The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,77
the New Naderi Hotel, off Jomhuri-ye Islami Street. Business hotel, big with the commercial-traveler set from Dubai. Road warriors, Tehran-style. Some of the desk clerks speak Arabic, apparently.
“And now you, madam base commander. You will be staying top-of-the-line, naturellement. At the Aziz Apartment Hotel in Vali Asr. Big suite. Lots of room. Wide-screen TV. Swimming pool that actually has water in it. Health club, Jacuzzi. You’re never going to want to come home. You will fly in on the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. Very nice. And you actually are flying business-class. Drink your fill on the plane, lassie, because when you land, there ain’t no more.”
“What’s the jumping-off point?” asked Jackie.
“RAF Mildenhall to Ramstein. When you get off the plane in Germany, you assume your new identities. New passports, the whole lot. We’ll have you all stamped into Germany in pseudonym. Then off you go—Hakim to Pakistan, Marwan to Yemen, Jackie lives it up in Frankfurt for a few days. Are we set on the basics, then?”
“Sure,” said Jackie. “But what’s the mission?”
Adrian turned to his American friend. Harry had been taking notes as his SIS colleague talked, wanting to get the details set in his mind. But now the preliminaries were done and it was time to get to the heart of the matter.
“I am going to let Mr. Fellows explain that,” said Adrian. “This is his baby, really. We are mother’s little helpers.”
Harry looked at the three SAS warriors in mufti. It was impossible not to like them, or to have confidence that they would do their jobs. It was a feeling he didn’t have often enough at the CIA. That was what had brought him here, really. The British could execute a daring mission, decisively and deniably, and his own service couldn’t, or wouldn’t. That bothered him, but it wasn’t a problem he could fix.
“This is an exfiltration,” Harry began. “We have an agent in Tehran, Adrian and I do. He’s frightened, and he wants out. He’s in a very sensitive position in a program run by the Revolutionary Guard, so he can’t travel. But we need to talk with him, face-to-face, and then decide what to do next—whether to pull him or send him back in. We can’t decide that until we talk to him. And we can’t do that without an exfil. So that’s why we’re here. But there’s a problem.”
“We like problems,” said Jackie.
“Yeah? Well, that’s good. Because we are asking you to exfiltrate someone we have never met, never contacted directly, never trained. We know where he works, but we have never seen him. We’re trying to pluck a fish out of a moving stream, but we aren’t sure where he is in the water.”
“That is interesting,” said Jackie. “And how do you propose to move this little fishy toward our net?”
“We message him that we’re coming. We don’t tell him any more than that, in case he has already been flipped. Then you guys find him. We’ll have a work address, probably a home address, too, by the time you get there. We’ll do whatever surveillance we can to give you a picture of him. You’ll have to stake him out, shadow him, and contact him. I’ll figure out some kind of recognition code.”
“And then?” Jackie was smiling. There was a taut look of expectation on her face. She liked this. Harry looked toward Adrian, who had that same flush of operational excitement, and then turned back to the team.
“You’ll do it in three steps. Step one: brush pass him a message saying where you will leave the commo gear. It will be one of the parks. Adrian can work with his Tehran station to figure out a toy that will blend in. Step two: when he picks up the toy, you talk and arrange details of the exfil. Step three: you move him to where we can talk to him. And then, maybe, you get him back in.”
“Will we have support in-country?”
Harry looked to Adrian. The agency certainly wouldn’t be providing any.
“A little, if we’re in extremis,” answered Adrian. “Our Tehran station commander has a few agents and safe houses. But I want to keep your team away from that lot. It may be contaminated. Better to have you three in as singletons.”
“Will the target be under surveillance?”
“We don’t know,” said Harry. “He’s spooked. He sent us a message saying he wants out. So we have to assume the Iranian service is watching him.”