Bagheri didn’t hesitate. “What brings the general and me together is an acute understanding that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s proclivity toward the destruction of Israel and the unbelievers who support her will leave Iran in ruins.”
There was a lot of danger here. A mild understatement if ever there was one. But there was also the greatest of opportunities, if the MEK chief was right. I looked over at Moradi. He hadn’t said a word so far, and it was time to get a read on the man from Amsterdam.
“Kouros?” I used his first name. Very personal.
“We worked together how many times?” he said to me. “Five, six times? Always with the same goals. We’re not friends, but there is respect. And you’re not leaving Iran without talking to this General Navid. I know you better than that.”
I gave him credit for holding my eye. He wasn’t lying. He was all in. Just like he’d always been for the last thirty years.
“Okay, but we use my rules,” I said.
Bagheri shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. Navid’s rules. He walks around with National Security draped around his shoulders. There are maybe three or four places where he can actually let his guard down, and one of those is his cousin’s place in Mehran. And it’s already arranged. The meet is scheduled for suppertime. Navid eats there a couple of times a week, so it won’t raise an eyebrow.”
“And what do you suggest I do? Walk up and knock on his cousin’s door? That doesn’t sound too suspicious.” My cynicism was getting the best of me.
Bagheri handled it well. He gave me a cool smile. “You’re a man of mystery. Be mysterious.”
“A nice compliment, I suppose, but I’m actually very old-fashioned. I prefer a solid plan with a solid back-up plan,”
“So my friend Kouros tells me.” He gave a twist of the head in Moradi’s direction.
The man from Amsterdam reached into the inside pocket of his rumpled tweed jacket and extracted a single sheet of paper. It looked like a crudely drawn map. He said, “General Navid’s cousin owns an herb-and-spice shop in the Grand Bazaar. Just off the main junction in Green Square.”
Moradi didn’t hand the map to me. He passed it to Charlie, and Charlie said, “We’ll find it.”
“Come at five o’clock this evening. Things will just be getting busy,” Moradi said. He held my eye. “Come alone. Sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”
“I think I can manage,” I said.
Moradi had said, “Come alone,” but he was smart enough to know I would have serious countersurveillance every step of the way. Were there risks? Sure. But at least I could feel pretty confident that I wasn’t going to be driven out into the desert and shot in the head. “What’s this cousin’s name?” I asked.
“Sa’ra Milad. But she won’t be there,” Bagheri said. “Look for a man wearing a red-and-yellow soccer jersey.”
“A man after my own heart,” Jeri couldn’t resist saying from the front seat.
“Ask him for blue ginger,” Bagheri said. “He’ll deliver you to the cousin’s house in the back of a delivery van. It’s a trip he makes three times a week, so there will be no suspicion. He’ll also deliver you back to the bazaar after your meeting is concluded.”
“I can live with that plan,” I said. There was nothing in their voices that suggested a trap, and a man’s voice was always the best barometer of deceit. A part of me wanted to issue some kind of subtle threat against any kind of treachery, just in case, but I was relying on my instincts. And my instincts told me the two MEK men were on the level. I caught Jeri’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Let’s get them back.”
We had circled the neighborhood and returned to Bagheri’s Volvo. The two MEK men wanted to shake hands and act as if we’d created some special bond. I just wanted them out of the car. I shook their hands anyway. I said, “General Navid’s involvement doesn’t go beyond this car, gentlemen. Maybe that goes without saying.”
“Oh, it most certainly goes without saying,” Bagheri said. The MEK boss looked as tired as he did determined.
Bagheri put on his sunglasses and got out. Moradi said, “Good luck tonight, Jake,” and followed.
CHAPTER 24
We waited until they were in their car before driving away. Charlie’s bodyguards appeared from both side streets, and we suddenly had an escort—an escort I could have done without. I didn’t say anything.
“What do you think?” I asked Charlie instead.
“Bagheri’s on our side. He’s got as much to lose in this fight as anyone. Moradi doesn’t impress me, but he didn’t strike me as a threat.”
