“Very well, sir. I’ve never lived by the sea…it’s so beautiful here. AndI…I like him, too. I pray for him every night.”
“Good. I’ll be seeing you both very soon.” De Tolomei paused, not quite sure how to phrase his next thought. “By the way, Surina…”
“Yes, sir?”
“If it’s something you’d…like, I’ve made an appointment for you with a plastic surgeon in Paris. He’s one of the best in the world.”
She was quiet for a moment, barely breathing. “Oh…I don’t know what to say, I—” Her voice broke, then she finished, “Yes, I—I am interested. Very much so.”
“The doctor said your bandages would be off before your classes begin,” de Tolomei said. Surina had told him that she’d used part of his payment to enroll at the Sorbonne.
“Thank you.”
“Good-bye, then.”
Turning off his phone, de Tolomei closed his eyes and sighed, marveling at how smoothly his scheme was unfolding. And to think he had a former enemy to thank for it all.
Three years before, a senior CIA officer on the payroll of multiple foreign intelligence agencies had alerted VEVAK’s Hamid Azadi to a CIA operation under way on Iraqi soil. Tehran, the American traitor knew, wanted to see Saddam’s regime pulverized by the full might of the U.S. military, not simply decapitated through a covert assassination. He’d therefore given Azadi enough information to locate the young man in charge of the operation and have him killed.
Azadi had indeed sent a team after the American spy. But he did not do so to further the geopolitical goals of his country. He had stopped caring about those long before. He wanted to use the spy for personal reasons—as a bargaining chip to facilitate his impending defection. And so he’d lied to the members of his kidnap squad, explaining that their quarry was simply a witness with valuable information about the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), the most militant of the Iranian opposition groups, which at the time had training bases and rendezvous sites all over south-eastern Iraq. He’d then hidden the young spy under a false identity in Tehran’s Evin prison.
Azadi hadn’t intended to take three years to finalize his plans, nor had he wanted his prisoner to suffer at the hands of Evin’s sadistic guards, but such is life. For the most part, Azadi had kept him drugged and isolated. The prisoner had been tortured, but with luck, would barely remember it. Knowing that Luca de Tolomei was more familiar with the inner workings of American intelligence agencies than he, Azadi had asked his friend for advice on how to use his bargaining chip.
Watching Azadi’s video for the first time, de Tolomei had felt a jolt, as if he’d accidentally touched a live wire. After thirteen years of patiently biding his time until he could orchestrate a revenge befitting the man who’d ruined his life, the perfect tool had unexpectedly dropped in his lap. Immediately de Tolomei had offered to buy the prisoner from Azadi for personal reasons and use his extensive contacts to ensure the success of Azadi’s defection to the U.S. He explained that American government officials could not be trusted to keep their end of any deal. If they didn’t burn him intentionally after getting what they wanted, no doubt one of them would make a mistake regarding his relocation and get him killed. Azadi had readily accepted the offer.
Looking at his hands, de Tolomei watched them encircle an imaginary neck. When Donovan Morgan had destroyed his life thirteen years ago, he had wanted nothing more than to wring the life out of him. Over time, however, he had decided that death would be too easy.
MCLEAN, VIRGINIA—4:44P.M.
Alexis Cruz, the director of central intelligence, was relaxing in a spacious tub in the bathroom adjoining her office on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters. She had been in meetings for ten hours straight and had insisted that she not be disturbed for an hour, saying something to her executive assistant about an urgent call with a Southeast Asian head of state.
Alexis’s predawn workout had been grueling. With a former D-boy (member of the army’s elite Delta Force) as her new personal trainer, she was in excellent physical shape, but her muscles were now painfully sore just about all the time. Conducting her afternoon reading in the tub was quickly becoming a habit. One of her bodyguards—the only person who knew about it—liked to joke that she gave new meaning to the term “wet work.”
