PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (26 page)

‘He’s on his way to
Iran?
’ Vinson said, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘I think they must have identified him as a foreign spy,’ Michiko said.

‘No doubt,’ Vinson said. ‘But the question we have to ask is, why is the Iranian embassy getting involved in the first place? What do they have to do with it?’

‘Could be they’re involved in this thing, maybe it’s Iran who’s been behind it all.’

Vinson nodded his head, deep in thought. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Yes, that would certainly make sense. But if the school killings were state-sponsored, that presents some horrific possibilities.’

‘I think Mark wanted them to take him,’ Michiko said.

‘You do?’ Vinson asked. ‘Why?’

‘I think he got something out of Milanović,’ she answered, ‘I think the arms guy gave up his Iranian connections. So my father has to find out what else is going on, right? But the answer’s in Iran. And he’s locked up in a Serbian jail, so how the hell is he supposed to get there?’ Michiko shrugged. ‘So he comes up with a story that excites the Iranians, they demand the Serbs hand him over. And now he’s on his way to Tehran at the request of MOIS. He’s obviously indicated that he knows something, and they want to find out exactly how much he knows, and who he’s told.’

Vinson looked at Michiko gravely, concern etched across his features. ‘You know what that means?’ he asked.

Michiko nodded. ‘He’ll be tortured, then killed. Which is why I want Force One up and running, in case we have to go and get him.’

Vinson nodded in understanding. ‘If he is in Iran, it’s unlikely the president will authorize direct action to get him back. But then again, if the Iranians played a role in what’s happened, then Force One might definitely have to be used in anger.’

‘And if he’s over there, we can’t rule out the possibility that he’ll manage to find something out. We should make plans to extract him, if only to get that information. With the memorial events this Sunday, time is something we don’t have the luxury of.’

Vinson paused, took off his glasses and massaged his temples with his fingertips. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘You’re right. If anyone can do it, Mark can. We can’t write him off, we’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Have you got a line into MOIS in Tehran?’

Michiko nodded. ‘Yeah, I can access their systems. Do we have some Farsi speakers we can trust? There’s only so much I can do with translation programs, no matter how good they are.’

Vinson nodded. ‘We have a couple of people I’m one hundred percent on,’ he said, ‘so consider it done – they’re yours, for the duration. Anything else you need, let me know.’

Vinson tapped the arm of his spectacles on the glass desk in front of him, thinking. ‘We need to speak to Elizabeth Morgan too,’ he said finally. ‘Mark might have told her what he learnt from Milanović, when he spoke to her at the police station. We need that information.  I’ll have some people waiting for her in London.’

He rubbed his temples again, before putting his glasses back on. ‘And I think you’re right about Force One, we need it up and running, in full working order and with complete access to JSOC resources and personnel. So whatever your plans are for Mason, Jones and Graham, I hereby authorize you to go about them immediately. Teach them a lesson, Michiko, and make sure it’s a good one. Make them know they can’t fuck with us.’

Michiko smiled widely at her boss. ‘Yes sir,’ she agreed happily. ‘Consider it done.’

2

Mohammed Younesi peered out from the windows of the small café to the teeming streets of Tehran beyond, deep in thought as he drank the banana milkshake known in Iran as
Sheer-moz
. Delicious and refreshing, it reminded Younesi of his childhood – of earlier, more simple times – and he often came to this café to escape the psychological hardships of his chosen profession.

Only today, no respite came, even after his second milkshake. He wiped the foam from his mouth, and considered what he was going to do about the man being held in the basement of MOIS headquarters. The Ministry of Intelligence and Security maintained buildings throughout the Iranian capital, as well as in other cities; but its headquarters was based in the north of Tehran, a one acre compound that housed several administrative office blocks with subterranean basements connecting them all.

MOIS was feared throughout Iran, and rightly so. With a remit that involved domestic counter-espionage as well as foreign intelligence gathering, Iranian citizens were as likely to end up in the basement dungeons as Western spies.

Younesi had experience in all aspects of the organization, from working behind diplomatic cover at embassies around the world, to helping train the Quds Force and the Lebanese Hezbollah in guerilla warfare tactics. He had also worked in counter-intelligence, and had interrogated his own fair share of Iranian suspects. Some had been obviously innocent, but Younesi had been compelled by his superiors – and by the very nature of his organization – to torture them anyway, often until they were dead, or turned into vegetables no longer able to communicate. Such days often found him in the café, drinking a milkshake and wishing for happier times.

