by Andrew Grant
Lt Colonel Mark Linn—my new CO—did not offer me coffee.
The Lucius D. Clay Kaserne barracks has seen a lot of change over the last century. It started life as a horse-racing track in 1910, and was transformed into a civilian airfield in 1929. The Luftwaffe commandeered it in 1936, and the 80th Infantry Division captured it in 1945. Now the headquarters of the US Army in Europe, the complex has grown to fill every inch of available space. It was almost bursting out of its site—a broad rectangle with one corner snipped off, bounded on the north side by its military airstrip and by a crazy tapestry of farmers’ fields on the other three. Aside from the usual offices and stores and gymnasia and parking garages, it also has a baseball diamond. A bowling alley. A commissary. All manner of imported American vehicles scattered everywhere you look. But despite all the familiar sights, every time I was on a plane that landed there those fields hammered home the fact that I wasn’t back in the United States. They’re too small. Too chaotically crammed together. And too unevenly shaped to ever be mistaken for the geometric uniformity of our own Midwestern landscape.
My unit—the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade—occupied the last of a half-dozen identical buildings on the east side of the base. They were three stories high, built of plain, featureless brick, and each was crowned with a jagged row of narrow, fussy dormer windows. I don’t know what the architect had in mind, but the result made each one look like a bizarre collision between a cheap warehouse and a romantic Bavarian castle.
Colonel Linn’s office was at the far end of one of the long, impersonal corridors. I’d never been to it before. Linn was the first of my COs to request a new office, rather than take over his predecessor’s. I don’t know why he did that. Maybe he liked having to walk farther from the main entrance. Maybe he preferred a more compact workspace. Maybe he was partial to the view from the top floor, although that was hard to judge the morning of our meeting because he had the frayed, steel gray blinds pulled all the way down. My guess was that he was attempting to stage some kind of political game. I’d seen plenty of those play out during my various forays into the private sector. And Linn certainly seemed the ambitious type. Tall, wiry, with the restless energy of a long-distance runner, he was the youngest-looking light colonel I’d ever set eyes on. I was idly trying to figure how much field time he could possibly have under his belt, and wondering if it would be worth calling in a favor to get a peek at his service record, when he finally stopped staring at me across his bare metal desk and decided to get the ball rolling.
“Just back from the Balkans, I see.” Linn leaned back and steepled his fingers. “You kept yourself busy. I’ve been reading your report.”
“Sir.”
“Some interesting news coming out of Iran, by the way. I don’t know if you heard, but we’ve had word of an explosion. A large one. Just outside Isfahan, near the airport.”
“Do we know the cause?”
“The Iranian government’s saying it was an accident. At the Mobarakeh steel plant. Something to do with a faulty oxygen injector unbalancing one of the blast furnaces.”
“Do we believe them?”
“Our friends in the Mossad certainly don’t. They have plenty of boots on the ground over there, as you know. And they’re saying the blast came from somewhere else. Somewhere close to the steel plant, to disguise its power requirements and heat signature. But underground. And whatever it is, it’s now leaking radioactive isotopes.”
I allowed myself a brief smile. “Like the kind of place where solid-state uranium gets converted to gas, and back again. Part of the enrichment process. The plant did exist.”
“It did.” Linn nodded. “But it doesn’t anymore. Thanks to you. The Mossad scientists are saying that losing it’ll set the Iranian nuclear program back eighteen months, minimum. Good work, Paul. This is a major result. Success on this level, it’s career defining. In any other branch of the service, we’d be giving you a medal.”
“Sir.”
“There is one part of your report that I have some questions about, though.” Linn tipped his head to the side. “I need you to clarify something for me.”
“Of course.” I settled back in my chair. “What do you need to know?”
