Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thrillers) Page 5

  The sad end for me was that I actually failed in my mission. It turned out I had copied documents that were worthless from an intelligence point of view; and the truth was that I was supposed to have recruited an asset.

  “Not enough time” was my excuse. Now I know that such an excuse was so bad that it wouldn’t even warrant inclusion in the volume I intended to compile one day of My Kids’ Excuses: why they’d skipped school, or didn’t do their homework, or clean up their messes, or practice the piano.

  Obviously, Alex didn’t buy that excuse. “You had a mission and you didn’t perform.” He was so serious that I thought I was about to be expelled from the operational course. At the end, only a derogatory notation was entered in my personnel file.

  “How can I redeem myself?” I asked, feeling deflated.

  “I’ll give you one more chance to recruit an asset and obtain valuable information,” he said. “This time it will be in Israel. We can’t spend more money on futile trips.”

  “Do I choose the target myself, or will you assign me?”

  “Devise a plan and submit for my approval,” he said.

  That night I went out with Benny for a beer, taking the opportunity to pick his brain for suggestions. We hit our favorite bar, Puerto Rico, across from the Tel Aviv City Hall. It was small, dark, with a few couches in the back. You could order chicken schnitzel—not quite like my mom used to make, but good. The food wasn’t kosher, so Benny just ordered beer.

  “OK,” Benny said, staring into his beer, thinking. He looked up. He had the look, that Cheshire cat smile. “What about that friend of yours whose mother is having an affair? Isn’t it with an ambassador from some African country?”

  “Recruit him? I could cause a diplomatic incident if I fail,” I said, weighing it.

  “Alex said to make a proposal. So make a proposal. He doesn’t have to go with it.”

  Surprisingly, after consulting with his superiors, as well as with SHABAK, Israel’s internal security service, Alex approved my plan.

  So I rekindled my friendship with Rina. She and I had had a short romance a year or so earlier, and had remained in touch after it ended. She was earning an economics degree at Tel Aviv University, and was planning to open a chain of “hip kosher” bar/restaurants, beginning in Tel Aviv and expanding to New York. She lived with her parents in Kfar Shmaryahu, a posh neighborhood just north of Tel Aviv where diplomats and Israel’s higher echelon live, five minutes from the Mediterranean shore. I once more became a welcome guest at their house, a spacious family home with a lush backyard, complete with poplar and olive trees and a sky-blue pool. It was early fall, and Rina was busy studying. I soon discovered that the African ambassador visited Rina’s mother each Tuesday at noon, when her husband was at work and Rina at the university. On one Tuesday, after I spotted the ambassador’s car parked in a side street a block away, I came into Rina’s backyard and dived into the pool, as I had done many times before.

  Wet, with my bathing suit still on, I went directly upstairs “to look for a towel,” and surprised his Excellency, the very startled and embarrassed ambassador, leaving the master bedroom buck naked. I could see he recognized me from the family’s parties; he looked stricken. He had a diagonal scar on his chest, and I dimly remembered reading a while ago how had been in a serious car accident in Tel Aviv; it had made all the papers. Besides the scar, though, he was, as the cliché dictates, tall, dark, and handsome, deeply brown with almond eyes, slightly Asiatic almost. They gave him an exotic look—at least that’s what Rina called him, “exotic.” Even she thought he was cute; though, no doubt her opinion would change if she knew her mother felt the same way.

  I pretended to look shocked, didn’t say a word, and turned to return to the pool.

  He called me a day later and asked to see me.

  “How did you get my phone number?” I sounded intentionally defensive.

  “Rina’s mom gave it to me,” he answered. “We need to talk.”

  We met in central Tel Aviv, at a café at the top of the Shalom Tower. Back then it had been the tallest tower in the Middle East, before Dubai’s massive construction boom hit. The view from the observation floor of the tower was spectacular: you could see up and down the Mediterranean coast, and as far east as the Judean Hills.

  Aside from the observation floor, though, the tower was a big office building with an American-style department store, all utterly nondescript, bustling, and anonymous. Here you were swallowed by the crowd.

  “I hope I can trust your discretion,” the ambassador said as we sat at a corner table.

  “I understand that,” I said, giving him a non-answer.

  He waited for my consent, guaranteeing my silence, and when it didn’t come, he said, “I know it must have shocked you, but these things happen. What can I do to make things right?”

  I let him simmer in silence for a minute and finally said, “I have no idea.”

  I had to let him sweat. “I’ve always really liked Rina’s dad,” I said. “But I mean I almost feel like I’m screwing him over by not telling him. Or does he know already?”

  The ambassador started. “No, it’s a private matter between me and Varda.” He used the first name of Rina’s mother.

  “Don’t you think he should know? I mean, isn’t honesty always better?” I played at being righteous.

  “That could make things worse. I’d really appreciate it if you’d be discreet and keep what you saw to yourself.” He paused, and as if he was talking about a side matter, he asked, “Did you confide in Rina?”

  “No, but don’t you think I should?”

  Now he was sweating. “No, it’d be just as bad. In my position, I could be very helpful to you. Anything I can do for you?” he asked.

  I paused for a minute before answering.

