by Mark Henshaw
Kyra walked to the front desk and checked out, an unnecessary maneuver, but it allowed her to grab a newspaper from the reception counter. The text was all Farsi and she couldn’t read a word, but it was useful for wrapping the pistol and disposing of it in a garbage can after the shuttle left her at the Kish International Airport ten minutes later.
The airport was quite modern, if small, perhaps the size of a large college-town airport back home. The ceiling was glass tile with recessed lighting and a blue neon border at the perimeter that hurt her eyes when she stared at it too long. Kyra navigated the ticket desk, her British passport drawing some extra scrutiny, then security. A small market on the way to her gate offered food and water, and only then did she realize how long it had been since she’d eaten anything, much less a proper meal.
Kyra made her way to the gate. Her watch showed that she had one hour before boarding. She sat down in the chairs by the windows overlooking the tarmac and focused on a point on the airfield’s far side, avoiding eye contact with any of her fellow travelers. She imagined that if the Iranians knew that she’d been at Amiri’s warehouse, they would have detained her when she produced her passport minutes ago; but there would still be no relaxing here, on the plane, or in Tehran if she made it that far.
If the Iranians came for her now, there would be nothing she could do. A commercial flight was always a trap for a spy and there was, quite literally, nothing in the world she could do but put herself in it and pray that her cover would be enough to keep it from closing around her neck.
CHAPTER NINE
CIA Operations Center
Hadfield walked through the empty halls of the Old Headquarters Building to the elevator by the library, his feet moving slowly. It had been taking ever more willpower to drag himself to work every night and that commodity was becoming harder and harder for him to dredge up. But much as he disliked his present duty, the thought of returning to a normal office during normal hours almost sent him spiraling down into a panic attack.
He reached the center, took his desk, and stared at his monitor until the system finished logging him on and he launched the usual applications. He opened the cable database and stared at the list of communiqués that had come in since the shift change. The one on top caught his attention. He opened it and scanned the headers, all cryptograms and code words. The cable had come in not from an Agency station but some other location. He couldn’t even identify the author, but the header information directed that the message be routed . . .
. . . straight to the director, he realized. He stared at the first paragraphs.
1. Contact made with Amiri. Todd report confirmed. He agreed to meet with Todd but meeting didn’t take place.
2. Amiri said that rumors indicated Todd was taken to Evin Prison shortly after her detention. Todd’s present condition and location are unknown.
He brought up the print window and directed the message to one of the laser printers in the next room. Then he locked his computer and walked over to fetch the hard copy.
He walked south along the corridor and turned right, his feet shuffling along the carpet. The President’s Daily Brief Office at the end of that hallway. The men and women who delivered daily briefings to the president of the United States and other senior officials were among the few who kept the same hours as the Operations Center staff. Barron was on that list of people who got briefed, but he was far from the most senior. The briefers spent their nights poring over reports, dry-running their presentations, and dragging analysts in from their beds to answer questions, all to be ready to give their customers the finest intelligence the United States could collect. He actually felt sorry for them on the morning that the president or some other arrogant official canceled their briefing for whatever trivial reason. It was one of the few emotions he felt anymore.
He let himself in. The secretary smiled as he came through the door. She’d seen him before. Hadfield held the cable out to her. “This just came in. I’m sure Director Barron wants to see it first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you.” She checked the code words. “You need to route a copy of this to the Red Cell, too.”
“I’ll take care of it as soon as I get back.”
“Quiet in the Ops Center tonight?”
He shrugged. “It usually is.”
CIA Red Cell
Jon shuffled through the hall, his cane tapping out a third footstep, until he reached the last vault on the left. He reached down to where his new badge was hanging off his shirt pocket and stared at the plastic card for a moment. It was odd to see his own photograph surrounded by a block of green. For twenty years, he had worn the blue badge of a staff officer. Now to see himself carrying the green badge of a contractor seemed very strange. “Should’ve asked for more money,” he muttered.
He waved the badge against the reader mounted in the wall. The vault door made no sound. He frowned and repeated the action, with the same result. Jon stared at the badge, wondering if someone in security hadn’t encoded it incorrectly, then let it hang again from the clip on his pocket. He reached for the doorbell, then stopped as his eye fell on the room placard mounted above it.
The Red Cell plaque was gone. In its place, someone had posted a printed card: Salem Investigation.
“Oh, you are kidding me,” he muttered. Jon pressed the doorbell and heard it sound inside. No one answered and he pressed it repeatedly until the door finally opened.
Rhodes stood in the doorway. “Mr. Burke.”
“Bureaucratic petulance becomes you,” Jon replied.
“We needed more space. Yours fit the bill and Director Barron signed off,” Rhodes countered. “Do you have something for me or are you just here by mistake?”
Jon considered four different responses, two of which were likely to get him arrested and a third that involved words that he’d promised his wife to never repeat. He finally chose to say nothing. He held out a folder. The FBI officer took it and opened the flap. Kyra’s report was inside.
