Waterworks

by Jack Winnick

  An hour or so after their arrival, all rose, greeted their neighbors, and recovered their sandals. Uri and Mohsen met Tala and Sarina outside, greeting them with wishes for a pleasant weekend. They began walking back home at a very slow pace, greeting a few of their neighbors, all of whom seemed to at least know of the presence of Heydar, who nodded and smiled at them. Along the way, Tala pointed to a monument outside the mosque, motioning for Uri to follow her. Sarina and Mohsen did not seem to notice; they continued on their slow pace toward home.

  Tala pointed to some ornaments on the monument, but her voice was uncharacteristically low. “I know I may have seemed unusually forward toward you. It is part of the plan.” Uri pretended to look at the monument as he considered her remarks. They were totally unexpected, especially in view of her behavior. He felt it best to go along as if nothing unusual were occurring. But if this were true, why hadn’t Tom even mentioned it? Uri was extremely suspicious.

  “Agent U37FGI—that is I. That is me,” she said in English. Uri halted in his tracks, stunned by her statement. How would she even know this name, let alone the context? “All right,” she added after a pause, “not exactly me, but I worked for him; he told no one, not even his contact in America, Tom Buckley.”

  This time, Uri spun around, at a loss for words. How did she know who Buckley was, let alone his name? He would have to check with Tom as soon as possible. For now, he would go along. “All right, tell me more,” he said, walking around to the back of the monument, taking a peek at the people on the street; no one seemed suspicious.

  “It was the way with us,” she said. “His name was Harry; he was Israeli, like you.” Uri felt a film of perspiration form all over his body. How could she know all this? “We pretended to be lovers; it would explain the closeness between us. We were not, but no one suspected the collaboration. Even Sarina and Mohsen, they just assumed we were . . . intimate. That’s what I was hoping to set up with you. I know you are married, and quite happily,” Uri was flabbergasted. He would just have to listen and see where this led. He could then check in with Tom.

  “There is another plan against the American water supply system; you must alert them to it.”

  Uri circled the monument before replying, “Can we talk about this later, after the guests leave?”

  “Certainly,” she said, smiling. “They will not stay long. They are going on a trip tomorrow early.” She then added an afterthought: “Tell him about the Boris affair two years ago.” She looked him straight in the eyes for an instant. Then, “It was me.”

  Uri nodded, pretending to look at the far side of the monument as they returned to the sidewalk, his brain whirling. He did not discuss the matter further; they caught up to Sarina and Mohsen and walked in silence the short distance to their house. Once there, Uri said he would like to change clothes and take care of a few matters from work before dinner, which would be at five. He did, in fact, change back to his casual attire but then immediately checked in with Tom. He left a message that he needed to talk to him tonight; that is, this morning, Friday, in New York between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. It was urgent, he added unnecessarily. Then he went downstairs to greet the visitors for tea before dinner. It took all of his charm to discuss his brief time in the city, then as quickly as possible switch the topic to the guests, their family, and their life in Tehran. It was about 7:00 p.m. when the guests made their excuses, saying they were taking a trip to the mountains tomorrow, a Saturday, and needed to pack. They left on an agreeable note, pledging to get together again soon.

  Seeing that the time was now right for calling Tom, he started to head upstairs, just as Tala reminded him of the “walk” she had suggested that afternoon.

  “Of course, just let me wash my hands and put on my walking shoes and socks,” he replied casually. She nodded; of course, she knew he would be contacting Tom, informing him of the startling news she had given him after the prayer service.

  Up in his room, the water running, he reached Tom on the first ring. “What’s happened, Uri?” the chief said instantly.

  “Agent U37FGI . . . my host says it’s her! She knows all about you!”

  There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line as Tom tried to process this information.

  “Are you there, Tom?”

  “Yes . . . yes, of course . . . it’s just that . . . how in the world!?”

  “She said to tell you of the Boris affair from a couple of years ago. Does that make any sense?”

  There was another pause before Tom replied. “Yes . . . he was a Russian agent working for the Iranians. Our team, those working for the agent you mentioned, helped . . . dispose of him. She must have been at least aware of it, perhaps more . . . Can you get any more details from her before . . . ?”

  “I’ll be talking to her again this evening. Can I reach you later . . . at this number?”

  “Certainly, yes, of course. This changes things, as you can imagine.”

  “Give me an hour or two at the most. I’ll get what I can.” Uri broke the connection, shut off the water, and headed downstairs, his footwear changed.

  Tala, as agreed, was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs, an amorous smile on her lips. As they headed out the door, she held on to his arm, denoting to anyone watching that she was in his charge, a requirement for her to be out on the street after dark. They had walked only a block in the direction of a small park before she began the conversation, still gripping his arm. “They are not going to attack the Los Angeles plant again. This time it will be another area entirely. I’m not yet sure exactly where. It may not even be on the West Coast.”

  Without breaking stride or otherwise indicating alarm, Uri replied, “How is it you know all this?”

  “I have a contact on the other side . . . He is my real lover . . . we both want to be rid of the ayatollah’s regime, to be friends with the West. It is best for all of us.”

