One Night in Tehran: A Titus Ray Thriller

by Luana Ehrlich

  As I walked out of the hotel, I checked for any changes in the scenery.

  A few cars were gone from the parking lot. At this late hour, those were probably bar patrons or hotel staff. One car had arrived and was parked a few spaces beyond mine. It looked like a rental car, so I figured it belonged to Wassermann. There was also a dark-colored Dodge van parked on the far side of the parking lot away from the other vehicles. I knew I hadn’t seen it before. However, no one appeared to be inside, so I dismissed it.

  When I thought about it later, though, I realized the van’s windows were heavily tinted, and I shouldn’t have assumed it was unoccupied.

  Inside the Range Rover, I inserted my extra handgun in my waistband and covered it with my jacket. The rain arrived the second I slammed the car door.

  I made a mad dash for the lobby, darting inside just as it started to pour.

  When I laid the gun in front of Wassermann, he was already halfway through his chocolate cake. “Are you driving the black Toyota parked in the second row?”

  “Yeah. Everything look okay?”

  “I think so. Did you detect surveillance on any of your flights?”

  “From Damascus to London, I knew I had a watcher, but I lost him at Heathrow. From London to New York I spotted two Arabs traveling separately, but they had lots of eye contact, so I made sure I lost them before I caught the plane to Chicago.”

  “And from Chicago to Dallas?”

  “There was one Arab couple, but they had some kids with them. Of course, about half the passengers were Hispanic looking, and, with what Hezbollah’s doing in Mexico … well, I was concerned, but, yeah, I’m sure I came in clean. Of course, once I got to the airport and rented the car, I made several circuits around the area before coming here to the hotel.”

  “I think we’re good then. I’m headed back to Norman now.”

  He lifted the aluminum warmer from the plate next to him. “At least eat the apple pie I ordered for you.”

  The vanilla ice cream was just beginning to melt, so I sat down and started devouring it while Simon checked out the gun I’d given him.

  “Thanks for this,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder as he got up from the table, “and thanks for being so understanding about … ah … the other.”

  “And thank you for coming halfway around the world to give me this information,” I replied.

  “Enough happy talk. I’m going out to the car to get my duffel bag, and then I’m taking a long, hot shower. I know I must smell awful.”

  “It’s pouring rain. Wear my jacket or you’ll get soaked.”

  “What’s up with you and the weather reports all the time?” he asked, but he put on my jacket, slipped my spare gun inside his pocket and grabbed my OU ball cap, checking out the hallway before closing the door behind him.

  That was the last time I saw Wassermann alive.

  CHAPTER 18

  I finished my apple pie, loaded my computer back in my duffel bag, and waited for Wassermann to return.

  The storm had intensified with lots of lightning and earsplitting thunder. Whether it was the storm or Wassermann’s absence, I began to grow increasingly anxious. However, out of sheer habit, I spent the next five minutes wiping down the room for fingerprints.

  Then, as all the instinctive synapses in my brain began firing at the same time, I grabbed my duffel bag and quickly left the room.

  In order to avoid the lobby, I ran down the back stairs and exited out a side door behind the hotel. At that point, I took out my gun and made my way to the parking lot in the blinding rain.

  The first thing I noticed, as I remained crouched behind a trash barrel on the west side of the hotel, was the absence of the Dodge van.

  Then, I focused on Wassermann’s car and saw he wasn’t anywhere near it. Finally, my eyes spotted a crumpled heap, about the dimensions of a fallen man, positioned twenty feet away from my Range Rover.

  I cautiously made my way over to the spot and found Simon Wasserman on his back with a gunshot wound in the center of his forehead. Raindrops were pelting his lifeless eyes, and the blood pouring from his body was merging with the dirt and grime on the concrete surface and flowing rapidly down the street.

  I checked for signs of life.

  I found none.

  He’d never even had a chance to draw the gun I’d given him.

  The killing shot had probably come from a high-powered rifle some distance away, say from a Dodge van on the far side of the parking lot.

  As my emotions started to get the best of me, I grabbed his shoulders, leaned into his face, and said, “Goodbye friend, your debt’s been paid.”

  My training kicked in, and I quickly removed my jacket, ball cap, and gun from his body, throwing them into the duffel bag. At the last second, I remembered the business card I’d given him, and I also lifted it from his pants pocket.

  After I got inside my Range Rover, I scanned the area one more time. However, I was sure the killer had left as soon as he’d made the shot.

  The downpour continued as I drove out of the parking lot.

  Once I made my way back to I-35, I pulled into a Love’s Truck Stop and parked where I was completely hidden by some eighteen-wheelers. I sat there for several minutes until I could feel my heartbeat slow to a normal rhythm. Then, I laid my head back on the headrest and let my emotions roam free. Finally, I reached underneath the passenger seat for my Agency satphone and contacted Carlton.

  I woke him up.

  He mumbled, “Where are you? What’s that noise?”

  “I’m in my car outside of Dallas, Texas and it’s pouring down rain.”

  “Talk.”

  “First, you need to call the FBI in Dallas and have them secure a murder scene in the parking lot of the Airport Hilton in Grapevine, Texas. Simon Wassermann is dead.”

