The Scorpion's Gate

by Richard A. Clarke

  The waiter brought a small mezza of tabouli, hummus, olives, feta, and baba ghanouj to start. A U.S. minesweeper made smoke and pushed off from a dock below.

  “Well, I figure Brian Douglas is more than the usual British Embassy petroleum whatsit himself, especially if he knows the deputy director of... What is your title again, Rusty?”

  “Intelligence Analysis Center. We’re the writers, the sifters, not the spooks. Brian and I met at a petroleum research conference in Houston last year,” MacIntyre tried lamely.

  “Right,” she said sarcastically. “Where is he, by the way? He hasn’t returned my calls in days. I need to return something to him.”

  As she spoke, Kate Delmarco took a small reporter’s notepad from her bag and placed it on the table next to her.

  “Well, since you’ve already seen through Brian’s intentionally thin cover, he’s in London for a week or so. So what is it you were hoping to tell someone in a Western intelligence agency?” MacIntyre saw no point in continuing the charade and hoped his candor would buy him some credit with a reporter who appeared to have very good sources.

  “Well, that was frank. Which is more than I can say for Brian when it comes to his job. Thank you, Rusty.” She wondered whether she had given away too much about her friendship with Brian. She wondered how much he had told the American. “The reason I knew the attack was under way was that I was told so by someone tied to Islamyah intelligence. And the reason I knew him was that I was introduced to him by a Dubai real estate mogul, whom Brian Douglas suggested I should get to know. In short, our mutual friend Brian must know that Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid over at the Salmaniyah Medical Center here is the brother of the head of Islamyah intelligence.

  So why couldn’t he just tell me that straight out?”

  MacIntyre paused, trying to follow the connections. “As I said, I am not an operational type. I write analyses, or rather, I have a bunch of really smart people who write analyses based on the things that people like Brian collect. So I can only assume... But I think it has something to do with deniability. What would Dr. Rashid have done if you called up and said, ‘Can I interview you? You were just outed as a spy by the British’?”

  “He would have freaked.” Kate laughed. “You’re right. Instead, with the Dubai guy as our mutual friend, he has become quite a source for me. I’ve seen him a couple of times since the tanker hijacking. He’s worried. That’s what I would tell the mysterious Brian Douglas if he weren’t off in London.”

  “Worried about what? That the Brits and the Bahrainis know who he is and what he’d doing here?” Rusty asked.

  “Lots of things,” Delmarco said, looking at her notes. “That the Shura Council in Islamyah may do something soon, something really stupid that will provoke the Americans. That it’s dominated by fundamentalists who will continue some of the mistakes made by the Sauds. That his sources that keep tabs on the Iranians here think something big is about to happen. He’s a very nervous man, our doctor. I wouldn’t want him keeping an eye on me in the intensive care unit.”

  “I’d like to meet him,” MacIntyre said.

  “No way. Do you want to get me killed? ‘Excuse me, Ahmed, meet my spy buddy from Washington.’ I’d never hear from him again,” Kate said, closing her notebook and placing her napkin on the table.

  Rusty MacIntyre took the napkin. “It’s amazing they use paper napkins in a high-class place like this,” he said, and tore it into four pieces.

  “What...what are you doing?” Kate stammered.

  MacIntyre held the pieces of the napkin in his right hand, moved his left above it, and then, looking straight at Kate, said, “I must see Ahmed.” He then pulled the napkin from his right hand and handed it back to Kate in one piece. She gasped. He grabbed the napkin back, ran it through his hands, and repeated, “I must see Ahmed.” What appeared from his right hand was a napkin in the shape of a rose. “I don’t believe it,” the reporter said, accepting the paper rose. “Excuse the parlor tricks,” MacIntyre said. “I just wanted to get your attention. Kate, if Ahmed’s right and things are about to happen in Islamyah and Iran, there may be no more time for niceties.

