John Weisman - Direct Action

“As I recall, Harry’s habit is to go to lunch, come back to the office, then leave again at about three for an hour or so.”

Margolis’s slight nod confirmed to Tom that the pattern hadn’t changed. Tom winked roguishly at Margolis. “He just about always forgets to lock his safe, y’know.” He caught Margolis’s sudden smile. “Nuff said?”

“Gotcha.” Margolis scrunched his chair closer to the table. The kid nodded and leaned forward conspiratorially. “When do we need the poop?”

Tom kept a straight face. “By the weekend, Adam. You’re going to be a busy guy tomorrow. You may even have to work late.” He paused and watched the kid drain the wine. “Don’t worry-it’ll all go smoothly. I’ll come out to your place Saturday morning and we’ll go over the stuff then.” He caught the look on the kid’s face. “Don’t worry-I’ll be clean.” He gave Margolis a reassuring smile. “What’s your cell-phone number?”

“Zero six, twenty-four, sixty-six, fourteen, eighty-two.”

“I’ll ring you if there’s any kind of hiccup.”

“Is there anywhere I can contact you?”

“You can leave me a voice mail at 4627.” Tom recited the number.

“Got it.” Margolis checked his watch, scraped his chair away from the table, and retrieved his yellow pad. He stood up, brushing crumbs from his suit as he did. “Gotta be going. Got a train to catch.”

“Have a safe trip.” Tom cocked his head at the younger man. “See you Saturday.” He paused, then said, “How’s eleven o’clock?”

The kid nodded and backed away from the table.

“You be waiting outside. I’ll drive by and pick you up. We’ll go someplace nice for lunch.” Tom was gratified to receive a circled thumb-and-forefinger okay sign.

6:24P.M. Tom watched Margolis go, fighting an uncharacteristic inclination to kick the kid’s ass into next week. He just didn’t get it. The meeting had been a setup. Shahram had told them there’d be an attack in Israel sometime in the next week to ten days. That had to be Gaza. Langley had done nothing-and Jim McGee had died. In fact, instead of checking on Shahram’s information-which was on tape, according to Margolis-someone at Langley decided to paint a huge target on the Iranian’s back, then step back and see what happened next. If nothing happened, then Shahristani was fabricating. And if Shahristani was murdered, then maybe his claims were worth following up.

Jeezus. And Adam Margolis and his boss, Harry Z-disposables who’d take the fall if Shahram was, in fact, murdered and the decision to dangle him was traced back to Langley-were the guys with the cans of Krylon.

It wasn’t the first time a potentially valuable source had been screwed in that fashion. Tom remembered a 1988 case in Damascus that was equally appalling. There’d been a walk-in-a Lebanese Shia calling himself Hassan-who came to the embassy gates and asked to speak to an American diplomat.

He’d been met by an energetic young case officer named Bryan V. OFUTT 29and ushered into the ground-floor debriefing room. Hassan claimed to know where three of the hostages who’d been captured by Islamic Jihad in Beirut were currently imprisoned. When OFUTT pressed for details, it became apparent to the case officer that Hassan was the real thing. Hassan knew, for example, the precise medicines being taken by one of the non-American hostages, an Indian engineer. He described in detail the appearance of Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, an American priest who’d been kidnapped by Imad Mugniyah in January 1985.

Most important, Hassan not only told OFUTT precisely in which building of the Sheikh Abdallah barracks compound in Lebanon’s Bekáa Valley the hostages were being held, he also knew that their captors were not Hezbollah guerrillas but, in fact, Iranians. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops-the Seppah-e Pasdaran.

OFUTT slipped Hassan about twenty dollars in Syrian dinars and told him to wait. He went upstairs to the embassy’s second floor, punched a combination into the cipher lock on the heavy door to the CIA station, and reported what the Lebanese had told him to his boss, Martin J. POTTER, 30the station chief.

POTTER was a wreck of a man. Alcoholic, thrice divorced, and afraid of being up-and-outed, his instinctual reaction was to do nothing. But OFUTT was adamant-American lives might be at stake. And so POTTER used the secure phone and called Langley. The NE desk duty officer put POTTER on hold while he ran the message up the chain of command.

The CIA’s director at the time was Judge William H. Webster. Webster was known inside the DO as the Stealth DCI because of his judicially cautious disinclination to sign off on high-risk recruitments or operations. When asked what to do about Hassan, the DCI delegated the decision to his executive assistant, whom he’d brought from the FBI. The whole operation looked like a risky scheme to the G-man. And so, the seventh floor punted, tossing the decision back to NE Division.

But the NE Division chief and his deputy were both on vacation, and the deputy’s deputy was taking two weeks of paternity leave. And so the determination on how to handle Hassan fell to the deputy deputy’s assistant, a deskman pseudonymed Alfred F. PARDIGGLE. PARDIGGLE was a former reports officer who had been elevated to the DO under DCI Robert Gates’s “cross-fertilization” program. He had no real-world operational experience. But PARDIGGLE did have a long-term fascination with popular espionage fiction.

And so what did PARDIGGLE do? He instructed Damascus station to hold off on any action until it had polygraphed Hassan. That instruction was pretty much by-the-book. But then PARDIGGLE decided to get cute. If the lie detector showed no deception, he cabled POTTER, the station chief was to dangle the Lebanese and see who nibbled at him.

PARDIGGLE had read about the dangle technique. Precisely where, he couldn’t quite remember. Was it Clancy? Ludlum? Westlake? Freemantle? Deighton? Whatever. Point was, it had worked. On the page.

OFUTT protested strenuously. Even if Hassan’s claims weren’t true, Langley was putting the man in harm’s way. The first rule of case-officerdom, he told his boss, was that you don’t screw your agents. Cable PARDIGGLE, said OFUTT, and tell him to shove it.

POTTER, however, was in no mood to contradict the suits at Langley. The closest polygrapher was in Cairo and he had a day’s work left before he could head for Damascus. So Hassan was bundled out the back door but told to return Saturday morning. The polygraph would be held at the Damascus consulate, located a block and a half from the main embassy.

At 9A.M. on Saturday morning, the polygrapher and his portable poly-graph, along with POTTER and OFUTT, who carried yellow legal pads and a tape recorder, all marched hup-two, hup-two from the embassy gates down the street to the consulate-which of course was closed.

POTTER unlocked the door and the Americans disappeared inside.

Half an hour later, Hassan made his way to the thick front door, rapped on it, and was admitted. None of this, of course, was lost on the Syrian Mukhabarat 31teams that kept both the consulate and the embassy under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Hassan emerged from the consulate an hour and a half later. Right there, in the doorway, POTTER pulled a white envelope out of his jacket pocket, displayed a thick wad of cash, and handed the envelope to Hassan. The Lebanese self-consciously jammed the money into his trousers then scampered off-right into the waiting arms of the Mukhabarat, who wanted to know why someone was meeting with American diplomats on a day when the embassy was closed.

Given their interrogation methods, it didn’t take the Syrians long to discover who Hassan was-and what he’d told CIA. Their reaction-which OFUTT discovered six months later-was to bundle Hassan into the trunk of a car and deliver him bound and gagged to Imad Mugniyah, who tortured the unfortunate Lebanese for three days, then finally dispatched him with a bullet to the brain.