Marcia stayed behind after the others had filed out. She lit a cigarette, which was against the rules. Blue trails of smoke curled around her head.
“What’s going on, Harry? Cut the crap. I know you too well. Where were you over the weekend?”
“Between us?”
“Of course. After all these years, who else would I tell? My cat?”
“I was in London. I’m working on some stuff with SIS. They have capabilities and authorities that we don’t. We have a name and address for Dr. Ali. We need to talk to him in a hurry. Obviously. Otherwise these crazy fuckers downtown are going to get him killed.”
“Does the admiral know what you’re up to?”
“Sort of. Enough to give me a fig leaf.”
“Well, don’t get caught. That’s all I can say. In the meantime, how can I help?”
“Cover for me, the way you did today. I have to do some more traveling. And try to keep Fox and his friends from doing anything crazy. And keep your mouth shut.”
“And if the balloon goes up?”
“Which balloon are you talking about? War with Iran?”
“No. I’m talking about you, Harry. What should I do if you get caught, doing whatever it is that you’re not doing?”
“Lie.”
She smiled and took a last puff on the cigarette.
“You got it,” she said.
Harry called Arthur Fox. His secretary said he was on the seventh floor with the director. So Harry called the admiral’s private line and asked if he could come up. The admiral said of course, he had been meaning to call Harry to ask him to join the meeting. He sounded embarrassed.
The view from the director’s suite was a bland vista of trees, parking lots, the dome of the bubble-shaped auditorium where the agency gathered for what were usually tedious ceremonies. Long ago, when the CIA had reigned supreme, this must have seemed to Allen Dulles and his coterie the very height of modern elegance—this “campus” on the Potomac. Now, it was a monument to mediocrity. Even a middling state university had more panache among its faculty members than did the agency in its espionage corps.
The director was playing with one of his ship models when Harry entered the room. It was a battleship, long and fat in the hull. Evidently he had been waiting for Harry to show up. Fox was sitting on the couch with his back to the window. He was in shirtsleeves, wearing his green-striped Ivy Club tie as a secret signal to any Princeton man he might encounter. He had a sour look on his face, as if he had just eaten something that didn’t agree with him.
“Harry Pappas, back from the dead,” said Fox. “Sorry about your cold. We missed you.”
“I’m sure you did, Arthur. But somehow I’ll bet you managed on your own.”
“Easy, shipmates. One big happy family here,” said the director. “We were just talking about where we are going. Now that the White House has given us new Codeword policy guidance on Iran.”
“And what might that be?” asked Harry. “If I’m cleared for it.”
“You missed that too,” said Fox. “Another NSC principals meeting yesterday. People asked after you. ‘Get well soon.’ That sort of thing.”
Harry ignored Fox. He was like an unpleasant dog. The louder he barked, the more you wanted to take out a gun and shoot him.
“They want to go public,” said the director. “Disclose the new evidence about the nuclear program in a big prime-time press conference in a week, maybe two. Then declare the embargo on Iran. Naval first, then air.”
“Just like the Cuban missile crisis,” said Harry.
“Precisely,” said Fox.
“They don’t want to take it to the United Nations?” asked Harry.
“No. Bad memories. Nobody wants another Colin Powell show.”
Harry shook his head. He knew they had been heading in this direction, but the rush worried him.
“How much detail does the White House plan to reveal about the bomb program?”
Fox answered for the director, to whom the question had been addressed.
“We’ll roll out everything we’ve got. Appleman’s orders.”
“But what we’ve got is ambiguous. And it will get our guy killed.”
“Can’t be helped. Casualty of war.”
Harry turned to the director. He was playing with another ship model, a submarine this time. It looked like a big gray knackwurst. “Do you agree, Admiral?”
The admiral nodded. He looked uncomfortable. “Afraid so, Harry. This is crunch time. The Iranians have to know we mean business.”
“What if the Iranians resist the embargo? Because they will. Some crazy asshole in the Revolutionary Guard will decide that he can win a one-way ticket to paradise if he takes out one of our ships in the Gulf. What do we do then?”
“We attack, of course,” said Fox.
“I get it,” said Harry. “You want them to attack. So you’ll have a pretext.”
“Let’s just say the White House won’t be unhappy.”
“Oh shit,” said Harry. “This is a big mistake. Everything tells me you’re reading this wrong, Admiral.” The director was silent. What his feelings might be, Harry wasn’t sure, but he suspected they were similar to his own.
“You know what?” broke in Fox. “It doesn’t really matter what you think, Harry. It’s too late. This is a decision. What we are talking about now is implementation. And what you should think about is tactical intelligence. To support our brave soldiers and airmen who may soon be in battle.”
“How long do we have?” asked Harry.
“Until the press conference? A week, two at most.”
“That’s insane,” said Harry. “What’s the rush? Why be in a hurry to make a mistake?”
“Because the president is determined to be firm. This problem isn’t going away. Leadership is about making the tough decisions. But that’s not your game, is it, Harry? You people always want more time. But we’ve run out.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Nobody knows anything about our new intelligence. Why don’t we take the time to understand what it means?”