  Besides, Brian isn’t coming back for a few days. I need to do this now. Tell Rashid that I’m your editor from New York, tell him I’m your older brother, tell him—”

  “Nice try. Older brother. I like that. I have you by five years at a minimum.” Kate thought for a moment. “If I do this and lose him as a source, you’ll have to do some other magic trick to make it up to me, with material at least as good as I got from Ahmed. Deal?” “Deal. See if you can get him to meet me tonight,” MacIntyre urged.

  “I’ll try, but he works late at the hospital.” She took out her mobile. “Are you staying here at the Ritz?”

  “No. I have the guesthouse at the American ambassador’s residence. It’s...safer,” Rusty admitted, blushing slightly. As Kate Delmarco called Dr. Rashid and left a voice mail for him, saying that they needed to get together tonight if possible, Rusty MacIntyre checked the PGP-encrypted e-mail on his BlackBerry.

  There were three messages and only four people knew the account.

  One was from Sarah. She had to go to Somaliland to do a refugee survey and would be back in D.C. in ten days. The neighbor kid would look in on the cat. One was from Brian Douglas, suggesting they meet at Jaipur, a “dive curry house” on Dubai Creek in three days, when he would be on his way back from his “shopping holiday,” meaning his trip to Tehran. Even using encrypted e-mail, Brian was careful.

  The third message caused him to focus:

  Rusty,

  All right so I had to handwrite this and give it to Ms. Connor to send to you. The keyboard on this thing is too small. Anyway, here’s the story. Secretary Conrad’s DIA source in China now says that the Chinese troops will fly into Islamyah on the 28th, a day after the Chinese fleet arrives in several Islamyah ports. We still cannot confirm this with any other source, so Conrad may be making it up. Separately, one of the military guys on our staff says he learned from a friend in CENTCOM that the date for the Bright Star Exercise with the Egyptians has suddenly been moved up from March 15th to February 25th. I have no idea why. Be careful out there, but find out what you can and get your ass back here pronto. We may not have a lot of time. R.

  “Hello? Sorry to interrupt...” Kate was saying. And then as Rusty looked up from the BlackBerry: “I left a message. If he calls back and agrees to meet my editor, I’ll call you.”

  “What’s today’s date?” Rusty asked, distracted.

  “February eleventh, here on earth,” Delmarco needled. “Right. Sorry. So—tonight. I really need to see him tonight.” A three-ship flight of Bahraini F-16s swept low over the port, headed out to the Gulf, out toward the Zagros.

  Imam Khomeini International Airport

  Tehran, Iran

  “Simon, old boy. How was the flight? Bloody cold here compared to back home, i’n’ it?” a tall, broad man in a heavy overcoat said loudly as he approached Brian in the sparkling, high-vaulted glass cathedral that was the international arrivals hall. “Did Limpopo really beat us? God, you know, I leave Durban for a little bit and our team starts losing to the likes of Limpopo. Next we’ll be going down to the likes of Mpumalanga. Here, let me take that,” he continued boisterously. This, apparently, was Martin Bowers, of the SIS Durban base, playing the nut importer and partner of fellow South African Simon Manley.

  Brian Douglas let his newfound friend take his bag. He looked about in amazement at the modern airport.

  “Yes, it is a wonder, isn’t it, Simon? They tell me the old airport was a proper dump, Mehrabad with emphasis on the ‘bad.’ Glad we never had to use it,” Bowers continued as they pressed through the mob by the Customs door. “This is only about forty-five kilometers south of the city, so at this time of day less than two hours’ drive. After the traffic here, I’ll never complain again about Durban. That’s why I splurged and got us a driver for the run in: I couldn’t navigate us sa
fely with these crazy drivers.”

  Good, Brian thought, a hired driver taking two foreigners in from the international airport is likely to be on the hook to report to VEVAK, the Ministry of Intelligence Service. Let VEVAK know that the two white South Africans were not afraid to get a hired driver and that they spoke only about traffic, football, rugger, and pistachios. Someone trying to avoid VEVAK attention might take the crowded bus downtown; Simon Manley and Marty Bowers would never even think of VEVAK. Maybe Bowers is more than the oversized blowhard he played.

