After the introductions, Liz said, “This afternoon, I became a pioneer in the world of catering in Sinaia. I persuaded Mr. Georgescue, owner of the Dragului, to have one of his waiters drive up here and deliver our dinner.”
“Great!” Kella said, smiling.
“We like some of the Romanian cuisine. I hope you like it too, Kella. We’ll be having Ciorba, a sour soup; venison with Mămăligă, a sort of polenta. And for dessert, I thought we’d go back to the tried and true cuisine of France, Baba au Rhum, cake soaked in rum.”
As Liz set the table, Charlie poured a Romanian Cabernet for the three of them then went upstairs to take a quick look at the street from one of the bedroom towers. Liz entertained Kella by recounting anecdotes from their tours in Thailand, Italy, and, more recently, in Bucharest. While Charlie had been under official cover, Liz had experienced life as a diplomat’s wife. It showed.
“We first went to the Dragului because of its name, which means ‘the Devil’s Restaurant.’ And it refers to the vampire legends. The model for Count Dracula was a medieval warlord named Vlad Tepes, a famously cruel local tyrant known as Vlad the Impaler. When the Sultan’s messenger refused to remove his fez in his presence, Vlad Tepes had it nailed to his skull with a spike. His castle is about an hour away.”
Upstairs, Charlie decided the Mercedes had only triggered his professional paranoia and decided it was simply a false alarm.
Downstairs, Liz called the restaurant. After hanging up, she asked Kella, “Is that an engagement ring?”
“Yes it is,” Kella replied, smiling and raising her hand for Liz’s inspection. “Decisions about the wedding are being made as we speak,” she said, revealing what was uppermost in her mind. “We’re going to have a church wedding in Paris. But is it going to be Notre Dame? I don’t think so. Too grandiose, probably too expensive, and too unavailable. Or perhaps it will be Saint Severin on the left bank, a neighborhood church with hundreds of years of history.” She shrugged helplessly. “I will find out after I leave Romania.”
“If you were getting married in Rome I could give you some good advice. But I’m sure you know more about Paris than I do. I need to call the restaurant again.”
After a conversation in Romanian, Liz hung up the phone. “Mr. Georgescue assured me our order is on the way. He also told me our friends had gotten lost, but he gave them directions to our house. Who could that be, Charlie?” she asked, as he rejoined them.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably the guys in the Mercedes. Not a false alarm after all. I need to call the station, and I’m going back upstairs to look outside one more time. I’ll call down if I see anything. In the meantime, please go get us weapons from the safe room.”
With that, Charlie left the room. Twenty minutes later, he ran down the stairs and took an Armalite M-15 from Liz. Kella was already holding one, and Charlie told his wife to go to the safe room.
They waited anxiously, weapons at the ready. Charlie peered out the front window and said, “An old, cream-colored Dacia just pulled up in front of the house. Showtime.” Charlie stayed at the front of the house and directed Kella toward the back.
“Two guys coming out of the car,” he said loudly enough for Kella to hear. “They’re looking for something in the back seat. Maybe their weapons. Okay, now each has a bag, large enough to hide a weapon. They’re coming up the front walk.”
“I see no movement back here,” Kella said peering through a back window.
“I recognize one of the Dragului waiters,” Charlie said. “I think we’re okay.”
A moment later, there was a knock on the door. It was their dinner, which two Dragului waiters quickly laid out on the dining room table. After they departed, Charlie beckoned Liz back upstairs.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if our so-called guests followed our food up here. Let’s wait a few minutes and put out the light,” Kella said. She positioned Liz by the kitchen window, while they retrieved their Armalites from a closet.
“I’m going to bring the food to the kitchen to…” Liz started to say, before Kella interrupted her. “Wait!” she shouted. “Three guys with overcoats in the front. Two going around the back. Liz, get back downstairs. Use the telephone there to call the station again.”
