by Randy Singer
Kerri knew that the president was taking a lot of heat for the situation. Hassan had been sentenced to death for apostasy based on his conversion from Islam to Christianity. People wanted the U.S. to act, and the president had issued some strong statements condemning Iran for its lack of adherence to “internationally recognized standards of human rights and religious freedom.” But strong words had not silenced the president’s critics.
“Our job is to extricate this pastor from prison so he can seek asylum in Great Britain,” Sean explained. “If we fail and our operatives are captured, the U.S. will disavow any knowledge of the operation.”
Kerri felt the type of adrenaline surge that made journalism so addictive. This was a reporter’s dream! She had been speculating about some potentially explosive stories during her trip to D.C., but this story exceeded even her wildest expectations.
And yet, unless something changed, she might never be able to go public with the biggest story she would ever cover.
“You’ve probably got a thousand questions, but most of those will be answered in time,” Sean said. “For now, we need to get down to the situation room.”
34
IT WAS THE TYPE OF WAR ROOM Kerri had anticipated during her first trip to Cipher Inc., yet it was even more fantastic than she had imagined.
The centerpiece was an enormous round table whose surface was a gigantic computer screen. The screen could be navigated and changed by touch, using something akin to iPad technology. At the moment, it showed an aerial view of a prison complex and its surrounding environs. A label on the screen identified it as Evin Prison in Tehran. The war room’s walls were covered with other monitors, each showing a visual image of a separate aspect of what Sean and his team had dubbed Operation Trojan Horse. The lead operative, Sean explained, was code-named Odysseus, after the mythological leader who hid inside the Trojan horse and led the Greeks to victory.
There were six people in the room besides Kerri and Sean, four men and two women, all high-level operatives of Cipher Inc. One of the men looked Persian, and one of the women had a European lilt to her voice. The rest seemed to be Americans, all dressed casually enough that they might have been at Sean’s house to watch a football game on the big screens rather than conduct an international espionage operation.
“This is Kerri Reed, the embedded journalist I’ve been talking about,” Sean said, speaking loud enough to get everyone’s attention. Kerri smiled, but the people in the room did not step forward and introduce themselves. “It goes without saying,” Sean continued, “that I need you totally focused on this mission as if Kerri is not even here.”
Kerri had never served as an embedded journalist before, but many of her colleagues had. Most of the time, the journalist became part of the team and interacted with the others. But at Cipher Inc., the rules were apparently different. Being an embedded journalist meant that Kerri would be treated like wall plaster—part of the room but not worth talking to.
Morning and afternoon passed slowly, as the pieces of the operation started falling into place. Periodically, Sean pulled Kerri aside and explained various aspects of the mission.
“Part of our challenge is that this can’t have the look and feel of a Navy SEAL operation,” he explained. “We can’t parachute a bunch of guys in with surgical precision and extract Seyyed Hassan, or everyone will assume it’s a U.S. military op. We’ve got to make it look clunky. Local. Like an inside job. Use car bombs and the types of things that Iranians see every day.”
“So what exactly are you going to do?” Kerri asked.
“You’ll see.”
Sean stepped over to the center table, and Kerri followed. “We have a contract with a group called Satellite Imaging Corporation. They provide high-resolution imagery from the world’s most advanced satellites—GeoEye-1, WorldView-2, IKONOS, SPOT-5, and others. Our software combines the imagery with our database of terrain elevations and ongoing infrared heat-sensing data, and we can extrapolate a 3-D fly-through of almost any location on earth.”
Sean touched part of the screen, and the image on the table became a horizontal 3-D view of the Evin Prison complex. Kerri felt as if she were on the ground, walking around the facility. Sean provided running commentary, pointing out where Seyyed was being held in isolation and the various layers of security that made Evin the Alcatraz of the Middle East. Most of the others in the room were either working at computer terminals or engaged in quiet conversation. One or two listened casually as Sean gave his tutorial.
The 3-D visualization was dark, with shadowy figures and barely discernible landmarks. “Is this real-time technology?” Kerri asked.
“That’s the problem. Our best data is several hours old. The infrared input that allows us to map out people’s locations is based on information from last evening.”
He motioned for Kerri to follow him to another screen, hanging on one of the side walls. The camera feeding the input appeared to be traveling in a car somewhere in a city that Kerri presumed was Tehran. Again, the image was dark and grainy.
“We need to have someone inside the facility—thus the code name of this operation,” Sean explained. “What you’re looking at here is a real-time visual taken literally through the eyes of Odysseus, our lead operative. The camera is located in a contact lens Odysseus is wearing. Everything he sees, we’ll see. Everything he hears, we’ll hear.”
Kerri stared at the screen in awe. She couldn’t begin to imagine how much all this technology cost. Not to mention the millions of dollars Cipher must be paying to its various operatives in countries all over the world. How expansive was this company? Was there any part of the world they couldn’t penetrate?
“How is he getting in?” Kerri asked.
“Always the journalist. So much curiosity.”
A man came up to Sean and pulled him aside for a brief conversation. Kerri stared at the buildings Odysseus was riding by and then looked at the other wall-mounted monitors, trying to guess what each view represented.