But he had brought it upon himself, he knew; and indeed, given a choice, he would never give up the profession that he had always been a part of. For, if he was a part of
it
,
it
was also a part of him, embedded in his very nature, so ingrained that he often felt he would be incapable of living a normal life, whatever that was.

He had always wanted to be a part of this world, ever since listening to a presentation given at his high school. MOIS looked like it offered the chance to serve Islam, and his country, with the promise of adventure; but with rather more intellectual input than required by Iran’s various military units.

He had therefore taken the entrance exams to Imam Mohammed Bagher University, which was linked to MOIS, and had then undergone a stringent battery of physical, intelligence and personality tests at the Intelligence Bureau in Hamedan in western Iran. Having passed these initial assessments, he went on to study one of the MOIS-approved majors at the university, Intelligence and Communications Management, and then later specialized in Technology and Engineering for his master’s degree.

He officially joined the Ministry of Intelligence and Security as soon as his education was complete, and it was only then that he had been given the name Mohammed Younesi. He had been born Masoud Taherian, but every MOIS officer was granted a pseudonym for their own safety, which they used forever after.

Younesi had served in varying capacities within the organization ever since. Sometimes he loved it, sometimes he loathed it; but he always served his masters as they wished to be served and followed the directives of his superiors – as dictated by the Supreme Leader – to the letter.

The attack on the British schoolchildren was a case in point. As commander of the Office of Europe, which was part of MOIS’s Second Directorate – Foreign (Operations), Younesi was tasked with encouraging and orchestrating terrorist activity against targets in Europe. He worked with existing groups, or else encouraged the setting up and creation of entirely new groups, to be used as proxies against the West in the eternal battle against the Great Satan. He was uniquely effective at it too, and had thus found himself in this post far longer than any other. It was, as the director of the Second Directorate had pointed out, the job he had been born for.

Younesi had had particular success in encouraging the much-feared ‘lone wolf’ attacks, so effective because the people involved never even knew they were doing the will of the Islamic Republic of Iran – they had simply been indoctrinated by expertly designed online propaganda, which had been distributed so widely among the worldwide faithful that a few willing soldiers were always guaranteed to independently emerge over the years, with no evidence to link them back to Younesi or his organization.

He didn’t even need to supply weapons – the online information provided details on how to get hold of them, or else advised on makeshift tools readily available in the home. A head could be hacked off in the street with a kitchen knife quite effectively, for example.

The beauty of the scheme was that – because only one or two people were involved in such attacks at a time, the amount of ‘chatter’ – the digital trace of email and voice communications necessary when the planning was on a larger scale, and which the western intelligence services typically relied upon to foil such attacks – was completely absent, which was why the lone-wolf approach was so hard to defend against. The information that the security forces had come to rely upon was simply no longer there.

But Younesi was the first to admit that such attacks were low-key at best; they caused a certain degree of fear – if not exactly
terror
– in the population, but they were a far cry from the coordinated mass casualty attacks of Nine Eleven, which was still the supreme arbiter by which all other terrorist events were judged. They were effective, but lacked the huge psychological impact of such a ‘big time’ act of terrorism.

And so Younesi had been making plans for ‘the next big thing’, the attack that would supplant Nine Eleven as the most effective terrorist attack in history.

Younesi – although regarded as a genius by the director of the Second Directorate for his vision and tactical mastery – had, in the end, not even come up with the idea himself.

It had actually been suggested to him by a colleague of his in another country entirely, someone who also wanted to make the west bleed, but lacked the resources and contacts to make it happen.

He remembered the conversation even now, many months later.

‘I understand that you’re not entirely satisfied with your lone-wolf system anymore,’ the man had said over dinner, sipping at a cup of black tea. ‘You want something that will make more of an impact.’

‘It’s easy,’ Younesi had replied, ‘and effective, but only on a small scale – and there’s a limit to what can be achieved on a small scale.’

‘I’ve had something in the back of my mind for a while now,’ the man had said, and Younesi remembered the twinkle in his eyes as he’d spoken. ‘But I’m not in a position to follow through on it.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You remember the attack in Paris? Charlie Hebdo?’

Younesi had nodded. ‘Of course –
je suis Charlie
, it had great recruitment value online, excellent propaganda.’

‘Yes, but do you remember the memorial events afterward?’

‘Yes,’ Younesi had said, unsure where his colleague was going with this. ‘I remember people were upset because Obama didn’t attend, even though . . .’ Younesi had started to smile, understanding for the first time. ‘Even though forty world leaders did.’

