Under Fire Read online

“That’s not good enough.”

  Instead of answering, Ysabel asked her own question: “What were you doing at that building in the Zafaraniyeh district?”

  Jack was getting annoyed with the thrust-and-parry, but he decided it might break the stalemate. “I was meeting a man named Speidel.”

  Ysabel let out an exasperated sigh. “Spellman, Jack. Matt Spellman.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  “Seth was reporting to him.”

  Interesting that Seth had shared Spellman’s name with her; in the Spy Rings for Dummies manual, sharing a handler’s name was taboo. Why had Seth done it? Did she also know about Raymond Wellesley? He said, “Spellman thinks Seth has done a runner—along with a lot of money.”

  “He’s right about the former. The money I don’t know about.”

  Jack decided to gamble: “You were part of his network, weren’t you? An agent.” It was a logical guess; if Seth was reporting to Wellesley and Spellman, it suggested they were his handlers. Handlers handled agents. The fact that it was a direct conduit with no cutouts told Jack that Seth was overseeing the network. But what was he, an agent or a CIA operations officer? And what was the purpose of the network? Something to do with Iran? So many damn questions, Jack thought. He hated having to play catch-up.

  “Who were the men who took me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But I did get the van’s registration plate.” She closed her eyes for a moment, recalling, then recited it for him.

  “Could they have gotten yours?” Jack asked.

  “Doubtful. They were too busy diving for cover. Their plate might be useless to us, though—unless you want to ring Spellman.”

  “We’re not doing that. I might have a way.”

  “From your vast array of financial contacts?” Ysabel said with a smile.

  “Yep. I think it was an electrician’s van.”

  “It was. I caught a snippet from the placard on the side—Yazdi something. I’ll see what I can find.”

  Jack said, “You knew nothing about Seth’s Niavaran apartment? Or about the keys he gave you?”

  She shook her head. “As I said, I assumed they were both for Pardis. I’m just guessing, but maybe he thought I’d be able to track down his bolt-hole if things went bad—and if it was important enough.”

  This was plausible, Jack decided. By leaving Ysabel initially ignorant of the bolt-hole, he might have been trying to protect her.

  “Okay, one more question—”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Was Seth really working for Shell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  While Ysabel’s answers weren’t proof positive she was on Seth’s side, Jack’s gut told him she was on the level.

  He had his ally. Provisionally. Goddamn espionage, Jack thought. He’d stepped into this world of his own volition, but it had come with a price: Outside your inner circle, trust was a rare thing; of course, the actions of his former girlfriend, Melanie Kraft, hadn’t helped matters. Though she’d had her reasons—objectively good ones—he still considered her turning on him as a betrayal.

  Enough, Jack.

  Ysabel said, “Shall we check our booty?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Our spoils. The folder and wallet.”

  • • •

  THE WALLET CONTAINED two credit cards and an IDP—International Driver’s Permit—all issued to a David Weaver. The address on the IDP was 4711 Hardesty Street, Albany, NY 12203.

  “What a perfectly ordinary American name,” Ysabel noted.

  “Very.”

  The International Driver’s Permit was a nice touch, Jack thought. Standards for IDPs were often inconsistent from country to country. Jack suspected they’d glean little of use from digging into David Weaver. Still, he’d have Gavin check. No doubt Weaver’s partner, Balaclava, was also equipped with an IDP.

  Jack said, “Spellman wasn’t alone when I met with him. He was with a Brit named Raymond Wellesley.”

  “I’ve never heard of him. So, British and American handlers, American kidnappers. Quite a coincidence, yes?”

  “No coincidence at all.”

  Wellesley and Spellman had taken off the gloves: Jack’s status as First Son had earned him no latitude at all. And as Jack had no intention of leaving Seth on his own, his relationship with Wellesley and Spellman had been bound to sour. Now it was out in the open. Oddly, Jack was okay with that.

