Dead drop, p.10
Dead Drop, page 10
It rankled her endlessly that Kahlidi knew her real name. In the euphoria of his initial defection, they’d all shared too much. One more thing she wished she could redo.
“Do I detect some sarcasm, Colonel?”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Dale. Frankly, seeing anyone besides taut old men in dark blue polos is a very welcome distraction these days.”
“You look right at home in your own dark blue polo, Kasem.”
He plucked at the fabric on his upper arm. “You know, for all you Americans harp about diversity, I do believe you’re the first woman I’ve seen since I’ve been on this extended holiday. And I must say you’re in high color. Were you somewhere sunny? Tropical vacation, I hope? I suppose not. You look tan, but tired. You sleeping all right?”
He raised a carefully plucked eyebrow.
Meredith shook her head. Some of the women at Langley who’d watched the Persian’s debriefs had been quite taken with his angular jaw, narrow waist, upper-crust English accent. She looked at her watch again.
“Are you ready for your first real intelligence assignment?” she asked.
This time Meredith saw something in his eyes—a tiny speck of shadow. “Of course,” he said, spreading his hands, palms up. “As long as you’ve shown me proof of funds—and Kasra.”
“Soon,” she said.
“Then let’s talk. Why not?”
Meredith opened the first of a stack of folders that she’d picked up on her way down from Langley. Each had been stripped of information, ordered carefully. She slid the brown manila down the table’s length.
He caught the folder and opened it. It was a photographic composite of Mohammed Baramzedeh, the assassinated aerodynamics specialist. “Who’s this man?” Meredith asked, watching Kasem’s eyes carefully.
He studied the photograph for ten seconds before looking up. The smile was gone. “Why do you want to know?”
“Do you know him or not?”
“Yes,” he said. “I know him. Or rather of him. He’s a physicist.”
“Name?”
He shrugged.
“Kasem, you know he’s a physicist, but you don’t know his name?”
He looked at her again. “Meredith, I’m sure you already know this man’s name. A junior analyst could figure that out.”
“That’s not how this works. Answer my question. Think of it as one of the control questions in your polygraphs.”
He smirked. “All right. He’s Mo Baramzedeh.”
She took a note. “What does Baramzedeh do for Quds?”
The Iranian looked down at the picture of the physicist and then up again, hesitating. “You know, the wonderful thing about you being here, Meredith, is that I’m finally talking with someone who can actually get something done.”
“What does Baramzedeh do, Kasem?”
“All the other junior field people you’ve sent in, all the psychiatrists, the trainee analysts, the phony tough guys—don’t get me wrong, they’re all lovely people. But not one of them has been able to respond to a single request of mine.” He slid the closed folder back toward her, watching her face.
She stared back at him, blankly.
He said, “You must have Kasra back in the US by now. It’s the one thing I’ve consistently asked for, the crucial part of our deal. Like I said before, I want to see her. Let’s close that.”
“Can’t,” said Meredith. “We don’t know where she is yet. And our deal didn’t stipulate that we get her to the US as a precondition.”
Kasem looked toward a blank spot on the yellow-beige wall. “If you want something now, then I want to see her. Simple terms.”
“I told you, I don’t know where she is. You know that.”
“Can I go back to my room now? I am really coming to enjoy the solitude.”
“Give me something, Colonel. Then we’ll talk about Kasra.”
“I just did. Mo Baramzedeh. Physicist. Your turn. That’s how this needs to work.” He remained staring at the wall.
Meredith drummed her pen on the legal pad. “Kasem—look at me.” He turned his head. He settled a cold stare on her, a different man now. Good, she thought. “I’ve been looking for Kasra. So far, we’ve got info from the UK Border Force that she entered with a visa. A few weeks ago. But after that, there’s no record of her. She’s hard to find.”
“She’s in the Queensway neighborhood of London. She knows enough to be in hiding. I told you about the doctor friend of hers. They were engaged once. She’ll probably seek him out. She doesn’t know anyone else there.”
