To Rubenstein
Subject: Update
1. US military here is concerned Iran has been exercising intervention forces and may plan an incursion in Bahrain, or possibly gas-rich Qatar. But I still have a problem thinking that Iran would pick a fight with us. They must know we will come to the rescue, even if Iran does now have nukes.
2. Bigger problem may be Islamyah-China connection. The leadership in Riyadh still has not jelled, but if they see Iran being aggressive nearby, those in the Shura who want to put nukes on the top of their new Chinese missiles will win out. Even if that doesn’t happen, the DIA report on China planning to send more military advisers or whatever they are to Islamyah increases the chances of an exclusive oil deal with Beijing. If that oil is taken out of the market, prices will go even higher than the $85 a barrel that they are now. Conrad’s idea of scaring them with a big Bright Star off their coast may have the opposite effect of what we want. It may get a consensus in the Shura for even more Chinese presence to protect them from us.
3. Speaking of Secretary Conrad, if it’s true, as I learned in London, that his henchman Kashigian has been secretly in Tehran, presumably trying to scare them straight, we have a problem in our own government of who is supposed to do what, and with whose approval.
4. I still have a feeling that we’re not putting all the pieces together and I have this dread, this sense of impending something. Sorry to ramble. Jet lag. On to Dubai today. Hope to learn more about what Iran is up to from a Traveller, who is due in tonight from Tehran. By the way, thanks for not telling me all about your buddy, Sir Dennis. Anything else you’re not telling me?
Rusty
After he hit Send, he checked his in-box for new messages. There was one. It was from Sarah. “Arrived Berbera. Boy, do they need help here. The project site manager has already asked me to stay for at least a month. Will let you know.”
Rusty didn’t have to wait to know. He had no doubt that Sarah would stay as long as she was wanted. His wife was more interested in saving the world than in saving their marriage. It was an ungenerous thought, Rusty recognized, and maybe the same could be said about him, but that was how he felt.
His head ached. His back hurt. He hailed a taxi.
9
“I’ve never smelled so many different aromas at once,” Bowers said as he and Brian Douglas walked down the packed, narrow aisle between two rows of stalls. “Jasmine, cumin, roasting nuts, incense, coffee — it’s overwhelming.”
“Yes, it certainly is,” Douglas replied, filling his lungs. “I think we need a good supply relationship with someone here. Look at all the pistachios. They’d love this in Joburg.” Douglas had not noticed surveillance when they had left the hotel, or in the Metro, but the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) — or VEVAK, as they were known in Persian — was very good, and the fact that he could not see a tail did not mean there was not one.
They wandered up and down aisles, asking questions in English, sampling foods, examining prints. At the end of one aisle they noticed a sign pointing to toilets. “You go on a bit,” Douglas urged Bowers. “My gut is about to erupt. Something we ate last night. Or
the water. I’ll catch up.” Passing down the side aisle toward the toilets, Douglas moved quickly, stepped behind a high pile of boxes, and opened a back door into the rear of a carpet stall. The older man from the Metro newsstand was sitting on a pile of carpets, sipping tea. A pipe sat next to the tea. The room was barely lit by the single bare lightbulb that hung from the canvas ceiling. A radio played loudly. Douglas locked the door behind him.
“So you return” was the older man’s greeting. He did not move from the carpets.
“Thank you for meeting me, Heydar. It has been too long,” Douglas said, moving to sit on the lower pile of carpets opposite the man.
“A long time in which many were killed. Tortured first. Praise Allah, they did not give up my son’s name. But if they had, how would you have helped us get out, when you had already severed all contact?” Heydar Khodadad had aged. The lines in his face were etched. His eyes were deep in their sockets.
“They did not give you up, Heydar, because they did not know your name, or your son’s.” Douglas was speaking Farsi, quickly, fluently. “I compartmented things precisely so that if this sort of thing happened, if some of you were discovered, the others would be safe. You were safer here, acting innocent, than if we had tried an extraction. I severed all contacts so that the VEVAK could not connect you to me, to the network. But you did get the money, yes?”
The older man nodded, yes. “Moteshakkeram.” Thank you.
“How is Soheil?” Brian asked, helping himself to a glass of tea from the pot sitting on an electric coil.
“My son is safe. He hates what he does, the people he works for, but what else can he do? If he quits, they will suspect him, think him disloyal.” Heydar was opening up. Brian refilled the older man’s glass and listened as he went on. “They are so cynical, these people. They loosen up a little to let off steam, make it look a little more free, pretend to have elections. Still it is all run by those you do not see and their mullahs. They line their pockets. They play their games, in Lebanon, in Iraq. They build their bombs, while the people have to pay a treasure to live, for housing, for hospitals. Without your money, my wife might have died. The public medical care is a joke.”
Douglas was pleased to see that Heydar’s attitude toward the Iranian government had not changed. He hoped the same would be true of his son’s.
“So, Soheil. You will want to see him again, yes? Not an old newspaper seller. You would put his life in danger again? And if they are following you or Soheil, will you be able to do more to rescue us than you did for Ebrahim, or Yaghoub, or Cirrus?” Heydar ticked off the names of British assets who had disappeared into VEVAK detention cells, men who no doubt had died painful deaths.
“Heydar, the VEVAK never found me. They penetrated because one of the circle was sloppy, not me. I have been doing this for twenty years in Lebanon, Iraq, Bosnia. I am not still alive because I am careless. I am still alive because I am good at this. Soheil can pick the place he thinks is safest.” Brian was not the polite diplomat here, or the diffident South African. This was a man who had recruited agents in dangerous places and gotten them to do risky things.
“Tomorrow night,” the news seller said flatly. “I told him you were here, that you had given me the meet signal. I told him not to see you. No good can come of it. But he insisted to see you. Here is the address. Ten tomorrow night.” He handed Brian a slip of paper. “Now go.”
Brian read the address, then took a match from the box sitting by the older man’s pipe. He lit the piece of paper and dropped it on the concrete floor. “Moteshakkeram,” he said, and left.
Not until tomorrow night. He had wanted to be gone by then. He thought again about the cameras at the airport and brushed both hands across his bald head. Then he felt the modification to his nose. It was warm inside the bazaar.
“Brad Adams, it’s great to see you, buddy. I just heard you were on board back here.” The Air Force one-star was dressed in a tightfitting green jumpsuit. “Congratulations on the career, man. You can see mine has stalled out a little. Got to brigadier, but it looks like I’m going out that way. But this is my plane, so let me show you around. Sorry we don’t have better accommodations for a vice admiral, but the boss has taken the suite up front.”