by Matthew Dunn
“Under the circumstances, sounding foolish should be of little concern to you.”
Harry groaned before speaking. “Lovers? Friends? I have none. For every million dollars that I have made, I have also made a hundred enemies. And that has suited me just fine. But enemies don’t give you adulation.”
“But you decided that MI6 could,” Will whispered into Harry’s ear. “Because we spend time with our agents, listen to them, tell them how vital their work is, and make them feel special.”
Harry seemed offended. “Certainly that’s what Ewan did for me. You’re obviously different.”
“Adulation?”
“I said it would sound foolish.”
Will moved the blade to Harry’s other eye. “Well, here I am, spending quality time with you and hanging on your every word.”
He could feel Harry’s heart pumping faster through his carotid artery.
Harry sighed. “Charles, you have to understand. I need this. I did nothing to compromise Ewan’s safety. I would never do anything to jeopardize my work for you guys.”
“And what exactly is that work?”
“I gave you a name. The woman Lana. You can use her to identify your target.”
“That means you are now redundant.”
“Only if you fail to realize my potential. You can use me in other ways: my knowledge, my contacts—God, you can even use my money if you need to.”
Will tightened his hand around the knife’s hilt. He knew that he would have to move the blade only a few millimeters to permanently blind Harry. He frowned as an idea came to him. “I have no need for your money. But I am prepared to test you and your contacts.” He smiled. “I want you to find out if there are any other IRGC officers working in Central Europe. I require only one name. And it is crucial that the person is working in an official capacity rather than covertly, maybe someone attached to an Iranian embassy or working as a military observer. Can you do that for me?”
“There are no other IRGC Qods Force officers working in Europe. The lead I’ve given you remains the best.”
“I’m not asking you to find me another Qods Force officer. Just a regular IRGC person. Can you do that?”
“If it’s what MI6 wants, then yes.”
“Forget MI6. You work only for me now.” Will’s lips were touching Harry’s ear. “Only me.”
“Yes, yes!” Harry’s voice was urgent.
“Good. Now I believe that you and I have a much better understanding of each other. Would you agree?”
“Of course. Under the circumstances, why would I say anything different?”
Will smiled. “Very good, Harry. Very good indeed. But there is still one other thing I need from you.”
“Tell me.” Sweat from Harry’s forehead had begun to course down his face.
“The Qods Force commander. You must know who he is.”
“I don’t! Nobody did!” Harry shouted the words.
Will slowly moved the hunting knife away from Harry’s eye and brought it down against his throat.
“Please, no!” Harry gasped. “Please, no!”
Will’s words were now barely audible. “Unlike you, I have no need for company, acceptance, or adulation. All I need is a name. And I’m absolutely convinced that a man like you, a man who by his own admission is so well connected in the Balkans, would not have been able to go about his business during the war without knowing the name of this Iranian.”
Will brushed the edge of the blade up and down against Harry’s skin.
“We all gave him names.” Harry’s body was shuddering. “But they were our names, not his.”
“You are a businessman. Your brain deals in trades.” Will stopped moving the knife. “The trade I am offering you is beyond obvious.”
Harry’s legs began to shake. “A rumor! Just a rumor!”
Will sighed and moved the knife a hairsbreadth from Harry’s throat. “A rumor?”
“That’s all, Charles. That’s all. That’s all.”
Will brought the knife up to Harry’s eyes. “What do you think I am?”
“God only knows.”
“Maybe I know, too. Or maybe I don’t.” He could see Harry’s eyes in the reflection on the blade, and they were wide with fear. He wondered if his actions were too much. He decided they were not, because he knew that a man like Harry had to be tamed first before telling the truth. “But for now I’m prepared to play the good intelligence officer and listen to your conjecture and rumors. What did he call himself?”
A fresh sweat emerged across Harry’s whole face. He emitted a noise that sounded like a moan. His left arm began to twitch, and then his whole body convulsed. He took several deep breaths before speaking. “Megiddo. We believed that he called himself Megiddo.”
Eleven
“It’s been only seventy-two hours since I gave you my instruction.” Alistair took a sip of his Château Margaux. “And within that time you have been to three countries, terrified two people into working for us, and witnessed the murder of a senior MI6 man.”
“I did advise you to send a regular intelligence officer.” Will smiled and pushed his own wine to one side.
“And maybe your advice was correct.”
Will narrowed his eyes. “But that officer would have met Lace, taken notes, and then returned to London to give you a well-written but ultimately useless report. I, on the other hand, have given you our target.”
The two men were sitting at an oak booth in Simpson’s on London’s Strand. The restaurant was an elderly eatery, popular with government mandarins and senior business executives. It was also a place to eat meat, and among many other things Will’s Controller was certainly a consumer of flesh.
Alistair peered at him. “Do you trust Harry and Lana?”
