Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (28 page)

Here we are in the 21
st
century, new technology sprouting every three seconds; so much of my work is dependent on it. And yet at the end of the day, we lost one pursuing Mercedes, thanks to a bunch of spilled lemons. Never underestimate low-tech.

We opened the windows to let the smoke out, coughing. “Is everyone OK?” asked Ittai. A quick head count showed that none of us was hurt. Our driver used the two-way radio to report and, apparently, to get instructions. I just heard the buzzing of the
on and off exchange. “The first car took an RPG missile at the rear end but managed to drive away, they have three injured.”

“What about the car that was behind us?” Ittai asked.” He was cool.

“They are fine, with light burn injuries. But we must get the hell out of here. The attack was well planned, and whoever attacked us must have Plan B.”

We didn’t have to guess who’d attacked us. Forces loyal to Iran made the attempt. They could not allow Madani to get away. He was much too valuable.
To national pride and to national security.
However, the attack proved that the CIA/Mossad ploy had worked. Our attackers were sure that we had Madani with us, not Ittai, the Israeli decoy. “We’re going to a meeting in Alpha Place,” said our driver. “We have a Plan B, too.” I knew that ‘Alpha Place’ was the code word for Istanbul Samandıra Army Air Base, but I had no idea where we were.
             

“Where is it?” I asked.

“In Kartal district, right here in Istanbul,” said the driver, “within the Gen. İsmail Hakkı Tunaboylu Barracks north of the Anatolian Motorway Otoyo 4. We are not far.”

Ten minutes later we were at the gate. They were expecting us. We went directly to the heliport. A UH 60A black Hawk helicopter was waiting us. We were the last of the three cars from our motorcade to arrive. We rushed into the helicopter, and it took off in a blazing noise.

Ittai was looking out, I was looking out. Men like us are prepared for all kinds of situations.
Snipers, grenades, roadside bombs.
  We understand guns, bombs, and covert war.  We know what to do if we’re shot at. We know what to do in the case of tear gas. But with all that knowledge and our background in Israeli Army in combat, still, what the fuck was this? I turned to Ittai.

“Nothing in the Mossad playbook for this?”

“Nope,” he said. “Not a thing.”

XVII

June 2007
             
- Ankara, Turkey

We flew to Ankara. After Ittai and I checked into the Hotel Arshan, we were joined by Jay Black, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara for security briefing. In the morning we went to the Ankara office of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees to request political asylum for Madani, a/k/a Ittai.

The office was full of people seeking asylum. Most of them were in ethnic clothing typical of their country of origin. I could identify many coming from the combat areas in southern Russia. They were waiting patiently. Following a two-hour wait, a staffer asked us to approach the desk. We quickly filled out the application form and handed it
back to the staffer, along with prepared “documents” supplied by the Agency and delivered through Jay Black showing that Cyrus Madani was a subject of persecution in Iran because of his political beliefs, and that his life was in danger. He was requesting asylum in the U.S.

The staffer quickly reviewed and accepted the paperwork. “Call us in one month for the status of your application,” he said, handing Madani some sheets of boilerplate information with the UNHCR phone number.

“There’s one other thing,” I said hesitantly. “General Madani doesn’t have status in Turkey, there could be questions.”

He nodded in understanding. “What would you need?”

“Some paper, a letter or any sort of confirmation that General Madani is being processed by you, if he’s stopped by police or any Turkish government agency and asked why he didn’t leave Turkey when his visitor’s visa expired.” I sounded humble and apologetic.

