by Mark Greaney
“His termination has been approved by the Director of National Intelligence. If that’s not good enough for you, then you are in the wrong business.”
Babbitt persisted. “There’s something more. Something not in the file. Isn’t there?”
“It’s classified, Lee.”
“It’s me, Denny.”
Carmichael stopped walking. They were in the center of the foyer now. Denny’s security team had formed a diamond shape around him, ready to usher him outside and back into his Navigator, but Babbitt remained inside the coverage.
Denny seemed to struggle with his next comment. Finally he said, “American national security vis-à-vis a crucial ally has been severely degraded by our inability to take Court Gentry off the playing field. You and your organization are our last best hope for nothing less than the future good relations with an important partner on the world stage.”
He patted Babbitt on the shoulder. “Don’t fail me, Lee. You can expect more oversight on this. I will not allow another massacre like what happened last night in Tallinn.”
Denny acknowledged Parks with a brisk nod, then turned and left with his security detail.
Babbitt stood there on the marble floor of the hallway, thinking over what D/NCS Carmichael had just told him. Another country wanted Gray Man dead, so the CIA was pulling out all the stops to make it so.
What the hell?
Parks stepped up to his boss. “That went swimmingly.” His sarcasm was clear.
Babbitt was still weighing over Denny’s nonexplanation of the reasons behind the Gentry contract. He shook away his confusion and addressed Parks. “Additional oversight, my ass. He’s not going to move us to Langley, and he’s not going to send Langley personnel to us. The reason we have this job is so there are no comebacks on the Agency. Carmichael sees Townsend as his own private army. He won’t fuck that up by sending over official eyes and ears. He’s bluffing. We’ll be fine.” He held a finger up. “Correction. If we find Gentry in the next few days we’ll be fine.”
Jeff Parks knew this was his cue to fill Lee in on the status of the hunt.
“I’ve got our best hackers pulling feeds from every municipal and private security network in the area. The newest facial recog software is processing it all.”
“How wide a net?”
“All of the Baltic, of course. Part of Poland. We can pull in Germany and Ukraine if we need to, but the costs will skyrocket. Also, there is a daily ferry from Tallinn to Sweden that also stops in Norway, so I’ve added Oslo and Stockholm to the collection haul.”
“Can the software keep up with all that data?”
“It’s the best there is. Better than the newest stuff they are using at the Fort.” Babbitt knew “the Fort” was Fort Meade, home of the National Security Agency.
“Good. You have the personnel you need?”
“I have everyone working on it. It’s a matter of time before Gentry shows his face in front of a camera. When he does, we will be on him within a few hours.”
TWENTY-ONE
When they were still in the arrivals cab stand at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport, the taxi driver asked his passenger if he was absolutely certain he had the correct address. The passenger was, after all, a Westerner, and the address he gave was, after all, in the Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut. The Dahiyeh was the tough part of town, and the particular neighborhood that was the requested destination of the brown-haired man with the eyeglasses and the sport coat was populated predominately by poor Shias; crime was rampant there and kidnappings of Westerners was certainly not unheard of. The driver pictured this fare of his paying him and then stepping out of the taxi, only to be grabbed off the street, dragged to a basement, and chained to a radiator.
Hence the cabbie’s plea that the man double-check the proffered address.
But the foreigner’s Gulf Arabic was surprisingly fluid and his reply was confident; he explained with a comfortable smile that he had influential friends in the government here in the capital, as well as friends in that neighborhood in particular, and he was not concerned for his safety in the least.
The taxi driver took that to mean this stranger—this Westerner—was tight with Hezbollah, and if true, that should get him out of most dangerous situations in the streets around their destination.
After all, Hezbollah was the law around here.
Russell Whitlock had not told the truth to the taxi driver. He had no associates here in the government whatsoever. He had worked in the Middle East during a large portion of his career with the CIA, and he had been in and out of Beirut enough times as a NOC operative and a member of the National Clandestine Service’s Autonomous Asset Program, but he wasn’t exactly drinking tea and smoking a hookah with the town council on those trips. No, here in Beirut he’d assassinated a Syrian general and a Hezbollah politician and an al Qaeda banker, but those operations did not come with the free time or the backstories to allow him to cavort with the local intelligentsia or glitterati.
So he was going to have to bullshit his way through today.
As they drove south they passed bombed-out buildings from Lebanon’s most recent war with Israel, and they passed armed men in military uniforms driving motorcycles and standing on street corners eyeing every vehicle they passed. They drove by posters glorifying suicide bombers, men and, in many cases, women who had “martyred” themselves over the border in Israel. It seemed to Russ that on every block there was another picture of a bearded young man or a woman with her arms and head covered, always in front of a flag and always holding a Kalashnikov. All these young men and women were dead now, and Russ muttered “Good riddance” under his breath while he looked out the window, careful to keep his head low and his eyes unfixed on anything that looked like it might have been official military business, lest he cause his taxi to get pulled over and his papers to get scrutinized.
