The Counterfeit Agent (20 page)

Wells hung up.

—

Insult to injury, the hotels near the airport were sold out. Wells backtracked halfway to downtown before he found an empty room. Flight schedules showed the shortest route to Phuket was almost thirty hours. If the hunch was wrong, he’d lose another thirty getting back.

But Phuket was their only lead. So Wells booked the ticket: Korean Air, Houston-L.A.-Seoul. Then a small break, straight to Phuket without a stop in Bangkok. It was three a.m. when he closed his eyes, a wake-up call not even four hours away.

He thought of Anne. At this point, he wasn’t sure how many days were left in her countdown. Twenty-four? Whatever the answer, his uncertainty was not promising. Was she sleeping now in their bed, Tonka beside her, the two of them snoring? Anne didn’t believe him when he told her she snored. But she did, especially after a long day at work. Or maybe she was awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering what Wells would do.

No. He’d vote for sleep. She had written him off already. She’d given him the thirty days to come to terms with the truth. But he wasn’t ready for the truth yet. Maybe he’d walk away. Maybe this would be his last ride before he sailed off with Crockett and Tubbs into the sunset . . . His consciousness was dissolving sweet as sugar in water . . . an ageless retirement . . .

Ageless?

Wells sat up. Reached for his phone. Changed his mind, decided to let Shafer sleep. Then changed it again. Shafer had woken him enough times.
He was almost disappointed when Shafer picked up on the second ring.

“Better be important.”

“I wake you?”

“Dummy. My wife.”

“Sorry. I know why the NSA recognition software can’t find him. And why he went to Thailand.”

“Do tell.”

“Plastic surgery.”

—

Facial-recognition software didn’t exactly
look
at faces, as a person would. It compared the dimensions of various facial features that conventional disguise could not change. Those included the eye sockets, the jawline, the distance between the bottom of the nose and the upper lip. At any time, NSA looked for a few hundred people around the world, and pulled down tens of billions of digital images each day. Not just from obvious places like cameras on federal buildings and airport immigration control. From pictures uploaded to Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and other photo-sharing sites. Feeds from satellites and drones.

The matching required massive processing power. The images came in every conceivable size, shape, and resolution. Some included a single face, others had dozens or hundreds. Some shots were head-on, others angled. As a first step, the agency’s software digitally rewrote them to approximate a standard passport photo, the base-case image. The process was known as rendering, but many photos couldn’t be rendered. Their resolution was too poor, or they didn’t contain anything that the software recognized as a face. Those were thrown into the digital equivalent of cold storage, though no photo was discarded for at least six months.

After the rendering process was complete, another software algorithm examined the images to determine the dimensions of the “unique signifiers”—the facial features that determined identity. It matched those against the targets in its database. Billions of images, dozens of parameters, and hundreds of targets translated into trillions of comparisons a day. Adding to the complexity of the problem, the matching software needed to account for the errors that rendering inevitably introduced. Comparing two original passport photos was easy enough. Those were taken in standard sizes everywhere in the world, precisely to make identifications easy. Matching a man wearing a hat in a crowd in Times Square to a cell-phone shot taken covertly at a madrassa was far harder. But the software got more sophisticated every year.

If enough variables matched, the software alerted a human analyst. It sent him the surveillance images, the original image or images of the suspect, and the rendered standardized versions. The analyst looked over the photos himself to decide if the software had found a true match. Most of the time, it hadn’t. And because the software compared so many images, NSA had to calibrate the parameters for a match carefully. Allowing too wide a margin of error would waste analysts’ time. Setting it too tight might miss a match.

After a back-and-forth that reached the agency’s highest levels, NSA kept the criteria strict. The agency considered the possibility that a high-level terrorist might have plastic surgery to remake his face but dismissed it as impractical. An operation would require tens of thousands of dollars and weeks of recovery time. In the four-thousand-mile hot belt that stretched from Algeria to Pakistan, only a handful of hospitals and surgeons had the skills to handle such a makeover, mainly in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. The
mukhabarat
in those countries had already told those doctors that if anyone . . . problematic . . . appeared at their clinics they should inform the authorities. Otherwise they would risk being considered supporters of terrorism, with tragic consequences. The warnings seemed to settle the issue.

No one had considered that a terrorist might have surgery
before
he was a target, to give himself a new identity in this age of surveillance.

—

“Plastic surgery,” Shafer said now. “Like that movie with Travolta and Nicolas Cage.”

