“Could be, sir. I started looking into this as soon as we heard about Paul. I have a possible candidate, but I need to speak to you in private first,” said Brent. “Let’s grab lunch outside. Meet you out front at thirteen hundred hours. We’ll take my car.”
Along with the deputy director’s security detail, comprised of three black SUVs, they pulled up in front of an Italian restaurant at Tyson’s Corner, and the director and his deputy jumped out, followed by two bodyguards who kept discreetly behind them.
“What’s on your mind, Pat?” asked Monaghan.
“Well, sir—” said Brent.
“You can cut the ‘sir’ crap when it’s just you and me, Pat.” The two men, both former US Marines, had a long history together. They had been under fire in more places at more times than they cared to recall. That close camaraderie bonded them and they had full trust in each other. That was why when Brent asked to speak to him outside the office, P. T. knew his longtime friend would not be wasting his time.
“Well, P. T., it’s like this. I pulled all the files on all the likely candidates and I come up with one name every time.”
“And?”
“And you’re not going to like it . . .”
“No! Don’t tell me it’s who I think it is . . . not Laura Deadwood.”
“Yes, P. T. It’s Laura Atwood. I know you dislike her, but she is good. She proved herself.”
“She also embarrassed the Agency.”
“That was five years ago. And she was not wrong. She called it as it was. She proved herself in Iraq; she was right, goddamn it. She took the fall for her guy. You and I would have done nothing different,” said Brent.
“You and I would not have had an affair with a terrorist.”
“Come on, P. T., she didn’t know he was a terrorist.”
“She should have. Anyway, why do you think she is the only candidate?”
“Because, first, she speaks fluent Arabic; second, she is the only one crazy enough to take on an assignment in Beirut at this current time. Third, she has contacts in that city and can establish a network pretty fast. That’s how she works. With Paul dead, so is his network. We are basically blind in Beirut right now.”
“Anyway, you didn’t ask to talk to me outside the Agency to discuss Lara Croft. We could have had this conversation in the office, so what’s on your mind?”
“Well, we need a cover for Laura, one that will allow her to roam the country freely without raising suspicion, particularly in a place like Lebanon, where they see a spy under every bed.”
“And?”
“In a place like Beirut, there are only three professions that allow you to travel freely around the country. One, diplomat, and you ruled that one out. Two, spy, and that rules itself out; and the third is journalism. And President Ronald Reagan ruled that one out when he passed a law banning us from using journalism as a cover.”
“Oh, shit. I thought you were going to say that. We can’t; it would be breaking the law.”
“But you said just half an hour ago that you wanted to start playing dirty.”
“I didn’t mean for us to go breaking our own rules. I meant we can break a few bones if we feel it is absolutely necessary.”
“P. T., the lives of our government officials—of the president of the United States—are at stake, and we don’t have the luxury of time on our side. Can we or can we not have your order to proceed? Proceed, but keep this only between us.”
“OK, do it, make it happen, but no fuck ups this time.”
“And P. T., one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“This is the real reason I brought you out of the office.” Monaghan looked Brent in the eyes. “We have a mole in the Agency.”
“How good are your sources?” asked Monaghan.
“Solid,” replied the deputy director’s deputy.
“Okay. Until this crisis is over I want you to personally take charge of that dossier. Does Atwood have a code name yet?”
“She does,” replied Brent. “It’s Qadi. That’s Arabic for judge.”
“Okay. From now on, we never mention her name. We refer to our agent in Beirut as Qadi. I will start compartmentalizing various bits to see who picks up what and how, and what they do with it. You know, the usual stuff.”
9
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Laura Atwood loved living in Baghdad, but she knew she could never call it home. Baghdad was one of those places where you could spend an eternity but never quite fit in, unless you were Iraqi, of course, and even then you had to belong to the right sect and reside in the appropriate neighborhood, or else risk getting abducted and having your throat slit. A complicated place it was, but an exciting place all the same, especially at this time. Atwood, now thirty-five, single, a couple of not very successful romantic affairs behind her, and with no immediate prospects of attaching herself to any particular man—not that she needed to—she devoted all her energies to her job, at which she was very good.
Her first real love affair had been with Jean-Louis, a Frenchman she met while working on her first major assignment for the CIA in Europe. Because of her fluent command of the French language—her mother was French—she had been sent to liaise with an official of the French counterespionage on the matter of a defecting Syrian who was French-educated. The CIA, who had worked with the French to help extradite the man from Syria, wanted someone who could understand all that was said firsthand and not rely on the translation.
Jean-Louis. Dear Jean-Louis. Only trouble was, it turned out he was married, and not very bright to think he could lie to an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency and get away with it. He had since divorced his wife and never remarried, or so he said. But when they exchanged a couple of emails in the last few years and he told her he was in Paris, something inside her told her to check the source of the email. A revealing bit of data found in the hidden header attached to every email sent allows one to pinpoint the sender’s location within ten yards. And that’s using websites and software available to all over the Internet. At the CIA they have slightly more precise means at their disposal. Still, you don’t have to be a James fucking Bond superspy to figure this out. The email placed him at his wife’s address on the wife’s family farm in Normandy. She never called him back or replied to his emails after that.