“Now, look, Paul. Don’t take this the wrong way.” Linn held out his hands, palms first. “You clearly did an outstanding job of convincing the Iranians that the piece of equipment you were ‘selling’ was genuine. They wouldn’t have installed it at their conversion plant and blown themselves to kingdom come, otherwise. And the circumstances you were operating in were clearly challenging. Your contact had been caught double-crossing his bosses and was murdered practically under your nose. New players unexpectedly entered the arena, including a senior officer and a technical expert. You had to think on your feet. I get that. But there’s one part of the way things went down that…troubles me.”
“I see.” I kept my voice calm and level. “Which part?”
“The money. The belligerent way you demanded it. The fact you demanded it at all, actually. You’d achieved your mission objective, which was to make them trust in the device. So why didn’t you withdraw at that point? Why stay in the hot zone? Why risk antagonizing those guys? You could have blown the whole operation. You could have gotten yourself killed. It makes your judgment appear…questionable, to say the least.”
“With respect, sir, if you think that, you need to reread my report.” Or try spending some time in the field. “Holding out for the money was the key to convincing them. Everything else was just set dressing. If I’d tried to walk away without it, I’d have gotten a bullet in the back and the device would have ended up in pieces at the bottom of the Bosporus.”
“Explain.”
“We knew the Iranians were going to be hyper-vigilant. Think of all the success the Israelis have had against them recently. The faulty raw materials they’ve inserted into the supply chain. The bogus plans. The sabotaged equipment. The computer viruses. That’s why the Iranians came looking for an American in the first place. They’d been burned by their usual contacts too many times. So they cooked up the whole scene at the carpet store as an elaborate test.”
“Including killing their own guy, Asgari?” Linn attempted a smile. “Or was it a coincidence that he turned out to be a traitor?”
“No one in our business believes in coincidences.” I kept my expression neutral. “And while killing Asgari would have been hard-core, I wouldn’t put it past them. But that wasn’t what happened. I don’t think Asgari’s a traitor at all. And I don’t think he’s dead.”
“You said he was.” Linn leaned forward.
“No.” I shook my head. “I described the scene. You drew the conclusion. The wrong conclusion. I did, too, at first. Though not for long.”
“Why’s it the wrong conclusion?” Horizontal creases appeared in Linn’s forehead. “What’s the problem with it?”
“There are three problems with it.” I raised my right thumb, to start counting them off. “First, the blood. There was too much.”
“You said he’d been stabbed to death.” Linn crossed his arms. “There was bound to be a lot of blood.”
“No.” I shook my head again. “Not in that scenario. For Asgari’s body to be propped up as it was he’d have had to be killed instantly. Otherwise he’d have turned to fight back. Or fallen to the ground, writhing in agony. Or whatever. Which means his spinal cord would have had to be severed, which would have caused his heart to stop beating right away. There should have been no significant arterial spray. And as he was upright, most of his blood would have been below the wound so without his heart pumping, gravity would have kept it inside his body. Plus the blade was still in place, stopping up the hole and reducing any leakage.”
Linn steepled his fingers again and scowled.
“Second problem.” I didn’t wait for him to comment. “The smell. T
here wasn’t any. With that amount of blood, the place should have stunk like an abattoir. It didn’t. There was just a slight hint of hessian and sweet tea. I could even pick up the cigar smoke on the colonel’s uniform, the air was so fresh.”
“I guess only someone who was there would be able to judge that.” Linn’s scowl deepened. “And the third problem?”
“The knife. It came out of Asgari’s neck way too easily. When a blade gets jammed between two vertebra—even the little ones, higher up—you have to really pull to get it back. This one almost fell out. I don’t think it had even broken the skin.”
“So Asgari was just acting the whole time? He was that good?”
“No one’s that good. More likely he was drugged. Something to bring on temporary paralysis. Etorphine, maybe. M99. That’s what I’d use.”
“I still don’t see why.” Linn shrugged. “How does any of this help them to evaluate the device?”
“It doesn’t. That’s the point. How could they evaluate the device? It’s based on technology they’re not allowed to have. They have zero experience with it. They can’t build a test bed for it, because that technology’s banned, too. So what would they compare it to? It’s an absurd proposition. Does one thing they’ve never used work the same as another thing they’ve never used? And it’s full of ultra-miniaturized circuitry, remember. There’s no way to tell if that stuff’s genuine without all kinds of specialized diagnostic equipment. So no. They weren’t testing the device. They were testing me.”