  Also, he preferred to live outside his dad’s shadow—as well as outside his aegis. Of course, Ryan Senior had no control over the former, but fortunately, Jack’s dad had so far resisted imposing the latter.

  A more pressing question for Jack was what to do about The Campus. He’d found himself neck-deep in a CIA-SIS operation. Gerry Hendley and John Clark would want to know about it. Later.

  Much would depend on what was inside Seth’s mystery accordion folder. Jack pulled it toward him, unwound the elastic band closure, and opened the flap. Ysabel scooted her chair around the table until she was shoulder to shoulder with Jack.

  “This is like Shab-e Cheleh,” she said with a tinge of giddiness. Seeing Jack’s confused expression, she explained, “Think of it as Persian Christmas. In the West you celebrate the birth of the son. Here we celebrate the rebirth of the sun—the Winter Solstice.”

  “You’re a font of fascinating trivia,” Jack replied.

  “You have no idea. Open it.”

  Jack did so. Inside was a stack of legal-sized loose-leaf paper, at least five hundred sheets, he guessed. He shuffled through the ream. All the pages had a faded, old-style typewriter font. In Cyrillic.

  The date on the first sheet was 4 MaH 1963.

  Ysabel said, “I don’t suppose you read Russian?”

  “Only fair.” This was a slight understatement, but not far from the mark. Though his grasp of the language had improved dramatically, for some reason he had a hard time getting Russian to stick in his brain. “That middle word is May.”

  Yet more questions, Jack thought. The biggest being: What the hell were they looking at? Aside from Gavin Biery, Jack had access to no one who could faithfully translate the document, and he sure as hell couldn’t fax the damn thing. Such a task wouldn’t escape Gerry’s notice, and Jack wouldn’t put Biery in that kind of spot. He’d have to give it some thought.

  “None of this looks familiar?” he asked Ysabel. “Seth never mentioned something like this?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you know anyone else in the network?”

  “Only one—code-named Ervaz.”

  “Is that a Persian name?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve got an e-mail address. It’s bad form, I know, for me to know even that much, but I suppose I’d become Seth’s ‘right hand,’ as it were. I’ve never tried contacting Ervaz. Should I?”

  “We’ll do it together.”

  Unbidden, Raymond Wellesley’s “apple tree” comment popped into Jack’s head. “Ysabel, did Seth ever talk about his father?”

  “Are you testing me again, Jack?”

  “No. Genuine question.”

  “Yes, he did, quite a lot. He said his dad—Paul, I think—died of a stroke a few years ago and that his mother was having a hard time with it.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Uhm . . . His father worked for the government. Something to do with farming.”

  “Department of Agriculture.”

  “Yes, that was it. You know, one thing always struck me when Seth talked about his father: He always seemed”—Ysabel paused, searching for the right words—“more bitter than sad. Almost scornful sometimes.”

  “About what specifically?”

  “The death, I assumed. I remember because it seemed an odd reaction. Why do you ask?”

  “Something Wellesley said�
��that Seth hadn’t fallen far from the tree.”

  “Strange. Then again, if this Wellesley is who you think he is, those types like to play mind games, yes?”

  “True.” If so, had Wellesley been trying to plant doubt in his head about Seth, or was there something to the comment?

  “Jack, you haven’t asked me what Seth had me working on. Why?”

  The question had been on Jack’s mind.

  “That’s a morning-cup-of-coffee question,” he said. “Where am I sleeping?”

  JACK DOWNED THE DREGS of his coffee and set the cup on the counter, where Ysabel scooped it up and headed back to the French press. She returned with the second cup, and they walked to the sunken seating area and sat across from each other.

  Outside the balcony windows, the sun was fully up, and yellow rays streamed in, casting sharp shadows across the carpet. Jack turned his face to the warmth and let it soak in.

  “Your eye looks better,” said Ysabel. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I went five rounds with Chuck Liddell.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Never mind. So, when and how did Seth recruit you?”

