The Red Cell

by André Le Gallo

  Kella digested this information before saying, “I am so sorry. Is there anything I should do?”

  “Mom said she has things under control.”

  “If anyone can, Kate will take charge of this situation. Oh my God, will your parents be able to come to the wedding?”

  “I don’t think so. And by the way, how was Paris? Am I authorized to know what my wedding arrangements are?”

  “I thought you had lost interest,” Kella said pouting. “The church is reserved. Alexandra is still searching for a suitable restaurant, which to her means seats for at least a hundred people, and Grand-Père’s apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement is ours for as long as we want.” She paused and added, “Two weeks.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding, a hundred people? I can think of some names to put on the list, but where are the other ninety going to come from?”

  Kella went to the window, taking her glass with her and looking out for a moment. “I have something to tell you,” she said, turning toward him.

  “No, don’t get up.” She took another sip and smiled broadly, “Steve, I’m pregnant.”

  ***

  “Be careful,” Vanness said. “I broke a tooth here once on, how you say? Shotgun?”

  “Oh, the shot, you mean?” Steve said. “I’ll be careful, and thanks for recommending this place. Excellent boar. And Belgian beer is my favorite.”

  Steve and Vanness were having lunch at Restaurant Barbizon in Overijse, east of Brussels proper, in the Flemish-speaking part of the country. Steve, on learning Kella’s news the night before, had insisted she get on the next plane to Paris and get clear of this dangerous operation. But she had insisted right back that being pregnant was not the same as being sick, that she was perfectly able to do anything Steve could do, and she had even challenged him to a foot race. She at least had decided, however, that she would not be needed at the luncheon meeting, and she could make better use of her time if she explored the potential of the Avenue Louise stores.

  Two weeks to his marriage in Paris? If everything went smoothly, two weeks would be doable.

  “Your man arrived last night,” the colonel said. “He was met at the plane by the former head of Belgian security, Louis DuChemin, who escorted him through. In other words, VIP treatment. I don’t know what DuChemin’s business is with the Iranians, but I can tell you he is no friend of your country—and no friend of mine either.”

  The colonel was short, his hair was still black, and his paunch was evidence of a bon vivant. He took a bite of his rabbit stew. “Your father and I planned several counterterrorism operations here and in other restaurants in Brussels,” he laughed. “The spy business could not function without good food,” he laughed again.

  The remark spurred Steve to examine the salt shaker in front of him and run his hand under the table, now suspicious that if this was a well-known watering hole for spies, it must have occurred to someone to bug the place.

  “Where is General Yosemani staying, and how many men does he have?”

  “He has two bodyguards, and they are occupying half of the sixth floor of the Royal Windsor Hotel Grand Place. Price is no object.”

  “We obviously can’t grab him in the hotel. But if your guys can establish a pattern to his movements, I would like to take him at night outside the city.”

  “I did not know you wanted night coverage. My men are off duty at six. I will need more people.” He looked at Steve with questioning eyes.

  “Price is no object,” he said, grinning.

  ***

  Yosemani had needed only a short time to convince DuChemin it would be to his advantage to do business with Iran, forgetting his commitments to Syrian intelligence. “Make an appointment to see our ambassador,” he told the Belgian. He will be alerted, and you and he can deal directly. You know what we need: dual-use equipment for our nuclear program. The ambassador will have a full list.”

  “Yes, mon général. My friends in Belgian industry will be more than happy to work with me and sell you whatever you need.”

  Yosemani concluded his business with DuChemin by the time the two reached the hotel. He and his men checked in, after which he told them, “You can take the night off. You are within walking distance of the Grande Place. Go and amuse yourselves.”

  The general then took a shower, changed, and 45 minutes later his taxi dropped him in front of a luxurious apartment building in northern Brussels. On the way up to the third floor in the elevator, he checked himself in the full-length mirror, which took the entire back wall of the cabin. He ran his hand through his hair and full beard.