Without a word, the staffer disappeared behind a door, leaving us to wonder if he’d return. Thirty minutes later he emerged and handed us a printed sheet of paper carrying the Commission’s emblem. I read it quickly:

United Nations High Commission on Refugees

Regarding Cyrus Madani
To Whom it May Concern,
Referrals from the UNHCR for the U.N. refugee resettlement program for Iranian and Iraqi refugees in Turkey are processed by the office of the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) office located in Istanbul. ICMC is an agency under contract to the American Department of State, and is charged with preparing refugee applications for presentation to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers. The USCIS officers are responsible for finally determining the applicants' eligibility for resettlement in the United States under the refugee program.
The referred refugee(s) have been scheduled to have their first interview with the agency during the next few weeks. Subject to eligibility
determination the case will then be presented to a USCIS officer at the next adjudication in Istanbul. Should the case be approved for resettlement by USCIS then a further 1 to 2 months are needed for the coordination of the actual departure
 
of the concerned refugee(s).
Any assistance your office may extend to the referred case during these processing periods shall be appreciated by our agency and the U.S. Refugee Program.
Sincerely,
Peter K. Schwabb
Director

I thanked the staffer with a nod, not wanting to appear overjoyed, although my heart sang, and walked out of his office. We left the building, relieved
that
it had gone
without a hitch.

The request for the document was a spur of the moment move. I thought that we needed some such document as a sort of alibi. We obviously didn’t need a U.N
.
agency to arrange asylum for Madani in the U.S. He was already there with legal status, together with a retirement package that would astonish even the generous souls in the intelligence community. Although issued to a decoy, not to the real Madani, that paper could be a public
relations insurance policy against planted rumors that Madani was anything else but a defector. That usually happens in similar instances when rumors, speculation, and anonymously sourced news stories suggest a kidnapping. There was a risk, though, that the U.N. -- trying to maintain neutrality -- would later on try to distance itself from the document, alleging that it was fake. Obviously, the Iranian government could make that argument as well. But I didn’t care anymore. I had the document in my hand, and everything else that could emerge later on would be just propaganda.

In the safe house with Ittai, I reported my achievement to Eric on the secure phone.

“Whose idea was it?” he asked, when I told him about the letter I was able to extract from the
UNHCR
.

Waiting for praise from Eric is like expecting rain in the Sahara, it does come, once in a millennium. Therefore, I wasn’t expecting anything. But what followed was bizarre.

“Dan, I think we went through these matters earlier. Although I appreciate your creative mind, in sensitive matters such as this one, you need to clear things with me first.”

“Eric,” I said trying hard not to lose my temper, “are you suggesting that I had to leave the UNHCR office, call you on an
unsecured phone, raise with you the idea of getting something from the UNHCR with Madani’s name on it, then return and wait another two hours to ask for the damn letter?”

Eric sensed my anger, but didn’t seem to care. Eels don’t have feelings, only an insatiable need to hunt their next meal. However, I wasn’t about to allow Eric to regard me as his next prey.

“I did what was right under the circumstances,” I said dryly. “The process as far as Madani was concerned was ended but they gave him no paper or receipt bearing his name. They just gave him a bunch of boilerplate documents with general information, nothing specific to Madani.”

Eric didn’t respond and moved to ask other questions. “OK,” he finally said, “I’m sending you instructions on what to do next,” and hung up.

I no longer take antacids after talking with Eric, I got used to his acerbic conduct. It comes with the territory.

Jay Black called me shortly thereafter. “Due to the sensitivity of Madani’s case, and the fact that the U.S. Embassy brought the U.N
.
agency in on it, Madani’s asylum application will be accepted in a day or two. After the United Nations accepts his file, it will be referred to Istanbul to a refugee
organization called the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) to help him out until the asylum application is
finalized.” This was basically what was in the letter that I’d got “Madani” from the UNHCR. But Jay Black didn’t know that it was in fact Ittai posing as Madani, and I thanked him for the news.
             

The way back to our hotel from the refugee agency in Ankara was uneventful. As the driver pulled up beside the curb, Ittai sat still for a minute. I knew what he was thinking.  We’d crisscrossed the city; he’d been an open target; and we’d escaped unscathed. Did they know? If agents had been watching—and he felt they had—had he done something that had tipped them off?
A suspect gesture?
Something that had somehow managed to telegraph, “I am not Iranian?”  I let him sit. I could see it in his face: he was mentally cataloguing every move he had made since taking on this mission, turning each moment over in his head, looking for the crack, the defect.

