Jeff Dorsey walked down the main hall of Langley’s seventh floor at a brisk pace. Along the way a few staffers approached to intercept him, hoping to catch a quick word or a signature. But the resolute steel in the eye of the head of Clandestine Services scared them all off.
Around two corners, past a bank of administrative assistants and a row of interior offices, Dorsey finally found the one with his intended nameplate: MEREDITH MORRIS-DALE, COUNTERPROLIFERATION DIVISION, MIDDLE EAST. He knocked twice and entered.
Meredith was at her desk speaking into a bulky encrypted STU-III telephone of Cold War vintage. She talked in clipped phrases and took notes with her free hand. “Right. Right. Okay. You’ll call me when? Right.”
She looked up at Dorsey and waved him to the chair before her desk. In so doing, she smiled charmingly.
She hung up. “Something I can help you with, sir?” she said to her boss’s boss.
“I see you smiling, Meredith.”
“Am I?”
“Spill it. Colson’s been calling the director looking for an update on Active Archer. I’m on my way up there now.” Scott Colson was the White House chief of staff, a notorious ballbuster. “There’s a rumor you have something.”
Meredith leaned forward in her chair. She couldn’t suppress the grin. “You know, sir, this place is terrible at keeping secrets. What did you hear?”
“That your husband checked in.”
“Ex-husband.” The grin flattened.
“Whatever. The director wants me in his office in fifteen minutes.”
She was just about to explain when there was another knock at the door. Rance wasn’t about to let one of his subordinates go off script with the higher-ups. He’d heard about Dorsey’s beeline down the hall.
“Oh, hey, Ed,” said Dorsey, shifting his chair to make room in the cramped office.
Meredith nodded to Rance and he took the other chair. He was, as usual, immaculately turned out, while Dorsey had his tie askew and sleeves pushed up past his elbows. Odd couple. Rance would be leaving for Europe in a few days, per Dorsey’s direction. He hadn’t been paying as much attention to Archer, but he also couldn’t stand being out of the loop.
“Okay,” she said, leaning over her notepad. “That was chief of station Delhi.”
“Delhi? That’s Nick Reeves,” said Rance. “Why would—”
Meredith cut him off. “Yeah, Nick Reeves. The short story is that John is bringing Cerberus into the Mumbai consulate.”
“What the fuck’s he doing in Mumbai?” asked Rance.
“When?” asked Dorsey.
She ignored Rance. “Should be early morning our time, four or five tomorrow.”
Dorsey looked at his watch. “It’s what, like a twelve-hour time difference between here and India?”
“Ten,” said Rance.
“Okay,” continued Dorsey. “So late afternoon, Mumbai time. Dale is just going to sashay into the consulate with our asset? That’s it?”
“Actually, I think it will be our asset and his family,” said Meredith.
“How?” asked Rance.
She said, “Reeves is sending a Navy helo over to Mumbai, on loan from Seventh Fleet. Bonhomme Richard Marine Expeditionary Unit is in the Bay of Bengal. We’ll chopper Cerberus up to Delhi and get him into protection immediately.”
“Right,” said Dorsey. “Meredith, check with CENTCOM. Let’s see if we can get clearance from the Indians for a C-17 to drop in and pick him up right there in Delhi. I want this fucker landing on an American base for debrief in the next twenty-four hours.”
She took a note.
“Hold on, hold on,” said Rance. “Given what we’ve been through with the Russians back here . . . how do we know this is all secure?”
“John hasn’t picked up any surveillance,” she said.
Rance glanced at his boss. “Ever been to Mumbai? It’s nuts. Would be hard to detect surveillance over there. Should we send in a SAC team?”
Before Dorsey could answer, Meredith said, “Ed, you know the rules of this one. Low profile. High speed, low drag.”
“Because John wants it that way,” Rance mumbled.
Meredith shoved her notepad away. A pen rolled across her desk and dropped to the floor. “No. Because I want it that way.”
“At the request of your husband,” he shot back.
“Ex-husband, Ed. He’s my case officer and I’m handling him—per your request, I might add. Or have we all forgotten about that? Are you really questioning my judgment here?”
Dorsey was sucking the inside of his cheek, listening and thinking. “It’s not a bad idea, Meredith. A little extra protection never hurt.”
