False Flag

by F. W. Rustmann Jr.

  “Where did all this happen?” asked MacMurphy.

  “I was getting to that.” Maggie brushed a wisp of errant, graying, auburn hair back from her face and fiddled with her pencil. “As I said, she’s assigned to Cyprus but travels frequently to the Middle East, mostly on an alias Jordanian passport. She does this by leaving Cyprus on her U.S. passport and going to Beirut where she meets with one of our inside officers and switches passports for onward travel to Iran, Syria, Libya, or wherever.”

  “That’s one ballsy woman!” exclaimed Santos.

  “You bet she is. She’s one of our most sensitive and effective NOCs, and now someone’s got her. Rothmann is pulling his hair out. They’re deep into the damage assessment and still have no idea how her cover got blown or whether whoever’s got her even knows whom they have.”

  MacMurphy put his hands together in front of his face and massaged his nose with his fingers, thinking. “When did all of this go down? Who do they think has her?”

  Maggie said, “There’s so much we don’t know. But we do know she was grabbed off the street in Central Beirut about an hour after she made a midday brush pass with one of our officers to switch passports. It happened three days ago. We think our inside case officer was under surveillance and led the kidnappers to our NOC.”

  “So, whoever has her may believe they have a Jordanian woman. They may not even be aware she’s an American,” said MacMurphy.

  “Maybe . . . probably,” Maggie nodded. “But we just don’t know. Her Arabic might be accented.”

  Santos asked, “I imagine the Agency is pulling out all the stops to locate her and get her back, so what does Rothmann want us to do?”

  “The Agency is doing what it can, but it’s limited in what it can do due to the sensitivity of the operation and of her in particular. Very few people even know of her existence. Her activities are highly compartmented and the bigot list is very short. They think it was Hezbollah. That would make sense. They’ve got us under almost constant surveillance in Beirut. But all we really know is that she was grabbed by a couple of Arablooking men and forced into a black van with local plates. Eyewitnesses told us that. Or rather, they told the police who then told us. Abductions take place all the time in Beirut. Mostly they just want ransom.”

  “But no one has contacted anyone for ransom,” said MacMurphy.

  “They probably wouldn’t know who to contact if they were common criminals. She wasn’t a resident of Lebanon.”

  “What a mess,” said Santos, shaking his big head.

  “What’s her name?” MacMurphy asked.

  “The name on her Jordanian passport is Abida Hammami. Her true name is Yasmin Ghorbani. She’s thirty-three years old with waist-length black hair, green eyes, and a slender build. You’d like her, Mac. Beautiful. Just your type.”

  “Your reputation is catching up with you, Mac,” chided Santos.

  “Maggie knows everything.”

  She pushed back in her chair. “What’s the plan?”

  “Damned if I know,” said MacMurphy. “But if we assume she’s being held by Hezbollah and that Hezbollah knows they have someone important, like a Jordanian agent of the CIA . . .”

  “Or worse . . .” said Santos.

  “Yes, or worse. They could know they have a CIA case officer. An NOC. In that case, they—I mean Hezbollah—would probably be forced to give her up to Iran. The Ayatollahs in Iran call most of the shots as far as Hezbollah goes. We’d never get her out if they did that. Not with this mealy-mouthed administration. There are four other American hostages who have been languishing in Iranian prisons for years.” MacMurphy turned and looked directly at Maggie. “In any event, why does the DDO think we can do this when the Agency can’t?”

  “I asked him that. He said you were the best case officer he had ever worked with. He said that you could move faster than the CIA bureaucracy could and that you were a great recruiter. But don’t let any of that go to your already over-inflated head.”

  “Recruitment?” MacMurphy shook his head. “He wants a source inside Hezbollah. But none of those fanatics would ever work for Americans.”

  Maggie said, “Rothmann said you’d figure something out.”

  “Sounds pretty complicated to me. Where do we even start?” asked Santos. “We’d at least need an access agent to get things rolling, wouldn’t we?”

