False Flag

by F. W. Rustmann Jr.

  He longed for the way things were. When Beirut was a beautiful and gay city and Iran was a strong nation of free people. Of course, the Shah had been a bit of a despot and ruled with an iron fist, but there had been freedom and the country had been a great place to live and work. How had things taken such a horrible turn? It all happened so fast.

  When America abandoned the Shah and agreed to bring back the Ayatollah Khomeini, everything went downhill. Millions were killed in the war with Iraq, which was such an egregious foreign policy error. It was true that when America sneezes, the whole world catches cold.

  Well, he would help make things right again. He would work with MacMurphy to do whatever he could to help his country and the world.

  He reached his flat and went up to shower, change clothes and get ready for dinner with friends. At least there were still some very fine restaurants in Beirut.

  After dinner, Kashmiri received a call from his journalist friend. The journalist confirmed that Hezbollah had “an American spy” in custody but was unable to give any further details. When he returned home, he called MacMurphy on his throwaway phone and brought him up to speed.

  “You were right, Mac. They’ve got one of ours—I mean yours.”

  “You were right the first time. She is ours. We’re in this together. It’s our fight. Did you get any more details?”

  “None, but my contact confirmed the spy is a she.”

  “Good, then we’re probably talking about the same person.” MacMurphy smiled. Kashmiri was quick on the uptake. “It’s important we find out just how much they know about her. Do you think you can get anything more?”

  “I’ll try. I’ve got more than one source in this city.”

  “We need to know how to play this. Our actions will depend upon what they know. Please do your best.”

  “You can count on me. I’ll phone you as soon as I have something to report.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Yasmin Ghorbani was frightened. Two weeks had passed since her brutal abduction. She could not help but think about the last time this had happened to a CIA officer. His name was Bill Buckley, the Beirut station chief. Buckley was tortured and killed, and his body was placed in a plastic garbage bag and dumped on the side of a dark road near the Beirut airport. That was back in 1991. Hezbollah had been the culprit. She was quite certain Hezbollah was behind her abduction too.

  The modus operandi was the same, but she couldn’t figure out why they had chosen her. Her cover was airtight, or at least she thought it was. So far, her captors had only referred to her as madam or miss. That added to her discomfort.

  Surely, they must know her real identity. Why else would they have abducted her? At least there had been no interrogations. They hadn’t even asked her name. It was all very disquieting. She was quite sure ransom was not the motive. And that plagued her.

  She had been moved twice since her capture, another similarity to Hezbollah’s modus operandi. Each time she had been blindfolded and covered from head to toe in a full-body, black burqa. She had been placed in the back seat of a car and transported through the city to a location within a half-hour’s drive of her previous spot. But there were a lot of twists and turns during the drive, so the distances between safe houses could have been shorter.

  Her escort was a large, older man referred to as Abu Salah. It seemed Abu Salah never left her side or at least was never far away from her. He spoke very little and appeared to be very professional in her handling. He had an assistant, a woman covered in a black burqa, who also spoke very little and whose main role seemed to be escorting Yasmin to the bathroom and back.

  She was currently being held in a modest, upper-floor apartment somewhere in Beirut. It had two rooms that were basically the same. Her room had one window, which was barred and blocked, a small bed, a dresser and a sink. There was a bathroom down the hall. She could hear street noises, airplanes overhead, and occasional chatter from inside the apartment and adjacent apartments. The nearby apartments probably belonged to Hezbollah supporters who would ask no questions.

  Her meals were brought to her by either the woman or Abu Salah. They were always from local takeout restaurants. Falafels, all sorts of local dishes, and even the occasional McDonald’s burger were the standard fare. But there were gaps in the meals. Some days, she was only given one or two. She dreaded the day when food would stop coming altogether. And her constant hunger fed this paranoia. It rankled her that their tactics were already getting to her.

