John Weisman - Direct Action

“What was the Iranian’s reaction?”

Margolis tapped his fingertips together. He cocked his head in Tom’s direction. “Reaction?”

“When he got the envelope.”

Margolis pondered the question. Tom could see the gears in the kid’s head engaging. Margolis’s face screwed up. He bit his lower lip. “I dunno, he…he just kind of gave me this strange look-he stared at me. And he stared at Harry Z, and then he slipped the envelope into his pocket. Never looked inside. And he said, ‘Au revoir,’ and I escorted him down to the gatehouse.”

“That was it?”

“Yup. Never said another word.” Margolis paused while Tom emptied the last of the Bourgueil into the kid’s glass. “But the look on his face. It was…strange, Tom.”

“Describe his expression if you can.”

The kid thought for about half a minute. “He was…kaleidoscopic. His face went from, like, bewilderment-no, it was darker than that. Bemusement. To…resignation, and then he looked at both of us with this incredible, smoldering contempt. It was amazing, actually.”

Of course it was. Shahram had realized at that instant he was a dead man walking. Tom had seen the amount of static surveillance around the embassy. On a Sunday morning the watchers could be anyone: dog walkers, trysting lovers, tourists, joggers, or bored cabdrivers. The French, the Arabs, the Israelis, al-Qa’ida-they’d all be there. Some would have video. Shahram had probably gone straight back to Cap d’Antibes-until he’d reached Tom and confirmed the lunch at Gourmets des Ternes. No wonder DST had had a team waiting at the airport.

Obviously, Shahram had understood-he was a professional after all-that he’d been set up. He’d had to realize, when Harry handed him the envelope right in front of all that static surveillance, that someone at Langley wanted him targeted.

But why? Maybe because Shahram knew how deaf, dumb, and blind CIA really was. Or maybe because he knew about Imad Mugniyah and the Palestinians running joint ops. Or perhaps just because Shahram had screwed with Langley for two decades and the Langley bureaucracy was sick and tired of losing. And the look on Shahram’s face had said it all-except Adam Margolis had been oblivious.

Tom had seen a similar expression on the face of a man about to die once before. It was in a photograph that hung in Rudy’s cubicle back at 4627’s Washington offices.

One of the paramilitary agents Rudy’d run in the old days was a Cuban-American B-contract named Felix Rodriguez. Felix was a Bay of Pigs veteran who’d been fighting Castro since 1959. In 1967, when he was twenty-six, CIA dispatched him to Bolivia to help capture Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Felix did his job well. On October 8, 1967, acting largely on information Felix had developed, Bolivian forces captured Che. On the ninth, Felix flew to the tiny village of La Higuera to debrief the legendary Marxist guerrilla and terrorist.

There is only one photograph of Che alive on that day. It was taken with Felix’s camera. He and Che are standing, surrounded by Bolivian soldiers. The look on Che’s face tells you he knows he’s going to die. It is an expression that merges bemusement, resignation, and contempt. Tom had spent a lot of time staring at the photo, wondering what had gone through Che’s mind.

Now, remembering Shahram’s phone call, he had some idea. “I have an engaging story to tell you,” Shahram had said. “ Très provocateur. You will be fascinated. We must meet tomorrow. Must. I will not accept an excuse.”

But it hadn’t been Shahram’s coaxing words that had made Tom change his schedule. It had been the man’s urgent tone. But now that he thought about it, he understood that Shahram hadn’t projected urgency at all. He was signaling desperation- oougah, oougah, dive-dive-dive desperation. And Tom hadn’t caught it. He hadn’t. Not until now, goddamnit.

He fought his way back through the memory to focus on Adam Margolis. “Adam,” he said, “what did you do…with the tape?”

“I transcribed it, checked it, and handed everything to Harry Z.”

“Your notes, too?”

Margolis nodded. Tom remained silent, as if he was thinking. Finally, he said, “I think we can help fix things.”

“Fix what?”

“Your problem.”

“Problem?”

“Merde. Ventilateur.”

Margolis’s head bobbed up and down once. “Gotcha.”

So far so good. The kid hadn’t thrown his wine in Tom’s face. That meant he was approachable. Now Tom had to set the hook. He had to make sure Margolis thought of this as a team effort. “There are three small snips of information at the embassy. Once we’re sure about them, we can protect your back.”

“Which are?”

Tom’s gut was churning. Thank you, Jesus. Margolis just bought in. There’d been no “but-but-but.” No reticence. Just “Which are?” Tom knew his foot was in the door, so he wasted no time. “One, we need to know what Harry Z did with the information you passed him. Two, we need to know who got hold of him with the instructions about the Sunday-morning meeting. And three, we need to see a copy of the transcript you gave Harry Z.”

The kid emitted a low whistle. But he didn’t object to any part of Tom’s demands-either in body language or eye movement.

Margolis looked at Tom. “What time frame?”

He’d asked a specific question. The door cracked another inch. “Over the weekend in question. Harry called you on Saturday. Who messaged him?”

Margolis’s eyes went wide. “How do I find that out?”

“I’d check the message logs,” Tom said as matter-of-factly as he could.

“Message logs.”

“Right.”

“Where are they?”

“They’re in the administrator’s section of the SIPRNET.”

That caused Margolis’s first sign of vacillation. “They’re on the secure network?”

Reinforce. Support. Bolster. But don’t ask him to commit a crime. “It’s nothing you’re not cleared to do.”

“But…but it’s the secure net.”

“And you’re on it every day, aren’t you?”

Margolis shrugged. “Sure. But I’m not an administrator.” His eyes narrowed. “Who is the administrator?”

“If things work the same as they did when I was in Paris, Harry Z.”

“But he has a password. I don’t know it.”

“When I was in Paris, the administrator’s password was GUEST .”

“You’re kidding.”

“All caps, of course.”

“Jeezus,” Margolis said. “My SIPRNET password is ten characters long and alphanumeric, and if I didn’t have it written down on a card in my wallet, I’d never remember the damn thing.”

Tom smiled indulgently and made a mental note for Reuven to get hold of Margolis’s wallet at some point. Who knew what other jewels the kid kept on his person.

Margolis had no idea what was going on in Tom’s head. “Okay, I’ll try.” The kid’s mouth suddenly pruned up-like he’d licked a styptic pencil. “But what if they find out? They box me, you know.”

“Nobody’s going to ask you how many times you were on the secure network, Adam. You know as well as I do they’re more interested in unauthorized meetings with foreign nationals or your sex life.”

Margolis snorted. “As if I had one these days.”

Tom tried to be avuncular. “The message log is easy, Adam. Piece of cake.” He paused. “Now, as to what Harry did, it’s all a matter of checking his out-box.” He paused. The kid wasn’t being balky, so he pressed on. “And as for the transcript, does Harry still take those afternoon breaks?”

“You know about them, too, eh?” Margolis’s lips curled disparagingly. “Every damn day.”