When Sean returned, he picked up right where he had left off. “When the terrorists wanted to attack America, they found our Achilles’ heel and used our cultural weaknesses against us. They exploited the openness of our society, our infatuation with freedom, our disdain for security measures. They waltzed onto our airplanes and turned them into bombs.”
As he talked, Sean constantly glanced around the room, surveying each of the monitors. Kerri sensed a slight increase in tension and attentiveness, a hushing of conversations in other parts of the room.
“But every culture has its weaknesses,” Sean said, his voice lower. “And now we will exploit one of theirs.”
It was 8 p.m. on Saturday night in Washington, D.C. But more importantly, as a clock on the wall reminded them, it was four thirty Sunday morning in Tehran.
The vehicle in which Odysseus was riding stopped. Sean turned his attention to the monitor, his little guided tour over. Sean and the other Cipher employees put on headsets, and he handed one to Kerri. All eyes were on the wall monitor above Kerri’s head.
The headphones picked up the live audio feed from Odysseus, and a voice provided real-time English translation. As Odysseus spoke to a few guards at the prison, Sean, never taking his eyes off the wall monitor, grabbed Kerri’s elbow and led her to the round center table. He drew a circle with his finger, and they could see a 3D view of the front of the Evin facility from approximately two hours earlier.
Kerri watched and listened as the Evin guards checked Odysseus’s ID, asked him a few questions, and frisked him. He was led through three sets of prison doors, each with bars, bulletproof glass, and magnetic locks. They eventually left him alone in a stark room with off-white concrete walls and a few bolted-down chairs. He took a seat and waited.
Kerri looked at Sean, knitting her brow in confusion, waiting for an explanation. But Sean just gave her a little shake of the head and waited.
It was probably five minutes, which seemed more like an hour, before the
doors opened and three men entered Odysseus’s room. Two of them wore guard uniforms. The third was dressed in a pin-striped business suit.
The guards checked Odysseus’s ID again and compared it to a photograph on their clipboard. One of them fingerprinted Odysseus on some type of electronic fingerprint machine that, after a few seconds, flashed a green light. There was a sigh of relief in the war room, and Kerri could sense everyone relaxing just a little. She realized that she had been holding her breath along with the rest of them.
“We’re in,” Sean said quietly to Kerri. She felt a chill spiderweb down her spine. This was not the movies; it was real life! Odysseus was now walking down a tiled corridor into the guts of the infamous Evin Prison on the other side of the world, and Kerri was watching it in real time! It was a reporter’s dream, an international story unfolding right before her eyes, even if she might never get to tell about it.
From this day forward, she would never look at the world the same way again. She was like Dorothy after Toto pulled the curtain back. She now knew things people like her were not supposed to know.
“Why did they let him in?” she asked Sean quietly.
Sean held out a palm as he watched Odysseus take his seat in a courtyard area. He was facing a wooden platform about twenty feet away. “Just a minute.”
“Mr. Montazeri has passed his physical,” one of the guards said to Odysseus. “Would you like to know what he ordered for breakfast?”
“The man’s last meal is no concern of mine,” Odysseus replied. His eyes turned to the gallows on the platform, the hangman’s noose coming into focus on the wall-mounted monitor.
There was going to be some type of execution. And as far as Kerri could tell, Odysseus was in charge.
35
AS ODYSSEUS STARED at the hangman’s noose, Sean Phoenix pulled Kerri aside and, in whispered tones, explained what was happening.
“Islamic law requires that executions occur at daybreak,” Sean said. “In the case of murder, the condemned cannot be executed unless a member of the victim’s family is present and calls for the execution. Our operative is disguised as the victim’s father.”
“What about the fingerprints?”
Sean snorted. “Fingerprints are 1970s science. With a few days’ notice and a usable print from the real father, a good plastic surgeon can take care of that and do a decent job at face enhancements as well.”
“Is Seyyed Hassan scheduled to die today?”
“No. That’s the whole point. The prison break needs to look like it was designed to spring somebody else. Part of the reason we chose today is because there are two executions, and one of them—” Sean stopped midsentence as a prisoner approached the gallows. He focused on the monitor and slipped the headphones back on. “Later,” he said to Kerri.
She put her headphones on as well and for the next few minutes witnessed a heart-wrenching scene. The accused man couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Two guards shoved him onto the wooden platform in front of the hangman’s noose. He had a five-o’clock shadow, and it looked like his hair hadn’t been combed in days. His eyes were wild with fear.
According to Sean, the condemned man’s name was Mehdi Montazeri. He looked directly at Odysseus, a look of stark terror Kerri would never forget, and began talking rapidly in Farsi. Pleading. After just a few sentences, the man in the pin-striped suit shouted something, and Mehdi stopped abruptly.
“He told him to shut up,” the translator said. “He said it was not yet time to beg for his life.”
Odysseus was now eyeing the man in the pin-striped suit, listening to an explanation of Islamic retribution law. “The right to retribution does not mean that the right must be exercised,” the man said. From the way he was speaking, Kerri assumed he was some type of lawyer. “It is your choice. Just as you have the right of retribution, so you also have the right of forgiveness. According to the Holy Qur’an, the victim’s family is king over the murderer. Whatever you decide will be righteous, and the peace and blessings of Allah will be upon you.”