  “Well, I’m in a very competitive class of Developing Countries at the university. If you could help me get ahead of the other students, I could beat them in the race to enter the law-school quota.”

  He looked relieved that I wasn’t asking for money. “Sure, I can do that.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Let me go over my papers and see what would help me most. I’ll call you later on this week.

  Two days later, I called him and asked to meet again.

  “Although I believe it’s public record, I wasn’t able to track down the minutes of the Security Committee’s session during the Non-Aligned Movement convention held very recently in Lusaka, Zambia. I know that your country attended the convention.”

  His eyes widened, “That’s a confidential document!”

  “Really?” I played dumb. “So why did my professor insist I use it as an example of the dynamics involved in the emergence of a third major block of non-aligned states?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’ll only take a quick peek. I promise I won’t tell where I saw it, and by now you know I can keep a secret.”

  I had already graduated and didn’t need these records, but that didn’t matter. I was holding the cards. If he confronted me on that, I could say I was writing a thesis proposal for a master’s degree, or whatever. He didn’t have to believe my story. All he wanted to do was to shut me up.

  The Non-Aligned Movement of the Third World Countries, convened in September 1970, had decided to prevent the West and the Eastern Bloc countries from stationing military bases in member countries. The detailed information on the decision and the deliberations, albeit not directly important for Israel, could be traded with the US and other Western countries for information they might have on the PLO. That, Israel needed.

  No further pressure was necessary. I met him again in the Shalom Tower, and he gave me a magazine. Between its pages, he had inserted eleven pages on the deliberations and decisions of the 1970 Non-Aligned Movement convention. I submitted it to Alex with my report. Alex then asked me to “introduce” Gideon, a SHABAK agent, to the ambassador. Gideon would take over the handling of the ambassador. I needed to tell the ambass
ador that Gideon was my academic instructor at the university who wanted to ask “a few further questions.”

  When I tried to contact the ambassador, I was told by his staff that he was out of the country. Three months later it was announced that the ambassador had resigned from his country’s diplomatic service and moved to Europe to work for a mining company. Obviously, now he couldn’t care less if we threatened him with disclosing his clandestine romantic interludes.

  “Good job,” were the only words I heard from Alex when that case was over.

  Good job. Why the hell would I remember that now?

  After spending a week in training and briefing in Ramstein and another week in another location in Germany, after undergoing the fiasco in Armenia, and coming out empty-handed, no way could I tell myself “good job.” I had a throbbing scar from the graze wound on my head; I was pissed off and frustrated as hell.

  Good job. Right.

  A month later, with the Tango matter still up in the air, I headed to Dubai on my next assignment in another case.

  V

  January 2007, Dubai

  On the plane to Dubai, crammed in next to the window, I finished a package of dry crackers on the tray table. Two of the great universals of flying: dry crackers and narrow seats.

  My new assignment had come quickly. The Agency had received a green light to cooperate with Mossad on identifying and cultivating Iranian scientists and key military personnel to defect. It had created a special operational team, code named TEMPEST. And best of all, it even had a promising contact. The “contact” was the sender of a letter to the US Consulate in Dubai, from someone calling himself Refigh, “a friend,” in Farsi. He’d offered his intermediary services in liaising with an Iranian nuclear scientist who apparently wanted to defect to the US, and he’d asked the consulate to keep a lookout for a letter that he’d mail later. My first assignment: gather pointed intelligence on this potential defector and the intermediary, of the kind that only human assets can provide.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing in the fingerprints department. Forensics had found zilch on either letter. We were pretty confident of a few things, however. According to the Agency’s handwriting experts, the person who wrote the letters was educated, right-handed, in his late twenties to midthirties, and frequently wrote longhand in English. They thought that he was not Anglo-Saxon, but had learned English from a British teacher. Each letter carried a Dubai stamp and postmark, and appeared to have been mailed from Dubai City. Which was exactly where I was headed.

  There was also a third letter, received recently at the consulate. I looked my copy. Like the previous two, its envelope had had no return address. The third letter consisted of just one line: PO Box 7233-11 Dubai.

  I was familiar with that security procedure. The first letter mentions only a general intention; the second includes the actual approach; the third letter includes just a POB address with nothing else. Only the intended recipient—or someone who hijacks all of them, a lower probability—can link the letters.

  The second letter had read:

  Attention CIA station manager:

  Sir, I am an Iranian national scientist working in one of my country’s nuclear development centers. Pardon me for not identifying myself as I have already taken significant risks just by writing this letter. I wish to leave Iran and relocate to the US. I maintain substantial nonpublic information on Iran’s nuclear arms development, which I am willing to disclose in return for American citizenship and a suitable job and housing for me and my family.

  Thank you.

  Refigh

  Anonymous letters were often pranks, or, worse, traps—and therefore dangerous. Only rarely were they the real thing. My job was to see which it was: a prank, a trap, or, hopefully, the real thing.

  Reviewing the letters, I identified a discrepancy. The initial letter was purportedly from a person who claimed to know the potential defector. However, the writer of the second letter claimed that he was the potential defector. That reminded me of questions posed to a doctor on a radio talk show purportedly for “a friend,” when the subject matter is too personal for the caller to admit that he’s in fact “the friend.”

