The Peregrine Spy (9 page)

“Good man,” muttered Novak. “Some of these assholes, if they’ve seen you once they wave you through.”

They walked past the ambassador’s office with its State Department seal on heavy oak doors to another barred stairway with a digital security lock. Novak punched in the code and led Frank up a narrower stairway. Frank guessed the door ahead led to the communications room. Novak turned to their left and led Frank across a wide corridor to the bubble, a strange chamber that looked like a plastic beehive laid on its side. The transparent door, walls, ceiling, and floor; the glass chairs; and the glass-topped tables made it difficult to conceal a listening device. Rocky’s index finger tapped a final series of digits, and he pulled open the door.

Totally transparent, it looked so insubstantial Frank expected it to sway when he stepped inside, but the bubble was solid. He knew agency security officers swept its chairs and tables daily for bugs. Access was limited to the chief of station and anyone he wanted to talk to in absolute privacy. The bubble and the communications room, which handled all embassy communications but was staffed solely by CIA employees responsible to the chief of station, were the real measures of power in the embassy.

“Information is power,” Novak had told him under the bubble in Rome. “The ambassador has fancier rugs and drapes, but I control the information.”

Frank could hear and feel the whoosh of air as Novak pulled the clear plastic door shut behind them. “Sit your ass down,” said Novak. They pulled up chairs opposite each other at a small round table. A longer glass conference table stretched out behind Novak’s back. He adjusted his hearing aid and said, “Talk.”

“About?”

“You know what the fuck I want you to talk about.”

“About the major?”

“Talk, for chrissake.”

“How did you hear so fast?” Frank hesitated. He knew Novak well enough to realize he might be fishing, staging even the anger he’d expressed over the scramble phone to Troy. He regretted mentioning the major.

“Well, I thought he was gay was all.”

Novak scowled. “Who the fuck you thought was gay?”

“Major … I forget,” said Frank. “Whatever his name is.”

“Nazih?”

At least we’ve got the right major, thought Frank. “I … I’m not sure,” he said, “Something like that. I’ve got it in my notes.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Sullivan. He came from the palace. He knew about Ethiopia.”

“Oh. Okay,” said Frank. “Now I know what you mean.” He recounted Major Nazih’s questions about Ethiopia. “He seemed to think I was a lot more important there than I was.”

“Keep talking,” said Novak.

Frank knew that Novak, as a matter of operational policy, maintained a steady level of intimidating anger but that his anger was up a notch above normal when he made the effort to pronounce the final
g
on his gerunds, particularly on his obscene gerunds.

“Quit … fucking … stalling.”

“So I’m stalling. I’m trying to be sure I don’t forget anything.”

“Talk to me, Sullivan.”

“He said the Shah remembered me.”

“In front of the others?”

“Yes.”

“That’s just great. What else?”

“He said the Shah had been told about my being here by another of his uncles. An uncle at the palace. I’m not quite sure what kind of uncle he means.”

“Uncle, cousin, whatever. Some kind of fucking relative. Like that Jayface general.”

“Nazih may be his nephew,” said Frank, “but he’s also the general’s squeeze.”

“What?”

“His squeeze. That’s what I was trying to tell you. His popsie.”

“Popsie?”

“As in Popsicle. You know what a Popsicle looks like, right? Fruit flavored, right? Visualize it. Eating a Popsicle.”

“All right, enough. I got the picture. How do you know?”

“Well, they made it fairly clear. Nothing flaming, I mean. Just apparent. Eye contact that … well, lingers. Intonation. Merid’s whole manner changed as soon as the major waltzed in. Called him ‘my son,’ ‘my colleague.’” Frank’s voice went up half an octave, followed by his eyebrows. “‘My protégé, in a manner of speaking.’”

“I wonder about you, Sullivan. Your imitation’s too good.”

“Well, I passed my last poly a day or so ago. There was also some eye rolling behind their backs by the other guys.”

“And they’re both in the army?” said Novak.

“Hey, it’s a noble tradition. Remember your ancient Greeks? All those warriors in short skirts? You were in Athens, right? During the coup. Didn’t some of those colonels have their little lieutenants?”

“Maybe we can use this,” said Novak. “What else?”

“That’s about it. Except the last thing he said about it was what worried me the most.” He expected Novak to respond. Novak stared at him and said nothing. “Don’t you want me to keep talking?”

