Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thrillers) Read online

  I called Eric on a secure phone. “How do we know that the man in the Armenian prison isn’t Tango after all?”

  “Our liaison on Benny’s team participated in the interrogation, took his fingerprints, and sent them to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia. They ran it against their database. This includes fingerprints that Benny’s ‘city sewer inspectors’ lifted when they met Tango in his house. The man in the Armenian prison is not Tango. Therefore, the provisional identification of Benny’s men—that he is probably an Iranian drug dealer with a criminal past and a grim future—could be accurate.”

  “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 was difficult to ascertain what was important and reliable and what wasn’t. So it was often difficult answering the most frustrating question: What was imminent, and what was 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 seven-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. It always calmed me. I 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 a.m. I mumbled a few four-letter words, but my rage subsided when I heard his instructions.

  “Unexpected change of plans. There’s an eight-thirty 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 National Airport in Washington. An Agency minivan met me and drove me to Langley, Virginia, through some of the most moneyed neighborhoods in the country—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 fifties 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. “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-twentieth-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 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 (  ), 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, I divorced my wife relocated to the US, took the bar exam, and started working for the US Department of Justice, gathering foreign intelligence on white-collar US 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 the 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 US 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 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, woul
d 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. 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 was 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, fifty-three years old. During the Islamic Revolution of 1979 he was a midlevel 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 the 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 Guard 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, aka 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 US military compound in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 US 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 Guard in Tehran as a 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 its 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—or 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.

  Benny continued. “In 2003, Madani uncovered several cases of embezzlement in the Republican Guard that made him unpopular, and officials involved in the thefts turned against him and forced him to resign. A year later, whatever friends he had left in the government tried unsuccessfully to win him back by offering him work as a consultant. But his enemies were still in power. Madani’s chances to rekindle his government career were finally killed in 2005 when his old-time rival, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, became Iran’s president. So Madani retired.”

  “And he didn’t take up gardening.” I said.

  “Right. After retiring, Madani tried to inject himself into the arms trade and weapons industry. He was trying to peddle his connections with the Iranian government to foreign companies who wanted a piece of the action.”

  “But let me guess,” I said. “Madani was dead in the water.” Retired generals, I knew, often successfully touted their government connections after retiring. But what could Madani say? Oh, and by the way, although the president is my chief enemy, you can hire me anyway.

  “Right,” Benny said. “It became pretty clear to any potential client that, as long as Ahmadinejad was president, Madani’s ‘connections’ were worthless. Angry and bitter, he started a small business trading in textiles. However, with his credentials, Madani became ripe for recruitment by foreign intelligence services. They scout for exactly such individuals, like sharks smelling blood a thousand miles away. Before Iran learned of Madani’s dissatisfaction and put him on a watch list, Madani got permission and made a trip to Italy while he was still trying to peddle his military connections.

  “When he was finally realizing that he wouldn’t be able to, we had our opportunity. My men made a cold approach in subterfuge, and after a long and slow recruiting process, we persuaded him to work for us. Now, obviously, my case officers couldn’t risk asking him to spy for Israel.”

  “Right,” I said. “An Iranian general spying on Israel, his country’s archenemy? It’s a possibility, but it could also be too big a bait to swallow.”

  Benny nodded. “Exactly. We decided not to take the risk, and therefore Madani was led to believe he was being offered work for NATO. No specific member country was mentioned.” Finally, Benny let out, for the first time, a fleeting smile. It lasted only a second, but in that second I could sense some of Benny’s pride. Madani was, after all, huge. Huge!

  “General Madani is no fool,” Benny continued. His tone remained serious, even a little grave. I knew that tone. Benny’s work, our work, had only just begun. “I think he suspected that his recruiters worked for the US, and of course we did nothing to dissuade him from that thought. In fact it was partially true: this was our joint operation with the CIA.

  “The short end of it is that Madani became
a Mossad/CIA asset. However, after being cultivated for some time, he now wants to defect from Iran immediately. He refused our offer to live in any European country, and told us that we must extricate him and his family from Iran and resettle them in the US as originally promised. Eric and Paul have played major roles in the delicate dealings we’ve had with Madani.” Giving credit to others was Benny’s forte.

  So, I was the odd man out here, the only one without any prior knowledge of what was going on. Maybe, I thought, that will change now. Getting the full picture was not a childish insistence, but a necessity—albeit one that could backfire. My years in undercover operations, most of the time as a lone wolf, always reminded me of a Navy SEAL operating under the ocean’s surface. He has his mission, but if circumstances change he must improvise, because communication to HQ is either very limited or nonexistent.

  On the other hand, limiting the information given to the operative to a “need to know basis” helps reduce a potential domino effect if he’s captured and forced to talk. And everybody talks, after a few hours or a few days. Nobody can withstand violent interrogation tactics such as forcible extraction of the fingernails or toenails with pliers used by intelligence services officers who do not have an Inspector General or Internal Affairs Office to second-guess their activities.