  She never saw the face of the burqa-clad woman, but she had plenty of opportunities to scrutinize Abu Salah. He was a large, dour, menacing, older man, with yellowing teeth and thick hands, who smelled of stale cigarettes. He was always dressed in a traditional dishdasha robe, a man-dress.

  What she did not know about Abu Salah was that he was a trusted Hezbollah operative who gained his experience handling captives from Sheikh Fadlallah and Imad Mughniyah back in the 1980s when the murderous pair controlled the now famous ninety-six foreign hostages. But she did know that Hezbollah had strong connections to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that back then hostages were used to extract concessions from the United States and the West, concessions that successfully advanced Iranian foreign policy interests. She worried that this was the purpose of her own abduction. If they knew her true identity, she would be as valuable to them today as Bill Buckley was back then.

  Her training had taught her to make every effort to escape and that escape was less and less possible the longer captivity continued. But Abu Salah kept her handcuffed to the bed when she was alone in her room. And he made it quite clear that any attempt to escape during the times she was not cuffed and in his custody would be futile and lead to great bodily harm.

  She was confident she could not overpower the monster, so she needed to think of another way. Intellect and persuasion were her only tools. She had always been able to use her charm and good looks to manipulate people, but this was different. It was as if her sexy figure and beauty were turnoffs to her captors.

  She was a shade over five feet tall, slender with ample breasts and a natural, sexy swing to her hips. Flawless olive skin, soft green eyes, and silky black, waist-length hair rounded out the package.

  But now she didn’t feel very attractive. Since her capture, she had only been permitted to use the sink and a washcloth to bathe. Her once shiny hair was now matted, oily, and dirty. And her full figure was starting to wane.

  She still wore the same clothes and lingerie she had been wearing when she was taken. All were soiled and her body odor was apparent even to her. She felt degraded and knew that was the purpose of her neglected hygiene. She suspected the interrogations would begin soon.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kashmiri’s call jolted MacMurphy awake in his Fort Lauderdale home. It was three o’clock in the morning in Florida. MacMurphy scrambled to find the source of the ringing on his night table and knocked his water bottle to the floor in his haste.

  “Hello,” he grunted into the phone.

  “I’m so sorry. I just realized it’s the middle of the night where you are. Shall I call you back later?”

  MacMurphy sat up and tried to shake the sleep from his brain. He recognized the voice on the other end of the line. The woman beside him moaned, pulled the sheet up over her head, and turned away. “No, it’s okay. What’s up?”

  “You’d better get out here. I’ve got information for you.”

  “You’re in Cyprus?”

  “Yes, I returned yesterday.”

  “Okay, I’ll get out there a quick as I can and call you when I get to the hotel.”

  “Thanks. I’ll wait for your call. Good night. And again, I apologize for waking you.”

  “That’s not a problem. Thanks for the call. See you soon.”

  The woman snuggled up to him when he ended the call. “Who was that calling you in the middle of the night?” she asked sleepily.

  “Nothing, go back to sleep.” He wanted to add her name to t
he statement, but he couldn’t recall it. Lola? No, Lorna. Maybe, but he couldn’t be sure.

  She snuggled closer. “You were wonderful,” she purred.

  “You were the wonderful one,” he lied. “Now go back to sleep. The morning will be here before you know it.”

  She tried to arouse him with her hand but he gently pushed it aside and turned away, feigning sleep. Finally, she gave up. Her breathing became heavier and he knew she had fallen back to sleep. But his mind was still active, and it was not concerned with Kashmiri.

  What the hell was her name? Was he experiencing memory problems? She had introduced herself at the Taboo Bar in Palm Beach earlier that evening, but he couldn’t recall what she had said. These one-night stands had to stop. He was drinking too much and constantly drifting from one bimbo to the next. Was he becoming addicted to alcohol and sex? Should he be worried about it? Clearly, he was.

  Santos had warned him about his behavior. Even Maggie had looked askance at him and commented about how wretched he looked in the mornings after too much booze and sex and not enough sleep. What was he trying to prove?

