I had to assume they were MEK. If so, I had a problem. My meeting with the MEK leadership wasn’t for another hour and twenty minutes, and the location hadn’t even been confirmed yet.
The two men passed through the patio and entered the pub. I put my glass of beer on the patio table and left. I crossed the street and watched the pub from inside a souvenir shop. I scanned both sides of the avenue, checking for signs of a second team: a shadow checking to see if the first team was being shadowed, so to speak. This was typical overkill in the cloak-and-dagger business; if you didn’t know if you were being tailed, then you shouldn’t be in the business. Fortunately, these two were alone.
They reappeared outside the pub less than a minute later, looking confused and pissed. The taller of the pair made another call on his cell phone. I took three pictures of the pair with my iPhone for later reference and waited.
It was a short call and very one-sided. The two hurried away from the pub and headed north. I stepped out of the souvenir shop. When they were halfway down the block and had put a good number of pedestrians between us, I started after them. They were still on the hunt, heads swiveling, peering into every storefront, stopping at every intersection and gazing down every alley.
I stayed with them, a half block behind, wary of the possibility that they could be leading me into a trap. At Bloedstraat, they turned left. Here the street narrowed through a residential neighborhood restricted to foot traffic and bicycles, and there were plenty of both. The tightly packed apartment buildings made this place way too convenient for an ambush. I watched their progress from the end of the street. I had no intention of venturing forward until I was dead certain of what they were doing.
Ten seconds later, they turned left at the cross street and disappeared around the corner. I plunged down the avenue. This was the kind of street the tourists never saw, which meant they never really saw the heart and soul of the city. The scent of baking bread filled my nostrils. A neon sign flashed over the door to an apothecary. I heard laughter.
I was a dozen paces from the cross street when an older-model Volvo sedan sputtered into view. I could see the shorter of the pair at the wheel. His taller partner rode shotgun.
I got to the cross street just as the car sped up. I had just enough time to memorize the license tag and take a second photo with my phone before the car was gone, lost in the chaos of traffic. Not that either the photo or the license-plate number would be of any value.
An hour earlier, I had been certain that I had arrived in Amsterdam unnoticed. Now I was high-profile on someone’s radar. I wasn’t particularly eager to return to my hotel room, but leaving my backpack was not an option. Bad move leaving it there in the first place, and now I had to risk going back. I made a call to the front desk and asked for the head bellhop. In my experience, there was very little a bellhop wouldn’t do for twenty American dollars, and this one delivered my backpack and duffel bag to the loading dock out back of the hotel for exactly that price.
I kept a list of additional safe houses in my iPhone. My backup was a tiny apartment in Hartenstraat. The landlord knew me only as an American businessman who insisted on privacy during his sporadic visits to the city. I sent a text asking if my room was available. Moments later, he answered that it was. Good. Maybe things were looking up.
I walked the several blocks to Hartenstraat and scoped the neighborhood, a strip of shops and apartments crowded together on opposite sides of the street. All clear.
The front door to the safe house was tucked between a women’s clothing boutique and a bakery. I tapped the entry code into an electronic lock beside the entrance, let myself into the tiny foyer, and shut the door behind me. I paused at the bottom of the stairs. I listened to every sound. There was only the chatter of people passing by on the walk outside, the ring of a bicycle bell, and the echo of a television on the first floor. Nothing else.
A row of mailboxes hung from the foyer wall. I turned the tumbler lock on the mailbox assigned to my apartment, opened it, and removed the room key stored inside.
My room was second to the left on the landing. Standing to one side of the door, I slipped the key into the dead bolt and turned the key until the lock snapped open. I listened for the rustle of clothing, the shifting of feet. Nothing.
I swung the door open and peeked inside. Again, nothing. I locked the door and activated the iPhone app that searched for surveillance bugs. Nada. I checked the rest of the apartment, the closet, under the bed, the shower stall. The upside was that the bathroom was stocked with toiletries; the downside was that I wouldn’t be here long enough to use them.
I threw a couple of pillows against the headboard of the bed, got as comfortable as I intended to get, and scrolled through my incoming messages. General Tom Rutledge wanted a videoconference ASAP. Had to be about the online banker Atash Morshed and his Iranian connections. I sent my reply: Ready now.
I stared at the phone for nearly a minute before the conference-call app beeped. I held the iPhone up to my face. Tom’s visage appeared. He was in full dress uniform, and I wondered why. A fruit salad of ribbons decorated his left breast pocket, and three silver stars glittered on each of his shoulders.
He said, “Sit rep?” Rushed. Even a little harried. Interesting.
“My situation is this. I was shadowed earlier today by two Middle Eastern types. I’m sending you their photo right now.” I transmitted the image and waited.
“Got it. Hold on. I’m doing an NSA cross-check,” Tom said. I waited again, counting the seconds off and betting I wouldn’t get to thirty. I didn’t.
“The picture’s coming through,” Tom said, twenty-six seconds later. His brow wrinkled as he examined the photo. “The tall guy is Kia Akbari. An MEK operative.”
“If he knew I was in Amsterdam, that means our security has a big hole.” I felt the sting of anger because someone had been careless, or worse, traitorous.
“His boss is Kouros Moradi.”
“The guy who runs the MEK cell here. The guy I’m supposed to be meeting within two hours. Not good,” I said, even though I could read Tom’s expression.
Not good, but also curious. I’d dealt with Kouros Moradi a dozen times back in the old days. He was smart and crafty. Smart and crafty enough to use any opportunity to put a chink in the armor of the current Iranian regime, and he was also resourceful enough to help. That’s why I was starting with him here in Amsterdam. All well and good, but it didn’t change the fact that two of his guys had been following me unannounced and uninvited.
I didn’t like this. A key to my survival was knowing more about the other players than they knew about me. Back in the day, this would have been enough for an agent in my position to cut bait and call the entire operation off. Retrench and regroup. But I didn’t have that luxury. The clock was ticking.
“Okay. My problem. I’ll take care of it. Any word on our online banker and his contacts?” I said. I was talking about Atash Morshed, the moneyman for the Iranian drug industry, and I’d assumed that’s why Tom had called.
“Plenty. Didn’t take much for the NSA to plow through his records. The guy’s up to his gonads in drug money, and a significant part of the cash Morshed is laundering makes a beeline right into the hands of some character named Sepehr Tale.”
“Don’t know him?” I said, shaking my head from side to side.