One Step Back: A Titus Ray Thriller

by Luana Ehrlich

  Unfortunately, Reza was not wealthy, and he was unable to help the opposition with their funding needs, nor did he have access to anyone who might have intel that would be helpful to the opposition.

  According to Carlton, Reza’s shortcomings precluded his recruitment, and I wasn’t given permission to pursue him as an asset for the mission of Operation Torchlight.

  All that changed a month later when Reza landed a job at a bookstore frequented by members of the Iranian Parliament.

  The bookstore was located around the corner from the legislative offices and featured a coffee shop that had live entertainment during the evening hours. Reza was hired to work part-time as a waiter and then to provide the patrons with entertainment at night.

  When I visited the bookstore and saw how often he engaged the legislators in conversation, and how popular his original songs were with the clientele, I decided to approach Carlton again about recruiting him.

  This time, he approved my request.

  As expected, my recruitment of Reza was not difficult, and it wasn’t long before he was providing the Agency with bits and pieces of intel on various members of the Iranian Parliament.

  Reza was a natural when it came to picking up tradecraft—unlike Farid—and I used our weekly meetings to help him hone his skills at asking questions and reading body language.

  Now, when I realized the two VEVAK agents were shadowing me, I decided the next time I met up with Reza, I would need to teach him how to spot a tail.

  Unfortunately, there would be no next time.

  Chapter 9

  Tehran, Iran

  December 12, 2014

  When I told Farid and Chaman I was having a dinner party at my apartment and inviting some of my neighbors, Chaman immediately asked me if I had invited Amir Madani.

  “Yes, I did,” I said, “and when I told him I was planning to invite you and Farid, he said he was looking forward to seeing you again.”

  “Is that right?” she asked with a playful smile. “I wonder if he meant it.”

  “Of course he meant it,” I said. “He specifically mentioned how much he enjoyed the candid way you challenged his views the last time he saw you.”

  Farid, Chaman, and I were standing in the lobby of the Iranshahr Theater, one of the oldest theaters in Tehran. It was during the intermission of “Green Orange,” a play by a popular Iranian theater troupe.

  Farid’s father had a box seat at the theater, and when Farid had invited me to the production, I’d seen it as an opportunity to meet up with one of my assets.

  The asset’s name was Hosein Jamali. He was the owner of a jewelry store in Tehran whose clientele included the wives of some of the top generals in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

  When we’d first arrived at the theater, I’d briefly encountered Jamali in the hallway outside our box and slipped him an envelope full of American dollars. In turn, he’d handed me a list of the banks where the IRGC generals had their money stashed, along with their corresponding account numbers.

  Now, I was trying to think of an excuse to leave the theater during the intermission, so I could send the list to the Ops Center.

  “Who’s catering your dinner party?” Farid asked.

  “No one,” I said. “I’m doing my own cooking.”

  “You should at least hire someone to serve the food,” Chaman said. “Otherwise, you won’t be able to enjoy your guests.”

  “She’s right,” Farid said. He grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket. “I’ll asked our restaurant manager if he could recommend someone to help you.”

  Before I could stop him, Farid walked over to a corner of the lobby to make his call.

  When Chaman saw he was out of earshot, she leaned in toward me and asked, “Will you invite a date to your dinner party?”

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps.”

  “Farid told me you were seeing Aviz Davar. Is she the type of woman you find appealing?”

  Not long after Farid had agreed to work for the Agency, I’d asked him to introduce me to any of his friends who had expressed an interest in the Iranian dissident movement. A few months later, he’d introduced me to Aviz Davar.

  Ironically, Aviz was the daughter of Colonel Davar of the IRGC, who was in charge of monitoring the activity of Iranian dissidents.

  After our Agency analysts had probed her background, Carlton had suggested I pursue Aviz as a love interest in order to get her to feed me intel on the colonel.

  It wasn’t long before I realized nothing romantic was ever going to happen between Aviz and me. Any overture I made in that regard was quickly rebuffed.

  However, one day, when Aviz and I were having dinner together, I expressed empathy for a dissident who had recently been arrested. She happened to know the background of his arrest, and, as she told me about him, tears came to her eyes.

  It was then I realized the best way to connect with Aviz was on an emotional level.

  That’s how she primarily related to people. A hurt child, a severely handicapped man, a dog with only three legs, any kind of suffering, immediately brought tears to her eyes.

  Like most men, I didn’t find it easy to express my emotions, and I’d never enjoyed being around a woman who was highly emotional.

  Nevertheless, the more outrage I expressed at the beating of a protester or the more sympathy I showed at the imprisonment of a Christian pastor, the closer Aviz and I became.

  It wasn’t long before Aviz took the bait I dangled in front of her. After that, as long as I assured her the tidbits of information she was passing on to me would lessen the suffering of the dissidents, she willingly handed over any information she was able to pick up from her father about the enemies of the regime.

  “Yes,” I told Chaman. “Aviz is exactly the type of woman I find appealing.”