Rhodes scanned through it, his eyes growing wide. “Salem is on Kish Island,” he muttered. “That was fast. She must’ve read through the intel before we arrested her.”
“I’m surprised that the package being cut open didn’t suggest that to you,” Jon noted.
Rhodes glared at him. “You know your partner just became a suspect,” he said.
Jon cocked an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected that particular threat. “I clearly underestimated the depths of your petulance.”
“It’s not petty revenge. The mole tries to pass Amiri’s name to Mossad. We stop that, but then Stryker travels to Kish, and in less than a day, the guy’s dead. That doesn’t sound like a coincidence to me.”
“Apparently, the implications of Salem reading the mole’s intel is still lost on you,” Jon observed. “And Rouhani’s assassination before Kyra went to Kish, suggesting that the mole found a way to deliver the intel through an alternate channel. I don’t suppose the fact that Kyra reported his death in an official cable counts for anything.”
“That’s actually what I’d expect. It would be suspicious if she didn’t.”
“You’re a purebred conspiracy theorist, you know that?” Jon asked, amazed. “Kyra does her job and it’s evidence that she’s a mole. If she didn’t do her job, you’d see it as evidence she’s a mole.”
“Not true, and you don’t know if things on Kish went down the way she says they did.”
“If you’re going to simply disregard any statement anyone makes that doesn’t fit your theory, why bother with an investigation at all?” Jon asked.
“Oh, please,” Rhodes muttered in disgust. “Salehi, Rouhani, and now Amiri. Three names in different compartments and no one had official access to all three except for the director and a few senior officials. So everyone thinks there’s more than one mole working together, but it’s always more likely that there’s just one. Isn’t it true that the Red Cell is free to look at anything and everything the Agency studies?�
�
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean we get automatic access to all of the intelligence the Agency has,” Jon corrected him. “Only the director and a few others on the Seventh Floor get that.”
“Which is why I’m going to interview all of them,” Rhodes assured him. “Kyra could always tell people who control the compartments that she’s working some special project for the director and needs access.”
“Believe me, getting other people to cooperate with us on routine projects can be a serious challenge. Getting them to open up compartments practically requires Seventh Floor intervention. They would have to confirm any such request, which would raise red flags, and if they read her into the compartment, her name would appear on the access list,” Jon argued.
“I bet your partner is very good at getting people to do what she wants.”
“Something you can’t seem to manage, but she is vastly better with people than you are, I’ll grant you,” Jon told him. “Unless you have something intelligent to offer, I’m done with this conversation.” He hefted his cane, hobbled back out to the hall, and closed the door.
• • •
“Please state your name,” Rhodes ordered.
“Mackie Staunton. Mackensie, if you need my full first name.”
“Mr. Staunton, according to your personnel file, you were a case officer under William Fallon in Iraq, correct?”
“Yes. I was his deputy station chief,” the man answered. He stared across the small table in the conference room at the notepad sitting in front of the FBI special agent.
“And you served in that position for how long?”
“Four years.”
“Did you know Samantha Todd prior to that time?” Rhodes asked.
“Yes. She and I EOD’d together.”
“EOD?”
“Enter on Duty. It means we joined the Agency at the same time,” Staunton explained.
“How would you describe your personal relationship with Mr. Fallon?”
“Friendly. We don’t socialize much outside of work, but, yeah, friendly. What’s this about?”
Rhodes ignored the question. “And you were in Iraq when Samantha Todd went missing there?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve read the investigation report. Do you have anything to add?”
“No. That investigation spiked my career and now I’m stuck behind a desk. Why are you asking me about it now?” Staunton demanded.
“The FBI arrested a spy a few nights ago very near Mr. Fallon’s home,” Rhodes told him.
“I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
Rhodes showed him Salem’s photo. “Do you know this woman?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
Staunton shook his head. “I don’t know her. Who is she?”
“The woman we arrested,” Rhodes told him. “We’re done for now, Mr. Staunton. Please do not talk to anyone about this conversation. I’ll have more questions for you soon.”
“Sure.” Staunton stood up and walked out of the conference room.
Fuller waited until the CIA officer had left the vault before entering and approaching Rhodes. “He say anything useful?”
“Denied everything. We have the warrant?” Rhodes asked.
“The judge signed off. Got his work phones tapped and we can read his e-mails and texts, both work and home computers. Fallon, too, and the rest of his little cult of personality. If they try to talk to each other, we’ll know.”
“Nice,” Rhodes said, approving. “Who’s next up?”
Fuller pulled out a notepad and read off the names. “Sally Ramseur. She worked with Fallon and Staunton and she was on another one of the access lists. I doubt you’ll get any more out of her than you got out of Fallon or that guy who just left. I think that group is tight.”
Rhodes smiled. “Then we start calling down the bigwigs. Director of ops, director of analysis, Barron. They all had access to the leaked intel, they all get pulled in.”
“Talking to ’em is one thing,” Fuller cautioned. “Getting a wiretap order on an Agency director is something else . . . and forget surveillance. He’s got a security team around him all the time. He couldn’t have made the dead drop at Banshee Reeks.”