She had just opened a thin file containing information that didn’t exist anywhere in her agency’s databases or tangible paper files. It was the personal history of an operations officer code-named Acheron, easily the Agency’s best of the past decade. If Jeremy Slade could get him back with his cover intact, it would be a miracle; he was worth far more to his country than any missile shield ever could be. Even if the boys at Defense ever designed one that worked, Alexis thought to herself with a shake of her head.
One thing the file didn’t contain was the spy’s real name, which was known only to Slade and Donovan Morgan. Scanning the first page, Alexis saw that he was the son of an Egyptian father and American mother and had grown up in Cairo with dual citizenship. During the early nineties, when the Mubarak government was at war with Egypt’s militant Islamic groups, several of their spy’s friends had been killed in a terrorist attack at a coffee shop in Cairo’s trendy Tahrir Square. Since most of Egypt’s revenue came from tourism, the militants targeted tourist destinations in order to destroy the economy and thereby undermine the government.
Having heard rumors that Egyptian intelligence had been penetrated by members of the militant groups, their spy—then a student applying to Cairo University—had offered his services to Slade, the CIA’s station chief in Cairo at the time. Despite his lack of standard training, under Slade’s guidance, the spy had infiltrated Al Gama’a al Islamiyya, Egypt’s most violent terrorist organization, gaining the militants’ trust by participating in their favorite fund-raising activity: bank robbery.
A fan of classical Greek literature, Slade had decided to call his new recruit Acheron, after an ancient river said to have given Odysseus access to the underworld. It turned out to be a fitting name; with Acheron’s information, Slade was able to help Egyptian law enforcement prevent nearly a dozen terrorist attacks on foreign tourists.
In 1995, Slade moved back to Washington to head the Agency’s Middle East Division, and two years later Acheron joined him, having enrolled in a graduate program in archaeology in the United States. Using his archaeological fieldwork as a cover, he carried out assignments all over the Middle East for several years with extraordinary success until the Iraq operation of early 2001, code-named Hydra. So named because with his infamous doubles, Saddam Hussein was, in essence, a monster with multiple heads.
Their spy had had an incredible cover. Despite being a brutal, repressive dictator, Hussein had always been an enthusiastic champion of Iraq’s cultural heritage, and after Desert Storm, welcomed foreign archaeologists—including British and American ones—to salvage and study his nation’s archaeological sites. And as the cradle of civilization—land of the ancient Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian empires—Iraq had thousands. Further endearing himself to the Hussein regime, their spy had been a member of a Boston-based organization that published a newsletter condemning the devastation inflicted on Iraqi heritage sites by American and British warplanes patrolling the no-fly zones; apparently their bombs had all but destroyed Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, among other sites.
In addition to being authorized to carry small laptops—for analyzing millennia-old cuneiform tablets—archaeologists in Iraq were encouraged to be armed in order to protect themselves from looters. On account of the chaos and poverty following Desert Storm, Alexis knew, the looting problem became so extreme that the few archaeologists working in Iraq were sometimes more heavily armed than soldiers.Welcomed into the country, authorized to carry a laptop and a gun—it doesn’t get better than that.
In March 2001, there had been an international conference in Baghdad to celebrate five millennia since the invention of writing. Archaeologists and cuneiform experts from the U.S., Great
Britain, and Europe had gathered to share the results of their recent research and debate new theories with their Iraqi colleagues. Thus Acheron had been one of dozens of Westerners traveling throughout the country to visit and resume work at old digging sites, during and after the conference. The coup he’d been so perfectly positioned to orchestrate would no doubt have been successful had he not been betrayed a month into the operation. Alexis had no proof, but she believed a senior CIA officer was responsible.
Alexis had not been at the Agency at the time. Though she had started her career as a case officer, she’d left in her late twenties to get a law degree, did a short stint as a federal prosecutor, and eventually became a congresswoman for the state of New York. Then, shortly after September 11, 2001, the president had asked her to take over the beleaguered Agency and, as he put it, clear out the cobwebs. Which was proving to be a painfully slow process. Among other things, she still had not identified this particular traitor, if he really existed.
