“I told her to report here as soon as I learned about Yosef’s death,” Dagan replied. “She is waiting in her office. I will call her.”
Five minutes later, a slender woman with long brown hair fixed in a bun joined them, wearing spiked black heels, snug denim jeans, and a white long-sleeve bodysuit shirt that favored her curves.
“I apologize, Mr. Director, for my casual dress,” she said. “I came directly from a club where I was with friends when the deputy director called. I’m sorry about Yosef. He was a good soldier, and a better friend.”
“To all of us,” Dagan interjected.
“We suspect he was murdered,” Big Jules said. “I need you to go to the Crimean Peninsula to investigate. Deputy Director Dagan can fill you in.”
“Sir,” Peretz said, “I’m scheduled to leave tomorrow for Lake Como. Your niece’s wedding.”
“I’d forgotten.”
“We have several others who can oversee your security detail there,” Dagan volunteered, “especially since most of the preliminary work already has been done.”
Before Peretz could answer, Big Jules said, “No. I need you with me at the wedding. My sister is familiar with you.”
“She knows me as Esther,” Peretz said, using her code name.
“I am not going to risk upsetting my sister and my niece on her wedding day by having a stranger, someone unfamiliar with their home, take charge. She considers ‘Esther’ more as a guest than as someone in charge of my personal security.”
“Who, then, shall we send to Balaklava Bay?” Dagan asked.
“Let’s begin by going through the official channels that are expected to obtain the body and medical reports,” Big Jules replied. “This will avoid suspicion.” He nodded at “Esther,” and said, “After my niece’s wedding, you will leave for the Crimea to complete Yosef’s original mission. Deputy Director Dagan will brief you, and you will report directly to him.”
“What about the Americans?” Dagan asked.
“The new CIA director is a timid man, a deal maker,” Big Jules said. “We will wait until we know more before sharing any information.”
Fourteen
“Dedicato par aevum.”
“Latin? From you?” Valerie Mayberry said.
“It means ‘Dedicated to service.’”
“I know what it means. I’m the one who speaks five languages.”
“Kudos to your Ivy League upbringing,” Garrett replied sarcastically. He nodded toward a granite marker to their left. They had stopped at a traffic light on Route 123 at the CIA’s main entrance in Langley. “Those words are inscribed there.”
It was dusk, and the lights positioned around the monument came on as he spoke, as if on cue, spotlighting the marker.
“I remember,” she said.
“Two dead. Three wounded. All shot by a Pakistani who’d bought a fake passport in Karachi. Came here and got a delivery job. That’s how he knew when people would be coming to work in the morning and get stuck at this signal.”
“Walked from car to car, shooting,” she said, “but only males, because it was against his religion to kill women.”
“You know what really pisses me off, Mayberry? There’s another memorial about these murders, only it’s in Pakistan and named after him. An entire mosque dedicated to a ‘martyr.’ It—”
The sound of Valerie’s Jaguar F-Type’s exhaust pipes drowned out his sentence as the signal turned green and she spun into the agency’s driveway, stopping a few hundred feet in at an intercom where she identified both of them. Once cleared, she pulled forward to another barricade, then through a maze of concrete barriers meant to prevent anyone from crashing through with explosives. Up a slight rise, she found a visitor spot to park. They entered the old building, where they submitted to yet another credential check before being escorted to a boardroom next to Director Connor Whittington’s upstairs office.
“Have you met him?” Garrett asked as they settled on either side of a highly polished conference table.
“Only once. He came to the bureau. He was polite but formal, somewhat cold toward me. I wasn’t surprised. I mean, he was appointed to clean up the mess that his predecessor left behind—a mess that involved us. Did you notice the photos in the hallway of former agency directors?”
“Yeah, one picture was missing.”
“Serves him right. Director Harris was a bastard, liar, and manipulator.”
“And you think Whittington isn’t a bastard, liar, or manipulator?”
“Dial back the cynicism, Garrett. We’re here to ask for his help.”