  Nothing seemed to be going right in his personal life since the death of Wei-wei Ryan. God, how he missed her. She had been his anchor for so many years during his CIA career. She always seemed to be there for him. Then, after years of off-and-on romance in all the corners of the world, they had finally come together in Paris and decided they would never be separated again.

  Paris, the end and the beginning for Harry Stephan MacMurphy. The end of his CIA career. Wei-wei’s murder. His own vengeful rampage. He shuddered at the memories.

  After his rebirth in Fort Lauderdale with GSR, everything came crashing down around him again in Thailand when he almost got the beautiful Charly Blackburn, a fine young case officer, killed. A very close call. They had survived, barely, but the emotional toll on him was great.

  Suck it up, MacMurphy! Stop whining and get on with it. He rolled over and pressed his body against what’s-her-name’s back. He grasped her breast, caressed her nipple, and heard her moan in her sleep. Then he released it, rolled away, and tried to sleep for another couple of hours before the new day began.

  CHAPTER 12

  MacMurphy was up early and went for his regular morning jog along the Intracoastal Waterway. When he returned, what’s-her-name had already showered, dressed, and made coffee for them.

  He felt sorry for her, so he went through the usual motions of caring for a stranger he just had a wild night of uninhibited sex with. But he got her out of there as soon as he could do so gracefully and then prepared himself for the day ahead.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when he arrived at the airport for his American Airlines 5:47 p.m. flight to Athens. He planned to spend his three-hour layover in Athens in the Admiral’s Club lounge before the short hop down to Larnaca, Cyprus. During his layover, he called Kashmiri and scheduled an eight o’clock dinner appointment at the intimate Chez Nicole restaurant on Aphrodite Street in the center of Nicosia.

  MacMurphy arrived ten minutes early to find the restaurant almost empty. He remembered that Cypriot hours were like Greek hours, which contributed to the lack of productivity of both countries. For the most part, the working population would rise early in the morning, begin the day at around seven in the morning and work until about one in the afternoon. Then they would go home for lunch and a four-hour nap. This was not a “kick off your shoes and stretch out on the couch” type of nap. It was a “put on your pajamas and get under the covers” type of nap. Most shops closed during the afternoon hours.

  After the nap they were supposed to go back to work for another three hours or so, but many of them did not. So, when they finally got around to eating dinner, it was late, about ten o’clock in the evening. But they were well rested when they awoke; they had already had four hours of sleep. So, when they fell into bed in the early morning hours, they only had to sleep another four hours to get their required eight hours of rest.

  Unfortunately, not everyone, especially not Americans, functioned well on this schedule. But not even the advent of air-conditioning, which allowed people to work indoors during the hottest part of the day, could change these deep-set habits of the Greeks and Cypriots.

  MacMurphy was jolted out of his musings by the touch of Kashmiri’s hand on his shoulder. “Hi, Mac, good to see you.”

  “Good to see you, Hadi.” MacMurphy stood and shook his hand warmly.

  MacMurphy ordered them a slightly chilled bottle of Chateauneufdu-Pape wine from the Rhone region of France and they perused their menus. When the waiter had left, MacMurphy said, “I can’t stand it any longer. What did you learn?”

  Kashmiri frowned, “I learned a lot, but it’s not good.”

  “I suspected as much. They know who they have . . .”

  “Exactly. And, it’s definitely Hezbollah. The kidnap order came directly from Tehran.”

  “What do they call her?”

  Kashmiri flinched. “What do you mean? Don’t you know her name?”

  MacMurphy hesitated before answering. How much should he tell this agent? He decided to go all in. “She has two names.”

  Kashmiri sat back in his chair and eyed MacMurphy. “Ah, I understand. She’s operating under cover and using an alias.”

  “Yes, like the leaves of an onion. We need to know how many layers they have stripped off so far, how much they know.”

  Kashmiri nodded. “Whether she’s sticking to her cover story . . .”

  “Right.”