  When the doors opened, he walked halfway down the wide, empty corridor. Licking his lips, he knocked lightly on a door to his left. The door opened almost instantly, revealing a slim, dark-haired woman dressed in a silk robe. After he closed the door behind him, they looked at each other for the instant.

  “My treasure,” he said, in Farsi.

  “My husband,” she replied, also in Farsi, while dramatically dropping the robe to the floor and revealing her naked body.

  He stepped toward her, encircling her with his arms and pulling her to him. She looked up and offered her lips then took his hand and led him to the bedroom.

  ***

  “Were those your men, first in Washington and then in Romania?” the woman asked, as they sat facing each other at a round table in the living room about an hour later, both dressed in robes and each picking at a salad.

  “We will get them, one way or the other,” Yosemani replied.

  “Well, they are in Brussels as we speak,” she said, “and they have been given White House approval to come after you.”

  “I am listening,” he said, laying his fork down.

  “President Tremaine is traveling, so I do not know what he finally decided. But I think his national security adviser wants to cancel the operation, because the White House wants to wait and see if President Rouhani will be more moderate, and therefore more open to negotiations, than Ahmadinejad.”

  Yosemani stood up and walked to the window, only half noticing the sun had set and the lights of the city were now flickering on.

  “That is good. It will give us more time, and we still need time to gain our nuclear capability. I hate living without you, but your value to our nation is priceless. If the two thieves who stole our cyber secrets are here, in this city, there is no time to lose.”

  He headed to the bedroom. “Where are they?” he asked, beginning to change into his clothes.

  “I vowed as a child after one of my brothers was killed at Karbala that I would devote my life to the Shiite nation,” the woman said, as she fingered a medallion, hanging from a gold necklace decorated with an evergreen pine overlaid with the beginning of the Shahada: There is no God but God and the Prophet is the Messenger of God.

  “They are staying at the Stanhope hotel. I do not know where their team members are.”

  Yosemani picked the room phone and dialed a number, but hung up after hearing a busy signal. His second attempt a few minutes later only succeeded in reaching Mme. DuChemin. Her husband called back an hour later.

  In an impatient voice, Yosemani ordered, in English, “Mr. DuChemin, I have other business to transact with you. And I would like to see you in my hotel room as soon as possible. In the meantime, I need you to pull a team of trusted men together. I need them right away.” Hearing no immediate response from the Belgian, he added, “Price is no object.”

  ***

  “What a dreary day,” Kella said the next morning, as she moved away from the window to start the coffee using the hotel coffee pot on top of the room’s mini refrigerator.

  “Welcome to Brussels,” Steve answered, as he scanned the front page of La Libre Belgique.

  The phone rang, as Kella put a cup of coffee in front of Steve. She picked it up, listened for an instant, and handed him the phone. “It’s your father,” she said, arching her eyebrows.

  As Steve listened, his eyes grew w
ider, and his jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious, Dad! They approved the damn thing! Our people are in place. What the hell’s going on?” He looked at Kella, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “The White House has canceled the operation,” Steve said, after hanging up. “We’re to stand down. Marshall said we’ll probably get a call from the chief here. I’m sure this will make his day.”

  “I can’t say it makes me sad,” Kella said, stirring sugar and cream into her coffee. “Did he say why?”

  “It’s exactly what LaFont feared. Someone got to the president, probably Dalton, and persuaded him to suspend all aggressive operations for the next few months to see what the new Iranian president does.” He shook his head again. “Watch and wait. Watch and wait.”

  “Well, I’m going to let you close everything down, and I’m going to go live my cover on Avenue Louise.”

  She was on her way out the door, when the phone rang again. “I’ll call you later, and you can take me out to lunch. I will fascinate you with a full report on Belgian wedding dresses.”

  ***

  Under a Brussels monochrome-gray sky, it was drizzling, and the sun could not pierce the thick cloud cover. Bruxellois, used to the weather from birth, went about their business wearing their traditional knee-high, green rubber boots.

