Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (5 page)

Benny continued. “In 2003, Madani uncovered several cases of embezzlement in the Republican Guard that made him unpopular, and officials involved in the thefts turned against him and forced him to resign. A year later, whatever friends he had left in the government tried unsuccessfully to win him back by offering him work as a consultant. But his enemies were still in power. Madani's chances to re-kindle his government career were finally killed in 2005 when his old-time rival,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
became Iran’s president. So Madani retired.”

             
“And he didn’t take up gardening.” I said sardonically.

“Right. After retiring, Madani tried to inject himself into the arms trade and weapons industry. He was trying to peddle his connections with the Iranian government to foreign companies who wanted a piece of the action.”

“But let me guess,“ I said, “Madani was dead in the water.” Retired generals, I knew, often successfully touted their government connections after retiring—but what could Madani say? “Oh, and by the way, although the president is my chief enemy, you can hire me anyway.”

“Right,” Benny said. “It became pretty clear to any potential client that, as long as
Ahmadinejad
was president, Madani’s “connections” were worthless. Angry and bitter, he started a small business trading in textiles. However, with his credentials, Madani became ripe for recruitment by foreign intelligence services. They scout for exactly such individuals, like sharks smelling blood a thousand miles away. Before Iran learned of Madani’s dissatisfaction and put him on a watch list, Madani got permission and made a trip to Italy while he was still trying to peddle his military connections. When he was finally realizing that he wouldn’t be able to, we had our opportunity. My men made a cold approach in subterfuge, and after a long and slow recruiting process, we persuaded him to work for us. Now, obviously, my case officers couldn’t risk asking him to spy for Israel.”

“Right,” I said. “An Iranian general spying on Israel, his country’s arch-enemy? It’s a possibility, but it could also be too big a bait to swallow.”

Benny nodded in accord, “Exactly. We decided not to take the risk, and therefore Madani was led to believe he was being offered work for NATO. No specific member country was mentioned.” Finally, Benny let out, for the first time, a fleeting smile. It lasted only a second, but in that second I could sense some of Benny’s pride. Madani was, after all, huge. Huge!

“General Madani is no fool,” Benny continued. His tone remained serious, even a little grave. I knew that tone. Benny’s work, our work, had only just begun.  “I think he suspected that his recruiters worked for the U.S., and of course we did nothing to dissuade him from that thought. In fact it was partially true: this was our joint operation with the CIA. The short end of it is that Madani became a Mossad/CIA asset. However, after being cultivated for some
time, he now wants to defect from Iran immediately. He refused our offer to live in any European country, and told us that we must extricate him and his family from Iran and resettle them in the U.S. as originally promised. Eric and Paul have played major roles in the delicate dealings we’ve had with Madani.” Giving credit to others was Benny’s forte.

So, I was the odd man out here, the only one without any prior knowledge of what was going on. Maybe, I thought, that will change now. Getting the full picture was not a childish
insistence, but a necessity, albeit one that could backfire. My years in undercover operations, most of the time as a lone wolf, always reminded me of a Navy Seal operating under the ocean’s surface. He has his mission, but if circumstances change he must improvise: communication to HQ is either very limited or nonexistent. On the other hand, limiting the information given to the operative to a “need to know basis” helps reduce a potential domino effect if he’s captured and forced to talk. And everybody talks, after a few hours or a few days. Nobody can withstand violent interrogation tactics such as f
orcible extraction
 
of the fingernails
 
or toenails with pliers
employed by intelligence services that do not have an Inspector General or Internal Affairs Office to second guess their activities.

“Why such an urgent request for relocation? Why now?” I asked the inevitable question. An asset the caliber of Madani is almost always more valuable while on location. Once he’s removed from his home turf and debriefed, and any remaining information is squeezed out of him, his intelligence value becomes zilch, all information he has is nothing but shopworn goods. In the Mossad, the term we used to describe thorough debriefing was ‘
peeling him like an onion.
’

Eric answered, “He’s reported that he’s been under heavy surveillance by VEVAK and could likely be arrested within a short
time. He doesn’t know whether the chatter around him relates to his contacts with us, but he’s scared.”

