by Cindy Dees
Torsten nodded. “Correct. Mehrabad is very close to the city center. It’ll be a lot easier to get there than Imam Khomeini International Airport, which is well outside of Tehran.”
Zane murmured, “It’s about thirty kilometers southwest of Tehran. Good roads. Traffic’s not too bad out that way. But plenty of time for security forces to catch up with a person. Security’s tight at Mehrabad, though. We’ll need a subterfuge to get Black onto the airfield.”
Zane’s boss nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll need a list of equipment and support you’ll need to mount the operation, and a time frame for execution.”
Torsten replied, “The equipment list is already built. I’ll email it to you as soon as we’re done here. We can be ready to go as soon as you pull the trigger.”
Zane added, “All we need now is the go-ahead to get Mark Black.”
“Stay here. I’ll be back,” Dominic ordered.
Piper looked over at Zane. “Where’d he run off to?”
“Hopefully, he’s getting us approval to roll.”
The team opened the printed dossiers on Mark Black and went through them in detail, studying every picture of his face, memorizing each angle and look carefully. Zane hoped the knowledge would be put to use identifying the guy and not having to shoot him to keep him out of Iranian clutches. Persephone Black seemed like a nice lady who would appreciate getting her husband back in one piece.
Dominic was back within about ten minutes to announce that they had, indeed, been green-lighted to proceed with the rescue mission. He nodded at Zane. “You’ll be the CIA liaison officer for this joint operation. Use your usual contacts.”
Dominic passed him a Tyvek envelope taped shut, and Zane signed for it. He recognized a legend package when he saw one. Inside would be fake IDs, a passport, perhaps some jewelry or a distinctive possession, emergency phone numbers and email addresses to memorize, along with challenge-and-response codes to use with those emergency contacts. And most important, there would be a printed packet of information on his new identity. An entire team of cyberspecialists sat around day in and day out building identities just like this one and maintaining them for when operatives needed a quick cover story.
He would memorize everything inside the envelope over the next few days and accustom himself to answering to the new name inside. Goodbye, Zane. Goodbye, Amir, the wannabe terrorist. Hello, Rashid Farouk.
“The folks down in the photography shop would like to see you before you leave the building so they can get to work creating identification documents for all of you,” Dominic commented.
Zane would undoubtedly get his hair dyed, wear colored contact lenses, maybe start growing a beard, and then he would be photographed for his—Rashid’s—new passport, driver’s license, library card and whatever other IDs were in the package.
Piper and her teammates were taken away to be fitted for their uniforms for the mission—costumes, actually. They would also be photographed for their fake IDs.
The hair dying, fittings and interminable photographs, fingerprints and even dental X-rays took the rest of the night. They reconvened back at the hotel in Torsten’s room for breakfast and to quiz each other on their legends. Zane stared when Piper walked in. He’d assumed she would also go dark haired, but in fact, just the opposite had happened. Her hair, already antique gold in color, was now platinum blond.
“Well, hello, Barbie,” he drawled.
She stuck her tongue out at him, while Rebel and Tessa laughed. Tessa, naturally olive complexioned and dark haired, had not had her appearance appreciably altered. Rebel, naturally a fair-skinned brunette, had been taken red haired. It was actually a good look on her.
He understood the thinking of the beauticians in the basement at Langley. Blondes and redheads were exotic creatures in a country like Iran, where most of the population was Persian in descent. Piper and Rebel would be treated like celebrities anywhere they went, but all that anyone would remember after seeing them would be their hair colors and not their faces.
The women all carried zippered vinyl clothing bags, which they hung in Torsten’s closet. Their uniforms were already tailored and ready to go? That was fast. This mission must have a higher priority at Langley than Dominic had let on to them.
Now, why wouldn’t Dominic be honest about something like that? Zane hated it when the higher-ups withheld information from field schmucks like him. The more he knew, the safer he was and the better he could do his job. But without fail, the brass kept secrets and played coy with the truth.
He sat beside Torsten, who was digging into his pancakes with gusto. Zane waited until the guy had slowed down to murmur, “Have folks in your intel channels given you any additional information about this op?”
Torsten looked up at him sharply. “Most of what the military has comes from your people. Why would we have more?”
Zane shrugged. “I know Dominic. He wasn’t telling us everything. I got the distinct feeling that folks up the chain of command from us are holding back something important.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe something about Black, or maybe about the facility he’s supposed to inspect.”
Torsten nodded. “I noticed how coy Dominic was about guessing what the Iranians don’t want Black to see.” He paused and then added quietly, “Only bit of hot intel I’ve seen recently on Iran has a major arms dealer coming back from the dead and supposedly doing a deal with the Iranian government.”
“What dealer?” Zane asked quickly.
“Abu Haddad.”
“Haddad? Well, hell. I was hoping that bastard was well and truly six feet under.”