An aide appeared. “The director is running a few minutes late, but he will be with you shortly. Can I offer you coffee, tea?”
“That would be nice,” Mayberry replied.
“Not unless you have scotch,” Garrett said.
They sat quietly for several moments, Mayberry sipping coffee, Garrett tapping his foot on the plush carpet, until Director Whittington appeared. Garrett had only seen him on the news—a tall, broad-shouldered, sixtyish former Texas senator. An outdoorsman who prided himself on making deals.
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Whittington said. “I’m due at the White House.” No pleasantries. No apology for making them wait.
Whittington sat at the head of the conference table, with Garrett to his left and Mayberry on his right. Before either of them could speak, he looked at Mayberry. “Your director asked me to take this meeting because he said you have information I should hear. Otherwise I would not have met with either of you.” He looked Garrett up and down, adding, “Especially you, especially after reading that article where you bragged about killing General Gromyko and acknowledged being a CIA hit man.”
Garrett opened his mouth to respond, but Mayberry cut in. “Thank you, sir. We’ll be brief, and it is important. We brought you photos.” She nodded to Garrett, who opened a manila envelope and spilled several on the table.
“What am I looking at?” Whittington asked.
“Pictures of Saeedi ‘The Roc’ Bashar and, we believe, his daughter, in Georgetown outside Clyde’s,” Garrett replied.
“Impossible,” Whittington sniffed, lifting a pair of reading glasses from a lariat around his neck. He glanced at the pictures and then put them aside.
“I’ll admit the photos bear a slight resemblance,” he said, “but the Roc was killed during a drone attack. A kill confirmed by the Mossad.”
“The two bodies in that car were burned beyond recognition,” Garrett said.
Whittington begrudgingly took a second look at the photos. “I was on the Senate intelligence committee when the Mossad took him out. We knew about his death because it was one of our drones that got him. He was a cold-blooded Palestinian killer. An assassin, although I forget why they called him the Roc.”
“A nom de plume from Persian mythology,” Mayberry volunteered. “The Roc is a powerful bird of prey that swooped down and terrorized its targets.”
“I don’t care what the Mossad told you,” Garrett said. “That’s him, and he’s back.”
“Based on what? Your keen eye?” Whittington scoffed. “Haven’t you ever heard that everyone in the world has a doppelgänger?”
“Actually, sir,” Mayberry said softly, “facial recognition software verified it.”
“Whose facial recognition software? The bureau’s?”
“No, sir,” she said. “Thomas Jefferson Kim, at IEC. His firm has a number of government contracts—some with the agency, as I’m sure you are aware. So you know he’s reliable.”
“Having a government contract only means you have a government contract,” Whittington snipped. “You’ll have to do better than this if you want me to second-guess the Mossad. Now, if this is all you had to show me—”
“We have more than this,” Garrett said, producing another photo. “The Saudis arrested Bashar in Riyadh after one of the royal family members was fatally shot by a sniper. This was back when he was first crafting his image
as the Roc. We believe it was his first important kill.”
Whittington looked at the photo of a young man with a badly bruised and bloody face. “The Saudis slashed his face with a knife while he was being interrogated at al-Ha’ir Prison,” Garrett continued. “You can see a cut that runs from his right ear to his neck. If you compare this photo of him, taken by the Saudis, to the one of the man exiting Clyde’s in Georgetown, you’ll see it’s the exact same scar. It’s him. The only prisoner who ever escaped alive from al-Ha’ir.”
Director Whittington pushed the photo back toward Garrett and checked his watch. “Like I said, I’m due at the White House, and nothing you have shown me has changed my mind. The Roc is dead.”
“Director,” Mayberry said, “you might recall that about a year ago an assassin mortally wounded Jabir Abboud, a presidential candidate in Egypt, who was friendly with the West. This was long after the Mossad had reported that the Roc had died in that burning car.”
“A single shot killed Abboud, and it was fired from three thousand, six hundred and thirty meters,” Garrett said. “The longest recent recorded sniper kill was about a football field shorter than that shot. Which would make it a record if we gave records to assassins.”
