“John Dale is headed to Iran,” Maria said into the phone.
She was in the third-floor Stoke Park Insurance office in Farringdon. Just as soon as she could slither out from under Rance’s sweating, heaving body to download the take from his phone, she’d returned here, anxious to call Oleg. It was three a.m.
She wanted a shower. She wanted to wash Rance off of her. But duty called. She’d arrived and immediately analyzed the audio file. It was good. Really good.
Oleg had been asleep. He was in Istanbul, where it was now five in the morning. “How do you know?” he asked.
She stayed silent, declining to answer.
Oleg knew what that meant—Zoloto had her ways. There was an unspoken agreement between the two professionals that they shouldn’t discuss the tradecraft of their respective callings. It was one of the things they liked about each other.
He corrected himself. “Never mind. Sorry. What exactly do you know?”
“I picked up one end of a phone call from Meredith Morris-Dale. Before I tell you—any sign of Dale over there?”
The Interpol Red Notice had picked Dale up entering Istanbul. They knew he was under a French passport using the name Etienne Crochet, an executive with Shell Oil. As soon as the Red Notice came in, Maria had dispatched Oleg to Istanbul while she stayed to work Rance.
“Not since Erzurum. Either Turks are lazy about reporting travelers or he switched passports again. Do we know why he’s going to Iran?”
“Now I do,” she said, smoothing the hem of her skirt. “They have a spy. The code name they used is Cerberus. Apparently, Dale is on a mission to exfil him. The wife is going to run the op from Dubai. She’s on her way there from the States. Apparently, she’s his handler.”
“Have you briefed Yasenevo yet?”
“Not yet.”
She paused. When she’d gotten back to the office, her first thought had been to file the new intelligence in the SVR database, per the standard protocol. But she’d hesitated—hesitated because she wanted to test it with Oleg first.
He grunted over the phone. “It’s your call. You want me to stay on here?”
She looked out the windows at the dark city. There was a low crescent moon on its way down, a few silver clouds gliding by the newer glassy buildings across the street. Far off in the other direction, there was a hint of purple dawn.
“Kuznetsov’s Red Notice is still in effect for both of the Dales, right?”
“Yes.”
“We know he’s on his way to Iran and she’s on her way to Dubai . . .”
She paused a moment, thinking, weighing what she was about to suggest carefully. She’d been trained to operate independently, to take the initiative however it presented itself. But there was a fine line between that and willful disobedience. She knew she should file the report with Yesenevo. But she had other ideas—and she was reasonably sure Oleg was an operative she could lean on.
“Oleg, why not just get in position and wait? We could snatch both of them ourselves.”
“Without getting orders first?”
She looked around the dark office, a breath of vulnerability washing over her. She was almost certain FSB couldn’t monitor them. Supposedly, SVR had encryption that was unknown even to the rest of the Russian government. That was what they’d told her. But the two organizations were infamous for lying to each other.
“I will tell them,” she said for the sake of the assumed monitors on the other end of the call. “But speed is important here. We can’t afford a delay.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “You sure?” Oleg dragged out the words. He knew what she was thinking. He knew it perfectly well.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, underlining her conviction. “They’ve taken down five of us, Oleg. Five. We need to get them. Both of them. This is hot pursuit. We need to act now.”
“You’re the boss. Besides, I’ve never been to Dubai.”
Maria breathed deeply, swelling with relief. He was on board.
“She’s mine,” she said. “I’ll be going to Dubai. I need you in Tehran.”
He grunted. “I figured. I want him anyway. Fucker has killed four of my men, not to mention Kuznetsov.”
“Can you handle him alone?”
“Da. Given the speed with which we’ll want to do this, I’ll have to. Besides, I can’t take a whole Alpha team into an allied country, especially if we’re not going to wait for HQ.”
“Right.”
“You sure it’s Tehran?”
“No. Might be Bushehr. Wherever they’ve stashed Cerberus, their asset. If Cerberus had something to do with the Bushehr summit meeting, then maybe Dale’s headed there. Wherever Dale lands, he’ll pop on the Red Notice.”
“Maybe not. Who knows how he’s getting in? You think you can access any other sources that could help pin this down?”
“The best source will be Meredith Morris-Dale herself. Based on my intel, I know she’s in contact with Cerberus. I’ll use her to get to Dale. When you get Dale, you get that asset. I assume you still have access to scopolamine.”
“I have a kit with me. I can’t say I can be trusted to be gentle with Dale, though. It may take more than drugs.”