Finally the cab arrived at the address. Russ paid the driver and climbed out, taking his small leather tote bag with him. He stood in the street as the taxi drove off, then looked up at the building in front of him.
It was a mid-rise apartment building, maybe a dozen stories high, with antennae and satellite dishes bolted onto every horizontal or vertical surface. At street level, older boys and young men sat smoking and standing around in front of a souk that spilled out of an alley just up the sidewalk, and Russ had not even shaken his collar down and straightened out his slacks from the cab ride before a malevolent-looking group of young toughs began walking his way. He ignored them, acted oblivious to the danger, and strolled toward the sliding wire mesh gate in front of the building.
A security guard stood inside the locked gate, staring back blankly. Russ told him he had a meeting with two men inside. The guard asked which two guys he was talking about, and this was Russ Whitlock’s first indication that he would have to bypass whatever flunkies were here in order to speak to someone with actual authority.
A call was made from the guard to Russ’s hosts, and after a perfunctory search, he was let into the building.
A few minutes later Russ knocked on the door to an apartment on the fifth floor. Behind him stood two security men who had just searched him. They seemed competent enough with the frisk, although they let their guard down to do it. As one man stood behind him, patting down his arms, the American knew he could ram back an elbow into the guard’s throat, spin him around, and stomp on the inside of his leg to break it. Then he could draw the man’s pistol from his waistband as he fell and with it shoot his partner.
But none of this happened; Russ just war-gamed scenarios in his mind like this in order to stay prepared for days when such moves might be necessary.
The door opened, and Russ found himself in a room with two dark-skinned and clean-shaven men in shirtsleeves. The men shook his hand while eyeing him warily. One looked to be over fifty, and the other might have been
thirty-five.
There was a poster of Ayatollah Khomeini on the wall; otherwise the apartment was all but barren. A teakettle whistled on the stove in the kitchen to Whitlock’s left, but the men ignored it. They asked to see Russ’s passport and his visa. He produced both from the inside breast pocket of his sport coat. His documentation was passed back and forth between the two men; it claimed his name was Michael Harkin and he was a Canadian citizen, an import/export consultant from Toronto.
They handed him back his documentation, and all three sat down on threadbare sofas. Russ smiled at them, and they smiled back, but their body language read uncertainty.
The men were with VEVAK—the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. They did not know who Russ was, really; they’d only been ordered to meet with the Westerner by bosses who themselves did not know Russ’s true identity.
Russ knew this meeting would have happened somewhere else if the men he was coming to meet had had even an inkling of what he was about to offer them. Instead, Russ had contacted a man he knew to be an Iranian intelligence officer in Iraq posing as, of all things, a travel agent. Russ gave the man the Michael Harkin backstory and told him he had information to offer Iran regarding Iranian dissidents in Montreal who were operating in a computer hacking club that had created problems for the Iranian government.
The computer hackers did exist; Russ had learned about them in an article on the Internet. When the VEVAK man in Iraq asked how this Canadian man knew his identity, Harkin demurred, said he would make everything clear in a face-to-face meeting. He offered to come to Iraq, but instead he was given a counterproposal.
When it was proposed that the persistent Westerner who knew the right people would have to journey to Beirut to meet with Iranian intelligence, Russ knew he could have balked. He could have asked for other arrangements, safer arrangements, to be made. Perhaps he could have gone to a third-party embassy or consulate in Denmark or Lithuania or Ukraine, maybe met agents there who would have then passed his message up the chain. Certainly, if his goal was to stay in character as Michael Harkin, there was no way in hell he would have come to Beirut.
But Russ thought a few moves ahead on the chessboard—he’d studied from a master, after all—so he agreed to the meeting. He was not Michael Harkin. In order for his “true” identity to be believed, he had to display confidence in his ability to travel anywhere in the world.
So here he was, sitting in front of Iranian intelligence in the center of the most dangerous part of Hezbollah-controlled Beirut.
With a relaxed smile on his face.
They offered him tea and he accepted; he’d spent enough time as a guest of Arabs and Persians to know how to behave.
They spoke in English. A little small talk began as he told them about his flight and the traffic from the airport; the conversation was completely driven by Russ and not the two wary men who wondered who the fuck this guy was and what the fuck this guy wanted.
Finally the older man said, “We were told by our colleagues in Tehran that a man who knew the right people and said the right things would be coming today. But we were warned that you have not given a credible reason as to why you chose to fly around the world and come here to talk to us. Something about computers, I understand?”
“I was vague, yes,” Russ acknowledged.
The younger of the two men—neither had offered his name—asked, “How can we be of service to an import/export consultant from Canada?”
Russ smiled. “I am not an import/export consultant from Canada.”
“Oh?” said the younger man with one raised bushy eyebrow.
“I can give you my real name.”
“You are not Michael Harkin? Do you realize you could be punished for applying for a Lebanese visa under a false identity?”