She glanced at a file. “Dr. Roger Gulrajani, her ex-fiancé. Yes, we’ve checked. No sign that he’s been in contact with her,” Meredith said, lying.
“Who do you have looking?” Kasem asked.
“Case officers.”
“Your UK officers are clumsy. I’ve seen them. Classic G-men, barging in with boxy suits and American accents. The locals will all be worried about Gitmo. They’ll hide her.”
Meredith shrugged.
“You must surely have contacted MI-5 by now,” he continued. “They run a surveillance state.” He looked away from her, breathed deeply. “There isn’t much time, Meredith. You’re not the only intelligence service tracking her. MOIS will be after her. You realize that?”
Meredith didn’t need Dr. Paul’s fancy MRI equipment to see that she’d tapped an authentic nerve. “I’m using the resources I have at my disposal, MI-5 included.”
“How’s John?” Kahlidi said with a sudden smile.
The abrupt shift surprised her. It was her turn to glance at the cinder blocks.
“Oh . . . ,” the Quds man said, the smile widening. “I’m so sorry.”
Meredith opened her second folder, the photo of Baramzedeh with the Mossad honeytrap in the Paris bar. She slid it across the table to the Quds officer. “How about her? Who’s she?”
Kasem studied the photo, shifting the angle. “I don’t know. But . . . I very much wish I did. I’d say old Mo is punching well above his weight, wouldn’t you?”
Below the table, Meredith formed a fist, squeezed her thumb. “So you recognize Baramzedeh in the background there.”
“Yes.”
“And you really don’t know her?”
“No.” The Quds man shut the folder, slid it back. “Your turn. Tell me about John. Where is he?”
“What would be the point of talking about John?”
“He’s the only man you have that would be able to blend into Queensway.” He stroked the scar on his neck. “He speaks the language, understands the culture, knows how to do an exfil without tipping MOIS. He could slip into London under MOIS’s nose, find Kasra in two hours, and get her back here safe. That’s when we’ll have a deal.”
Meredith knew John would be coming to Annapolis in a week for Grace’s award. Though she didn’t want to see him, she’d have no choice. “John’s not active,” she said. “I’ll talk to him—but you understand he doesn’t take orders from me.”
“I understand that very well.”
She stowed the urge to whip the legal pad at his head. “I mean it,” she said, staying as impassive as she could. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll see him in a week or so. Who knows? Maybe he can help.”
Kasem nodded. “All right. Thank you.”
She returned the nod. Time for the big play. Staring straight into his eyes, she said one word: “Taniyn.”
Kasem’s eyes were blank, expressionless. Small wonder he made a mockery of polygraphs, she thought.
“Taniyn,” she said again, louder. By now she knew Kasem had put together the photo of Baramzedeh and the code word.
“Have you been studying Arabic, Mrs. Dale? It means ‘dragon.’ ”
“Morris-Dale. It means more than that, Kasem. Give me something.”
“If you let me talk to John, maybe I will.”
Bingo. She kept her eyes focused on her pad, taking a note. Deal. A meeting with John for a lead on Taniyn. Easy.
“Actually . . . ,” he added. “I want something else too.”
Fuck. “What?”
He looked at the camera on the ceiling, the two-way mirror along one wall. “I assume, based on the way you people pop in and out of my interrogations, that I’m somewhere in Virginia.”
“How do you even know you’re in the US?”
“I’ve been to DC and New York, Meredith. I know America.”
“New York? FBI’s been looking for IRGC since that botched kidnap attempt of an American journalist up there. Maybe I should ask them to join us.” She glanced at the cameras, reminding Kasem that everything he’d said to this point had been recorded. They both knew he was at their mercy—CIA would forever be able to blackmail him with these tapes.
“That New York snatch was MOIS,” he said. “I had nothing to do with it. And you already ID’d the suspects. It caused quite the stir back in Tehran before I . . . left.”
“What then?” she asked. “You come over here for some weapons deals with one of the various Hamas or Hezbollah lobbying groups on K Street?”
