Two Steps Forward

by Luana Ehrlich

“I still don’t understand what personal reasons you had for asking me to take pictures of him.”

  “I was just about to explain that, but first, I need to give you some background. I should warn you my explanation may take a few minutes. Are you sure you have time to hear it?”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  * * * *

  Carlton began by telling me the reason he’d asked me to do him a favor was related to something the DDO had done.

  That didn’t surprise me.

  If Carlton ever acted out of character, it was usually because Robert Ira, the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) at the CIA, was involved in some way.

  Ira, who was Carlton’s immediate boss, was a results-oriented supervisor with Machiavellian tendencies. As he carefully considered the operations that came across his desk, he weighed the pros and cons of each mission relative to its cost effectiveness, its success rate, and most importantly, the odds it would make him look good in the eyes of the other suits on the seventh floor and the President of the United States.

  In spite of his egotistical attitude, the DDO wasn’t a micro-manager.

  In fact, he left most of the day-to-day details of running Operations to his division heads, and he primarily focused his attention on the world’s hotspots or whatever the current geopolitical crisis of the day happened to be.

  However, since Carlton was the division head for the Middle East, and that part of the world tended to churn out more critical situations than most, scarcely a week went by that Carlton didn’t find himself in the DDO’s office having to brief him about a crisis happening in the Middle East.

  Carlton said that’s where he was a few months ago after he and the DDO learned Saudi Arabia was pushing the idea of having an Arab Summit in the spring.

  After discussing it with Deputy Ira, Carlton had suggested the Ops Center should begin monitoring the activities of all the known modirs in the Quds Force.

  Carlton told me his motive for making the suggestion to the DDO was related to the Iranian regime’s past behavior. “Previously, whenever there’s been a gathering of the major players in the Middle East, and Iran’s been invited to participate, the regime has used the opportunity to make sure a fixer, or even several fixers, were embedded in the Iranian delegation.”

  “I can understand why. It’s an easy way for a fixer to scout out venues for a possible terrorist attack without getting caught.”

  “That’s one reason, but an operative I sent to the International Arabic Conference on Education also reported observing a fixer making contact with a Saudi Arabian diplomat, someone sympathetic to one of the Iranian opposition groups, and that kind of encounter wouldn’t ordinarily happen with a fixer.”

  “No, you’re right, Douglas. They usually live in the shadows and almost never draw attention to themselves.”

  “This guy wasn’t hiding in the shadows. He was pretending to be a delegate so he could speak openly to the diplomats at the meeting.”

  “So you told the DDO you suspected the Iranians might be sending some of their fixers to the Arab Summit disguised as delegates?”

  “That seemed like a logical assumption, but when our analysts spent several weeks looking into the backgrounds of the Iranians who had registered for the Summit, they didn’t find any fixers among them. That’s when the DDO decided the Agency’s resources would be better spent developing an asset in the Iranian delegation instead.”

  At this point in Carlton’s narrative, I realized I had less than ten minutes before I was to meet Nikki in the hotel’s lobby, so while I was talking to him, I began walking back toward the hotel.

  The walkway was much more crowded than when I’d first entered the gardens, and in an effort to keep our conversation as secure as possible, I made sure my end of the conversation was brief and innocuous.

  Carlton said, “Naturally, I wasn’t opposed to trying to recruit an Iranian asset, but I still thought the Agency should be on the lookout for any fixers at the Summit.”

  “I agree. That sounds reasonable.”

  “Well, reasonable or not, the DDO didn’t agree with me. He specifically told me to forget about trying to identify any of the Iranian fixers.”

  “Did you try to talk him out of it?”

  “Talk him out of it? Are you kidding? Of course, not. You know if the DDO’s made up his mind, you can’t talk him out of it. Sure, he’ll occasionally reconsider a decision, but only if it’s backed up with new intel.”

  I almost asked him if he had any new intel to give the DDO, but I caught myself when I noticed two teenagers walking toward me.

  Instead, I asked, “So what did you say?”

  “I didn’t have any new intel to give him, so I told him I felt sure the Iranians knew we were expecting them to send their fixers as delegates to the Summit, and they must have changed their tactics.”

  I nodded at the teenagers as they passed me. “I agree. That sounds right to me too.”

  “Well, Deputy Ira didn’t say he agreed with me, but he did say he’d be willing to assign an operative to monitor any fixer that turned up in Marrakesh. His only caveat was that I needed to present him with some tangible evidence that a fixer was actually attending the Summit. Naturally, he wasn’t going to give me permission to send an operative to Marrakesh to find that evidence.”

  I’d almost reached the entrance to the hotel, so I was hoping Carlton was about to finish up his narrative. To hurry him along, I said, “So that’s why you asked me to take the photographs?”

  “Uh . . . yeah, that’s right. Once the DDO sees them, I’m sure he’ll assign an operative to monitor Baran Asan while he’s in Marrakesh.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up, Douglas. I understand why you needed the favor, and I hope you’ll accept my apology for what I said earlier.”

  “Of course, but . . . uh . . . don’t you want to know how I found out Asan was passing himself off as a member of Madi’s security detail?”

