John Weisman - Direct Action

Tom watched the kid’s face metamorphose. Margolis stuck his lower lip out. “That pisses me off.”

Showtime. Tom looked at the younger man solicitously. “Maybe I can help.”

The youngster spread butter on a slice of baguette, topped it with two slices of sausage, and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. “How?”

“Look, I have- we have-really good contacts back at”-Tom leaned forward-“the home office. You realize that, right?”

Margolis nodded. He looked at Tom. “Y’know, I really think it was the money.” He chewed and swallowed. “Now that I think about it, Harry said the home office was very pissed about the money, but they thought the info might turn out to be pretty good.”

That was another revelation. Tom checked to see whether Margolis had any awareness of what he was saying. The kid’s eyes told him the answer was no. Tom took things up a notch. “Where did you meet the contact?”

“The Iranian? He came to the embassy.”

“When?”

“That was the strange thing. He called on Friday the tenth of October.”

“You’re sure of the date?”

“Positive.”

“When did he call?”

“Late in the day.”

“ When, Adam?”

The kid’s in vino veritas expression displayed confusion. “I told you. Late.” He caught the piqued look on Tom’s face. “Oh, when . After five. I spoke to him for a couple of minutes. He introduced himself. He told me he’d had dealings with us before. He said he had something big that-and he said this right on the open line-that he could lay his hands on…you know, the big guy. But it would cost us plenty. I knew I’d have to get back to him, of course. So I did everything by the book. I was noncommittal. I asked for a twenty-four-hour phone number and explained we’d be in touch.”

“Then?”

“I took my notes to Harry Z, dropped them off at about five forty-five, then I went home. Harry must have walked it up the ladder back at HQ because he called me Saturday afternoon. Told me to be standing on the front steps of the embassy on Sunday morning at eight forty-five, to have a pad and a tape recorder with me, and to talk to this guy under alias.”

“What alias were you to use?”

“Jeff Stone.”

The order sounded odd to Tom. CIA’s walk-in debriefing room on the embassy’s ground floor had audio recording capabilities, and he mentioned that fact to Margolis.

“Seemed strange to me, too. But Harry was very specific. He described the Iranian to me. I was to watch for him-that’s easy enough, given the maze of barriers we have out front-wait until he was admitted to the gatehouse, then pick him up, walk him into the embassy, and listen to what he had to say. I was to make absolutely no commitments then write a report and have it on Harry’s desk by nine Monday morning.”

Something wasn’t right. “When Harry called Saturday, what did he tell you about the contact?”

“Tell me?” Margolis blinked. “He described him physically, if that’s what you mean.”

“No-I mean what he said about who the guy was-his background, his past relationship with…where you work.”

“Harry?” The kid popped the last chunk of sausage into his mouth. “He didn’t say a thing.”

“And what checking did you do?”

“None. I told you-he called late on Friday and we close the office promptly at six. I was told to be at the embassy Sunday morning.” He looked at Tom. “I was operating blind.”

Close the office promptly at six ? Clock-punching spies? It was frigging inconceivable. Still, if this drivel was true, and Tom had no reason to believe he was getting a runaround because none of the kid’s body language suggested the faintest hint of deception, then Margolis was a bigger schmuck than Tom had thought and Shahram had been totally mishandled.

Even an idiot would have Googled Shahram’s name to see if anything came up. But Margolis had done nothing. Tom groaned inwardly but kept a poker face. “How did it play out?”

“Just like Harry said it would. I was a couple of minutes early. I waited. The Iranian was late-he showed up at nine, on the dot. I guess there’d been some misunderstanding about the time. I went down to the gatehouse, walked him in, we talked for about half an hour.”

“Did he bring any paper?”

Margolis shrugged. “Nope.”

“Nothing? Then how did he substantiate his claim?”

Margolis’s expression started to change and he crossed his arms.

Tom eased up. “You know what I’m saying-if a walk-in doesn’t offer a piece of paper…”

“…We’re always supposed to ask for something. Insist. I know that,” Margolis said peevishly. “But he claimed he wasn’t carrying any paper. He kept saying that within seventy-two hours after he got a down payment, he’d pass us a twenty-four-karat package.”

“Those were his words?”

“Uh-huh.”

Tom looked into Margolis’s eyes. “What did he tell you, Adam?”

Margolis blinked. “They orange-tabbed what he said, Tom. 28I don’t think I’m supposed to get into that. It would look bad on the polygraph.”

“Suppose I tell you, then. The Iranian told you there would be an attack somewhere in the Middle East within the next week to ten days.”

The astonished look on the kid’s face was confirmation enough. But Adam didn’t disappoint. “How did you know ? Who told you?”

Tom smiled, and deflected. “Remember-I have a lot of friends at your headquarters.”

The answer, of course, was that Tom hadn’t known. Not exactly. It had been a guess. But an educated guess. He’d gone over all the notes from his lunch with Shahram. Obviously, Shahram had put some of the puzzle pieces together. At lunch, he’d tied the Gaza bombing to the other two blasts. Which told Tom that Shahram had realized before October 15 that Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said were both in Israel and something nasty was imminent.

The question, of course, was that if CIA had the information, why had Langley not acted? Because it hadn’t. There had been no warnings sent to Tel Aviv-or anywhere else. There had been no proactive security measures taken. It was as if Langley hadn’t given a damn.

But Tom wasn’t sitting at Le Griffonnier to figure out what Langley had or hadn’t known-or to decipher the motives behind its negligent behavior. He wanted to know everything about Shahram Shahristani’s embassy meeting. Because that meeting was the key to everything that had followed.

IT WAS TIME TO STARTthe cold pitch. Tom looked into Adam’s eyes. “I told you I knew what the Iranian said.” He paused, his eyes entreating. “I need your help, Adam.”

Margolis’s voice took on a solicitous tone. “You were right on the money, Tom. He said he could provide the big guy on a platter. His words. Dead or alive. His words. He said he had information on other operations, but they’d cost us more.”

“That was all?”

“Like you said, he said one attack was imminent.”

“Did he say where?”

“He told me it would occur in Israel within the next week to ten days.”

“And what did you do?”

“I put it all on tape, just as I’d been ordered to. I took notes, too.”

“And?”

“And then it was finished. I told him we’d get back to him.”

“And you escorted him back to the gatehouse?”

“Yes. I’d just picked up my stuff and was ushering the Iranian down the front steps when Harry Z came charging through the lobby and called to us from the portico. That surprised me, because I didn’t even know he was in the building.”

Tom said nothing.

“Harry introduced himself to the Iranian-under alias, of course.” Margolis picked up his wineglass and drained it. “We all walked together down to the gatehouse. Just before we got there, Harry said he’d forgotten something upstairs, but he’d wanted to meet Shahram and thank him for his help. He gave Shahram an envelope. Said it wasn’t much, but he hoped it would compensate Shahram for his time, just in case the other thing didn’t work out.”