He smiled. “Let’s just say I think I’m not far from the sticky swamps of the Potomac. And judging by the gunfire I hear every now and then, probably a military base, maybe Quantico.”
“I could have ordered much worse accommodations for you, Kasem.”
“Bah. This place is insulting, Meredith. I’m a field-grade intelligence officer. You should treat me like one. We’re on the same side now.”
“Have you any idea, Lieutenant Colonel Kahlidi, how much worse we could have made things for you?”
He inspected his fingernails. “Maybe I should ask a lawyer to file a habeas writ.” He glanced at the camera and smiled, waved. “Remember, Meredith, we’re being recorded.”
“Right,” she said. “And I could send you back into Iran. Today. I could leak an edited tape that shows how cooperative you’ve been. Would that be better?”
He smiled again, shaking his head. “Meredith. That would blow your big nuclear deal, wouldn’t it? My MOIS friends and I would tell the world how the Americans invaded our country, snatched one of our officers, played fast and loose with the international order. I confessed under torture . . . torture. Would that be good for you?”
Bastard. She took another note. “We have more to gain by helping each other.”
“The smartest thing you’ve said to me today.”
“All right. Besides John, what can I do to make your circumstance more comfortable?”
“I’ve toured Virginia’s horse country. Acres on acres of rolling green, not unlike the downs of Suffolk. I so miss those downs, those horses.”
She nodded. “True enough. You’re near horse country. I can tell you that much.”
“Then it should be very easy for you to get me what I want.”
* * *
—
“Are you picking anything else up now?” Eli asked forty minutes later. The katsa team leader was behind the wheel of a rented Nissan Altima, twenty cars behind Meredith’s silver Volvo SUV in the dense late-morning traffic of northbound I-64. An early-summer shower had crept in.
“No,” said Rina in his earpiece. “She’s riding in silence.”
“No music or anything?”
“We could try another path-loss signal test, see if there’s another frequency with less noise. But I can hear turn signals, the wipers. The phone rang a minute ago. I think she didn’t answer.”
“Huh,” said Eli. “Second time she’s done that. Either she’s using tradecraft to avoid roving Bluetooth snoops or just blowing someone off. Alone at home, alone on the road. Lonely woman.”
“Or just focused,” the young katsa collection officer answered.
Eli clicked the mic twice. He’d made a pass at Rina on a previous Caesarea op in Toronto and gone down in flames. He watched a low helicopter over the traffic, skirting beneath the iron-gray overcast with its anti-collision lights blinking.
“Okay,” he said, thinking about Meredith’s reported patterns, the time of day. “HVT’s Volvo is probably headed back to Langley now. But let’s confirm. What’s your pos, Mia?”
“Richmond. Just passed exit 193.”
Rina came on the encrypted UHF net. “Wait one. She just made a call. Stand by.”
Eli waited. The three Mossad operatives each carried a receiver capable of picking up the audio snoop, a thin wire heat-fused to the lower inside glass of the Volvo’s windshield to pick up sound vibrations. The receiver had to be within seventy-five yards of the car to pick up the low-wattage transmitter. It was Rina’s turn to close in for the take.
Thirty seconds later, Rina came back on. “She called someone named Ed—sounded to me like her boss. She said she’s making progress with Atlas, whoever that is. She asked to delay a meeting at HQS until she can get him to a new location, it sounded like. That’s it. Short call. I had to close to two car lengths for the gain to work. I’d better drop back and exit here.”
Eli checked his speedometer. “Mia, slow down so she passes you. You can pick her up in case there’s a follow-up call.”
It was their first lead worth reporting since Eli had initiated surveillance a week ago. He’d need to get this to Washington Station ASAP. “I’ll speed up in the left lane and make a pass. Rina, exit and report the take to the station. Oh—wait. Hang on. HVT’s moving over now, slowing down. Chara. She’s exiting—abruptly, too fast, feels like an SDR. I can’t follow. Going to have to pass her too.”
“What’s the exit?” Rina asked.
