“But what about his father?” Kashmiri asked. “They may not see eye to eye politically, but they are still father and son.”
MacMurphy shook his head. “Do you think his father could talk him into helping us?”
Kashmiri was surprised. “Never.”
“That’s my whole point. From what you’ve told me, Uncle Nabil is a trusted Hezbollah sympathizer and Walid is a long-time Hezbollah operative. That’s the combination we need. They will trust each other.”
“I’m sorry, Mac,” Kashmiri shook his head, confused. “I still don’t follow you.”
MacMurphy smiled. He was enjoying this. “Here’s the way it works. It’s like a daisy chain. At one end of the chain, we have our driver, Walid. He’s the one with direct access to our target, Abu Salah who is in control of the hostage. The one we want to rescue. Are you following?”
“Okay, I’ve got all that.”
“At the other end of the chain we have me. And right above me is you. Still following?”
Kashmiri nodded.
“But there’s a gap between you and me and driver Walid and Abu Salah.”
“And we need to fill that gap,” said Kashmiri.
“Yes, we need a transition figure who will work with me and you to convince Walid to report back to us on the activities of Abu Salah.”
“To spy on Abu Salah,” said Kashmiri.
“Right, to report on him—what he says and what he does and where he goes. We need information on the welfare and whereabouts of his American hostage and for him to report that information back to me through you.”
Kashmiri was confused once again. “But they would never do that. They hate America and everything American, especially the CIA.”
MacMurphy leaned toward Kashmiri and spoke in a low, conspiratorial voice. “But what if it was not me pulling the strings of the operation? What if it was the Ayatollahs in Iran who wanted to know exactly, from an independent source, how Abu Salah and his Hezbollah masters were handling their very important CIA hostage?”
Kashmiri’s eyes grew large and he moved to the edge of his chair. “You want me to tell Nabil that the supreme leader, the Ayatollah, wants him to get the cooperation of Walid to monitor the activities of Abu Salah?”
MacMurphy sat back and smiled broadly. “You’ve got it! It’s called a false flag recruitment in the trade. You can just refer to me as the Ayatollah from now on . . .”
CHAPTER 16
It took fewer than six hours of skillful interrogation to crack Yasmin Ghorbani.
The poor girl had cleaned up well, but she still looked frail and stooped and defeated when Pouri Hoseini returned to the safe house for the second round of interrogations.
Pouri began her questioning in a soft, non-threatening manner, designed to get the woman talking. Pouri knew that communication was key. They discussed health issues, the treatment of women in the West as opposed to the Middle East, Middle Eastern politics, and the Iran nuclear deal that had just been finalized between the United States and its allies and Iran. Pouri agreed with Yasmin’s opinions more often than not.
They formed an unexpected bond: one between two intelligent women of Middle Eastern descent against the stupidity and excesses of the Mullahs and Sharia law. They agreed that an Iranian nuclear capability in the hands of the fanatical Ayatollahs would kick off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, and that that would be a very bad thing for the world.
Yasmin was being gently pulled out of her funk and a sparkle was returning to her eyes. She began to revel in this intellectual conversation with this perceptive woman and almost forgot who and where she was.
Until Pouri Hoseini dropped the bomb on her.
“So, Yasmin, was that what you were doing in Iran during all of those meetings with our nuclear scientists? Were you attempting to elicit information on our nuclear program in the interest of world peace?”
Startled, Yasmin looked up into Pouri’s eyes and stuttered, “You know my name? I mean, you called me Yasmin. Why did you call me that?”
“Yes, Yasmin Ghorbani, I know your name. I know who you are and what you have been doing in Iran. I know you live in Nicosia, Cyprus, on Nikis Avenue and that you travel to Beirut under that name, which I suspect is your true name. You change into your Jordanian alias, Abida Hammami, when you travel to Iran and elsewhere to do your spying for the Great Satan. I know all of this.”
