SEVENTEEN

The woman calling herself Stephanie Arthur climbed the stairs out of the U-Bahn station at Dahlem-Dorf in southwestern Berlin just after one p.m., keeping pace with the crowds on their way back from their lunch breaks or hoofing it to class at the nearby Freie Universität Berlin. The sun shone hot, but a low rumble to the south gave her the impression the weather was about to change.

The university was to the right, but she made a left on Königin-Luise Strasse, careful to meticulously catalog the faces she saw around her without giving any hint that she was doing so. She glanced in shop windows, scanned patrons at a sidewalk café, eyed a young man on a motorized skateboard as he whizzed towards and then past her.

Normally an American intelligence analyst, formerly of the National Security Agency, would have no special concerns about walking through a European capital, but Stephanie Arthur was, in fact, Zoya Zakharova, and Zoya had more than enough reason to be on guard. She knew good and well the Russian government wanted her dead, and she knew her cover had been blown, at least to her employer. She didn’t know if the Kremlin was aware she was here, but she had spent the last couple of weeks operating under the assumption that killers lurked around every corner.

She continued down Königin-Luise until she was flush on the sidewalk with Eis Zeit, an ice cream shop nestled on the tree-lined street between a perfumery and a hair salon. She didn’t go into any of the shops; rather, she stepped out into the road and climbed into the back of a parked blue van with a collection of ladders attached to the roof and sides.

The van’s engine wasn’t running; consequently, neither was the AC. It was warm inside, even in the darkness that had Zoya ripping off her Tom Ford sunglasses and slipping them into her purse as soon as she sat down. And though it was hotter in here than on the sunlit street, that wasn’t the only discomfort. Her left shoulder was pressed against the side of the van, and a low table lined with monitors and other equipment was wedged against her rib cage on the right side.

Two men were in there with her; they were all three packed so close she could smell the sweat under their armpits, mixing sickeningly with the scent of hair gel off one of their heads.

Both men were in their twenties; Moises was Israeli, a translator and technician for Shrike International Group who spoke fluent Farsi. Yanis, also a Shrike employee, was French Algerian, and Zoya could see he was the one with the gel spiking his short black hair.

These were the techs Stephanie had been assigned for her first operation with the company. Yanis drove the van and monitored equipment when not doing his main job, which was black-bag ops. He led the pair on clandestine break-ins and other operations where they would set microphones, photograph documents in buildings, and the like. But in the van, Moises was in charge of this operation.

And Stephanie Arthur, Shrike International’s newest case officer, was in charge of them.

Zoya had met the two younger men on her first day on the job two weeks earlier, and they had worked together since as a small team, setting up surveillance on several Iranian embassy staffers. Yesterday, she received a new targeting order. She’d briefed Yanis and Moises, who had then gone directly to this neighborhood to the southwest to install listening devices in the man’s roomy flat three stories above the ice cream shop.

Zoya hadn’t joined them for the operation to emplace the bugs, but she’d spent the balance of the evening looking over her target’s portfolio.

Javad Sasani was a thirty-six-year-old Iranian consular affairs officer here in Berlin, and Shrike Group had been hired by its mysterious customer to investigate the man to see if he was, in fact, an operative with VAJA, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Zoya didn’t know why Sasani was suspected of ties to Iranian intel, nor did she even care. Her real mission wasn’t to out this one potential spy in an Iranian embassy that was surely bursting at the seams with spies. No, she was really here on a Poison Apple initiative to acquire intelligence about Shrike Group from the two men seated next to her.

In her short time at the company, she’d only met Ric Ennis, the man who hired her, and this pair of young men. Ennis was certainly a more prized target for her to plumb for intel relating to the corporate intelligence firm, but Moises and Yanis were here, with her, so she got right to work on them.

Just like she’d done most every day for the past two weeks.

She’d already placed a tracker on two of their vehicles, hoping to see if they did other work for Shrike that would help her understand the organization. So far she’d found nothing of interest, so today she was determined to attempt to socially engineer the two to get them to reveal information.

Zoya reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of cold Red Bulls she’d just bought at a market, then slid them down the little table to the two men. “I know you guys didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Both Moises and Yanis instantly popped their cans.

The Frenchman said, “Thanks. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. He had an alarm system on his door, but the window just had a lock, with a glass break sensor on the ceiling of the living room. I defeated the old lock with a shim and slid it open in no time. The subject was out at dinner and we had a cam on him there, so we knew when he left and began heading back to his flat.” With a self-assured tone he said, “In my world, this one was pretty easy.”

Moises added, “Yeah, might be he’s easy because he’s not an intelligence officer. I’ve listened to him all day and he’s just watching TV. No calls in or out, no visitors.”

The woman the two men knew as Stephanie said, “Well, it’s Sunday. I’ll tail him tomorrow and see if anything shakes out.”

Yanis nodded. “You know, you don’t have to stay with us in the van. We’ll let you know if—”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” she interrupted, and the men looked at each other nervously. After a second she said, “I’m kidding. I’ll stay. What else do I have to do? This might not feel like much to you, at all, but this van is the center of the action as far as I’m concerned.”

