Meredith was sleeping soundly, dreaming nonsensically about her time at the Farm. Somehow John was there too, even though their training hadn’t overlapped in the real world.
He seemed inexpressibly sad for some reason. Her dream was filled with the stress of trying to keep his spirits up while she missed required training briefings. The missed meetings were going to get her bilged out of the elite Clandestine Services program. John was being confoundingly dense, morose, unable or unwilling to comprehend that. Even in the otherworldliness of her dream, she could feel a buzzing sense of irritation.
There was a loud jangling noise. As she shook herself awake, it took two more trills before she realized what was happening.
She switched on a light and looked at the glowing smartphone screen on her nightstand: of all things, a cell call from the secure burner phone they’d given Nadia Rahimi. She forced herself to take a deep breath and run a hand through her tangled hair, pulling her mind out of the dream, back to reality. Once there, she felt even worse.
Nadia shouldn’t have been calling. It was a flagrant violation of all the instructions and protocols Meredith had given the middle-aged Iranian woman, who was tucked into a safe house a few miles away in Arlington. But it was just shy of five in the morning. It must be important. Meredith answered gruffly.
“I’ve heard from Zana,” Nadia said at once. Her voice was shaking, rushed.
“Okay.” Still raw from the dream, Meredith’s mind was slow to comprehend. She asked for Nadia to repeat what she’d said. On hearing it a second time, it clicked.
This was going to be bad.
Meredith had been hoping that John had gotten to the scientist by now and that the two of them were on their way out of the country. If Cerberus was calling directly, something must have gone very wrong.
“What is it? What did he say?”
“It was via text. He wouldn’t tell me much. He just said that he is safe but that he wants to talk to you.”
“Me?” She was sitting up now. “How does he even know about me?”
“I told him in my letter about you. I told him you are Mr. Reza’s wife.”
Meredith didn’t bother to correct her. “All right, Nadia. I’m going to need his number. As soon as we’re done, you’ll text it to me. Got it?”
If nothing else, she’d need NSA to scramble the phone’s geolocation, throw off any unwelcome surveillance.
“Yes. But I also already gave him your number. I don’t know when he will be able to call. He only told me not to worry and that he would be in touch.”
Goddamn it, Meredith thought. She absolutely hated this lack of control. But she needed to keep Mrs. Rahimi on ice.
“It’s all right. At least we’ll have a way to communicate now. I’ll set something up with him. Just text me that number when we’re done.”
“Okay. I just wanted you to know first.”
“Thanks, Nadia. You did fine. But remember what I said about not contacting me directly? You need to use the phone at the house and call the duty officer. Remember that talk?”
“Yes, I remember.”
The older woman sounded deflated. Meredith would have to address that. Both Rahimis would be more cooperative if they remained hopeful.
“It’ll be okay,” Meredith said.
No, it won’t, the veteran handler thought. Active Archer had seemed cursed from the start, a cascading series of mishaps since that first briefing in Dorsey’s office. She swallowed her irritation, concentrating on the frightened woman on the line.
It took another three minutes of soothing before Meredith hung up. Once the phone was back on the table, she pressed her palms to her eyes. Why hadn’t John checked in? She picked up her iPad, secured her reading glasses on her nose, and looked through the messages in her secure app, the way John was supposed to get to her. Nothing.
Inconsiderate prick.
The last she’d heard, John had met with Steve Chadwick, chief of station Istanbul. If she needed to, she could check with Steve on John’s whereabouts—but she’d rather not. She was supposed to be the handler for this op, and she didn’t like showing that kind of incompetence. Besides, having dated for a few months, she and Steve had a complicated relationship.
What a mess, she thought, sighing.
A run would have to be her therapy. She forced herself out of bed, feeling uneasy, looking for her tights. Her phone chirped. Nadia had texted the number. Meredith would deal with that in a minute.
The phone rang while she laced her shoes. She willed it to be John. But it wasn’t. Maddeningly, it was HQS, Langley. Just what she didn’t need right now. She coached herself to cool off, lest she say something she’d regret.
“Morris-Dale,” she answered, initiating the secure connection.
“Hey, Meredith, it’s Desmond.”
“Morning, Rick. What’s up?”
“Something happened in Iran a few hours ago. Military communications are lighting up. Air defense radars are going nuts.”