‘Exactly,’ his friend had said with a broad smile of his own. ‘
Exactly
. So there I was, sat at home watching the television, watching the march of solidarity, all those presidents and prime  ministers arm in arm down the Boulevard Voltaire, and I remember thinking
what if . . . what if . . .
’

‘Yes,’ Younesi said, imagining it himself now, realizing what a missed opportunity it had been, if only there had been some better planning, some more long-term thinking.

‘You know what I mean, right? They were all right there in one place, what better target could there ever be? I was watching it, hoping for something to happen,
wishing
for it . . . But nothing ever did. But it gave me the idea, you know, that if someone
was
willing to plan ahead, then they could orchestrate the terrorist event of the century, the big one to trump them all.’

‘Yes,’ Younesi had repeated, deep in thought. ‘Yes . . .’

‘Of course,’ the man had continued, ‘it would necessitate two attacks, two teams, preferably ones who would know nothing about the other.’

‘Of course,’ Younesi had said automatically, nodding his head. ‘The first just a decoy, a feint, before the real thing.’

He could already see the beauty of it. Most events that brought together leaders from around the world – UN debates, Olympic Games finals, G8 meetings – were planned months, if not years, in advance, and security was fully embedded. A memorial event for an unexpected terrorist attack would be something that would be arranged quickly, on the fly, and it would be impossible to protect it to the same standards.

‘Yes,’ the man had said, ‘but whoever did this would need to ensure that the first attack – although not against the actual target – would be something truly horrific, something to really get the public pissed off, something so sickening that there would be no major Western leader who would be willing to miss the memorial parade which would surely be arranged soon after.’

‘The second group would have to be in the selected city already, ready to go.’

‘Of course, as there would be no way to know how long it would be until such a parade was arranged. A few days at most, I would suspect.’

‘But which city?’ Younesi had wondered. As commander of the Office of Europe, it would have to be something within his sphere of influence. ‘Paris again?’

The man had shaken his head. ‘Not sure if it would work again in the same place, probably wouldn’t get the same level of response. They’ve been through it before. Someplace new would be better, I think.’

‘Yes,’ Younesi had agreed. ‘And if the American president is to attend this time, then perhaps a country with solid ties to the US, even . . . a ‘special relationship’?’

‘London?’ the man had said, thinking for several moments before smiling widely again. ‘That sounds perfect.’

And that was the way it had been, just a suggestion from a colleague that had set Younesi off on months of planning, and not a little soul-searching.

What action could possibly be so horrific that international outcry would be guaranteed? That would bring leaders to London from all over the world? The first word that had come into his mind was ‘children’, but he had crossed it out automatically.

But as he had gone through the alternatives, there was nothing to really beat it for psychological impact, and the word kept on coming back to him, sometimes keeping him awake at night.

Indeed, sometimes he would leave his sleeping wife in her bed and stroll down the hallway of his home to look in on his own children, sleeping so innocently and peacefully. Were children not the same all over the world? Did Western children not deserve the same protection as his own?

But it was not his job to protect Western children. Innocent of the crimes of adults they might well be, but they would one day grow into those adults, to serve the Great Satan – and he knew all too well that it was a policy of the West to destroy his beloved Islamic Republic, to spread the evil doctrine of all-out capitalism to the four corners of the world. They wouldn’t be happy until Iran was just another consumer of American products, its people slaves to the faithless corporations that ran that corrupt nation, the nation that all other western states followed like puppies.

Empty and vacant. Idolatrous and greedy.

Evil
.

Evil, and a threat to his own country – and therefore a threat to his own children.

And so it was that he had justified his choice and – over the months that followed – come to see it as the only option he had, the only one that made sense. It was, he had decided, completely in accordance with
velayat faqih
, the specific belief system of the Islamic Republic – and so, plans at last finished, he had approached the director of the Second Directorate.

The man had been appalled but impressed; and yet he hadn’t been entirely sure. What if Iranian involvement was discovered? Wouldn’t all-out war with Britain and her allies – including the United States – be the likely result?

But Younesi had told him that discovery was almost an impossibility, that he was experienced in these proxy operations and was an expert in keeping things secure.

Added to which, he’d added, attacking Iran wasn’t quite as easy as attacking Iraq had been. Her armed forces were far larger and more professional, the land itself far larger and harder to maneuver across; and then there was the question of Iran’s nuclear program. Did she or didn’t she have access to such weapons? Despite all their efforts, western intelligence still didn’t know.

But the answer was ‘yes’, if only in small amounts – and it would be enough to stay the West’s hand, if this knowledge was finally made public.

Satisfied, the director went to the Minister of Intelligence and Security, who put the matter before the Supreme Leader for final authorization.

Younesi remembered how nervous he had felt, the excitement that had followed when he had finally been told to go ahead with the plan.