by Matthew Dunn
Eleven
“It’s been only seventy-two hours since I gave you my instruction.” Alistair took a sip of his Chateau Margaux. “And within that time you have been to three countries, terrified two people into working for us, and witnessed the murder of a senior MI6 man.”
“I did advise you to send a regular intelligence officer.” Will smiled and pushed his own wine to one side.
“And maybe your advice was correct.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “But that officer would have met Lace, taken notes, and then returned to London to give you a well-written but ultimately useless report. I, on the other hand, have given you our target.”
The two men were sitting at an oak booth in Simpson’s on London’s Strand. The restaurant was an elderly eatery, popular with government mandarins and senior business executives. It was also a place to eat meat, and among many other things Will’s Controller was certainly a consumer of flesh.
Alistair peered at him. “Do you trust Harry and Lana?”
Will shook his head. “No. Harry thinks he’s reached a state of grace where business no longer matters to him, but he will always be someone who sees enemies around him. If it came to it, the only side he can choose is his own. Lana is motivated by abandonment-fueled anger and a desire for meaning, but those are dangerous and unstable emotions. Trust will never come into play, but I believe I can channel and control both Harry’s and Lana’s mind-sets to my advantage.”
Alistair looked out over the rest of the restaurant and its lunchtime diners. “What will you eat?”
“Nothing.”
“As you like.” Alistair took another sip of his drink. “You’ll need to be careful with Lace.”
“I know.” Will spoke the words slowly. He thought for a moment before saying “I’m certain that Harry did nothing careless to lead a killer to Ewan. But somebody knew that our man was going to be at that restaurant. Do you have a view on Ewan’s death?”
Alistair shook his head. “I suspect that Ewan was running up to fifty agents and as many operations out of his Sarajevo Station. There are a number of people of whom he could have fallen afoul.”
Will nodded. “Harry’s given me the Iranian man’s code name,” he said quietly.
Alistair cursed. “A code name? That’s hardly going to help identify the man.” He shook his head. “What is it?”
“Megiddo.”
Alistair’s eyes immediately narrowed. “Megiddo? You’re sure?”
Will frowned. “Of course.”
Alistair said nothing for nearly a minute while continuing to hold his gaze on Will. He then nodded slowly, and Will could see that a slight smile had emerged on his face.
“Is the name relevant?”
Alistair broke his gaze with Will and seemed lost in thought. He muttered something, but whatever the words were, they seemed more for his own benefit. “I have moments where I wonder if I have overcapitalized upon your terrifying desire for retribution against the world’s ills.”
Will leaned forward and spoke firmly. “Do not wonder anything about me, Alistair. I make my own decisions.”
Alistair regarded him and smiled, but the look seemed bitter. “I know you do,” he said quietly. “You always do. But I sometimes wonder what sort of man you might now be had those men not murdered your mother when you were barely out of boyhood.”
Will leaned even closer. “It’s a pointless thought. When she died, my childhood died.”
“Memories don’t die, William.”
“I have too few to know.”
“There may be more to be discovered.”
“What do you mean?”
Alistair looked down and seemed to ignore the question. “My interest is anything but pointless.” When he looked up again, he said, “I wonder how long I can continue to exploit your incredible mental and physical strength before I can tell myself that I have failed in my duty. I wonder what sort of man I am continuing to allow you to be. I wonder if I am about to make things even worse for you.”
“What do you mean?” Will repeated.
Alistair nodded. “Your tiny number of childhood memories has produced a man who takes absolute measures to kill those you deem worthy of such punishment and who saves those you deem helpless. You have left very little if anything for yourself. But”-he pointed at Will-“there is still a chance for you to address that.”
Will rested back into his chair and exhaled loudly. “I do my work. That’s all that matters to me.”
“I don’t believe you.” Alistair spoke sharply and quickly. He glanced around the restaurant and then back at Will. Sighing, he lowered his voice. “You’re a good man, William. I of all people know that. But I also know that you have exceptional skills, which I have shamelessly utilized for the sake of our work. That is what I do; it is my job. But”-he shook his head-“there is a part of me that hopes you will one day find peace and happiness. And I know that is what you really want, too.”
Will frowned. Alistair’s eyes were locked onto him and seemed to be burrowing through his mind and soul. He felt a moment of total discomfort and had to look away. He wanted Alistair to say something, but the man just sat in silence. He wanted any distraction to stop him from reflecting on his Controller’s words. However, a surge of thoughts entered his mind and culminated in one unspoken sentence, You’re right, Alistair. So please release me now from your control and let me try to find that happiness and peace.
The Controller was still staring at him.
Will breathed in deeply. He felt anger rise within him, anger that Alistair was perhaps the only man who could, with words alone, strip off his armor and lay bare his compassion and his heart and his fantasies about a life different from that which he had. He wondered, though, whether Alistair knew everything. He wondered if the man knew that what terrified Will the most was the idea of taking those first few steps toward a different life. He decided that Alistair did know everything. He decided that Alistair was testing him.
Will smiled. “I’m sure that right now we have more pressing matters to discuss.”