“Moradi has been fighting the good fight since the ayatollah was in power. I don’t think he’d know what to do if the tables turned.”
“I think there’s a lot of people in my country like that, Jake. Me included. You never get used to oppression, but it becomes easier to tolerate as time goes by,” Charlie admitted. “Revolution is a game for the young. And I think the youth of Iran are ready.”
“Damn right we are,” Jeri said. She didn’t bother looking at me in the mirror. I could hear the pride in her voice.
I wanted to say, Let’s hope to hell so, but I didn’t. Instead, I did a 180 and said, “I need to make a couple of calls, Charlie. Where can I get some privacy?”
“We need petrol,” Jeri said. “Let’s make a stop.”
The gas station was nestled on one corner of an intersection in an old neighborhood not five minutes away. Both Jeri and Charlie got out, but not before his bodyguards were in place. She pumped the gas, while Charlie talked to the guy behind the counter. Charlie was smart. He did all his business with people he knew. Hard to get burned that way.
I opened a secure NSA uplink on my iPhone. I sent the information about General Armeen Navid to three-star general Tom Rutledge and Mr. Elliot. I tagged Navid “Bluebird.” Then I called Tom directly.
“Bluebird’s the real deal, my friend,” Tom said, using Navid’s tag. “If he’s on the level, this will put us over the top.”
“Get me everything you’ve got on the guy. He and I are going head-to-head in less than four hours.”
“I’m going to need our friend in Virginia for this one,” he said, referring to the CIA’s deputy director of operations. “I know you think he’s dirty.”
“Our friend in Virginia isn’t dirty,” I replied, wasting time on a subject that needed no discussion. “But he’s not running a clean ship. If he’s not willing to do the legwork, they you’re going to have to go over his head. You up to that?”
“I’ll put in a call to our friend at Penn Central. He’s got the pull,” General Rutledge said. What Tom was saying was that it was not in his best interest to go over DDO Wiseman’s head, and that made perfect sense to me. Chief of Staff Landon Fry, on the other hand, was in a position to do that.
“Roger that,” I said and ended the call.
I called Mr. Elliot. I said, “Bluebird and I have a date this evening. Feedback?”
I could hear Mr. Elliot thinking; you didn’t get a prize like General Navid very often. “Interesting. Trying to save his country’s ass, is he? Good for Bluebird. He’s just the man for the job.”
“That’s all I need to hear. I’ll be in touch. And by the way, things are getting waist-deep in politics, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an ear to the ground.”
“Done.”
I hung up and put the iPhone away. I knocked on the window to get Jeri’s attention, and we were on the road again thirty seconds later. We dropped Jeri at an apartment building close to the airport, where our countersurveillance team had reassembled for the surveillance op on eleven MEK agents suspected of trying to sell out my mission.
“Bring home a traitor,” I said to her. It was a long shot. Eleven was a big number. Maybe we’d get it down to three or four. Then we could do a clean sweep and apologize later for any collateral damage.
Charlie took me to the Grand Bazaar. I found the herb-and-spice shop near the main junction and the man with the yello
w-and-red soccer jersey. The van out back had a cluster of spice bottles printed on the side below the word ADVIEH.
General Navid’s cousin lived in a gated community twenty-five minutes north. The community had fortress written all over it, with the guards to prove it. They didn’t even stop the van. The driver waved, just like he did every day, I imagined. I was in the back, gagging on the overwhelming scent of cumin. Sa’ra Milad’s house was very modest. It was neatly tended with yellow walls and white trim. A small square of lawn was framed by neat gardens, with tall, leafy trees along the curb. Norman Rockwell would have been proud.
The van didn’t stop until it was inside the third stall in a three-car garage.
Two armed guards were waiting for me at the entrance. They relieved me of my Walther but didn’t bother about my digital recorder or my iPhone. Fine with me. I reached into my pocket and activated the recording app on the phone. A little backup never hurt.