XVIII

June 2007 - Istanbul

We took a commercial flight to Istanbul and waited for three days, under the protection of two U.S security agents, in a small hotel next to the airport. We were not allowed to leave our
rooms, and spent the time reminiscing about Israeli life and food. Then came the word that, with the help of the ICMC, a hotel room had been reserved for Madani, a/k/a Ittai, at the Jiran Hotel — the hotel the ICMC normally uses.

Are we moving there?” I asked the security detail chief, a bit baffled.

“No. We just made it look like Madani did move over there. Everything has to look like a routine handling of the matter by the U.N
.
agency.”

We did move, however, together with the protection detail, to a safe house instead. We couldn’t stay in one place for too long. The safe house was small but good for the purpose. It was in fact a fleabag hotel where, as European-looking men, we could quite easily blend into the background: this was a red light district. Lots of European tourists prowled the streets at any given time, day or night. Brothels were sandwiched between makeshift tea houses.

There was one upside to this hotel; it did not have computers. They had no way to scan credit cards though of course we paid cash. They don’t input your name into anything; they merely write it down. We made our way to the rooms; dark, each with a mattress, threadbare sheet, and worn dresser. My room
reeked of urine. A few minutes later, Ittai knocked on my door. He needed to leave Turkey immediately. I reported our location to Eric.

An hour later there was a knock—an expected one. I opened the door. Standing there was a slim man in his 40s holding a large satchel.

“I’m Joe and I came at the request of Mrs. Keene.”

“Yes, thank you,” I said completing the identification process, “She said you’d bring me a parcel.”

He nodded and I motioned to him to come in.
             

“Joe,” I said, “Meet Tango.”

Although Joe was an Agency employee and in the loop, for security reasons he should not know the real name of Ittai, just as my visitor’s name was probably not Joe.
             

Ittai shook Joe’s hand.

“I’m told you’re the man,” Ittai said.

Indeed, Joe was the one of the best make-up artists in the CIA.  Rumor was, before his recruitment into the service, he’d in fact gone to art school—an unusual background for a man in his position, surely. And, as it turned out, one that served the Agency incredibly well: he was amazingly skilled. He was highly
sought after, not only because of his skill in completely transforming anyone’s appearance, but because he was Arab. He was American born, though his parents were Christian Coptic, from Egypt.  He’d grown up speaking both English and Arabic.
             

“I’m doing both of you, correct?” Joe asked.

“No,” I told him. At this Joe looked puzzled.

“I mean you were, yes,” I clarified. That’s what Eric and Benny wanted, I knew. “But plans have changed, so you’ll only need to do Tango.”

Joe opened his satchel on the bed. He had a myriad of instruments and tools strapped to the walls of it, brushes, tape, what looked like scalpels, sponges, tubes of pigment, epoxy,
containers
of putty. He pulled out one small circular jar from a side pocket and held it up for us to see.

“Colored contacts,” he said. “You’ll be leaving here with green eyes.”

He sat Ittai down on the chair. Just as if he were a barber, Joe draped a sheet around Ittai’s shoulders, and proceeded, with practiced concentration, to work. Layers of high-tech putty altered the shape of Ittai’s face. Joe would mold, shape, then scrape off bits with one of his scalpels. He turned Ittai’s crisp
jaw line into jowls. His nose became bulbous, and arched down. Joe gave Ittai bags under his eyes, and then, as he waited for the epoxy to dry, he spent time mixing skin-color until he’d created Ittai’s pigment, exactly; and then he mixed a few similar shades, some lighter, some darker. These, he painted over the putty prosthetics he’d so meticulously placed, different pigments for different spots on the face; the results looked naturally irregular. He wove short extensions into Ittai’s hair and sprinkled it with gray. As he finished, he stood back, in much the way I imagine a painter would do, surveying his canvas. He held his chin in one hand and squinted. Then he winced.