Alistair remained very still for a moment, exhaled loudly, and then smiled. “Indeed we do.” He lowered his voice. “Have you ever been told about Operation Hourglass?”
Will shook his head.
Alistair inhaled deeply. “In 1979 we had advance indications that the shah’s corrupt regime was going to be imminently overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic, and we needed to understand what that meant for a reborn Iran. Specifically, we needed to understand what decisions were being made by the revolutionaries about Iran’s future military strength and its intentions toward its Arab and Israeli neighbors. But we knew that our existing Iranian agents and allies, some of whom were SAVAK officers loyal to the shah, would be redundant or killed as soon as Iran’s old regime collapsed. As a result, we were worried that we would be left with an almighty intelligence blind spot.”
Alistair quickly surveyed the room before settling his gaze back on their oak booth. “We shared these concerns with our CIA friends, and it was decided that we would construct a joint operation, code named Hourglass, to try to drain every available MI6 and CIA Iranian asset of relevant intelligence before we lost them to the revolution.”
Alistair placed his hands on the knot of his tie and pushed upward, even though Will could see no indication that it had slipped even a fraction of an inch. “The logistics in putting together Hourglass were huge. The operation involved approximately four hundred intelligence officers and analysts from Langley and London as well as signals-intelligence support from the National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters. But worse than that, there was a tortuous political resistance to declaring MI6 assets to the CIA and CIA assets to MI6. However, in the end we overcame that resistance and as a result constructed a joint-operation task force that was probably unprecedented in its level of collaboration.”
He went on quietly. “Once the green light was given, Hourglass immed
iately commenced approaching and debriefing some two thousand agents. It was an enormous task, and for three months Hourglass intelligence officers barely had time to sleep. The analysts had an even harder task, as they were charged with evaluating and collating all of the intelligence that was coming back from the agent debriefings. They achieved their task, but”-Alistair smiled ruefully-“the result was an unwieldy mess.” He narrowed his eyes and spoke more quickly. “The agents had produced conflicting intelligence, conjecture, rumors, and blatantly self-serving lies. It was a disaster.”
“Surely we should have predicted such an outcome? When agents are put under that amount of pressure, they often tell us what they think we want to hear.”
Alistair shook his head. “We had no choice, because time was our enemy.” He placed his hands flat on the table. “The operation was about to be closed down when, by chance, the Hourglass task force struck gold. Or at least we thought that was the case.”
For the briefest of moments, Will spotted what he believed looked like regret on his Controller’s face.
Alistair exhaled and brought his hands together. “A junior CIA officer, working in the American embassy in Iran with one other more senior CIA officer, was approached by a young Iranian man who claimed to be a revolutionary. The man said that he had been coerced into joining the revolutionary movement, that he had comprehensive intelligence relating to postrevolutionary Iran’s proposed domestic and foreign policies, and that he would give us this information if he could defect to the West. The CIA officer interviewed the man and established that if he was telling the truth, he was capable of supplying us with superb intelligence. But,” Alistair added, rubbing his hands together, “we had a problem.”
“The officer had to find a way to get the defector out of Iran?”
“Exactly.” Alistair frowned. “There were uprisings and hostilities across the country, and Iran had therefore become a very dangerous and unpredictable operating environment for the few remaining Western intelligence officers based there. The CIA had exfiltration plans in place, but these had not been properly tested. However, MI6 had a route out which they believed would work. So the Hourglass task force instructed the CIA officer and his senior colleague to work with one Tehran-based MI6 officer to get the revolutionary out of the American embassy and take him to the Iranian port of Bandar-e ’Abbas in the south. The three intelligence officers packed the man into the boot of a car and then drove across the country to their destination.” Alistair looked away again. “It was clearly a frightening journey, as the men must have known that they would have been executed had they been caught.” He looked back at Will. “Several years earlier the British had recruited an Iranian captain of a trawler vessel. The plan was for the three officers to take their prize onto that vessel and then sail across the Persian Gulf to the United Arab Emirates.”
“What happened?”
Alistair sighed. “They were driving along a straight country road about seven miles outside of Bandar-e ’Abbas when the men spotted a roadblock of revolutionary militia four hundred meters ahead of them. Even though they knew they could be seen by the roadblock soldiers, they immediately stopped the car and spoke to each other. They made some very rapid deductions about their situation.” The Controller nodded slowly. “All of which turned out to be true. They decided that the roadblock was unusual. They decided that somebody knew about them and their revolutionary man. They decided that such a security breach could not have come from their own services. And they decided that their revolutionary was most certainly not a defector.”
“They were being set up?”