“No, it’s not a bad idea,” she conceded. “But those aren’t the rules of this one.”
“Uh-huh,” Rance muttered. “So let’s see. We have no idea who Cerberus is, how Dale is communicating with him, or how he’s going to come in. All of this in trust to an officer who . . .” He looked at Meredith and shut his mouth.
She glared back. “Finish that sentence, Ed. Tell me what John is.”
“You know what I think.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
He glanced at Dorsey, who, after donning reading glasses, was now checking messages on his phone, staying quiet. “All right,” Rance said. “He changed out there in Mosul. I was there. I saw it. He’s just not one of us anymore.”
Meredith turned toward the wall and shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she scoffed.
“We’ve been over this,” said Dorsey, looking up from his phone, the glasses hanging precariously at the end of his nose. “Do we have to relive it now, Ed?”
“Sir,” said Rance, “it’s just that here we are with the most important catch in recent memory. We can’t lose Cerberus. And we’re wholly dependent on someone that we pushed out precisely because we thought he was untrustworthy.”
“You thought that,” said Meredith. “And you fucking pushed it!”
“I did what I thought was right. I’d do it again. I saw what I saw, Meredith. He let an enemy fighter get up and walk away. He fucking waved at the guy. The whole thing’s on drone footage. You want me to play the tape for you again? He’s compromised!”
“Jesus, Ed! He was tortured by fucking ISIL! They took off a finger! Who knows what the hell was going on in his mind at that moment?”
“No one,” said Rance. “That’s just it. John won’t debrief, won’t tell us shit, will he? What else are we supposed to believe?”
Meredith turned away, resuming her stare at the wall.
“Enough,” said Dorsey. He slipped his phone back in his pocket. The glasses came off. “I’m already late.” After a quick appraising glance, he said, “Look. We all know the story. No sense in rehashing this. We’ve made our deal with Dale and I’m going to honor it. If he pulls this off, he gets a clean bill of health, no questions asked.” He leveled a steady eye at each of them. “We all good here, team?”
Rance nodded hesitantly. Meredith continued staring at the wall.
Dorsey said, “The tactical question in the here and now is whether we think we need to bring a SAC team into Mumbai to make sure John’s ass is covered.” He turned toward Meredith. “You’re his handler. You’ve spoken to him. It’s your call.”
“India’s not a hostile country. I want it quiet,” she said. “That was also part of the deal.” She settled a cold eye on Rance.
Dorsey stood. “Okay. Then that’s how we’re going to play it.” He buttoned the top of his collar and tightened his tie. “Wish me luck, you two. I’m on my way in to brief the director. Can’t wait to tell him Cerberus is finally coming in.”
Colonel Naser Maloof, the MOIS counterintelligence chief, didn’t bother to knock on Kasem’s door. The older man simply walked in, scraped a chair into place, and lit a cigarette. In a shallow display of courtesy, he offered the pack of Winstons to Kasem, who quickly waved it off.
The younger Quds officer was at his usual post, perched at his desk behind a pile of personnel files of the scientific workers spread across Zaqqum. He and his two junior lieutenants had come no closer to finding the leak that supposedly existed, based solely on the inference from Kuznetsov. They’d cleared more than two hundred people at this point, about halfway through the program.
As he saw it, there were two significant problems with the failure to find the breach. First, there was the leak itself, which might jeopardize the country’s national effort. Second, and perhaps more important to him personally, was the threat posed by Maloof, manifesting now in the old man’s smug posture. The colonel lounged at the foot of the desk, attempting to blow smoke rings.
He knows something, Kasem thought. And it’s not good.
“The Russians . . . ,” the colonel started contemplatively. He paused to let another botched smoke ring depart. “They’re really crawling up our asses all of a sudden. Going crazy.”
The younger Quds lieutenant colonel offered a shrug. “Should I know why?”
“Well,” said the colonel, “apparently they think the Americans are cooking up something—some kind of plot. Probably to frame us at the UN. You know how they are. With the Bushehr trip happening next week, the Russians want to hear from our Foreign Ministry that everything is airtight. Otherwise they might delay. As you might imagine, the Supreme Council does not want a delay.”
“I see,” said Kasem. He could feel his gut tightening.
The colonel smiled behind a blue cloud of smoke. “I’m not sure what to make of it since I’m not involved in foreign intelligence. Just our own internal security. But I thought maybe you could provide some insight into their thinking.”
