John Weisman - Direct Action

When the waiter withdrew, Tom repeated the question. In response, Shahristani merely shrugged. Tom pressed him. “You gave no specifics?”

“You know how careful I am on the telephone, Thomas.”

Shahram was both prudent and circumspect on the telephone. Tom tapped his shirt pocket where he’d slipped the photos. “Who has seen these photos, Shahram?”

“Not so many people.” Shahristani read the expression on Tom’s face. “You and I, Tom, and the people who first passed the information on to me.”

“And whomever you talked to at the embassy.”

Shahristani shrugged. “I never got past your former employer’s gate-keeper.”

“Who was?”

The Iranian shrugged the question off. “Still, I can see why Langley would be…reticent. Langley completely bungled all the preinvasion intelligence on Iraq. Ever since, it has badly misjudged the situation on the ground there. Then there’s the global war on terror. CIA’s operational resources are stretched thinner than a crêpe. Don’t you think Tehran and al-Qa’ida understand that if there’s a major terror campaign this winter, there’s a good chance Langley will implode under the operational stress?”

Tom Stafford’s expression never changed. But Shahram was practicing tradecraft again. Shifting the subject. He was evading, deflecting, sidestepping. It was a common technique when agents didn’t want to fabricate outright, but were reluctant to continue about a specific matter. Shahram was a canny individual. He’d shifted subjects by telling the truth: CIA had long suffered operational stress fractures. In its present state, Langley was incapable of fighting the multifronted war it was being asked-no, ordered -to fight.

The Iranian leaned forward. “The doves have taken over CIA’s analytic side. They’re all globalists these days-Europhiles. The last thing anyone at CIA wants to know is that Tehran-which Langley’s National Intelligence Estimates have long maintained wants a dialogue with the West-is about to ally itself with an assassin working for al-Qa’ida.”

Shahristani took his fork, stabbed at the salad, and waved the forkful of greens in Tom’s direction. “But that’s what’s happened. Gaza was a joint Seppah-al-Qa’ida job. Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said are working together, and CIA covers its eyes and plugs its ears. Full stop, Thomas. End of story.”

Tom wasn’t about to let Shahram off the hook. “The embassy, Shahram. What happened when you called the embassy?”

“Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said in the same photograph, Tom.” The Iranian filled his mouth, chewed, swallowed, then laid the fork tines-down on the rim of his plate. “I see your face. You know I’m right.”

2:12P.M. “Let’s walk the lunch off.” Shahram shrugged into his overcoat, draped the long scarf around his neck in the European fashion, and pulled on his gloves while Tom said his good-byes to Monsieur Marie and Jeff then grabbed his own coat from the antique rack next to the front window.

The two men emerged through the narrow glass-paned door into a gray Paris afternoon. Tom glanced up at fast-moving slate-colored clouds that threatened rain and hunched his shoulders against the bone-chilling wind. Shahram didn’t seem to notice. He gave an offhand wave to the two DST agents sitting in a haze of cigarette smoke inside a silver Peugeot parked across the street.

“You have your shadows with you today.”

“They were waiting for me at the airport this morning.”

“Oh? Any reason?” Tom remembered the urgency in Shahram’s tone the previous night. And at lunch, his demeanor had been both intense and unsettled, anomalous behavior for the Iranian.

Once again, Shahristani deflected the question. “Henri and Jean-Claude. Good kids. Henri’s the one behind the wheel. He has twins.”

Tom caught a quick glimpse of the pair. They were kids, too-twentysomethings who wore mustaches so they’d look older-dressed in the wide-lapel, double-breasted retro chalk-stripe suits that were just now coming back into fashion. A couple of baby-faced gumshoes trying to look like Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon .

But they were no doubt well trained. DST’s Paris agents were some of the best operators in the world when it came to surveillance. In fact, CIA insisted that case officers heading for Paris take the denied-area-operations course-the same six-week course designed for spooks going to Moscow and Beijing. That was because DST was better equipped, more sophisticated, and much more highly motivated than the Soviets or the Chinese had ever been.

“Come.” Shahram put his right arm through Tom’s left and steered the younger man by the elbow along the busy sidewalk toward the Place des Ternes. Shahram pointed past the garish facade and rolled-up red awning of Hippopotamus, a branch of the American cum Parisian steak-and-frites chain that sat on the far side of the Faubourg du St. Honoré. “We’ll walk as far as Étoile. We’ll take our lives in our hands and cross above ground, then go down Victor Hugo as far as Boutique 22. I will buy you a cigar and myself a carton of cigarettes. Then I will go straight home for a nap and you will be free to write your report.”

Tom’s mind was racing. He didn’t want a cigar or a twenty-minute stroll. He wanted to go straight back to the five-story, nineteenth-century town house at 223 rue du Faubourg St. Honoré that was 4627’s European headquarters, scan the picture Shahram had given him into the computer, and start the process of verifying the Iranian’s claims. If Shahram’s information proved valid, Tom wanted to move the information about Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said right now . And the explosives. Air France flights to Tel Aviv were subject to extraordinary security measures. If Ben Said’s new formula for plastique could escape detection at de Gaulle, it truly was invisible.

The threat was unprecedented. In the 1990s, Ramzi Yousef, who’d been responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had devised a plan to blow up a dozen American airliners at the same time. If Ben Said’s plastique was undetectable, al-Qa’ida could bring down God knows how many flights simultaneously.

Tom said, “Hold on just a sec, Shahram.” He reached into his pocket, took the cell phone, and punched a number into it. “Tony, it’s Tom. Where are you?” He paused. “Can you get away? Meet me back in the office in”-he looked over at Shahristani and shrugged-“fifteen minutes. It’s critical.”

Shahristani said, “Half an hour, Tom-we must walk farther.”

Tom didn’t want any delay. Because what he’d just learned was more than critical. It was personal. Personal, because Tom felt he owed something to Jim McGee. Jim McGee, the disposable who’d volunteered to put his butt on the line without backup and paid the price. McGee’s murder deserved to be avenged-and in a timely fashion.

He looked into the Iranian’s sad eyes and sighed. This was Shahram, and certain…proprieties had to be observed. It was all about tradition, and respect. So he said, “I’ll see you in half an hour, Tony,” shut the phone down, slipped it back into his coat, and allowed himself to be guided by the older man.

They marched in slow, deliberate lockstep toward the square. As the two of them ambled past the entrance to the huge Brasserie Lorraine, which took up most of the northeastern side of the irregularly shaped place, Tom suddenly caught the scent of the sea wafting past his nose. He glanced over at the brasserie. Crates filled with oysters, shrimp, crabs, and lobsters all packed in ice and cradled by seaweed were piled against the restaurant’s wall. One of the brasserie’s countermen was shucking large, green-tinged Marennes and placing them on a three-tiered server.