Covering the glass-paned back door from a corridor connecting to the front of the house, Kella’s heart was pumping hard, and adrenalin was pulsing through her veins. What was she doing here with this weapon? Any other woman two weeks before her wedding would be parked in a safe and warm environment planning the event.
Well, not my first rodeo. She smiled inwardly at this Americanism, and also tried to wipe everything from her mind except the present moment. There had to be at least one man she could not see coming toward her. She should probably have been hiding outside instead of sitting inside like a target. Her body tensed and her nerves on edge, she decided it was too late and resigned herself to wait.
The sound of gunfire from the front of the house suddenly commanded her focus. Almost at the same time, she saw a man peering through the glass pane of the back door. Having heard the firing, he smashed the glass closest to the door handle with the butt of a machine pistol. He unlocked the door from the inside and pushed it open.
Kella waited, as the intruder walked in behind the muzzle of his weapon sweeping it left and right as he moved forward.
“Stop and drop your weapon! “Kella shouted, falling to one knee, and aiming her M-15. The intruder immediately fired in her direction. As bullets flew over her head, Kella felt time slow and could almost count the bullets zinging by. She was only twenty feet from the shooter and, strangely, she noticed his furrowed brow, his half-opened mouth, and the open top button of his shirt. As if in slow motion, she squeezed off a burst, which hit the man in the chest and punched him backward. He floated down to the kitchen floor.
Half an hour later, two police cars, sirens wailing, pulled up in front of the house.
Lying in bed that night, her mind was racing. Was the attack against a target one of opportunity? Was it specifically focused on her? How did the shooters know she was there? Was there a mole in the agency? Who else in the government knew she was going to be here? Who were these guys anyway?
10. Langley
LaFont stood by the picture window of her office on the seventh floor. As she looked out over the CIA campus, its greenery fading as fall approached, she ran over the points she was planning to make later that day with members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Mary, her secretary, stuck her head in the door and said, “They’re all here. Do you want them here or in your conference room?”
“Here will be fine,” LaFont said, refocusing on the present. As she returned to her desk, she picked up a note she had made to herself. Britt, her daughter Brittany, was starting at William and Mary, and her counselor had just suggested she change her major from marine biology to straight biology, deferring on a specialty until graduate school. She would call the counselor back at her home number that evening.
As they filed in, LaFont registered each in turn. Tom Nortsen, Near East Division’s chief, was an experienced operations officer with good judgment and unquestionable moral ethics. Nevertheless, she sometimes questioned the equanimity of his views on Arab-Israeli issues. The Saudis seemed to have won him to their cause during his two years in Riyadh.
Marshall Church, former senior operations officer who now worked as a contractor, chafed somewhat under the second-class status of a green badger. His Red Cell unit was a valuable addition to the agency, because it could hire high-quality temporary help at a fixed cost to produce out-of-the-box solutions and excellent results. His disease had slowed him down physically, but he was as mentally sharp as anyone else in the room.
Paul Kirk, counterintelligence chief, was Harvard smart, short tempered, and profane with a Boston accent. He had been spectacularly successful at turning his talent for countering Soviet spying efforts to the broader threat of the post-Cold War world.
Last, Robert Trent, head of the Counter Terrorism Center, was extroverted, twinkle eyed, and imaginative, sometimes overly so. She often wished he had stayed at the deputy level, where he could have received closer supervision.
“Your memos are piling up on my desk,” LaFont said, as the four men took seats on the sofa and two chairs, and she sat down behind her massive wooden desk. “One disaster after another. No solutions. No recommendations. We know the attempt to kill Steve Church came from Yosemani. The motorcycle driver is cooperating. Their knickers are still in a knot over his and Kella’s escape.”
Leaning forward, elbows on the desk, speaking with authority and confidence, she continued. “We also know our ambassador in Yemen was assassinated by Quds Force operatives. Al Qaeda wasn’t behind it, as the Iranians wanted us to believe. That means they’ve struck us twice and we haven’t yet responded. Marshall, I want action here.” She didn’t have to add the missing word: now.