Kasem nodded, his face neutral. He guessed the glib colonel had maneuvered this in such a way as to deflect the inevitable screwup. If an American plot was detected, it would be the fault of the Quds lieutenant colonel who should have known about it in the first place.
The colonel tapped a finger on the stack. “We really should close this out before the Bushehr trip, no, Kasem jon? We wouldn’t want Brigadier Salami to worry about some kind of internal issue.” He stubbed out his cigarette and left the dirty butt in the ashtray on Kasem’s desk.
For the rest of the day, Kasem didn’t react, continuing to work diligently at his desk. Since the rest of the building worked for Maloof in one way or another, Kasem guessed he’d be watched carefully. Rather than offer fodder, he pushed his lieutenants hard, clearing files without a break, other than kneeling on his namaz to pray.
With one exception. At some point in the middle of the afternoon, balancing his phone on his lap below his desk, he sent a text to his Hezbollah contact in Beirut.
He left the office at six. The weather had deteriorated to a confused mix of sleet, hail, and snow, leading to multiple car accidents. As it was, Kasem hated the bus, pretending to live the life of a dedicated pasdar. It was downright demeaning.
But there was Kasra. He’d hoped to see her for dinner. The slow bus ride home got even worse when he read a text from her saying that she’d be working late at the hospital.
He ate dinner alone, checking his watch often, wondering when she would call. Later, dropping the dishes in the sink, he was happy to hear the phone finally ring. But when he picked it up, he saw a Beirut country code.
“Oui,” he answered.
“Tu as une minute?” A man’s voice, the sound of cars honking in the background.
“Ouay,” Kasem said. He continued in French, “I need an update on the Russian. Did you get anything out of him yet? I need it soon.”
“He’s dead. This morning.”
The Iranian squeezed his phone hard, his knuckles white. “Dead? What the hell are you talking about? What happened? How could you be so stupid?”
“Écoute!” said the Hezbollah operative, his voice rising over the sound of a truck racing by in the background. “Your Russian killed one of my men. The other had to fire to defend himself. There was more of a fight in the snatch than we’d been informed to expect. You think we’re a hospital?”
Unbelievable, thought Kasem. He wondered now if Maloof had known somehow. Killing a Russian officer was a very, very big deal, a class A fuckup. “You’re sure it was Kuznetsov?”
“Ouay. He had ID. It was him.”
“Not just from what you heard from your men, but you yourself. You can verify this?”
“Ouay! I’m sure. I was there for part of the interrogation. There was another Russian too. Putov.”
“And him?”
“Also dead.”
“Fuck, Nabil!” Kasem yelled at his Hezbollah contact. “You killed two Russians? Do you know what this is going to mean? They’re going to wipe us out of Syria, probably Lebanon too. They’re going to come after you personally.” And me, he thought.
“Yes, of course,” said Nabil, the Hezbollah man. “It’s why we had to kill the other guy. We couldn’t have a witness. Inshallah, you understand.”
Kasem put a hand to his forehead. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He struggled for something else to say. “Well—what did you get out of him before he died? Anything?”
“A name,” said the man.
“What name?”
“They’re looking for someone. His name is Reza Shariati—I couldn’t quite make sense of the rest of it. We didn’t have a Russian speaker, so we—”
“Who is this Reza?”
“I just told you, I don’t know. The Kuznetsov character died fairly early on. His comrade Putov didn’t seem to know as much. We really have only the name.”
“Nabil, listen to me,” said Kasem. “You need to bury this. Get rid of those bodies and make sure they never see the light of day. This can’t come back to us.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t call again. I’ll be in touch when I need you. Bury this deep.”
“I got it, patron. I got it.”
Kasem looked past his reflection over the sink, out at the dark sky. Sleet had given way to snow, flurries bouncing off the glass. He could only imagine what the traffic would be like tomorrow. He poured himself a very full glass of red wine and sat at his counter, sick to his stomach.
The plan had simply been to rough Yuri up, get him to start talking, scare him a bit. Kasem hadn’t even been sure it would work, but he knew Hezbollah thugs were good at scaring the wits out of anyone, even Russians. And to have killed that little shit Putov too. Disaster.
