The Counterfeit Agent (28 page)

“Drug smuggling in Dubai—that’s punishable by death.”

“I see he not from Dubai. Anyway, the port busy, no one care about drugs. And he has very good plan.”

Ivory’s mother liked to say
If stupid people didn’t insist on thinking they were smart, the world would be a lot simpler.
He had never fully appreciated what she meant until now.

The arrangement to get the drugs to the
Kara Six
was simple, if brazen. The smuggler would pose as an electronics installer putting a flat-panel television in Sharif’s cabin. It was his responsibility to get the drugs past Dubai port security. When he was finished with the installation, he would leave the case under Sharif’s bed. The crew wouldn’t question what was happening. At sea or in port, Sharif was the unquestioned master of the
Kara Six
. He could have brought an elephant into the cargo hold and his sailors wouldn’t have peeped. In the unlikely event that Dubai customs agents ever searched the ship, Sharif would say he hadn’t known about the suitcase. Idiot greed had blinded him to the fact that the courts in Dubai would find his story exactly plausible enough to execute him.

“And how do you get it through American customs?” Ivory said.

“Two hundred kilometers from Charleston, I email. Then, exactly one hundred kilometers, I turn on beacons, throw case overboard.”

“So if you didn’t open the case, how did you know it was drugs?”

“He tell me heroin. What else would it be?”

“Tell me about this man.”

“He called himself Ahmad, but I don’t think that’s his name.”

“Where was he from?”

“I don’t know. Not Dubai.”

“This man gave you sixty thousand dollars to smuggle drugs. You must have looked him over. Could he have been Pakistani? Iranian?”

“No. Not Iran or the Gulf. Maybe Lebanese, Syrian.”

“He speak Arabic?”

“We talked in English. I don’t speak Arabic.”

“Height? Weight?”

“Maybe one meter eighty. Eighty kilos.” About six feet, one-seventy-five pounds.

“I don’t suppose you have a picture of him?”

Sharif shook his head.

“Okay, that was last time. Tell me about this time.”

“Two days after I throw the case overboard, I get email from him. Everything fine, I should tell him next time I’m going to America.”

“You have a phone for him? Email?”

“Only email. So six weeks ago, I tell him, we make same deal.”

Ivory thought of Sharif’s stateroom. “This time he installed the stereo.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Captain. I have to talk to my bosses. You may be here a while. Can I get you some water, something to eat?” Just keep him talking.

Sharif patted his pockets. “Just my cigarette.”

“Of course.”

—

An encrypted feed of the interview quickly made its way up the chain from the
Nicholas
to the
Reagan
to Atlantic fleet headquarters in Norfolk to the Pentagon and Langley. Meanwhile, NEST’s scientists opened the box in one of the lead-shielded emergency rooms near the
Reagan’
s nuclear reactor. Inside they found three hundred grams of cesium, enough for a nasty dirty bomb.

Now Hebley had the job of telling the President and the National Security Advisor what they’d found.

“Big day,” the President said when he was finished.

“Yes, sir. About the only good news was that we found cesium and not HEU or plutonium. Cesium isn’t impossible to come by. If this is some plot to suck us into war with Iran, the fact that we still don’t have direct evidence of bomb-grade material is comforting.”

“That what your analysts think? That this is a hoax?”

“No, sir. The agency now judges that this is a genuine plot. Eighty percent certainty.”

“Just like Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction?” Donna Green said.

Hebley ignored her. “Sir. If I may speak frankly. You put me at Langley because you felt it was ungovernable and unaccountable. From what I’ve seen, a lot of that’s true. Three case officers tell four different stories about an op, and they’re all lying. They spend their whole lives using other people. I mean, at least the Marines shoot you in the face.”

The President’s face tightened, and Hebley saw he’d overstepped. Only people who’d known him for decades could treat him as a human being. Everyone else served the office, not the man.