“Doesn’t mean he couldn’t have ordered someone else to do it, like Stryker,” Rhodes offered. “Rostow ordered CIA not to help Israel. Barron wouldn’t be the first CIA director to push back against a president he didn’t like.”
“Careful, man. You start picking on agency heads, you’re running with some big dogs. You better make sure our senior people are willing to back you up before you make those moves.”
“You don’t get to be a big dog yourself by sitting on the porch while the big dogs run,” Rhodes advised. “Somebody here is helping Mossad run an illegal war against the direct orders of the president, and if it’s Barron, then he’s got people helping him do it. He worked under Kathy Cooke, who’s married to Burke, who works with Stryker. That’s another tight little group there, and there could be others in the mix. So we’re going to take this place apart.”
“Just don’t get bit, boss.”
“Don’t worry about it. We crack this open, we’ll be writing our own tickets back at the Bureau.”
CIA Director’s Office
“That bad?” Barron asked.
Jon threw himself onto the director’s couch and stared out the window. It was dark outside, nearing midnight, practically the only time that was open on Barron’s schedule. “He took over the Red Cell vault.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Barron replied. “Rhodes made the request through his own chain of command and I got a call from the FBI director. I know it was a cheap shot, but we’re short on space and Kyra’s out of the country for a while. Until this is over, you can work up here. There’s an empty desk two doors down.”
“Not a goal I ever aspired to, but it beats the library, I suppose,” Jon replied.
“It’ll show we’re cooperating.”
“For what little that gets us,” Jon said. “Rhodes is either starting to take shots randomly or he’s trying to provoke us. He’s decided that Kyra’s a suspect.”
“He thinks we’re all suspects,” Barron admitted. “He hasn’t demanded an interview with me yet, but I won’t be surprised when it comes. Ambition feeds paranoia.”
“It also feeds lousy reasoning. He’s twisting facts to suit his theories, and ignoring facts he can’t twist.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I would suggest calling the FBI director and asking him to pull Rhodes out, except the man would decide you and I were both conspirators trying to protect a mole.”
“Speaking of which,” the director said. “I read Kyra’s report. So Amiri was supposed to meet with Todd.”
Jon nodded. “Which means that Todd’s report was genuine, but it was never entered into our database. That means that the meeting was entirely off the books. Fallon was digging for sources, and he probably ignored the safety protocols for meeting targets in high threat areas. Todd might not have even realized the danger she was in. Things went off the rails and Fallon covered it up so it wouldn’t hurt his career. Probably convinced a few other people to do the same. That would explain why Todd’s report was never in our system . . . not because of the intel it contained, but because it exposed an unapproved op.”
“Nice theory. How do we prove it?” Barron asked.
“We connect Fallon to Amiri,” Jon replied. “Todd’s report said that a British officer pointed him toward Amiri. So we find the British contact. We pin the request to have Amiri meet with Todd on him and then confront Fallon and the rest of his old team with it. Do we have anything on that warehouse Kyra marked in the cable?”
“I had some people take a look. It’s owned by a company called Morning Sun Imports, controlled by the Khamenei family. They own a second warehouse in the same dockyard, about a half mile north.”
“No kidding.” Jon frowned and looked away at nothing in part
icular. “Mossad has killed two Iranian nuclear scientists now and Tehran has said nothing. No accusations, no angry predictions about Israel being wiped off the earth . . . all quiet.”
“Interesting, isn’t it? I thought maybe they were trying to make a point with the silence . . . add weight to what Salehi told Kathy before he died, trying to prove their innocence by not lashing out. Now I’m wondering if they’re just trying not to draw attention to the man behind the curtain.”
“Or buying time trying to cover things up. In any case, they can’t keep it up forever. If Mossad keeps killing their people, they’ll have to push back eventually. Once they do, this whole thing will spiral down and nobody will be able to stop it.” Jon checked the time. “I’ll work on connecting Fallon and Amiri.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Talk to Sir Ewan at Vauxhall Station. Find out who on his side of the pond knew Fallon well enough to grant favors.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Barron said. “Why don’t you and Kathy go finish your vacation in London? She knows him better than I do. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”
“So we can break the news about Amiri to him?”
“Something like that,” Barron admitted. “Kathy is a better diplomat than I am, and I could use her help with that right now. If it helps you smooth things over with her, she’s getting to go back to London. Finish your vacation.”
“Works for me.”
“Good,” Barron approved. “Rhodes is interviewing Fallon again in the morning. I want you there.”
Jon nodded. “Kathy and I will head to London after.”
CHAPTER TEN
Ramot Alon
East Jerusalem, Israel
The neighborhood known as Ramot Alon had been a demilitarized zone once, before the ’67 War. It was part of Israel now, though no other country accepted this fact. Even Israel’s allies called it illegal, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, a “settlement” the Arabs said could not exist if there was ever to be peace. Fifty thousand Jews lived there, more coming in every month, a few at a time, and none willing to leave.