“The whole country?”
“The tactical activity is concentrated in the northwest . . . Azerbaijan and Kurdistan provinces. Not too far from Tabriz.”
Tabriz, she thought. John had said he thought Cerberus might be in Tabriz. Desmond knew as much.
“There’s more,” her deputy said. “We have Echelon intercepts. IRGC commanders are ordering troops to a small airfield. It’s basically a dirt strip, but the name keeps coming up in their conversations. It’s called Saqqez. Seems to have been some kind of attack there or something. Some of the wilder IRGC guys are saying it’s an American strike.”
“Ha,” she said mirthlessly, stretching a hamstring. “I wish. Can we get eyes over it?”
“Negative, no imagery. Too deep in-country and out of range of our current satellite paths. We can retask, but that’ll take a while. It would be at the NCA level.”
“Roger that. Okay. Any sign of John?”
“Not since he made contact with Istanbul two days ago.”
She’d finished stretching by now. She was standing at her front window, looking out on a shining street. Rain—a perfect complement to her sinking mood.
John was supposed to be headed toward the Tabriz area. Not only was he silent, but the IRGC hornet’s nest had been kicked. Not good. Not good at all. She was sick and tired of being in the dark, learning of everything thirdhand. She had half a mind to book a flight for Dubai to get back to her field team as soon as she hung up just so she could operate near the same miserable time zone.
The phone beeped twice in her ear while Desmond was giving more details about SIGINT activity. Another call was coming in through WhatsApp. There was no name, just a number that began with +98—Iranian country code—the same as what Nadia had just texted her.
“Rick, sorry. I have to take this. I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
She switched to the incoming line and took a quick breath. “Hello,” she said.
“I think you know who I am,” replied a male in heavily accented English. A heavy wind ruffled in the background, distorting his voice.
“Yes, I think I do. Your wife told me you might call,” said Meredith.
“Something has happened,” the man said.
Meredith was scrambling at the table by her unmade bed, looking for a way to take notes. She found a pen but no paper. All she had was a half-finished paperback, a guilty-pleasure bodice-ripping romance novel. She opened the back page and wrote down the name of the airfield Desmond had just given her: Saqqez. There was so much wrong with the way this was going down.
“Wait,” she said to the man in the wind. “Before you go on, I need to make sure you are who I think you are. Okay?”
“Yes, okay. But please hurry.”
“Fine. What’s your wife’s middle name?”
“Elaheh.”
“What’s her birthday?”
“July twenty-seventh.”
“Okay. You passed. What’s happening? Why are you calling?”
“You are Reza’s wife?”
She paused a moment before answering. “Yes. But you must understand, this line isn’t secure.”
“I do understand. I have borrowed a phone. It is not my number.”
“That’s good. Keep it. But take out the SIM and power it down as soon as we’re done. Only turn it on when safe and to check in with me every day at this same time if you can. Reza needs to meet you. I’m coordinating that. You understand?”
“Yes. But I am in hiding now. I’ve had to run for it. I’ve lost my way to communicate with him. That’s why I’m calling you.”
She took a note. That meant he’d lost access to the Baramar servers. John wouldn’t be able to initiate communication with him. Meredith would have to be the go-between. “What do you want to tell him?”
“You mean, you don’t know?”
The man sounded frustrated. She could hear him take a strained breath, an exasperated sigh.
“Do you understand, Mrs. Reza, what I have in my head?”
“No, tell me.”
“Your access. The access. If anything happens to my wife—”
“Whoa.” The balls on this guy. She realized what John had been dealing with. “Hold on, sir. Your wife is just fine. Nothing is going to happen to her. We’re just trying to get you to safety now.”
“I trust only Reza to do that. I do not know you.”
“You called me,” she reminded him. “I’m his . . . wife. You’ll have to trust me.”
Another gust of wind whipped through the phone. It sounded like a burst of static. He said, “I have to tell you something—now. Important.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“They’ve done it.”
“Done what? Who?”
“The scientists. The thing you’ve been trying to prevent. Critical mass.”
No! Meredith thought, reeling. She felt a cold stab in her gut. Her mouth opened and closed twice, saying nothing.
The Iranians had achieved breakout.
