Jaber held his ground, not moving until the three men had stolen away over the hill. He allowed himself a final look at the flaming remnants of the place he had called home for so many years, feeling a sadness he had not expected. Then he turned and began his journey to safety.
CHAPTER TWO
An imposing stone house sits amid a rolling lawn on a large tract situated some forty miles southwest of Langley in suburban Virginia. Once jokingly referred to by an agent as the House of the Seven Gables, the estate had since become affectionately known to insiders simply as the “Gables.” The property rolls on for more than a hundred acres, the perimeter marked by a wood fence inconspicuously braided with enough high-intensity electrical wire to stop a charging bull moose in its tracks. The fortifications at the gatehouse and outbuildings are also well disguised, giving the place the look of a stately manor while concealing tracking devices, day and night surveillance, a full complement of armed guards, and enough weaponry and communications paraphernalia to stand off an assault by a well-equipped battalion.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s most elaborate safe house, it is used only for the most distinguished and valued guests, such as Ahmad Jaber, until recently a senior officer in Iran’s state-supported terrorist network, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Jaber’s defection from the IRGC was greeted by considerable skepticism within the CIA unit devoted to countering Islamic terrorism. In the long history of counterintelligence gambits, practices of disinformation, false flag deceptions and other similar ploys had created a healthy level of paranoia whenever an enemy agent appeared on the scene claiming to bear unexpected gifts. Jaber was known to have been involved in the attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the training of operatives for the IRGC in Lebanon. He was also presumed to have been instrumental in planning the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that left 241 American servicemen dead. Deputy Director Mark Byrnes endorsed the suspicion that Jaber’s sudden departure from a career orchestrating murder and havoc might be a ruse of some sort. That view was shared by senior officials up and down the line, including the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence, and the President’s National Security Advisor. Byrnes, for his part, was intimately familiar with the carnage caused by Jaber and his minions, and he was charged with the responsibility of rooting out whatever scheme was being hatched by the Iranians.
When Jaber made his way out of Iran and into Iraq he promptly surrendered to the Allied Forces — which essentially meant American soldiers backed by the encouragement, and little else, of United States allies — and sought asylum through a back-channel connection he claimed to have in Washington. Jaber’s contact turned out to be someone in the State Department he had met only once, at a peace conference in Paris ten years before, and the American quickly disavowed having had any communication with the terrorist since then. Learning this, Byrnes insisted that Jaber be transported stateside and turned over to Central Intelligence for vetting, which was quickly agreed to by the President’s National Security Advisor as well as the Agency’s Director. The CIA medical team began by subjecting the Iranian to a complete physical. One of Byrnes’s theories was that Jaber, now almost sixty, might have contracted some fatal illness, and was intending to play out his final days doing as much additional damage as possible by feeding the Agency a giant helping of disinformation.
The DD was mildly surprised when the tests revealed Jaber to be in excellent health.
When the Iranian was placed under a mild anesthesia for his exam, he was also treated to a cocktail of so-called truth serum. Once he had regained consciousness he was still under the influence of a pharmacological mix far more sophisticated than sodium pentothal. The ensuing discussion, which is admittedly never as fruitful as an unfettered interview, was at least intended to determine if his defection was genuine or part of an IRGC mission.
While a regimen of intense psychological programming might have prepared Jaber to withstand this sort of drug-fueled colloquy, he said nothing to suggest that his presence was any sort of hoax. Moreover, Jaber seemed to have information about a planned attack that was coming from someplace other than Iran, a compelling bit of information if any part of it turned out to be true. The specifics were muddled, which is often the case when confessions are chemically induced, and Byrnes looked forward to a further inquiry, once his prisoner was fully alert.
And so, notwithstanding the DD’s continued misgivings, he had Jaber transferred from the CIA infirmary to the Gables for a formal interrogation. Then he called Jordan Sandor.
CHAPTER THREE
It was just after dawn, and Jordan Sandor was in his Manhattan apartment, grinding through the last sequence of his daily exercise routine. Not yet forty, he worked hard to keep in shape, his current regimen including some rehab moves intended to bring him back to top form after the injuries suffered during his recent mission in Europe.
He was in the middle of a series of sit-ups, working each elbow to the opposite knee in turn, twisting hard in alternating directions, when he heard the ring on his BlackBerry that told him he had a text message. He finished the cycle of crunches, stood, wiped his face with a towel, and grabbed the PDA from the table. The coded message instructed him to call on a secure line.
He went to his bedroom closet, reached inside and unlocked the overhead panel, took down the metal box he kept there, and brought it to his desk. He removed the satellite phone reserved for these communications, turned it on, and, as he waited for it to power up, entered a series of numbers on his computer keyboard that emitted a frequency that blocked any eavesdropping in the room. Then he picked up the phone, which was now at full signal, punched in the familiar number, and said, “Sandor encrypted.”
Sandor had not spoken with Deputy Director Byrnes since the debriefing at Langley that followed the mission he completed in Italy. He worked several weeks at rehabbing his leg, first at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland and then back home. He also spent time in the New York office, monitoring the work being undertaken by the Counter-Terrorism Task Force to undo the residual damage caused by the rogue agent Vincent Traiman, whom Sandor had successfully dispatched in Portofino. Now Sandor felt he was nearly back to full strength, regardless of what the Agency doctors had to say. He wanted clearance to return to action and so was not unhappy to receive a message from the Deputy Director. After a few moments he heard the familiar voice.
“Good morning, Sandor.”
“You’re up early, sir.”
“We have a situation I’d like you to have a look at. I need you here, pronto.”
“I can get to LaGuardia, be down to you in a few hours,” Sandor said.
“No, I’ve already arranged transport. There’s a car waiting for you downstairs.”
Sandor nodded at the phone, knowing that meant a few things. Urgency, of course. Also that Byrnes might want him armed, not wasting time with the security issues he would face on a commercial flight. And, most important, this was not going to be a meeting at Langley, it was likely going to be a private audience at the Gables, hopefully with Ahmad Jaber. “Am I going for a drive in the country?”
“You are.”
“I’m on my way,” Sandor said.
Sandor had heard the rumors of Jaber’s defection while spending time in the Company’s Manhattan office a few days before. He was surprised he had not already been contacted by Byrnes but hoped that was the reason he was being summoned to Washington.