Yasmin’s reaction wavered from shock to dismay to utter fear. Was her tradecraft that bad? What had tipped them off? Why didn’t her cover backstopping hold up? Had she been under surveillance in Cyprus? What about Beirut and Tehran? Did they enter her apartment in Beirut and find incriminating evidence? What about her Nicosia apartment? Did they know about her contacts in Tehran, or were they just probing? Had they identified her agents and developmentals?
But most of all, she worried about her future. What would they do with her? How long would they hold her? Would she be starved, tortured, or killed? Espionage carries the death sentence in Iran. Would she be forced to reveal her sources? Did they already have this information? What would happen?
After a long silence, Pouri rose from her chair, brushed her long hair from her face, and walked slowly around the small room in deep thought. She returned to stand over the cowering young woman with her arms crossed. She asked, “Who were your sources in Tehran? You know we know some of them, so do not try to lie.”
Tears streamed down the face of Yasmin Ghorbani and dropped on her blouse. She trembled and sobbed uncontrollably. She was trapped.
“We have been talking for a long time, so I will leave you now and let you get some rest,” said Pouri. “I want you to think about your situation. Think hard about your situation and tomorrow we will talk about your sources. That’s all that interests me now: your sources.”
CHAPTER 17
Hadi Kashmiri had his marching orders. He now understood exactly where MacMurphy was heading with the operation. What had he called it? A false flag recruitment operation. And, in this case, the flag was Iranian.
MacMurphy had given him another envelope containing $10,000. His instructions were to convert the currency into Lebanese pounds and to deliver the money to Nabil as a recruitment bonus. Kashmiri quickly calculated the exchange in his head and decided he would need a bigger envelope; it amounted to more than fifteen million Lebanese pounds at the going rate. Nabil would think he had died and gone to heaven.
Kashmiri wasted no time. He returned to Beirut on the evening ferry and changed the $10,000 dollars into Lebanese pounds at the Beirut ferry pier. He put the fifteen million pounds into a manila envelope and pocketed the remaining fifty-seven thousand pounds. He was not stealing the money; he simply did not want to place the exact equivalent of $10,000 dollars in the envelope. He was proud of himself for thinking of that little detail.
The following afternoon he headed for the Duke of Wellington Pub at the Mayflower Hotel for lunch. He knew Sami would probably be there in his usual spot during the lunch hour, and he wasn’t disappointed. Sami was sitting at the far-end corner of the bar watching people enter the pub. He recognized Kashmiri as soon as he stepped through the doors.
Sami was an elegant man with a well-trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard, a full head of curly, snow-white hair and wire spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “Hadi, my old friend, how are you?” He slid off his stool and embraced Kashmiri warmly. “Are you alone? Come sit by me.”
Kashmiri ordered lunch, a draft beer with bangers and mash, and the two friends chatted. Halfway through his lunch Kashmiri steered the conversation toward family and asked about Sami’s brother, Nabil.
“Nabil? He’s as ornery as ever. I don’t see much of him anymore.” He lowered his voice and leaned in closer to Kashmiri. “He joined up with Hezbollah.”
“Yes, I recall. That was several years ago, wasn’t it?”
“A long time ago. It pulled our family apart. He’s crippled, you know. In a wheelchair.”
Kashmiri
had him headed in the right direction. “How did it pull your family apart?” he asked.
Sami shook his head and removed his glasses. Thoughtfully, he said, “Because he took my son away from me. He talked Walid into joining up with Hezbollah. I lost them both to that murderous outfit.”
“What a horrible shame. I knew about Nabil but not Walid. Do you stay in touch with them?”
“Nabil is not welcome in my house. Walid, well, he stops by the house from time to time to see his mother, but we do not speak much. He is still working for Hezbollah. I don’t approve of that.”
Kashmiri was filled with empathy for his friend. It was not just an act to elicit information. He was genuinely saddened. He reached out and touched Sami on the shoulder. Then he decided to plunge ahead with his elicitation. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Where is Nabil now? I remember he was quite the athlete back in the day. Is he still in Beirut?”