“If he had his cheeks and eyes and nose and chin done—”

“It would hurt. Cutting open his cheekbones and all the rest. And he’d look weird. Like one of those actresses who seems younger at fifty than thirty.”

“But it would work.”

“I’ll talk to people who know how the algorithms work. But I suppose.”

“For the right price, he could find a clinic that would do anything he wanted—”

“I get it.”

“Being a jerk because you’re sorry you didn’t think of it.” Wells hung up. He tried to sleep but couldn’t. Instead, he spent the hours until morning trawling the Internet for Thai plastic-surgery clinics. He had close to a hundred names by the time he was finished, and no idea how he would convince their doctors to talk. Still, at least he had a theory now, a lead to chase. He was smiling as he boarded his flight to Los Angeles.

ISTANBUL

T
he first cable reporting the attack arrived at 8:34 a.m. local time, as Brian Taylor sat down at his desk with his morning coffee. Within an hour, the calls from Langley started. Taylor spent the next twenty-one hours sitting beside Martha Hunt in the station’s coms room, answering questions about Reza from the many desks that could stake a claim to handling the Iranian.

Near East had geographical standing, along with a list of twenty-two questions for Taylor to run by Reza about the structure of the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force. Counterterror had a say because of the Hezbollah connection, and fourteen questions of its own. Counterintelligence insisted that Taylor
at least get his real name
, those last six words spoken in incredulity. Like Taylor hadn’t realized the man’s identity might matter. Special Operations Group made a pitch to snatch Reza.
Guy popped up months ago. Time to resolve the uncertainty, debrief him whether he likes it or not.
Taylor and Hunt pointed out that kidnapping an agent wouldn’t do much to help his loyalty, and for now that plan was off the table.
I’ll talk to him,
Taylor said.

Too bad he couldn’t. Not unless Reza called. Standard rules of tradecraft simply did not apply in this case. Reza was the worst agent Taylor had ever run, and the best. He wondered if Reza might be a Revolutionary Guard plant. After all, Reza had given up just enough details about the attack on Veder to prove his bona fides, but not enough to stop it. But why would Iran risk the anger of the United States by killing a station chief and then leaking its responsibility? An Iranian exile group was another possibility, but Taylor didn’t believe any of them had the skill for an operation this large and complex.

So when the section chiefs asked Taylor what he thought, he told them the truth. He believed in Reza. Even the holes in his story could be viewed as proof of his authenticity. If the Revolutionary Guard were dangling Reza as a provocation, he would have handled himself more slickly, given Taylor enough details for the agency to confirm his identity. On the other hand, if Reza had chosen to betray a brutal regime . . . and was paranoid by nature and training . . . and was operating alone . . . he might well choose to keep his identity secret even from his case officer. For a while, anyway.

At 5:30 a.m. the morning after the attack, Hunt told the masters at Langley that she and Taylor needed to sleep.
We still have questions,
one of the suits said. Hunt nodded, turned off the screen.

“Let’s go home.”

“You’re tops. I think I’m in love.”

Hunt opened the soundproof steel door that separated the coms room from the rest of the station. “Take a nap, a shower. I’ll see you at nine.” Taylor staggered up, trailed after her.

In the hallway outside, she turned. “Do you believe in him, or have you just argued yourself into it?”

His head felt like it weighed five hundred pounds. “He’s told us about two different attacks.”

“You’ve met him once.”

She was right. He didn’t have enough evidence to judge Reza either way.

“You need to see him again.”

“Think I don’t know that?”

—

Two hours later, Reza called.

Over the next two days, Taylor reviewed surveillance footage from the dozens of cameras around the Galata Bridge plaza. But the cams had poor resolution in the weak morning light. Taylor spotted a man who might have been Reza, but the Iranian’s disguise of hood, cap, and glasses was surprisingly effective. The photos were of little use.

Reza’s parting words to Taylor, the promise of more information, sent the agency into a fever. SOG moved a six-man team from Warsaw to Istanbul, with orders to stay as long as necessary to get photos of Reza—though history suggested he might not pop up for months. The team was very experienced, all ex–Special Forces, two Deltas and four Rangers. Unfortunately, their experience had come in Afghanistan, Iraq, and more recently Yemen. None spoke Turkish. In fact, only one had ever visited Istanbul. Taylor feared that they wanted an excuse to snatch Reza, though SOG had promised that they were tasked with surveillance only.