It was all for naught, the whole goddamned thing.
“You’re sure?” she said weakly.
“Yes, they had help. I was compromised. Russians.”
Russians. She thought of the surveillance, the roll up in Dubai, the Spetz Alpha teams tracking John. Had she been the thread they’d pulled to have it all unravel? Was her screwup on Sagebrush and subsequent unmasking the thing that finally, indirectly allowed the Iranians to achieve breakout? She felt sick. Angry. Hurt.
“Why do we need you?” she asked rudely. “What’s in your head that’s so important?”
“Everything. I can undo it.”
She listened to the ruffling wind. “There’s still hope to turn this around?”
“Yes. If you act quickly with the information I have. But you have to get me. Now.”
Seriously, the balls on this guy, she thought again. But at least there seemed to be a chance. “We’ll get you. Reza will get you.”
“Tell me where I’m supposed to meet him.”
“Hold on.”
She reached for her iPad. She opened Google Maps and zoomed in on Iran. She checked the note she’d taken when speaking with Desmond. Saqqez.
She typed the name into the search bar. The description of a dusty city on a river popped up instantly. Kurdistan Province. One hundred twenty miles south of Tabriz, fifty miles east of the Iraqi border. She knew John was coming south through Turkey toward Tabriz. Where to have them meet? The IRGC would probably set up a cordon around Saqqez, given what Desmond had just told her. She knew she had to get Cerberus out of there.
Kurdistan Province. John had loads of experience with the Kurds. He certainly wouldn’t appreciate that she was calling the shots, but an exfil through Iraq made the most sense for everyone, John included. She could surge military resources out of Baghdad if she needed to.
She needed to make the call. Now. Who knew if she would really get the chance to speak with him again? Fuck it.
She zoomed in on a village that she thought would work as a rendezvous. “Okay. I want you to make your way to, ah, a village called Alut. A-L-U-T. Did you hear me?”
“Yes.” More wind through the phone.
“Commit it to memory. Now take out that SIM and do not try to contact your wife again. That was dangerous. If you do that, you endanger her and yourself. You check in with me only when safe, every twenty-four hours if you can. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, I understand you. But how will Reza find me?”
“For now just get to Alut. I’ll give you further instructions on how to meet. Let me worry about that.”
Let me worry about that, she repeated to herself, exhaling. She was certainly worrying now. She was the only one in the US who knew the Iranians had achieved breakout.
As Rance walked down the sidewalk with a barely suppressed grin on his face, the clouds parted. A rare London sun lit the imposing Whitehall buildings a shade whiter.
A good sign, he thought.
He was glad he’d dismissed his driver and decided to walk to the tube. It gave him some time to think. Walking around cities had always done that for him, all the way back to his early days as a new buck spy posing as a foreign service officer in Buenos Aires almost thirty years ago.
He’d just finished a meeting with an MI-6 colleague in the Defence Ministry building and was now strolling past the busts of imperial Victorian conquerors with a feeling of kinship, just the inspiration he’d been looking for. The e-mailed summary he’d just digested on his phone had put him in this happy place. It told him that the director had called Dorsey into his office for a briefing on Archer. The director was not happy. Things were not good, not good at all. Archer was failing.
And there it was.
Once terrified that the great leaning shit pot known as Active Archer would canter and spill on him personally, Rance had now come to realize that the stain would miss him. What was more, if played deftly, there was even the possibility the stinking, spreading mess might sweep away the bevy of nuisances that had dogged his career going all the way back to his days as deputy Baghdad chief of station and the ridiculous accusations about his judgment during Broadsword. Then there was this latest reprimand from Dorsey about Genevieve. That would be gone with Dorsey himself.
How perfectly apt that would be, he thought now, passing through the security gates toward Trafalgar, walking along the crowded sidewalk, perfecting the political angles. All of it would be swept away with the tide.
Stopped at a traffic light, he watched a red double-decker strain through a turn.
There would be no escaping it for Dorsey now, he thought. As NCA had taken an interest in saving Archer, the head of Clandestine Services had stupidly stepped into the breach, owning it, blowing it, allowing the Iranians to achieve breakout.
Yet it was Dorsey who’d pushed to involve the Dales. It was Dorsey who’d removed John Dale’s suspension. It was Dorsey who would have set in motion the chain of events that would lose Cerberus. Owned, owned, owned.