  “Maybe another time.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You sound out of breath.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “I don’t ever remember a time when you didn’t insist I tell you every last detail of what I know about a subject.”

  “That’s usually true, but right now, I need to go meet my bride. I don’t want us to miss the tour bus to Ouarzazate.”

  “Oh, you’re taking an excursion to Ouarzazate? While you’re there, be sure and visit the location where they filmed the desert scenes in Masters of Crowns. I believe those scenes were in Season Three.”

  When Nikki and I boarded the tour bus to Ouarzazate at precisely nine o’clock, she asked me why I was smiling.

  “Because just when I think I’ve figured Douglas out, he throws me a curve ball.”

  “I imagine he thinks the same thing about you.”

  Chapter 11

  Saturday, May 18

  The excursion to Ouarzazate turned out to be an enjoyable experience. Nikki and I took lots of pictures of the movie location sites, and I even sent one of them to Carlton.

  But, when we returned to Marrakesh, we discovered there were so many media people in town for the Summit, most of the restaurants had two-hour wait times. Then, after we’d eaten dinner, we had to walk four blocks back to La Mamounia because flagging down a taxi turned out to be impossible.

  The next morning, we were discussing these inconveniences over breakfast, and I told Nikki it might be time for us to leave Marrakesh and fly over to Israel to see if we could locate Lisa Redding.

  “I’m ready to go anytime you are,” she said. “In fact, I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  “I’ll see what kind of travel arrangements I can make while you’re at the spa this morning. I’d prefer to fly into Tel Aviv late this evening rather than in the morning. The lines at Ben Gurion Airport are usually much longer in the morning.”

  “I’ll be finished at the spa by two o’clock,” she said. “We can leave then as f
ar as I’m concerned.” She looked down at her watch. “I better get going or I’ll be late.”

  As she was leaving the table, she leaned down and kissed me. “See you in a few hours. Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.”

  “Not likely.”

  * * * *

  I had no trouble making arrangements for us to take a late afternoon flight on Iberia Airlines to Israel. However, since Morocco had no official diplomatic relations with Israel, there were no direct flights, which meant we’d have to change planes in Lisbon, Portugal, before flying on to Tel Aviv.

  After studying a map of Jerusalem and the area west of the city on my laptop, I decided to book us into the Orient Jerusalem, a five-star hotel located halfway between the German district in Jerusalem, where Lisa Redding’s apartment was located, and the Tzora kibbutz near Beit Shemesh, where I suspected Lisa was living.

  Once I made our travel arrangements, I grabbed my Agency phone and left the hotel on foot.

  My destination was the Musee de Mouassine, an art museum which contained over forty rooms of Moroccan art from the past five hundred years.

  I wasn’t particularly interested in Moroccan art from the past five hundred years. I was more interested in finding a place where I could sit undisturbed and read what the intelligence community was reporting on the Arab Summit in the Agency’s Daily Briefing Summary and look up what was in the Agency files on the Tzora kibbutz.

  When Nikki and I had visited the museum earlier in the week, I’d taken note of several rooms where only one person at a time was allowed inside. These were called meditation rooms and contained a single piece of artwork and a solitary wooden bench.

  Visitors were encouraged to sit alone and contemplate the painting, sculpture, or whatever piece of art was in the room, and they could stay as long as they liked, or at least until the museum closed.

  It looked like an ideal place for reading classified documents, plus I didn’t figure the Moroccan intelligence services would be monitoring the museum for encrypted cell phone signals originating from there.

  When I arrived at the museum, I headed up to the second floor where the meditation rooms were located, and after nodding at the security guard standing at the end of the hallway, I opened the first door that had an unoccupied sign on it and went inside.

  At one time, the museum had been the residence of a nobleman from the 16th century, but the room I entered wasn’t much bigger than a small storage unit. I assumed it had either been a child’s nursery or perhaps a servant’s bedroom. The painting hanging on the wall was so large it took up the entire wall.

  It depicted a sultan on horseback riding out of his palace with a large entourage. A group of townspeople were there to meet him.

  The painting was so detailed, I could understand why the museum’s curators had chosen it to be in a meditation room. An art aficionado would surely enjoy spending hours studying it.

  Me, not so much.

  But I did appreciate the time I got to spend reading the Agency’s Daily Briefing Summary, which detailed what had gone on during the first day of the Arab Summit.

  I wasn’t surprised when I read several Arabic leaders had delivered speeches denouncing the United States, or that the Iranian president, Hashem Rashad, had once again threatened to annihilate the U.S. and Israel.

  What surprised me was that President Rashad had sent a veiled threat to Iraq, accusing Prime Minister Madi of becoming too cozy with the Americans and suggesting there could be economic consequences from his Arabic neighbors if such behavior continued.

  After reading the DBS, I switched over to the Agency archives and began doing research on the Tzora kibbutz. While I was in the middle of reading the history of the kibbutz, my Agency phone vibrated, and my screen indicated Carlton was calling me.

  “The Ops Center just informed me you’re snooping around the archives,” he said, when I accepted his call.

  Although I wasn’t on active status at the Agency, I’d never been told using the archives in such circumstances was against Agency rules, and I was sure Carlton knew I’d been using them regularly in the last few months. Still, he sounded upset about the whole thing.

