I didn’t raise my hand. When his eyes moved across our table, I shared a nod so brief and nondescript that only a man in search of it would have noticed. He didn’t come over immediately, which was smart. He went to the counter. When he looked over at me again, he had a cup of tea in his hand. I nodded again and pushed a chair out with my foot.
He was sitting across from us ten seconds later. The veneer of calm held up pretty well as we shook hands. “You’ve come a long way from Panama City,” I said.
“You got my sentence reduced by two years,” he replied. “I never had the chance to thank you. I suppose that’s why you’re here.”
“I wish it were that simple.” I nodded in Jeri’s direction. “This is Rika.”
Jeri reached out her hand. I had no idea where the name Rika had come from, but she played it well.
“It’s a pleasure,” Jilil said.
“Don’t be so sure,” Jeri answered, her smile beguiling.
“I only have ten minutes,” he said to me.
I didn’t mince words, but I did lower my voice. “I’ve been inside the underground facilities in Qom and Natanz, Jilil, and I know you’re arming rockets with nuclear weapons.”
His eyes nearly popped from their sockets. His surprise was completely genuine. “You’re insane.”
“The evidence has been transmitted to my government. They would agree that there is insanity at work here, but they don’t seem to think it’s me,” I said calmly.
He saw the look in my eyes and knew I had used exactly two sentences to put a blanket over any argument he could possibly have made. He used two hands to lift his tea to his lips and still managed to spill it. He set the cup back down, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms over his chest.
The digital voice recorder that I took out of my pocket was hardly bigger than my index finger. It was podcast ready. It had a noise reducer and a bunch of recording modes I didn’t care about. I set it on the table. Pressed the Record button.
I said, “You’re planning an attack on Israel. When?”
He stared at me as if his world was about the come crashing down on him. He shook his head, three quick jerks, like a man warding off an attack. “I’m only the deputy minister of interior. I couldn’t possibly know that.”
I reached across and turned off the tape recorder. Kept my hand on it just to let him know that I would be asking the same question in a matter of seconds. “I could threaten you with the fact that National Security will put two and two together and conclude they have a traitor on their hands. I could also tell you that I can make sure they don’t put two and two together.”
I saw just a glimpse of hope, a blush touching high cheekbones and the minutest dilation of the eyes. Take him, Jake. “Instead, I’m going to ask you to save a few million lives, Jilil. Simple. No one will ever know except me, you, and Rika, but you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror every night and know you did the right thing. Oh, and maybe a few very important people in Washington. People positioned to make your life and your family’s lives better than you could have ever imagined them.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I turned on the voice recorder again. I said, “You’re planning an attack on Israel. When?”
He stared at the voice recorder. He glanced at the watch on his left wrist. He said, “Three days and fifteen hours from today.”
CHAPTER 23
TEHRAN—DAY 10
I slid a prepaid phone across the table to Jilil Kasra. He was, for all intents and purposes, a dead man. It was my fault. I had dragged a traitor into my op, something I would never have done had it been any other op. The reason was simple. Had it been any other op, I would have shut it down long ago.
“Don’t go back to your office, Jilil. Under any circumstances,” I said to him. “You have an emergency escape plan, right?”
“Yes.” Of course he had an emergency escape plan. How silly. Every high-ranking official in every dictatorship in the world had one, because the moment a dictator fell, which they all did eventually, the witch hunt began. Get out or die.
I pointed to the phone. “Call me when you’re out of the country.”
He got up. I watched him until he was outside Café Rumi. I nodded to Jeri. “Make sure we’re clean.”
She jumped up and followed him out the door and down the street.
While she was gone, I downloaded the audio from the voice recorder to my iPhone, marked the file “Priority One,” and transmitted it in separate e-mails to General Tom Rutledge and Mr. Elliot.
I didn’t wait for a response. I took a last sip of my coffee, came to my feet, and sauntered out of the café as casually as possible. The kind of intel I had just extracted from the deputy minister of Iran’s Ministry of Interior got the blood churning in a big-time way. It also made me realize there was still work to be done.
