The Last Man in Tehran

by Mark Henshaw

  They watched him a third day just to be certain that the first two hadn’t been unlikely coincidences of scheduling, but nothing changed. Rouhani’s faithful adherence to routine was the only approval they required to proceed. They knew enough about the target to plan the kill, and had gathered enough information to work out the escape routes for the two teams that would perform the act.

  The Aleph and Bet squads were one man and one woman each. The Alephs had the honor of being the trigger on the gun, as it were, the pair chosen to execute the man that Israel had decided should die. The Bets were backup, there to shadow the Alephs, perform their mission if something or someone unexpected stopped the first team, and cover them while they were in the act of slaughtering their target.

  The murder itself only took an hour to arrange. The Alephs and Bets waited until almost two o’clock to begin. The stars above their heads were washed out by Tehran’s lights, but the moon was full and high enough to let them see the path running between the houses. The scientist parked his car in a locked garage attached to his home, which was no obstacle. The female half of Aleph picked the lock to the door in ten seconds, which was more time than she needed to get into the car once she discovered Rouhani kept it locked even in his own home. Her male counterpart took the rest of the hour doing the real work on the car while the Bets kept watch outside in their vehicle fifty yards down the street. It would have been simple enough to walk into Rouhani’s bedroom and shoot him in the head. They would have needed only seconds, but Mossad preferred to kill with style when possible. Terrorists were not the only ones who understood that theatrics could send a message, and Mossad wanted Israel’s enemies to be forever looking over their shoulders and under their seats.

  They closed up the car, and slipped out into the side alley between the buildings.

  They spent the rest of the night sitting in their own car three blocks down the street by Bahonar Park. Rouhani would be awake in two hours and dead in three. They were sure of the quality of their work, but the ramsad wanted visual confirmation of the execution. So they talked to pass the time, mostly of mundane matters . . . nothing about old operations or predictions of future ones. They spoke of family troubles and politics.

  The digital clock in the car’s dash reported that it was almost five. The Alephs had learned that Ayatollah Khomenei himself had lived in this neighborhood for most of his life. They thought it fitting that a new campaign to save Israel from the mullahs for another decade would pass through the hometown of the man who had made this country Israel’s mortal enemy.

  The lights in Rouhani’s bedroom came on at the appointed time. Through their shared binoculars, the squad saw the slight movement of shadow in his room behind the curtain. Rouhani took his usual half hour to shave, shower, dress, and swallow a quick cup of sweet tea, slather jam on lavash bread, and eat some feta cheese. His appetite sated, the man entered his garage two minutes later than the average time that the Ayin unit had reported.

  He started his car and opened the garage door by hand. Then he opened the driver’s-side door, took his seat, fastened the safety belt, and eased the car out onto the street. He parked again, ran back to the house, and closed the entrance to the carport, then walked back. Seated and belted inside the car again, Rouhani put the automobile in gear and began to drive. He noticed two parked cars ahead. He could not recall seeing them on the street the evening before, but he was never particularly observant about his surroundings.

  Rouhani approached the first car. There were two people inside, he realized, just sitting there. He turned his head. They were looking at him.

  One of them, the woman, raised a hand, holding something. A phone? It was the right size, but she didn’t put it to her ear—

  The directional charge hidden in the driver’s seat headrest exploded, a fraction of a kilo of Semtex firing straight into the back of Rouhani’s head. His scalp melted and his hair burned off instantly as his skull came apart like a melon rind hit by a sledgehammer and everything inside was blasted against the front windshield, which spider-webbed from the shock wave and was painted with blood and brains. The car’s side windows blew out from the overpressure, fire and smoke rushing out, and the muffled rumble of the explosion escaped out into the morning air. Rouhani’s headless corpse was pushed forward by the explosion until it struck the steering column. The man’s foot was still pressed on the gas pedal and the car continued to move forward, veering to the left due to a slight misalignment of the front tires, finally striking a tree at just over thirty-five kilometers per hour, the engine still running.

