The Increment (19 page)

“Deniable.”

“But of course. Isn’t that sweet, Harry? I mean, this is a world that doesn’t have enough mystery left. And here, to excite the blood, we have a bunch of stone-cold killers who can get in and get out, and get the job done, and nobody is the wiser. And if anyone ever asks a question, we just say, ‘Sorry, mate. That’s a state secret. Can’t really help you with that one.’ Never-Never Land. That’s the Increment.”

The five conspirators met
Monday morning in a warehouse off Brixton Road, in the heart of the West Indian ghetto of South London. The sign on the door said it was an import-export company,
GENTLE WINDS
, and that was surely true. Adrian gathered them in a conference room in the back, past a mailing room that was all boxes and twine. He sat “Mr. Fellows” down in an overstuffed leather chair, as guest of honor. The SIS chief of staff was dressed in an old corduroy jacket with worn leather patches at the elbow, and a blue denim shirt open at the collar. He had an easy command of the group, a manner that was relaxed but also focused on the mission. It was evident that he had worked with the members of this team before, and that they trusted him.

The three operatives were dressed in the clothes they would wear in Iran. Hakim, the Pakistani from North London, wore a simple cotton shirt and a pair of trousers of the kind you might see on South Asian migrants throughout the Middle East. The daredevil on the motorcycle of the day before had vanished; now there was a faint submissive wobble to his head and a deferential smile. Marwan, the Yemeni from Barking, wore a cheap brown suit and a gray and blue polyester tie; he looked every inch the Arab businessman trying to hustle a buck. He too had managed to disguise the athletic vigor of the previous day. His suit was baggy; it made him seem bulky, rather than muscular.

Jackie was the most transformed. In place of the striking riding habit of Sunday afternoon, she wore a loose-fitting gray gabardine jacket that covered her down to her knees, and a black scarf that almost hid her blond tresses. Sunglasses shielded her eyes; but her lips were colored and glossy. When they sat down in the back room, Jackie unbuttoned her manteau. Underneath she was wearing a low-cut silk blouse in a vivid print that resembled the spots of a leopard.

“Work clothes are great, you lot,” said Adrian. “Just right.” He turned to the Pakistani, who was sitting humbly on the arm of a chair, not permitting himself to slump down the way the others had.

“Hakim, your papers will have you on a temporary visa working a construction project in Shiraz that’s supposed to be completed in six months. You’re in Tehran to purchase supplies; it’s all backstopped with the Pakistani construction company in Lahore. They have your name and passport number at the site manager’s office in Shiraz, if anyone needs it. But they won’t.”

“Tight,” said Hakim. “What languages do I speak?”

“Urdu, English, and a little Farsi and Arabic. You worked in Dubai before this. That’s backstopped too, if anybody gives a shit. Try to eat a little less over the next week, lad. You look too healthy.”

“South Asian starvation diet has commenced, sahib,” said Hakim with a little wobble of his head.

“Marwan, you look sleazy as hell, man. Just the kind of low-life Arab who would be in Tehran trying to rub two tomans together. Where did you get that appalling tie? You will be using a Yemeni passport—not your real one but the one with the Saleh identity that you used the last time in Iraq. Okay?”

“Yes, boss. For sure. You want to make business with me? I give you very good price. What you like? I buy carpet, pistachio, used car, as you like. Best price.”

“Down, boy. You’re giving me a headache. You have any more bad suits like that one?”

“Yes, boss. Three. All dirty.”

“Perfect. Your identity is backstopped, too. You have a letter of credit on a Yemeni bank that will allow you to draw up to one hundred thousand dollars, in the unlikely event that you should need to do any actual business. You have a multiple-entry commercial visa. You work for a trading company in Sanaa with a branch office in Muscat, and the managers in both offices will vouch for you. That work?”

“You are too kind,
habibi.
”

“You’re right. I am. So Jacqueline will be running the show. She’ll have the command post at an apartment hotel in Vali Asr. We’ll have the main communications module there, hidden in a makeup kit. There’s a rooftop restaurant with some flower pots where she can put a little relay antenna, so the transmission quality should be good. You’ve all got your gear?”

“Not yet,” said Marwan.

“Tomorrow,” said Hakim.

“Well, once you get it, do some dry runs with Jackie. Different parts of London, different propagation characteristics. If there are any problems, Jackie will get onto us.”

“What passport am I using?” asked Jackie.

“Same German identity as last time. Working girl, femme fatale, lady with a past. All backstopped. As if you needed a legend. Only joking, love.”

“Ha-ha,” said Jackie.

“How’s your German, then?”

