Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (4 page)

“So the question remains, is the person held by the Kurds in the safe apartment Tango, or just another decoy?” I asked.

"You’ll be dispatched once we have a good answer to that question,” said Eric.

III

October 2006, Manhattan

The Iranian-defector whirlwind had all started when an encrypted message arrived at my office in midtown Manhattan. “Dan, read file 2004-1197 and prepare for an operational meeting later on this week. Eric.”

With the overflow of intelligence reports, sometimes it’s difficult to ascertain what’s important and reliable and what isn’t. So it’s often difficult answering the most frustrating question: what is imminent and what is not. I went to the heavy safe at the corner of the office, signed in, punched in the combination, stuck my index finger in the fingerprint reader, and, after the 7 second verification process, opened the thick metal door and pulled out file 2004-1197.

I sat at my desk, a rich mahogany worn smooth over the years that always calmed me, and started reading. Although the file was not operational but informative, and a man like me definitely needs action to survive in a bureaucratic environment, I became captivated for the next two hours. So why was I captivated?
Because I saw the potential, and I saw my next hair-raising operation being born.

That night, when I was sound asleep, the phone rang. It was Eric, practicing typical Eric behavior. I peeked at the clock radio on the night table. It was 2:30 am. I mumbled a few four-letter words, but my rage subsided when I heard his instructions. 

“Unexpected change of plans. There’s an 8:30 am meeting at my office with Agency operatives, Benny Friedman is also attending. Be there.” He hung up. Although I was angry at Eric’s total lack of consideration, manners, etiquette, or whatever—a man needs his sleep—I also knew that a meeting with Benny, my old Mossad Academy buddy, meant ‘action.’ It has always been like that: official meetings with Eric and Benny meant a joint CIA/MOSSAD operation, of the kind that even fiction writers can’t invent.
             

Yawning but curious, I took an early flight from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Reagan Airport in Washington. An Agency minivan met and drove me to Langley, VA, through some of the most moneyed neighborhoods in the country—the lush-lawned Colonials with former servants’ quarters turned to stables, ornate gates, BMW after BMW. I especially liked seeing the front gardens of this area of Virginia, lush but understated, never allowed to
burst out of what human hands had designed. I thought of my parents’ garden in Israel, so different—but beautiful as well—the sometimes arid weather coaxing out date palms, and poplar trees, and the ancient desert flower, the rose of Sharon. 

Upon arrival I was jolted out of my reverie. The new Agency building was a utilitarian structure of cement and smoked glass, an anonymous building in an anonymous office park. After I went through the strict security screening precautions and identification process, Eric’s aide escorted me to the second floor in the new main building and into Eric’s office. Benny and Eric were seated on office chairs around a small coffee table, drinking coffee from paper cups and chatting. The third man there I didn’t recognize. With no chair available, I sat on Eric’s worn-out, brown leather sofa, a government seniority status symbol, and tried to engage in small talk with Benny. He was unusually reserved—I couldn’t get more than two words out of him, even with a “How are you?” Soon I realized that, unlike in previous cases where the CIA and Mossad had cooperated, Benny wasn’t going to give me a head start about the purpose of the meeting.

“I’m Paul McGregor,” said the man sitting next to Eric, when he realized that Eric wasn’t going to introduce us. McGregor was wearing a blue blazer and a yellow tie. He was in his early 50s
with raven-dark hair— a full head of it— and blue eyes. He looked like an aging football player, stout, well-built, just slightly gone to seed. He gave me a firm handshake.

"Paul McGregor is with the Agency's Directorate of Operations' CAS subdivision, Covert Action Staff, handling covert actions,” said Eric, and asked,

“Are we all ready?”

"I am,” I responded, nonchalantly leaning back on the sofa in a pathetic attempt to hide my interest, and anxious to see Benny's “cat that ate the canary” smile that appears when he describes a clever, conniving plan. Instead, Benny’s broad face displayed nothing. With his receding gray hair, medium height, and growing belly, Benny looked like the family doctor about to tell a worried parent that his child needed to be admitted to the hospital. There were none of his usual side comments or cynical remarks that, regardless of their acidic content, always came with a friendly smile.

Benny and I had become buddies during the first operational course of the Mossad. Benny came from a Jewish Orthodox family, while I came from a non-religious Jewish background. My parents belonged to the well-established turn of the 20
th
century Mayflower generation of Israel. His parents were Holocaust
survivors who had immigrated to Israel from Poland after World War II with only the clothes on their backs. Yet, despite our different backgrounds, we became the best of friends.

Unlike Benny, however, I’d decided to leave the Mossad after three years when my identity was exposed during a blind dating
rendezvous
in Europe with an Arab informer. The informer was accompanied by an Arab whom I immediately identified as a landscaper who had worked on my parents’ garden in Tel Aviv. He recognized me as well, and signaled his partner that I wasn’t the European journalist I pretended to be. They turned around and left without saying a word, but their eyes said it all: “Dir Balak” –
(
دِير
بَالَك
)
Arabic for a threatening ‘Beware!’

That botched
rendezvous
doomed my future at the Mossad. I could never again participate in field operations. My mere presence in the field with other Mossad combatants, regardless of the cover I assumed, would contaminate my fellow Mossad agents and could doom them. Therefore, I knew that if I stayed with the Mossad I would be forever confined to a desk. “
No, thanks,”
I said, and left. I went to law school and, after a few years of practicing law, divorced my wife; relocated to the U.S.; took the bar exam, and started working for the U.S. Department of Justice, gathering foreign intelligence on white-collar U.S. criminals who had absconded abroad with many millions. When cases I handled
turned out to be espionage or terror-related, I was co-opted to the CIA. Benny, on the other hand, climbed up ranks of the Mossad until landing in the prestigious position of Head of the International and Foreign Operations Liaison Division. That gave us the opportunity to work together again.