Russ laughed. Sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed now, he was the epitome of self-assuredness. “Do you want my name or not?”
“If you wish.”
Russ’s smile faded and he leaned forward a little. “My name is Courtland Gentry.”
TWENTY-TWO
The older man seemed unfazed, but the younger was not able to hide a reaction; his eyes widened just slightly, but he recovered. “Is that a name that should mean something to us?”
“If your organization is worth anything, then yes, it should mean quite a lot, in fact.”
The older man was genuinely confused; the younger turned to him and spoke low and fast in Farsi. Russ did not speak the language, but it, like Arabic, was a member of the Indo-European family of languages and he recognized the sound of it.
The older man asked his colleague for clarification, then turned to the American on the tattered sofa in front of him. With feigned nonchalance he reached for his tea and took a slow sip. “We are to believe that you are the Gray Man?”
“That name was given to me by others. There is nothing official to it.”
Both men looked incredulous, but the younger one said, “What is it that you want?”
“Your superiors at VEVAK have been pursuing a business relationship with me for some time. I wanted to discuss this with them, in person, but I did not want to just walk through the front door of an embassy. Your diplomatic buildings throughout the world are under surveillance by American intelligence, and I’d rather avoid our relationship coming to light. So I came through the back door, so to speak.”
Again the two men conferred for a moment in Farsi; Russ just watched them talk. They seemed to have no idea what to do, so he decided to help them out. “Gentlemen, I suggest you contact the highest-ranking member of your service you can get on the phone, and tell him I am here and ready to do business. They will send someone, someone who will verify my identity through whatever means VEVAK has to do so, and I will wait patiently until then.”
Without another word the younger of the two stood and headed out of the room, down a hall to the rear of the flat, pulling out his mobile phone as he walked. The older man sat in silence for a moment, then held up a finger to Russ, stood, and went into the hall. He left the door open as he conferred with the two security men standing there, and seconds later they entered, their jackets open and their eyes locked on the man on the couch. They took up positions near the doorway to the kitchen, some twenty feet away from where Russ sat.
Russ smiled at them and nodded, then turned to the older VEVAK officer. “I assure you, I am a friend.”
“Yes. I need you to wait, please.”
“Of course.”
“Would you like some more tea?”
“Love some.”
Russ Whitlock sat on the sofa alone for more than an hour. From the rear of the flat he heard conversation; it sounded like both VEVAK men were working telephones frantically, but neither popped his head out to let him know what was going on. The two security men in the living room were professionals; they did not even look directly at him but just stood there, doing their best to show themselves to be competent badasses who were ready for anything.
Russ passed the time brainstorming ways to kill them.
Finally there was a knock at the door. The guards looked concerned, but they did not move; it was the young intelligence officer who appeared from the back and opened it, then embraced the visitor, an attractive and well-groomed man in a blue double-breasted suit. He entered with a smile, car keys, sunglasses, and mobile phone in his hand, and he placed them on the counter by the kitchen with a delicate movement.
Russ could see instantly by the deference given to him that this man was the local power. Beirut was ground zero for Iranian intelligence outside Tehran, so Russ knew this man must be quite high on the food chain, indeed. Perhaps the local VEVAK assistant chief of station, Russ surmised, but he did not ask.
Russ stood to meet him, and they shook hands.
“My name is Ali Hussein.” This name was akin to John Smith in Iran, and Russ figured it was phon
y.
They shook hands. “Court Gentry.”
“That remains to be seen,” Ali said with a smile, and he held Whitlock’s hand for a long moment. The two men were close now, their faces a foot apart, and now Russ detected a hardness, a malevolence behind the polished veneer of nice clothes and nice manners. This man was no assistant station chief riding a desk for an intelligence agency. Instead, Russ determined very quickly that this man was Quds Force, a special unit of the Iranian Republican Guard tasked with exporting Iranian power around the world.
Ali Hussein was a dangerous hombre, indeed.
Good. This was the asshole Russ had come to see.
Ali and Russ sat down across from one another in the living room, and the Iranian retrieved a folded sheaf of papers from the breast pocket of his coat. “I have some information about the Gray Man. I am going to ask you some questions. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Ali smiled. “I hope so.” He looked back to the kitchen just as the young VEVAK officer stepped out with tea on a tray.
“Mamnoon.” Thank you, he said, then returned his attention to the American across from him.
He asked, “What is your CIA code name?”
Russ did not hesitate. “Violator.”
“And your CIA call sign?”
Whitlock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I am impressed with your knowledge. My former agency does not give you the respect you deserve.”
“Can you answer my question?”
“My call sign with my SAD unit was Sierra Six.”
“SAD?”
“Special Activities Division.”
“You were a commando.”
“Something like that.”
Ali Hussein nodded thoughtfully before continuing with the questions.
“Your place of birth?”
“Jacksonville, Florida.”
“You have a sister. What is her name?”
“I had a brother. His name was Chase.”
