he wasn’t.

  “Tell you what. Get us inside the Iranian nuclear program and I will.” She smiled a smile he’d never seen before.

  He spent twelve hours wondering if she was flirting. Until he realized what she’d done. She’d given him a tiny ambiguous signal to chew over. To take his mind off the letter. Taylor had heard some men weren’t suckers for beautiful women. He’d never met one.

  —

  The week dragged. Taylor looked over his fil
es from Ankara, but nobody jumped out as a possible double agent. The station’s tech-support team—two chubby guys named Dominick and Ronaldo—placed a thumbnail camera to watch the front door of the carpet store. The same night a cleaning crew threw it away. Hunt and Taylor decided not to risk placing another.

  Two days before the meeting, Taylor checked out the shop himself. It occupied expensive space a few feet from the domed square where the bazaar had begun five centuries before. Rather than traditional patterned carpets, it specialized in modern, brightly colored rugs. Under other circumstances, Taylor might have bought one. Instead, he wandered into a pipe store and watched Ethcon’s entrance as he pretended interest in an overpriced meerschaum.

  He’d come early. The bazaar was almost empty. After a few minutes, the Ethcon clerk poked his head out to talk to his counterpart across the corridor. Taylor recognized his accent as from southeastern Turkey, near Iran. Probably a coincidence. Hundreds of thousands of the region’s villagers had migrated to Istanbul. The letter writer had likely chosen Ethcon at random. The company didn’t show up on agency databases, and when Taylor had checked its Turkish records he’d found nothing suspicious. Taylor eavesdropped as the clerk talked about very little. Finally, he handed back the meerschaum and left, ignoring the curses the pipe store owner tossed at his back.

  He spent that night staring at the Bosphorus. He hated the way this meeting had come together. Simply by showing up, he was confirming his identity to whoever had sent the letter. Plenty of terrorists, from al-Qaeda to Greek anarchists, would gladly take a CIA scalp.

  —

  “Good night’s sleep,” Hunt said the next morning.

  “We don’t all have your cheekbones.”

  “Why don’t you take the day off, practice your shooting.”

  The agency had a deal with the Turkish army to let officers use a range at a base near Istanbul. As usual, she was ahead of him. Taylor hadn’t fired his pistol in a year. A day shooting would help him relax and might save his life. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”