  Maggie started scratching her head with her pencil. After a moment she said, “I know this fellow in Cyprus . . .”

  CHAPTER 8

  The CIA’s Nicosia station is the focus of all of the Agency’s worldwide counterterrorism operations. It’s CTC turf. Located in the eastern Mediterranean about midway between Turkey to the north and Lebanon to the southeast, Cyprus serves as a transit spot and communications hub for Middle Eastern terrorists in Europe and the Middle East. The island nation is divided roughly in half with the northern part occupied and controlled by the Turkish population and the southern half by the Greeks. A United Nations “Green Line” divides the two parts and keeps them from going after each other’s throats. It has been this way for more than forty years. Greeks and Turks are like oil and water.

  The United States Embassy is located in Nicosia on the Greek side of the island.

  MacMurphy’s plane touched down a little before noon on the southern coast of Cyprus at Larnaca Airport. He stopped at the Avis counter, rented a car, and took the highway north to Nicosia, arriving a little over an hour later.

  He was no stranger to Cyprus. During his active career with the CIA, he had visited it many times on temporary duty. His travels there taught him that almost every Middle Eastern terrorist case had a Cyprus connection.

  He pulled into the Hilton Hotel on Archbishop Makarios III Avenue and parked his car. There were newer and better hotels in Nicosia these days, but this one was located near the center of town and was familiar to him. MacMurphy was funny that way; he liked returning to familiar places even when he had better options. It made him feel comfortable. Perhaps this familiarity offset the danger he frequently faced during his Agency career and occasionally struggled with after.

  His meeting was not until eight o’clock that evening, so he checked into his room, worked out in the gym and walked to the pool to cool off and lay out in the sun for a while. He returned to his room at 6:02 p.m. for a shower and a twenty-minute power nap—whenever he slept, he had the ability to bring himself down to a relaxed state almost akin to hibernation. Then, refreshed, he dressed casually in tan slacks and a blue polo shirt and headed down to the Hiltonia Bar for a well-needed vodka tonic while awaiting the arrival of his contact.

  Hadi Kashmiri walked into the Hiltonia Bar at exactly eight o’clock. The short, balding, plump millionaire was known for his punctuality. He sported a well-trimmed moustache and goatee and a grey, three-piece, pin-striped suit. Regardless of the oppressive Cyprus heat, the suit was his uniform. He survived by ducking from one air-conditioned place to another. He paused for a moment at the bar’s entrance, scanned the occupants within and settled on the athletic man with salt and pepper hair—mostly salt—wearing a pale blue polo shirt.

  MacMurphy immediately recognized Kashmiri from Maggie’s description and slid off his barstool to greet him. He grabbed his half-finished drink from the bar and guided his contact to a booth near the back of the paneled room. A waitress took their drink orders—another vodka tonic for MacMurphy and a Dewar’s on the rocks for Kashmiri—and they settled in.

  Kashmiri had had a long career as a contact for the CIA. He was never officially an agent because he was never paid, which meant he was never under any kind of control. He offered his services for strictly ideological reasons—he hated the fanatical Ayatollahs and their murderous ways—and presumably because he enjoyed the excitement of working with the Agency. His family was part of the aristocracy in Iran before the revolution. After the Ayatollah Khomeini deposed the Shah in 1979, he remained in political favor due to his family’s indispensable business connections around
the globe. Kashmiri was permitted to run his family’s international business investments relatively unhindered by the usual restraints placed upon Iranian citizens. He maintained residences in Tehran, London, and Cyprus and traveled freely on Iranian and British passports, whichever served his purpose.

  They were halfway through their drinks when MacMurphy asked, “You were such a valued friend of the Agency for so long. Why did you break off the contact?”