“Oh yes, he’s still here. He lives in East Beirut over the Al Bouchrieh Pharmacy. It’s one of the few buildings over there with a lift.”
Kashmiri had the information he came for. Now it was time to change the subject. “This is all too sad, Sami, let’s talk about something more pleasant. Guess who I ran into the other day . . .”
They lingered for another hour, chatting and drinking more beer. When Kashmiri left, he turned his car east and headed for Massaken Street and the Al Bouchrieh Pharmacy.
It was in an area of East Beirut that had experienced a lot of fighting over the years. Many of the buildings remained bombed-out ruins that were pockmarked with bullet and shrapnel damage. The Al Bouchrieh Pharmacy took up the whole bottom floor of an old, narrow, five-story building that had survived the bombings, but the wounds of war remained visible on its façade.
He parked his car down the street in a spot where he could sit and watch the entrance of the building. After sitting for a while, he walked over to the building for a closer look.
The entrance to the upper floors was on the right side of the building facing the street. The glass entry door was operated with an electric fob or a key. It opened into a small foyer with an elevator and a narrow staircase on the left and four mailboxes on the right.
He returned to his car to continue his vigil.
Surveillance is nothing like the way it is depicted in movies. In the real world, it’s not as easy as pulling up in a car, finding a position with a good view of the premises, and then immediately springing into action as things start happening. Surveillance is time intensive. It requires sitting and watching and watching and sitting while nothing happens. Until you take your eyes off the target for an instant and then, bam! Things start popping and the adrenaline starts flowing.
Kashmiri was slowly learning this painful lesson. It was now after seven o’clock in the evening. His butt was sore from sitting and he needed to pee. He had been there for almost four hours and had not spotted anyone in a wheelchair going in or out of the building. He considered leaving for just a few minutes to find a restroom. Just thinking about it made his urge to urinate stronger. He thought about opening his door and peeing in the gutter. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic where he was parked, but what if someone saw him?
He held out as long as he could and then decided to find a restroom and call it a night. He planned to return early the next morning with enough food to last him an entire day and a large jar to use as a urinal.
Kashmiri also rehearsed in his mind how he would approach Nabil when he spotted him. This was the difficult part. He figured he had one shot at the guy, and if he didn’t do it right the first time, he wouldn’t get a second chance.
He wished he could find someone to act as an intermediary and make a soft introduction to Nabil. But he knew this was impossible. Even mentioning Sami would be a no-no. He could not put anyone else in jeopardy. After all, he was dealing with a Hezbollah operative, and a pretty unsavory one at that.
If this operation went south, the only one who would suffer would be Hadi Kashmiri. He was keenly aware of that fact, and it tied his stomach in knots.
He contemplated giving Nabil an alias name but decided against it. He would have no bona fides in an alias. For anyone in Beirut who cared to check, it was common knowledge that Kashmiri was Iranian by birth, traveled frequently to Iran, kept a residence there, and had high-level Iranian contacts. Many suspected he worked secretly for Iranian intelligence, which indeed he had, and this would add credibility to his cover story. He had discussed this with MacMurphy during their last meeting, and the balance of risk versus gain tipped in favor of Kashmiri approaching Nabil under his true name.
Nevertheless, his main concern now was finding a restroom.
CHAPTER 18
Three days had passed since the interrogator’s visit. Yasmin was left alone in her prison with Abu Salah and that nasty old crone who barely spoke a word. Pouri had said she would return the next day, but she had not.
It was strange, but Yasmin actually missed talking to Pouri. She had taken the “Resistance to Interrogation” course during her CIA training down at The Farm, so she was aware of this eventuality.
In fact, the more she thought about it, Pouri had conducted a classic interrogation, straight from the Army Field Manual, in the style now used by the CIA and other United States intelligence agencies. There was no sleep deprivation, no slapping around, no humiliation, no loud music, no standing in stress positions for long periods, and no waterboarding. She had experienced all of these things down at The Farm in preparation for this moment. And she had been told by her instructors that torture could get a lot worse, especially in the Middle East.
