One Night in Tehran: A Titus Ray Thriller

by Luana Ehrlich

  Fowler was an African-American with square, wire-rimmed glasses and a short, neat haircut. I noticed he kept fiddling with his iPad, even while Carlton was introducing everyone.

  I wasn’t acquainted with Tony Fowler, but we exchanged perfunctory nods.

  Because Fowler was the outside observer for my debrief, it didn’t surprise me we’d never met before. In fact, had we known each other, he could not have been the outside observer.

  All operational debriefing sessions were assigned a person from another division, someone who had not been involved in the mission itself and who did not know the covert intelligence officer being debriefed. The reasoning behind this rule was that an outside observer brought a new perspective and provided insights not otherwise apparent to the operational team. The Director had instituted this regulation at the urging of a congressional oversight committee ten years ago, but the responsibility for choosing the outside observer had been turned over to the DDO, Robert Ira.

  In my opinion, outside observers asked far too many questions during a debrief. This slowed down the whole process and interfered with the intelligence officer’s flow of thought in narrating the events of an operation. Such irrelevant interrogations primarily occurred because a debrief was an invaluable opportunity for an observer to delve into operations beyond his or her intelligence scope, giving that person a treasure trove of information. Such knowledge was highly coveted and served as a powerful commodity within the walls of the Agency.

  Carlton turned to his left and addressed Ira. “Once again, let me say how privileged we are to have you in the room today, Deputy Ira. I believe you’ve met everyone here before?”

  He smiled at Katherine and glanced briefly at the rest of us. “Yes, I have.”

  “I’ll begin with the formalities,” Carlton said, “and let me remind everyone that these sessions are being recorded.”

  Carlton cleared his throat yet again. When he spoke, his voice was slightly stilted.

  “Session One. This is Operations Officer, Douglas Carlton, in the intelligence debrief of Titus Alan Ray, Level 1 covert operative for Operation Torchlight.”

  He pointed a finger in my direction. “Begin the narrative.”

  “Two years ago, I entered Iran on a Swiss passport. My cover name was Hammid Salimi, the son of an Iranian watchmaker and a Swiss businesswoman. My legend was solid. I was in Tehran to open up a market for my parents’ line of luxury watches and jewelry. The contacts I made among the elite in the Iranian regime were to serve as the prime recruiting ground for a cadre of assets Operations hoped would help fund the Iranian opposition and topple the government.”

  Not surprisingly, Fowler was the first committee member to break into my narrative. However, his eyes barely left his iPad as he threw out his questions.

  “Aren’t most wealthy Iranians in lock-step with the regime?” he asked. “How was such an operation even feasible?”

  Carlton responded immediately. “Yes, Tony, that’s an excellent question, and it’s one I’ll be happy to answer.”

  Carlton picked up a set of documents on the table, although he didn’t refer to them immediately.

  “All our data pointed to a great disaffection among the upper echelon of Iranian society. We heard from a variety of sources,” he gestured toward Komeil, “including Mr. Haddadi, who indicated that the elite in Iran might be willing to help the opposition, despite continually receiving incentives from the government.”

  Mr. Haddadi shifted in his chair and opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, Carlton began reading from the set of papers he was holding. He’d chosen several sections describing the mind-numbing psychological details about the thinking of Iran’s upper class.

  As his voice droned on, I knew I wasn’t the only person in the room feeling sleepy.

  Finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I interrupted him. “I recruited four assets within six months and two more the next year.”

  Fowler looked up from his iPad.

  I added defiantly, “It was obviously a workable operation.”

  Fowler peered at me over the tops of his glasses, studying me for a few seconds. Then, he said, “Duly noted.”

  Perhaps trying to lower the testosterone in the room, Katherine spoke up.

  “Our product from these recruits was extremely beneficial,” she said. “Not only was Titus able to penetrate this closed community, he was also able to gain access into—”

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Carlton said, obviously trying to regain control of the meeting. “Titus, continue the narrative.”

  I spent almost an hour explaining how I went about identifying my targets by developing business relationships, cultivating ties in banking circles, and socializing with the affluent in Iranian society. When I got into some of the more specific details of the money I was spending to live such a lavish lifestyle, Deputy Ira started rapidly typing on his laptop.

  I did not take that as a good sign.

  Katherine, probably thinking the same thing, asked a question that prodded me on to a different topic. “Titus, wasn’t the purchase of your apartment the reason you were able to develop a friendship with Amir Madani?”

  At the mention of Amir’s name, Fowler’s head shot up and Ira suddenly stopped typing.

  I was puzzled at their sudden interest.

  “Correct,” I said. “I was sitting at an outdoor café with Farid, one of my recruits, when an acquaintance of his stopped by our table. Farid introduced his friend to me as Amir.”

  As I described my chance encounter with Amir, I noticed a slight tic had developed below Fowler’s left eye.

  “I immediately recognized the man as Amir Madani,” I said, “one of Iran’s nuclear scientists, so I decided to use Farid to see if I could get closer to him.”

  “How?” Fowler asked.

  “Pardon me?”

  “How were you able to recognize him?”

