Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thrillers)

by Haggai Carmon

  I remembered from my briefing that the railway linking Turkey to Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, and Pakistan goes through Kapikoy, so that Turkish officers could check passengers’ visas. The next stations going west were Van, the ancient cradle of Armenian civilization, and Van jetty. In Van jetty, passengers get on a ferry for the five-hour voyage across Lake Van to Tatvan jetty. Then passengers traveling to Damascus continued with a Syrian train. I looked up the schedule: The next stopovers in Turkey were the cities of Malatya, Sivas, Kayseria, and Ankara, before arriving at Istanbul’s Haidar Pasha Railway Station.

  My notes said that then, after passing Fevzipasa Station, the train stops at the border station of Islahiye, which controls the exit from Turkey. Then Syrian officials check passports and conduct customs inspections at the Syrian border station of Meydan Ikbis, and the train departs for Damascus. I closed my notebook.

  We arrived in Istanbul without incident, making our way through the station’s bustling crowds. In the corner of the high-ceilinged station, a group of whirling dervishes were spinning in ceremony, surrounded by onlookers. For a minute, I was reminded of the street performers in the Times Square train station, back in New York. This station, however, was more storied than any subway; this station was the final stop on the famed Orient Express. As Madani and I exited the station, I recalled how that simple phrase, “The Orient Express,” seemed at one time to be synonymous with all kinds of intrigue, with impeccably dressed spies in suits.

  And right as I was thinking about this—in fact, right as I was specifically trying to recall the last time I was able to fit into an extra-large suit—a slob of a man swerved into me, dripping coffee all over my shirt, then mumbled an apology. As I tried wiping the dark stain off, I was almost run over by an angry old lady shouting in Turkish.

  No, I thought. My life is nothing like the Orient Express.

  Through the haze of afternoon smog, I spotted two distinguished-looking men, tall, and just this side of nondescript, walking towards us. One carried a small backpack. Madani spotted me spotting the men; he and I exchanged eye contact: Is that them? Yes. The men got closer, and closer—and passed us. As I turned to watch, the coffee man came up to me again, so uncomfortably close I could smell the drink on his breath.

  He said, “Didn’t we meet in Vienna last year?”

  So this was him. Our contact. Could I trust him? Hot coffee or no, I was hoping so—the little devil in me was somewhat uncomfortable. Did the agency really send that slob? I looked at the coffee man and said, “No. I think we met in Paris.”

  The man held his hand out to me.

  “I’m Scott,” he said. And then he motioned to a squat, balding man in a suit, who, I guessed, had merely been pretending to look for a cab. He too held out his hand to me.

  “This is Thomas,” Scott said. “and, oh, sorry about the—” He pointed to my shirt. I waved it off.

  So, Scott and Thomas it was. They looked at Tango, then at me, and asked, “And this is?”

  “Tango,” I said.

  They shook his hand. Madani looked confused, trying to grasp was going on. He didn’t ask and I didn’t offer an explanation. I also decided not to share my doubts regarding Tango with these guys. Because if my nervous little devil’s suspicions regarding Tango were proven, then perhaps there were other contaminated individuals out there, detrimental to my mission. True, we’d all exchanged identification smoothly (or, looking down at my shirt, smoothly enough). But you never know. I still had the bullet scar from the first time I thought I was bringing in Tango, back at from the Iranian-Armenian border. That Tango turned out to be some fake, good-for-nothing drug dealer just out of prison. I decided to keep quiet and my eyes wide open.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Let’s talk outside,” suggested Scott. They had a car waiting for us, a black Suburban with Turkish plates. Even as I got in the car, I was doing a double take. A Suburban? No one drives Suburbans in Istanbul except US Embassy personnel, and maybe a few others. Can anyone possibly be more conspicuous? There was something wrong here. At the very best, Scott and Thomas were amateurs. And at worst?

  As they drove up to the Conrad Hotel, Scott turned around and said, “Here you are. This is your last stop.”