To balance out the paramilitaries, Near East desk moved two case officers from Langley. They spoke Turkish and had worked Istanbul before. With the entire Istanbul station, plus the two backups, plus the SOG team ready to scramble, Taylor figured they would get at least a clear photo of him next time he made contact.

He was wrong.

—

The call came on his landline around two a.m. on a Monday morning, eleven days after the hit on Veder. Taylor was stretched on his couch. He didn’t remember falling asleep. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, wondered who at Langley had a question that couldn’t wait.

“Good evening.” In Farsi.

“Reza?”

“I’m outside.”

They hadn’t figured Reza would call on Veder’s Turkish landline. It was taped but not monitored in real time like the mobile. No doubt NSA would fix that oversight tomorrow. Meantime, Reza had again outsmarted Taylor and everyone else. Or else someone inside was helping him. Taylor knew he was getting paranoid, but the guy never made a mistake. Nobody was that lucky.

“How did you get my number?” Stalling. Taylor’s phone sat on the kitchen counter. He needed to grab it, text his backup.

“Be downstairs in two minutes. No surveillance. Leave your phone. If you try to have me followed—”

“You’ll disappear and I’ll never see you again.” When Langley reviewed the call, his petulance wouldn’t earn high marks, but getting outplayed over and over was grating.

“Walk south on Türkgücü. And wear heavy shoes.”

“How will I—”

“It’ll be obvious. Ninety seconds left.”
Click.

Heavy shoes? Taylor shrugged on a jeans and a sweatshirt. He couldn’t find boots, pulled on a pair of loafers instead. He reached for his phone and then gave up. The SOG guys were at a hotel north of Taksim. Close but not close enough. No way could they scramble in time. And they couldn’t trace him anyway. He couldn’t risk carrying his phone. It was big enough to be obvious even in a routine pat-down. He would be meeting Reza naked. Again.

He was on the street in just over two minutes. He jogged south. The night was cold and slick. He skidded on a patch of wet sidewalk, windmilled his arms, barely staying upright. He wished he’d taken a few extra seconds to find the boots. Would Reza have ditched him?

Maybe.

Two blocks south he saw the motorcycle, a sleek black Suzuki. The rider wore a helmet with a mirrored faceplate. Taylor was sure it was Reza. He ought to have been nervous, considering that motorcyclists had killed Veder. Instead he felt the same stupid excitement he’d had when he saw Daniel Craig at a restaurant in New York.

Reza flipped up his face shield. “You bring your phone, anything that can track us?”

“No.”

“All right. I will trust you.”

Words that made Taylor wish he’d texted his backups, brought the phone. “Of course.”

A helmet lay under elastic netting on the seat behind Reza. He offered it to Taylor. “You know how?”

Taylor hadn’t ridden a motorcycle since senior year at UMass, when a friend insisted on taking out his old Honda Nighthawk 750, skidded off a curve on Route 22, and cut himself in half on a speed limit sign. He searched for an objection that wouldn’t sound too lame.

“My shoes.”

That wasn’t it. Soon as the words left his mouth, Taylor wanted to smack himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand
Three Stooges
–style.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
When he wrote up this meeting for Langley, he wouldn’t be mentioning footwear of any kind.

—

Five minutes later, they were on the O-2 expressway, which functioned as the city’s ring road. Reza rode expertly, ignoring the rain-slick pavement, cutting through the light late-night traffic like a garrote wire. Taylor wondered if they were headed for the Sultan Mehmet Bridge and the Asian side of the Bosphorus. But Reza turned off well before. He piloted the bike northwest, into the heavily wooded hills that began almost at the outer edge of the expressway. The forest preserves stretched to the Black Sea, an abrupt and surprising contrast to the city’s concrete.

A few minutes later, Reza turned in to an unpaved parking area whose sign warned in Turkish and English: “No Overnight Parking.” At the edge of the forest, he cut the engine. Taylor pulled off his helmet, stood beside the bike. The night was silent aside from the spatter of rain on the motorcycle’s gas tank and a distant rush of expressway traffic. Taylor was suddenly very aware that he hadn’t brought his Sig. Reza could have planned an ambush with his Rev Guard comrades. They’d shoot him, drag him into the trees. His body might not be found for weeks.

Yet he didn’t feel frightened. He didn’t completely trust Reza, but he didn’t see the Iranian as violent. Sly, maddening, not a killer.

Reza nestled his helmet against his lap.

“Where’d you learn to ride like that?”