  “Well, because …” I hesitated for only a split second but it was just enough time for him to hit me with a barrage of other questions before I could finish answering his first one.

  “Since your operational mandate was to cultivate assets to finance the opposition, what was your interest in this Amir?” he asked. “Your warrant didn’t include targeting Iran’s scientists, did it?”

  I suddenly found myself extremely curious about Tony Fowler.

  Because he was the outside observer on the committee, the position he held in the Agency was unknown to me. He could be employed in any section of Operations. Of course, everyone else in the room, except possibly Komeil, knew the name of his division.

  For my part, I was beginning to suspect which door his key card might open.

  However, if I were guessing correctly, it meant someone at the Agency had deliberately sabotaged my mission in Tehran.

  Carlton immediately spoke up. “Of course, I authorized it.”

  Fowler seemed stunned. “You did?”

  For several seconds, Fowler seemed to be grappling for another question. Finally, he asked, “When?”

  Carlton’s eyes grew wider. “When? You mean you want the actual date?” A puzzled look passed over Carlton’s face. Moments later, he looked over at Ira, as if hoping the DDO might be able to clear up his confusion.

  However, the deputy immediately turned his attention to his laptop, ignoring Carlton’s bewildered stare.

  Fowler was adamant when he answered Carlton. “No, I don’t want a date. I want a timeline.”

  Carlton shuffled through his notes. While I had no idea what was bothering him about Fowler’s question, I could tell he was simply stalling for time.

  Fowler continued questioning Carlton. “Did you authorize contact before or after Titus recognized him? I want to understand how it was that Titus knew this man in the first place. There are thousands of people walking the streets of Iran. It seems odd that he would be able to—”

  “I showed him pictures,” Komeil said, barging in
to the exchange.

  Fowler looked surprised. “Why would you do that?”

  “Look, Tony,” I said, before Komeil could answer him, “Perhaps I should have explained how I went about preparing for this mission. My oversight may have caused you some misunderstanding, and I take full responsibility for that. Let me back up and tell you about my preparation for Operation Torchlight.”

  I noticed a smile flicker across Katherine’s face, and I wondered if she knew I was simply trying to buy Carlton time to resolve his confusion.

  Fowler removed his glasses and began massaging his temples. “Sure, why don’t you do that?”

  I launched into a myriad of details explaining how Legends—the branch of Support Services responsible for creating false identities—had prepared my background, my credentials, and my entry into Iran. Then, I inundated Fowler with the kind of research I undertook prior to a mission. Finally, I described how Komeil and I had worked together to enable me a quick integration into Iranian society.

  “I met with Komeil three times a week for two months,” I said. “We only spoke Farsi when we were together. When we—”

  “Why are you so fluent in Farsi?” Fowler asked. He sounded surprisingly accusatory. “Were you ever in Iran before this assignment?”

  I turned to Carlton for approval. He gave me a dismissive wave of his hand. “Go ahead,” he said, while continuing to look through his stack of documents.

  “No, I had never been to Iran before this mission. And the language? It’s just a gift. It doesn’t take me long to acquire fluency in any language.”

  I started to elaborate about how many languages I spoke, but Fowler had no real need to know. An operational debriefing was not so much about the operative as it was about the operation. Tony Fowler was not cleared in this setting to know more about me than Carlton wanted him to know.

  “Komeil briefed me on some prominent people I should get to know in Tehran,” I said. “As I was studying the photographs of these people, I came across several group shots he had taken with some of his scientific colleagues while they were attending a conference together. We talked about their backgrounds, and that’s how I recognized Amir Madani when I saw him that day.”

  I twisted open a bottle of water sitting in front of me and took a very long drink.

  As I drank, Fowler appeared impatient, anxious for me to continue my narrative. I knew he wanted an explanation of why I’d decided to seek authorization to start courting Amir when my mission’s objective didn’t include contact with one of Iran’s nuclear scientist. For some reason, such information appeared to be extremely important to him.

  However, I placed the empty bottle of water back on the table and remained silent.

  I waited for Fowler to ask me the question again. I needed to hear his exact words and sentence structure, to catch the nuance, and to watch his facial expression.

  As the silence grew, Carlton made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Titus,” he said, “let’s break for lunch and resume in two hours.”

  Carlton watched as Tony Fowler hurriedly left the room. Then, when the door slammed shut, he turned to Ira. “Deputy, could we have lunch together?”

  I had no idea where the two of them were going for lunch, but wherever it was, I knew Carlton wasn’t leaving there until Deputy Ira had served him up some satisfactory answers. When it came to getting answers, Carlton was like a kid bugging his mom for a new toy—he would never gave up until he got what he wanted.

  This personality trait accounted for the love part of our relationship.

  CHAPTER 4

  Since I wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds until clearing my debrief, I took the plate of food Martha had prepared for me and escaped onto the patio, sitting at a table beside the Olympic-size swimming pool.

  It was a beautiful sunny day in April, and although the wind was chilly, I wanted the freedom of being outdoors too much to care about the temperature.

