“But you know for a fact The Council is real,” Parker said.
“Yes.”
“And how do you know that?”
“They almost killed me,” Casey said. “Twice.”
Parker leaned forward. “Now why would they do that, Mr. Shenk?”
“Because I found out who they were and what they were doing,” Casey said. “Remember the Manhattan bombings in 2011? I was in Soren’s Deli that morning.”
Parker stood up and turned his back to Casey, looking high along the back wall. “And you think The Council was responsible for that?”
“Yes.”
Parker turned around. “What made you come to that conclusion?”
Casey quickly flipped through the mental slide deck of memories from July 2011. Mari. Giordano. Prince. Cogburn. Swanson. Clawson. Evans. Penrose. There was one image that brought it all together. One piece that pointed Casey to the truth…even if that piece itself was a lie. He took a deep breath. “Davood Raad.”
“The same guy you just said is responsible for telling the Iranians about our alleged operations?” Miller asked.
Casey’s eyes narrowed. “Our operations?”
“Mr. Miller is an Israeli diplomat,” Parker explained. “He meant Israel’s operations.” Miller shot his friend a warning glance.
“And he’s with The Council, too?” Casey asked Parker.
“What is your fixation with The Council?” Parker barked. “We’re not talking about The Council, we’re talking about a man you claim is giving information to Iran about the clandestine operations of America’s greatest ally. Is he the same man who tried to have me killed tonight? Because if you don’t start explaining yourself, we can move you to the next room and try a different method to get the answers we want.”
“We’re not there yet, Scott,” Miller said, trying to keep his friend’s temper in check. “Assuming, for argument’s sake, The Council is real, and it was behind the Manhattan bombings...you came to that conclusion because Raad told you it was true?”
“No,” Casey said. He hesitated and added, “Raad just suggested it might be them. I went to see him to ask if he knew—since he was Iranian and traveled freely to and from that country—to ask him if Natanz was out of commission after Israel bombed it. He heard about my blog post on the ‘Complicity Doctrine’ where I said the U.S. may have let the bombings in New York happen to justify attacking Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen. He told me it might have actually been The Council manipulating the government. He asked me to see if I could find out more about The Council to help him in his own research into the group. After that, things happened that made me see Raad was right.”
“What things?”
“For one, they tried to kill me and one of my co-workers in my own apartment.”
“Right,” Parker said with a smirk.
“It’s true,” Casey said, looking up at Parker. “A lawyer for Penrose-Klein whose name may or may not have been Mitchell Evans. He might have succeeded if his head didn’t catch a sniper’s bullet from the building next door.” Parker didn’t answer, but his silence told Casey everything he needed to know. “Friend of yours?”
The pistol clipped to Parker’s belt came out before Casey knew what was happening. His eyes widened and he tried to drop below the table for cover, taking the chair tied to his ankle with him. The shot never came, and from his vantage point on the floor, he saw why. The handgun skidded into the corner and Parker crashed to his knees with a scream. Casey watched the man hug himself as the white bandages on his side turned dark red with an influx of fresh blood from the re-opened wound.
Casey cautiously peered over the table as he awkwardly got his chair up for the second time. Miller helped Parker off the floor and into a chair.
“Fuck, man. I wasn’t going to shoot him,” Parker said. “Damn it, that hurt.” He looked at the blood that covered his hand and wiped it on his shirt.
“Good,” Miller said. “Why don’t you let me handle the interrogation, and you just stick to…whatever it is you’re actually trained to do. I want to hear what else Mr. Shenk has to say.”
“Everything okay in here?”
Miller and Casey looked up at a man in a dark blue track suit who entered from the adjoining space where the Qods Force operatives were “interrogated.” Track suit pointed to Parker, who continued to focus on stopping the bleeding. “That come open again?”
“It’s all right,” Parker said. He looked at Miller. “Just fell, that’s all. I think it’s done bleeding.”
“How about the other one?” Miller asked, nodding his head toward the open door.