  When they got in the car, Bowers started, “We’re staying at the Homa Hotel, which they say was once a Sheraton. Very nice and on the high street, or what passes for one—Valiasr, I think they call it. Now, let me tell you about Tehran . . .” Brian Douglas, now Simon Manley, tuned out of the explanation that was meant mainly for the driver to overhear. He thought instead of the Tehran he knew so well, the back alleys off the bazaar, the poor streets in the south of the city, the dead-letter drops in the mountain parks an hour north of the sprawling, polluted jumble that was now the capital of Persia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  He thought of the network of Iranian sources that he had run successfully until, after he had moved on to the station chief Bahrain job, his best source in the Iran network had been shot dead on the street by VEVAK. Shot dead after depositing the plans for Iran’s new air defense system in a dead-letter drop in Baku two days before. Until then it had worked well, largely because it had not involved the British Embassy in Tehran. VEVAK kept close track of the entire embassy staff. His network of Iranian spies had survived because only Brian and a few in Vauxhall knew who they were and the meets were almost always out of the country: Ankara, Istanbul, Dubai, and, of course, Baku.

  After the hit, London had ordered all contact broken until an assessment could be made of how the source had been compromised. They never had figured it out. Months went by and Brian had been posted to Bahrain as chief of station for the lower Gulf, including the posts in Doha, Dubai, and Muscat. Downsizing had forced SIS into having one senior officer for all four posts. Now, three years on, he did not even know if the members of the network were still alive, still at their old addresses, still in the jobs that had made them so valuable. Most important, he could not know whether they would still recognize the invitation to a meet. He thought of the cameras in the Border Control booth at the airport and subconsciously wiggled his newly shaped nose.

  “So here we are, the Homa,” Bower said, breaking Brian’s reverie. “Owned by the airline, this chain is. Not really what we would call a five-star, but Iranian five-stars are the best they have. What we would think of as two-star.”

  The room was simple and relatively clean. His window looked down on Vanak Square and did little to stop the noise of the incessant Tehran traffic below. He gave it a quick check for audio and video surveillance, without being too obvious about what he was doing. If they already knew who he was, the surveillance devices would be too good to detect. If they thought he was a South African nut buyer, there might be some lower-quality devices placed there on a purely random basis. The fact that he could not see anything told him he was either clean or under sophisticated monitoring.

  He dined that night with Bowers at a place near Vanak Square, a place with a mix of locals and some foreign businessmen. The hotel doorman had recommended it. When they returned to the Homa, they approached the front desk. “Could you give me a wake-up call at eight o’clock tomorrow?” Brian asked in English. He turned to Bowers. “I’ll see you downstairs for breakfast at nine, since our first meeting isn’t until eleven.” Bowers had arranged to visit a pistachio exporter near the bazaar.

  As he got into bed, Brian Douglas set the alarm on his wristwatch for 0530.

  The Gulf Café

  The Corniche

  Manama, Bahrain

  Russell MacIntyre looked at his watch again, impatiently. “I thought you said he would show up around eleven. It’s almost eleven-thirty.”

  Kate Delmarco sipped her Tanqueray and tonic. “I said he gets off shift at eleven, assuming no one is dying on him. Chill. Anyway, people here work on a different rhythm of time. This isn’t Washington.”

  “Miss Delmarco, my name is Fadl.” The young man had appeared out of nowhere. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that said “California University” with a map of California below it. “Dr. Rashid would like your guest to come with me. I will take you to him, sir.”

  “Well, we both want to . . .” Rusty began.

  “Just you, sir. Dr. Rashid was very specific,” Fadl insisted. “Not the woman.”

  “Okay. Well, Kate, I’ll meet you at the Ritz later. I’ll call your room and we can meet at the roof bar.” Rusty wanted to make sure that somebody actually saw him later that night to know that he was all right. He hoped she understood what he was doing.

  “And if I don’t hear from you by last call?” Kate asked, smiling. She was enjoying seeing MacIntyre squirm. She was actually surprised that he’d agreed to go with the young man he had never seen before.

  “Call the place where I’m staying. Tell them to leave a light on for me.”

