The Red Syndrome (24 page)

Compartmentalizing was a way of life; it insulated people and information. Joe was not allowed to participate in my meeting with Brian Day.
Joe had trained me, Brian would handle me. Neither man could meet or
be seen with the other.

Brian pulled a big yellow envelope from his briefcase.

"Please make yourself comfortable," he said. "We'll be spending a few
hours here."

I sat on the small sofa and Brian sat opposite me on the desk chair.

"The Company has come up with a few ideas as to how to introduce
you to the clients without arousing their suspicion. The idea is to form a
long-term relationship built on trust and professionalism. We know them
as the Slaves of Allah, but you are to refer to them only as `the clients."'

"The clients?"

"Yes. The Slaves of Allah, the ultimate client. But forget that name.
Use only `the clients.' Have you heard about them yet?"

"Just recently. I know very little about them. Is it a new organization?"

Brian gave me a quick summary of what was known about them. The
Slaves of Allah, backed and sponsored by Iran, had cells in many countries. Iran had state-sponsored terrorism down to a kind of art form: Stay
in the dark, use third parties to do the dirty work, deny any connection
or knowledge, even offer help and sympathy to the victims, and all the
while plan the next attack. The Iranians kept themselves at a considerable
distance from organizations like the Slaves of Allah. "Plausible deniability" was scrupulously maintained; if a terror group like the Slaves of
Allah was ever exposed, Iran would not only wash its hands of them, but
issue harsh condemnations. "Unfortunately," Brian told me, "they will
never let go of their zeal. The religious fanatics of Iran continue with
their aspiration to defeat the `Great Satan"' - here he smiled and pointed
at himself - "through whatever means available. And their only means
are terror."

"Would you ever let them walk with impunity?" I asked. I'd seen that
happen before.

"Hell, no. We have proof that the money and the instructions to instigate terror come directly, or rather indirectly, from Tehran. We also know
that they maintain a top-secret center in the suburbs of Tehran -
Agdassieh Post - for training terrorists in assassination and kidnappings.

"European governments used to claim that they only had evidence of
moral support for the terrorists' extremist ideology. They'd turned a blind
eye to what Iran was really doing. But that's changed."

"Good morning, Europe," I said mockingly. "Israel has been saying for
years that the Iranians are behind the most heinous terrorist organizations, but as long as Europe was spared..

"Right," said Brian. "But a recent report issued by the Germans directly
linked Iran to terrorist groups, and pointed a finger at the Iranian
embassy in Germany. Maybe it signals a European change of heart."

"So are we targeting the clients or the Iranians, their patrons?" I asked,
with mounting interest.

"Both. But first an overview. Specific details are found in the folder I
am giving you. Your particular targets are the clients only; the rest is
background material."

"Got you," I said cooperatively. He was so different from Eric
Henderson, who was zealous in hoarding information, even beyond the
necessary shielding of sources and methods.

"Good. There are three branches of the Iranian intelligence establishment: the Ministry of Information, the Qods Force of the Revolutionary
Guards, and military intelligence. All three organizations have representatives at the Iranian embassies worldwide. The Iranian Ministry of Information uses the Orwellian name information as if they disseminate it. In
fact, it's purely an intelligence agency that collects intel and is also used as
the clandestine arm of Tehran to do its dirty work. In major countries the
embassies might be fronting twenty or more employees from the intelligence services. Apparently when that's not enough, they tap on the other
members of the embassy staff for support in their clandestine missions.

"The primary objectives of the three intelligence branches stationed in Europe are to trace and eliminate Iranian opposition leaders exiled there,
to purchase technology useful in building weapons of mass destruction,
and finally to run Islamic extremist groups in Europe. The two latter
activities are directly connected to our case and to your role."

"Have they used any special means to control the rogue Islamic organizations? Usually these people don't take orders from anyone."

"True. But the Iranians are smart. They've steadily infiltrated Islamic
educational and cultural institutions, using vast infusions of money to
turn them pro-Iranian. Iran couldn't trust the old leadership of these
groups to obey Tehran's instructions while maintaining the required strict
confidentiality. So they do it cunningly.

"The Iranian intelligence officers use light cover, pretending they're
simply arranging cultural activities. Once the officers have a foothold,
they can steer the groups in the directions Iran wants."

Brian paused to drink a glass of juice he poured himself from the jug. He
seemed very young with his boyish haircut and smooth skin. I wondered
why he dressed in such tacky clothes. Could he simply have bad taste, his
shrewd mind notwithstanding? At his age, I had served in the Mossad
doing similar things. This pattern of recruitment by Iran was similar to the
method used to recruit Malik Fazal. That meant that the Iranian recruitment efforts were not limited to Europe; they'd spread to the U.S. as well.

I moved impatiently in my chair.

"You want the bottom line first?" There was no sound of anger or discontent in his voice.

"Yes, if possible."

"Try to think of Iran as a dragon with several heads spitting fire at different times toward different directions. From your perspective, our
clients are the Slaves of Allah, not anyone else until we see a definite affiliation. However, we're not letting any of the other organizations off the
suspect list, since we still don't know who the Slaves of Allah are. That
name surfaced for the first time in the deciphered messages."

"You mean it could be an existing organization simply assuming a new
disposable name?"

"That's one possibility."

"And the other?"

"That the captured messages were faked."

"Why?"

"Because breaking the code wasn't that difficult. These guys should
never be regarded as stupid or careless."

Although it was an affront to my intellectual ability and the many
hours I spent with Laura breaking it while having wine, cheese and erotic
thoughts, I had to concede that he had a point. Breaking the code had
been easy.