  When I saw that Tango remained sitting, I asked, “What about him?”

  “We’re taking Tango with us; those are my orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “The head honcho,” Scott said. He wasn’t going to give me a real name in front of Tango. So why did I ask? He caught me off guard, really; I found myself dismayed and surprised that my mission was going to end so soon and that the plan to continue our travel to Syria was scrapped. Frankly, that had never made sense to me in the first place. But I was also feeling something else, something I can only describe as relief.

  I exited and met Scott at the back of the car, out of Tango’s sight. He took my travel wallet containing my Kraus passport and credit cards, and gave me another leather travel wallet with a new set of identity documents and a new legend in a brown envelope. The little devil inside me finally exhaled a little as I checked into the hotel with my new Irish passport.

  My name today was Daniel Patrick Leahy. I settled in to my room and began to memorize yet another new identity. How many had I had by now? I began counting my past identities like sheep.

  I flopped down on the bed without bothering to lift the bedspread. The second my head hit the bed, I fell asleep.

  An hour later I woke with a bad taste, not only in my mouth, but also my mind. I needed to talk to Eric and Benny. I knew that I would have to wait until contact was made; I couldn’t initiate. Or so they told me. Since when did I meticulously obey orders? If my suspicions had any basis in reality, I needed to know.

  I went to the minibar and pulled out a can of local beer, which tasted like it had first gone through a horse, and right as I was contemplating the minibar yet again, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard Benny’s voice. Although we were both raised Israeli, we always spoke English while outside Israel. We never knew who might be listening. Although with Benny’s accent, he’d never be mistaken for anything other than Israeli.

  “Come down now and hail a silver Mercedes taxi. The driver has a black cap on; he’ll take you to meet me.”

  I followed his instructions, and after half an hour, we were in a quiet, residential area, a nearly deserted street lined with date palms and apartment buildings. There was no traffic. The cabbie told me to go the ninth floor. As I came out of the elevator, I turned to see my old friend and Paul.

  “Hi, Dan,” Benny said, smiling that broad smile of his. “You’re two days late.”

  We began walking down the hall.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re two days late.”

  “Let me remind you, Benny, that we were traveling through locations that haven’t made it even close to the twenty-first century, some with crippling bureaucracy. And I’ll tell you, along the way, I began wondering whether some of the delays weren’t intentional.”

  We turned into an apartment at the end of the corridor. Benny sat on its white leather sofa; I sat on its white leather chair. Next to Benny on another chair sat Paul. Below us ran a wall-to-wall pink-patterned carpet. The décor was tacky in the extreme. But I wasn’t here for the interior decorating.

  “What do you mean, intentional?” Benny asked.

  “I mean, intentional. At this point I have too many questions. First off, there was a major change of plans which I wasn’t aware of.”

  “Meaning?” asked Paul.

  “Instead of staying at the hotel in Tehran as originally planned, I was taken to an apartment. Khader said it was for security reasons. Were you aware of that sudden change?”

  Paul and Benny exchanged looks. “No,” said Paul. “Tell us more.”

  I gave them the information. “At the time I thought it was strange, but I decided to go along with it, as long as the plan to get Madani out
of Iran was progressing. Then there was another major change of route, which I didn’t know about.”

  “You mean ending the voyage in Turkey rather than in Damascus?” asked Paul.

  “Yeah,” I said angrily.

  “This change was authorized for security reasons. If you were apprehended there, you couldn’t tell about the Turkish ending of the trip, and give VEVAK enough time to give us a hard time here.” I already knew about the planned, post-Damascus ending of the trip in Turkey, but said nothing.

  “Next, I had suspicions concerning Tango but couldn’t ask him. And there was no way I could discuss it with you. So I continued with my mission, but I still have doubts. Are you sure we’re not being duped again?”

  “What do you mean?

  “In Armenia,” I reminded him, “the Iranians had sent a phony defector; attempting to extricate him nearly cost me my life. For this mission, I was dispatched to Damascus, and Tehran, not exactly vacation spots, to deliver this man, this bona fide defector. And none of it seems right.”

