‘The Pakistanis, the Chinese and the Russians are all possibilities, monsieur.’
‘But you don’t have proof?’
‘Perhaps the US should be putting a lot more effort into finding that proof?’ Ashtar countered.
‘And this policy comes from the top?’
‘In all likelihood, although we don’t have proof of that either. But just as the President of the United States doesn’t know everything that’s going on inside the CIA, President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei are unlikely to be aware of the details of Iran’s myriad nuclear projects. Nor is the Iranian hierarchy in agreement on all aspects of policy. Iran has its hardline conservatives, but the parliament also has a number of liberals. If details of the Iranian nuclear program were common knowledge, cooler heads might prevail. But one thing is certain, Mr O’Connor: if the fanatics in Iran perfect the suitcase bomb, it will put the suicide bomber in another dimension …’ Ashtar’s voice trailed off.
‘Why are you handing all this to the CIA? Why not just go public with it? It wouldn’t be the first time.’
Ashtar exhaled towards one of the pear-shaped glass ceiling lamps and smiled. ‘Two years ago, one of our people revealed the existence of an Iranian program of weapons of mass destruction, which was based at the Lavizan-Shi’an Technological Research Center north-east of Tehran.’
O’Connor nodded in agreement. The CIA had followed the disclosures with interest.
‘That centre was originally known as Lavizan 1, but when the site was disclosed, the regime moved all the nuclear and biological equipment to another site on a 24-hectare military facility near Tehran, known as Lavizan 2.’
‘I thought the IAEA had inspected that site?’
‘Not Lavizan 2, and by the time the IAEA arrived to inspect Lavizan 1, there was nothing to see. The site had been bulldozed to the ground and six inches of topsoil removed to ensure there were no traces of enriched uranium or biological weapons. If we were to go public with what we suspect is really happening in Iran, that would give the regime enough warning to cover its tracks. The United States and Israel are the only two countries who are able to stop this …’
‘How, exactly?’
‘The United States is Israel’s greatest ally, and once your population is aware of the threat posed by Islam, Sharia law and a nuclear-armed Iran, there are many, at least on the Republican side of politics, who will be pushing for Iran to be attacked to protect Israel.’
O’Connor knew better than to ask whether the same information was being supplied to Mossad. Israel had struck her enemies before without seeking approval from the United States. When the then president of Egypt, Gamal Nasser, nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, Israel had secretly joined forces with Britain and France and attacked. President Eisenhower had been furious. In O’Connor’s view, one thing was certain: Israel would already have plans in place to attack Iran.
‘That still doesn’t explain what you and the NCRI expect out of all this,’ O’Connor probed.
‘It’s quite simple. The NCRI represents the large silent majority of Iranians who want their country back. In the seventies, the Shah and the SAVAK, his murderous secret police, tortured and assassinated countless thousands of my countrymen. One of the SAVAK’s favourite forms of torture was to insert broken glass into the rectum, followed by boiling water.’ Ashtar raised an eyebrow and dragged deeply on his cigarette. ‘Many of those in SAVAK were trained by the CIA, Mr O’Connor. Not one of your finest achievements.’
O’Connor said nothing.
‘I was brought up in one of the poorest areas of Iran, in Vali-asr, a little village not far from the ruins of Persepolis.’
‘The ancient capital?’
‘Parsa, or City of the Persians,’ Ashtar agreed. ‘To understand why we want our country back, you must understand a little of our history. In 1971, when I was just eight, the Shah threw a celebration at Persepolis to celebrate the 2500th anniversary of the Persian throne. Six kings, four queens and twenty presidents drove past our village in Rolls-Royces, and Maxim’s of Paris provided the catering. While my family was struggling to put a bowl of rice and potatoes on the table, the Shah celebrated his wife’s birthday with a menu of crayfish tails, quails’ eggs, truffles and roast peacocks stuffed with foie gras.’ Ashtar exhaled contemptuously. ‘As I’m sure you know, the Shah’s regime was backed to the hilt by your government because Iran provided a buffer against Soviet expansion into the Middle East, and Iran’s oil reserves are the third largest in the world. When Khomeini seized control in 1979, many Iranians supported him, because we all thought that the days of misery under a Shah backed by the US were behind us.’