Eric turned to me. “We’re here to discuss your role in a new joint CIA/MOSSAD operation. You are assigned to a location in Armenia, a former Soviet Republic, to participate in the extrication of a defecting key individual from Iran. Tomorrow evening you’ll travel to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany, for a week of operational training with seven additional agents. Once the Ramstein training is over, you’ll go to another location in Germany for additional individual briefing and training. Questions?”

Without waiting for any comment from me, Eric turned to his right and said, “Benny?”

Benny leaned forward in his chair, looked me in the eye, and asked, “Are you ready for this?”

“Whatever it is,” I said, “I’m ready. Even if it’s another crazy plan, even if ‘
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,
And
I am escaped with the skin of my teeth’”
I quoted the verse
in Hebrew, knowing that Benny, as an Orthodox Jew, would immediately identify its Biblical source: Job 19:20.

Benny smiled. "OK, Dan, I know I don’t have to tell you this, but the things I'm about to tell you are ‘for your eyes’ only, or rather ‘for your ears only.’ We can’t allow any security breach. I’ll use the key person’s name only here between closed doors. All future references to him, use his code name, ‘Tango.’ Only a few know his identity and it must stay that way. Understood?”

I nodded in acceptance, waiting to hear more. I’ve been through this routine many times before.  Who was Tango? Eric gave me a bunch of papers. “It’s your Access Permit to handle top secret documents, sign here.” It was a newly worded oath of secrecy. I signed. Life in prison deemed to be the lightest penalty in the list of hellish futures I could face if I betrayed my oath.

Benny continued in an almost ceremonious tone. “Lately, we had the opportunity we’ve been waiting for: recruiting a disgruntled Iranian general with a lot to tell and a rage to motivate it.  He is General Cyrus Madani, a retired deputy director of the Ministry of Defense of Iran.”

I let out a sigh. I knew something about Madani —
enough to know he wasn’t a small fish easily caught. He was a leviathan.

Benny continued, “Madani is an Iranian national, 53 years old. During the Islamic Revolution of 1979 he was a mid-level operative in
Sepáh e Pásdárán e Enqeláb e Eslámi
” Benny pronounced the words in a perfect Iranian accent. My limited command of Farsi was enough to understand their literal meaning:
Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,
more commonly known in Iran as
Sepah
, a branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran's military, kept separate from the regular armed forces. According to Benny, Madani had been assigned to their intelligence branch. After successfully infiltrating his agents into the
Mujahidin-e-khalk
, the violent Muslim opposition to Khomeini’s regime, he was promoted and assigned to
Al Quds
Forces that were provoking the Kurdish rebels to launch attacks against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. There, Madani met for the first time a dangerous rival: a young intelligence officer,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
. In the early 1980s, Iran decided to establish a Shiite militia in Lebanon, and Madani was one of the major forces behind the Iran-Hezbollah link. He became the right hand of Major General Mohsen Rezai, commander of the
Revolutionary Guards Corps,
and took part in the establishment of
Hezbollah
. With
Madani in there,
Hezbollah
was founded and the first step in the Iranian plan to put Lebanon under Shiite control was completed.”

Benny went on. “Madani subsequently returned to Tehran; assembled teams of expert instructors in sabotage and guerilla warfare; and dispatched them to Lebanon. In coordination with Imad Fayez Mugniyah, the
Hezbollah
military mastermind, and his assistant, Ibrahim Akil, a/k/a Tashin, Madani’s first test for his recruits was in how effective they would be using their new ‘skills.’ On October 23, 1983, an Islamic terrorist drove a bomb-laden truck into the U.S. military compound in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. Marines
.
That attack coincided with an attack on French peacekeepers’ barracks in Beirut. Madani’s students had passed with flying colors. The attacks achieved the Iranian goal—all the soldiers of the multinational force sent to Lebanon by several countries were pulled out and returned home. Madani returned to Lebanon in 1992 as one of the commanders of an
Al Quds
division, a position he held through 1995. Ever-ambitious, Madani then moved to the central command of the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran as General. In that capacity, he incorporated dummy companies to disguise the Iranian destination of embargoed technology. Subsequently, Madani was transferred to the Ministry of Defense in a top position, responsible for the logistics and armaments of Iran, including overseeing the activities of a
secret key
company engaged
in the development of Iran’s nuclear bomb manufacturing capacity.”

“In other words, from our perspective, Madani was, as they say, an evil man, with a lifetime’s worth of dangerous information.”

As Benny paused, I sensed he was about to tell us when Madani became a Mossad “subject of interest.”

As if on cue, Benny said, “Lebanon is just around the corner from us, and his activities in training and arming
Hezbollah
were, for obvious reasons, of serious concern. We picked up on his trail when he used a false passport to travel.”

I felt my stomach contract. My adrenal glands injected my veins with an extra dose of that heart-racing hormone.  Benny, however, continued with his dry recounting of these otherwise very intelligence-juicy details. “Madani then became an assistant to
Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian,
head of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security,
Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniat-e Keshvar.”

There was no need to introduce that “ministry.” It is the central intelligence and security agency of Iran, commonly known by its English acronym MOIS and Farsi acronym, VEVAK.  I didn’t need to be reminded who Ali Fallahian was either. He was
frequently mentioned in secret intelligence reports. He also starred in the published Interpol Red Notice list for “
crimes against life and health, hooliganism, vandalism and damage.”
Such laundered words in fact hardly described his activities—rather, atrocities. They put him on the short list of
“people we’ll be happy to meet in a dark corner”
of many intelligence services around the world, with dreams of offering him instant rough justice, by bullet or bomb.