Idiot, Rance thought, rounding a corner, shouldering through a mass of tourists toward Charing Cross. He’d warned all of them about the foolishness of trusting John Dale, an untrustworthy wild card if ever there was one. Dorsey, signing his own death warrant, had even doubled down against Rance’s advice, which, thanks to all of those meetings with General Counsel Sheffield, was quite formally on the record.
Moreover, Rance thought, his mind pleasurably aglow, there wouldn’t even be guilt by association since Dorsey had removed Rance from the equation. Dorsey had instead sent him on this boondoggle to London to talk about the vulnerability of African rare-earth minerals with MI-6. As if that mattered now!
It had been meant as exile—no one cared about Africa, least of all him. Yet here it was. Far from exile, it had proven to be a lifeboat. Rance wouldn’t even be in town when the ship of Archer finally sank.
A masterstroke, he thought, smiling, shuffling down the steps to the tube, pleased to be ducking into some shade. The long walk had quickened his pulse and dampened his forehead.
He inserted his ticket into the turnstile and descended the long, tiled subway stairs, roaring with echoes of fellow passengers and the rushing wind of trains. His mind plumbed in the murky depths of Archer outcomes, he headed in the wrong direction, toward the wrong platform. Suddenly aware, he doubled back on the stairway, moving against the crowd.
In doing so, he had a brief collision with a fellow traveler in his mid-twenties. He didn’t think much of it, given the tightly packed crowd. The young man wore an Arsenal hoodie pulled over a shaved head. He grunted before dashing off in the other direction.
Clod, Rance thought. As far as he was concerned, no one under the age of forty had any manners anymore, even in London. Maybe he should have taken his Agency car after all, he thought.
But then Rance went back to congratulating himself. Hanging on a strap, jostling his way under the city streets toward his hotel, he praised his own handling of Meredith. Knowing as he had that the odds of John Dale coming through were long, he’d given her all the leeway she could have possibly wished for.
It was Meredith’s authorization that had torn up a city block in Mumbai only to emerge with the wife of the asset rather than the asset himself. It was Meredith who had insisted on keeping everything secret from Rance. In the sum total of events, Rance now realized that his hands were antiseptically clean in the disaster that would forever be associated with Archer. Game, set, match!
Exiting the tube and shouldering through shoppers on Oxford, surfing ever farther on his own celebratory wave, he decided to treat himself. He ducked into a tailor and looked at bolts of wool, wondering if he might be in town long enough to order a new suit.
Thinking that prospect over, he stood in front of a mirror, holding various shades of neckties to his face. In doing so, he didn’t bother to notice the young man with the shaved head under the Arsenal hoodie who walked by the shopwindow.
The twenty-eight-year-old football fan was careful not to make eye contact with the man trying out ties in the window. He ducked into a pub across the street and took a seat near a window, watching Rance. He looked down just long enough to type out a text: Made a stop. But think he’s on his way to the Langham. Prob be there in ten.
Sure enough, Rance concluded that he did deserve that suit. He made an appointment for a measuring tomorrow morning and then continued on his way across Oxford Circus.
By the time he crossed through the heavy leaded glass doors of the stately Langham Hotel, he was in high spirits, imagining himself in his new suit, commanding the Clandestine Services from Dorsey’s office. The sun, the clothes, the self-immolation of Dorsey and the Dales, and the picturesque streets of London had produced a perfect cocktail of satisfactory flavors.
Just then, when it would have seemed that life could not possibly have gotten any sweeter, it suddenly did.
“Well, hello!” he said to Genevieve Lund.
He could scarcely believe his eyes. She was sitting in a chair in the lobby across from three other business executives. Her long legs were crossed. He caught a tantalizing glimpse of thigh under the short skirt of her business suit. When she stood to shake his hand in a display of appropriate commercial courtesy, his knees nearly gave.
Standing on her four-inch heels, she was an inch taller than him.
“Oh, my,” she said, putting a hand to her breast.
It was a little after five. There was a mixed drink on the table next to her, something bright and fruity.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said with a knowing smile and a blush. She pumped his hand twice before letting it go.
“I must say, it is quite a coincidence,” he murmured, dumbstruck.