Kerri watched in amazement as the condemned man was led from the platform to a nearby table. The handcuffs were removed, and he was given a pen and a tablet to write on. Sean came a step closer, lifted one side of his headphones, and gave Kerri some running commentary.
“He’s writing his last will and testament. If he’s smart, he’ll leave everything he owns to the victim and his family.”
“Who’s the guy in the suit?” Kerri asked.
“An imam.”
After Mehdi finished his will, everyone performed a ceremonial washing. Next, the imam led them through the chants and incantations of the predawn salat. Even the guards knelt and prostrated themselves. Odysseus joined them, of course, and at times the camera showed nothing more than the ground in front of him.
The whole thing was a sight so strange that Kerri had to continuously remind herself it was real, that this man named Mehdi Montazeri was a murderer who was moments away from his own execution.
When the prayers were finished, the guards returned Montazeri to the platform and placed the noose around his neck. The imam gave him one last chance to talk.
Montazeri’s pleas spilled out in a tearful and emotional monologue. He had a wife and three children. Who would provide for them? He was a changed man. He knew he deserved to die but he begged for mercy. Allah, he said, loved justice, but did he not also love mercy? Mehdi claimed he had only been trying to provide for his family. He had panicked when his victim resisted. He was wrong and he was making no excuses. He was sorry, so sorry. He rambled on as emotions overtook him, his bottom lip trembling, tears streaming down his cheeks. His whole body was shaking and his voice was now at a fever pitch.
With a word, the imam cut him off.
“It is time for you to decide,” he said to Odysseus.
Odysseus rose and walked to the gallows. He looked down, and the camera zoomed in on a handle at the edge of the platform. It was obvious to Kerri that under Islamic law, a member of the victim’s family was required to actually pull the lever that would drop the platform from under the feet of the condemned prisoner. She found herself holding her breath, wondering if Odysseus would look up at the condemned man as he plunged to his death, the rope breaking his neck. If Odysseus watched, the camera in his contact lens would record the action as well. Kerri didn’t want to see it, but she couldn’t look away.
Before pulling the lever, Odysseus looked at Montazeri one last time. Montazeri’s face was twisted in fear, his eyes closed, his lips mumbling some kind of final prayer to Allah.
A few seconds passed before Odysseus looked back down. Kerri could see the big man’s hand on the lever. He was going to pull it!
At that precise moment, a bright light flashed on a different wall monitor, and heads swiveled to watch it. A massive power line tower imploded and fell to the ground, snapping the huge electric lines connected to it. The lights in the prison yard on Odysseus’s screen, which had provided only dim illumination in the first place, suddenly went dark.
Instantaneously, there was a second explosion lighting up another wall monitor, and Kerri lifted an earphone as Sean explained. “We cut the power line to the prison facility. The second explosion you saw was a car bomb at the site of the backup transformers. Keep your eye on the Odysseus monitor. He’ll have on night goggles in a minute, and everything will come back into focus.”
“Night goggles?”
“They look like regular glasses. That’s how he got them past the guards.”
Almost on cue, the Odysseus monitor showed an eerie green-black skeletal representation of the prison yard. Odysseus loosened the noose around Montazeri and told him to run. Odysseus then jumped one of the prison guards who was stumbling around in the darkness, beat the man, stripped him, and changed into his clothes, grabbing the man’s gun and keys. He looked around the yard, this way and that, and then started running. The camera bounced aroun
d so much that it gave Kerri a headache.
Meanwhile, three other monitors came to life, ones that had been showing static shots of the outside walls of the prison. The cameras appeared to be mounted on three different Cipher operatives, all running toward the hole in the prison wall created by the car bomb’s blast. When they reached the fence and barbed wire, the men cut their way through and eventually came to the cinder-block building that Kerri had been told housed Hassan.
Soon the Odysseus monitor was showing the same area from a reverse angle. Kerri realized that all four Cipher operatives had come together at a predetermined spot. She now had a chance to see Odysseus through the eyes of the other operatives as he unlocked the door of the building and led his team down a corridor.
It was hard to follow what happened next as the men made their way through the prison facility, avoiding the flashlights of the prison guards, and took out a few other unsuspecting guards along the way. Between the four operatives, they accumulated quite a collection of keys.
Eventually they came to the locked door of a pod where three of the operatives kept guard while Odysseus tried a number of keys. Inside the bars, about forty prisoners were cheering and clamoring to get out. When Odysseus finally found the right key and the door swung open, the men streamed out, heading off in a number of different directions, causing more chaos for the guards.
Next the Cipher team wound their way to a row of individual cells and began shining their stolen flashlights into each cell, opening one door after another. On about the fifth or sixth cell, they came on a man sitting in the back corner, hunched over as if in prayer. Sean nudged Kerri and nodded. Pastor Hassan. Kerri watched as Odysseus opened the cell, grabbed Hassan by the collar, and pulled him out. The pastor was small and frail. He looked scared to death.