“The reason I mention all this is that I don’t want you to think I’m naïve. The CIA’s a snake pit. But what I’m seeing now transcends turf wars. Everyone’s trying to figure this out, why we can’t get SIGINT confirmation, why the Brits and the Mossad don’t know anything. Our best guess is that the Iranians know the risks they’re running, and that knowledge of this program is limited to a small number of senior regime officials. We think only a dozen people may really know what’s going on, including only a couple of the top scientists. Everyone else, in the dark.”

“Would they compartmentalize that way—”

“Think about our own nuclear program during World War Two, we had a great advantage, huge country, we didn’t have to worry about satellites or spy planes. Even so, we basically imprisoned our own physicists until the war was done. The Iranians know we’re looking at everything they do. The idea that the Rev Guard would go out of its way to try to create deniability here makes sense.”

“And the fact that over the last few months they’ve been so positive in public, opened negotiations?”

“Putting Mathers aside, and the ship. Our analysts believe, and I agree, that what they say in public, whether it’s at the UN or on Twitter or wherever, doesn’t mean anything. Either they let us into their plants or they don’t. And they’re still not.”

“So you believe they’re cynical enough to have agreed to negotiate just to buy time for this scheme?”

“Sir, in the 1980s, they sent close to a million of their own men to die in a war. I don’t think they’d have a problem lying to the United States.”

“But we have this source,” Green said. “This magic source. If we didn’t have him, we’d blame the embassy bombings and Veder on al-Qaeda. We wouldn’t even know about the cesium. We’d be whistling our way over a cliff like everyone else.”

“Mathers is real.”

“I wish I shared your conviction.”

“We know they have a program. Mathers has simply told us it’s further along than we thought.”

“He’s done more than that, General. He’s suggested a very specific threat. The kind that starts a war. And, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s not just that we don’t have any confirmation of this, none of our allies have picked anything up, either—”

“The Mossad has warned something like this is a possibility.”

“That was war-game bull out of Tel Aviv. Not relevant.”

Hebley stared at Donna Green. In Sangin, Afghanistan, a full-bird Marine colonel had once thrown up during a briefing under the weight of that stare. The guy had been running sick, but even so. Green didn’t throw up. Green stared right back.

“You are correct,” Hebley finally said. “We’ve got no other confirmation.”

“Thank you.”

“I thought you had bigger balls than this, Donna. If we’re going to war, let’s do it
before
they put the nuke on our soil—”

“Nothing’s happening today,” the President said. “I agree with Donna. We need more than this before I’ll consider military action.”

“Scott, there’s a plane waiting for you at Andrews,” Green said. “Have somebody pick up your go-bag, make sure it’s got a fresh suit. You’re going to Paris, to see Hamad Assefi.” The Iranian ambassador.

“He knows I’m coming?”

“Not yet,” Green said. “The DGSE can set it up, yes?”

“Probably. We’re going to have to tell them something.”

“Tell them we’ve found that the Iranian nuclear program is more advanced than we believed. We need to start raising the curtain on this anyway.”

“You’re going to tell Assefi we know what they’re doing,” the President said. “Without specifics. Just that they’re on a very dangerous path.”

“I doubt he’ll know anything.”

“That’s why we want you to talk to him,” Donna said. “If the mullahs and the Rev Guard have made an end run here, let’s at least make sure the rational folks know.”

Hebley feared the mission would be a waste of time at best, but he saw the President was done hearing objections from him on this day.

“Good luck, Scott.”

Hebley offered the President his crispest salute and received the briefest of nods in return. He couldn’t get out the door fast enough. Least now he knew how that colonel in Sangin felt.

LANGLEY

W
ells was gone.

Twenty-four hours since he’d last checked in. He hadn’t called or emailed. He hadn’t sent a telegraph or a semaphore or a pigeon. He’d dissolved like a spoonful of sugar in a hot cuppa tea. Shafer wanted to believe he was in the weeds, about to take the photo of Glenn Mason that would turn everything around. But Wells had said the day before that he was close. By now he would have gotten the shot, or realized he was chasing a false lead. Either way, he’d want to talk to Shafer. He had no reason to go silent. Ergo, he hadn’t gone silent by choice.