  “Tell me who this is.”

  “I cannot, not yet. It is too dangerous for him.”

  “At least, then, where is he?” Uri was insistent.

  “I cannot; not yet, at least.” She left some hope that he might learn more at some point. But for now, she wouldn’t budge; they walked on in relative silence after this. Only the cooing of the nesting doves in the trees could be heard in this relatively quiet neighborhood.

  She suddenly relaxed her grip on his arm, saying, “We really should be getting back.”

  Uri was fine with that; he simply nodded and started back the way they had come. On arriving home, she was all smiles again as they greeted the family. Uri excused himself and headed upstairs to prepare for bed. In his room, he immediately called Tom, still at work. With the water running, he went over the remarkable conversation he had just had with Tala.

  “Our information was that the agent was given up to the Iranians and . . . eliminated,” Tom responded after just a slight pause. “We haven’t heard from him in months. We knew he had an accomplice, did not identify him or her, for their sakes. But what she says may be true . . . we have to consider it, anyway. Have to wait for info from Lara, some confirmation. Don’t want to tip our hand. For now, leave it at that until Tala comes up with more. Take the weekend to learn more about the location, try to relax . . . that’s an order.” Uri could hear the satisfaction in Tom’s voice. He must feel they were making progress.

  Chapter 21

  Uri was installed in Iranian military headquarters, housed in the Castle, in the foothills of the Alborz mountains northeast of the city. General Alirezeh had arranged for a car to bring him and three or four others of his staff from downtown to his new offices here. As Heydar, Uri was facing his first real test as chief advisor to the general. He was given a small but well-outfitted office in the old stone structure left over from the seventeenth century.

  His job was to translate American transmissions intercepted by Iranian agents at a location unknown to Uri; he guessed it was somewhere outside Iran where the locals had broken int
o the S-band the Americans were using. What the Iranians didn’t know was that the fault in the S-band was deliberate, allowing them to “listen in.” It had taken months for Tom’s team to make certain the ruse had worked. But now, in addition to low-priority messages, Tom’s team was sending missives hidden in a new code, so far unrecognized by the Iranians.

  For the first two weeks, Uri submitted translations of the intercepts, using his knowledge of the American code that he had demonstrated for the Iranians, most particularly General Alirezeh. Tom briefed him daily as to what the messages were meant to convey. They were designed by Tom’s team in New York to look like instructions for a team of American undercover agents hidden near the Turkish border, in preparation for some sort of strike against Iranian outposts in the mountains. In reality, they were merely a guise to confuse the Iranian military, especially Alirezeh and his “Black Ops” division.

  * * *

  Uri dutifully translated the intercepts in such a way that they appeared to be detailing a multipoint operation against Iranian research outposts around Esfahan. He communicated these daily to Alirezeh in his afternoon dispatches. To verify the accuracy of this information, Tom’s team sent innocuous drones from high-flying aircraft into the area around Esfahan. These drones were immediately shot down by the Iranians, as Tom anticipated. But their contents were useless to the hapless Iranian military; even Uri seemed unable to find anything useful in them. However, these drones, in concert with the signals Uri translated, verified that something was indeed imminent.

  Then one day, the general summoned Uri into his office with some important news. Alirezeh was trim for a man in his seventies, splendid in his tailored uniform. Just as many of the Iranian officers, he dyed his hair and moustache a shiny black in an attempt to present the image of a vigorous, younger man. His eyes were the most noteworthy of his features; they gleamed with an intensity that was almost matched by his predator like nose. His stare was worthy of a great mountain eagle.

  Uri had just arrived when the general presented him with some sobering news. The night before, the general told him tersely, a message from the Americans appeared, couched apparently in a new version of their code; markers indicated something very important and immediate. Uri was to put down everything else and strive to translate this dispatch.

  Uri headed back to his office, knowing full well what it contained. Tom had alerted him just last night of this memorandum: it was the outline of the Iranians’ plan for insertion of polonium-210 into the San Francisco waterworks! That is, it was the Americans’ countermeasures to the plan they had reason to believe had been chosen by the Iranian strike team. It did not go into detail as to how or why the Americans had chosen this strategy to foil the attack, only that it was firm and operational. It was, as Uri knew, the plan that the other branch of his disinformation team had deliberately allowed to reach Alirezeh.

  Uri took two hours to give the appearance of a difficult translation; it was a complex and detailed plan of counterattack. Seeming breathless and unnerved, Uri hustled back to the general holding his “translation” in shaking hands. Briefly, it stated that the Americans were convinced the Iranian attack on the water supply would be made on the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, well to the east of the city. The earlier information they had received suggesting the Americans were expecting an attack on the peninsular lakes was a ruse meant to encourage an Iranian attack on the Hetch Hetchy instead. The message even listed the actual lakes involved in the plan, with details of the terrain and access points!

  Alirezeh seemed stunned, to say the least, as he read through Uri’s translation. The expectation had been that the Americans would ready themselves for an attack on the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. Just this year, the US government was allowing pleasure boats onto the lake, access that had never before been granted. General Alirezeh silently read the report again. He permitted Uri to leave only after he carefully considered the full impact of this American transmission. He was holding their top-secret plans to counter the expected Iranian attack!