  “About eight months ago. The truth is . . . we were a little more than friends.”

  The admission took Jack by surprise. “You were hooking up.”

  “What? Oh, yes, I guess that’s what you would call it. Purely physical. Does that shock you?”

  “Not particularly. Where did you meet?”

  “At Chaibar, as a matter of fact.”

  “So he seduced you.”

  “It was genuine, and mutual. I could be wrong, of course. We broke it off after a month but stayed friends. He’s a good man.”

  MICE, Jack thought. The most common reasons for someone cooperating with a foreign agency fell within the acronym MICE—Money, Ideology, Compromise, or Coercion—but the umbrella was bigger than that: ego, excitement, disaffection, personal ties, sex . . . Though it seemed this last one may have been Seth’s original method of recruitment; the relationship had ended quickly, but Ysabel’s cooperation had not. Ideology, then?

  “Why did you keep working for him?”

  “I didn’t start until about two months after we broke it off—after I joined the research group,” Ysabel replied. “It has no name, really. It’s just a bunch of us academics. We talk about Russia.”

  “When you and Seth met, did you know about this group?”

  “No, I got the impression it had just been founded.”

  If Ysabel was right, perhaps Seth’s relationship with her had been genuine, and her joining the group just dumb good luck for him.

  “Tell me about this research group. What’s the context?”

  “The new leadership in Moscow—what they want, what they might do next and where. It’s all brainstorming, really.”

  “Who runs it?”

  “My department head at the university—Dr. Pezhman Abbasi.”

  “One day out of the blue he just asked you to join?”

  Ysabel nodded. “We’re very close, he and I, like grandfather and granddaughter. He hired me at the university.”

  “So you report to him; who does he report to?”

  “I don’t know that he does, Jack. You don’t understand, it’s all just intellectual ‘what if’ games. Many of the departments do it—econ, history . . . Sometimes what they come up with becomes part of curriculum. Jack, we weren’t gathering intelligence.”

  In fact, coopting private-sector academic groups was a common tool for intelligence agencies. Raw, puzzle-piece intel can get you only so far. What a nation or group was capable of told only part of the story; how that nation or group intended to use those capabilities was the real prize, and getting to that often took out-of-the-box thinking.

  Before Jack could explain this to Ysabel, she said, “Ah, I see what you’re getting at. We may have been feeding someone? The VAJA, yes?”

  Ysabel was no dummy, Jack thought. “Could be.”

  VAJA was the acronym for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, Jack thought, and ostensibly the latest, kinder-and-gentler incarnation of the SAVAK, Shah Reza Pahlavi’s ruthless secret police.

  Ysabel said, “I feel foolish for considering this. You don’t think Pezhman is involved in—”

  “At this point, I don’t think anything,” Jack replied. “So you were feeding Seth your notes from the group. Tell me about it.”

  “Yes. He never said why he was interested, but I knew who he was, Jack, and I knew he was working for the U.S. You’ve heard the old Persian proverb: ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’”

  “Isn’t that Arabic?”

  Ysabel smiled. “A tragic misattribution. Anyway, both Iran and your country should fear Russia. Plus, officially, I’m half American. If a few notes from a think tank would help the common cause, then so be it.”

  Ysabel was right: The direction of Russia’s foreign policy was troublesome. Its president, Valeri Volodin, had already invaded Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Estonia—though he’d been pushed out of the latter, something that seemed only to strengthen his ultranationalist tendencies.

  Jack doubted Ysabel’s research group at the University of Tehran was the only one the VAJA had launched. Do the Iranians know something the United States doesn’t? Is this what Seth’s network was chasing?

  “I assumed I was only working on my own small part,” said Ysabel. “Whether there were more than myself and this Ervaz, I don’t know.”

  Jack went silent, trying to assemble pieces, to find the right thread to tug that might lead him to Seth. He said to Ysabel, “Write down the e-mail address for Ervaz. I need to make a call.”