Will shook his head. “No. Harry thinks he’s reached a state of grace where business no longer matters to him, but he will always be someone who sees enemies around him. If it came to it, the only side he can choose is his own. Lana is motivated by abandonment-fueled anger and a desire for meaning, but those are dangerous and unstable emotions. Trust will never come into play, but I believe I can channel and control both Harry’s and Lana’s mind-sets to my advantage.”
Alistair looked out over the rest of the restaurant and its lunchtime diners. “What will you eat?”
“Nothing.”
“As you like.” Alistair took another sip of his drink. “You’ll need to be careful with Lace.”
“I know.” Will spoke the words slowly. He thought for a moment before saying “I’m certain that Harry did nothing careless to lead a killer to Ewan. But somebody knew that our man was going to be at that restaurant. Do you have a view on Ewan’s death?”
Alistair shook his head. “I suspect that Ewan was running up to fifty agents and as many operations out of his Sarajevo Station. There are a number of people of whom he could have fallen afoul.”
Will nodded. “Harry’s given me the Iranian man’s code name,” he said quietly.
Alistair cursed. “A code name? That’s hardly going to help identify the man.” He shook his head. “What is it?”
“Megiddo.”
Alistair’s eyes immediately narrowed. “Megiddo? You’re sure?”
Will frowned. “Of course.”
Alistair said nothing for nearly a minute while continuing to hold his gaze on Will. He then nodded slowly, and Will could see that a slight smile had emerged on his face.
“Is the name relevant?”
Alistair broke his gaze with Will and seemed lost in thought. He muttered something, but whatever the words were, they seemed more for his own benefit. “I have moments where I wonder if I have overcapitalized upon your terrifying desire for retribution against the world’s ills.”
Will leaned forward and spoke firmly. “Do not wonder anyt
hing about me, Alistair. I make my own decisions.”
Alistair regarded him and smiled, but the look seemed bitter. “I know you do,” he said quietly. “You always do. But I sometimes wonder what sort of man you might now be had those men not murdered your mother when you were barely out of boyhood.”
Will leaned even closer. “It’s a pointless thought. When she died, my childhood died.”
“Memories don’t die, William.”
“I have too few to know.”
“There may be more to be discovered.”
“What do you mean?”
Alistair looked down and seemed to ignore the question. “My interest is anything but pointless.” When he looked up again, he said, “I wonder how long I can continue to exploit your incredible mental and physical strength before I can tell myself that I have failed in my duty. I wonder what sort of man I am continuing to allow you to be. I wonder if I am about to make things even worse for you.”
“What do you mean?” Will repeated.
Alistair nodded. “Your tiny number of childhood memories has produced a man who takes absolute measures to kill those you deem worthy of such punishment and who saves those you deem helpless. You have left very little if anything for yourself. But”—he pointed at Will—“there is still a chance for you to address that.”
Will rested back into his chair and exhaled loudly. “I do my work. That’s all that matters to me.”
“I don’t believe you.” Alistair spoke sharply and quickly. He glanced around the restaurant and then back at Will. Sighing, he lowered his voice. “You’re a good man, William. I of all people know that. But I also know that you have exceptional skills, which I have shamelessly utilized for the sake of our work. That is what I do; it is my job. But”—he shook his head—“there is a part of me that hopes you will one day find peace and happiness. And I know that is what you really want, too.”
Will frowned. Alistair’s eyes were locked onto him and seemed to be burrowing through his mind and soul. He felt a moment of total discomfort and had to look away. He wanted Alistair to say something, but the man just sat in silence. He wanted any distraction to stop him from reflecting on his Controller’s words. However, a surge of thoughts entered his mind and culminated in one unspoken sentence, You’re right, Alistair. So please release me now from your control and let me try to find that happiness and peace.
The Controller was still staring at him.
Will breathed in deeply. He felt anger rise within him, anger that Alistair was perhaps the only man who could, with words alone, strip off his armor and lay bare his compassion and his heart and his fantasies about a life different from that which he had. He wondered, though, whether Alistair knew everything. He wondered if the man knew that what terrified Will the most was the idea of taking those first few steps toward a different life. He decided that Alistair did know everything. He decided that Alistair was testing him.
Will smiled. “I’m sure that right now we have more pressing matters to discuss.”
Alistair remained very still for a moment, exhaled loudly, and then smiled. “Indeed we do.” He lowered his voice. “Have you ever been told about Operation Hourglass?”
Will shook his head.
Alistair inhaled deeply. “In 1979 we had advance indications that the shah’s corrupt regime was going to be imminently overthrown and replaced with an Islamic republic, and we needed to understand what that meant for a reborn Iran. Specifically, we needed to understand what decisions were being made by the revolutionaries about Iran’s future military strength and its intentions toward its Arab and Israeli neighbors. But we knew that our existing Iranian agents and allies, some of whom were SAVAK officers loyal to the shah, would be redundant or killed as soon as Iran’s old regime collapsed. As a result, we were worried that we would be left with an almighty intelligence blind spot.”