“What’s your point?” Whittington asked.
“Only the Roc could have pulled off a shot like that.”
“He’s rumored to be one of the finest marksmen in the world,” Mayberry said.
“Rumors are not facts.”
“Here’s a fact,” Garrett said, raising his voice. “After Jabir Abboud was murdered, Egyptian authorities found photos of a man—with a scar that matches the Roc’s—in its customs computer data bank. He’d used a false passport to enter Egypt. Saeedi Bashar, the Roc—whatever the hell you want to call him—is alive and killing again.”
“Most recently,” Mayberry said, “Garrett’s neighbor, an Iranian nuclear physicist, in Arlington.”
“Okay, let’s assume he is alive, and the Mossad misidentified the two men killed by our drone. Why would the Roc show up here to kill this Iranian?” Whittington asked.
Garrett removed the letter that Nasya Radi had put into his mailbox, along with a translation that Mayberry had prepared.
“My neighbor fled Tehran after the shah was tossed out,” Garrett said. “He was a member of the MEK. He put this letter in my mailbox moments before he was stabbed to death by the Roc.”
Whittington raised his reading glasses, skimmed the translation, and looked up from the letter. “This self-exiled MEK devotee writes you a letter that says Iran is planning to launch a submarine attack against one of our major cities and explode a nuclear bomb that it has made. Is that the gist of this letter?”
“Yes, sir,” Mayberry said.
“Did either of you stop to consider this is not the first time the People’s Mujahedin has accused Iran of building a nuclear bomb? In fact, I’ve lost count of how many times the MEK has claimed that Iran’s manufactured a nuclear weapon, and not one claim has been verified. Zero. Nada. The MEK likes to get right-wing political groups in our country excited so they will send it money.”
“With all due respect, Director,” Mayberry said, “the MEK hasn’t always been wrong. Its members have told the West the location of several secret nuclear facilities in Iran.”
“And let me remind you, Agent Mayberry,” Director Whittington replied, “that the MEK has been called a terrorist organization by several of our allies. In addition, international inspectors have repeatedly verified that Iran does not have the resources to build a nuclear bomb, and there is no rational reason for them to build one, because they have been made aware of the consequences. Sure, they may spin up their centrifuges and rattle their sabers, but there is no verifiable evidence that Iran can actually build a bomb. And if you think I’m going to go run to the president and tell him that a terrorist has risen from the dead and Iran is about to attack us with a nuclear bomb on a submarine, you are badly mistaken.”
“But sir—,” Mayberry started.
“Hold on, Agent Mayberry,” Whittington said. “Did you show the photos and letter to the FBI director?”
“Not the letter, but the photos, yes. That’s why he agreed to call you about meeting us.”
“Agent Mayberry, if the FBI director believed any of this, why would he have sent you two over to me? The bureau could pursue this on its own.” Without giving her a moment to reply, Whittington said, “I’ll tell you why, Agent Mayberry. Because he doesn’t want the bureau getting involved, but at the same time he’s covering his ass. Do I need to remind you of the entire WMD debacle that led to the war in Iraq? It was the result of bogus claims by so-called intelligence sources. Your director is passing the buck, and I deeply resent it.”
“Sir,” Mayberry said, “in his letter, Radi states that the nuclear bomb is being built inside an underground fuel enrichment plant at Natanz. He lists details about what materials the Iranians are using to construct it.”
“Information anyone who searches long enough on the internet can obtain. We’ve known for a long time about the Natanz fuel enrichment plant, and you just told me that Radi was a nuclear physicist. Just because someone can describe how to make a nuclear bomb doesn’t mean they got one made.”
“What about his warning?” Garrett asked. “Using a submarine to attack us.”