“Yes, a trap.” Alistair shrugged. “We still don’t know what purpose the trap served. It could have been to flush out the mechanics of the exfiltration route, or maybe it was to catch three Western intelligence officers with their pants down. But whatever the reason, the men realized that their situation was dire. For thirty seconds they argued and debated as to what they should do. And then the senior CIA officer made a decision all on his own. He picked up his handgun, got out of the car, and walked to the back of the vehicle. The officers knew that his actions were being watched by the roadblock guards, as those soldiers had now swung weapons in the direction of the vehicle. Nevertheless the CIA man removed the revolutionary from the vehicle’s boot and placed the gun against his head. The CIA officer told his colleague and the MI6 man to run while he held his captive.” Alistair exhaled loudly. “The two men were reluctant to do so at first, but they also knew that it was their only option. There were approximately fifteen soldiers ahead of them, so to stand and fight would have resulted in the capture or death of all three intelligence officers rather than one. They therefore left the CIA man to his fate.”
“Did the two men escape?”
“Yes, they did. They got into Bandar-e ’Abbas and used the trawler captain to take them to the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.”
“And the CIA man they left behind?”
Alistair leaned forward. “We later found out from some of our Iranian agents who survived the revolution that the CIA officer was captured and subjected to terrible torture. We know that he revealed nothing to the Iranians. We also know that he was finally executed and that his body was dumped somewhere in the Persian Gulf.”
Will was silent for a moment before asking, “What is the point to your story?”
Alistair did not reply immediately. Instead he stared at Will, as if analyzing him. He tapped a finger once on the table. “The story is another memory for you. But I fear that it will drive you even harder. I fear that it will snap any remaining possibility for you to one day gain peace with yourself and others around you.”
“As you said, so far that has suited you just fine.”
Alistair nodded. “It has, and it continues to suit me. After all, it was I who spotted you when you joined MI6. It was I who identified your extreme and peculiar potential. It was I who took you away from the normal corridors of MI6 and put you on the highly classified Spartan Program. No man of your generation had ever done the yearlong program and lived. However, you not only survived but excelled in the program, and as a result you became our most deadly and effective operative. There is never allowed to be more than one of you, so while you live you are the only man who has our most distinguished code name: Spartan.”
A memory came to Will. It was the first day of the Spartan Program. He was standing barefooted in the Scottish Highlands wearing blue overalls. It was winter, snowing heavily and well below freezing. An instructor walked up to him, pointed north, and quietly gave him his first task:
You’ve got two days to cover one hundred miles on foot across the mountains. Armed men with dogs will be trying to hunt you down. If they succeed, you fail. If you don’t get to the objective within the time allocated, you fail. If you try to get help from anyone you might meet on the route, you fail. And know this, if you succeed we’re going to take you away and put you in a prison cell for two weeks. There you’re going to receive your first taste of intense torture and total sleep deprivation. We will make you wish that you were dead. With every frozen step you take over these mountains, remember that.
Will pushed the memory away.
Alistair’s eyes narrowed. “As Spartan you have provided exceptional results in the field. But one day I am going to have to look in the mirror and ask myself some hard questions.”
“One day, but not yet?”
Alistair leaned farther forward. His words were hushed and rapid. “Right now the Qods Force Head of Western Directorate is the West’s most dangerous opponent. He is not a fanatic or an ideologist or a martyr. Instead, and from the little we know of the person, he is an exceptional strategist and an intellectual who also happens to be a killer. He plans to massacre thousands of people in one of our cities in Europe or the States. And I need you to stop him. But I cannot allow your desire for vengeance against the world’s evil to cloud your judgment.” Alistair reached across the table and gripped a hand over Will’s
muscular forearm. Despite his age and thin frame, Alistair’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Whatever happens, whatever you subsequently hear, can you assure me of that?”
Will looked down at Alistair’s hand and then back up at the Controller’s face. “My judgment has always been absolute and unclouded.”
Alistair nodded once and released his grip as he leaned back. He took a sip of his Margaux and then replaced the glass on the table. “Tomorrow you will fly to CIA headquarters in Virginia. There you will meet Patrick, who will brief you on our Qods Force commander. He will also be on hand to help you throughout the mission.”
“This is to be a joint operation between the CIA and MI6?”
Alistair smiled crookedly. “Technically, yes. But you would do better to view this as a joint operation between Patrick and me.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t, but Patrick will ensure that you do.”
Will considered this. He looked away, frowning in thought before turning back to face Alistair. “I presume you must have been the MI6 officer in that car outside of Bandar-e ’Abbas. Would I be right in saying that the CIA man who escaped with you was Patrick?”
“You would.” Alistair was motionless while watching Will.
Will frowned as he recalled Patrick’s words to him in the New York room:
Alistair and I share the same debt of gratitude to another man. And that debt brought me to this room today.
Will’s frown increased. “Who was the other CIA officer?”
Alistair nodded slowly. His eyes glistened. “He was a private man who kept his work completely secret. Even his small family believed that he was an American diplomat whose death was a tragic accident.” Alistair was very still now. “I think about him every day. I think about how calm he looked when he took the decision to save me and Patrick. I think about how defiant he looked when he held the revolutionary man against his body and shoved the handgun’s muzzle to the man’s head. I think about how resolute he looked as the soldiers rushed toward him while we escaped.” Alistair placed his fingers again over Will’s forearm, but this time the grip felt tender. “Every day. . every day I never fail to think about your father.”