  Dubai. It would be my first time there. On the surface, it was known as a banking and respectable regional center. Beneath, however, it was known as an international hotbed of money launderers, smugglers, and arms dealers. During my briefing I was shown evidence that it was teeming with mobsters—Indian, Asian, and Russian thugs; Arab terrorists; and Iranian government agents.

  Over the past few weeks, Eric, Paul, and Benny had given me even more information about Dubai: it also had, apparently, a whole lot of Iranian traders trying to broker arms deals. Dubai’s underground banking channels were used to transfer money for the 9/11 terrorists. Even A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, used Dubai to distribute his nuclear technology. And, according to Eric, Dubai was such a global rat’s nest that Dubai’s emir, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, had just recently vowed to honor UN sanctions against Iran. Apparently he was trying to make sure that Dubai didn’t wind up facing sanctions.

  “Why?” I’d asked Eric, while we were in his office. I had just received my mission.

  “Dubai is just across the bay from Iran. I think he finally understood the risks his city-state was taking if it continued to allow embargoed goods to be shipped through Dubai to Iran. Most of the Dubai banks have announced that they will no longer be taking new business from Iranian banks. And worst of all, at least from the Iranian perspective, Dubai is cooperating with the United States to uncover dummy corporations used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and other governmental or private entities to import embargoed goods.

  “It’s also harder now for an Iranian citizen to get a work visa, and the Dubai government is harassing arriving Iranian travelers by subjecting them to physical searches, even eye scanning. To bypass embargo restrictions, Iran has started placing orders for some dual-purpose goods, which can be used for civilian as well as for military purposes, to be shipped through Dubai.”

  According to Eric, there had recently been a case in which the Iranians attempted a circular transaction, placing an order through China to a European company for dual-use vacuum pumps. These can be used in civilian industry, but they’re also essential for enriching uranium via thousands of centrifuges. There was another transaction, this time by Aban, an Iranian company. From Chinese companies it bought thirty tons of tungsten, used in the aircraft industry but also used to build missiles. Aban wanted the goods shipped to Dubai and then to Iran.

  “That failed, though, when Dubai recently decided to cooperate with the US in stopping these bogus ‘dual-purpose’ shipments. Obviously, that decision seriously pissed off the Iranians, making the situation in Dubai extremely volatile. The Iranians aren’t going to give up that easily on their stronghold in Dubai. Their undercover operatives in Dubai are trying to identify American agents who are collecting evidence of embargo violations. The Iranians know that the US and its allies will use any such evidence to increase pressure on Dubai to stop these practices, or else suffer sanctions for violating UN decisions.

  “So, Dan, although your assignment is completely different, you are still a US agent, therefore you should watch your back,” Eric concluded.

  Of course I would. I’ll be watching my back, and front, I thought. I can’t trust you guys too much. Not because you don’t care, you do, but because you’re so entangled in bureaucracy, writing reports and adhering to procedure. Hell, by the time you’d answer my cry for help, I could be on my back on a slab in the freezer, toes up.

  The Iranian government had been sending its agents to Dubai to threaten, attack, and even kill anyone who might be helping the US. So running into Iranian agents in Dubai would be a very real possibility. I knew that Dubai was dangerous territory for people with missions like mine; I even expected to be dealing with some very real, very nasty covert operatives, because Dubai was a place where huge interes
ts and money were at stake. As were lives.

  “I’m careful regardless,” I said nonchalantly, although I was sometimes wasn’t.

  An elderly Agency staffer came in and gave me a travel folder. “This is your Sheep Dip.”

  “My what?” I was sure I’d heard “deep shit.” Only later I discovered it wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “Sheep Dip,” he repeated. “that’s an old Agency term taken from farming. On farms, sheep are dipped in chemicals to kill any disease-bearing lice or to clean their fleece before shearing. In tradecraft, it means disguising your identity by placing you in a legitimate setting. We give you clean documents—your sheep dip—so you can operate without suspicion.” I had to admit that I’d never heard that one before. In the Mossad, we called it Sipoor Kisooy, our legend, or cover story.

  I knew that for my short-term assignment, there was no need to go into “backstopping” an elaborate and expensive array of bogus identification documents and background info that would hold water if thoroughly investigated by a suspicious counterintelligence service. Basically, the old Five Freedoms of Cover had to be met, Freedom of Action: what I can do; Freedom of Movement: where I can go; Freedom of Leisure: how much time I will have for my “hobby”; Social Freedom: what kinds of people I can associate with; and finally, Financial Freedom: how much money I can spend.

  “Inside the folder you’ll find your new European passport, credit cards, family photos, and pocket debris. You also have an electronic ticket confirmation for a United Airlines flight out of Dulles International Airport.”

  “Please put me on another airline,” I said, “I don’t fly United, and anyway, I want to fly from New York, not Dulles. I need to run some errands with my children and dog in New York.”

  “There’s a direct flight from JFK Airport with Emirates. You’ll be undercover. So federal government rules about flying a US flag carrier won’t apply. Should I book you on that flight?”