LaFont took a sip of coffee from a cup on her desk. “Anyone else want coffee?” Nods from around the room. She pushed the intercom button and said, “Mary, please bring coffee for everyone.”
Marshall took a brief pause to gather his thoughts. Then he said, “We expect Yosemani to be in Brussels in about two weeks. Steve has assembled a team, and they will be on the ground in the next few days. After her near-miss in Romania, Kella is taking a few days off in Paris and will join Steve in Brussels.”
Mary brought a carafe of coffee and put it on a small table in front of the men. Marshall poured himself a cup, stirred some sugar into his coffee, and took a sip. “No surprise, the three men who attacked her in Sinaia were all Quds Force. The Romanians are interrogating the two survivors. As you know, Kella killed one, Charlie Pastor wounded one, and the Romanians captured the driver before he even reached the highway.”
“They obviously had obtained or been given the location of the base beforehand,” LaFont said. “Were they targeting the house because they had learned it was one of our locations, or were they after Kella specifically?”
“They were after Kella,” Marshall said. “Their orders were to get as much information as possible on how she and Steve made their getaway from Tehran to the coast, and then to kill her. They don’t know where the information on Kella’s travel came from.”
“What about that, Paul?” LaFont asked.
“The leak had to come from Bob’s double agent SCONE/1. She’s talking to the Hizballah, and now directly to the Iranians. There’s nothing double about that operation. It’s all one way, as far as I can see.” Kirk was famous for peppering his speech with four letter words but never in the director’s office.
“She has not had access to Red Cell activities,” Trent said, without his usual twinkle. “Although we moved her from unclassified translation duties outside of the building to classified work here on the fifth floor, she’s not privy to the identities of our targets.” He paused and added, “Besides, where else can you find someone with both Arabic and Farsi?”
“Compartmentalization is never airtight,” Kirk said, shaking his head. “Her cubicle is in the middle of the Counterterrorism Center’s analysis section. You can’t stop her from having lunch with her colleagues. It was a mistake to bring her into the building.”
“Nonsense,” Trent replied, raising his voice. “We’re getting good personality data on Hizballah from her. It’s the first time our information isn’t coming from another intelligence service. I’m afraid, though, that we’re going to lose her if we don’t bring her mother to the States. We’re waiting for a reply from Beirut.”
“Tom, get Beirut in line,” LaFont said, looking at her Near East chief. “What do you make of the assassination of her case officer in Cyprus?”
“That was clearly a Mossad hit. They have used telephone explosives for years, starting back with the Wrath of God assassinations in reprisal for the Palestinian attack against the Israeli athletes in Munich. It’s a Mossad signature.”
“I wouldn’t take that to the bank,” Marshall said. “Al Khoury’s men have caused many casualties in the ranks of the secular rebel groups, and they’re starting to retaliate. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind the hit. We know they’re getting training from the French, from the Brits, and from the Turks.”
“It’s clear to me, more so every day,” LaFont said, “that taking Yosemani off the board would make life a lot easier for us all. Just like getting rid of bin Laden. We know Zawahiri’s taken his place, but so far he hasn’t been nearly as good.”
She walked over to the coffee tray, poured herself a cup, and returned to her seat. Instead of taking a sip, she placed the cup on her desk. “I have to say I’m concerned,” she frowned. “The White House has been reluctant to move on our plan. The chief of staff has told me the president wants to wait a while to see whether the election of Rouhani has changed the equation.”
She sipped from the cup.
“So, Marshall, pry Kella from her Paris R & R and make sure Steve’s team is ready to go when Yosemani lands in Brussels.
11. Brussels
Kella walked past the security guard into the public area of Zaventem Airport, ignoring his admiring stare. She smiled expectantly, as she searched for Steve in the crowd waiting for friends and family exiting the plane from Paris. He spotted her first, and soon, they were in each other’s arms, oblivious of the other reunions going on around them.