  A windowless gray van, parked down the street from the Stanhope Hotel, hid behind the raindrops. Its three occupants smoked while watching the hotel entrance. “That bitch is not an early riser,” one of them said in French.

  “Church will probably come out first. Or, they might come out together, in which case we are only supposed to follow them. We are supposed to grab them only if one comes out alone.”

  After a few more cigarettes, a tall young woman emerged from the hotel and deployed an umbrella. Barely able to see through the smoke and rain, one of the men said, “That is probably her.”

  A few minutes later, a taxi drove up and Kella disappeared.

  “Allons-y!” Jean, the leader, said.

  ***

  A couple of hours later, the van was parked on Avenue Louise, raindrops falling through an open window. “How long must we wait?” Yves asked from the back seat.

  “If she comes out of the store and heads away from us,” Jean said from the front passenger seat, “We will get out and walk behind her. Laurent,” he said, turning to the driver, “take the van to that double parking space about thirty meters from here. When she reaches the back of the van, you will open the back door. I will put this pillowcase over her head, the two of us will grab her at the same time, shove her into the van, and we will take off.”

  Kella materialized a few minutes later, opened her umbrella, and retrieved her cell phone. She dialed Steve’s number while balancing her umbrella and phone. Having misdialed, she tried again smiling inwardly at the uncommon sight of two men looking at a window that displayed wedding dresses.

  “Steve, I am on Avenue Louise. I’m getting soaked, but I’m going to do one more store, and I will see you in forty-five minutes at the Chez André. It’s around the corner from where I am.”

  She resumed her walk and put her cell back in her purse. The gray van pulled in front of her, stopping at an angle into a large empty space between cars.

  As the pillowcase was pulled over her head it caught onto the umbrella handle, but Yves pinned her arms to her side. Caught unaware, she nevertheless reacted instinctively and kicked whoever stood behind her. She heard a yelp, but the pressure around her arms did not lessen. So, bending her knees slightly, she rotated to the right, reaching back and squeezing her assailant’s testicles as hard as she could, triggering a satisfying scream. She started yelling, but a hand covered her mouth over the pillowcase. She dropped the umbrella and threw her head back, connecting with a nose.

  Then a large fist connected violently with her solar plexus, ending her fight and making her gag for breath.

  To the sound of Walloon anger, she felt herself lifted off the ground and thrown in through the open door of the van. The two men quickly got in behind her, and the vehicle disappeared in the rain.

  12. Silicon Valley, California

  Heyder Kazemi drove along the highway from his home in Fremont, as he thought about his forthcoming social bash with antagonists of the Iranian regime. He had been reporting dutifully the names of these wealthy and self-important expatriates for the previous four years. He addressed his letters to a post office box in Portland, Oregon and assumed they were being hand-carried across the border to Vancouver and delivered to the Iranian Consulate there.

  Kazemi no longer worried whether he had made the right choice, if indeed it was a choice. He had been recruited by the Ministry of Intelligence shortly after his graduation from the University of Tehran. They had given him six months of clandestine tradecraft and explosives training, after he was deemed worthy of trust by the virtue police of the IRGC, the Islamic Republic Guard Corps, and sent to the United States via Canada to be a sleeper agent. He thought he had already accomplished his primary mission, to bore into the society of the enemy to establish cover. He had obtained a graduate degree in computer sciences at UC Davis and was now helping to build hard drives for Hewlett-Packard.

  Kazemi was still motivated to defend Persian interests in a world dominated by Sunnis and other infidels, but he was not totally convinced he was making a difference. His role was too passive. Except for an occasional letter from a nonexistent aunt in Tehran, which, with the use of the antiquated technology of invisible ink, was the only feedback he ever received for his work. There had been one incident he wanted to believe was the direct result of his reporting. A leading Persian expat, whom everyone knew was the funding behind several anti-regime radio stations in the Los Angeles area, had been killed by a hit-and-run driver on the street that led to his hillside mansion overlooking the city.