  “You can use my—”

  “No, I need a pay phone.”

  “There’s one down the block. I’ve got a prepaid calling card.”

  • • •

  JACK GOT DRESSED, jotted the serial number of David Weaver’s nine-millimeter on his palm, then left the apartment. He found the pay phone on the corner outside a small convenience store fronted by crates of fruits and vegetables. An employee was sweeping the sidewalk. He nodded and smiled at Jack.

  Jack used Ysabel’s card to dial The Campus’s main switchboard. It was late afternoon there. After five rings, Carly, Hendley’s most recent intern, this one from Towson University, answered.

  “Evening, Mr. Ryan. You caught me going out the door.”

  “I won’t hold you up. Is Gavin still in?”

  “What do you think?” she said, laughing. “I’ll transfer you.”

  The line went silent, then buzzed twice. Gavin Biery picked up and said, “Still alive, Jack?”

  “And kicking.” Jack hesitated. Dragging Gavin into this was going to put the man into a tough spot, but unless he was willing to give up on Seth, he had no choice. He would fall on his sword with Gerry later. “I need a few more favors.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I need you to brick my phone. I lost it.” Jack paused, then changed his mind. “No, scratch that. Track it.”

  “Can do. You want a cloned phone?”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got a cloud. We back up all your phones and tablets whenever you’re in the building. You didn’t get the memo?”

  “I guess not.”

  “By the way, those are some nasty pictures in your photo album.”

  “I don’t have—”

  “Kidding, just kidding. Yeah, I’ll set up a trace on your old phone. Whenever it’s powered up and on either Wi-Fi or roaming, I can track it. I’ll get a duplicate headed your way.”

  “Give me a different number, though.”

  “Can do. You’re at the Parsian Hotel?”

  “No, send it to Ysabel Kashani, 1214 West Sedaqat, Tehran. Signature required. I’m going to buy a disposable cell phon
e. If I give you the number, can you switch it to the number of the stolen phone?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Gavin paused. “Jack, maybe you should let Gerry know—”

  “I know. I’ll put him in the loop.” The question was: When? Jack probably should have already done this.

  “What else?” asked Gavin.

  “Monitor my credit cards and get me some new ones.”

  Though Jack doubted his kidnappers would be stupid enough to use his cards, it was worth a shot.

  Gavin asked, “Did you get mugged, Jack?”

  “More or less. Next: I need everything you can give me on these two e-mail addresses.” Jack recited the Yahoo! and Gmail addresses Ysabel had given him. “Next: Look into a guy named David Weaver.” Jack also recited the address on Weaver’s IDP, as well as the man’s credit-card numbers and the nine-millimeter’s serial number. “It looks like a SIG Sauer P226, but there are no markings and no logo.”

  “Got it. Next?”

  Jack gave him Dr. Pezhman Abbasi’s name and particulars. “He’s at the University of Tehran. Whatever you can get on him.” Jack was tempted to ask for the same check on Seth, but he decided to hold off for now. “I’ve also got an e-mail for you to track.” He gave him the address for Ervaz. “Finally, I need you to run a license-plate trace. Can you do Iran?”

  “Might take a bit longer, but I think so.”

  Jack gave him the van’s plate number, as well as the partial wording on its side placard, then said, “Thanks. I’ll call you back.”

  Jack hung up, then went into the convenience store, bought a prepaid cell phone, then returned to Ysabel’s apartment to find her sitting at the dining table.

  Jack asked, “When did Seth give you Ervaz’s name and contact info?”

  “About a month ago.”

  This was about the same time Seth abandoned the Pardis condo, the one Spellman and Wellesley knew about, for the bolt-hole off Niavaran Park. “Did he say why he wanted you to have the name, when you should use it?”

  “No. His brain was always going a mile a minute. He’d jump from one subject to the next. Sometimes I could barely get a word in. Sometimes it was like I wasn’t even talking.”

  “That’s the ADHD,” Jack replied.