She had been taught the difference between enhanced interrogation and actual torture, and the difference was profound. She did not fear enhanced interrogation, even waterboarding, because she knew it would not leave scars or have lasting effects. It would be uncomfortable, but she would live through it. This knowledge was enough to help most people resist.
But she did fear torture. The United States would never engage in it, but Hezbollah was holding her. With them, anything could be expected. The frequency of her meals was erratic, but they still came at least once a day. Maybe her treatment was unusually good because Iran was pulling the strings. Probably, but Iran did not play by American rules either.
She knew Pouri Hoseini had effectively broken her down by skillfully using information against her. The only question was how much did she really know? Was Pouri bluffing about the extent of her knowledge? Almost certainly she was but how much?
Yasmin decided she had said enough, confirmed enough. From now on, they would have to pull out her fingernails to get any more information.
When Pouri returned to the safe house late in the afternoon, she was carrying two large shopping bags. She dismissed Abu Salah with a wave of her hand and dropped the bags onto the card table in the center of the room.
“Wait till you see what I bought for you,” she exclaimed happily. “You’ve been wearing those awful clothes for far too long.”
Yasmin could not help but smile. She moved from the bed to the card table and sat down in her usual spot. “You brought me clothes?” she asked.
“Yes, you need them.” She pulled a brightly colored scarf from one of the bags and unfolded it. “Isn’t this a pretty hijab? This is for when we go out together. And that’s not all.”
Go out together?
One by one, she pulled out a pair of tan slacks, a purple, long-sleeved blouse, a sequined tee shirt, a beige sports bra, a pair of matching beige panties, and two pairs of white socks. She was delighted with herself.
“I can’t thank you enough,” said Yasmin. She was close to tears of gratitude. Did she really say that we would go out together?
“You must try them on, but first I imagine you would like to take a proper bath. I don’t suppose you’ve had a real bath since you’ve been here, have you?”
Wide-eyed with gratitude, Yasmin responded, “No, I would love a bath.”
&nb
sp; “Then gather up those new things and let’s go.” She knocked on the inside of the door and Abu Salah opened it immediately. “We are going to the bathroom. Keep an eye on things. We’ll be out shortly.”
Pouri guided Yasmin to the small bathroom at the end of the hall. It consisted of a white, chipped, porcelain tub, a sink, and a toilet with a stained-wood seat. The dark linoleum floor was worn through in spots. Old and cheap. But at least it was clean.
Pouri closed and locked the door behind her, went to the tub, and turned on the hot water tap. “Get out of those clothes,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re in for a treat.”
While the tub filled, Pouri unwrapped a bar of green, scented soap and placed it in the soap dish. She squirted bubble bath into the running water. She looked back at Yasmin, who was standing nervously in her bra and panties, covering herself, looking confused as to what to do next.
“Get those off too. Do you want to bathe in your underwear?”
Embarrassed, Yasmin removed her bra and dropped it on the floor then hesitated a bit before stepping out of her panties. She stood there, nervously covering her breasts with one hand while the other attempted to cover her pubic area. Finally, she sighed and dropped both hands to her sides and just stood there watching the tub fill.
Pouri knelt beside the tub stirring bubble bath into the water. As the tub filled, she turned toward Yasmin. Her heart sank when she saw this beautiful woman standing nervously and fully exposed in front of her. Long dark hair, deep green eyes, flawless olive skin, ample rose-tipped breasts, flat, toned stomach, a trimmed patch of silky, black pubic hair, slender muscular legs, and perfect, small feet. Yet, she looked pale and too thin—something Pouri had not noticed during their interrogations. It finally dawned on her that Hezbollah was not treating Iran’s hostage as well as she had requested. And there was nothing she could do to change this without creating dangerous, politically charged friction. Anger and shame washed over her. Torture, even mild food deprivation, was despicable.
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