  As I ate my chicken salad sandwich, I decided not to think about the dynamics occurring inside my debrief. Instead, I watched two groundskeepers cleaning out a flowerbed. They appeared to be enjoying each other’s company, laughing and talking together as they worked.

  However, the longer I watched them, the more I realized I wasn’t just showing them passing curiosity. On a professional level, I was assessing them, scrutinizing their movements, trying to determine if they presented any real danger to me.

  Since The Gray was encased in a secured environment, my obsessive exercise made me wonder if I’d been living the clandestine life for too long.

  Was it mentally healthy to be so suspicious? Was my wariness a sure indicator I needed to get out? Should I take the initiative and ask to be transferred to a desk job?

  Yet, being a covert intelligence operative was the only thing I knew how to do, and I did it very well. I knew that.

  As a kid growing up in Flint, Michigan, I thought I wanted to be a police officer or maybe an FBI agent. My parents never discouraged me, nor, for that matter, did they encourage me to pursue law enforcement. In fact, my dad, Gerald, who worked on the assembly line at GM, didn’t pay much attention to me at all. In some ways, he was the typical alcoholic dad. He worked on the line all day, and then he drank himself to sleep every night. He wasn’t mean, and he didn’t mistreat my mom or my sister. He was simply emotionally absent from our family.

  My mother, Sharon, who was a high school science teacher, relied on empirical evidence to explain her husband’s behavior. “When Gerald came home from Vietnam, he was a broken man,” she often told people. “He saw way too many horrible things over there, and it’s haunted him ever since.”

  Perhaps my father experienced the most horrifying aspects of that war, but he was never willing to talk to me about any of them, and I certainly tried often enough. As a young boy, I asked him endless questions about the Army. What was like to be shot at? How did it feel to see someone die? However, his answers were always vague or monosyllabic. As a teenager, his attitude infuriated me, and we exchanged heated words on a regular basis. By the time I left for college, we were barely speaking.

  As expected, my relationship with my father was a topic the Agency psychiatrists discussed with me when I applied for the CIA. At the end of those intense sessions, I finally realized my failure to bond with my father was the motivation behind my willingness to embrace Laura Hudson and her family.

  Laura and I had met during my first month at the University of Michigan. Within a few weeks of being introduced, we were spending all of our time together, and, during one weekend in November, she invited me home to meet her parents.

  Roman and Cynthia Hudson were welcoming, gracious people. I was immediately drawn to them, especially Roman, who owned a hardware store in a strip mall in Ann Arbor and started calling me “son” as soon as we were introduced.

  Instead of returning home for Christmas during my freshman year, I spent my entire two-week break with Laura’s family in Ann Arbor. It was then I learned Roman had also been in Vietnam, but there was a big difference between him and my father—he was more than willing to talk about what he’d done over there.

  The first time Roman had mentioned Southeast Asia was when Laura and I had stopped by the hardware store on Christmas Eve to see if we could help with the holiday rush. Laura’s mother, Cynthia, was working as a cashier, so Laura had opened up another cash register, while I went to find Roman. I located him at the back of the store in the sporting goods section where he was showing a gun to a customer.

  Because I’d never been around firearms before, I watched in awe at how easily he handled the weapon, stripping it down, explaining its features, and then putting the whole thing back together in the blink of an eye. Roman noticed my fascination at his expertise, and when the customer left, he immediately began telling me stories of his time in Vietnam working for the CIA.

  Laughing at himself, he said, “They called us spooks back then.”

  For Christmas, he gave me
my first weapon, a .22 revolver, and I spent the rest of the week at the gun range. The following year, during my Spring break, two important things occurred: I asked Laura to marry me and Roman gave me a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum.

  I married Laura the following June.

  For a wedding present, her parents gave us the down payment on a small house near the campus. However, between both of us going to school full-time and working at our part-time jobs, I barely remembered living there. Besides that, I chose to spend most of my free time with Roman.

  Roman not only continued teaching me everything he knew about weaponry, he also tutored me in the rudiments of the tradecraft he was taught during his brief time working for the Agency. I hadn’t made a conscious decision to join the CIA yet, but before starting my junior year of college, I switched my major from business to international relations with a minor in languages.

  By our second year of marriage, Laura was growing increasingly unhappy about my relationship with her dad. Even though I knew Laura hated all the time I was spending with Roman, I refused to change at all. When we would argue—which was often—I’d lose my temper and say incredibly cruel things to her.

  Eventually, Laura found someone else.

  The day she asked me for a divorce, she said, “You didn’t fall in love with me, Titus; you fell in love with my dad.”

  She was right, of course.

  At first, I blamed the failure of my marriage on my disappointing family life. Later, I realized when Laura and I had met, I’d been sinking in a sea of uncertainty. Then, out of the fog, Roman had appeared to me as a lighthouse, and I’d been drawn to him as my only means of rescue.

  Perhaps not surprisingly, a week after signing the final divorce papers, I was talking to a CIA recruiter.

  After finishing up my sandwich, I went back inside and put my dishes in the kitchen sink. The room was empty, so I faced the ceiling camera, raised my arm, and made a circling motion with my forefinger. Within a few seconds, Jim came through the pantry door.