Alistair quickly surveyed the room before settling his gaze back on their oak booth. “We shared these concerns with our CIA friends, and it was decided that we would construct a joint operation, code named Hourglass, to try to drain every available MI6 and CIA Iranian asset of relevant intelligence before we lost them to the revolution.”
Alistair placed his hands on the knot of his tie and pushed upward, even though Will could see no indication that it had slipped even a fraction of an inch. “The logistics in putting together Hourglass were huge. The operation involved approximately four hundred intelligence officers and analysts from Langley and London as well as signals-intelligence support from the National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters. But worse than that, there was a tortuous political resistance to declaring MI6 assets to the CIA and CIA assets to MI6. However, in the end we overcame that resistance and as a result constructed a joint-operation task force that was probably unprecedented in its level of collaboration.”
He went on quietly. “Once the green light was given, Hourglass immediately commenced approaching and debriefing some two thousand agents. It was an enormous task, and for three months Hourglass intelligence officers barely had time to sleep. The analysts had an even harder task, as they were charged with evaluating and collating all of the intelligence that was coming back from the agent debriefings. They achieved their task, but”—Alistair smiled ruefully—“the result was an unwieldy mess.” He narrowed his eyes and spoke more quickly. “The agents had produced conflicting intelligence, conjecture, rumors, and blatantly self-serving lies. It was a disaster.”
“Surely we should have predicted such an outcome? When agents are put under that amount of pressure, they often tell us what they think we want to hear.”
Alistair shook his head. “We had no choice, because time was our enemy.” He placed his hands flat on the table. “The operation was about to be closed down when, by chance, the Hourglass task force struck gold. Or at least we thought that was the case.”
For the briefest of moments, Will spotted what he believed looked like regret on his Controller’s face.
Alistair exhaled and brought his hands together. “A junior CIA officer, working in the American embassy in Iran with one other more senior CIA officer, was approached by a young Iranian man who claimed to be a revolutionary. The man said that he had been coerced into joining the revolutionary movement, that he had comprehensive intelligence relating to postrevolutionary Iran’s proposed domestic and foreign policies, and that he would give us this information if he could defect to the West. The CIA officer interviewed the man and established that if he was telling the truth, he was capable of supplying us with superb intelligence. But,” Alistair added, rubbing his hands together, “we had a problem.”
“The officer had to find a way to get the defector out of Iran?”
“Exactly.” Alistair frowned. “There were uprisings and hostilities across the country, and Iran had therefore become a very dangerous and unpredictable operating environment for the few remaining Western intelligence officers based there. The CIA had exfiltration plans in place, but these had not been properly tested. However, MI6 had a route out which they believed would work. So the Hourglass task force instructed the CIA officer and his senior colleague to work with one Tehran-based MI6 officer to get the revolutionary out of the American embassy and take him to the Iranian port of Bandar-e ’Abbās in the south. The three intelligence officers packed the man into the boot of a car and then drove across the country to their destination.” Alistair looked away again. “It was clearly a frightening journey, as the men must have known that they would have been executed had they been caught.” He looked back at Will. “Several years earlier the British had recruited an Iranian captain of a trawler vessel. The plan was for the three officers to take their prize onto that vessel and then sail across the Persian Gulf to the United Arab Emirates.”
“What happened?”
Alistair sighed. “They were driving along a straight country road about seven miles out
side of Bandar-e ’Abbās when the men spotted a roadblock of revolutionary militia four hundred meters ahead of them. Even though they knew they could be seen by the roadblock soldiers, they immediately stopped the car and spoke to each other. They made some very rapid deductions about their situation.” The Controller nodded slowly. “All of which turned out to be true. They decided that the roadblock was unusual. They decided that somebody knew about them and their revolutionary man. They decided that such a security breach could not have come from their own services. And they decided that their revolutionary was most certainly not a defector.”
“They were being set up?”
“Yes, a trap.” Alistair shrugged. “We still don’t know what purpose the trap served. It could have been to flush out the mechanics of the exfiltration route, or maybe it was to catch three Western intelligence officers with their pants down. But whatever the reason, the men realized that their situation was dire. For thirty seconds they argued and debated as to what they should do. And then the senior CIA officer made a decision all on his own. He picked up his handgun, got out of the car, and walked to the back of the vehicle. The officers knew that his actions were being watched by the roadblock guards, as those soldiers had now swung weapons in the direction of the vehicle. Nevertheless the CIA man removed the revolutionary from the vehicle’s boot and placed the gun against his head. The CIA officer told his colleague and the MI6 man to run while he held his captive.” Alistair exhaled loudly. “The two men were reluctant to do so at first, but they also knew that it was their only option. There were approximately fifteen soldiers ahead of them, so to stand and fight would have resulted in the capture or death of all three intelligence officers rather than one. They therefore left the CIA man to his fate.”
“Did the two men escape?”
“Yes, they did. They got into Bandar-e ’Abbās and used the trawler captain to take them to the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.”
“And the CIA man they left behind?”
