Ten miles east of Khan Giran, northeast Iran
September 20, 11:15 a.m. local time
Justin Hall glanced through his binoculars at the dirt road down in the valley, expecting to see the silver Toyota of the Iranian defector. His eyes took in the vast semi-desert, the scrubs of plants and the oil pipeline alongside the road, the hot air sizzling over the ground, but no sign of the car. He wondered if the nuclear physicist had changed his mind. Or worse. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards or one of the Iranian intelligence services might have caught him.
He sighed, blowing at the desert sand in front of his face. He was on his stomach, observing from a vantage point atop one of the rolling hills in this remote part of northeast Iran. The sun had been baking the land for the last two hours at a constant ninety degrees. Justin wiped the sweat off his brow with his tan headscarf. His desert camouflage fatigues did not protect him much from the deadly desert heat. He took a few sips from his canteen. The warm water did nothing to quench his parched throat.
Justin glanced at the road again, this time through the scope of his C8 carbine. Something moved on the side of the road. A flock of goats, seven, no eight, and a young boy, perhaps no older than eleven, driving them toward the road. Justin smiled as the boy looked both ways for traffic before taking the livelihood of his family to the other side. One of the stubborn goats decided to relieve itself in the middle of the road. The boy ran and shooed it away, back to the flock.
There had been no sighting of a car, not even a motorcycle or a bicycle for more than an hour. Along with Nathan Smyth, his partner in this clandestine rescue operation of the Canadian Intelligence Service, Justin had travelled early in the morning from Turkmenistan up north. The team had crossed the porous border with the help of two Turkmen drug runners familiar with the broken terrain. The area had always been a theater of war during most of its five thousand years of history. It still remained a lawless haven and a preferred route for traffickers smuggling Afghan opium to Russian and European markets. Persians, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Arabs lived in a state of a delicate balance of power shared among tribal leaders and clansmen.
“What are we going to do?” asked Nathan, stretched next to Justin. He leaned back against a large boulder, seeking shelter from the scorching sun.
“We’re waiting,” Justin replied.
“Our guides are growing impatient.”
“They’ll have to wait, like we do.”
Justin hung his binoculars around his neck and crawled back. Once he was behind the boulder, he got to his feet. He took another sip of warm water and used it to wash his dried mouth. Then he headed toward the battered Nissan Pathfinder of the drug runners. They were supposed to keep watch on the other side of the hill overlooking the steep path leading to the top. Justin found them sheltered away from the desert heat, enjoying the air conditioning in their cabin, glancing occasionally through the windshield.
One of the guides, the younger one sitting in the driver’s seat, rolled down the window. “Your man is not coming,” he said in English with a heavy accent. “We should go back.”
Justin shook his head. “No. He’ll come. We’ll wait.”
Ruslan, the older guide, rolled down his window. He gave Justin a deep frown and a stern headshake. “This is not the deal we had. We brought you here two hours ago. You were meeting someone at ten. It is now eleven thirty. We must go back,” he said in Arabic.
Justin stepped closer to Ruslan and locked eyes with him. He replied to him in Arabic, “I made no deal with you. You have a deal with Colonel Garryev. Your deal with him is to bring us here and take us back once we’ve finished our job. As you can see, we haven’t.”
Ruslan seemed unfazed by Justin’s words. “Every minute we stay here we risk being discovered. I know Iranian troops patrol this area. You know they hang drug traffickers in this country, do you?” He rubbed his neck as if to emphasize his point.
And you know what they do to foreign secret agents derailing their nuclear program?
The thought brought back bitter memories. Five years ago. The deepest, darkest cells of Tehran’s Evin Prison. He spent a long week in solitary confinement. The jailers fed him moldy bread and foul water but put him on a healthy diet of daily beatings. It took the intervention of Canada’s Prime Minister, complicated negotiations, and an exchange of favors before Justin was sent home.
Justin nodded. “I know what they do. You’re not going to lose your necks. Another day perhaps, but not today.”
Ruslan grinned. “Another thirty minutes. If he’s not here, we’re driving back, with or without you.”