As Alexis cursed, one of her secure telephone lines rang. “Cruz,” she said, picking it up.
“Lexy? It’s Jeremy.”
“I’m just reading the file now. Have you found him?”
“Yes. After years in one of the world’s most impenetrable prisons, he’s in a lightly guarded villa on the Tunisian coast, if you can believe it. I’ve got a team preparing to move in as we speak.”
“How did you…?”
“He was taken from Evin by truck and loaded aboard a ship leaving the gulf for the Mediterranean. Last night the ship had a rendezvous with a yacht off the coast of Tunis. A KH-12 was in the right place at the right time to catch the transaction.”
“So you think this de Tolomei, whoever he is, bought him from Azadi as a means of blackmailing us?”
“Appears to be his primary business,” Slade said. “If it was Azadi, I’d guess he was trying to engineer some kind of prisoner swap, but with de Tolomei…”
“Right. Although, Don may be comfortable, but he certainly doesn’t have money on the scale of de Tolomei’s usual targets,” Alexis said. “He could be after my discretionary funds, of course, unless…”
“He’s after something other than money,” Slade filled in.
“A pardon?” Alexis suggested. “Maybe he took a new identity because he’s some kind of fugitive.”
“That’d fit,” Slade agreed. “Whatever the case, we’ll get our man back, but we might have another problem. Remember those track marks on his arms? It’s possible Azadi has a full confession on tape.”
“Which could get everyone involved investigated by Congress, the Hague…possibly indicted,” Alexis said. “My predecessor, you, Donovan, not to mention the president.” Her mind raced over the murky territory of international law concerning the attempted assassination of a political figure in another state. “We couldn’t argue there was a condition of war in early 2001,” she continued, “so the charge would be…conspiracy to violate article one of the 1974 U.N. resolution on illegal acts of aggression. We couldn’t go with anticipatory self-defense, of course. Yeah, it’d have to be humanitarian intervention.”
“Would that work?” Slade asked.
“Legally? Sure. But a PR nightmare with the election around the corner? The president will have my head for breakfast.”
“I won’t let it come to that, Lexy.”
“I know,” she said softly, shifting her weight because her right leg was asleep. To her irritation, the movement generated a tiny splash.
“In the tub, huh?”
“Caught in the act.”
“I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”
In spite of the warm water engulfing her, Alexis shivered.
SIDIBOUSAID, TUNISIA—11:56P.M.
Moonlight and street lamps illuminated Sidi Bou Said, a picturesque blue and white town perched on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of Tunis. All of the whitewashed rectangular buildings had bright blue doors, trim, and intricate lattices dripping with bougainvillea. Tourists milled in the streets—mostly smartly dressed Europeans poking their noses down cobbled alleys, checking out the shops as well as each other.
Dressed in ivory linen, Connor Black and Jason Avera, two former CIA paramilitary operatives in Jeremy Slade’s employ, were strolling toward their destination, a cliffside café with a view of the gulf below. They’d taken a flight from Istanbul to Tunis that afternoon. The café was half a kilometer northeast of the villa their four-man team had under surveillance.
“To think we were on our way to an Iranian prison. This is a fucking piece of cake,” Jason said.
Connor nodded. Then, seeing a pair of women openly ogling them, he reached for Jason’s hand. To avoid unwanted attention, they were posing as gay tourists.
Feigning a smile, Jason grumbled, “Bitch, your hands are clammy.”
Connor grinned. “All the better to caress you with, my dear.”
“Don’t you think the pink and lavender shirts are enough to get the message across?”
“Apparently not,” Connor said, letting go once the two women had passed with a predictable “the hot ones arealways gay” lament.
Rounding a bend in the road, Connor and Jason entered a widened stretch lined with cafés and headed for the table they’d been sitting at earlier that day. Fortunately it was vacant. They ordered the house specialties—sweet mint tea in tiny glass mugs, baklava, and a hookah with apple tobacco—then gazed down at the curvaceous coastline below, pretending to admire the view.