Torsten lifted his chin in Tessa’s direction. “Tessa and Beau are the ones who took him out. We all thought for sure we got him, but apparently, he managed to slip away. Either that or one of his flunkies has resurrected his business and is invoking his name to get clients.”
Zane picked up his cell phone, put it on secure mode and placed a quick phone call. “Hi, Antonia. It’s Zane.” He chatted with the Turkey-Cyprus-Greece specialist for a few minutes and then casually shifted topics. “Hey, Toni. I heard a rumor that Haddad may be back in business. Has anything crossed your desk about him recently?”
The analyst expressed surprise that Haddad was alive but had nothing else.
“Do me a favor,” Zane added. “Don’t mention his name in connection with mine. No need to go out of your way poking around to find out more.”
“You don’t want me to raise any red flags?” the woman asked shrewdly.
“You know me too well,” he replied ruefully.
“If I happen to run across any information, I’ll pass it your way.”
“Thanks, love.”
Piper’s eyebrows raised fractionally across the room.
Zane disconnected the call and said to the group at large, “Antonia has been around practically since the CIA was founded. I’m convinced she personally knows every single person living in Greece today. And she is related to at least half of them by blood. Last time I heard, she has about thirty grandchildren.”
Piper’s expression abruptly shifted to one of total disinterest, and Zane glanced over at Torsten, who was, indeed, looking back and forth between him and Piper.
“Did she have anything to say?” the major asked.
“No. Which is telling. She knows everything about Turkey. Whatever’s being withheld from us is happening at a very high level.”
Torsten swore quietly. “There’s possibly nothing on earth I hate worse than going into a mission half-blind.”
Zane laughed without humor. “I dunno. Direct congressional oversight on a mission sucks pretty hard.”
Torsten groaned. “God save us all from meddling politicians.”
Around midmorning, a call came in to Zane that the airplane and two pilots requisitioned by the agency would
arrive at Dulles International Airport in a few hours. They would cross the Atlantic and stop in Europe for twelve hours of crew rest for the pilots and then continue on to Tehran.
Zane asked the group, “Any preference as to where we stop over in Europe?”
Torsten pulled up a map on his laptop, and a good-natured argument ensued. It was eventually settled that they would stop over at a US Naval facility in Sicily. It was far enough off the beaten path that casual informants shouldn’t spot them, and the food was apparently first-class. Mount Etna, the volcano that rose up to tower over Sicily, had been quiet recently, as well.
The entire group went to the Pentagon to work out in its gym before their ride arrived, and Zane took pleasure in being less shocked than the other gym rats as Piper, Tessa and Rebel commenced tossing around weights like candy and generally embarrassing the men in the big facility.
A group of silent men working out together in one corner recognized Torsten and invited him and the women to come over and play with the big boys. Zane was just as happy to stay on his treadmill, stretching out his legs for a quick hard run today.
As they rode in the van back to the hotel, the women talked excitedly about getting to work out with and measure themselves against a SEAL team. He was gratified when Piper slid her hand surreptitiously between them to squeeze his in reassurance.
No need for her to worry. He was confident in his own masculinity.
They each went their own way for supper, which meant he was able to collect Piper and take her to that jazz club downtown. They sat on the same side of a banquette table, and he lounged back, listening to an improv band while she half lay on his chest, relaxing.
He couldn’t remember ever being this at peace in his own skin.
He couldn’t ever remember being this scared.
Which was exceedingly strange to him. He didn’t do scared. He’d stared down fanatics and terrorists; he’d been chased by spies and run for his life without ever feeling half this terrified.
But then, he also didn’t spend much time living in his own skin, either. He’d spent a good chunk of his adult life pretending to be someone else.
“You’re messing with my head, Piper,” he murmured as the level in the bottle of wine in front of them dropped.
“You’re messing with mine, too,” she replied.
“How?” they both asked simultaneously.
“You first.” He beat her to saying it.
“I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” she confessed. “I’m still not looking for one. But here you are, and I have no idea what to do about you.”
He set down his wineglass and twined their fingers together. “I would never come between you and your work. I have a decent idea of how hard it was for you to land an assignment with the Medusas. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“You’re not wrong. I’ve devoted my entire adult life to this goal,” she replied. “But then, I imagine you had to do the same to become what you are, too.”
He shrugged. “It’s possible that it was easier for me to hide behind all those other personas rather than face my own life and deal with it.”
“Is there some trauma in your past? Something that made you want or need to run away from it rather than face it?”
He replied quickly, “Nothing like that. My family is affluent. Successful. Relatively normal if you accept the premise that no family is actually ‘normal’ and that all families have their problems.”
“What problems does your family have?”
He shrugged again. “Nothing radical. My father is a control freak and ordered around my mom, my brother and me. My older brother went along with the program and did what he was told. I...didn’t.”
She nodded. “Rebelled as a kid. Check.” A pause. “Did you get in trouble with the law?”