  MacIntyre followed Fadl and climbed into a minivan, which pulled up as they made it to the curb. There were two more men inside. Fadl introduced them. “This is Jassim. He will pat you down. No guns, cameras, recording devices. You understand.”

  Jassim looked closely at the BlackBerry and then removed its battery. “You will get it back when we return you to your ambassador’s residence, Mr. MacIntyre.” So much for being Delmarco’s editor from the New York Journal, thought MacIntyre.

  His efforts to engage the three young men in conversation failed totally, even though at least two of them were apparently fluent in English. At least, he thought, there is no blindfold involved yet. Despite his ability to watch where they were going, Russell MacIntyre doubted he could reconstruct the route down alleys and side streets without street signs. Finally, the minivan stopped on a dusty back street lined with run-down apartment buildings. “He’s waiting for you,” Fadl said, pulling back the door.

  “Where?” MacIntyre asked, looking down a barely lit pedestrian passage between the buildings directly in front of the van door.

  “Over there. In the Mustafa Café,” Fadl said, pointing across the street in the other direction, where a storefront was lit and a small Pepsi sign glowed dimly, with the name of the shop written in Arabic below. MacIntyre got out and walked across the little three-way intersection to the store. One street was unpaved, dirt. On the others, the curbing was intermittent. The parked cars were old and beat-up. The street lighting was occasional. This was not the highrent district. As he pushed open the door, a little bell overhead rang to let the owner know someone had come in. It was a combination convenience store and café. Not the kind of place that would be open at midnight.

  “Mr. MacIntyre, over here,” a man said from the farthest of the four tables along the wall. He rose and walked toward the American, holding out his hand. “Thanks for coming to my part of town. Hope you don’t mind. I am Dr. Ahmed bin Rashid. I understand you wanted to see me.”

  They shook hands and sat down at the little table. Rashid was drinking a Pepsi and had a second bottle opened and a glass waiting for his guest. MacIntyre noticed there was no one else in the shop.

  “Dr. Rashid, America has many intelligence organizations. I am from one of them,” MacIntyre said as he placed his business card on the table. He doubted many recruitments had been done quite this way. “Our job is not to run operations but to interpret information that others collect. Sometimes, however, when we are not getting the information we need, we go to the field ourselves to learn. I am here to learn, from you.”

  Ahmed examined the business card and then dug out one of his own. It said he was “Attending Physician, Cardiology, Intensive Care Unit, Salmaniyah Medical Center.” Noticing Rusty’s smile as he read the card, Ahmed added, “And, as you know, my brother is Abdullah bin Rashid, a member
of the Islamyah Shura. What would you like to learn about, Mr. MacIntyre?”

  “About the Shura and how America could deal with it in a way that prevents a long period of hostility. I personally—and I stress this is just my belief—I personally think that our two countries could be reconciled. Unless, of course, the Shura is intent on adopting policies that will make it impossible for us.”

  “What would those policies be, Mr. MacIntyre?” Ahmed asked stiffly, formally.

  “Policies that enforce a strict Wahhabist approach, denying human rights, exporting terrorism. Policies that might involve the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, or restricting the export of oil to one market. But I am not here as a policy maker or negotiator. As I said, I am here to learn, Dr. Rashid.”

  “You must come to a café on a dirty back street in Manama to learn about Islamyah because you cannot learn from your embassy in Riyadh. You closed it, out of fear and lack of understanding.” Ahmed shifted in his chair. “Very well. Here is what you must learn. The pronouncements of your government, particularly the Pentagon, make it sound as though you have not accepted what has happened in my country. The Sauds are gone from power, Mr. MacIntyre, and they took the people’s money with them. And your ministers consort with them to bring them back to the throne. This drives some on the Shura to look for ways to protect our country from America. It strengthens the hands of the faction who also want the Wahhabist policies you object to.”

  MacIntyre spoke slowly, softly. “Dr. Rashid, I am not too sure I know all the factions in the Shura, but I do know that your brother, Abdullah, was a member of al Qaeda. I don’t know whether he personally killed any of my fellow Americans, but I can tell you that the presence of people in your government who are or have been terrorists makes it very difficult for our two countries to have normal relations.”