  Chaman glanced over at Farid, who was making his way back over to us. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

  Farid handed me a slip of paper he’d torn off his program. “The manager recommended you contact one of these people to help you with your dinner party. He said they’re in high demand, so you should probably get in touch with them right away.”

  As I took the slip of paper from him, I glanced down at my watch. “It’s not too late to call them this evening. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll slip out and do that now.”

  Farid waved me off. “Sure; go ahead.”

  “I forgive you,” Chaman said with a smile.

  Although I told Amir my love of cooking was the result of my Swiss heritage, in reality, I’d learn to cook by spending time in the kitchen with my mother when I was growing up in Flint, Michigan.

  I’d spent most of that time at the kitchen table doing my homework and fighting with my sister, Carla, but, along the way, I’d picked up the basics of how to prepare a few meals.

  Now, I usually volunteered to do the cooking when I was stuck in a safe house with a bunch of other operatives. Mostly, I did this just to pass the time, but sometimes I did it to give myself a little taste of home.

  Although I’d never mentioned my cooking abilities to Carlton, somehow, he’d found out about them, and, in the fall of 2010, after I’d returned from an assignment in Beirut, he told me the Agency had enrolled me in the L’Academie de Cuisine Culinary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

  This was a crash course to prepare me for an operation in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I was to pose as an Executive Chef at the Dubai International Hotel. The training only lasted for two weeks, but it was enough to get me the job when the American chef in the hotel’s restaurant mysteriously came down with a case of food poisoning.

  I was sent to Dubai because a resident of the hotel, Asad Badawi, was laundering money for Al-Qaeda, and my assignment was to install a software program on his laptop in order to monitor all his banking transactions.

  Badawi loved American cuisine, and, one day, after I’d delivered a meal up to his suite on the tenth floor, I was able to complete my assignm
ent.

  Not only was the operation a success, I also added a few new recipes to my cooking repertoire during the mission.

  For obvious reasons, I had no plans to have any American dishes on my menu for my dinner party with Amir Madani. Instead, I was planning to serve my guests traditional Iranian dishes.

  However, the day before my dinner party, I came across a vendor selling broccoli at one of the farmers’ markets, and in an effort to make an impression on Madani, I added it to my menu.

  When we’d eaten at the restaurant together, Madani had mentioned he’d tasted broccoli for the first time at a London hotel during a nuclear energy conference. He said he found the vegetable delicious, but he hadn’t been able to find a restaurant in Tehran that served it.

  I wasn’t a big fan of broccoli, but I remembered liking a broccoli dish my mother used to serve at Thanksgiving, which was basically cooked broccoli smothered in a ton of butter and cheese, so I decided to give the dish a Swiss name, brokkoli cremig, and serve it to my guests.

  I didn’t really expect the broccoli to be a deciding factor in my recruitment of Madani, but, in the game of espionage, I never knew if a cruciferous vegetable might put one in the win column for our side.

  The antique dining table Uzan had purchased for my apartment seated twelve people, and I had invited eleven guests.

  Besides Amir Madani, my guest list primarily consisted of some of my clients, a few of the other occupants of my building, and, of course, Farid and Chaman.

  To make sure there was an even number of men and women, I’d included two sisters who lived in my building, since Madani had told me he wouldn’t be bringing a date, and, contrary to what I’d told Chaman, I had no intention of inviting Aviz Davar.

  As soon as my guests began arriving, I gave Ahmad, the server I’d hired for the evening, a few last words of instructions and left the kitchen in his hands.

  The two sisters who lived down the hall were the first ones to show up at my door. Like all of my guests, they didn’t arrive empty-handed. By the time Amir Madani appeared, I’d already been showered with two boxes of Iranian chocolates, a tin of nuts, and some pastries from a local bakery.

  Strangely enough, Madani chose to bring me a box of dark chocolate truffles from Teuscher’s, the famous Swiss chocolatier.

  I thanked him profusely.

  Farid and Chaman arrived fashionably late. Once I’d introduced them to everyone, I invited my guests to the dining room, where I’d already placed name cards at each place setting.

  Naturally, I’d seated Amir next to Chaman.

  Before long, they were engaged in a lively discussion that excluded everyone else in the room.

  That changed as soon as Ahmad served the brokkoli cremig. When Madani tasted it, he looked over at me and said, “Hammid, now I have proof you’ve been lying to me about who you really are.”

  Even though his statement took me off guard, I smiled and said, “Why would you say that, Amir?”

  “You said your mother is Swiss, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you said she’s in the jewelry business, right?”

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. “You must be lying about that. Only a Swiss chef could make such a delicious dish.”

  I relaxed.

  By the time the dessert was served, I could tell Farid was frustrated by the way Chaman was ignoring him and devoting all her attention to Amir.

  The younger of the two sisters was seated to the left of Farid, and, in an obvious move to make Chaman jealous, he began flirting with her.

  Farid’s actions didn’t go unnoticed by Chaman.

  Instead of ignoring him and continuing to bewitch Amir with her charms—as I suspected she might—she immediately attempted to bring Farid into their conversation.