“Are you okay?” he asked, letting out a big sigh of relief.
“Yes,” she replied, hugging him with all her might.
A few minutes later, he was loading her luggage into the trunk of their rental car.
“LaFont’s passed the word through Marshall to step on it,” Steve said. “I’ve been here a couple of days, and I have a surveillance team. Well, I’ll know for sure tomorrow.” He glanced at Kella and answered her questioning gaze. “Marshall has put me in touch with one of his former contacts, a Colonel Vanness. He started in the Belgian police, in the mounted gendarmerie. He was head of counterterrorism when Marshall was station chief here.”
“Why create a new team? Can’t the station lend us their team?”
“Remember, this isn’t, strictly speaking, an agency operation. We’re supposed to be independent. Vanness is retired, but he still has experienced agents he can call on—if he can persuade them to take time out from perfecting their beer-tasting skills. Anyway, they’re experienced, they know the city, and Vanness trusts them.”
“Does that mean you’re going to use them to help capture our target?”
“Our swoop-and-scoop team consists of Special Ops guys, whose past experience was either Rangers, SEALs, or Delta Force. They’re ready to go, but right now I’ve got them stashed in Bruges, in Luxemburg, and in eastern France. They’re all within a three-hour drive.”
While Steve tried to keep his eyes on the road, he could tell he didn’t have Kella’s full attention. As they passed a large and closed complex of buildings, whose main entrance was covered with flags, she asked, “And what is that?”
“NATO headquarters. Its military offices are in Mons, about an hour from here. Vanness was telling me last night that since the end of the Cold War, Brussels has taken Vienna’s place as the espionage center of the world. Most countries have three diplomatic installations in Brussels. One for relations with the kingdom of Belgium, a second one accredited to NATO, and another keeping an eye on the European Union, which also has its headquarters in Brussels. All these facilities offer natural cover for spies.”
“Why does this matter to us? Where are we staying?”
Puzzled by Kella’s unusual lack of focus, Steve replied, “Since they’re all watching each other, this multiplies the number of trained observers who could stumble onto our activities.
“We’re staying at the Stanhope, a small business hotel with a low profile. But before we go there, I think we need to pay a courtesy call on the station chief.”
“I’d rather go straight to the hotel
. I thought you said we’re not supposed to be in touch with the agency here.”
“He already knows we’re here through official channels. So let’s just go kiss the ring. Who knows? We might need him later. It won’t be long, I promise.”
Finding a parking space on Boulevard du Régent and getting through building security took longer than their meeting with the chief, who was visibly agitated that Langley had kept Steve out of his chain of command. Steve was polite but uninformative and left with Kella as soon as he could.
Steve knew he had totally lost Kella’s attention when they drove by the luxurious stores along Avenue Louise. “Steve, I need an in depth reconnaissance of this street. I still don’t have a wedding gown.”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt to review our cover, though I doubt we’ll have to use it. Your alias passport identifies you as Jane Mercier with a Paris address, and you’re a buyer for several high fashion stores in Paris and New York. I’m Christopher Yates with a New York address. I’m also a wannabe writer, and we’re traveling together.”
“Next time we travel,” Kella said, smiling, “It will be under our true married name—two weeks from now.”
They checked in at the hotel, and it was only after they had washed up and Steve was sipping a beer while Kella had a glass of Perrier when he said, “by the way, I talked to my mother yesterday.”
“Oh, I love Kate. She is so energetic, so…” Kella paused for an instant looking for a word. “Together. How is she?”
“My father took a fall,” he said, haltingly. “He was turning into the bedroom from the hallway with his walker, when his right leg gave out. My mother had to get help. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but his mobility and activities are obviously going to be more limited. Mom said she’s ordered a power chair. She also said his fingers could no longer hold a pencil.”
The Red Cell Page 7