The languid gulf waters sparkled, reflecting the moon and stars above. On the shore, about thirty yards from the villa in question, a man was meandering along on horseback. Wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt, he had a map spread across the horse’s neck, a flashlight in hand, a compact disc player at his waist, and earphones on his head. Singing aloud periodically, with slurred words, he appeared to be a tipsy tourist.
Connor turned his attention to the villa. Nestled in a cluster of palm trees, it had a two-tiered balcony facing the sea and was Sidi Bou’s requisite blue and white. When he began to speak, Jason nodded and chuckled, although Connor wasn’t actually talking to him; there was a microphone hidden in his shirt collar.
“Mr. Revere, this is Lover One. What do you see?” Connor asked. They were using just enough coded words to conceal their identies and keep their target ambiguous, should anyone chance upon their radio frequency.
“Two cats on the first-floor balcony,” the man on the horse reported, using their term for armed guards. “Don’t know how, but it looks like they’ve got a couple of M4s,” he added, referring to a model of assault rifle specifically made for the U.S. Special Forces. Lightweight and compact, M4 carbines had built-in night-vision scopes and grenade launchers.
“How about inside?”
Turning a barely detectable knob on his glasses to activate their thermal imaging feature, the horseman answered, “Same three bodies. Upstairs, Mr. Nightingale, prone. The missus still hunched beside him—touching his head, might be combing his hair. Another cat, a third one, downstairs near the front door.”
“Lighting?”
“Probably extends about fifteen feet from the house.”
“Overall assessment?”
“No cameras. No red lines, either,” he added, speaking of laser trip wires. “An ordinary vacation home, I think.”
“All right. See you soon,” Connor said. Turning to face Jason, he leaned in closely. “Woodsman, what’ve you got?”
The man Connor was really speaking to was sitting on a comfortable mound of earth and leaves across the road from the entrance to the villa. Though concealed by dense trees and shrubbery, he had a good line of sight to the driveway and front door. He also had a directional microphone in his hands, and a pair of powerful binoculars in his lap.
“Hey, Lover One. A car came in and out today, twice, remaining for about twenty-five minutes each time. The plates have been identified as those of a local doctor.”
“Anything bouncing off the glass?”
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“Mrs. Nightingale got a call about fifteen minutes ago from whoever hired her. I’d guess he’s paying her well—she sounded pretty grateful. Seems to like him a lot, too. Other than that, she’s been talking to her old man. A continuous monologue about how she cares about him, wants him to come to Paris with her…asks him questions, then starts imagining what his answers might be.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“That he’s in a coma, that he could come out of it at any time. Gave Mrs. Nightingale more IV bags, antibiotic creams, stuff like that.”
“Okay. Come in around two or three.”
Looking once more at his colleague on horseback, Connor watched him trot past the villa and head toward the marina at the base of the cliff. Turning back to face Jason, Connor noticed that their dessert had arrived. He took a piece of baklava and, with a saccharine smile, brought it toward Jason’s mouth, subtly nodding at a table of women gazing in their direction.
“Nice try,” Jason said, leaning back with his tea.
Laughing, Connor fumbled for his ringing cell phone.
“Hey,” he heard Jeremy Slade’s voice say. “How’s it look?”
“All clear.”
“Feel comfortable going in tomorrow night?”
“Definitely. It’s supposed to be completely overcast.”
“Good.”
“What about the guards?”
“Do they know who they’re watching?”
“No. And apparently, his face is so battered his features are indiscernible.”
“Trank them.”
“And the girl? She’s some kind of nurse, a teenager we think. She doesn’t know who the hell she’s taking care of, but she sure knows her boss.”
“Then take her with you.”
MAYFAIR, LONDON—10:10P.M.
Sitting at her computer, Kate heard a knock on her door and the familiar voice of one of the hotel’s bellmen. He gave her a handwritten message. Glancing at it, she was surprised to see nothing but random garbled text.
“He thought you might need this,” the bellman added, handing Kate a Cardan Grille, the Elizabethan code device she’d described to Medina the previous evening.
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