Shafer wanted to be surprised. In truth, he had expected this moment for a long time. Maybe as long as he’d known Wells. Certainly since Wells had left Exley. Adrenaline was a drug, and Wells was a junkie. Only Exley and Anne wanted him clean. Everyone else enabled him. Like all junkies, he chased bigger and bigger fixes. Now he’d put himself in so much danger that all his skills couldn’t save him—

His phone buzzed. The burner handset reserved specifically for Wells.

Shafer grabbed it. It slipped through his gristled hands, bounced off the floor, stopped buzzing. Shafer’s eyes filled with tears.

He was getting too old for this. Age hadn’t just taken his knees or his eyes. It had blunted his mind, made him a mawkish fool. Crying would do no one any good, least of all Wells. Shafer checked to be sure no one was outside his office. Then closed his fist, smacked himself in the forehead hard enough to hurt. He felt much better.

The phone buzzed again. He went to his knees, grabbed it like a prize pearl. “John.”

“Do I speak to Mr. Ellis?”

Not Wells. Not an American. “Ellis Shafer, yes.”

“Roger Bishop give me number. Say you pay me.”

“We’ll pay. You have him?”

“Not me.”

“Who are you?”

“My name Kemal. I drive him. From airport.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, Kemal detailed what he’d seen. He had locations and times but no details. He hadn’t written down the BMW’s plate.”Before he go, he tell me, wait for him at Taksim, so I do. Two hours. He don’t come.”

“Did you see the man he was after?”

“Not really, no.”

“Are you home, Kemal?” Late afternoon in Langley, so past midnight in Istanbul.

“My taxi my home.”

“If you say so. Find a Western Union, call me again. I’ll send you money.”

“Yes.”

“Be careful. These people are dangerous.”

“You think I don’t know?”

—

Shafer wondered if Mason had killed Wells. Most likely. If not, he was being kept alive for a specific reason, and it wasn’t his winning personality. Maybe Mason feared that if Wells was found dead in Istanbul, Shafer and Duto could convince the seventh floor that the connection Wells had chased was real. Right now Wells had been missing for barely twenty-four hours, not enough to matter. Kemal’s version of events proved only that Wells had shown lousy judgment, racing into a terrible neighborhood alone in the middle of the night.

Shafer called Duto, told him what Kemal had said.

“Think our friends upstairs will care?”

“No.”

For the first time in his life, he and Duto agreed on everything.

“I’m going to Istanbul, Vinny.”

“By yourself.”

“Stake out the apartment.”

“You think you can do better than the best field guy ever.”

“They were waiting for him. They won’t be waiting for me.”

“They will catch you in five minutes, Ellis. If Wells is alive, he’ll get himself out of there. Your job is to make the connections. So
make them
.”

Duto was right. A fact that only made Shafer feel worse.

“Anything new from our adventure on the high seas?” Duto said.

“From what I hear, not much. Captain’s in isolation on the
Reagan
. They haven’t decided what to do with him. He’s sticking to his story. NEST has gone over the ship, hasn’t found anything else. Crew remembers a guy installing a television on the stopover in Dubai before this one, then the stereo system this time, so that backs up. But Sharif said leave him alone, so nobody talked to him. He did his thing and left. We’ve asked them about nationality, they don’t think Iranian, maybe Turkish, Lebanese. But none of them are Arab, they’re all Filipino or Pakistani, so what do they know? And plenty of Iranians are lighter-skinned.”

“Sharif—”

“No AQ connections as far as we can tell, doesn’t show up in the databases. Family’s in Lahore, we and the ISI have already sweated them. Not religious. Drinks, known to gamble, money problems, only two kids, only went to the mosque on Fridays.”

Shafer was bugged by something he’d just said, but he wasn’t sure what.

“Could be a cover.”

“Anything could be anything. Most of the time you back-trace a guy like this, the story you get is the truth. Meantime we’ve talked to the company that owns the
Kara Six.
Cover story is a drug interdict, we found a thousand kilos of heroin, we’re bringing the ship to Miami. According to what the captain said, he was supposed to drop the package and send the email for the pickup two days from now. So we have a little time. NSA’s chased the email and the number, but so far nothing.”