  When I spoke those words, Carlton made a hissing sound as if he were sucking extra air into his lungs.

  I continued, “Next, have the local and state police be on the lookout for a late model Dodge van, dark blue, with heavily tinted windows.”

  “License plate number?”

  “I have no idea. The passenger will be of Arabic descent, but possibly passing himself off as Hispanic.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Whatever happens, don’t let the press get wind of the murder and release a photo of Wassermann.”

  “Are you hot now?”

  “Negative. I’m heading back up I-35 to Norman.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  He hung up.

  Once again, I was grateful Carlton was my handler. I understood how desperately he wanted to know what was going on, but instead, he trusted his agent’s on-site analysis and simply responded by doing his own job, keeping his questions and judgments until a more appropriate time.

  I pulled out of the truck stop and onto the expressway. As I drove north, I began asking myself what just happened and why my friend was dead.

  If Wassermann had been followed from the airport and was the intended target of the Dodge van killer, then why wasn’t he taken out before reaching the hotel? Why would someone wait and risk a shot in front of a hotel when the hit could have been done in a less conspicuous environment?

  I thought back to Wassermann’s statements about being certain he had a tail on the flight from Damascus to London. If someone had wanted to kill him, why didn’t they do it before Wassermann left Syria? Why would an assassin follow him halfway around the world to take him out?

  Wassermann’s death made no sense if he was the intended target.

  On the other hand, it made perfect sense if I was the assassin’s mark.

  Since Hezbollah was sophisticated enough to be dropping sleeper cells into the United States, they probably had the means to draw some analysis threads between Wassermann and me. When Wassermann and I had posed as the Figueroa brothers, we had operated out of Syria, and it wouldn’t have been hard for Iran or Hezbollah to draw a connection between the two of
us.

  Then again, maybe Hezbollah knew Wassermann was running Talib and had set the whole thing up, hoping he would lead Ahmed straight to me. Perhaps that was why Ahmed was in Damascus in the first place.

  At the hotel, when Wassermann was telling me about all the great intel he was getting from Talib, a yellow caution light had been going off in my head. The whole scenario had sounded a little too convenient for my taste. Even now, Talib was probably alive and living the good life in Syria, having betrayed Wasserman, while enabling a surveillance team to follow him to my doorstep.

  On Wassermann’s trip back to the States and on to Dallas, Hezbollah could have set up a “leapfrog” type of surveillance with one operative tailing him on one leg of the journey, then handing him off to another agent for the next leg and continuing on like that all the way to Dallas.

  If that’s the way it went down, then the operative tailing Wassermann on the flight into Dallas must have transmitted his flight information to Ahmed before leaving Chicago. Ahmed would have had a two-hour window to position himself at the airport and tail Wassermann to the hotel. Although Wassermann had sworn he was clean, his fatigue could have made him careless.

  I thought back to when I’d first spotted the van in the hotel’s parking lot. It wasn’t raining then, so the light from the hotel’s security poles would have been bright enough for Ahmed to identify me, even though I’d been wearing the ball cap.

  At that point, I was an easy target.

  Why hadn’t he made the kill shot then?

  Perhaps the shooter wasn’t ready yet. Maybe the rifle’s scope hadn’t been attached, or he hadn’t done the necessary surveillance. Thirty minutes later, when Wassermann had appeared wearing my jacket and cap, the assassin had taken the shot, and Wassermann had gone down, sacrificing his own life for mine.

  This scenario all made sense to me, but as so often happened, Carlton might read the tea leaves differently.

  I don’t remember much of the trip back to Norman, except when I reached Denton, Texas, about an hour from the Oklahoma border, I saw the sun coming up over the horizon. At that point, I realized the rain had stopped and my windshield wipers were squeaking like crazy.

  By the time I pulled into my driveway, the sun was fully up.

  I paused for a few seconds before going inside the house and thanked God I was still around to enjoy the early spring morning.

  The moment I entered the house, Stormy greeted me enthusiastically, but then, after sniffing at my clothes, he sulked around, refusing to let me out of his sight.

  Was it possible he could sense my loss? Could he know my heavy heart?

  After I got out of my wet clothes, I took a hot shower and cooked myself a huge breakfast. When I was on my second cup of coffee, my Agency satphone rang.

  Carlton sounded awake and in full operational mode now. “What’s your status?”

  “Home in Norman safe and sound.”

  “The FBI is handling everything at the hotel in Dallas. They’ve cited national security interests and cut out the local authorities. Nothing definitive has turned up on the van yet, but the police have been alerted. Simon’s body is being flown to Andrews, and the Agency will handle the arrangements with his family.”

  “I think Simon’s been married a couple of times, but he doesn’t have any kids. I believe his parents live on Long Island. He has a sister in San Diego and a brother in Detroit. You could find their phone numbers in his files. Oh, and I also think there’s a sister in Chicago.”

  Sounding concerned, he asked, “Are you okay?”

  I suddenly realized I’d been babbling.

  “Simon took that hit for me. I’m trying to deal with it, that’s all.”

  “You don’t know for certain that’s what happened. We’ll do a complete analysis when we get there.”