She explained that she was at the Langham for a conference on international shipping. The three men with her all worked for her company, Stoke Park. He went through the perfunctory introductions. He forgot each of the men’s names as soon as he heard them.
During the cocktail hour after the meeting, Genevieve started to relate a story. Her compatriots joined in, talking about something that had happened in the courtyard out back. As they recounted the incident and began to laugh, Rance felt her hand run down his back.
“Well,” one of the men said, “we should probably get back to it.”
Yes, they all agreed. Genevieve said she would be along in another minute. Suddenly, she and Rance were alone, standing face-to-face among a crowd of strangers.
She just looked at him. Her smile was gone, replaced with an icy feminine glare.
He was suddenly unnerved, awash in guilt, a pang of fear. He’d jilted her. He’d done it after Dorsey had called him on the carpet to tell him it had all been too risky. Rance had done his duty, ended his affair with Genevieve. But now here he stood. What could he do? It hadn’t been his decision. Besides, thanks to Archer’s failure, Dorsey was finished.
“I assume it had something to do with your wife,” Genevieve said coldly, doing her best to play the part of the disappointed mistress.
“No, it wasn’t that.” He took her hand in his, deeply aroused by the pout of her perfectly shaped lips. “It was something else. . . . It had something to do with work. The hardest thing I—”
“Spare me.” She looked away, dissatisfied, extending her lips farther.
“No, really,” he said.
He caressed her fingers. He realized he would say just about anything now. Her peevishness was such a turn-on. The old tingle was back. And, he reminded himself, Dorsey was finished.
“Meet me for dinner tonight,” he said.
A few hours later in an Italian restaurant four blocks away that Genevieve had called her favorite, Rance’s phone rang. Putting down his pinot noir, he glanced at the screen. The call was coming in over the secure app.
Meredith. Fuck. There he was, having painstakingly repaired the damage in his relationship with Genevieve, on his way to a perfect ending to a perfect day, when none other than Meredith should call to screw it all up.
Rance thought about the time difference. It would be midday in DC now—prime working hours. Meredith hadn’t called him since the botched Mumbai op, in which Dale had duped all of them by bringing in Cerberus’s wife.
Rance had liked it that way. The less he heard from her these days, the better. Let her hang herself.
He looked at Genevieve, flashing the buzzing phone in front of her. “I’m sorry. I know this is rude, but I have to take this. It’s work.”
“As long as it isn’t her,” said Genevieve, puckering her artfully painted mouth.
“Well, it’s a her,” said Rance. “But not the her. Work.”
He stood and made his way toward the entry, where he ducked down a hall.
“What?” he said, irritated.
Meredith was nonplussed by the tone. “Sorry, Ed. Am I . . . am I interrupting something?”
“Huh? No, not that. I’m at a dinner . . . the MI-6 thing. You know. Anyway, I assume it’s something urgent.”
“It is,” Meredith said. “I’m getting ready for the Cerberus meet.”
Shit, Rance thought. By now he’d figured that Cerberus was rotting away in some Iranian jail. The op still had a chance?
“And? Where is he? Does John have him?”
“No, not quite. But they’re getting ready. I’m putting together the exfil.”
“Where?”
She hesitated.
He clenched his free fist. It was back to the old excuse that John’s whereabouts were to remain only between the ex-husband and his ex-wife handler. God, he was sick of these two. But he knew now they’d been outmaneuvered. The more they left him out of it, the deeper they dug their own graves. Fine.
“Never mind,” he said, preempting her. “I know the drill. So why are you calling?”
“I need your authorization to go back to my team at Dubai Station. It’s just too hard to control the op from back here.”
“So Cerberus is still in Iran, then? You can admit that much to me, Meredith.”
“Yes, Ed, he’s still there. But we’ve got a good exfil shaping up.”
“Fine,” Rance said. He was watching Genevieve. She was giving him that come-hither look. “You have my authorization to do whatever you need to do,” he said.
Walking back toward Genevieve, he asked himself how he should play it if Meredith and Dale actually managed to get Cerberus back. If she was somehow successful, he would need to maneuver himself to be able to share in the credit—if the asset even mattered at that point. He didn’t think anything would come of it, but it was hard to say, an angle to be covered. The Dales could be surprising.