“We’re buying his story.”

“Until we get a better one.”

“This mysterious electronics installer, anything on him?”

“Good news is the Dubai port has three thousand surveillance cams. But ninety-five percent are live only. The entry gates have sixty-day recording, but only the customs warehouses, the refiners, and the fuel storage require a permit or a badge. Rest of it, show a passport, local ID, you’re in. The ships themselves are responsible for their own security, keeping out stowaways. Long story short, the guy could have driven up in a sedan, the television in the trunk, and we’d have no way of knowing who he is. But we have six case officers in Dubai looking. We’re trying to track the television and stereo equipment too, see if we can figure out who bought it.”

“Smart.”

“Yeah. But Dubai has huge used electronic markets so it may not go anywhere. Meantime, most of SOG is in Istanbul. No one’s told me explicitly, but I think we’ve decided if the source pops up again, we’re taking him.”

“It strike you these people are going to a lot of trouble to make sure we never see them, Ellis? Rev Guard officers have DI”—diplomatic immunity. “And even some of Quds Force.”

In other words, if the Iranians really were running this operation, why were they going to so much trouble to stay hidden? “You know what Hebley’ll say to that. That when you’re thinking about starting a war with the United States, you take extra precautions. He might even be right.”

They were silent for a while.

“You thought I was pigheaded when I ran the place,” Duto finally said.

“I think this is a ball that wants to roll. If that makes sense.”

“To be continued.” Meaning Duto understood what Shafer was saying, that the seventh floor
wanted
to believe in the story coming out of Istanbul. And that they should have the conversation when Shafer wasn’t at headquarters.

“I’ll let you know if I hear from Wells.”

“He’s fine, Ellis. Boy’s a survivor. When the apocalypse comes, it’ll be him and the cockroaches.”

Shafer knew that Duto was just soothing him, but he was desperate to believe.

“Reporting to you, King Rat.”

“
Inshallah.
Figure out who’s paying for this, Ellis, before we start dropping bombs.”

—

Shafer tried. He saw now that he faced the reverse of the typical detective’s problem. Instead of a deep pool of suspects, he had only a handful. But he had too few clues to eliminate them. He was stuck guessing, not analyzing. Again and again, he considered the agencies that might have the communications and money and operatives to run a false flag plot targeting the United States. The FSB. The Mossad. Maybe the DGSE. But he kept running aground on motive. Whatever country had done this hated Iran, but it was willing to risk its relationship with the United States.

Yet Shafer had the maddening feeling that he already knew the answer, that if he only twisted the kaleidoscope once more around, the pieces would skip into place. An Iranian exile group was out. They hated the regime, but they gossiped so much that they could barely sneak anyone over the border without the Guard hearing.

Reverse engineer.
Find the piece that’s sticking out, doesn’t fit. Pull on that until the whole machine comes apart.

The timing. The Israeli embassy attacks were less than six months old. Before that, the source known as Mathers hadn’t existed, as far as the agency knew. Yet Glenn Mason had worked on this operation at least since he’d faked his own death close to four years ago. What had Mason been doing all that time?

Assuming Shafer and Wells and Duto weren’t crazy, this false flag was meant to stampede the United States into attacking Iran. To use American firepower to do what the plotters couldn’t. Maybe Mason and his group had spent those first two years trying to stop Iran directly, before realizing they couldn’t.

Shafer remembered now, a half-dozen or more assassinations in Europe and Asia, all related to the enrichment program, Iranian scientists and foreign nationals, too. None of the murders had been solved, as far as Shafer knew. They looked a lot like James Veder’s killing, professional, but not high-tech. No drones or remotely detonated bombs. Hands-on work. The world had naturally blamed Israel, the Mossad.

Shafer called Duto. “Remember, maybe three years ago, bunch of guys connected with the Iranian program got hit?”

“Sure.”

“You talk to Tel Aviv about that?” Home of the Mossad’s headquarters.