  Benny gave me his wise, heavy-lidded, brown-eyed look, one I know all too well after decades of friendship.

  “Dan,” he said, “things are not always as they appear.”

  At this, my blood pressure began to rise.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I risked my life again—for nothing?”

  There was a knock on the door. I gave Benny a look, to which he responded, “Eric is here.”

  Eric wore a black polo shirt and khaki trousers. I hadn’t seen him in a few months. He’d lost weight. I was jealous.

  “What’s up, Dan? I hear you brought in Tango safe and sound,” said Eric, as if continuing a conversation we’d had yesterday. That was quintessential Eric in Technicolor, two-dimensional, with no emotions.

  “Yes,” I said, and brought him up to speed, repeating what I’d just told Benny and Paul.

  “Good,” he said. “I want you to stick around in Istanbul for a few days until we ship Tango to the US. Have some fun. Eat.” He knew that eating was my favorite pastime. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had just told him about serious gaps in the structure that the Mossad and CIA had toiled so hard to build, and Eric suggests food?

  “Thanks, Eric. I do like Turkish food. But I’m here for the action, not the calories. And you know, when you tell me to ‘take it easy,’ it sounds a lot like I’m being kept out of the loop.” My words were loaded with temper.

  Eric shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it. You’ve completed your assignment. I heard your reservations, and I’ll take a look at them once I see your written report. Until then I thought you might want some time to relax.”

  “Shouldn’t I be present during the debriefing of Tango?”

  “Yes, there will be a debriefing.”

  “Do I participate?” I asked.

  “No. Two Agency interrogators will do the job.”

  “Don’t you think I should sit in as well?” I asked. “I know this guy.” Was it a good time to add that I have suspicions regarding Tango? My inner devil said, Go for it.

  “Of course you do, but my interrogators should grill him first, and then we’ll see.”

  “Eric, you just heard my reservations regarding this guy. I’m not sure he’s for real. I raised them earlier. Then there were additional events you don’t know about, which increased my level of suspicion.”

  “You’ve always been suspicious,” said Eric in a surprise showing of some humor, albeit acerbic.

  “I’m serious, Eric.”

  “We’ll read your report and then decide.” This was too evasive for me to accept.

  I gave him a nasty look.

  Eric looked quizzically at Benny and Paul.

  Benny said, “Let me think about it,” and before the period hit the end of that sentence, I knew he meant “Never.”

  “Don’t give me that bull. I’ve earned the right. So what—I was simply a chaperone? That’s what I do now? I’m some glorified slab of muscle?”

  Benny shook his head. “That’s not true. We needed a smart guy like you, who knows how to avoid trouble.”

  “What, you’re kissing up now?” I knew how bitter this sounded. And I meant it. And I said again, “I think I’ve earned to right to participate.” That was not a case of etiquette or honor that made me insist. During the few days I spent with Tango, I had noticed a few minute details that made me uncomfortable. I needed to sit in his debriefing to see how he reacted to direct questions. Tango was our prisoner now, albeit in a golden cage. If he changed his mind all of a sudden and demanded to be let go in Turkey or returned to Iran, I didn’t think Eric would allow that. Not after all the effort and expense that was invested in the operation. Eric would first squeeze all the lemonade he could from lemon Tango before letting him out on the street. And that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, and definitely not in Turkey, where Tango could walk to the nearest police station and complain that he had been kidnapped by American agents. The level of the political scandal that would follow can only be imagined.

  Therefore, Tango would sit while a few seasoned CIA interrogators tried to get his life story out of him. Until travel arrangements to the US were completed, he would have to spill the beans, knowing he had no alternative. That’s exactly why I wanted to be present.

  “Why is that?” said Eric. “This isn’t a competition.”

  “I agree, Eric, this isn’t a competition.”