  The Alephs pulled forward, following the planned escape route back to the safe house. The Bets had had their own backup detonator in case the other team’s unit failed. Had both devices been stubborn and refused to work, the male half of Bet had been cradling an AK-47 in his lap. He hadn’t wanted to use it. There was no élan in gunning a man down that way. He started their car and the woman beside him took a photograph of Rouhani’s wrecked car and body as they passed by. She looked in the rearview and saw neighbors started to emerge from their homes, wondering about the source of the loud noise that had disturbed their quiet sleep. Groggy and distracted by the sight of Rouhani’s automobile crushed against a tree and starting to burn, they failed to notice the make or model or color of the two cars or any other bit of information the Iranian security services could have used to track down the man’s killers.

  The last squad of the team, Qom, was the smallest, actually a single member, the youngest of the group at just twenty-eight. His job was communications. He had missed out on the more exciting parts of this particular mission, he thought, but he did have the honor of telling the ramsad that another of Israel’s enemies had been exterminated. The ramsad acknowledged the message personally and offered his gratitude for their bravery in the defense of Israel, but he gave the unit no orders to come home. Instead, he told the Qom that it should be ready to move by nightfall. There was another target. The ramsad provided the broad outlines, but the head of their unit would meet them personally to share the fine details of their next assignment.

  The young man disconnected the call, then looked up at his teammates. “The ramsad expresses his gratitude for our services and his satisfaction that the operation came off without any complications. He also has new orders for us.”

  “A new mission?” one of the Alephs asked.

  “Yes. We are to deploy to a safe house on Kish Island. I have the address. We will join an officer there who is coming from home. All other operations are delayed.”

  “Any reason given?”

  “No,” the Qom admitted. “We will receive the particulars in person tomorrow.”

  “Then let’s get moving,” the male Bet told his friends. “If everything else is being pushed back, then the ramsad must think someone on Kish Island is in desperate need of some justice. Let’s make sure he gets his share of it.” The rest of the team muttered their agreement and then broke up and started packing their gear.

  Leesburg, Virginia

  “You hear that ruckus the other night?” William Fallon’s neighbor was the talkative sort and had a talent for coming out the door in the mornings to start his commute whenever Fallon was doing the same. An overweight refugee from New York City, Walter spoke with a Queens accent that grated on Fallon’s nerves, no matter the subject of the conversation, and he was either impervious or oblivious to Fallon’s body language. Still, the intelligence officer couldn’t bring himself to tell the northerner to bugger off. The man’s wife was attractive and Fallon didn’t want word of his lack of manners getting back to her ears. One needed to keep one’s options open, after all.

  “No.”

  “Happened late, real late,” the neighbor reported. “After midnight. I was still up, playing games, and heard the crash, even through my headphones. Somebody was driving way fast in the neighborhood, really gunning the engine, and they T-boned another car. I stepped outside, but I couldn’t figure out where it came fro
m. After a few minutes, I saw the ambulance lights and ran on over. The wreck was down at the intersection, over by the drainage pond. I’m surprised anyone came out of it. Funny thing was, it wasn’t the police who were in charge.”

  Fallon frowned. The man had his interest for once. “Who was it?”

  “A bunch a’ guys in FBI jackets.”

  “The Bureau?”

  “Yeah. Loudoun County deputies showed up with the ambulance, but they weren’t running the show. It was those federal guys. Two of them rode away with some woman in the ambulance. Looked like they had her cuffed to the gurney. Didn’t know the feds would arrest you for reckless driving,” Fallon’s neighbor recalled. “But she was a hottie. Probably a drunk, though. I’d love to know who she was.”

  Me too, Fallon thought. “Sounds like I missed something big. If you hear anything else, let me know.”

  “Yeah, sure thing.”

  • • •

  The commute into Langley was miserable, an accident at the intersection of the Dulles Toll Road and the Capital Beltway having backed up traffic for ten miles. Fallon navigated through Dulles Airport so he could get onto the airport access road and avoid both the tolls and the traffic, but it still took longer than an hour to make the drive. His reserved parking space saved him from a long walk to the building, which still did nothing to improve his typically dark mood.

  He walked into his vault a half hour later than he preferred, the office secretary already at her desk. “Director Barron’s office called early. He wants to see you in his conference room.”