  Kashmiri smiled, “It wasn’t me. It was you guys. I never knew the reason, but I think I figured it out. For years I did the bidding of the Ministry of Intelligence under Mohammad Reyshahri, you know, the new SAVAK. Reporting directly to him on what I saw and heard during my travels, which was nothing much. Nothing of any great importance, but he hung on every word because they lived in such a vacuum. They had no idea what went on outside their borders. Then they started asking me to do little things for them. Things like renting apartments—they were probably for safe houses—and arranging furniture shipments to their embassies abroad. They had no idea how to get things done abroad. Even simple things like buying drapes. They’re morons.”

  He swished the ice in his glass before continuing. “Where was I? Oh yes, and during these meetings we would talk about other things. Mohammad was very chatty, especially after a good meal, and we always had dinner during our meetings. He had no money so I always bought. He liked visiting fine restaurants. He would tell me about this and that. Complain about his job. Gripe about the pressure the Ayatollahs were putting on him. Those kinds of things. And of course, I would tell you people everything he said and about the things he asked me to do for him. Then, one day, he asked me to give him the name of the CIA station chief in Cyprus. I said I didn’t know it. He told me to find out for him and to let him know as soon as I had it. It appeared that this was very important to him.”

  “Did you give it to him?” asked MacMurphy.

  “Never. I never knew it. I knew the guy I was meeting in Nicosia couldn’t be the chief. He was too young. And he was probably using an alias with me anyway. How was I going to find out something like that?”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Of course, I reported it all to my CIA contact and asked him what I should do. He told me to try to use my contacts to figure it out like I normally would and asked me to report back to him before saying anything to Mohammad.”

  “Did you get the right name?” MacMurphy was uncomfortable.

  “Yes, I got three different names from my sources in the Cypriot government and police. All three of them were on the U.S. Embassy diplomatic list.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Well, the young officer read the names and handed the list back to me without giving me any indication of whether I had the right name or not. Then he told me to go ahead and give my report to Mohammad like he had asked.”

  “And?”

  “I went back to Tehran and gave Mohammad the list and told him the source of each name. That’s it . . . except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “I returned to Cyprus three weeks later and signaled for a meeting, but the young officer never showed up. I tried repeatedly, but no one ever came to meet me. Not until now.”

  “That’s very strange. Very odd . . .”

  “Oh yes, this may be important. I checked around later and learned that one of the guys on the list had gone back to Washington on short notice. I drove by his house and it was empty with a ‘For Rent’ sign in the front yard.”

  MacMurphy knew right away what had happened. Langley had yanked their officer out of there as soon as they learned he was being targeted by the Iranians, and then they had broken off contact with Kashmiri. That’s not what he would have done, but it was symptomatic of the way things were at headquarters in those days. They would toss away an excellent contact on the off chance that the Iranians might figure out he was the source of the information that caused the departure of the station chief. This overabundance of caution was ruining the CIA.

  They were halfway through another round of drinks and had ordered dinner and wine. MacMurphy felt Kashmiri was relaxed enough to move the meeting on to more substantive issues. He was satisfied that Kashmiri was trustworthy and could be helpful. MacMurphy began, “I have something very important to discuss with you, something very sensitive.”

  “I figured. If I can help, I will.”

  MacMurphy looked him directly in the eyes. “We have a very big problem.”

  He explained what had happened and asked Kashmiri to gather as much information as possible about the welfare and location of Abida Hammami. But he withheld the fact that the woman was actually an American citizen of Persian decent named Yasmin Ghorbani. For the time being, it was important to stick to the cover story: a Jordanian woman of interest to the United States was abducted off the streets of Beirut, and the United States wanted her back.

  “What do you want me to do?” Kashmiri asked. He was quite serious now and leaned in as he spoke.

  “First, make inquiries among your contacts. We want to know who abducted her and why. That’s very important. Do they think she’s an American agent, or do they simply want a ransom? We have reason to believe Hezbollah is behind the kidnapping, but we really don’t know for sure.”