“Rudi always denied it.” Ari Rudin, known as Rudi, had run the Mossad for a decade before leaving for reasons similar to Duto’s. Elected leaders didn’t like their spy chiefs to be too powerful.

“You believed him?”

“There were a couple things that made me think he wasn’t lying. I didn’t see the Israelis killing EU nationals in Europe.”

“They’ve operated there before.”

“Against Arabs, yes.” The Mossad had famously carried out reprisal killings all over Europe against the Palestinian terrorists who assassinated the Israeli Olympic team. “And if they caught a European in Tehran, I don’t think they’d care. But the blowback from the EU if Israel got caught smoking a host-country national would be big. It’d have to be a very high-value target, I mean someone whom the Iranians couldn’t afford to lose. And none of these guys fell in that category. They were little fish.”

“So why risk it?”

“Correct. Plus Rudi said something else, too. I said, Okay, not you, who, then? He said, I don’t know, I don’t want to know. This is a
mitzvah
.”

“Mitzvah?” Mitzvah was a Hebrew word that meant good deed.

“What he said. From his point of view, it was scaring these Eurotrash helping Iran, plus if whoever was behind it went down, he wouldn’t have any blowback because the Mossad wasn’t involved.”

“But he didn’t tell you who.”

“Like I said, he insisted he didn’t know.”

“It would have to be privately run, though.”

“If it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t us, who else could it be?” Duto paused. “And you’re asking because you think maybe this is the same people?”

“Just guessing.”

“And nobody put it together because who’s going to connect anti-Iran assassinations from three years ago with an op that starts with hits on two Israeli embassies. Not bad. See, your boyfriend gets lost, you put that big brain in gear.”

“Heng dikh oyf a tsikershtrikl, vestu hobn a zisn toyt.”
A Yiddish curse Shafer hadn’t heard since his childhood:
Hang yourself with a sugar rope, you’ll have a sweet death.

“I love it when you go ethnic on me, Ellis—”

—

Shafer didn’t expect trouble getting a look at the files on the Iranian assassinations. As Duto had said, no one had connected them with the current crop of killings. He called Dave Hikett, the guy who had told him what had happened on the
Kara Six
. They’d served together in Warsaw in the late eighties. Hikett was now the deputy director of Counterproliferation, which theoretically oversaw the agency’s efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, but in reality spent most of its time stuck in turf battles with the Pakistani, Iranian, and North Korean desks. A couple months before, Hikett had told Shafer he was sick of the infighting, ready to retire. Hikett, Lucy Joyner, a couple guys in the DST—Shafer could count his real friends inside on one hand. Live too long, no one comes to your funeral.

“Ellis.”

“Dave. Question for you—”

“Now’s not a good time, Ellis. Lot going on. Call you back.”

“Dave—”

But Hikett was gone.

Everyone at Langley consented to being monitored on the house phones as a condition of employment. The unwritten rule was that the agency listened only for good reason. But Hikett had as much as told Shafer he was under surveillance.

Shafer wondered how much trouble he might be in. Plenty. He talked to Duto and Wells on burners, but those wouldn’t matter if they had his office bugged. He had revealed classified information to Duto twice today. The fact that Duto was a United States senator and former DCI would save Shafer from criminal prosecution, but not from losing his job, his pension, any connection with this place.

He had to admit Carcetti had warned him.

Shafer picked up the phone to call Hikett again, then stopped himself. He would only get the man in more trouble. Hikett lived on the Hill, a divorcé with two cats and a girlfriend Shafer had never met and suspected might not exist. Maybe he’d go by tonight and they’d figure out some place in Southeast to meet, somewhere where they’d stand out but the agency’s internal security guys would stand out even more. Or maybe Hikett just wanted to retire with his pension intact, and, even more important, his clearance, so he could work for Booz Allen for a couple hundred grand a year. In that case, he wouldn’t call at all.

Shafer
believed
in this lead. Hikett’s files would have police work and intel tips from a half-dozen countries. Forensic evidence. Maybe Mason had even let a surveillance camera take his photo. But Shafer wouldn’t be getting a look at those files tonight.