O’Connor could hear the anger in Ashtar’s voice. How much did this affect his analysis of the current situation?
‘In fact, they were only just beginning. Under the ayatollahs, life became a nightmare of strict Islamic law. Article 102 of Iran’s new Penal Code states that if you commit adultery, you will be stoned to death. You are placed in a hole and covered with soil, a man up to his waist and a woman up to her chest. Iran’s new legal codes are based on the seventh century – Khomeini turned the country back 1400 years, and his successor Khamenei has kept it there.’
‘Barbaric,’ O’Connor agreed, but the stoning of adulterers paled against the nuclear threat. ‘So you hope that the US will intervene, and in doing so, remove the ayatollahs from Iran. But what makes you think the Supreme Council will order a nuclear strike against the West?’
‘The ayatollahs’ intentions are very clear, at least to us. It’s to be hoped your people in Washington don’t make the same mistakes they made in 1978.’
‘The Iranian Revolution?’
Ashtar nodded. ‘Washington had no idea how bad things were in Iran under the Shah. Carter’s advisors didn’t have a clue. The Shah had pissed off the clergy, the merchant class, the farmers, the intellectuals, the students … the only thing propping him up was the army.
‘But even after the police and the army started killing protesters in the streets, the US government naïvely believed that the uprising was the work of a few disgruntled extremists.’ Ashtar leaned forward. ‘This Iranian regime will not stop until the entire world is subject to Islam and Sharia law. It’s written in the Iranian constitution, a public document. The final statement is clear, Mr O’Connor: this century will witness the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.’ Ashtar lowered his voice still further. ‘Don’t be swayed by claims of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The ayatollahs are determined to acquire nuclear weapons, and they’re well on the way. It’s imperative that the US and Israel strike now, before it’s too late.’
An hour later, O’Connor left the restaurant and scanned the road leading back to the train station, his mind filled with foreboding. If what Jalal Ashtar had passed on was true, the United States might not be the only country facing annihilation. But could he be trusted? Was the NCRI hoping to use the United States and Israel to knock out the current regime so that they could assume power? Everything he’d been told was uncorroborated and would have to be exhaustively checked. It was time to report back to his boss in Langley.
Chapter 5
‘Come in, buddy. Take a seat.’ Tom McNamara, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations, motioned O’Connor towards one of two old and cracked brown leather sofas in front of a desk stacked high with briefing papers and crimson files. The DDO was the second most powerful man in the CIA, responsible for running all the CIA’s agents and countless international ‘black’ operations. McNamara’s manner matched his office chairs, old-world and comfortable, but manners could be misleading. The furniture had been scheduled for replacement more than once, but McNamara had told ‘those jerks’ down in Administration that he’d garrotte the first one of them who tried to replace them. In pride of place on the wood-panelled wall behind McNamara’s desk was the seal of the CIA, an eagle atop a shield with a sixteen-point compass star, which represen
ted intelligence sourced from all points of the globe.
‘I’ve had a look at the Ashtar stuff,’ McNamara began. ‘What’s your take on it?’ The barrel-chested ex-marine leaned back in his swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. McNamara had a big round face, greying hair cropped very short and piercing blue eyes.
‘It might be genuine, but it’s a big “might”. Given the clusterfuck we’ve got ourselves into in Iraq, we’ll need confirmation before we can take anything to the White House,’ O’Connor responded easily. He and McNamara had served together in some tough neighbourhoods since McNamara’s days as station chief in Moscow, where O’Connor had worked in the field undercover. Theirs was a trust forged in adversity.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ said McNamara. ‘I’m still not convinced all that bullshit about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction wasn’t fed to the Pentagon by Iranian intelligence.’
‘Not helped by the defense secretary and his neo-cons setting up their own intelligence unit … What was it called again?’
‘Ah yes … the Office of Special Plans. Code for “If there’s not sufficient intelligence to justify a war, we’ll make it up.” They wouldn’t know shit from clay at the Pentagon,’ McNamara grumbled.