“That’s not exactly true, Harry, that nobody knows. The Israelis have found out. The prime minister called the president over the weekend. He said that if the United States doesn’t take action, others will.”
“Shit! How did the Israelis find out?” Harry was glowering at Fox.
“Don’t be so naïve, Harry. This is Washington. Nothing stays secret for very long.”
Fox had such a smug look on his face that Harry suspected he must have been the leaker himself.
“Admiral?” asked Harry. But the director was brushing lint off the crisp blue serge of his navy uniform. He didn’t want to hear about it.
They talked for another forty-five minutes about the new orders that had been issued by the Special Interagency Group that was now managing Iran policy out of the NSC. Harry asked how the director wanted to use the additional officers that were being surged into the Iran Operations Division, but the director didn’t have a clue. He just wanted to cover himself in the event someone asked later if there had been enough people to do the job. Fox didn’t have any suggestions, either. So Harry said he would draw up an ops plan, muttering that it might have made sense to have the ops plan first, and then add the bodies.
The heart of the discussion was about tactical intelligence to support the planned naval and air embargo, and future follow-on military operations. The White House wanted to mobilize every asset the agency had in the Iranian military or Rev Guard corps. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much, so the discussion didn’t take very long. When they finished going over the requirements and tasking, Harry asked if he could see the boss alone for a moment. Fox protested, but the director for once showed a little backbone and asked the Counter-Proliferation chief to leave the room.
The two men sat down beside each other on the couch. It was an oddly intimate setting, without the usual buffers of distance and other people.
“You’ve got to delay th
is,” said Harry. “We need more time. We’re rushing into this for no reason. We’re going to get my guy killed, but I can live with that if I have to. The fact is, we’re going to get a lot more people killed, unnecessarily.”
“I know,” said the director quietly. “How much time do you need?”
“A month,” said Harry. “Two months would be even better.”
“Forget it. You’ll never get that. You heard Fox. These people are ready to go.”
“Three weeks,” said Harry. He was thinking to himself how fast Adrian’s team could get into the country, find Karim Molavi, and get him to someplace safe where they could talk to him.
“Two weeks is the best I can do, Harry. I know for a fact that the president himself isn’t quite as hell-for-leather as Arthur and his pals. But this is in motion. I think he will take the full two weeks if I tell him we need that time to work our sources.”
“Then I’ll take two weeks, if that’s the best I can get.”
“What are you going to do? I need to tell the president something.”
Harry turned away and looked out the window, to those rustling trees. They were beginning to lose their leaves in the early chill of October. Out by the parking lot, a cluster of Japanese maples had already turned fire-red. Harry wondered if he should tell the director what he was doing with Adrian Winkler. It would open too many doors, pose too many questions for which there weren’t good answers. It was one of those situations where the right thing to say, paradoxically, was absolutely nothing. Harry had started down a road by himself, and he had no choice but to continue along it, to the end.
“Tell the president I’m working my ass off to get him what he needs. I’m doing everything I can to make contact with our Iranian agent in the nuclear program and get more information out of him.”
“Right, but how are you going to do that?” The director spoke softly, as if his words might break something fragile.
“I don’t know. Just tell the president I am trying to get him the information he needs to make a wise decision. And not to pull any triggers until I get back to him.”
“And if you run out of time?”
Harry didn’t answer. He wanted to say that if he ran out of time, he would plead for more, or lie to delay action another few weeks. But the truth was, he didn’t know what he would do.
25
TEHRAN
An attractive foreign woman with an Hermès scarf tied loosely around her blond hair approached the reception desk at the Aziz Apartment Hotel on Esfandiar Street in North Tehran. She was muttering to herself in German, but when she reached the desk clerk she switched to a slightly accented English. Her suite on the seventh floor was acceptable, she told the clerk. It was very nice, very clean. The porters had carried the luggage up to the room, thank you very much, all four Louis Vuitton bags, plus the oversize makeup kit. But there was a problem. She would be needing two keys please, because she would have a visitor, coming and going, yes, and he would need his own key. She tilted her head, ever so slightly, and smiled at the clerk. She didn’t have to explain any further, did she?
The woman was very beautiful—with bronzed skin and that silky blond hair that kept slipping out from beneath the luxurious scarf that was her attempt at a hijab. She talked loudly, so that others in the small lobby could hear, and when the desk clerk handed her a second key card, she smiled conspiratorially. She unfolded a ten-euro bill and left it on the desk, then strolled back to the elevator.
None of the Iranians who watched the woman, including the several who reported to the intelligence ministry, would have been in the slightest doubt as to what they had just seen. This German woman was the mistress of someone powerful; she was the sort of well-mannered courtesan who escorted international businessmen, even in a city such as Tehran. By Islamic lights, she was certainly immoral, but then, so were most Western women. Her status was confirmed a few hours later, when she received a visit from a gentleman caller—a wealthy Iranian businessman who resided most of the time in London and Frankfurt. The microphones in the woman’s bedroom picked up the sounds of lovemaking—quite amorous and, by the sound of it, more than a little rough.