“No. My old man was the district attorney and was always able to have a word with the police chief and get any charges dropped.”
“What kind of stuff did you do?”
“I drove too fast and drank too much. Partied too hard and made too much noise mostly.”
“Why the choice of your current employer?” she asked curiously.
“They were looking for risk takers. People who could function in danger and were willing to put their necks on the line. It seemed like a good fit at the time.”
“And now?”
He looked up, making eye contact with her. “For the first time, I’m questioning my life choices.”
She jolted. “Why? Because I’m a bad choice?”
“Not at all. Because I may actually have found something—someone—worth living for. Someone more important to me than my job.”
“Oh.” Her gaze slid away from his, and in the dim lighting he wasn’t sure she blushed. But he thought she did.
After a long pause, she looked back at him. “You said before that I’m messing with your head. Is that what you meant?”
“Partially.”
When he didn’t explain, she asked hesitantly, “What’s the rest of it?”
He sighed, “This is going to sound stupid, but I have no idea who I am.”
She frowned. “How’s that?”
“I went straight from college to the agency. All that growing up and self-discovery you’re supposed to do in your twenties didn’t happen for me. The next thing I knew, I was pretending to be all these other people.”
He tossed back the rest of his wine and refilled their glasses.
“The thing with deep cover is you have to become your legend. You don’t get a break to go home and put your feet up on a coffee table, read your mail and catch up on your life. You don’t report in to your boss or touch base with your colleagues. Anything that might link you to your real life is strictly off-limits. You’re cast adrift without any anchor whatsoever to your reality.”
“That sounds scary,” she murmured.
“After a while, it becomes normal. You stop thinking about your real life, your real family and friends, your real identity. You become the cover story.”
“Would you say you actually became a white supremacist or a religious fanatic?”
He took another slug of the excellent wine, swirling it around in his mouth and savoring its dry bite.
“While I was that other person, I was both of those things. I had to be. There’s no room in an undercover operation for hesitation or equivocation. You have to commit to the role, both in action and in thought. You have to believe you’re that other persona.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” she replied.
“It’s like being a method actor and completely immersing yourself in the role.”
She smiled sadly. “I still couldn’t do it.”
“I’m starting to wish I hadn’t done it,” he replied in a low voice.
“Why not? You’ve done your country a great service. You should be proud of your work.”
“But at what cost? I don’t even remember who I am anymore. I don’t know what I think, what I like or dislike, what I believe in. I’m...empty.”
“How do you feel right this minute?” she asked urgently.
He considered for a moment. “Relaxed. Happy. Relieved that I get to spend more time with you before our careers rip us apart. Worried about the mission.”
“Why are you worried?” she asked quickly.
“I’m a known Iran expert. I have to assume that Mahmoud sent photos of me back to his superiors. After I escaped with you, he also surely told them I was at best a traitor to their cause and at worst a plant of some kind. The odds of me being recognized when I enter Iran are fairly high. And the consequences of that...” He shrugged.
“You’d be lucky if they only killed you,” she finished for him.
“Exactly.”
“How good is the disguise the agency worked up for you
?”
“It’ll have to be good enough, won’t it?”
“Can I help you be less recognizable?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What if we pose as a married couple? That would throw them off, wouldn’t it?”
“Our IDs would have to be redone—”
“Not necessarily,” she interrupted. “You know us aggressive, out-of-control American women. We don’t take our husbands’ names anymore. It’s scandalous. All that would have to happen is one of the cyberidentity folks would have to enter a marriage license for us in some database.” Warming to her topic, she added, “We could have eloped to Las Vegas recently.”
“It might help. And it would have the added benefit of forcing you to stay near me during the mission.”
She reached in her purse for her cell phone and placed a call. “Beau, it’s Piper. I need you to marry me.”
Even Zane heard the squawk at the other end of the phone.
“Not like that,” she laughed. “I need you to plant a marriage for me in whatever system it needs to be planted in. Yes. Part of a cover legend. Zane. His name will be Rashid Farouk.”
She glanced up at him. “How’s that spelled?”
He relayed what was on his new passport, and she relayed it to Beau.
She put her phone away and picked up her wineglass. “A toast. To our long and happy fake marriage, Mr. Farouk.”
“To us, Mrs. Farouk.”
Except it didn’t feel the least bit fake as they clinked glasses and drank, smiling deeply into each other’s eyes.
Chapter 17
Piper tugged at the annoyingly tight red suit the CIA had seen fit to provide for her. “When I signed up to be a Medusa, I didn’t think I would end up saving the world in pantyhose and high heels.”
Zane and Torsten laughed, and she threw them a dirty look. “Next mission, you two get to wear the pencil skirts and stilettos.”
Zane threw up his hands. “No, thank you. I don’t know how women stand upright in those monstrosities, let alone walk in them.”
She glared at him. “Clearly, it’s because we are the superior gender and have exceptional balance.”