  “Farid,” she said, “you must tell your joke about the Iranian grandma who wanted to become an Israeli citizen.”

  Farid, who was a great storyteller, seemed pleased at her request, and he immediately began describing the grandma, the Israeli bureaucrat, and the circumstances surrounding the grandma’s request to become an Israeli citizen.

  When he finally delivered the punch line, everyone around the table burst out laughing.

  Although Amir politely joined in the laughter, he didn’t seem amused when Chaman encouraged Farid to tell another joke. Then, as the evening wore on, and Chaman brushed off Amir’s attempts to reengage her in conversation, Amir turned his attention to me.

  “Will your parents be coming to see your new apartment, Hammid?” he asked.

  “I don’t expect them to visit anytime soon. This is a busy time of year for them.”

  “But surely they would want to see where their son is living in Tehran. And what about your father, wouldn’t he want to visit his homeland?”

  Once again, I began fielding questions from Amir about my background.

  This time, however, his interrogation set off some alarm bells.

  A few days later, the sirens began to wail.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 10

  Tehran, Iran

  December 20, 2014

  A few days after my party, I initiated a video call with the Ops Center to transmit some intel I’d received from Omid. I also wanted to give Carlton a brief rundown on what I’d observed about Amir during my dinner party.

  Once Carlton gave me kudos on the progress I was making in getting closer to Amir Madani, I decided not to mention the man’s continued interest in my background. I rationalized my decision by telling myself I needed to put Amir under surveillance again before informing my handler I suspected he might be gathering intel on me instead of vice versa.

  However, I knew that was only partially true.

  In the back of my mind, I realized I was reluctant to tell Carlton about my suspicions because I didn’t want to admit I could have been wrong about Amir.

  A couple of days after I began shadowing Amir again, Carlton notified me he had an urgent assignment for Farid, one involving the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

  The IAEA was sending a delegation to Tehran to visit Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to assess whether they were in compliance with the new UN resolutions regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

  The Agency had learned the IAEA delegation would be staying at the Asadi Hotel in downtown Tehran, and I was instructed to have Farid obtain the surveillance videos from their hotel rooms.

  When I called Farid to set up a meeting, he suggested we meet outside the Imamzadeh Mosque on Darya Boulevard near his apartment. He said he planned to attend noonday prayers at the mosque.

  Since Farid was not a devoted Islamist and seldom attended the mosque except on holy days, I wondered what had prompted his desire to be at the prayer service.

  I arrived at the mosque thirty minutes before our scheduled meeting. After doing a careful recon of the area, I slipped inside.

  The service was already in progress, and, as I sat there on a colorful Persian rug listening to the mullah deliver his sermon, I surveyed the room to see if I could locate Farid among the hundreds of men in attendance.

  I finally spotted him sitting close to the front, near the end of the second row. As he gazed up at the mullah, he appeared mesmerized by the words coming out of his mouth.

  The cleric was explaining Sura 16:129 from the Quran, “Allah is with those who are righteous and those who do good.”

  During other assignments, I’d had to memorize several chapters or suras from the Quran, but this sura wasn’t one I recognized. Even if I had, I doubt if it would have had much impact on me.

  I wasn’t a religious person.

  I wasn’t opposed to someone worshipping a Higher Power, Buddha, Allah, God, or some other deity, but I’d seen little practical benefit from it. In my mind, religion brought the world a lot more misery than it did joy.

  When the service finally ended, and the men began filing out of the mosque, I managed to fall into step
alongside Farid. As we walked into the outer courtyard together, I suggested we go across the street and have lunch at an Indian restaurant called Cingari.

  After the waiter had taken our order, I asked Farid, “What made you decide to attend prayers at the mosque today?”

  He gave me a somber look. “I wanted to fulfill my obligations to Almighty Allah before I die.”

  Although I was stunned by his response, I tried not to show it.

  “You make it sound like your death is imminent.”

  “I believe it is.”

  My first thought was that Farid’s father had discovered his son was spying on his hotel guests and was threatening to kill him.

  “What makes you think you’re about to die?”

  “I had a dream last night,” he said, “but it wasn’t like any dream I’ve ever had before. I was sitting in a chair in an empty room and standing beside me was a man dressed all in black with a sword in his hand. He kept asking me over and over again why I didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t have an answer for him.”

  I felt an immediate sense of relief. “You had a dream, Farid. It wasn’t a window into your future.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  There was nothing I could say to convince Farid he wasn’t going to die anytime soon, but after I told him about his new assignment, he dropped the subject and assured me he would have no trouble obtaining the surveillance videos from the hotel rooms of the IAEA inspectors.

  Before we left the restaurant, Farid agreed to meet me at Assar Art Gallery on Barforooshan Street in downtown Tehran in three days.

  Three days later, when Farid didn’t show up for our appointment, I got worried.

  It wasn’t unusual for Farid to occasionally miss an appointment. What was unusual was for him not to call me and let me know he wasn’t going to be able to meet me for one reason or another.

  After I wandered around the art gallery for an hour, I tried phoning him.