The Russians were going to come swarming. It was probably the real reason they were lighting fires at the Iranian Foreign Ministry ahead of the Bushehr trip.
But at least he had a name to work with. He seized his phone. He called one of his junior lieutenants, the one who was good with databases.
“I need you to go back to the office,” he said into the mic.
The young officer hesitated before replying.
“Did I say something confusing, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir!” said the younger man, rattled.
“Get in there and trace a name for me. Reza Shariati. We need to find anyone in the program even associated with that name. All right? As soon as you have something, call me back. Tonight. This can’t wait. Understand?”
He hung up and took a big gulp of cabernet.
Kasra texted a few minutes later. She was still coming, but later, not till ten.
Kasem acknowledged the message and opened up his laptop. He Googled Reza Shariati, a fairly common Iranian name. It seemed pointless, but he was bored and anxious. Google came up with scads of people, none of whom he could connect directly to an element of Zaqqum.
He was pouring his fourth glass of wine, emptying the bottle, when his lieutenant called back around nine forty-five.
“Did you get something?” he said, his tongue a little thick.
“Maybe, sir. I did find one instance. But I’m not sure if it’s what you’re looking for.”
There was a knock at the door. Kasra.
“Wait. Hang on.”
Kasem put his phone on mute, set it on the counter. He went to let her in. As she removed her damp coat, he saw she was still in blue surgical scrubs. He waved her in distractedly, told her he was on an important call.
“I need some of whatever you’re drinking,” she said. “Smells like you may be way ahead of me.”
He opened another bottle, handed it to her, picked up his phone. Cupping it, he said to her, “I need to finish this in the other room. Give me one minute.”
She nodded and found her way to the sofa with the wineglass in her hand. She kicked off her shoes.
Kasem went into his bedroom, shutting the door behind himself. He took the phone off mute and spoke softly. “All right, Lieutenant, what do you have?”
“Just this one thing, sir. I cross-checked the name against everyone in Zaqqum. There was nothing.”
He fought the urge to hurl his phone against the wall.
“But,” the lieutenant added quickly, “I also checked all of the cleared supplier companies and foreign contractors associated with Zaqqum. I checked their employees going back ten years, where I could find records anyway.”
“And?”
“And one of the supplier companies, Baramar—”
“The reseller in Dubai.”
“Yes, that one. Baramar had a contractor on file who left about seven years ago by the name of Reza Shariati. A Canadian citizen.”
Canadian. Western. “What kind of work?”
“Computer systems.”
“What else?”
“Nothing. I just have his title as ‘Consultant, Information Systems.’ He was on the payroll there for three years.”
“Which facility uses Baramar the most?”
“Tabriz. It’s mostly centrifuge equipment. Swiss made.”
“Okay. Tomorrow morning we do the Tabriz files. Maybe even head up there for interviews. I want a complete scrub of anyone who has access to Baramar at Tabriz.”
After hanging up, he went back to the kitchen, directly to his laptop. From her perch on the sofa, Kasra could see he was all business. She didn’t bother to speak to him.
Hunched over the kitchen island, he started Googling again. He tried variations of the name, adding in “information technology,” “Canadian,” and other permutations. Nothing obvious came up.
Ten minutes on, Kasra sat at the stool across from him. Her glass was empty. “I wish you would tell me what’s so important,” she said. She poured another and handed it to him.
Absently, he thanked her and took a sip, setting the crystal down by the laptop. “One more sec,” he said.
On a new tack, he opened up LinkedIn and entered the name Reza Shariati in the search field. A half second later, a stack of tiny professional thumbnail images stared back at him, all with that name. He looked down the list of their corresponding business titles. A third of the way down, his eye landed on one that read, “Independent Information Systems Consultant, Montreal.”
He clicked the link. The public profile of Reza Shariati, Independent Information Systems Consultant, Montreal, filled his browser. There was a picture of a bearded man in a suit and tie staring back at him.
Kasem froze. Four seconds later he backed away from his computer, tripping over a barstool, eyes still glued to the screen.
Kasra hurried to him, steadying him with a hand on his back. She raised the other to his chin, forcing his eyes toward hers. “Kasem jon, you’ve gone pale. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He glanced at her, eyes twitching. His hand went to his neck, absently stroking the scar. He stared back at the computer screen. “Yes,” he said weakly. “That’s exactly what I’ve seen.”