The Last Man in Tehran

by Mark Henshaw

  The phone on the wall rang. The facility director answered it, spoke quietly to the party on the other end, then hung up. “They are loading the RTGs now. They will be ready to go in thirty minutes.”

  “Very good.”

  Ebtekar walked out the front door and checked his watch again. His driver pulled up in the Mercedes S600 and the director climbed in. The car pulled away from the building and through the front security gate.

  Six stories below the surface in the loading dock, the extra shipping crate, a metal box labeled in Farsi script, sat behind a stack of wooden containers surrounded by dozens of other pieces of equipment. The dockworkers had tried to open it when they’d first pulled it off the truck, but the key provided hadn’t matched the lock, there had been no bolt cutters on hand, and the driver who’d delivered the package had already departed, so they could not ask whether he’d given them the wrong one. That driver was a regular, so they had simply decided to ask him about it when he returned the next day. They would have settled on a very different course if he had told them how he had gladly taken a several-hundred-thousand-toman as a bribe from a beautiful woman he’d met at his usual bar to deliver the crate. How she had known he made deliveries to this site he didn’t know, but his lust and her money had convinced him not to ask the question. She had told him that it was computer equipment that one of her smuggler associates was going to resell. He hadn’t cared whether she was telling the truth or not. She hadn’t been impressed with his crude attempts to flirt, so he had settled for her money and some leering glances. If he did the job well, there could also be more in the future, and maybe other chances to seek more than monetary payment from her for his services.

  The detonator inside was connected to both a timer and a radio receiver wired to the crate itself, making the entire box an antenna. The timer had counted down from twelve hours, giving Mossad time enough to deactivate the system if there was any reason to do so.

  The detonator fired a millisecond after the timer reached zero.

  The explosion turned the metal crate into an oversize grenade, two thousand kilopascals of pressure shredding the sides of the box and every other crate around it into countless pieces of shrapnel that cut the workers into bloody ribbons. The blast wave hit them two milliseconds later, smashing their bones to powder, their organs to jelly, and the heat vaporizing nearly all of what remained of their bodies before gravity itself had time to pull their mangled corpses to the floor.

  The nearest load-bearing pillar was less than ten meters away, and the blast wave shattered it and every other pillar within twice that distance before deflecting up and smashing into the ceiling. The entire building shook for an instant, and the fifth-level floor above the cargo dock fell away, dropping men and machines into the burning storm below. The fourth level held its ground for a moment as the support beams and pillars stressed and twisted, crumpling as the unbalanced weight of the entire building pushed down on them. The third level dropped onto the fourth, finally causing it to crumble. The separation factory hurtled down, nuclear waste and extracted plutonium spilling out of their vessels into the fire, radioactive particulates rushing skyward on the rising air. The second level crashed down, the first a second later, men now having had time to scream as they saw their deaths below them for a few moments before they landed.

  The guards around the warehouse outside had felt the rumble before they heard it, wondering for an instant whether Qom hadn’t suffered one of the temblors that rattled the windows at random times. Then the concrete under their feet fell away, the entire street level above emptying into the ground as fire and smoke rose up through the cracks faster than the street fell into the earth.

  The crater was a city block square and growing as it took everything aboveground into its widening mouth and vomited smoke toward the blue sky.

  • • •

  Ebtekar felt the car shake. The driver pressed the brake and the car came to a gradual stop.

  The people would think it had been an earthquake at first. Iran suffered them sometimes, sixes and sevens on the Richter scale. One had hit Bam in 2003 and killed more than thirty thousand. Another had killed fifty thousand in Manjil in 1990. The mullahs lived in fear that one would hit Tehran and destroy the entire city, Allah’s judgment for their hypocrisies.

  Ebtekar pushed the car door open and stepped out, then stared at the scene behind him.

  The facility was gone, replaced by a small volcano in the earth, flames and smoke reaching for the clouds.

  The RTGs were buried now, crushed at the bottom of the hole that had eaten the entire building he had just left, buried under tons of earth, metal, and the bodies of dead men.

  Ebtekar looked up to the sky, where the US satellites were orbiting. He checked his watch. On schedule. They will share the pictures with you, Gavi, Ebtekar thought, hoping his distant Israeli friend might hear him. It is your choice now.

  CIA Operations Center

  “Anything on your side?”

  “No,” Hadfield told his FBI counterpart.

  “You know, I worked as a sheriff’s-office dispatcher for a year when I was trying to get into the Bureau,” the FBI officer admitted. “New guy on the totem pole, so I got the night shift, five nights a week. Small county in West Virginia. So small that all the sheriff’s deputies went home after midnight. You know what’s on the television in rural West Virginia at three o’clock in the morning? Infomercials, Country Music Television, and Baywatch reruns. That’s it.”

  “I’d be doing as much for my country watching any of those as I am processing these reports,” Hadfield groused. “There’s not a—wait . . .” The message on his screen was one that he’d seen maybe once before. He clicked the link and stared at the window that opened. Then he sent the image to the monitor array on the front wall.