“How? By throwing a corpse at you, and a bunch of blood, and seeing if you’d blow your cover?”
“In a way. It’s like my old sensei used to say. When you attack, never go with one technique. Go with at least three, in case the first couple don’t work. And keep the best till last. If I’d fallen for the thing with Asgari’s body, then great. That would have been like me walking into a sucker punch. It would have been a bonus for them. They could have gone home early. Same with the accusation about me being an agent, and the old guy who was posing as an expert. But when I parried those blows, it didn’t matter. They could back off, leaving me to think I’d survived their onslaught. Get me to drop my guard. Because what they really needed to do was figure out my motivation.”
“Wasn’t that obvious?”
“No. Not at all.” I looked down at the floor for a moment. “Let me tell you something. About my grandfather. He was Irish, so naturally during World War II he worked for British Intelligence. For the section that handled double agents. His team was extraordinarily good. So good that every single agent the Nazis sent to Great Britain was captured, and either killed or turned. Every single one. Meaning every single report that went back to Germany was planted. The flow of misinformation was vital. D-Day couldn’t have succeeded without it, for example. So they were under huge pressure to keep the operation running. But they had a giant problem. Do you know what that was?”
“Trust?” Linn shrugged. “They were dealing with doubles. How can you rely on them?”
I shook my head. “No. It was making sure the enemy agents got paid. You get the occasional spy who’s driven by ideology, sure. But as a rule spies are mercenary bastards. If they don’t get paid, they don’t produce. Now, normally that’s an advantage. If you cut off their funds, you cut off the threat. Stopping the money was the first thing the counter-Intelligence guys always tried to do. It was S.O.P. And the Germans knew that. So if the British hadn’t gone after the payments, the Germans would have been suspicious. And if they’d received intel from spies who weren’t getting paid, they’d have known the information was bogus and wouldn’t have trusted it.”
“So how did the Brits fix it?” Linn looked genuinely interested.
“It’s a brilliant story.” I paused for a moment. “You’ll love it. But I’ll tell you another time. The point is, last week, back in that carpet store in Istanbul, I was supposed to be the mercenary bastard. If I’d given them something without at least pushing to get paid for it, they’d have known not to trust me. My goal would have been obvious. Planting the device. Fighting for the money was the only way to disguise that. It was the clincher. I guarantee it.”
Linn stood up and turned to the window behind his desk. He pulled the edge of the blind aside an inch, spent a moment gazing through the slender gap, then let it fall back into place.
“OK.” He sat back down and laid his hands flat on the desktop. “Let’s say I believe you. My next question is, what did you do with the money after they gave it to you?”
“Took it back to Sofia, like I wrote in my report. Why?”
“And then what?”
“I hid it in a storage unit on the outskirts of the city. That’s also in my report. Along with the address. Why do you ask?”
“Why take it there? Why not take it to the embassy and have it properly vouchered?”
“The embassy’s the last place I could have taken it. I had to assume there’d be GPS trackers in the cases. Maybe even transponders in some of the notes or the bill wrappers. The Iranians aren’t stupid. They’d have been fools not to have taken that kind of precaution. It would have given them an extra safety net. They believed the device was genuine after our meeting, sure. But if they’d watched that cash make its way to a US embassy, or an army base, or anyplace we were known to use, the whole ruse would have been blown on the spot.”
Linn didn’t comment, and I noticed he was doing his best not to look at me.
“Sir, what aren’t you telling me?” I leaned forward, trying to catch his eye.
“I was reading your file this morning, as well as your report.” Linn raised his head. “Your current tour. It’s just about over, isn’t it? So I have to ask: Are you planning to re-up?”
“Why do you have to ask?” I crossed my arms.