Justin shrugged and walked to the edge of the path. A light breeze toyed with the loose flap of his headscarf. He took a deep breath, enjoying the temporary relief from the desert’s dry air. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes and searched the bottom of the hill and the surrounding area. No sign of human or animal life. Just patches of scraggly brush, rock boulders, and sand. A lot of sand.
He turned around.
Ruslan gave him a frown and tapped the gold Rolex on his left wrist. “Another thirty minutes, Mohammed,” he said.
Colonel Garryev from Turkmenistan’s Ministry of National Security had introduced the two agents to Ruslan as Mohammed and Mehmet—Nathan’s idea, since he loved M&M’s chocolates—two liaison officers helping the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, a terrorist group waging war against Turkey and seeking the creation of an independent Kurdistan. The two officers were to obtain information from a reliable source about the operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. One of the PKK’s largest bases in northern Iraq had been attacked by a joint Turkish and Iranian force, giving credibility to the Canadian secret agents’ cover story. Colonel Garryev knew the true identities of Justin and Nathan, but he was in the dark about the nature of their operation in Iran.
Nuclear physicist Massoud Safavi had made his first contact with the Canadian Intelligence Service three months ago. He had promised the CIS his vast knowledge of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and its plans to build a nuclear bomb. In exchange, Safavi wanted a new life in the West.
The CIS had checked, double-checked, and triple-checked Safavi’s credentials and his story, his motives, and his reasons for this defection. He worked as a chief physicist at the heavily fortified secret Fordo Plant near Qom in northern Iran. He was not married and had very few friends. He lived with his elderly mother and a younger brother but was almost always away because of work. Safavi was a devoted Muslim, but moderate in his beliefs. Afraid of the new wave of killings of nuclear scientists all over Iran—the most recent a month ago in the heart of the capital, Tehran—Safavi had decided to get out while he still could.
A defection scenario was one of the most difficult and dreaded operations by all secret agents. It was a ticking bomb waiting to explode at any second. No matter how hard one tried to cover all angles, there were too many variables that could not be identified, let alone controlled. Was Safavi really defecting or simply luring the agents into an ambush? Was his intelligence going to be any good? Useful? Actionable? Was he a double agent, sent by the Iranians to spy on the CIS and the West and feed them bogus information?
These and many other questions ran through Justin’s mind. He had no answers to most of them. The potential of securing a highly valued defector and top secret intelligence had convinced Justin to set foot again on Iranian soil. He had picked this remote meeting point—fifteen miles south of the Turkmenistan-Iran border—and had set up every detail of the operation. And now here they were, a mile away from their meeting point, almost two hours past their appointed time, and the defector was nowhere to be seen.
“Anything new?” Justin asked Nathan, who was keeping an eye on the road.
“No, nothing. What did Ruslan say?”
“He threatened to leave us here. He’s not gonna do it.”
Justin looked at Nathan’s calm face. He was ten years his junior, but already a great field agent. In the absence of his normal partner Carrie—who was searching for her father’s grave in Grozny, Chechnya—Justin and Nathan had worked together in a reconnaissance mission in Sudan. Nathan’s orienteering skills had saved their lives after their local contacts were shot dead. Even if the drug runners left them behind, Nathan would be able to find his way through the desert
wadis,
the dry river beds, and back to Turkmenistan.
Nathan raised his binoculars. “I see some movement. A silver Toyota.”
Justin fell to the ground and stared at the road through his binoculars. The Toyota was travelling very fast for the dirt road, bouncing over natural speed bumps and dipping into shallow potholes. A long tail of gray dust clouded the view behind the car.
“That’s our man?” Nathan asked.
“Not sure. The Toyota matches the description, but I can’t make out his face.”
“Can’t tell if he’s being followed.”
“We stay put until we have a visual confirmation.”
Justin crawled forward and followed the car through the scope of his C8 carbine. It would be practically impossible for the driver and any passengers in the Toyota to spot Justin’s and Nathan’s position from that distance. Even if the car stopped and someone searched the hilltop, the chances of finding the C8 carbine muzzle were extremely slim. Justin had picked their vantage point keeping in mind counter-surveillance tactics from anyone down on the road. A few shrubs, some rocks jutting out of the ground, and two heaps of sand formed a natural shield in front of their position.