  All heads in the room looked up at the live satellite image that had replaced the news feeds. A pillar of smoke was rising out of a crater surrounded by cargo warehouses and flatbed trucks. “Where is this?” the senior watch officer asked.

  Hadfield checked the alert. “Qom, Iran. Suspected nuclear site.”

  The senior watch officer reached for his secure phone and dialed. “Director Barron, this is the Ops Center. Sorry to wake you, sir. There’s been an incident.”

  US Embassy

  Tel Aviv

  Ronen stood in one of the reception halls on the embassy’s main floor, a US marine standing behind him at parade rest, hands behind his back. He’d spent the afternoon in a meeting with the American ambassador and the station chief. After reviewing the material they’d given him, he’d asked for a few moments of personal privilege, which the Americans had kindly granted. The State Department was hosting an art exhibit this year, portraiture on loan from the British government, and the ramsad had asked for permission to view the artwork on his way out of the building. Gentleman that he was, the ambassador had approved the request, with the caveat that an escort accompany him and he restrict his movements to the public areas. The marine had kept a respectable distance, but that would change quickly if Ronen tried to venture anywhere away from the exhibition. The way we treat our allies, Ronen told himself, then laughed at the absurdity of the observation. Given the operations he had approved in recent weeks, he had no right to complain about how his country’s allies were treating him.

  The request to come to the embassy had been a surprise. Such invitations were rare and he had thought that he might find himself subjected to a demarche, but the ambassador and the CIA station chief had both been courteous. They had not bothered to waste his time with trivial matters, which he appreciated. The station chief had given him an envelope, which he had opened to find satellite photos of a burning warehouse. Ronen had given no orders to destroy it and the Americans had not done the deed. Five pages of NSA intercepts, translated into English and Hebrew for his convenience, let him review a conversation between the director of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security and Iran’s president. The direc
tor, Eshaq Ebtekar, had been present, had barely escaped the facility moments before its destruction in fact, and had made the call over an unsecured cell phone, no doubt forgetting in the shock of the moment that it was an unencrypted connection. He confirmed that almost fifty men were believed dead in the rubble, including one of his own senior deputies. The RTGs were buried under the pile, their condition unknown but likely destroyed. Ebtekar had recommended that they not try to exhume the devices. The smoke rising from the hole showed no sign it carried radioactive particles, but that alone did not prove the RTGs were intact. If they were breached, they could yet pollute the sky or the groundwater with strontium. Better, Ebtekar thought, that they fill the site with concrete, to ensure that any radioactive material stayed where it was. If the president disagreed and ordered an excavation, it would take months to clean up the site, and every shift in the wreckage would threaten to turn the RTGs into dirty bombs that would contaminate all of Qom. Iran would then know what Israel had felt after Haifa.

  Ronen stared at Hysing’s Portrait of an Unknown Man for almost five minutes, looking but not seeing.

  Ebtekar took a long drag on his cigarette, never looking away from the students dancing on the embassy walls. “I don’t know where Mossad will send you after this . . . but wherever you go, always keep your eyes here on Tehran. Khomenei and those who come after him want to see Israel pushed into the sea, but they have seen you defeat the Arab armies and how you deal with terrorists. That will leave them only one option. Do not ever let them lay hands on it.”

  Ronen digested the man’s words while Ebtekar finished his cigarette. What was the term he had heard the Americans use? The Islamic Bomb. “That would be the most difficult mission Mossad ever takes,” he said, his voice depressed. “And the most vicious.”

  The ramsad shifted his feet as the memory played through his mind. It had remained sharp and clear despite the years, and he could remember the look on Ebtekar’s face as the Iranian told him what the future held.

  “I know,” Ebtekar had said. “That is why men like you should lead it. It is as your boss, Meir Dagan, has often said: ‘The dirtiest actions should be carried out by the most honest men.’ You are the most honest man I know. I do not think you and I will ever see each other again after tonight. To survive, I will have to become one of them and I will have to do some very ugly things. I will have to hurt your country. As the years wind on, please trust that I will take no pleasure in it, no matter what you may ever hear me say. I do not care for Israel, but you are my friend. And I will do what I can to stop my people from getting their hands on the bomb, because I know what they would do with it. Trust me that I will do what I can to prevent war between our people.”

  Ebtekar had removed the RTGs from the field, and he had destroyed a nuclear facility and killed his own men to make the point for an audience of one person.

  Ronen turned to the escort. “I’m ready to leave. You may show me out.”

  The marine held out an arm, directing the Israeli to the door. Ronen stopped at the front desk and retrieved his cell phone, then walked outside.

  • • •

  Mossad’s campus was five kilometers north of the embassy, less than an hour’s walk. It was not especially safe for the ramsad to travel on foot, even in his own country, but Ronen decided he needed to breathe the sea air, to clear his mind as he thought. Several members of his security team walked with him in a respectful circle, two ahead, two behind, one to each side. He said nothing as he marched north at a steady pace. His mind was miles and years away as he thought about the last words he and Hasan, now Eshaq Ebtekar, had ever spoken.

  “I will miss your company,” Ronen had said.