Sa’ra turned out to be an older, slightly built woman, who seemed to appreciate the gravity of this meeting. She led me into the kitchen, where a man in his early fifties, athletically built, with closely cropped hair and a deeply tanned complexion, was brewing tea. He had a lean face and a hawk nose rounding the top of an impressive mustache. Despite his civilian clothes—a really uninspired ocher shirt tucked into blue trousers—he projected the confident bearing of a career soldier. No mistaking it.
He waited for me to speak first. I said the scripted words exactly as Bagheri had written them: “General Navid, a mutual friend sends his regards.”
He reached out then and shook my hand. “Welcome. Sit.” He pointed to the kitchen table. Very homey. I took my usual place with my back to the wall. I laid my digital voice recorder on the table. Navid served tea. He took the chair opposite me, his brown eyes troubled, but hardly conflicted. I would have given anything for a cup of really strong coffee, a dark roast with a good blast of cream. It was not to be.
I followed his lead, spicing the tea with honey and a cinnamon stick. Did I say very homey? It took a sip. Ghastly. Now it was my turn to wait, but I didn’t have to wait long.
Without preamble, Navid reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a gray memory stick. He placed the memory stick in my hand and wrapped his fingers around mine. The troubled look in his eyes vanished.
“Let me assure you of the moral dilemma this places me in.” His English, though heavily accented, was precise. “I am no fan of the United States of America. I provide this information for one reason only: to save my homeland from disaster. Perhaps with luck, your country can use what I’ve given you to prevent a nuclear holocaust. To do that, you’ll have to destroy the missiles on their launch platforms. Many of my fellow soldiers will perish.” Navid squeezed my hand and let go. “Good men will die. By giving you this information, I’ll be as culpable in their deaths as the pilots who drop bombs on them.”
“We could talk about where the blame rests until the cows come home, General. And there’s plenty of it to go around. But let’s not. I might get pissed off.” I held the memory stick between my thumb and index finger. “What’s on this?”
“First, let me explain Ahmadinejad’s strategy,” Navid said. “He knows, should he launch an attack, to expect immediate retaliation.”
“I think that comes under the heading of no-brainers, General.”
“But he’s hedging his bets by not expending his nuclear arsenal in one blow. He has twenty-one missiles in his strike force. These he has divided into three batteries of seven missiles each.”
Navid pointed to the memory stick. “That lists the targets of the first two batteries. The first battery will launch missiles against Tel Aviv and Israeli military bases.”
“Yes, I know. The attack takes place in two days.” He didn’t flinch when he heard this, nor did he ask where the information had come from. “I need confirmation. Two days from today. Yes or no?”
I waited. And waited some more. He looked at me, and all I saw was opportunity. I had no time for the anguish. Finally, he said, “Yes.”
“And Ahmadinejad thinks he’s going to get away with this.” I didn’t wait for an answer. “The second one of those nukes pokes its nose out of a silo, it’s over. Israel will know within seconds, and they’ll launch a counterattack seconds later.”
“Of course they will. But our missiles will be airborne by then. That can’t happen.” Navid lowered his hand and his expression turned more morose. “The targets of the second battery of missiles include the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet at Gaeta, Italy, and NATO bases around the Mediterranean and eastern Europe.”
I tucked the memory stick into a pocket. “And the last seven missiles?”
“The third battery is Ahmadinejad’s trump card. Those missiles are targeted at major cities within range.” Navid’s tone turned icy and foreboding. “Rome. Nuremberg. Munich. Istanbul. Vienna. Athens. And our president will settle scores against our Sunni brothers by wiping out Riyadh.”
I wanted to say, Never happen, except that it was happening. One madman’s definition of Armageddon and here it lay before us, as real as tomorrow. A nuclear inferno. Tens of millions dead. And for no other reason than to satisfy a murderous craving.
“Something else,” Navid added. “When Ahmadinejad launches his attack, he, the top mullahs of the Revolutionary Council, and the senior officers of the Military High Command will be in a secret underground bunker. The coordinates of the bunker are on the memory stick as well.”
The man had just signed their death warrants. Nicely done, General.
I said, “And you? You’re in the high command.”