  “You’re coming here? I thought I’d have to—”

  “Katherine and I are on an afternoon flight to Oklahoma City,” Carlton said, cutting me off.. “It arrives at 4:07. American Airlines. Meet us curbside.”

  I didn’t protest.

  CHAPTER 19

  After sleeping soundly for almost five hours, I got up, ate a sandwich and decided to check out Ortega’s guest rooms.

  I wanted to be prepared in case Carlton decided to accept an invitation to stay with me—Katherine too, of course.

  Before receiving Carlton’s phone call earlier, I had anticipated being ordered back to Langley. There, in a conference room at Headquarters, I would have been required to give Carlton and a couple of analysts an “incident” debrief.

  Intelligence officers sometimes called these sessions “mini-debriefings,” but to me they bore little resemblance to a debriefing, mini or otherwise.

  Basically, an incident debrief was a recorded accounting of a clandestine officer’s involvement in a non-operational event. If the event required the intervention of local law enforcement, then the questioning of the officer might become pretty intense.

  There was only one reason Carlton had gone to the trouble of convincing the DDO he needed to come to me instead of vice versa—he continued to be worried about my security. He thought I was still a target, and he believed Norman was a safer place for me than the D. C. area.

  I was hoping he was right, but now, I had my doubts.

  While driving to the airport, I got a call from Carlton saying their plane had landed early. By the time I arrived, he and Katherine were standing on the curb outside the American Airlines terminal.

  I was happy to see both of them.

  Despite having been awakened by me in the middle of the night, managing my crisis since dawn, and traveling for almost three hours, Carlton looked well rested. Unlike most people, travel seemed to energize him. He wore a pair of light-colored slacks with a dark navy blazer over a crisp white shirt. However, since it was Saturday, he wasn’t wearing a tie.

  Katherine, on the other hand, was dressed very casually in a pair of jeans, a light green silky blouse, and black boots. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her head, and the Oklahoma wind was blowing her hair in every direction.

  She looked quite beautiful.

  Carlton urged Katherine to ride in the front seat with me, and, except for this brief exchange, he remained silent as we drove the short distance back to Norman.

  However, Carlton’s reticence was not a surprise to me because I knew his preference was to hear the details of any crisis in a prescribed and orderly fashion and not in a conversational back and forth.

  As we pulled up to Ortega’s house, Katherine said, “This is a gorgeous place.”

  Carlton murmured, “Nice,” from the backseat.

  We all got out of the car, and, at that moment, Stormy come bounding out from behind the garage.

  He headed straight for Carlton, dirty paws and all.

  I shouted his name once, and, whether it was my urgent tone or Carlton’s scowl, he immediately whirled around and ran toward me, obediently plopping himself down beside my feet.

  I was as surprised by his behavior as anyone.

  “What a cute dog,” Katherine said, leaning over and rubbing Stormy’s head. “Did he come with the property?”

  “No, he just showed up one day.”

  Carlton nodded approvingly. “Well trained animal.”

  Katherine wanted a tour of the house, and, although I knew I must have sounded like a real estate agent showing her around, she laughed at my commentary. For a few short minutes, I forgot all about Wassermann and the real purpose of her visit.

  However, I was brought back to reality when we returned to the living area and saw Carlton standing at the dining room table adjusting a video camera. It was aimed at the head of the table.

  He looked up as we entered the room. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  When I sat down, Carlton said quietly, “Begin by telling us what you and Simon Wassermann were doing at the Airport Hilton last night.”

  Around the Agency, Carlton had a reputation for con
trolling his emotions and maintaining his composure, even in the most stressful of circumstances. After years of working with him, though, I had no doubt he was seething with anger and frustration, not only at me, but also at Wassermann.

  Although he might not show his feelings outwardly, I knew there were numerous ways he could demonstrate his displeasure with me—from assigning me a boring, tedious mission to partnering me up with a less-than-desirable operative.

  For that reason, and because I desperately wanted to capture Wassermann’s killer, I decided to tell him the whole truth.

  Beginning with the first email I’d received from Wassermann, to the phone call I’d made at Love’s Truck Stop, I told him everything—every last detail about what had been done and said, both by me and by Wassermann, in the last twenty-four hours.

  While I was relating all this, Katherine was busy at her computer, communicating with her office back at Langley and building a timeline of Wassermann’s last hours.

  When I finished my meticulous account, Carlton was the first to speak.

  “I should have suspected something was going on when Simon asked me if you were on an assignment. I was the one who told him about your medical leave.”

  Strangely enough, I felt our situations were suddenly reversed, and I found myself taking on the handler’s role of offering support to Carlton. “There was nothing suspicious about that question, Douglas. You knew we were friends.”

  “He was a double agent. There’s no other way to look at it. I badly misjudged him.”

  “Simon was—”

  “We’ve got the video from the hotel parking lot.” Katherine announced, turning her computer around so we could all see it.

  As I’d been relating my story, Katherine had been entering an approximate time when each of the events at the hotel had unfolded. Her timeline now appeared on the left side of her computer screen, while the grainy black and white videos from two CCTV cameras in the hotel’s parking lot were being displayed on the right.