  “You told me her name was Abida Hammami, a Jordanian woman. That’s who they think they have. That’s her alias, isn’t it?”

  MacMurphy considered. How far should he go with this? He trusted Kashmiri and knew that full disclosure would work to his advantage, but the other side of the coin was security. If he knew too much and was captured . . .

  “Trust goes both ways. I want to level with you, but I also need to protect you. I’m sure you have heard about the need-to-know principle. It’s pervasive in the intelligence business, and for good reason.”

  Kashmiri replied, “I do understand, and I’ve got no problem with it.”

  “Okay then, I can tell you this much, Abida Hammami is not her true name and she is not Jordanian. Hammami is an operational alias. Her cover story allows her to travel unrestricted throughout the Middle East as a Jordanian businesswoman. The business is backstopped with a telephone number and an address in Beirut, but it’s not airtight.”

  “So, she’s actually an American citizen and a CIA employee.” It was not a question.

  MacMurphy answered, “Yes and yes.”

  “Then you really do have a huge problem,” said Kashmiri with great concern.

  “Tell me about it . . .”

  A waiter walked up to take their orders. On MacMurphy’s recommendation, they both chose the house specialty, caneton á l’oignon, and then continued their conversation.

  MacMurphy said, “Now it’s your turn. Please begin at the beginning and walk me through your efforts since our last meeting.”

  Kashmiri took a sip of wine, regarded his glass for a moment, and set it down in front of him. “I may have stirred things up a bit with my questioning. I got the impression that they, Hezbollah I mean, were not prepared to release any details about the abduction as soon as they did. My journalist friend, the guy from L’Orient-Le Jour, will release the story in the morning. Essentially, it will report that Hezbollah has announced the capture of a Jordanian businesswoman who was spying on Iran for America. That’s about all the article will say other than she was captured in Beirut, and it won’t be a headline, just a block on page four.”

  “And other papers will pick it up.”

  “Yes, everyone is out digging for details now. But that’s all that is known in Beirut at the moment.” Kashmiri paused to let that sink in. “This duck is delicious,” he said.

  “Indeed it is, but don’t keep me hanging. What other information outside of B
eirut are you talking about?”

  Kashmiri smiled broadly. “I called one of the guys I used to work for in Tehran, you know, in the new SAVAK. He gave me the number of his former boss, the guy who used to run the Ministry of Intelligence, Mohammad Reyshahri. Reyshahri is retired now, but when I called he remembered me right away. He’s still well connected but bored with his new life of leisure. He’s not permitted to travel outside of the country, but he invited me to visit him the next time I’m in Tehran.”

  “Wow! Great work.”

  “Thanks. He’ll make an excellent source for us. He’s very chatty. During our conversation, I mentioned what I had heard about the American spy captured in Beirut, and he said he knew all about it. I could hardly control myself. I just let him talk after that. He said she was spying for the Americans and that Hezbollah picked her up off the streets under direct orders from his old outfit, the Ministry of Intelligence. How about that? Direct orders.”

  MacMurphy was visibly excited. “What else did he say?”

  Kashmiri grinned broadly. “I’m getting there. Someone got suspicious about her and reported her to the ministry. Apparently, she’d been asking too many questions about Iran’s nuclear program. That’s a very sensitive subject these days, especially in light of the recent Iran nuclear agreement with the U.S. So, they told Hezbollah to pick her up for interrogation.”

  MacMurphy shook his head. “They’re going to let Hezbollah interrogate her about Iranian nuclear matters? I don’t think they would ever do that.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe they’ll send one of their own interrogators. We didn’t get into that.”

  “Okay, good. Where are they holding her?”

  “In a Hezbollah safe house in Beirut under the control of the same guy who used to oversee security for Imad Mughniyeh, the bastard who was responsible for the 1983 Marine barracks bombing. More than two hundred Americans died in that attack. The subsequent U.S. Embassy bombing killed another sixty-plus Americans.”