“I know Allah will protect me.”

The answer surprised Taylor. They’d never talked about religion, but he had assumed Reza wasn’t observant.

After a beat, Reza laughed.

“You should see your face. You think I believe that nonsense? Like some taxi driver with a sticker on his bumper? I have as much use for Allah as He has for me.”

“You enjoy making a fool of me.” Taylor needed to put himself in charge, but he had no idea how.

“You don’t like me, Mr. Brian.”

“I like you fine.”

“Maybe you want to
hit
me.”

“I need your name. You have no idea of the pressure I’m under, Reza.”
No.
Spies begged case officers, not the other way around.

“This way is safer for both of us.”

Taylor tried another tack. “Did you check your bank account?”

“I tell you this isn’t about money for me.”

“We can’t trust you if you don’t agree to a real debrief.”

“It’s your choice, whether you trust me. I don’t trust
you
. Every time I look around, you have another leak. Manning, Snowden.”

“That was the Army, NSA—”

“You think your place doesn’t?”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Reza?”

“What I say is, tell everyone I will not come in, I will not tell you my name. The end. Twice now I have given you enough to leave me hanging from a rope. That’s enough.”

“Maybe you still work for the Guard, Reza. Maybe they tell you what to say.”

“Insult me this way.” Reza started the Suzuki’s engine, rolled off.

Taylor ran after him, yelling
Stop, stop,
like a lovesick teenager who’d just been dumped. Reza turned onto the road, still helmetless. Taylor couldn’t do anything except watch him go. He didn’t even have a phone. His feet were raw in his loafers.

—

A few seconds later, the motorcycle turned around, puttered back into the lot. The most humiliating moment of Taylor’s career. Turned out this wouldn’t be the meeting where he established the proper officer-agent relationship.

Reza cut the engine. “I should have left, but I must tell you two things.”

“I’m listening.” Taylor said the words with all the dignity he could muster. Which wasn’t much.

“We’ve put a package on a ship to the United States.”

“A bomb?”

“Not bomb. Radioactive material. It’s a practice.”

“A test run.”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“Three weeks ago, I went over the mountains, back to Tehran. A friend of mine, good friend, engineer in the program, he says we’ve made enough uranium for ten bombs, and more every day.”

If what Reza said was true, he had just delivered a world-changing piece of intelligence.
Iran planned to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States.

“When you say ‘uranium’—”

“I mean what the scientists call
H-E-U
.” Reza sounded out each letter. “My friend told me that this has happened in only the last few months, they worked out some technical problem I couldn’t understand, now they make two, three kilos of it every day. He said they have so much that they don’t even keep it in the gas form anymore, they turn it into the metal. I don’t know what that means.”

“I don’t, either.” But Counterproliferation would. “So they’ve built a bomb.”

“Not yet. It’s a matter of the engineering, making the pieces fit. He thinks that’s still two or three months away, but he isn’t sure. That happens somewhere else.”

“Can we talk to him?”

“Not unless you get someone into Tehran, maybe not even then. They hardly let the scientists off the bases anymore. Never out of the country. Both so they don’t defect and the Israelis don’t kill them. Plus he has his own special problems with them.”

Then Taylor understood. Reza’s hatred of the regime. His obsession with secrecy. Even what he’d said a few minutes before,
I have as much use for Allah as He has for me.
“This friend of yours, this good friend—”

“What about him?”

Taylor knew that if he was wrong, or if Reza’s pride and whatever was left of his Muslim identity wouldn’t allow him to admit his sexuality, taking this route would infuriate him. In an ordinary recruitment, Taylor would work up to this moment over years. But he didn’t have months, much less years.

He decided to make the play. Obliquely.

“Is he married, this man? Does he have a family?”

“Why does that matter?”

“You tell me, Reza.”

“You’re a fool.” Reza couldn’t meet Taylor’s eyes.

“If his heart is in the West, if he’d like to leave the regime behind, come to a place where he can live more freely, even get married, maybe we can get him out.”

“It’s impossible.” Reza’s voice was low and angry, the sound of a man who hated himself for his own hope.

“Nothing’s impossible. Of course, for that we’d need his real name. And yours.”

“I will ask. Now leave it alone, Mr. Case Officer.” He thumbed the starter. The Suzuki came to life.

Taylor knew he’d pushed Reza to the limit. “Wait.”

“What now?”

“In all this you haven’t given me the details on the ship. Do you have a name?”