The Leveling

THE PRESIDENT SAT behind his desk in the Oval Office, listening to an audio file that had cost the US government $990,000—wired to an account in the Seychelles—to obtain. Seated before him, in wingback chairs, were the director of national intelligence, the secretary of defense, and Melissa Bates, the head of the CIA’s Persia House. As the tape played, Bates translated the Farsi to English.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The attack was scheduled to start within the hour. The file they were listening to had been e-mailed to the CIA a half hour earlier.

Khorasani suspects something.

Why do you say this?

The intelligence ministry is investigating Hashemi.

Melissa Bates hit Pause and said, “Hashemi is a top general in the Revolutionary Guard. He controls security for the nuclear facility at Natanz, and the Mossad has had a plant in his office for over a year now.” She started the tape again.

For what?

He purchased a new car. A Peugeot 405, and he paid in cash.

The fool.

He was told to wait to use the payments.

This is the problem with involving men like Hashemi.

But I had no choice. He was my only link to the Damascus katsa.

Bates said, “Here it gets complicated—a katsa is a Mossad operations officer, an Israeli spy. The one man the Mossad has in Damascus is legendary. He’s been operating undercover for over ten years there and was also the point man for collecting Israeli intelligence coming out of Iran, including intelligence that was coming out of Hashemi’s office. Bottom line, this appears to be evidence that the Iranians knew about the spy in Hashemi’s office and were using her to feed intelligence to the Mossad’s point man in Damascus.”

“Did the intel about Khorasani’s daughter and the Hezbollah connection come out of Hashemi’s office?” asked the president.

“It did.”

“So the Iranians were playing us. They uncovered the Mossad’s spy in Hashemi’s office, and rather than expose her they used her to feed us whatever intelligence they wanted.”

Instead of answering, Melissa Bates started the recorder up again.

Can the payments be traced to you?

I never communicated with him directly.

Shirazi—

“Deputy minister of intelligence,” interjected Melissa Bates. “And a top hard-liner.”

—can stall the investigation until the Americans act.

I received word that matériel was moved from Natanz and Fordo yesterday. And I confirmed that Khorasani’s daughter will remain hidden until she completes her religious studies. It will not matter how many spies the Americans and the Israelis send to Kish. They will learn nothing.

Khorasani will be in your debt.

Yes, but he must never—

The tape clicked off.

“We’ve long thought that Ayatollah Muhammad Bayat was the intellectual leader of the hard-line conservatives in Iran, and that he would welcome a confrontation with us,” said Melissa Bates. “If you listen closely to his sermons and read through the lines on some NSA intercepts, it’s not hard to conclude that he thinks Iran needs better external enemies so that Iran’s internal enemies can be silenced without fear of sparking a revolution. And he’s well aware of the fact that nuclear power is pretty popular with all Iranians, even those who hate the regime. My guess is that he was hoping that an attack on the nuclear program would rally people around the flag and breathe new life into the regime.”

“So he set about finding a way to provoke us,” said the president.

“What I think we’re learning right now is that Ayatollah Bayat and the Chinese teamed up to feed us false intelligence about Khorasani’s daughter being raped by the Israelis, and about Khorasani taking his revenge by giving a nuclear weapon to Hezbollah. And that Khorasani himself is clueless about it all.”

“You trust the source of these tapes?” asked the president.

“Not entirely,” said Bates. “They come from a woman who left the Agency eight months ago, and it wasn’t an amicable parting. But she claims, and we can confirm, that she’s been working with one of our former station chiefs, a guy named Mark Sava—and we do trust him. Three days ago he survived an assassination attempt in Baku, so the two of them are knee-deep in something.”

“You’ve spoken with Sava about the intel?”

“No. We haven’t been able to contact him. Our understanding is that he’s still in Iran. Apparently he gave her classified contact information for our Central Eurasian division chief, which is why we were able to get the intel so quickly. The other thing we can confirm is that one of the voices you just heard on that tape is without a doubt Ayatollah Bayat himself. He frequently delivers the Friday prayer service at Tehran University, so we know his voice. It’s a perfect match.”

The president considered the matter, but only for a moment. “Get me CENTCOM and the Israelis on the phone. We’ll stand down. For now.”





69


Two Days Later