The 2003 US invasion of the Iranians’ old adversary, Iraq, had played right into the hands of the Iranian ayatollahs. With Iraq now a smouldering train wreck, Iran was on the rise as the Shia powerhouse of the Middle East, something that was not lost on Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia.
‘Confirming details of the nuclear program in Iran is going to be tough, though,’ O’Connor observed.
‘I know. Especially since those fuckwits in the Pentagon convinced the White House we don’t need people on the ground any more. Satellites can do it all, apparently, except where it comes to nuclear facilities that are buried so deep in the fucking mountains that even if we could find them, our biggest bunker buster wouldn’t touch them.’
McNamara reached for a crimson file marked Top Secret – NOFORN, meaning that in addition to the watertight security afforded to CIA secret files, the information was not for release to foreign nationals. ‘Which is where you come in,’ he said.
O’Connor grinned. ‘I was afraid of that.’
‘We’re ignoring the Pentagon and are now in the delicate first stages of bringing a defector on board – a member of the Revolutionary Guards. His name’s Farid Jafari and his details are in this file,’ McNamara said, pushing the file across the desk. ‘We’re about to train him in the finer points of staying alive.’
‘Here? Doesn’t that raise alarm bells in Tehran?’
‘Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your point of view – Jafari has a sick uncle in Maryland, so he’s here on the pretext of visiting him.’
‘Have they got him under surveillance?’
‘Not as far as we can tell, which is a sign he’s not high on their watch-list, but he’ll be interrogated when he gets back to Tehran. Nothing surer. We’re in the process of getting his wife out, so they can’t get to him through her.’
‘So where do I fit in?’
‘You’re going to help bring him up to speed with survival skills, and then we’re going to send you into Iran to run him and verify as much of Ashtar’s story as we can. For all we know, Ashtar might be another “Curveball”.’
Iraqi defector Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball, had fabricated the intelligence the US administration had used to bolster the case for invading Iraq. The German intelligence agency, BND, had warned the US they had doubts about al-Janabi’s claims, but the warnings were ignored, enabling the US to claim irrefutable and eyewitness proof of mobile biological-weapons laboratories.
‘Is there something in particular I’ve done to piss you off lately?’ O’Connor asked with a lopsided grin.
‘No, although you usually do, so you can hold this one on account. We’d normally use an Iranian, but thanks to the secretary of defense, they’re pretty thin on the ground, and you’re one of the very few people we’ve got who can speak Farsi,’ McNamara responded, more serious now. ‘Even hailing a taxi in Tehran without the lingo can be problematic.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something? The last time I looked we don’t even have an embassy there.’
‘More’s the pity,’ McNamara agreed. The DDO came from the old-fashioned school of hard negotiation and diplomatic arm-twisting, rather than the neo-con school of storming in with every available aircraft carrier and tank regiment. ‘But money talks, and we’re pretty confident we can fix a dead-letter drop in Tehran. It will include a Glock 21, which if I remember rightly is your persuader of choice, along with a satellite phone that will connect you with one of our Seal teams if we have to get you out in a hurry. Your codename for this operation is Cyrus and the codename to activate an extraction is Asman.’
‘Nice touch,’ O’Connor allowed. Asman was the ancient Persian god of the sky, and Cyrus the Great was the most successful king to ever rule over the Persian Empire, expanding its boundaries over a vast area of Asia, Africa and Europe. And it was Cyrus the Great who, in 540 BC, had freed the Jews from their Babylonian captors.
‘As cover, you’re going in as an academic on a research mission, and there we’ve had a stroke of luck – or perhaps turning a tragedy to our advantage would be a better way of putting it.’
The DDO pushed another thick crimson file towards O’Connor. ‘The life and times of Associate Professor Darragh McLoughlin. Everything he’s ever written or published. Two years younger than you, and there’s a rough likeness, particularly once you’ve grown a beard. He’s a lecturer in political science, specialising in Islam, at Trinity College Dublin … or was.’
‘Was?’