Track suit shook his head. “Didn’t make it.”
“Any new information?”
“He gave us this.” He handed Miller a piece of paper, who looked it over before handing it to Parker. Casey tried to see what was written on the paper, but he lowered his eyes when he saw track suit staring at him.
“Thanks,” Parker said. He handed the paper back to Miller, who quickly pocketed it.
“Just give us about ten more minutes,” Miller said to track suit, “and then he’s all yours.”
“Roger,” the man acknowledged and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Casey’s eyes darted between Miller, Parker, and the closed door. His mouth went dry, and his leg involuntarily pulled on the zip tie at his ankle. “What…what else do you want from me?”
“Answers, Mr. Shenk. Answers,” Miller said. “First, what do you know about Davood Raad?”
“Not much,” Casey said. “I know he writes books, lectures, used to work for Mir Hossein Mousavi, and he’s an Iranian spy.” He hoped that last part might keep him out of the torture room.
Parker and Miller exchanged looks. “Sounds like you know more than ‘not much,’ Mr. Shenk,” Miller said.
“So you weren’t just helping some academic, you knew you were helping a spy,” Parker said.
“Scott, please,” Miller said. “We can get to whether you believed Dr. Raad was a spy before you agreed to help him in just a moment. Right now I’m interested in how you learned that information.”
Casey’s heartbeat quickened. Miller’s inquiry told Casey that the Israeli knew who Raad was. He knew Raad had a doctorate, and he seemed know that Raad was a spy. The chance that Casey could offer any information this man didn’t already have had left the room, and Casey’s sense of self-preservation crowded out any other feeling in his body. “Lev Cohen told me.”
Miller’s face turned to stone. His eyes, unmoving, seemed to look through Casey’s, focused on the wall behind. Silence. After a moment, he blinked. “When?”
“Three days ago. I mean, four days ago. Saturday.”
“You saw him here? In Washington?” Miller asked.
“Yes.”
“Who is Lev Cohen?” Parker asked.
Miller ignored him. “And he personally told you this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“He wanted my help,” Casey said. He saw his response was not well-received. Miller looked skeptical, and Casey knew he had to convince the man he was telling the truth. “Cohen thought I might have been Raad’s source, and when he decided I wasn’t, he asked me to use my relationship with Raad to find out who was giving him the information.”
“And you thought Mr. Parker here might be that source?”
“That’s bullshit!” Parker said. He tried to stand but the pain from his wound ended that idea, and he dropped hard back into his chair.
Casey thought he was safe enough from the hobbled deputy national security advisor to speak freely to the Israeli in front of him. “I think Raad’s source is someone in The Council. Cohen wanted me to see what was so interesting at a building in Rosslyn that Raad kept going back to, and I found that NCRI has an office there. Raad already told me he was helping them get established here, but a security company called Horus Rhind is also in the building, and that got my attention.”
Miller said nothin
g, waiting for Casey to continue. But Casey now had Parker’s full attention, as well. “I think Horus Rhind might be a front for The Council, just like Penrose-Klein is, or was. And I saw Mr. Parker going into the building yesterday, so I thought he might be part of The Council. I didn’t know who he was right then, only after the fact.”
Parker said nothing. Miller glanced at his friend and looked back at Casey. “Why do you think Raad’s source is in The Council?”
Casey knew the answer to Miller’s question would not sound good, no matter how he delivered it. “Raad told me the information I gave him about The Council from my investigation after the Manhattan bombings helped him find a contact there.”
“You gave him a name?”
“Well, yes,” Casey said. “But the name only helped him find a contact. It wasn’t the guy who’s acting as Raad’s source.”
“How do you know?” Parker asked.
“He told me.”
“Who told you? Raad?” Miller asked.
“Yes. He said I helped him find a contact within The Council to help him with his research, but he wouldn’t tell me who it was,” Casey said, wincing at how weak his answer sounded even to him.
“And Cohen knows all of this?” Miller asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
“Who the fuck is Cohen?” Parker asked for the second time, visibly uncomfortable with being the only one in the room who was in the dark.