“That should have been your first tip that his letter is nonsense,” Whittington sneered. “Do you know how many submarines Iran has?” He raised his right hand. Separated his fingers. “Five. Count ’em. Five submarines capable of launching a nuclear bomb. The rest are all miniature submarines used for harbor attacks, not transatlantic voyages. The idea of a submarine attack by Iran is completely ludicrous. Just more MEK saber-rattling. I can’t believe either of you would fall for it.”
“Maybe they have a submarine we don’t know about,” Garrett said.
Whittington glared at him. “Along with NATO, we keep constant track of Iran’s navy. We can destroy every vessel in their fleet in a matter of minutes. Even if a submarine made it to the Mediterranean, we would intercept and destroy it long before it crossed the ocean and reached our shores.”
He checked his watch. “Leave me copies of the photos and letter, and I’ll make certain they get the attention they deserve,” he said dismissively.
“Which means you and your people will do diddly-squat,” Garrett said.
“Which means I’m not going to get excited just because you’re seeing ghosts and believing a load of crap written in some letter.”
“A letter whose writer was murdered,” Garrett shot back. “Maybe we are talking to the wrong intelligence service. Radi sent a letter to the Israeli embassy. I’m guessing it was identical to mine.”
“You want to take your dog and pony show over to the Mossad? Be my guest. They’ll laugh you off their embassy grounds.”
“Director Whittington,” Mayberry said in a calm voice, but Whittington was still focused on Garrett.
“Tell me, Mr. Garrett,” he said, “when you came in to see me, what exactly did you expect me to do?”
“I’d like you to authorize me to hunt down the Roc and find out who paid him to murder my neighbor. I’d like you to authorize me to investigate Radi’s letter.”
A look of sheer disbelief swept across Whittington’s face. “You really are delusional, aren’t you?” he said. “Did you seriously believe that after listening to you, I was going to green-light you to go vigilante? Send you off on a one-man mission to stop an Iranian nuclear attack?”
“Last time the agency sent us after terrorists, Mayberry and I stopped an attack on the United States Senate,” Garrett replied.
Whittington shook his head and looked at Mayberry. “Was this your plan too? Go chasing after the Roc and investigating this dead man’s charges?”
Mayberry flashed an irritated glance at Garrett. “I didn’t realize that’s what Mr. Garrett was expecting. I thought we were simply alerting you to the Roc’s r
eappearance and Mr. Radi’s warning, so you could take appropriate action.”
“Well, well,” Whittington replied with a smug look, “I guess Mr. Garrett was not as honest with you as he should have been.” He stood. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that the director before me is currently in a federal prison for lying to Congress and conducting a black ops mission without our president’s knowledge.” Staring at Garrett, he added, “Nor should I have to explain that one reason I gave up my Senate seat and became director was to put an end to this agency’s cowboy, off-the-books antics—by you and others, but especially by you.”
Whittington’s assistant, who had joined them, said, “There’s an escort outside the conference room, waiting to take you to the lobby.”
Ten minutes later, Mayberry slammed the car door of her parked Jaguar shut and pushed its ignition.
“I should never have let you talk me into this,” she said bitterly. She fumbled with her purse, extracted her pill bottle, and swallowed a pill.
“How bad is it?” he asked. “The pain?”
“A hell of a lot more, now thanks to you. I’ll be lucky to still have a job after Whittington complains to the bureau.”
She drove through the barriers toward the exit without speaking.
When they reached the highway, Garrett’s cell phone rang. Mayberry could only listen to Garrett’s end of the conversation. “Okay. Yes. Great work. Who else knows? Let’s keep it that way. I knew I could count on you.
“That was Kim,” Garrett explained when he ended the call. “The Roc and his daughter just cleared passport control at Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport. They’re traveling under assumed names. The Italians don’t have a clue who they are.”
“What? How’d Kim find them?”
“He put the Roc’s face into his worldwide system. One of his companies has the airport security contract in Rome. Facial recognition monitoring.”
“I don’t think Whittington or the bureau will go after him,” Mayberry said. “I guess we should tell the Arlington police, since they are investigating your neighbor’s murder.”
Shakedown Page 8