The second love affair happened right here in Baghdad, with a handsome and debonair Lebanese businessman who, it turned out, was helping funnel large sums of money to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That was what not only broke her heart, but nearly ended her career, splashing mud on her face and on the Agency.
The affair was quickly hushed up and the press never got wind of the story; otherwise they would have had to pull her out of Iraq. The only reason she was still employed by the Agency was very likely because Pat Brent looked out for her. She and Brent had a short but passionate affair many years ago, before Brent married. The romantic attraction passed away with the years, but their friendship grew steadily and Brent watched her back as much as he could.
Atwood was of average build, with a very attractive face, straight black hair that ran down to her shoulders, and unusual green eyes that gave her a feline look. At times she would wear red lipstick that outlined her sensuous mouth, making her look like she might belong on the cover of a fashion magazine. She described herself as average, but was actually more on the petite side. Yet what she lacked in size, she amply made up for with self-esteem and self-confidence. She had a black belt in several martial arts philosophies, was an expert sharpshooter, and could kick the ass of any male twice her size.
Late one night, she took on five Iraqis who thought they would have an easy time raping a lone woman on a deserted Baghdad street. Two of the Iraqis ended up in the morgue with snapped necks; the other two in the hospital with broken collar bones, broken tibias, and shattered knees. The fifth one was probably still running. But she loved the work she was doing and she believed it was helping—albeit in a very small manner—t
he overall stability of the country. No one was going to impose democracy on Iraq overnight, over a year, or even over a decade. As a matter of fact, she was not sure anyone could ever impose democracy in that country, ever. Iraq, much like the other countries in transition in the region, had to grow up on its own. The people needed to find democracy on their own terms and decide when they would be ready of their own accord. The US could not bring democracy to Iraq, or any other place, for that matter, by dragging the people to the polling booth kicking and screaming. The Iraqis—as with any other people—needed to realize that in order to get ahead in the world they needed to mature as a nation first, something they were not doing at the present time. The country of Iraq, like many parts of the Middle East, was created by the Western powers. Its borders are haphazardly drawn across the sand, which is partially why there is so much strife in the region.
When the call came earlier that morning asking her to fly to Paris right away to meet with Patrick Brent, she knew it meant that change would occur in her life. She was ready for that change. All Brent could say on the phone was, “You have nothing to worry about, just meet me in Paris tomorrow at the usual place.”
The last five years had been tough, both professionally and emotionally. There was the cock-up with one of her sources, someone who turned out to be a double agent, who had accused a valued US source working for the other side.
Laura sat back in her large, comfortable bamboo chair in a small inner courtyard of a house in Baghdad’s “safe” neighborhood. It was unbearably hot and the air conditioning had stopped working. She liked sitting outside late at night when sounds carried far and the city was somewhat more at peace, except for the forces working in the shadows. She listened to the sounds of the night. A child was crying in the distance, and a woman’s laughter filtered up from a house or two down the street where a party was in progress. That was one of the things Laura liked most about the Middle East. People still managed to party even in times of war.
Somewhere not too far away, a car could be heard struggling up a steep hill. In the distance, Arabic music was playing from an old, scratched record, a reminder that this was still very much the Middle East.
Baghdad seemed so peaceful now. She thought of her pending trip to Paris and how she would enjoy it, what restaurants she would eat in, and she would maybe even call Jean-Louis. She smiled at the thought.
10
BEIRUT, LEBANON
It had been a few years since Laura Atwood was last in Paris and she was happy to be back, even if it was most likely not going to be for more than a few days. Laura went through customs and immigration and took a cab to the Hotel Baltimore on Avenue Kléber in the sixteenth arrondissement, the “usual place” referred to by Pat Brent. She checked in and called Langley, who informed her that Brent was due to arrive within the hour. She changed into a dress and decided to wait for Pat at a small outdoor café, the weather being so charming at this time of year. Brent arrived in time for lunch.
After Brent briefed her on her new assignment, Laura Atwood, now working under the alias of Laura Craft, arrived in Beirut and established herself at the Commodore Hotel, just off Hamra Street. The Agency had arranged for her things in Baghdad to be shipped back to a storage facility in Virginia, and she was given cash to buy everything she might need as far as personal effects went, from clothes to perfume.
For her cover, she was set up in a cozy apartment on Rue Vaneau in Paris’s seventh arrondissement, not far from Les Invalides. She opened a bank account with Banque Nationale de Paris, in which she deposited about thirty-five hundred dollars in euros. She also opened a savings account, in which she deposited about ten thousand dollars in euros. She was issued a press card by a fictitious magazine that existed only in the minds of its CIA web developers. The site came complete with masthead, with real email addresses that all went to the same small group of recipients: four CIA analysts specially recruited for this assignment by Patrick Brent. They were set up in a separate office in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, rented for the occasion by a front company. Had anyone bothered to check out the credentials of Miss Laura Craft, they would have been amply satisfied of her authenticity as a working journalist.