  “When?”

  “He said as soon as you arrived.”

  “ ‘He said’?” Fallon asked. “He called himself?”

  “It was him,” the secretary confirmed.

  CIA Director’s Conference Room

  FM AMEMBASSY LONDON

  TO DCIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE

  TEXT

  SUBJECT: ASSASSINATION OF IRANIAN SCIENTIST QOLAM ROUHANI

  1. (TS//NF) UK EMBASSY TEHRAN REPORTS VIA MI6 LIAISON THAT IRANIAN SCIENTIST DR. QOLAM ROUHANI WAS ASSASSINATED YESTERDAY NEAR HIS HOME IN JAMARAN, TEHRAN, BY PERSON OR PERSONS UNKNOWN.

  2. (TS//NF) A SHAPED CHARGE WAS HIDDEN INSIDE THE DRIVER’S SIDE HEADREST OF ROUHANI’S PERSONAL VEHICLE. PHYSICAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THE CHARGE WAS DETONATED REMOTELY. ROUHANI WAS DECAPITATED SHORTLY AFTER 0530 WHEN HE LEFT HIS HOME FOR WORK.

  3. (TS//NF) FORENSIC ANALYSIS OF THE BLAST BY IRANIAN POLICE SUGGESTS A SEMTEX CHARGE SIGNIFICANTLY SMALLER THAN ONE (1) KILOGRAM, SUFFICIENT TO KILL ROUHANI AND ANYONE ELSE INSIDE THE VEHICLE BUT NOT DESTROY THE VEHICLE ITSELF.

  4. (TS//NF) INVESTIGATOR POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED ROUHANI’S IDENTITY VIA FINGERPRINTING AND FAMILY IDENTIFICATION OF PHYSICAL TRAITS OBSERVABLE ON THE INTACT PART OF THE BODY. DENTAL MATCHING WAS IMPOSSIBLE DUE TO THE STATE OF THE VICTIM’S CRANIUM.

  The CIA watch officer on duty in the Situation Room delivered the paper to the Red Cell on Barron’s orders. It was the last stop on a tortured route that had started in a restaurant in Tehran where an Iranian turncoat on the MI6 payroll had reported the assassination to his British handler, who had written up the juicy tidbit and sent it off to his own superiors at Vauxhall Hall in London. The British shared the information with their American cousins after sanitizing some of the more sensitive details, and the CIA liaison shortened the report and dispatched it to Langley within an hour after he received it.

  Kyra read the cable at a far slower pace than she normally consumed such things and then reread it a second time. The information had clearly passed through several hands before finally reaching hers, which meant details likely had been twisted and obscured. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, Agency cables were usually drafted using the universal language of bureaucracy, all passive voice and ambiguities combined to present their message in the least detailed manner possible. But in this particular case, the unknown author in London had been smart enough to know who the audience was for this particular report and he kept the language tight and blunt, especially in the last sentence.

  5. (TS//NF) IRANIAN AUTHORITIES ATTRIBUTE ROUHANI’S DEATH TO ISRAEL’S MOSSAD BUT HAVE NOT ELABORATED.

  END OF MESSAGE TOP SECRET

  “I assume that Rouhani was another one of your code-word compartments?” Rhodes asked.

  “You assume correctly,” Barron confirmed. “And we didn’t learn about him from the Brits either. We developed that bit of intelligence on our own.”

  “So this tells us nothing.”

  “It tells us that somebody finally passed the Banshee Reeks intel to Mossad,” Kyra said. “If true, the good news is that we have at least a partial copy of their kill list.”

  “The bad news is that arresting Salem pinched off a solid lead—” Rhodes started.

  “You wouldn’t be sitting down to interview William Fallon if you hadn’t,” Kyra observed, shutting him down. “And the Israelis would’ve gotten Rouhani’s name a few days sooner. Same result.”

  The phone on the table buzzed. Barron leaned forward and pressed a button. “Sir, William Fallon is here to see you,” the secretary announced.

  “Thank you.” Barron looked up at Kyra. “When are you heading out?”