Kasem hurried across the tarmac at the small Saqqez airfield to the churning helicopter. The closer he got, the more dust from the spinning rotors pelted him. He pulled the T-shirt he wore under his military blouse and tented it over his nose, straining for a breath of fresh air, instead getting a whiff of his own body odor. He took one final glance back at the young captain he’d left in charge, a company commander of the local Guards regiment. The captain waved at him.
In the greasy, noisy helicopter, a crewman helped Kasem to a seat. The Quds lieutenant colonel strapped in and placed the boom-mic headphones over his ears. He told the pilots he was ready to go and watched the lone crewman settle into his rear seat. The engines screeched, the blades whopped, the ground suddenly fell away. Kasem felt the helicopter pitch forward as it gained altitude, banking, corkscrewing up over the field in a wide right turn.
Looking through the open cargo door, he could see the burned-out hulk of the twin-engined Y-12 pushed to one side of the field, barely recognizable with one wing blown to bits. He could see the scorch marks on the taxiway where the plane had caught fire. There was an enormous brown streak where the fuel truck had exploded. Chunks of the chassis were still lying in the yellow grass. Farther down the runway, he saw the vehicles of the captain’s Guards company spread around a tent, their temporary command post.
Over the internal communications system, he listened to the pilot radioing a clearance to the local IRGC commanders on the ground. Before long, he could see them too. A dirt road leading to a revetment of six SAMs dug into the scrub, surrounded by heavy trucks. As the helicopter flew farther, he could see the roadblocks, a heavy DShK machine gun set up behind sandbags. Every road that led to the city had at least a squad-strength patrol manning a barricade with a heavy machine gun.
Kasem squinted against the glare. Off in the distance, he could see the town of Saqqez itself. A dusty cluster of buildings and roads that stretched toward the river of the same name. A midsized city where the locals spoke Kurdish in their houses and Farsi in their schools. The valley stretched with the river into the inhospitable hills. Dr. Zana Rahimi was down in that city somewhere, Kasem thought. He had to be.
Under the jurisdiction of MOIS, the Quds officer had personally interviewed the witnesses and overseen the cordon that stretched around the city. He’d ordered the local police commanders to drop everything for a house-to-house search of the physicist.
But doubts were mounting. It had been three days.
Kasem watched the hills slide beneath the wheels of the helicopter, feeling the warm air rushing in. Was it possible? Could a by all accounts mild-mannered fifty-two-year-old physicist really have gotten out of the area somehow?
No, he concluded for the fortieth time that morning. Not a chance. Within a few hours of the explosion, they’d ordered air surveillance and troops onto the roads, fanning out for a hundred miles. Given the inhospitable landscape, there really wasn’t anywhere to go, except for the town.
Unless the scientist had help. Kasem thought of Reza.
Now that the helicopter had leveled at a thousand feet, Kasem leaned back against the nylon cords of his seat. A blast of fresh air, cool, burst through the door. The ungainly aircraft bucked through turbulence. Another windy day. He gulped in the breeze, grateful for something that smelled better than aviation gas.
Looking out at the brown horizon, he was thinking again of the man he knew as Reza Shariati. He was sure that CIA was all over this now. Amazingly, the mysterious CIA operative who had spoken Farsi to him so long ago in Iraq had been on the Baramar payroll. It seemed inescapable that he’d been the link to Rahimi, their spy.
Too many pieces fit together for there to be any other explanation. Rahimi’s wife had disappeared on a trip to Mumbai, just as the city had been shot up in a supposed terrorist incident. She was nowhere to be found now, surely in the embrace of the Americans.
Unfortunately, there were no loose ends to pull when it came to Rahimi. His parents were long dead. His brother—a supporter of Massoud Rajavi, the socialist sect leader who had rivaled Khomeini—had died in Evin Prison in the eighties. There were some more recent rumors that his daughter had been developing some ties with the radical student sect. Her boyfriend, Esfan, who’d also died on the Ukrainian airliner, had been on a watch list.
But so was half the country. Rahimi was too important to discard because of peripheral antigovernment associations. For decades his work had been exemplary, and though his file noted potential risks, it also documented the wife and daughter as insurance against any possible treason when Zana had been read into Zaqqum. They’d been his collateral, a requirement of everyone in the program. At the end of the day, Rahimi wasn’t much different from any other scientist. Except for one thing: his daughter had been killed in the idiotic shoot down of the Ukrainian airliner by the IRGC.