  Because he’d mentioned the Ops Center, it suddenly occurred to me he could actually be down in the Ops Center in the basement at Langley, and the gruffness in his voice might strictly be for the benefit of those around him.

  “I hope that’s okay, Douglas,” I said, trying to sound deferential. “We’re heading over to Israel later today, and I was using the archives to check on the history of a kibbutz we’re planning to visit.”

  If I’d guessed wrong, then I figured he’d remind me he was the one who’d told me about the kibbutz in the first place.

  He said, “Well, as soon as your honeymoon’s over, you’ll be back on active status, so I’ll let it go this time, but as long as you’re headed to Israel anyway, the DDO has a delivery he’d like you to make.”

  I hadn’t guessed wrong.

  Evidently, Carlton, and perhaps even the DDO himself, were both in one of the Real Time Management (RTM) Centers at Langley, where the Agency’s day-to-day operations were conducted.

  When I’d seen Carlton at the wedding, he’d mentioned there were several operations running, and whenever that happened, the DDO often paid the RTM Centers a visit in order to receive an operational update in person.

  I’d been told by Olivia McConnell, one of the RTM’s directors, that whenever the DDO made an appearance in the Ops Center, he’d invariably offer his advice on how to proceed with a mission, even if the protocols were already in play.

  “Oh, sure,” I said, “I can do that. What kind of delivery is it?”

  “It’s a flash drive, so it shouldn’t cause you any problems with airport security, and once you’ve cleared customs at Ben Gurion, you’ll be met by a courier from Shin Bet who’ll take it off your hands.”

  “That sounds easy enough. How will I get this flash drive? Nikki and I are flying out of Marrakesh around four-thirty this afternoon.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that. Ben Mitchell has the flash drive, and he’ll meet you in an hour at the coffee shop where the two of you had coffee the other day. That’s when he’ll hand it over, and at that time, he’ll also give you the contact phrase for the Shin Bet courier.”

  The moment I heard this, any guilt I had about not telling Carlton I’d encountered Mitchell at the El Badi Palace immediately dissipated, although I was curious about how he knew we’d seen each other.

  However, that was a conversation for another day.

  Seconds later, Carlton told me he’d be in touch and disconnected the call.

  * * * *

  Even though I only had an hour to get a taxi and make it over to the coffee shop near the El Badi Palace, I sat on the bench in the tiny room and stared at the painting of the sultan on his horse for a few minutes.

  I had no reason for doing so, other than I needed a moment to process the phone call.

  As I looked at the entourage following the sultan out of the palace, I thought about what might be going on behind the scenes at the Agency.

  Clearly, something unforeseen had happened; Mitchell had come into possession of a flash drive, and it needed to be delivered to Israel’s internal security service immediately.

  Presumably, Carlton had informed the DDO I was making plans to fly to Israel, and the deputy had instructed him to get in touch with me about making the delivery.

  My eyes focused on one of the men in the sultan’s entourage. He was walking a few feet behind the sultan, but his head was turned in the direction of one of the townspeople crowding around the sultan’s horse.

  Had Abbas Alviri, the guy who’d left Mitchell the brochure at the El Badi Palace, given him the flash drive when they’d met at the Koutoubia Mosque, or was Mitchell given the flash drive by someone else?

  A short squatty man, who was standing near the townspeople, appeared to be the person who’d drawn the attention of the man in the s
ultan’s entourage. The squatty man was dressed in several layers, and his clothing looked to be of much better quality than anything worn by the rest of the townspeople.

  I wondered if Mitchell realized he needed to take extra precautions since he had something in his possession the Israelis wanted.

  Did he know he needed to be more aware of his surroundings and keep his eye out for anyone showing interest in him?

  I got up from the bench and walked over to the painting so I could get a better look at the position of the squatty man’s hands. It was then I realized his right hand was midway across his chest.

  His right hand was just inches away from the handle of a sword hanging from a belted sash on his left side.

  Perhaps his aggressive posture was the reason the man from the sultan’s entourage was giving him his full attention.

  Perhaps he was waiting to see if the squatty man was there to defend the sultan or to attack him.

  As I thought about how Mitchell had handled himself with Alviri, I decided I wouldn’t second-guess him this time, nor would I offer him any suggestions on how to carry out his tradecraft.

  I took one last look at the man in the sultan’s entourage.

  It was then I realized I’d missed an important detail.

  The man was left-handed. His sword was hanging on his right side, and his left hand was wrapped around the sword’s hilt.

  In fact, he looked to be seconds away from drawing the sword out of its scabbard.

  What were the intentions of the man in the sultan’s entourage?

  Was he there to defend the sultan from the squatty man or to attack the sultan?

  I had no clue.

  All I had were questions.

  It made me wonder if the painter’s intentions had been to create a scenario in which these very questions would be asked.

  That was the reason I wasn’t an art aficionado.

  Art was too much like real life.

  Chapter 12

  I arrived at the El Badi Palace forty-five minutes after Carlton had told me to meet Mitchell at the coffee shop. It was the location I’d given the taxi driver when he’d picked me up at the museum.