itself. Another mile and they came to a gated villa. The guard spoke to the security man in the front seat and then raised the barrier. As they rolled toward the white marble villa, the front door opened. Every aspect of this trip seemed to have been ordered by an unseen hand.
“This is a safe house?” asked Harry, looking at the splendid villa. “You might as well put out a neon sign.”
“It’s a police state, Harry. Everything is safe. The GDP is a state secret, for God’s sake. If they tell us it’s secure, it’s secure.”
“Have you set up the audio?”
“My people have. We’ll be running a tape the whole time you’re in with him. It will upload to London via satellite, so we don’t have to worry about keeping a record here.”
“Did you rig any countersurveillance?”
“Sort of. No bubble, but some white noise. We’ll be all right. These people aren’t going to shop us to Tehran. They have too much at stake.”
Harry shook his head doubtfully, but it was too late to question these details. He had the feeling, not for the first time, that Adrian was taking risks that would not make sense unless he knew something that Harry didn’t.
Karim Molavi was waiting in a pleasant sitting room when Harry and Adrian arrived. He was drinking a cup of tea and reading a copy of the latest issue of Scientific American, which had been left on a coffee table with other scientific periodicals. He was alone in the room. Jackie and her crew had gone somewhere else in the villa, to sleep or eat or practice their marksmanship.
Adrian peered through a keyhole into the room where Molavi was sitting and opined that the Iranian appeared to be content. They had agreed that Harry would do the initial debriefing alone. Behind Molavi, through a large plate-glass window, were the mountain peaks that buffered him from his homeland.
Harry Pappas entered the room. He took his first look at the man who until this moment had only been an email address. Molavi was bigger and younger than he had expected. He had a dark, handsome face, with a dominant nose and thick black hair. He had the bearing of an intellectual; confident, reserved, composed. The mystery was why he had risked everything to reach out.
“My name is Harry,” he began. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I received the messages that you sent to us. I’m responsible for your case, in our government. It is an honor for me to meet you at last in person.”
He extended his hand to Molavi, who shook it softly, almost like a caress.
“Thank you, sir,” said Molavi. He spoke English in a soft and measured voice.
“Are you happy? Do you have everything you need?”
“Oh yes, sir. The people who came to rescue me were like a dream. I thought that only happened in movies. They were English, I think.”
“Yes. The British are working with us. We moved heaven and earth to find you and get you out, once you contacted us.”
“I do not know what to say, sir. You came to me from so far away, and picked me up as if you were a great bird and I was your chick.”
“Well, you’re here now, son. And we need to talk.”
Harry hadn’t planned to call him “son,” but it slipped out, and it seemed right.
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Are you ready? Would you like to eat something first?”
“Oh no, sir. They gave me breakfast. It was very good.”
“Don’t call me sir,” said Harry, smiling. “I am here as your friend and adviser, not your boss. You can walk away anytime you are uncomfortable.”
“I am quite comfortable, sir. And where would I go? Please, I am not stupid. I am ready for your questions.”
Harry began with the basics, as intelligence officers always do. Full name, parents’ names, addresses, close relations, workplaces and addresses, foreign travels. He ran it like a doctor’s checkup; taking the inventory of a life, item by item. He wanted to assemble the collateral that could be checked against available records and databases—not simply to establish Molavi’s bona fides, but to provide a context for understanding him and what he wanted.
Harry was of the old school, in that respect. He believed that the essence of handling an agent was understanding what he wanted out of the transaction, and then attempting to give it to him, or at least the appearance of it. Something in the way Molavi spoke about his family history caught