Yes, Kasem thought, idly watching the clouds hunched over the distant mountain peaks, it’s CIA. Whoever Reza Shariati really was, he was certainly in the middle of the whole thing. And if he was anything like the man Kasem had met years ago, he could well be down there right now orchestrating his agent’s escape.
And what if Rahimi did slip through their net? What would it mean for Iran? The scientist knew everything about Zaqqum. He knew everything about the systems that ran it, the architecture, the design. He’d probably been in a position to sabotage their efforts for going on a dozen years now, ever since he’d returned with his doctorate from Montreal. The patch through Baramar had enabled the Americans to do whatever they would have wanted. God only knew what kind of malice they’d already planted.
It had all been right under their noses. When the Supreme Council learned of the scheme, it would be considered the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the republic. A treasonous failure. What would happen then?
Because Kasem had thought this through several times over the past few days, his mind fell into a familiar groove. It was better to think about success than failure, he reminded himself. If he, as the only officer with the complete picture, was able to capture Rahimi first and foil the plot, he would gain full credit. He would be a hero. He would almost certainly step into General Soleimani’s vacant shoes, assuming leadership of Quds. It was a perfect golden opportunity, the chance of a lifetime.
But if the worst should happen . . . if Rahimi somehow got away into the clutches of CIA . . . how best to distance himself? There was only one answer. Kasem would have to find a way to pin it on Maloof. It was an internal security issue, after all.
Ever since Kuznetsov had hinted at the presence of an agent, Kasem had been positioning himself as someone who’d at least provided a warning. He’d been prudent, pulling MOIS in early. If MOIS failed to uncover the plot in time, well, then, that would be the fault of Colonel Maloof, wouldn’t it? Kasem would position himself as the whistleblower who had been ignored.
Of course, Maloof would claim just the opposite. He would say that the failure to apprehend Rahimi had been Kasem’s fault. He would say that he’d deputized Kasem, given him full authority to execute the operation. A failure.
Still. Kasem was a Quds man. He’d shown up as a volunteer with the best intentions.
There was, he considered, one fatal flaw. It was Kasem’s link to Hezbollah that had killed Yuri Kuznetsov. That was the thing that had spooked the Russians, Maloof would say. That was the loose end. Kasem had fucked up, declared war on the Russians. The entire deal had crumbled because of his brazen stupidity.
The battering of the rotors had a hypnotic effect. No, he thought, closing his eyes. He would close off that avenue by getting to Rahimi first. He, Kasem Kahlidi, was the only man in the entire country who had the complete picture.
Once he foiled the plot, rounding up Rahimi and his handler, he’d be a hero to the Supreme Council. His first act on assuming leadership of Quds would be to have Colonel Naser Maloof jailed for incompetence. Let him shout out his protestations to the concrete walls of his prison cell until the end of his days.
Nearly drifting off, Kasem thought again about the face on the LinkedIn profile. There was something chilling about it, as though he could feel the presence. He crossed his arms, warding off the sudden cold, thinking of it, remembering. He absently touched his neck. He sensed the man he knew as Reza was down there somewhere, orchestrating the whole thing. Kasem couldn’t let that happen. There was just too much at stake.
He reached his office at dusk. Maloof was gone for the day, which was just as well. He was in no mood to spar with the wily MOIS commander.
One of his lieutenants was at his desk, running through lists of records from the Rahimis’ cell phones.
“Anything?” Kasem asked, leaning against the door.
The young officer looked back at him, his face white in the glow of the desk lamp. “No, sir. Sorry. Nothing from either of their phones for two weeks. Hers went dark in Mumbai, his at Saqqez. Since then, nothing.”
“Not surprising,” Kasem said.
He pulled a folder from under his arm and approached the lieutenant’s desk. He spread the folder, showing a print of the LinkedIn profile of Reza Shariati.
“We need to find this man,” he said. “Find him, and we’ve got it all.”
A few hours later, after leaving orders for the search for both Reza and Rahimi, Kasem slipped into the bed of his high-rise apartment in north Tehran. Kasra was already there, deep asleep. He knew she’d worked late at the hospital today and he was careful not to disturb her. She’d been staying in his place regularly now.
As he shut his eyes, he wondered if he’d done all he could. He believed he had. He expected he would hear something from one of the IRGC commanders out in Saqqez in the morning. He could well have Rahimi in custody by the end of tomorrow. And perhaps Reza. Reza . . .
He reached over and caressed Kasra’s smooth forehead, brushing her hair back.
If it all fell apart, he thought, they would come for her too.