‘He said something would go down soon?’ Zeb twirled a pencil in his fingers as he rocked back in his chair.
Next day in their charity office. The twins had finished briefing them on their date with Habib Nassour.
‘Yeah,’ Beth confirmed and checked her screen again. Nope, it didn’t look like the Quds officer had synced his phone to his laptop yet. They had gotten all his contacts, his text messages and his notes. Werner got to work on the contacts, to check if they already existed in their database or in those of other agencies. Put faces to names, trawled Iranian public records for similar names, checked if those people could be a match for the ones on Nassour’s phone. Standard intelligence grunt work that their AI program exceled at.
The sisters had glanced quickly through the text messages and found nothing of importance. Meeting confirmations, locations for the same, chatter with his wife and family.
They would analyze the messages again, in more detail, and would also pass them on to Werner.
The notes were more interesting.
‘He said he would call you?’ Chloe grinned.
‘Well,’ Beth said tossing her hair back with a flick of her head, ‘it was a reminder to himself. That he should meet Parvin and Mahya. Why wouldn’t he? We were great company.’
‘Yeah, we could make that out,’ Bear said. ‘We were across the street. The way he inched close to you, if he had gotten any closer—’
Chloe slapped his hand to shut him up. ‘What else in his notes?’
‘Get Golzar’s file to boss,’ Beth quoted.
‘Golzar? Any such name in his contacts?’
‘Nope. There are two more notes, both one word each. The first one is Oil. The second is MA. Just that. It’s either a name or just a couple of letters that mean something to him.’
‘These are important because?’ Broker queried.
‘Because he wrote them yesterday. After all of them met with Mostofi.’
‘It could be nothing,’ Zeb said.
‘You believe that?’ Meghan challenged him.
He shook his head. He agreed with their assessment. ‘Nothing on his calendar?’
‘Nope. Doesn’t look like he sets up events on his phone.’
‘He’s back with Mostofi?’
‘Yeah. We tracked the last location of his phone. It’s back in the same place as yesterday, the Presidential offices.’
‘Anything interesting on his calls?’
‘Nah. Summons to driver, another call to his wife.’
Zeb nodded. Oil. What did he mean by that? Quds Force has nothing to do with it. The petroleum industry had its own minister who too was appointed directly by the Supreme Leader.
‘Something Noori, right?’ he asked aloud. ‘That’s the oil minister.’
‘Bijan Noori,’ Meghan confirmed.
‘Any way of knowing if Mostofi is close to him?’
‘Way ahead of you, Zeb,’ she smirked and turned her screen towards him. The rest of the operatives crowded behind him to watch.
‘This,’ she brought up a photograph, ‘taken last year by Mossad. That’s Noori,’ she pointed to an older man, ‘Salman Poozesh, Finance Minister by his side, Hadi Sayyadi, Foreign Affairs Minister at the far end. You can see Mostofi is right in the middle.’
The four men were dining in a restaurant, relaxed, all of them smiling. Mossad’s probably got a sayan in the place. A server, the bartender or even the manager.
The Israeli agency had helpers all around the world. People of Jewish origin who had a strong allegiance to that country, who freely offered their services or any help they could extend to Mossad. Cab drivers, estate agents, takeout joint owners, nurses, doctors, the sayanim were everywhere and played a crucial role in some of Mossad’s most audacious missions.
‘CIA got this, earlier last year,’ Meghan showed them another image. The four men hugging each other outside the Presidential Administration Building’s entrance. ‘There are several more of the men, but this one,’ she saved the best for the last, ‘clinches it.’
Four women dining in a restaurant.
‘Their wives. Yeah, those men are close.’
‘Those three,’ Zeb pondered, ‘they have offices in the Presidential Administration Building as well?’
‘Their ministries have their own establishments, but Hadi, Poozesh, and Noori have been known to work out of that building.’
Oil, finance, foreign affairs and Quds. Mostofi was planning something.
But what?