He fought his way back through the memory to focus on Adam Margolis. “Adam,” he said, “what did you do…with the tape?”
“I transcribed it, checked it, and handed everything to Harry Z.”
“Your notes, too?”
Margolis nodded. Tom remained silent, as if he was thinking. Finally, he said, “I think we can help fix things.”
“Fix what?”
“Your problem.”
“Problem?”
“Merde. Ventilateur.”
Margolis’s head bobbed up and down once. “Gotcha.”
So far so good. The kid hadn’t thrown his wine in Tom’s face. That meant he was approachable. Now Tom had to set the hook. He had to make sure Margolis thought of this as a team effort. “There are three small snips of information at the embassy. Once we’re sure about them, we can protect your back.”
“Which are?”
Tom’s gut was churning.Thank you, Jesus. Margolis just bought in. There’d been no “but-but-but.” No reticence. Just “Which are?” Tom knew his foot was in the door, so he wasted no time. “One, we need to know what Harry Z did with the information you passed him. Two, we need to know who got hold of him with the instructions about the Sunday-morning meeting. And three, we need to see a copy of the transcript you gave Harry Z.”
The kid emitted a low whistle. But he didn’t object to any part of Tom’s demands-either in body language or eye movement.
Margolis looked at Tom. “What time frame?”
He’d asked a specific question.The door cracked another inch. “Over the weekend in question. Harry called you on Saturday. Who messaged him?”
Margolis’s eyes went wide. “How do I findthat out?”
“I’d check the message logs,” Tom said as matter-of-factly as he could.
“Message logs.”
“Right.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in the administrator’s section of the SIPRNET.”
That caused Margolis’s first sign of vacillation. “They’re on the secure network?”
Reinforce. Support. Bolster. But don’t ask him to commit a crime.“It’s nothing you’re not cleared to do.”
“But…but it’s thesecure net.”
“And you’re on it every day, aren’t you?”
Margolis shrugged. “Sure. But I’m not an administrator.” His eyes narrowed. “Who is the administrator?”
“If things work the same as they did when I was in Paris, Harry Z.”
“But he has a password. I don’t know it.”
“When I was in Paris, the administrator’s password wasGUEST.”
“You’re kidding.”
“All caps, of course.”
“Jeezus,” Margolis said. “My SIPRNET password is ten characters long and alphanumeric, and if I didn’t have it written down on a card in my wallet, I’d never remember the damn thing.”
Tom smiled indulgently and made a mental note for Reuven to get hold of Margolis’s wallet at some point. Who knew what other jewels the kid kept on his person.
Margolis had no idea what was going on in Tom’s head. “Okay, I’ll try.” The kid’s mouth suddenly pruned up-like he’d licked a styptic pencil. “But what if they find out? They box me, you know.”
“Nobody’s going to ask you how many times you were on the secure network, Adam. You know as well as I do they’re more interested in unauthorized meetings with foreign nationals or your sex life.”
Margolis snorted. “As if I had one these days.”
Tom tried to be avuncular. “The message log is easy, Adam. Piece of cake.” He paused. “Now, as to what Harry did, it’s all a matter of checking his out-box.” He paused. The kid wasn’t being balky, so he pressed on. “And as for the transcript, does Harry still take those afternoon breaks?”
“You know about them, too, eh?” Margolis’s lips curled disparagingly. “Every damn day.”
“As I recall, Harry’s habit is to go to lunch, come back to the office, then leave again at about three for an hour or so.”
Margolis’s slight nod confirmed to Tom that the pattern hadn’t changed. Tom winked roguishly at Margolis. “He just about always forgets to lock his safe, y’know.” He caught Margolis’s sudden smile. “Nuff said?”
“Gotcha.” Margolis scrunched his chair closer to the table. The kid nodded and leaned forward conspiratorially. “When do we need the poop?”
Tom kept a straight face. “By the weekend, Adam. You’re going to be a busy guy tomorrow. You may even have to work late.” He paused and watched the kid drain the wine. “Don’t worry-it’ll all go smoothly. I’ll come out to your place Saturday morning and we’ll go over the stuff then.” He caught the look on the kid’s face. “Don’t worry-I’ll be clean.” He gave Margolis a reassuring smile. “What’s your cell-phone number?”
“Zero six, twenty-four, sixty-six, fourteen, eighty-two.”
“I’ll ring you if there’s any kind of hiccup.”
“Is there anywhere I can contact you?”
“You can leave me a voice mail at 4627.” Tom recited the number.
“Got it.” Margolis checked his watch, scraped his chair away from the table, and retrieved his yellow pad. He stood up, brushing crumbs from his suit as he did. “Gotta be going. Got a train to catch.”
“Have a safe trip.” Tom cocked his head at the younger man. “See you Saturday.” He paused, then said, “How’s eleven o’clock?”
The kid nodded and backed away from the table.
“You be waiting outside. I’ll drive by and pick you up. We’ll go someplace nice for lunch.” Tom was gratified to receive a circled thumb-and-forefinger okay sign.
6:24P.M. Tom watched Margolis go, fighting an uncharacteristic inclination to kick the kid’s ass into next week.He just didn’t get it. The meeting had been a setup. Shahram had told them there’d be an attack in Israel sometime in the next week to ten days. That had to be Gaza. Langley had done nothing-and Jim McGee had died. In fact, instead of checking on Shahram’s information-which was on tape, according to Margolis-someone at Langley decided to paint a huge target on the Iranian’s back, then step back and see what happened next. If nothing happened, then Shahristani was fabricating. And if Shahristani was murdered, then maybe his claims were worth following up.
Jeezus. And Adam Margolis and his boss, Harry Z-disposables who’d take the fall if Shahram was, in fact, murdered and the decision to dangle him was traced back to Langley-were the guys with the cans of Krylon.
It wasn’t the first time a potentially valuable source had been screwed in that fashion. Tom remembered a 1988 case in Damascus that was equally appalling. There’d been a walk-in-a Lebanese Shia calling himself Hassan-who came to the embassy gates and asked to speak to an American diplomat.
He’d been met by an energetic young case officer named Bryan V. OFUTT29and ushered into the ground-floor debriefing room. Hassan claimed to know where three of the hostages who’d been captured by Islamic Jihad in Beirut were currently imprisoned. When OFUTT pressed for details, it became apparent to the case officer that Hassan was the real thing. Hassan knew, for example, the precise medicines being taken by one of the non-American hostages, an Indian engineer. He described in detail the appearance of Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, an American priest who’d been kidnapped by Imad Mugniyah in January 1985.
Most important, Hassan not only told OFUTT precisely in which building of the Sheikh Abdallah barracks compound in Lebanon’s Bekáa Valley the hostages were being held, he also knew that their captors were not Hezbollah guerrillas but, in fact, Iranians. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops-the Seppah-e Pasdaran.
OFUTT slipped Hassan about twenty dollars in Syrian dinars and told him to wait. He went upstairs to the embassy’s second floor, punched a combination into the cipher lock on the heavy door to the CIA station, and reported what the Lebanese had told him to his boss, Martin J. POTTER,30the station chief.