“I’ll be at my post in the Air Defense Headquarters at Mehrabad.”
“That’s got to be a priority target for a retaliatory strike if ever there was one.”
“I won’t abandon my men,” he said.
Foolish, but honorable, I supposed. I tapped the memory stick. “None of this means a hill of beans without the launch-site locations, General. I assume they’re on here.”
He was already shaking his head. “The launch sites haven’t yet been selected. When I get them, I’ll relay them as fast as possible.”
Unfortunately, what he was saying made sense. The launch sites would remain hidden until the very last. So be it. I was prepared to give him a secure e-mail address, when he shook his head and said, “Not electronically. National Security will be monitoring everything but my pacemaker. I have already chosen a courier. My most trusted envoy, rest assured.”
A courier. His most trusted envoy. I didn’t like it and said so. He didn’t budge. “When I know, I’ll have our mutual friend set it up.” He meant Bagheri; and for me, just one more thing not to like.
He stood up and took my hand. “We’ll see you back the same way you arrived. Please take care.”
And just like that, the meeting with General Armeen Navid was over.
CHAPTER 25
TEHRAN—DAY 10
When the job description says “collect intel,” there is also an unwritten sidebar that says, “Don’t think about it too much. Just deliver the goods and move on.”
I wasn’t all that good at the rules of the unwritten sidebar back when the bad guys were drug lords and cyber terrorists and arms dealers. Back then, Mr. Elliot and some other guys I never knew and never wanted to know were in charge of turning the intel into action; I rarely had the pleasure of taking down the criminals I’d set up. Now the bad guys were men with their fingers on the launch codes of Sejil-2 missiles with twenty-kiloton warheads in tow. Hard to be objective. Hard not to want to be the guy driving a stake into their hearts and stomping on their ashes.
The van delivered me back to the Grand Bazaar. I went to a cyber café on Green Square, prepaid for a connection, and downloaded the material from the memory stick directly onto my iPhone.
Then I opened a secure satellite link to the NSA. The files were text files and small. They transmitted in seconds.
No sooner had I unplugged the me
mory stick than my phone vibrated with an incoming call from Mr. Elliot.
I switched to the phone app, stood up, and walked toward the madness of the Grand Bazaar at seven thirty at night. Things were just getting started in corridors lined with shops selling everything from children’s toys and teak carvings to tripe and the spices to cook it in. I stopped to look at a copper urn and said into the phone, “Go.”
“The files came through,” Mr. Elliot said. The edge in his voice was as subtle as a blade of grass on a football field. I heard it. “I gotta say, the friggin’ hair stood on the back of my neck when I read the hit list. Bad.”
“Bad,” I agreed. I tried looking like a tourist engrossed in the abundance of Persian artistry on display, moved two steps to my right, and settled in front of a glistening silver platter. “You get The Twelver’s pond?” I meant Ahmadinejad’s bunker.
“He and all his fat-cat buddies. Definitely. Bluebird came through on that one. That’s a serious prize. Well done.”
I wasn’t all that taken by the compliment. I might feel better about it after a Tomahawk missile burned down the place, if and when that ever happened. I said, “How’s our intel stacking up?” In other words, did we have enough to hit them before they hit us?
“We’ve got eagles and owls all over Europe and the UK locked and loaded,” he said.
This was the real deal. General Rutledge called it “Big George.” He’d been planning it for years. A single wave. A thousand targets. And Iran’s nuclear capacity destroyed in one fell swoop by U.S. aircraft armed with the most powerful bunker busters ever created.
You make it massive, precise, and stealthy, and you light up the targets with boots on the ground. Can’t have one without the other. That was my job.
Big George called for an initial wave of B-2 stealth bombers, F-117s, and F-22s, the “eagles” Mr. Elliot was referring to. Their job was to cripple Iran’s long-range radar and strategic air defenses. The “owls” were carrier-based F-18s and F-15s, and F-16s launching from ground bases all over the Middle East with one goal in mind: to take out places like Qom and Natanz and to blow their missile sites to smithereens.
The Natanz Directive Page 26