“Iran hangs spies in public,” Benny said. “Sometimes they hoist them up with a crane with a noose around their neck.” The room went silent for a moment.

“We think,” Eric said, “that the increased security
scrutiny
by VEVAK most likely resulted from the sudden deaths and unexplained ‘accidents’ in strategic locations and against key nuclear scientists, both those that have already happened, and those that just could happen very soon. We simply can’t allow him to stay in Iran any longer. If we abandon him, nobody would ever work for us. Period.”

Those that could happen soon?
What? I found Eric’s premonition funny, but I didn’t laugh. I tensed up.

             
“Got you,” I said. “What’s my role in this operation?”

“You’ll run the extrication operation on location.”

I felt proud. Benny noticed it. “In the Chameleon Conspiracy operation you successfully infiltrated Iran, identified a potential defector, and managed to leave alive—all of which made Eric put you on board and at the helm on location. We supported that decision.”

I nodded in thanks, remembering briefly the chase of the evasive Chameleon and his conspiracies throughout Iran, Pakistan, and Australia.

“Where do I sign?” I asked.

“Read this.” Eric gave me a thick blue folder with the CIA’s golden emblem embossed on the top. I opened it. Inside were approximately 100 pages of intelligence reports and a faded photo of a man with a thick mustache. He looked to be around fifty, with a roundish-face and hard eyes—hard even through the faded photo.

“This folder doesn’t leave this room,” said Eric. “That put you on the bigot list, a short list of people privy to that information. You can take notes, but the notes stay here as well.” Eric and Paul got up to leave. “We’ll be in the adjoining office if you need us,” said Paul as he stepped out, “I’ll see you in the afternoon; lunch will be brought in an hour.” 

Eric didn’t bother to say anything. He just scowled and left.

IV

October 2006 – Washington, D.C.

I poured myself a cup of water from the cooler and read the folder labeled
Tango Defection.
Tango’s access to real-time intelligence on Iran’s progress in developing nuclear arms and sponsorship of terrorism made him invaluable. His fear of being captured created a real dilemma—pulling him out to save his life, getting our last bit of intel when he’s debriefed in Langley, vs. leaving him there hoping that the chatter he noticed around him was just cicadas, not VEVAK agents closing in on him. Madani would be an incredibly valuable asset to lose. And Iranian assets were hard to come by—very hard.

The most important part of the Tango folder was the section dealing with the strategic timetable. It gave a new meaning to the word
urgent.
According to the brief, the world would have little time to stop the Iranians before it would be too late. Your arsenal of strategies against a rogue state armed with nuclear weapons is ill-stocked if not empty. The year 2015 could mark the turning point because, by then, Iran is expected to have nuclear weapons that would deter any potential attackers, as well as the means to deliver them. Iran will deploy the Russian made air defense system S-300PMU2, serving as an advanced Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) in addition to an advanced SAM Air Defense System. The Iranian Navy would be able to threaten commercial shipping and military naval forces in the Arabian Gulf, and stop
oil tankers passing through the Straits of Hormuz. By 2012 or 2013 Iran will also have accurate short, medium, and long-range ballistic missiles, which could carry nuclear warheads and reach Europe and the U.S Eastern seaboard. Finally, Iran will increase its support to its proxy terrorist groups to launch attacks against American interests and allies anywhere. Urgent? Maybe the terms ‘critical’ and ‘burning’ would be more appropriate.

Eric returned to the office with Benny. “Have you read it?”

I nodded. “What’s my specific role?”

“You’ll be the person to meet Madani face to face in a crossing point on the Iranian-Armenian border, identify him, and escort him to safety. A seven-man unit will be around you as back up and security.  You’re leaving tomorrow for
a
week of training in Ramstein, Germany, and then a few more days in another location in Germany where you’ll also get the final operational instructions.” 