  Jannat had pleaded with him not to go to the States, because she had not been able to obtain a passport. Her family’s uncertain political loyalty to the Islamic Republic had consequences. It would be a two-year assignment, he was told. He now realized what a blatant lie that had been. It makes no sense to send a sleeper agent on a mission of two years, because it took at least two years to establish a presence and understand a target.

  Kazemi and Jannat had had long talks. He would perform his patriotic duty and come back a hero, while she completed her studies. Although they had vowed to stay true to each other, he barely remembered the contours of her face, and he looked at her photo on his dresser less and less frequently. His requests to go back to Tehran for “family” visits had been denied. He wondered if Jannat was now married and whether she had children. His ministry’s unequivocal ban against correspondence with her was another measure of the cover department’s stupidity. In his mind, he had already written the memorandum that would illuminate the minister’s understanding of covert operations in the United States and would make him shine. Meanwhile, he knew he had better remove Jannat from his mind.

  Assigning him to study at UC Berkeley had been a mistake, Kazemi thought. The cover department should have known most Iranian students there were pro-regime and planned to go back to Iran after acquiring their degrees. Because his mission was to infiltrate anti-regime elements, he was careful not to participate in the social or political activities of his fellow Iranian students. He assumed the FBI was keeping close track of everyone at those meetings, especially so after the Boston bombing, so he stayed away. He even considered volunteering to report on pro-regime students to the FBI to bolster his cover. But he decided against it; his ministry would not understand and, although he was confident he could outsmart any American, getting close to the FBI might be playing with fire. He nevertheless was contemptuous of the decision makers in Tehran, who should have sent him to UCLA or any other school in the Los Angeles area where most of pro-Shah families had immigrated after the Revolution.

  Kazemi already knew most of the people also attending the seminar at Stanford University. But it was
also part of his job to report on public and private meetings focusing on Iran, and he had become a regular, to the extent that he had once been part of a panel discussing the recent presidential election. The main speaker at today’s event would be Hossein Nikzad, a Stanford scholar and published author. He was also an occasional adviser to the White House, and it was important to be aware of his most recent lies.

  As he drove through the upscale suburbs of Palo Alto, he wondered if the computer experts who had written the program for the STUXNET virus lived in any of those homes. The virus, reportedly a joint effort between the CIA and Mossad, had destroyed several thousand centrifuges and delayed Iran’s nuclear program, by at least several months.

  He crossed onto the Stanford campus, randomly noticing students walking and bicycling to their next classes. Stanford was perhaps the most difficult school to get into. Yet, Kazemi thought, these people were ignorant for their failure to understand the divide between the faithful and the infidels. They stupidly and slavishly pledged allegiance to a piece of paper they called a Constitution, when the only law came from Allah through the Prophet. That the students would probably have successful and comfortable lives while his Shiite brothers and sisters continued to be persecuted was wrong. His role as a sleeper was unsatisfying. He had to find a way to be more useful, more productive, and more faithful, to his people and to Allah.

  13. New York

  When Um had boarded the Amtrak train at Union Station, she used all of her instincts to try to detect any unusual attention to her movements. Situational awareness, her case officer Bob had told her, would help to keep her out of trouble. But who in the world would be following her in Washington, D.C.? After all, this was not Cyprus.

  Although she still trusted Bob, the relationship was clearly one-sided. He would tell her what to do and she would report the information she was able to elicit from her new Iranian case officer. But his initial promise to take care of her mother in Beirut seemed empty. At first, she simply wanted her mother to come to the United States. All she needed was money, which Bob had been willing to provide. Then her mother had told her over the phone she was not willing to start her life over again in another country. Visit America? Perhaps. But move permanently and say good-bye to her friends? That was an issue she was not willing to discuss. It was now too late anyway.