The Toyota followed the curved road, slowed down, then stopped. Justin had given Safavi the GPS coordinates of their meeting point, and the car was right on the designated spot. The driver rolled down his window, as per Justin’s instructions.
“That’s Safavi,” Justin said.
His features matched those of the pictures Justin had seen, except for the curtain of sweat flowing down the man’s black and gray beard. Safavi’s eyes had dark circles around them. He ran his hands through his receding hair and fixed his black-rimmed glasses. Then he looked out the window.
Justin moved the sight of his scope to the back seats. It seemed there was no one else in the Toyota, but he had no way of being completely sure. He reached for his satellite phone and dialed Safavi’s number.
“You’re late, very late,” Justin said in English. “What happened?”
“Traffic, I ran into heavy traffic.” Safavi’s voice was weak and he was huffing, as if trying to catch his breath. Justin looked through the carbine’s scope. Safavi’s hands were shaking, and he almost dropped his cellphone. “There was also an accident.”
“Anyone else with you in the car?” he asked.
“No. I’m alone.”
“Anyone follow you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I didn’t see anyone following me.”
The cloud of dust had started to thin out. Justin examined the road for the next five, six, then seven miles behind Safavi’s car. No trace of a tail. He raised his scope and scanned the horizon. No sign of any helicopter or airplanes. It seemed everything was going according to plan.
“You see anything strange?” he asked Nathan, who had been mimicking Justin’s reconnaissance actions.
“No, but that’s doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“Eh-huh.” Justin grunted. He spoke to Safavi over the phone, “Turn off the car, but leave the key in. Take everything you need and step out.”
Safavi followed Justin’s orders. A briefcase hung from his left hand. “Where are you?”
“We’ll meet you soon. Start walking toward north. Stay on the road. Stop once five minutes has passed.”
“In the sun?”
Justin sighed. “Yes, in the sun. I’ll call you in five minutes.”
“All right.”
Safavi began to walk slowly. He was wearing dress shoes, almost useless for the hike he had just started. The briefcase was not heavy. It was swinging back and forth as he took small steps.
“Keep an eye on him and on the car. I’m going to meet him. I’ll tell you when I know he’s clean.” Justin tapped his throat mike, while looking at Nathan.
Nathan nodded. He placed his eye on his C8 carbine’s scope. His index finger caressed the trigger.
Justin crawled backwards until he reached the boulder then jumped to his feet. “Our contact’s here,” he told Ruslan when he got to the Nissan. “I’m going to meet with him. Nathan will let you know when I’ve gotten what I need. At that time, bring the car around. Meet me at the road, and we’ll get out of here. Is that clear?”
Ruslan nodded and showed Justin his crooked teeth. “Yes,” he muttered and lit up a cigar.
* * *
Justin skirted around the hill, watching his step for loose rocks. His feet sank ankle deep into the sand a few times as he slithered downhill, hidden from Safavi’s line of sight. He advanced fast, moving toward the next hill to his right, always keeping Safavi’s car in his peripheral vision. At the same time, he checked farther away at the road on both sides, as well as the peaks of surrounding hills and the horizon. The operation seemed to be running without a glitch.
He popped out in the open at the bottom of the hill, about half a mile away from Safavi, who saw him right away. Safavi stopped and moved the briefcase from one hand to the other. Justin gestured for him to keep walking and come closer. At the same time, Justin pulled out his H&K P30 pistol from his side holster and pointed it at Safavi. At the first sign of foul play, a barrage of fifteen rounds would be his reward.
Safavi continued to walk with unsteady steps, glancing at the hillside from where Justin had appeared. He seemed to have quickened his pace. At some point, he raised his hand to protect his face and his head from the sun. He shrugged and shook his head once he was close enough to notice the gun.
“Stop, stop,” Justin called to him. “Put the briefcase on the ground and open it slowly.”
“Why? Is this necessary?”
“Yes. I explained to you it’s our standard procedure.”