We then engaged in a seven-hour review of the master plan.

"Any more questions?” asked Benny.

I had plenty, but I kept my big mouth shut, a rare occasion. I was certain that they would be answered during the final instruction session in Germany. I’ve been through the process
before. Almost nothing is left for self-initiative. In the Mossad operations, on the other hand, there was always room for improvisation, as conditions in the field change. This is where Israeli operatives excel and sometimes fail.

Paul
McGregor
gave me a travel folder. “At Frankfurt airport, an Agency representative will give you a duffle bag with a U.S Army uniform and documentation. Change into the uniform and travel by train to
Ramstein Air Base. There are travel vouchers in the folder."

Ramstein Air Base, in the rural district of Kaiserslautern, Germany, was both the headquarters for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and a NATO installation.

"Bear in mind that besides Americans, the base also includes Canadian, German, British, French, Belgian, Polish, Czech, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch personnel. Only if asked, say that you are a part of a U.S. Army teachers’ team that travels to U.S. bases outside the United States to teach Civics. See further details in your travel folder. Use that cover story only if you can’t shake the person talking to you in any other manner, polite or impolite. And,” he looked me in the eye, “Stay out of trouble.”

Dozing off on the plane, I was in awe at how the Mossad had been able to recruit Tango. I recalled how Alex, my Mossad Academy instructor, taught us the art of identifying and cultivating a defector. “Think of MICE,” he said, Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego.” He looked intently at our cadet class with his watery blue eyes, and added, “
Motivating an asset to defect is a huge leap forward, even when compared with turning a person into an intelligence asset. Pushing a person to defect means uprooting him from his country, language, culture, friends, and sometimes even from his family. Above all, he will have to live in fear for the rest of his life that his old compatriots would find him, and…"
He moved his hand across his throat.  However, here the case was different. There was no need to motivate Tango to defect. It was
his own
decision. Nonetheless, the mere fact that the Mossad, and later the CIA, were able to recruit him was a considerable achievement. I was hoping not to screw things up and compromise the very end of this case – bringing him to freedom.

I could picture Alex perfectly at his lectern, in his glasses, always rubbing the fabric of his aged tweed jacket:

“
Forget the stories about kidnapping the enemy’s top generals. We cannot afford Soviet Cold War practices, and besides, that could backfire and force the enemy
country to retaliate in kind. Very recently, we successfully completed Operation Diamond. Munir Radfa, an Iraqi pilot, defected to Israel with his MiG21 fighter jet, the pride of the Soviet aircraft industry. Up to now, no country outside the Soviet Bloc could closely inspect a MiG-21. After the Israeli Air Force completes the review of the aircraft’s capabilities and drawbacks, the MiG 21 will be sent to the U.S.”

Indeed, shortly after Alex’s presentation, that defection made the headlines. Few people outside the intelligence community know that these defections rarely end well for the defector. Their home countries don’t forget, and definitely don’t forgive. An Iranian pilot who defected with his missile-armed plane to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s was traced by Iranian agents to Europe and was killed. Captain Mahmood Abbas Hilmi, an Egyptian pilot who defected with his plane to Israel, was located by Egyptian agents in Buenos Aires, Argentina, six months after he left Israel and was killed.

Alex trained us in how to collect nuggets of information, or to sniff out a potential asset for recruitment. He concentrated first on the rules of recruiting, cultivating, coaching, motivating, and finally going in for the kill: causing the asset
to work for you as an informer, or to defect, or both. Decades later, true to the saying, ‘
Difficult during training, easier at combat,
’ I still remember the rules vividly. Most intelligence services maintain special sections tasked with identifying potential assets or defectors within an enemy’s ranks. “Spotters” survey enemy ranks for a weak link -- people who were passed over for a promotion, or those with personal or financial troubles.  A spotter is like a vulture on a treetop waiting for a sick or weak animal to lose its ability to defend itself. Once a suitable location is identified, an approach plan is devised. This is a very complex and detail-rich scheme of deceit.