  I walked over to the window, looking down at the deserted street below. Everything I’d done for the Agency, I thought. All my work. My sweat. The bullet scar above my temple. And for what? To wind up here, a glorified bodyguard? With a pat on the shoulder, a “Good job, Dan?”

  I turned to Eric.

  “You’re right,” I said, “This isn’t a competition. This is bullshit. And I want to know why, Eric. Why I’m being treated like someone utterly expendable. And worse, an idiot.”

  Eric looked at Benny, at Paul, then at me. Benny’s eyes seemed to question Eric’s; somewhere, deep down, maybe, Benny wanted to tell me something. But Eric’s eyes, as usual, were steely: a quality, I knew, that made him very good at his job, a quality that alienated many and typically impressed me. Well, most of the time.

  But not today.

  No. Today, standing in our safe house in Istanbul, Eric’s poker stare felt like some kind of heat ray, because I could feel my temperature rise. My temples began to throb. My scar began to throb. For a split second I even wanted to punch him. Isn’t that was a “bodyguard” might have done? Wouldn’t a slab of muscle simply hit the guy? I played it out in my head: me smashing Eric’s jaw with my fist, watching him topple through the glass coffee table, watching his blood stain the tacky Turkish rug below.

  The image did nothing to quell my anger. Of course, I knew why; only thugs resorted to violence. And I wasn’t a thug. Besides, would a punch by me knock Eric over? No. The Mossad has a saying, “Your best weapon is the mind,” and of course, my mind is the reason I’m alive today. My mind, not my fists. My rage was no longer addressed to their refusal to let me participate in Tango’s interrogation. I was beyond that already. I was angry because I’d just realized that they might have known that Tango was also a fake that the Iranian planted, but nonetheless they let me continue with the charade, risking my life for nothing.

  “Eric. I already told you that there is something wrong here. I can smell it. Everywhere I’ve been, everywhere you’ve sent me the past few months, my cover has been blown. Dubai. The German ‘girlfriend’ in Paris.”

  “You do covert operations, Dan. That’s par for the course,” Eric said dismissively.

  “To a certain extent, yes. But there have been so many security breaches, it can only mean one of two things: either the Agency has become completely, shockingly inept, in which case you should recommend to the Agency to do some housecleaning—you too, Benny. Or, you’ve duped me into a babysitting a fake Tango. And I want to know why I was risking my life—twice—when you k
new it was just a game.”

  “You weren’t babysitting him,” Eric said, calm, cool, artfully dodging the most loaded part of my accusation: that I was right in my suspicion that Tango was probably fake.

  “Tango needed a savvy escort. And for obvious reasons, Dan, that was you.” He kept up the stare, but was now he scratching the back of his hand; it looked like a nervous tic. But no, couldn’t be. I’d never seen Eric do anything I would call “nervous tic.”

  “Did you hear what I called him?”

  “Fake? Is this is a gut feeling, Dan? I mean, he could be a fake planted by Iran, of course. If you had hard proof, if you’d intercepted any kind of communication, for example.…”

  Proof. He wanted proof. The best weapon is the mind.

  “OK,” I said, although I was certain he had proof, but wanted to see my cards as well. “Let’s apply Occam’s razor. According to the fourteenth-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham, the simplest theory that accounts for all the facts will be correct. Now, I know it may seem like intelligence work is an exception to that rule; very often, the ‘truth’ seems tremendously complex. I go to Dubai, to Istanbul, to France, to Damascus. I have different names in different countries. But in the end, it’s really not so complex. In the end, it’s all about groups of people who want to do harm to other people, and I work to prevent that. Simple. I’ve been doing that for you for years—”

  “And you know we appreciate the work you do Dan. You know—”

  “Spare me the platitudes. Back to Occam’s razor. Let’s take the problem, and see what the simplest answer is. Problem: Madani had no idea why we were going through Syria, even though it was supposedly his idea. Problem: he disappeared on the train on our way here, claiming he ‘likes trains.’ My suspicion? He met someone for whatever reason, and it was not romantic purposes, and I don’t think he spent some time chatting with the engineer.”