‘Died of a heart attack two months ago. We’ve managed to sanitise that small detail from websites and anywhere else our friends in Tehran might care to look. Fortunately McLoughlin was single, and pretty much a loner. The Irish government and the university are cooperating, and if the Iranians were to check on him, they would conclude McLoughlin’s still alive and kicking. The file also contains a detailed background brief on his personal habits, such as they were … just in case.’ The DDO allowed himself a sardonic smile. ‘McLoughlin didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and, unlike you, he had absolutely no interest in women, but I’m sure you’ll be able to restrain yourself in Iran.’
‘Batted for the other side?’
McNamara shook his head. ‘Why do you assume everyone who’s not interested in women bats for the other side? He just didn’t spend his life trying to get into bed with every woman he met.’
‘Iranian women are very attractive,’ O’Connor countered, feigning a hurt look.
The DDO shook his head and looked at O’Connor over the top of his glasses. ‘And being stoned to death is equally unattractive, so I suggest you concentrate on finding out just what the Iranians are up to. We’re going to need confirmation of every nuclear plant, including location, purpose, staffing numbers and types of equipment.’ McNamara placed his glasses on the desk and leaned back in his chair. ‘Your initial meeting with Jafari is set up for tomorrow at noon in the Watergate complex. After that Jafari’s scheduled for some intensive training at the farm.’
O’Connor smiled to himself. Located north of Route 64, not far from Williamsburg and about 150 kilometres south of Washington, DC, ‘the farm’ covered over 3500 hectares on the south bank of the York River in Virginia. One of the Agency’s top-secret training areas, it had been closed to the public since the early 1950s but O’Connor knew it well. He’d spent many weeks there, learning the darker arts of his trade.
‘Any questions?’
‘Why does Jafari want to defect?’
‘Like a lot of Iranians, Jafari’s family ran foul of the ayatollahs. His father was a scientist who studied here at Yale in the seventies, when we were helping the Shah build up Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But after 1979, Iran was a very different place. Jafari’s father r
efused to cooperate, even when the secret police raided the family home and beat him up. When the Ayatollah’s thugs came back, Jafari was away, serving as an engineer on a patrol boat in the Iranian Navy, but this time no one else survived … father, mother, and two sisters beaten to death.’
‘Jesus. I knew there was a reason I wasn’t religious. So with his father’s background, how come Jafari was accepted into the navy?’
‘It’s all in his file,’ McNamara said. ‘Like a lot of young Iranians, Jafari was originally attracted to the regime, but he’s intelligent, and he’s come to realise that Iranians are far from free. Now that Iran’s ramping up its quest for the bomb, he’s been transferred from the navy and promoted to sargord … a major in the nuclear division of the Republican Guards. He’s young to hold that rank, but he holds a Master of Science in nuclear physics so he’s obviously impressed his superiors and is being marked for a bright future. Although …’ McNamara paused thoughtfully. ‘There’s no guarantee he’s not a double agent,’ he warned. ‘But given what happened to his family, that’s unlikely.’
O’Connor walked back to his office, three floors below that of his boss, thinking carefully. Everything was falling neatly into place. Perhaps too neatly.
Chapter 6
Cardinal Felici rose from his plush, red leather chair and stood by the windows of his opulent office. The Palazzo della Sacra Inquisizione, a forbidding grey and ochre palace, still went by its ancient name of the Sacred Inquisition. The palace had been built in 1571 by Pope Pius V to house what was then known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition. In the sixteenth century, the Holy Church had supported the Inquisition’s widespread use of torture of those who refused to follow the Catholic faith, a policy that turned the Inquisition into one of the most feared offices in Europe. The Holy Church’s successor organisation to the Inquisition had been given a softer title – the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – but it was still in the same palace and it was still charged with investigating heresy. A painting of Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, occupied pride of place on Felici’s wall. A staunch guardian of the Faith, Torquemada had been a strong supporter of the Alhambra Decree, which had ensured Jews were expelled from fifteenth-century Spain, and he had also been violently opposed to Muslims. Torquemada and Felici were in lockstep.
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