Yanis drained the last of his Red Bull, then slipped the can into a garbage bag lying on the floor at his feet. “My colleague here insists we remain in the vehicle. Now that we have the bugs placed, we could monitor the subject just as well in a nice, comfortable flat in Charlottenburg or in your suite in the Adlon or—”

“No,” Moises interjected. “You hear people say all the time that proximity doesn’t matter anymore. They say with the Internet you can be in Canada and listen to someone in Istanbul, or you can be in California and track the computer of someone in Berlin.”

“Yeah. People say that because it’s true,” Yanis replied.

“No, that’s bullshit,” the Israeli countered. “If you are conducting surveillance on someone worth conducting surveillance on, then they are going to be running some sort of a counter. And the easiest counters these days are on Internet and Wi-Fi. The only real advances in the past fifteen years have been cyber related. You’re better off with regular short-range transmitters: easier to hide their signal in the digital background noise of coffeemakers, computer equipment, smart dishwashers, all that stuff. We have to be close to do this right.”

Zoya said, “I’m with Moises on this one. It’s harder this way, but it works better.” She added, “And I’m new here, but I can tell Shrike Group prides itself on running an efficient operation.”

“We try,” Yanis said.

After a moment sitting quietly, Zoya pressed. “Tell me about yourselves. Do you two come from domestic or military intelligence in your home countries? Neither of you look like soldiers to me, so I’m guessing you’re academics recruited directly by Shrike. Electrical engineering majors? Did I get that right?”

Neither of the men spoke for a moment, until Moises said, “One thing that’s important at Shrike is that we don’t talk about our previous work with the other employees we come in contact with. Operational security.”

Yanis added, “Yeah, surely Mr. Ennis told you that.”

“Yeah, I get it, but I’m trying to get a baseline for your capabilities. If we’re going to be working with one another, we have to—”

Moises shook his head. “I was told when I was hired that my employment would be terminated if I discussed background beyond country of origin with any of my colleagues.”

“Me, too,” Yanis said. Neither of the men seemed put off by her question, but Zoya noted that these two took their pledges to keep their stories to themselves seriously.

“Understood, guys,” she said. “I’m new. I’ve only met you and Ennis.”

“That won’t change much,” Yanis said. “I’ve been here almost two years and I’ve only met six or seven other Shrike Group personnel other than you and Moises.”

“I was told it was a horizontal structure.”

“Yeah,” Moises added. “We don’t even know who the client is.”

Zoya tried to think of her next line of questioning, but before she could come up with something, Yanis muttered under his breath, “I do.”

This was too good an opportunity for her to pass up. “You do?”

“Yeah. It’s obvious. It’s the Mossad.”

“Bullshit,” Moises said. “Why do you say that?”

Zoya found herself in the enviable position of sitting quietly while someone else probed for the intelligence she sought.

“Look, man,” Yanis said. “Sure, it’s set up with a German front company. Some ex-Stasi character who is probably living in the south of France and has less to do with running this show than I do. But three of the four case officers I’ve met are Israeli. You’re Israeli. I’ve met Ennis, a Dane, a guy from the UK, and Stephanie, but the rest of you guys are straight-up Mossad.”

Moises shook his head. “I’m Israeli, but that doesn’t mean I’m Mossad. Never was. We aren’t supposed to say anything about our backgrounds, but I guess I can say what I wasn’t.”

Yanis said, “Okay, maybe you were recruited by Shrike, but what about Dan, Simon, and Miriam? All three case officers with clearly a ton of experience, and all three Israeli.”

Moises shook his head. “I don’t know Simon. Dan’s from Tiberias, which is in Israel, and you’re right, he’s probably former Mossad. But Miriam isn’t Israeli.”

Yanis cocked his head at this. “She’s not?”

“I’ve worked with her. She sounds German to me. She speaks Hebrew, but she has a little accent.”

“Israeli or not, Miriam is hot,” Yanis said, and Moises agreed, but added a caveat.

“Not as hot as you, Stephanie, if you don’t mind my saying.”

She was barely listening to him. “Maybe I’ll work with Miriam soon.”

Yanis shook his head. “You are a case officer, she is a case officer. Shrike keeps the officers compartmentalized. Us techs work with different officers, but you guys only work with us techs.”

Yanis continued with his thought stream. “Still. I think this is a Mossad front, set up in the heart of Europe to tear into Iranian intelligence efforts here. What we are doing is good, and that’s all I care about.” He grinned. “We’re gonna change the world. We’ve uncovered a Quds Force cell, and when the operation wraps up next week, our client is going to go to the German government and get those guys arrested.”

Zoya was surprised at this news. “Quds Force? Here? In Berlin?”

Moises nodded. “Yeah, like a big-time commander of them, who has recruited his own cell of operatives. They are dormant now, anyway, working in the shipping and transportation industry.”