“We have a history,” Casey said. “It’s a long story.”
The door to Casey’s right opened. He saw track suit enter, and with wide, pleading eyes, Casey looked to Miller for a reprieve, a stay of execution, anything.
“Well, I see our time is up, Mr. Shenk.” He glanced above Casey’s head and nodded.
Casey felt the sting in the side of his neck before he knew track suit was behind him. A second later, the darkness closed in. Not again, he thought as he slipped once more into unconsciousness.
Chapter 27
Except for their height, Andie Jackson and Lev Cohen seemed an unlikely pair. It wasn’t so much the color of their skin, as bi-racial couples were not uncommon in the Washington area—at least not so odd as to draw stares from any but the most bigoted or sheltered pedestrians. It wasn’t even their age difference. What stood out most was the contrast of Andie’s natural elegance in both physical appearance and outward demeanor with Cohen’s rugged, worn complexion and aura of suspicious caution born from years in deserts and mountains fighting wars even history had forgotten. It was easier for Andie to dress down in jeans, Uggs, and a parka, than for Cohen to go shopping for a suit to match Andie’s normally professional work attire. Their wardrobes fit their cover. It was early morning on a cold January Wednesday, and the tourist crowds were non-existent, making the cover less than ideal. But Andie was able to get a rudimentary itinerary for Congressman Shirazi using her reporter’s credentials, and the pair had little time to come up with anything better.
They stood by a tree in a landscaped corner by the barricaded driveway to the Library of Congress. From that vantage point, they could monitor both the LOC and the wide brick-and-tree-lined walkway that led to the front entrance of the U.S. Capitol building across the street. Andie checked her watch. “Should be coming out soon.”
Cohen looked up from the map he was “studying” and glanced toward the building across 1st Street SE. Shirazi had an early appointment at the Library of Congress before a scheduled hearing of the Joint Economic Committee. They had not heard from Casey since he left to confront Scott Parker, and Cohen suggested they could use the time until he did contact them to observe Cyrus Shirazi in person.
Cohen became more interested in the congressman after Andie dug deeper into the man’s biography. Ali Shirazi immigrated to the United States from Iran in 1978 with his wife six months before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. By February 1980, the couple settled into a modest home in Los Angeles, and Cyrus Shirazi was born. With his training in systems engineering, the elder Shirazi was hired by an established logistics company’s research and development department. When the company expanded to transshipment operations in the Mediterranean in 1991, Ali Shirazi was selected to head the technical operation of a new hub in Tangier, Morocco. His fluency in Arabic, as well as English and his native Farsi, helped move Ali Shirazi up the ladder of responsibility and pay, and Ali moved his family once more.
While in Morocco, Cyrus Shirazi was exposed early to the world of international commerce and foreign economics thanks to his father. The young Persian-American also learned about rising above racial discrimination courtesy of young Arab and Berber bullies around his home in Tangier. Cyrus concentrated on his studies, and by the time he was eighteen, his grades and unique childhood earned him a trip back to the U.S. where he went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2002 and an MBA from the same institution two years later.
Rather than return to Morocco, where his parents and younger sister still lived, Cyrus Shirazi remained in California. After his studies, Shirazi was hired as a commodities broker for Peregrine Financial where he quickly made a name for himself as a shrewd, knowledgeable businessman destined for huge success. By 2008, Shirazi stepped away from the financial business despite being recently married, and he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by voters in California’s 42nd congressional district.
Shirazi’s biography and rise to a history-making political position in the U.S. government was well-known. It was the man’s family connections and his time in Morocco, however, that prompted Lev Cohen’s urging for Andie to help him dig deeper. Cohen and Andie found that Shirazi’s maternal uncle lived in Algeria from 1984 to 2007. During that time, Payam Khadem was suspected of facilitating the movement of arms to Islamist fighters in North Africa and other terrorist organizations in Europe from his business operations in Oran on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. While Khadem was not on any American watchlists, Israel was well-aware of his activities, including his help in supplying arms to Hamas in Gaza.