Jackie stayed in her room for several hours, reading a book. The gentleman, who never actually removed his clothes, sat in a chair. When it was dark, she led the Iranian man upstairs to the rooftop restaurant of the Aziz Apartment Hotel. The lights of North Tehran twinkled in every direction, and the night air was scented with the perfume of the garden’s array of flowering plants. They ordered a lavish dinner, and as they waited for the courses to arrive, they busied themselves with cellular telephone calls, his and hers, as travelers will do.
Jackie’s first call was to the number of a young man from Yemen who had entered the country that same day. His real name was Marwan, but she called him “Saleh.” She spoke in her German-accented English, and only for long enough to confirm an appointment the next morning. Then she took another phone from her purse and called a hairdresser in the penthouse of the Simorgh Hotel, the newest and glitziest in town, and made an appointment to have her hair done.
When the food arrived, she flirted with the Iranian gentleman in her mix of German and English. Before she left the rooftop at the end of the evening, she and her friend walked over to array of shrubs that marked the edge of the terrace. As she gazed out at the million points of light that was Tehran, she leaned toward one of the wooden boxes in which the shrubbery was planted. No one could have seen her remove a thin object from her purse and stick it into the soil of the planter’s box, so deep that only the very top remained above the dirt. She walked away, leaving her relay antenna invisibly in place.
Marwan’s flight from Doha was delayed by a sandstorm. And when the Qatar Airways jet finally arrived at Imam Khomeini Airport, Marwan couldn’t find a taxi at first. The airport was so far from the center of town that the drivers didn’t like to pick up passengers they couldn’t cheat by doubling or tripling the fare. In his cheap suit and his garish tie, Marwan looked like an Arab hustler—a man who would cheat the cabdriver before falling prey to his tricks. But eventually a taxi pulled up in front of Marwan and the driver agreed to take him to the New Naderi Hotel, just off Jomhuri-ye Islami Street.
The hotel was a big ramshackle place in the middle of the downtown business district. A few blocks north were the main offices of the big Iranian banks—Melli, Sepah, Tejarat. Marwan had booked a cheap single room in his work name, Moustafa Saleh, and a cheap room was what he got, facing out on a courtyard that was little more than a ventilation shaft. The Iranians didn’t much like Arabs, least of all the Yemenis who came to Tehran prospecting for quick ways to make money.
Marwan emptied the contents of his flimsy suitcase into the drawers of the wooden dresser. He opened the window to get some fresh air. Even if there had been surveillance in his room, nobody would have seen him attach a small rod to the exterior wall, hidden against the frame of the window. The second node of the communications relay net was up.
The Yemeni traveler took his dinner at a small restaurant on Sa’di Street. He had his cell phone with him, the one that had been configured so artfully in London; it transmitted to the high-gain antenna, and from there, to the satellite in space. Marwan took a brief call during dinner from a woman. Then he placed a call to a third cell phone, configured like the other two. That one didn’t answer, but Marwan didn’t leave a message. He knew that his Pakistani brother was coming.
Hakim’s arrival in Tehran had been delayed by the ordinary realities of Iranian life. He had come into the country from Pakistan, crossing at the border post at Mirjaveh on the eastern frontier. He had boarded a bus operated by Cooperative Bus Company No. 8, which traveled the main highway of southeastern Iran, the A02. It wound through Zahedan and Kerman and Yazd—sour little cities frequented by smugglers and traders. The bus was supposed to connect in Yazd with another that would take him southwest to Shiraz.
But this was Baluchistan. The bus had a flat tire a few h
ours into the trip, and it took many hours to fix it. They limped into Kerman eight hours late. Hakim found a cheap guesthouse where he could spend the night and set off the next morning for Yazd. He missed one Shiraz bus, but found another and finally arrived in the city where he was registered as a purchasing agent for a construction project. He took the first transportation to Tehran he could find, the Sayro Safar private bus. The trip was almost a thousand kilometers—all night and most of the next day before the bus finally rolled into the Southern station, below Besat Park. From there he took a group taxi a few miles north to the dust and debris of the old Tehran bazaar and checked into the Hotel Shams. He was dirty and smelly, which gave his cover a gritty reality.
Hakim found a qibla in his room, pointing the direction toward Mecca; there was just enough space for him to put down a prayer rug. He walked to the window. It was broken, letting in the noise and smells of the bazaar. He found a gap in the molding around the window, and into it he placed the thin antenna of his relay transmitter. His cell phone rang as he was trying to catch a little sleep. It was Marwan, checking to make sure that he had arrived and confirming the meeting the next day.
Jackie left the Aziz hotel the next morning at nine. Her Iranian gentleman caller had departed at seven-thirty, dropping a lavish tip in the doorman’s hand as he departed. Jackie made a grand exit, wearing black leather pants under her manteau, and carrying a flamboyant Fendi purse. She had reserved a hotel car and ordered the driver to take her down Vali Asr Avenue to the Simorgh Hotel. The hairdresser was on the top floor of the hotel. She made her way across the lobby toward the elevator, the leather of her pants squeaking from the friction of her thighs as she walked. From the other side of the lobby, an Arab man dressed in a business suit approached the elevator, entering it just after she did.
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