"So, let's assume they were faked," I replied. "Then we should ask why
and for what purpose. Come to think of it, if they were faked, there is an
inherent assumption that the sender knew that the messages would be
intercepted and deciphered. That's a higher degree of sophistication. Are
you willing to grant it to them?"

"Nothing is conclusive," said Brian patiently. "We simply can't rule anything out. We take the messages at their face value. Treat them as if they are
genuine, but continue to suspect they are fake and look for reasons why they
bothered, and whether it was a decoy to distract us from the real thing."

"Okay, any other options?" I moved on.

"Yes. It is also possible that they are either a new splinter group that
broke off from one of the other organizations, or ..."

He hesitated, inviting me with his silence to complete his sentence, ".. .
or they planned something so horrifying that even they don't want to be
identified as the perpetrators." He nodded and I queried, "Terrorists afraid
to ruin their monstrous reputation?" My sarcastic remark was left hanging
without comment. There was a sudden silence in the room. In our minds,
we were digesting what might be at stake. It had the mark of a black operation. A covert operation not attributable to the organization carrying it
out. That would be a genuine worst-case scenario in the making.

"I get the picture, I think," I said although I still wasn't sure what my
role in this would be. "The deciphered messages were not single-source
intelligence, which would make them suspect," I went on. "They were
corroborated by Malik Fazal's interrogation. Although even when put
together, it doesn't make them anything more than a lead."

Brian nodded. "Fazal's version and the contents of the messages should
be regarded as one source. After all, the three messages were in his hands.
How do we know that he didn't concoct them as a decoy, while something else, the real thing, is continuing undetected? You probably haven't
heard the developments in that matter since you came here, in the week
that you've been sequestered."

"It was refreshing to keep away from the noise of phones, faxes, and
e-mail for a week," I said, "but I do feel out of the loop."

"The latest is that all agencies involved are confident that the viruses
the Slaves of Allah received were too few to cause any immediate largescale damage; they would need real experts to clone them. The bad news
is they can easily recruit any number of biologists who care more about
money than any terrorist cause. What these corrupt scientists probably
don't realize is that once they've rendered their services, they may become
expendable. If they've betrayed once, they might betray again and talk.
Terrorists don't like talkative people."

"The Israelis conned the Slaves of Allah into thinking the virus was
genetically engineered. Maybe they discovered the hoax?" I suggested

"No. If you think the kidnapping of the Israeli operatives was retaliation for fraud, then look elsewhere for a better reason."

"How do you know that?"

"The task force investigation is not the only source of information for
us. In fact, it's a small, albeit important, source," Brian said.

"So has the state of emergency been canceled?"

"Definitely not. The fact that the Slaves of Allah's single operation
failed does not mean a failure on their next attempt. We don't even know
if there are additional plans that we haven't uncovered yet. We still don't
have the other members of their cell in custody."

"It seems there's still a lot of work to do," I agreed.

"Sure. Think of it: We still don't know why Boris Zhukov and his comrades were helping the Slaves of Allah to launder money. Just greed?
There could be other reasons, such as strategic alliance. You could be very
instrumental in developing that angle."

I nodded, trying to figure out how that could be done, since Zhukov
and the Slaves of Allah lived in two different worlds.

"But with things as they are, the interim success is largely thanks to
you. I heard that your earlier money-laundering investigation and the
subsequent obtaining of the messages made the difference. I heard praise
for your work."

"How come I always hear only the complaints?" I was bitching but my
heart sang.

"Back to our matter," said Brian, not giving me a chance to relish the
moment any longer. "There are a number of plans to combat the Slaves
of Allah before more of them reach our shores. But first we need combatzone intelligence. The part we want you to play concerns your expertise
in following the money trail."

"Dry them up?"

"Yes, but that's not enough. We need to track the exact route of the
money flow. That would clearly identify who is financing them, thereby
facilitating their terror. An open investigation has its advantages. People
come and talk to us, supporters are reluctant to be exposed, and potential
supporters hesitate more. At the same time we make it difficult to funnel
money to fuel their operations. But these are side matters for now. First and
foremost, we must identify the operators and their controllers to enable us
to facilitate their return to their forefathers in the fastest and most efficient
manner." The boyish expression on Brian's face turned iceberg rigid.

But I smiled. "Now, we'd need plausible deniability for that," I retorted.

Brian thawed and smiled, too.

"So, what's my mission?"

"The point is, Iran may be behind the Slaves of Allah. We're sending
you as an operative to find out first, if there's an Iranian connection to the
plot, and second, why Zhukov is moving money for terrorists."

"And the plan to achieve these goals?" I asked.

"We must take an indirect approach, since organizations of this sort are
usually highly suspicious," said Brian. "Frankly, if these guys are like the
others in their industry, unless we plan it right, you wouldn't pass their
background check and remain alive."

There was tingling in my spine that I couldn't ignore.

"Therefore, infiltration must be indirect."

"Meaning?"

"We will be moving you into a target area while your true affiliation
will go undetected. We know and assume two things in that context: We
know that a member of a Belarusian group with strong ties to Russian
organized crime in New York made huge money transfers, and we suspect that once the money arrived in New York, the clients issued instructions to U.S.- and European-based cells to use the funds for terrorist
activities in the U.S."

"You mean the role of Igor and friends in all of this is to act as money
launderers for the terrorists?"

Brian nodded. "That's the working assumption at this time. There is no
other explanation. In these matters, the intelligence officer doing the tactical planning must always assume the worst-case scenario. Murphy is
always right."

The theory coincided with my own early suspicion.

"Do you think Zhukov and his band knew who they were working for,
and for what purpose?"

"I don't know. I guess they operated like bankers used to before moneylaundering laws were introduced. They asked no questions."

"Is your assumption based on specific info or are you speculating? That
the money would be used for attacks on the U.S. presumes the messages
were real."