  “Bedrood, my friend.”

  “Tzeth’a leshalom, Hasan.”

  “I think peace will have to wait for the next life.”

  He looked up at the traffic sign—Einstein Street. He saw the classroom buildings of Tel Aviv University rising just a block to the east. There were so many students there, young people whose safety and futures depended on the decisions he had to make, and this one more important than any other in his life.

  Ebtekar was in the same position, he knew. So many young Iranian men and women who hoped they would never have to actually fight an open war, no matter what their leaders in Tehran said. Did Ebtekar feel the weight of that? Ronen thought a man would have to be a monster not to be aware of it.

  The ramsad breathed in deep. He had not imagined on that night that either he or Ebtekar would be their countries’ chief spies four decades later. What were the chances of that? he asked himself. Two young officers, once friends, now serving countries that were enemies, unable to talk to each other for half a lifetime. But they each knew who the other was now, how high he had risen, and what his duties demanded.

  Ebtekar had shown that he still remembered their last conversation that night when revolution had taken his country. Could a man remember such words forty years after if they meant nothing to him?

  The ramsad made his choice.

  Ronen pulled his cell phone from his coat and dialed a number, never breaking his stride, and held the unit to his ear. The call connected. “All teams are to stand down and return home immediately,” he said.

  He ended the call and replaced the phone in his pocket. I will trust you, Hasan. I pray you will keep your promise.

  Maybe peace would have to wait for the next life, he thought, but if they could have it in this one, that was the place it should start.

  An Eastern Beach on Kish Island

  Salem watched as the men lifted two forms wrapped in canvas and laid them in the boats, one in each—their dead from the warehouse. Two other men were helped in, the walking wounded who had taken rounds in a shoulder and a knee, the latter man drugged heavily to keep him from screaming in agony with each step. Whether either man would serve Mossad in the field again remained to be seen, but they would receive Israel’s highest honors when they got home. The awards would be secret, of course, but no one joined Mossad for fame.

  Salem turned away from the scene and looked back at the island lights while the rest of the team finished packing the gear into the two rubber dinghies. There was nothing left for them to do in this place, no one left to target. She doubted she would ever see Kish Island again. That did not bother her. She’d never had any desire to see this place before she’d come and had not enjoyed a moment of its pleasures while she’d been here.

  She pulled a satellite phone from her pack and dialed a number. It rang only once before the man on the other end took the call.

  “Report,” Ronen ordered.

  “As you ordered, our evacuation is under way,” Salem told him. “Two dead, two wounded but stable.”

  “You’ve done us all a great service,” Ronen told her. “Please have the entire unit report to me when you arrive home. I would like to offer my thanks to everyone in person. Also, tell them that I will visit the families of your fallen to share our gratitude and sorrow with them.”

  “Toda, sir,” she said.

  “Al lo da-var,” Ronen replied. “Tzeteh’ Leshalom.” Return in peace.

  The call disconnected. Salem replaced the phone in her pack and slung it over her shoulder.

  “We’re ready,” one of the men announced.

  She marched across the wet sand and crawled into one of the small boats as two men pushed them out into the shallows and then heaved themselves aboard. The drivers fired up the motors and the dinghies surged forward through the low waves and turned south, running for the cargo lanes of the Persian Gulf. The Israeli navy had stationed the Dolphin-class submarine INS Rahav five kilometers south of Kish days ago; it had sat on the bottom a mere eighty-six meters below the surface. The gulf was shallow and the sailors had certainly heard cargo ships and Iranian military vessels passing only a few dozen meters overhead, but they were brave men, no less than her own team. The Rahav would surface on schedule, the Mossad officers would board with their equipment, and th
ey would settle in for a cramped ride home, which would take a few weeks. Ronen would debrief her and the rest of the officers, and then she would go back to Haifa content that she had repaid the injury done to her home.

  But an eye for an eye would never give Israel the security Salem wanted her country to have so much. It was too small a nation to just trade blows when it was outnumbered so heavily, and to hit their enemies harder than their enemies hit them would just escalate the violence until Israel was destroyed or Tel Aviv used nuclear weapons, which likely would produce the same result. What was left? Fear, only, Gavi Ronen said. Israel had to make her enemies afraid to act, and that meant striking at the very people who gave the orders to attack and those who carried them out. The people who would pull the trigger must know for a certainty that to strike Israel was to pronounce a death sentence upon their own heads. Is that terrorism? Salem wondered. Perhaps, but she thought there was a difference. If Israel’s enemies buried their guns tomorrow, there would be peace. If Israel put away her guns tomorrow, there would be slaughter in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and there was the difference.

  The cold spray of the gulf wet her face. She did not bother to wipe it off.

  She would return to the field and fight again. Salem thought she would probably die on an operation like this one, as two of her team had, but it would be a good death. And if there were enough in the world like Shiloh, helping her and Mossad identify the men who needed to be made to fear for their lives, then Israel would survive.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CIA Red Cell

  The vault door opened and Fuller came in, staring down at papers in a file. Rhodes looked up from the classified terminal on his desk. “You have something?”