“Because we have a problem, Paul.” Linn sighed. “When word of the explosion in Isfahan reached us, we sent two guys to the storage unit you listed. Their job was to collect the money. When they got there, the unit was empty. The lock hadn’t been forced. There was no sign of any cash. And now I’ve got a Major Turner and a couple of MPs from the 110th crawling up my ass. They’re saying, a stash like that? It would make a nice little nest egg for a newly retired officer…”
Chapter Three
One day, a week or so after I turned eighteen, I sneaked into Manhattan with a couple of buddies from high school. We didn’t have much of a plan. We were just thinking we’d hit a couple of bars, drink a few beers, see what the city had to offer…
Everything was going fine until the second place we tried. It wasn’t the most salubrious of establishments, which wasn’t surprising given that most of its revenue seemed to come from selling watered-down drinks to underage kids with sketchy fake IDs. Anyway, a girl latched onto me the moment I set foot through the door. She was tall. Blond. I guess you could say she was gorgeous, although I wasn’t interested that way because I already had my eye on someone else. So I bought her a drink, just to be polite. We started to talk. Then a guy came into the bar. He was maybe in his early twenties. He had greasy hair down to his shoulders and a plaid shirt worn open over a black T-shirt with some kind of slogan about the devil printed on it. I didn’t pay him too much attention at first. Not until he squeezed by me and walked up to a couple at the next table. He didn’t say anything to them. He just stood stock-still between a pair of empty chairs for thirty, maybe forty seconds. Then he pulled out a .38 Special from the waistband at the back of his pants. Shot both of them in the head. Paused for another second. And finally turned the gun on himself.
The sound was stunning in such a confined space. Pieces of skull and brain were sprayed across the table and floor and wall. A fine haze of blood hung in the air, highlighted by the broad shaft of sunlight shining in through the open door. All around me people were diving for cover, shrieking, crying, covering their heads with their arms, or trying t
o run for the exits. But for some reason the mayhem didn’t affect me the same way. The girl I’d been talking to was one of the first to make for the fire escape. I wasn’t too interested in catching up with her so I stayed in my seat. Checked my clothes for anyone else’s body parts. Finished my beer. Rounded up my cowering buddies. And split before the police arrived.
I thought we’d gotten away clean, but there was one thing I hadn’t realized about that bar. It had a security camera concealed high up in the corner near the main entrance. That wasn’t something I was in the habit of thinking about in those days. Somehow footage of the shooting made it onto CNN. Inevitably my father saw it. He went absolutely crazy. Not because it showed me sitting in the bar. And not because I had a beer in my hand. But because he thought I looked way too comfortable in such proximity to the violence. He said it revealed a deep flaw in my character. Words like psychopath were used. More than once. He insisted that I get help, and ultimately demanded that I sign up for cognitive behavioral therapy.
Instead I got a haircut, and I signed up for the infantry.
* * *
—
My decision to join the army had been impetuous, driven by a reaction to something my father had said, so I guess it was only fitting that my decision to leave was made the same way.
There were some practical considerations, sure. I couldn’t go back to the Balkans—there’s no way I could expect to dupe the Iranians twice—so I’d have to wait around for a new posting. That wouldn’t happen until the MPs officially signed off on me having nothing to do with the disappearance of the money in Sofia. There was no doubt that they’d clear me. My guess was the Iranians had been tracking it, and came to get it back after their plant exploded, as they’d no longer need to keep me sweet as an illicit supplier. But it could just as easily have been some local guy. Someone who worked at the storage facility. When you deliberately seek out a low-rent, no-questions-asked type of place, you can’t be too surprised when things blow up in your face. The only issue was how long the cage-kickers would take to process the paperwork. And even when they did, it’s hard to wash the stink of something like that completely off your hands. How do you prove you didn’t do a thing if there’s no concrete evidence that someone else did? Especially when you have years of training and experience in concealing just the kind of underhanded thing they think you might have done. So who knew where my next assignment would be? And while I waited to find out, I’d be tethered to a desk. That prospect did weigh on my mind. But what really swayed me were the words my father had written, two years earlier.