Yanis said, “They’re dormant because they’re sleepers. But as soon as they get the go-ahead from Tehran, they’re going to light this town up.”

Zoya was astonished. “Why don’t we notify the German government now? Why wait till the end of the contract?”

Yanis answered, “Because if we do that now, they’ll just get deported. Germany has eased sanctions, moved towards normalized relations. They are basically trying to distance themselves from the U.S., Israel, and anyone else playing tough on Iran. But if we catch these assholes actually planning something, then the Germans will hold them, interrogate them, and hopefully find out who else is out there hiding.”

The plan made sense to Zoya, unless, of course, the cell was able to pull off a terror attack before getting arrested.

Moises was obviously worrying about the same thing. “I don’t think Shrike is a front for Mossad. Mossad wouldn’t play on the knife’s edge like this. Our surveillance screws up for one day, and Quds Force could blow up a restaurant or something.”

Yanis thought this over, but before he could form a retort, Moises added, “Also, I don’t see why Mossad would need to establish a front company like Shrike to do all the work Mossad is doing anyway.”

But Zoya had a feeling she did know. If Shrike was secretly hiring the missing intelligence officers from around the world, men and women with state secrets from their home nations, then Israel would not want to be affiliated with the operation officially.

---

•   •   •

An hour later Zoya Zakharova climbed out of the van as a warm rain fell, opening her umbrella as she headed south. She was in a foul mood, because right in the middle of her social engineering experiment to glean information from the two young technicians in the van, Suzanne Brewer began blowing up her phone with cryptic texts demanding she check in. She’d ignored them at first, but finally relented and told Yanis and Moises she’d be back later in the afternoon.

Now, as she walked in the direction of the Freie Universität, she pulled out her phone and placed a call.

Her handler answered quickly.

“Brewer.”

“Anthem. Iden Charlie, Mike, Golf, seven, one, Charlie.”

“Iden confirmed.”

Zoya said, “You need to stop reaching out to me. I’ll come to you if I need you.”

“I have intel for you. Hence the texts. First, what do you have to report?”

“Nothing to report. I’m just doing low-end surveillance.”

“Who is the target?”

“A consular affairs staffer at the Iranian embassy. Seems like a nobody.”

“What does Shrike Group suspect him of?”

“The usual. They think he’s VAJA. Haven’t seen any evidence of it yet, but we’ve only been on him for twelve hours or so.”

“Why is this one potential spook so important to them?”

“Unknown. I was just given a portfolio of the man and his home and employment information, and ordered to work with a team to dig into him.”

“So, you have created other contacts with Shrike Group?”

“Just a couple of young surveillance techs.”

“That’s it?” Brewer was displeased.

“I’ve been here two weeks, Suzanne. I haven’t unraveled the mysteries of the universe just yet.” After no response she said, “Something for you to work on, though. The techs are talking about another case officer at Shrike. She’s using the name Miriam, which might be a pseudonym. She’s posing as an Israeli, but I think she might actually be a German national.”

“Age?”

“Thirties, and that’s just a guess.”

“Description?”

“Hot.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The boys said she was hot. That’s all the description I have.”

“So . . . what would you like me to do with that information?”

“I don’t know what you do, Suzanne. I’m not sitting in an office at Langley, am I?”

Brewer answered back with, “Let me show you what I do. This mysterious Miriam you are looking for is named Annika Dittenhofer. She is thirty-six years old, and she has a flat in Kreuzberg, in the south of Berlin. She was born in Dresden, not too long before reunification, and then she served in the Bundeswehr—that’s the German army. After that she was German foreign intelligence, but she’s been out and working for Shrike for several years.”

Zoya was listening, but her true focus was on the source of this intel. “How the hell do you already know all this? I was told by Hanley we had no other access points into Shrike.”

“This is intelligence that came to us in the last twenty-four hours. That’s all I can tell you.”

Zoya didn’t like being kept in the dark like this, but she let it go. “Anyway, I’m told she is a case officer, like me, and I will never meet her due to the firm’s policies about internal security.”

“Where there’s a will, Anthem, there’s a way. You might never work with her, but Ennis will know who she is. You’re going to have to get closer to him. As close as is necessary to complete your assignment.”

This angered Zoya. “Meaning what, Suzanne?”

“Didn’t your nation have a very famous Sparrow school where the art of seduction was taught to pretty young recruits?”

Zoya wanted to reach through the phone and punch Suzanne Brewer in the jaw. But she forced calm into her voice and said, “We also had a very famous school where the art of lethal combat was taught. The kind where a student is trained to snap a neck without any real effort.” After a beat she said, “I went to that school, not sex camp.”

“That’s too bad. Snapping Dittenhofer’s neck will tell us nothing. I want you to keep working Ennis. Work the two techs, as well, for whatever good they may provide.”

Zoya asked, “Have you picked up any hints that Moscow knows I’m here?”

“Nothing at all,” Brewer replied. “Obviously I will make contact if that changes.”

She muttered under her breath, “Obviously.”

Minutes later she was back in the U-Bahn, heading home to her hotel.