I was two steps from the door when Jeri reappeared. She caught me by the arm and steered me back inside.
“Problem?”
“Let’s use the back door.” We walked right past the counter and through the kitchen. Jeri smiled at a chef, two waiters, and a guy in a wrinkled suit. She said something in Farsi that I didn’t understand, and the guy in the suit gestured toward the back door.
When we were outside in the alley, I said, “Jilil?”
“Not Jilil. He looked like a man headed back to work and hoping no one would know he was gone. But I saw a couple of cars that looked just a little out of place, and we’ve still got a traitor on the loose. Why risk it.”
We hustled down the alley, and she placed a call to Charlie. “Abu. Head of the alley. A block east of the café. Just a precaution.”
We were inside the car fifteen seconds later—Jeri in front and me in back—and Charlie, looking as fresh as a daisy.
“I saw them,” he said as we worked our way through the neighborhoods west of the park. “Two cars that didn’t belong. Our guys are on it. If they can pick up their trail, maybe we can pin them down.”
I didn’t say anything. Like Jeri had said, there was still a traitor out there, and if they tracked me to Café Rumi and a meeting with a government minister, then they were as good as in my back pocket. It took twenty minutes to work our way into the Ajoudaniyeh neighborhood. We dumped the car in a parking lot next to a busy market and walked three blocks to an abandoned warehouse. Charlie’s IT team had already set up shop on the second story.
Six guys and two women were huddled over banks of laptops in the middle of the room. They had honed a routine of setting up and tearing down their equipment to a well-rehearsed drill. They could hardwire their laptops to a secure router and connect the router to a satellite dish in two minutes. And still have time left over to connect the entire setup to my iPhone when the need arose. They could dismantle the operation and be out the door in ninety seconds. What took the longest time was brewing tea and fixing kabobs for their breaks.
The guy in the bow tie, the one Jeri called Amur, gave me an update. “You know that we narrowed our search to eleven potential targets. All with MEK connections and four with substantial government interaction.”
“We’ve got to get that number down fast,” I said, looking from Jeri to Amur. “What’s the plan?”
“Tell him,” Jeri said.
“We sent out some electronic chatter that makes it sound like you’re in for an important rendezvous later tonight. Places all over town. A coffee shop, an abandoned warehouse, a bazaar, a kabob stand, a late-night bookstore. Places like that. Eleven different places. One for each candidate. All at nine P.M.”
“That’s a lot of manpower. We got it covered?”
When I asked this, Amur deferred to Charlie. He said, “My guys will work in two-man teams, watching all eleven rendezvous locales. Should be enough. If someone shows, we’ll pull in some other guys for surveillance. Sound good to you?”
“Your guys have been great so far, Charlie. I couldn’t ask for a better team.” I stole a deep breath and let my eyes trave
l around the warehouse. We had hacked in to Tehran’s central phone exchange and Internet sites all over the country. We had tagged a half-dozen government databases. We had a direct line into the NSA and computers so strong that no one really knew their full capabilities; or at least I sure didn’t.
We had gigabytes of data and some very sharp guys analyzing it. All this information at our fingertips provided the illusion of control. The operative word here was illusion. Because a whole lot of this mission remained outside my control. The MEK was a perfect example. They were birds of prey waiting patiently to strike. I was the guy providing the opportunity. They needed me, and I needed them, as much as I hated to admit it. They had contacts within the Iranian military command and the upper echelons of the government. They had people in every university in the country. They had people in the media. They had eyes and ears on the street. But they also had someone in the high levels of their own organization playing a very dangerous game. And I was their target.
They had already missed me twice. A third attempt was inevitable.
“So?” I heard Charlie’s voice and let out a slow, deep breath. Jeri, Amur, Charlie. They were all looking at me. Charlie put a hand on my shoulder. “You look a little frayed, my friend.”
“Nothing a hot cup of tea won’t mend,” I said.