Upon arriving in Beirut, Laura called on an old contact, Charbel Assaf, a man she met years ago towards the tail end of the Lebanese Civil War who once ran the Lebanese Forces’ intelligence unit and whom she had trained back in Langley. She told him she needed some hired help, musclemen who could think on their feet. Men she could trust. Assaf provided her with three names of men who would give their lives for him. They were like brothers—more than brothers. She hired them on the spot. One of them, an Armenian by the name of Kevork Nazarian, showed he had promising skills with his battered gray taxi.
After checking back into her room at the Commodore Hotel, Laura Atwood connected her laptop to the high-speed Internet offered by the establishment. She connected to an Internet site and signed in using her username and password.
She was instantly transferred to a high-security intranet server somewhere in Virginia, not very far from Dulles International Airport. She entered a second password and was granted access to an extra secure server and one more password would allow her to get into her mailbox. She clicked “Send” on her laptop. Seven seconds later, the message went to an electronic mailbox. Had anyone traced her call, as happened with most calls by the foreign press, they would have learned that she called a commercial computer network system based somewhere in Ohio that provided easy access to its members worldwide. Also, had anyone bothered to check further, they could have learned that Laura had sent her message to the editor of an American women’s magazine.
What no one would have ever been able to trace, however, was that the electronic mailbox Laura Atwood had messaged could be accessed from any telephone, anywhere in the world, without the caller ever revealing his geographic location. In fact, the “American editor” happened to be a group of CIA desk officers in Tyson’s Corner, just outside Washington, DC. Their job was to publish the fictitious publication, keeping it current in case someone checked up on it. They reported directly to Brent and no one outside the group except for the deputy director knew anything about this operation.
The reply was sent to Laura’s electronic mailbox in the same way. An hour later, when Laura Atwood called the US number again, she was prompted with a message flashing on her screen: YOU HAVE ELECTRONIC MAIL WAITING. She retrieved the message, which simply said: “TO: /Bei Ex Foreign Desk/DC. Acknowledge your earlier message. Hope you are having a great time. Stay safe. Regards Dougherty/DC.”
Laura Atwood hit the ground running. On her first night in Beirut she was invited to a party thrown by a journalist she met in the lobby of her hotel. It was here that she first noticed Chris Clayborne. She instantly felt attracted to him. Laura got herself a gin and tonic and sat back, taking in the crowd. She recognized an American television reporter, James Wallace, from one of the American networks. He looked about as arrogant in real life as he appeared to be on television. Half drunk, the man was relating to a captive audience his past exploits.
“Those assholes in New York don’t know shit,” said the correspondent in a loud voice, holding his drink between two fingers and waving his arm around so much that half the contents spilled out onto his trousers. “It does not matter,” he said. “It does not matter. Because in the end we will all be dead when the Israelis start to bomb the place again, as they did in ’82.”
He took another sip from his drink before continuing, this time spilling more contents down his shirt. “It does not matter. Does it matter?” he asked a young female assistant producer who seemed to be worshiping his every word. “It does not matter.” He turned to the young woman, “Ask Shirley, here.”
“Sheila,” corrected the young woman.
“Shirley, Sheila, what the fuck. Sorry sweetheart, of course I know you are Sheila. Not Shirley.
“Anyway, Shirley, Sheila, anyway, I told those shitheads in New Y
ork that we were exclusive with the footage from the south and they refused to run it. Too fucking gory, they said. Too much blood and guts. Man, this is a fucking war; people get killed. What do they expect? It’s a fucking war we’re covering here, not some goddamned political convention. There ain’t no balloons and ribbons here.”
“You ain’t seen war yet, mate,” offered an Australian writer, looking down into his beer. “Those misbegotten bastards in Dixie are gonna waltz right up to downtown Beirut in their bleedin’ Merkava tanks one of these days, mate. Right up to bleedin’ Hamra Street. Just as they did back in 1982. And mark my words, mate, then you’ll see what bleedin’ war is all about.”
“Dixie?” asked a young reporter. He had just arrived a few days earlier and was unfamiliar with the jargon used by the press corps in Beirut. “What does the southern United States have to do with the Middle East?” asked the young reporter to one of the older veterans sitting next to him at the bar.
“Dixie is how we refer to Israel,” said the more experienced journalist.
“Why?”
“Israel is a taboo subject in most of the Arab world. And sometimes just mentioning the word ‘Israel’ can get you in trouble, so we call it Dixie. You know, south of the border . . . Dixie?”
“I still don’t get it,” said the young reporter.
“Oh, you will soon enough. The next time a pre-pubescent nine-year-old kid sticks his AK-47 into your back and tells you he is going to kill you because you are a Zionist spy, you’ll get it.” The older reporter picked up his drink and walked away.
Meanwhile, across the bar, the others were still at it. “Shit, just listen to the fuckin’ Aussie. He’s gonna give us that Vietnam shit again. Hey, all right, I wasn’t in ’Nam, buddy,” retorted the American network correspondent. “I was too young then. But I sure as hell know a goddamn war when I see one.”
“Yeah, right, mate. Right on,” replied the Aussie.
“Don’t let them impress you.” Laura turned around to identify the source of the voice addressing her.
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