  Kashmiri studied MacMurphy. “So, she’s a CIA agent.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s Hezbollah. That’s a big problem.”

  “Do you know someone who would know whether Hezbollah grabbed her and why?”

  “Not directly. Has anything been reported in the press?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Then where do I start?”

  “Good question.” MacMurphy looked down at his meal, arranged his fork and knife on the side of his plate, and picked up his glass of wine. His mind was spinning with thoughts, none of which gave him any answers. How would Kashmiri broach the subject of the woman’s abduction if no one was supposed to know anything about it? The only people who knew about the incident were in the CIA station in Beirut, a few people in Langley, the eyewitnesses, and presumably the police. He finally broke the silence. “Do you know any journalists in Beirut?”

  Kashmiri thought for a moment. “Yes, I know several.”

  “Any with Hezbollah connections?”

  “Sympathies maybe, but I don’t know about connections. I see where you’re headed, though.” Kashmiri’s eyes brightened. He felt himself being pulled into the conspiracy with MacMurphy. “What if I made some inquiries for you? I assume you can give me all the details of the abduction, like the exact location, the vehicle, and descriptions of the men and the woman.”

  “Yes, I can give you all of that. You can attribute your knowledge of the incident to hearsay from one of the eyewitnesses. Great idea.” MacMurphy’s admiration for Kashmiri took a big leap forward.

  Kashmiri grinned, “It was your idea. You just planted it in my head.”

  “No, not at all. Like they say, great minds think alike.”

  They continued eating their dinner, content that they at least had a clear direction in which to proceed. At the end of the meal, MacMurphy gave Kashmiri his throwaway phone number and instructed him to purchase a similar pre-paid phone so they could maintain contact with a fair degree of security. MacMurphy also forced Kashmiri to take an envelope containing $10,000 “for expenses.”

  At first, Kashmiri resisted because he had never taken money from the CIA before. But MacMurphy eventually wore him down. It was important to maintain a degree of operational control over an asset. That was the difference between a “contact” and an “asset.” Control. MacMurphy also wanted Kashmiri to feel like part of the operation, and the money proved MacMurphy had confidence in him.

  Kashmiri didn’t know it, but he had just been recruited.

  CHAPTER 9

  MacMurphy returned to Fort Lauderdale the following day. Three days later, Kashmiri had a meeting in Beirut with a journalist friend
who worked for the French language daily newspaper in Lebanon, L’Orient-Le Jour.

  Kashmiri told the journalist what he had heard about the kidnapping and asked whether Hezbollah was back in the kidnapping business. The journalist immediately picked up the phone and queried one of his Hezbollah contacts. The contact feigned ignorance at first but said he would do some checking and get back to him. The journalist got the impression his contact knew something but did not know how to answer.

  Satisfied that the meeting had run its course, Kashmiri left the offices of L’Orient-Le Jour and walked down to the Paris corniche that ran along the bank of the Mediterranean. It was a beautiful afternoon and a great day for a walk. He certainly needed the exercise, so he headed north in the direction of his flat.

  He passed the spot where the old American embassy used to stand and couldn’t help but remember the bombing that occurred there almost thirty years ago. So much had happened in the world of terrorism since then. Beirut had been transformed from the Paris of the Orient to a bombed-out ruin. Yes, there were construction cranes all over, and the city was trying to dig itself out of the ashes and rebuild. But it would never be the same.

  At least it was still beautiful along the corniche. A light breeze wafted across the sea and enveloped him as the sun slowly drifted downward, reflecting off the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean.

  He thought about his relationship with his new CIA contact. MacMurphy was different from the rest. More self-assured, yet his dark eyes exuded an air of compassion that made him feel comfortable. Still, Kashmiri knew not to be careless. He understood the dangers of working with the CIA. After all, he was playing both sides. He traveled frequently to his home country of Iran and kept a small pied-à-terre in Tehran. If someone discovered his duplicity . . . well, it would not be pretty.