“I might join you,” he said.
I turned and looked Charlie square in the eye. “How you feeling about Bagheri, Charlie? Gut feeling?”
Charlie raised his shoulders. “I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend, Jake, but he’s running too scared to be our traitor.”
My eyes settled on Jeri. She gave me a curt nod, as if I were asking her opinion. I wasn’t. I had already made up my mind. But it was good to know she was onboard. “Okay. Nine o’clock tonight. Let’s see if we can sniff this guy out.”
Amur, a guy who wore bow ties and pop-bottle glasses, didn’t look like a man of action, but he snapped his fingers and started issuing orders to the rest of Charlie’s team as if he’d been doing it his whole life.
I pulled Charlie aside. “Hey, I’ve been meaning ask. Your nephew…”
“Azran.” The one who had caught the brunt of the explosion at the hotel three days earlier.
“Yeah. How’s he doing?”
“Better. He’ll even play soccer again if things keep going as well as they have been,” Charlie said. “Thanks for asking.”
One of his prepaid phones chimed. He dug it out of his pocket and stared at the incoming number. Looked at me and said, “Bagheri.”
I nodded, and he answered it. They talked for sixty seconds, in typically rapid-fire Farsi. Then Charlie held the phone against his chest and said to me, “He wants to talk. Somebody high up the chain has information to share. Very big-time information.”
“Who?” If there was suspicion in my voice, it was very intentional.
“Bagheri won’t say over the phone. Too sensitive.”
“How high up the chain?”
“Any higher and it would be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself, was how Bagheri put it,” Charlie said. “How shall we play it?”
“Like we’re in charge. And like we don’t entirely trust anyone. Which we don’t. Especially a guy with a mole running around in his organization,” I replied. I turned to Amur and said, “Pull up a street map, can you?”
All Amur did was punch a single key on his computer, and a detailed map of Tehran was on the screen seconds later. “Okay,” I said. “We move him around. Just like we used to do in the old days, Charlie. Tell him to bring Moradi. No one else. Not even his top lieutenant.”
Charlie was shaking his head. “That’s like asking your president and vice president to sneak out the back door of the White House without telling the Secret Service.”
“Like we care.” I didn’t even bother to look Charlie’s way. “And just for the record, I happen to know that the vice president is one badass driver.”
We plotted three different points along Hemmat Highway, and Charlie relayed the first of these to Yousef Bagheri. He hung up and grinned. “He’s not going to like the runaround.”
“Listen. He’s been compromised. So has Moradi. You think our traitor doesn’t know that we’re reaching out to these two? Of course he does. This counterop we’re running is as much for Bagheri as it is for us. And if he expects anything less, then he doesn’t know the rules of engagement.”
Charlie held up his hands like a man surrendering. “You convinced me. Okay? I’m convinced.” Then he gathered three of his bodyguards together and gave them their instructions. “When Bagheri shows up at our designated locations, make sure it’s safe. If he has any baggage other than Moradi, the deal’s off. If he’s clean, we move him on to the next one. If the second one looks secured, we plan our meet for number three. Tayeb?”
“Tayeb,” one of them said.
“Good. Go.”
I watched the three as they jogged toward the back stairs, then I disconnected my iPhone and severed the uplink to the NSA. Charlie’s IT team would remain in the warehouse for another hour before breaking camp. They’d set up again in another location just before sunset and monitor the movements of the eleven men still on our list of potential traitors. With any luck, we’d be one step closer to finding our guy. A very real alternative was that our guy would be one step closer to finding me.
Charlie, Jeri, and I returned to our car. Jeri drove, and I laid in back. We made a quick stop at a café that Charlie owned near the Goodarzi Market just off Daroos. I couldn’t remember my last decent meal. We huddled in a private room off the kitchen. The chef brought rice, cheese, and apricots. Then he served a soup made with pomegranates, a stew he called khoresht, and a yogurt drink known as doogh.