If Shirazi spent any time with his uncle between 1991 and 1998, Cohen argued, the younger man could have been exposed to some of the more active elements of the entrenched Islamist faction in the country—including al Qa’ida—who would consider an intelligent, multilingual son of a successful Muslim engineer a prized recruit. More likely, however, Khadem could have influenced his nephew by selling him the ideals of the Iranian revolution of which Shirazi’s uncle was an ardent supporter and veteran. Andie thought the chances of such a transformation escaping media scrutiny of a candidate running for political office in America was slim, and she let Cohen know as much.
“And frankly,” she had said, “your suspicion of Congressman Shirazi smacks of racism, if you want to know the truth.”
“Racism? Because he’s Persian?”
“Exactly,” Andie said. “If Shirazi were white, or Jewish for that matter, you wouldn’t be so quick to accuse him of being a criminal just because his uncle robs banks.”
“Payam Khadem does not rob banks. He is a dedicated Khomeinist who has worked for years to arm the enemies of Israel,” Cohen said. “If there is even a one-percent chance your congressman was influenced by his uncle during his youth, I cannot ignore the possibility that he too is working for Iran’s interests.”
“The ‘one-percent doctrine.’ I’ve heard that before,” Andie said. “I didn’t buy Dick Cheney’s fear mongering then, and I’m not sure I buy that weak argument now.”
Cohen had not been in the mood to argue, and because she was in no way obligated, he took a more pleading approach to eventually convince Andie to help him tail Shirazi anyway. Andie felt there wasn’t any harm in watching the congressman walk from one building to another, and though she was convinced nothing would come of the surveillance, her reporter’s mind secretly hoped they would catch Shirazi in some incriminating act.
So they stood in the c
old, biting wind of early morning, waiting for something to happen. The city sounds of construction, buses, and taxis, would have seemed out of place to real tourists in front of the majestic Capitol building, despite the unsightly scaffolding on the dome. For Andie, the noise had long since moved to background, and she decided to break the silence.
“You used to work for Israeli intelligence,” she said without looking at Cohen. “But you told Casey you don’t work for them anymore.”
“That’s right.”
“So what do you do now?”
“You could say I’m in private practice now,” Cohen said after a quick visual scan of the immediate area.
Andie looked at Cohen with the composed countenance of a seasoned reporter or successful poker player. “Mercenary?”
Cohen lowered the map he wasn’t looking at anyway. “Hardly,” he said. “I think in America you would call me a contractor. Except I work alone—not for a corporation—and you won’t find any contracts with my signature on them.”
“But you do this work for the government.”
“In a way.”
Andie wasn’t sure what he meant.
“There,” Cohen said before the reporter could ask him to elaborate. He nodded toward the Library of Congress building and pointed at the map in his hand to keep up the tourist guise while alerting Andie to the figure of Shirazi walking toward them. Andie wasn’t sure what they could learn by tailing Shirazi between meetings—meetings they wouldn’t be privy to in the first place—but Cohen argued that anything was better than doing nothing, which was exactly what he felt like he was doing back at Andie’s place.
Casey had taken it upon himself to look into the Parker-Horus Rhind “lead,” and in the interest of time he did not have, Cohen wanted to see what he could discover on the Shirazi front. Decades of scouting targets had taught him that you could learn more from direct observation than from just reading reports. More often than not, a target who was up to no good would act in ways that unwittingly signaled their guilt. Nervous, erratic movement, stuttering or hesitant conversation, and even an almost imperceptible clumsiness that caused minor breaks in their normal stride, were all indicators Cohen had learned to be suspicious of when he saw them. As Shirazi passed Andie and Cohen, talking into a cell phone with a folded newspaper under his arm and a briefcase in his other hand, he exhibited none of those signs. When he crossed the street towards the Capitol, he didn’t head down the walkway to the legislative building, instead turning left to a nearby bench.
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