Eli sped up, moving to the far-left lane, staying well clear of the Volvo. “Instead of merging to I-95, she’s staying on I-64, westbound, toward Charlottesville. I don’t like it. She might have made us.”
“Copy,” Rina answered. “I’ll stay on her then but drop back. Losing audio. Exiting I-64.”
“Chara,” Eli said. “What’s in Charlottesville? Is this just an SDR? Are we blown?”
“I don’t know. Your orders?”
Eli wondered what his best move was. The rules for operating in the US were different. Word had come down that this woman was exceptionally important, that contact had to stay tight. But, he wondered, what would that mean if they backed her into a corner?
He supposed he’d find out soon enough.
CHAPTER 9
The warmth crawling its way up his socks made Major Siamak Azad grateful to have landed late in the day. Though the sun had peaked a few hours earlier, the Iranian MOIS counterintelligence officer could still feel the hot sidewalk through the soles of his shoes. Walking to the curb, looking for his ride, he inhaled the polluted air with its ripe diesel stink and remembered just how much he disliked Tehran. Though he’d grown up here, once again, the major wished he hadn’t been ordered to return.
But it was neither smog nor heat that accounted for the MOIS major’s dread. It was, rather, the botched snatch of Kasem Kahlidi’s woman, Kasra Khani, at Paddington Station some twenty hours earlier. What a clusterfuck.
That Siamak had even made it out of the country was a minor miracle, he thought as he watched the cars driving on the terminal loop road, picking up passengers. His trouble-free exit was a testament to the strength of his UK visa, which had declared him an employee of the National Iranian Oil Company, NIOC.
What with the expected thaw in sanctions from the emerging Vienna nuclear deal, BP had leapt at the opportunity to sponsor Siamak for a meeting to discuss drilling leases in Iran’s South Pars field. Once in London, BP had driven him around like royalty, feted him. And when it was time to leave, they’d gotten him through the executive lines at Heathrow, made calls to the people that mattered to leave this Iranian alone. How shocked those BP execs would be to learn that Siamak had ordered a Hezbollah cell to abduct a poor, unsuspecting National Health Service nurse a few miles away while they were all lunching at the top of the tallest building in Square Mile.
Now, while standing on the curb, Siamak checked the news on his phone, fearful of what he might find. Sure enough, there were plenty of stories about the shootout in the alley just outside Paddington. But helpfully, BBC was calling it “gang activity,” nothing related to politics or terrorism. The reporting was going the way of cultural commentary—screeds on the proliferation of weapons and drugs, just like in America. Nothing related to Iran or Hezbollah.
Siamak held the phone in his hands and looked around, wondering what he should do next. He’d already gotten the updates from his cell, and it was better to keep communications to a minimum. After thinking through his options, he sent a text to his wife back in Beirut, the meat of which was that he’d finally been able to find the Star Wars LEGO for his son, Ali. Siamak had even had it gift-wrapped right there at the LEGO store in Oxford Circus. He hated that his son wanted that LEGO, a symbol, he thought, of Western consumerism and overall cultural decay. But he was still a father and a husband, and the boy wanted what the boy wanted. In the end, Siamak had ridden the tube to Oxford Circus to find the godforsaken thing.
And inshallah, he’d added to his wife in a second message, he’d be flying home to Beirut in the morning, early enough to make it back for Ali’s birthday.
He hoped so anyway as he watched a full-sized Range Rover pull to a stop at the curb in front of him. Tinted glass on the forward passenger’s door lowered. A bearded, plainclothes man behind the wheel glanced at Siamak before the tinted window went back up.
The lack of greeting was typical of the culture at MOIS. Descended from the Shah’s vicious SAVAK secret police, MOIS had maintained its foreign and domestic intelligence mission under the Islamic Republic. Among other duties, its officers operated clandestinely to affirm the loyalty of the pasdaran, the devout IRGC soldiers that preserved the spirit of the revolution. And for that reason, the men in the ranks often kept mum—just as they were doing now. They rode the half hour to MOIS headquarters in silence.