“Yeah, but I got a hunch I’m not gonna wanna hear what I’m gonna hear.”

“Well, the last thing he said, he talked about what happened after I left Ethiopia. The coup and all that. He said maybe they might have to keep me here forever. So what happened to Haile Selassie wouldn’t happen to the Shah.”

Novak nodded. “I knew I didn’t wanna hear it. Look, Langley sent me a cable on what you did with the Shah in Ethiopia. Spent some private time with him. Got some good reporting, but don’t get any ideas about seeing him while you’re here. The ambassador meets with the Shah. And from this shop the chief of station, and only the chief of station, meets with the Shah. Do you fucking understand me?”

“I understand,” said Frank.

“Any questions?”

Yeah, a couple of hundred, thought Frank, remembering Pete Howard’s instructions to take advantage of any opportunity to meet with the Shah.

“No,” he said. “But there is something else. The guy from the Imperial Guard, the Shah’s bodyguard squad, right? He wasn’t there.”

“And?”

“General Merid said he won’t be there. Ah, pressing other duties, right?”

“Keep talkin’.” Novak’s anger seemed to have ebbed. Frank hoped the worst was over.

“Well, Nazih gave us the idea the colonel from the Imperial Guard was tight with
Savak
.”

“And?”

“Well,” said Frank, “he wasn’t there.”

“And?”

“So you got a call from someone, right?”

Novak said nothing. His expression didn’t change.

“So we can figure the room is bugged, at least by
Savak.
Maybe the military. Not by us because if you had an agent with access to bug the place you wouldn’t need me and Gus and Bunker coming over here.”

“I fucking
don’t
need you and Gus and Bunker coming over here. You got a great imagination, Sullivan. You shoulda been a writer, a novelist. This is fucking fascinating. Keep talking,” he snapped.

Frank wished he hadn’t brought up the Imperial Guard and
Savak.

“So what my imagination tells me is that
Savak
has our meetings wired or someone else in our little nest is wired to
Savak.
But who?”

“Gee, Sullivan, I wish I could tell ya. I really do.”

“Okay,” said Frank. “Okay.” But he knew it wasn’t okay. As a spy, he expected others would spy on him. But he hadn’t expected that his chief of station would have Iranian assets spying on him.

“Look, Frank. I’ll level with you. You did a helluva job with the book club operation when you were in Rome. You screwed up one of my guys who worked with it, but maybe he had it comin’. I read everything in your 201 file before you got t’ Rome. All great shit. I read the update, in a hurry, before they threw you over here. More great shit. You’ve always been a little flaky, but that’s not your real problem. Your real problem is you get too involved. You got too fuckin’ involved in Ethiopia. You got too fuckin’ involved in Rome. Maybe gettin’ involved is a good thing, sometimes. Like in Ethiopia. But not here. You shouldn’t even be here, much less gettin’ too involved. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“As long as you’re here, just walk through it, okay? I’ll be honest with you. Once Bunker’s in place, I’m gonna ask NE to pull you outta here.”

I’m not here because of Near East, thought Frank. I’m here because of Covert Action. He said nothing. He didn’t want to give Novak a better idea of what strings to pull. He wanted to stay and get the job done.

After a long pause that he hoped looked thoughtful, Frank nodded and said, “Okay.” Then he asked, “How come?”

“You know how come. Now that all the shitfaces on Jayface think you’ve got a pipeline to the Shah, they won’t be telling you squat about what’s really on their minds.”

“Maybe it could work the other way around. Maybe some of them might figure I could be the only way they could get a message to the Shah. Not a whole lot of junior officers have access to the commander in chief.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” said Novak. “But mostly it makes you look like a palace fink. If Bunker was here I’d ship you out on the next plane, but that’s the other good news I got today.”

Frank smiled. “Talk to me.”

“Delayed,” said Novak. “Ten days. High-level briefings. Our pissant President wants a new National Intelligence Estimate with more military input. They’re working up a presidential finding, and they want Bunker up to speed on the requirements before he comes out here. So you’re gonna have to sweat it best you can, at least until Bunker gets here. But stay outta trouble. Don’t get too involved, and stay the fuck away from the palace.”

“I haven’t been invited,” said Frank.