  “As soon as we finish talking to Fallon.”

  “I’ll ask Jon to come in for a few days to work with Mr. Rhodes here until you get back.”

  “I’m sure you’ll earn his undying love if you do,” Kyra offered.

  “I don’t care about his undying love. He owes me,” Barron said. “And Agent Rhodes . . . Sam Todd’s case is also a code word compartment, and we’ve got plenty of those getting spilled open these days. So, unless you can make a very strong case why I should change my mind, the rest of your team doesn’t get read-in. They know he’s a person of interest and that’s plenty for now. We’ll keep you in the loop on any developments there and you can argue for more access then.”

  Rhodes frowned but decided not to argue for once. “Yes, sir.”

  Barron didn’t rise when Fallon entered the room. “Director Barron—” Fallon started. His voice was quite friendly, which seemed out of line with the details Kyra had gleaned from his personnel file.

  “I’m not staying,” Barron announced. “I’m just here to make the introductions. This is Special Agent Jesse Rhodes of the FBI, and this is Kyra Stryker, chief of the Red Cell. She’s working with the Bureau for this investigation. I expect your full cooperation with them both.”

  “Investigation?” Fallon asked, surprised.

  “They’ll explain it.” The director nodded at Kyra. “Have a good flight.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  Barron walked out, closing the door behind himself and not being quiet about it. Rhodes pulled out a set of credentials, which he held out toward Fallon. “Have a seat, please.”

  “I . . . okay.” Fallon took the nearest seat. Rhodes uncapped his pen, and scribbled a date and time on a legal notepad. “Mr. Fallon, are you aware that the FBI arrested a spy in your subdivision a few nights ago?” Rhodes asked.

  Awareness dawned on Fallon’s face. “One of my neighbors told me this morning that there had been some kind of incident. He told me that he saw some Bureau officers ride away with a woman in an ambulance,” Fallon replied. “What was she doing there?”

  “She was retrieving a dead drop at Banshee Reeks.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Do you think I’m playing with you?” Rhodes set a copy of Adina Salem’s photograph down on the table. “Do you know this woman?”

  Fallon looked at the picture and shook his head. “No. Should I?”

  “This is Adina Salem. Until her arrest, she was listed as a legal adviser to the Israeli embassy here in Washington. We reviewed the information in the package she was trying to retrieve and found a report written by a Samantha Todd several years ago, but which was never entered into any CIA database.”

  Fallon rolled his eyes and his head slumped down. He took a deep breath and lai
d his hands flat on the tabletop. “That again.”

  “So you know Miss Todd?”

  “Of course I know her. C’mon, the inspector general went over all of that with me!” Fallon protested.

  “We know,” Kyra replied. “You pleaded ignorance.”

  Fallon shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “But you sent her out on the assignment where she disappeared,” Rhodes observed.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t file an ops cable proposing the meeting,” Kyra observed. “I tried to look it up. It doesn’t exist.”

  “It was an oversight at the time,” Fallon explained.

  “Here’s the problem, Mr. Fallon,” Rhodes announced. “Mossad is out there tearing up Iran right now. Then we find a Mossad agent trying to recover intel written by Sam Todd and not in any database, and the drop site for that happens to be a half mile from the house of one of the very, very few CIA officers connected to Todd’s disappearance. So the only people who could possibly have passed that intel to Mossad are people who were in contact with Todd before she went missing . . . but no one admitted to the IG that Todd was passing them reports. So I’m inclined to think that somebody was lying. In fact, I’m inclined to think that they withheld evidence from the IG to stay out of trouble, despite the fact that such evidence might have helped the Agency find Todd. And it’s not going to be hard to convince Director Barron that someone willing to leave a woman to rot in an Iranian prison in order to protect themselves might be just the kind of person willing to sell intel to Mossad.”

  Fallon stared at him, eyes wide. “I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t do that—” he said, tapping the table with his index finger, punctuating his words.

  “There aren’t that many people to look at, Mr. Fallon, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the dead drop was within spitting distance of your back deck,” Rhodes offered. “So either you’re lying or someone is setting you up.”