Charlie didn’t say a word. He wasn’t particularly nervous or distracted, just quiet. Not Jeri. She went on and on about Iranian soccer and how the national team had just pounded a team from Greece. I wanted to tell her that everyone pounds the team from Greece, but I was too busy keeping track of Bagheri and Moradi on my iPhone map.
We finished lunch just about the time the surveillance teams confirmed that the two MEK chiefs were alone and safe. Safe was the magic word. Time for a rendezvous.
We left the restaurant and drove to a parking lot next to a strip mall on east Damavand Street. Charlie was on his phone the entire time. His men had swept the area and given the all clear. No MEK. No National Security. They posted lookouts along a four-block radius.
Charlie hung up. He glanced over at Jeri. “Keep an eye out for a white Volvo.”
“He probably took it through the car wash on the way here,” she said with an abundance of sarcasm.
Charlie used a prepaid phone to dial Bagheri’s number. “Park next to the curb. Grab a seat with us, and we’ll get this done,” I heard him say.
A moment later, a white Volvo sedan—spotless, as Jeri had predicted—cruised east on Damavand, slowed, and halted against the curb. Bagheri got out from behind the wheel, a big man in a maroon shirt with a big gold necklace, big sunglasses, and a big mustache. Moradi looked positively dowdy next to his boss.
We rolled out of the parking lot and glided up close to the pair. I unlatched the right rear door and threw it open. “Gentlemen. Climb aboard.”
Moradi slipped in first and slid toward the middle. Bagheri threw his bulk in and slammed the door. Jeri had the car rolling even before the MEK chief removed his sunglasses, and we shot down Hemmat Highway.
Bagheri surprised me by saying, “Thanks for watching our backs. This situation is beginning to piss me off.”
I wanted to say something terribly sarcastic, like, That’s what happens when you recruit second-rate talent, but I didn’t. Hell, for all I knew the office of the deputy director of operations of my own CIA was compromised. Who was I to talk? So instead, I said, “So? You mentioned someone way up the food chain. Who?”
Bagheri said simply, “Armeen Navid.”
“Air force general Armeen Navid?” Charlie blurted.
I was impressed that Charlie was so impressed.
Bagheri nodded. He said, “Arteshbod.”
“Arteshbod?” I asked. My eyes flashed from Charlie to Bagheri and back again.
“The big cheese,” Charlie said.
“The head of Iranian Air Defense Forces,” Bagheri answered. “That enough cheese for you?”
“The head of the Iranian Air Defense. I see,” I said. Yeah, I knew they could hear the skepticism in my voice. But intel coming from a source this highly placed was about as rare as finding a good bottle of single-malt scotch in a hamburger joint. “And this guy wants to stick his neck out why?”
“Navid is Persian first and Shia second,” Bagheri replied. He must have see the skepticism flash across my face. “Yeah, I know. A rare bird. But General Navid is a pragmatist. He knows what a nuclear war will do to our country. And if stopping such a war means dealing with the Great Satan…”
“The Great Satan! You wouldn’t be talking about my country, would you, Mr. Bagheri?” I interrupted.
Bagheri shrugged as if to say, Who else? Then he went right on, as if I hadn’t said a word. “… And branding himself as a turncoat, then so be it. General Navid is ready.”
“A man who takes the long view. I’m impressed,” I deadpanned. Jeri had exited the highway. She was wending her way into a residential area, her eyes monitoring her rearview mirror as if the boogeyman himself might be lurking behind us. I asked, “How close are you to the general, Mr. Bagheri?”
Bagheri shrugged. “We’re estranged acquaintances at best. He doesn’t agree with my methods. I don’t agree with his. But if your question is how much do I trust him? As much as you do your friend Charlie here.”
“Okay.” My voice might have been calm and collected, but that had nothing to do with the magnitude of the situation. A guy like General Armeen Navid was the mother lode. He was in a position to confirm everything I’d learned so far, and it sure as hell helped to have more than one source when the end game is a military strike. I said, “So what is it that brings you and Navid together?”
The Natanz Directive Page 25