“Keep it that way. Stick to the misfits they’ll have you locked up with at Jayface. God knows what you’ll find to talk about all day, since they won’t know squat about what’s going on, and for chrissake don’t stir up any trouble.”

Show the flag, thought Frank. And be a fly on the wall.

“And don’t get mixed up with anyone else at the Supreme Commander’s, because we do have a few assets up there, though God knows they aren’t worth much. Stay away from the embassy as much as possible, and let the rest of us do what we’re supposed to do. Got that?”

“Got it,” said Frank.

“And Sullivan, you’ve already been told what else to stay away from, right?”

“Right,” said Frank. Here comes Lermontov, he thought.

“I don’t know how blunt the Near East or South Asia or whatever the fuck they call that division these days laid it out, but I’m going to be very fucking blunt. For as long as it takes to get you shipped outta here, you’re gonna keep a very low profile. This town is crawling with journalists from all over the world who think they smell a civil war or some fucking disaster, and you and Simpson both have the good fortune to know a lot of journalists from all over the world, and the last fucking thing I need is to have any of them run into you and start asking around about what the fuck you’re doing here. To make it worse, one of the so-called journalists is that Lermontov thug who’s supposed to work for Tass. You two go back a long way together, right?”

“Yeah, we do.”

“All the way to Ethiopia where you got his ass PNG’d, right?”

“Right.”

“And he’s had a major league hard-on for you ever since, right?”

“No big deal,” said Frank. “Just he’s showed up a few places where I had an assignment.”

“Like Rome,” said Rocky. “Where he tried to recruit one of my assets. Like Beirut, where he tried to get you killed.”

Frank shrugged. “A lot of people got shot at in Beirut in those days, including our ambassador, and no one ever figured out who set that one up either.”

“Let me make this very fucking clear, Sullivan. You are to have no contact, I repeat, no fucking contact with this fucking Lermontov thug. Is that clear?”

“Clear,” said Frank. And clearly the opposite, he thought, of what Pete Howard had told him to do.

*   *   *

A tense, gray-haired secretary looked up from her desk as Frank followed Rocky into the ambassador’s outer office. Gus, already escorted upstairs by one of Rocky’s case officers, waited for them.

“He’s expecting you,” said the secretary, arcing her eyebrows from Novak to an imposing set of metal-covered doors.

Novak looked at his two charges and muttered, “Don’t mention it to the ambassador. What I said about the demonstration. I was just jokin’.”

*   *   *

Ambassador Cornelius O’Connor stood with his back to them, staring out through the ceiling-high rear windows overlooking lawns and pines and sycamore trees that stretched toward his residence and the rear gates of the embassy. Another emperor, thought Frank. But not master of all he surveys. The demonstration at the front gates was only a murmur that the ambassador couldn’t see from his spacious office. Frank could recognize the sound of a chant leader’s voice over a bull horn and a rhythmic crowd response that sounded like “uh-uh.” He could smell burning rubber, and from television news clips he’d watched he could imagine the scene. He tried to focus his attention on the small hands clasped behind the ambassador’s back.

“Mr. Ambassador.” O’Connor continued to stare out the rear windows. Novak fiddled with the knob on his hearing aid and tried again. “Your Excellency.”

“I hear you, Rocky. But God, this depresses me.” The ambassador turned to face them. The white hair, neatly cut, framed a ruddy, almost unlined face. If the hair had been dark, O’Connor would have looked very young, thought Frank, and very innocent. He was relatively short, not more than five-eight, Frank guessed. Like many short men, he tended to stand at his fullest height, legs and spine straight, chin slightly lifted. He walked around the desk, glanced at their badges, and extended a tiny hand, first to Gus, then to Frank. “Simpson … Sullivan. Welcome aboard.”

He motioned to a circle of plush chairs and a sofa that surrounded a low table of ornate teak. Frank and Gus sank into deep cushions on either end of the sofa. O’Connor settled into a stiff leather chair facing the sofa and the huge windows behind it. Frank noticed he sat ramrod straight, his delicate hands firmly propped on his knees. Novak eased himself into the remaining chair.

“The other one?”

“Fred Bunker. Not here yet,” said Novak. “Not till sometime next week. He’s scheduled in on Scandinavian Air from Paris. As of tomorrow, they’ll be the only ones still flying in.”