“It’s pretty fucking good, actually. How’s yours?”

“Nonexistent.”

The boys laughed. They liked Jackie taking the piss out of the boss.

“How do we get in-country?” asked Jackie. “Nobody had decided that last week. Waiting for you to decide, they said.”

“Each of you different, to fit your cover. I was thinking of bringing you all in together across the Turkish border, and then having you find your ways separately to Tehran. But I don’t like it. Our Turkish friends have gotten so squirrelly lately. What is their problem anyway? I don’t trust their intelligence boys, and I don’t even trust the army anymore. So better to come in separately. Right?”

Everyone nodded.

“So, Hakim, you will come in overland from Pakistan, crossing the border at Mirjaveh. Then take Iranian buses to Shiraz. Sorry, mate. Not exactly business-class, but it can’t be helped.”

“Don’t worry about me, boss. I like traveling rough.”

“Famous last words.” He looked down at a notebook he had brought, which listed the logistical details. “You’ll be staying at the Hotel Shams, right in the bazaar in South Tehran. Lots of Pakis. No showers, I am afraid.”

Hakim sniffed his armpits and laughed.

Adrian turned to the Arab.

“Marwan, I want you to fly in from Qatar. There’s a daily flight to the new airport. Imam Khomeini International. Doesn’t sound quite right, does it? So you’ll fly from Sanaa to Doha, then Doha to Tehran. Back of the plane. Discounted economy, bought from a bucket shop in Saana.” He looked at his paper again. “We’ve got you staying at 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.”

“How good are they?” asked Jackie. She was doing the talking, but the other two were listening carefully. Adrian was watching Jackie with a hungry look in his eye. This was part of how they got off.

“We’ll find out, won’t we?” said Harry. “But everything I know about the MOI says they are quite competent, especially on their own turf. So you will just have to be smarter.”

“I like it,” said Jackie. “A test of wits. You give us the Tehran locations, office and home, and we’ll work it out. Where do we exfil him, once we’ve found him?”

“Not sure yet. Azeri border, Iraqi border, Turkmen border. Take your pick. Adrian and I will decide which works best for us.”

“What do you mean, ‘us.’ Are you lot coming along?”

“Most definitely. We need to meet him. Face-to-face. Talk to him, see how scared he is. Decide on an ops plan. The only way is to eyeball him. You’re the delivery service. If he insists on defecting, then we have to arrange something that makes it look like he’s dead. If we send him back in, then you’ll have to get him back.”

“Does he have a wife and kids?” asked Jackie.

“Don’t know. My gut says no. But honestly, I don’t even know what this guy looks like, let alone his marital status.”

There was a pause while they all digested the risk and uncertainty of the operation. Jackie broke the silence.

“What happens if we get caught?”

“You’re fucked,” said Adrian. “No black passports on this one. You shoot your way out, I would say, if you’re near a border. If they grab you inside Tehran, there isn’t a lot you can do, except pucker up. We’ll get you a good Iranian lawyer. Promise. And we’ll send a fruitcake to Evin Prison every Christmas.”

The three laughed, politely. They didn’t want to think about the risks. Part of being a successful operator was assuming you would never get caught. In your mind’s eye, you had to believe you were invisible.

“So what do you think? Come on, Adrian and I want to know.”

All three smiled. It was no bullshit. They were excited.

“Are you joking? This is what we
live
for.” Jackie was looking at Adrian as she spoke.

Harry wanted to fly
back home that afternoon so that he would miss only one day at the office. He had sent Marcia Hill a message at 6:30 a.m. Washington time saying that he had a stomach flu and wouldn’t be coming in that Monday. She messaged back that she needed to talk with him, urgently. The boys “downtown” were in a sweat, but it could wait another day if he was sick. Harry knew that if his “flu” stretched two days, Marcia and other colleagues would be calling him at home to make sure he was okay.

Adrian drove Harry back to Heathrow in the same Rover sedan. The SIS officer seemed preoccupied, perhaps thinking about Jackie—worrying about her, or wishing he was bonking her, or probably both. But that wasn’t it.

“Should we talk about arrangements?” said Adrian as they passed Chiswick and neared the airport. “For you, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What we’re doing is out of the normal lanes, old boy. Unauthorized. Illegal, even.”

“That’s my problem.”

“Quite right. Don’t mean to intrude. But what if you should get caught? Then it’s our problem. Loyal ally. Hands in the other fellow’s cookie jar. Naughty, naughty. The P.M. got a tad…concerned. We had to tell him. He
hates
upsetting Washington, you see. Thinks we shouldn’t be suborning the services of a CIA division chief. There’s a name for that, I think.”