  Uri left work feeling the euphoria of a man who has just sprung a monumental trap against his enemy. He was certain the Iranians would modify whatever plans they had made and zero in on the peninsula reservoirs. He headed home ready to telephone Tom with the good news.

  Chapter 22

  Uri delivered his news to a surprised and delighted Tom as soon as he arrived home that evening. “All right,” Tom replied, “but we need to keep tabs on what they do from here on out. We can’t just assume they will fall into our hands.” The invigorated agent had an uneventful evening meal, then headed up to bed.

  The next morning seemed no different as Uri had his breakfast, except that Tala was not present. Her “aunt” and “uncle” told him that she had been called away to some matter at the market but would be home in time for dinner. Uri then made his way up to the Castle in good spirits and on to his job. Nothing seemed at all changed as he translated more unremarkable messages from the Americans, mostly to do with supplies: food and clothing, but not arms.

  It was near 10:00 a.m. when a uniformed sergeant tapped politely on his door. The general would like a word with him, he told Uri. But instead of delivering the message and leaving, the armed sergeant waited, apparently to escort Uri to the general’s office. This seemed a bit unusual to Uri, but not alarming; he had witnessed more troubling incidents than this one. They moved as one along the corridor without arousing any curious glances from the other workers. They were used to armed men in the building.

  But as they turned the corner and headed into Alirezeh’s open door, everything changed dramatically. The door closed behind him, and Uri found himself confronted with five glowering Iranian officers and two enlisted men; the sergeant had quietly drawn his sidearm from its holster. Uri, who would ordinarily have identified the make and model of the automatic weapon, did not even glance at it. It was immediately obvious that he was under arrest. The hair on his neck rose, and his bowels loosened ever so slightly. This had come out of the blue; his mind churned as he struggled for an explanation.

  “Well, Heydar, or whatever your name is,” Alirezeh started in English, “how are you today? Or would you be more comfortable speaking Hebrew?” The officers, mostly colonels, Uri could see, laughed heartily.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Uri tried gamely in Farsi.

  “Oh, good try, my friend, but you see, ‘the jig is up,’ as they say in the old American movies. I presume you are familiar with them.”

  Uri made a half-hearted try to reach his pocket, but two of the sergeants caught his hands before he could do so. They twisted both of his arms behind his back as an officer turned both of Uri’s pants’ pockets inside out. A small blue capsule dropped to the floor.

  “Well, what do we have here?” Alirezeh said, chuckling. “Do you suffer from erectile dysfunction?” The others laughed appreciatively. “You won’t have to worry about that anymore, I can assure you.” He turned to his audience, ordering a sergeant to get Uri’s briefcase from his office.

  As the man left to get the briefcase, the general, clearly amused now, repeated his question to Uri. “Are you prepared to fill us in a bit about your true name and assignment, or do you need some persuasion?”

  Uri had by now recognized what was going on; someone had turned on him, though he had no idea yet of who, or why it had come at this particular time.

  He assumed the manner of someone falsely charged and took on an attitude of justified arrogance. “Look, General, I don’t know what you have been told, nor by whom, but I assure you I am exactly who I said I was, and yes, that blue pill is, in fact, a libido enhancer, as you so correctly announced.”

  “Take it, then. I won’t stop you from your apparent noontime pleasure,” the general countered. Uri reached for the cyanide capsule but a little too eagerly. He would have been glad to get this over with right now. “Not so fast, my amorous asset of the enemy. You’ll not get out of this that easily.”

  A
quick frown of disappointment crossed Uri’s face as he saw his easy death taken from him, the cyanide pill dropping into the general’s pocket. At that moment, his briefcase appeared at the door in the hands of the sergeant. Uri was roughly thrust down into a chair as Alirezeh went through the contents of the briefcase. The room was deathly quiet as the general brought out items one by one. There were two folders of messages, coded transmissions in one and translations in the other. There was an address book that the general handed to an aide, then a Persian-made mobile phone that he pocketed himself. The search seemed concluded when suddenly Alirezeh pulled out, with a cry of triumph, another small mobile device hidden deep in an interior pocket.

  “Well, now, what is this, my creative friend? Are you so embedded with eager females you need two mobiles to keep track?” The room exploded with mirth; it was clear the famous general was going to have some fun with this butterfly on a pin before feeding him to the fish.

  “And you, ‘Heydar,’ will go along with our team to a place not nearly as comfortable as you are used to. Before they are through with you, you will wish you had complied with me right now.”

  “Here, Saad,” he said to one of his officers, handing him the device. “See what your men can retrieve from this piece of American junk.” The man took it and headed out the door. Uri at least had the pleasure of hearing the small explosion and cries of shock as the tiny cyanide pellet hidden in his phone hit its mark.

  Chapter 23

  General Alirezeh stared at his colonels as he strode back and forth in front of his desk, his riding crop smacking into his boot as he fumed at his men. It was a rather good imitation of Adolf Hitler in the closing days of World War II.