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  The two MISIRI men were known to American counterintelligence, and the FBI did their best to keep tabs on all Iran’s spies here in America, but these MISIRI officers were professionals. This stood to reason; only Iran’s very best intelligence operatives were sent to work in the land of Iran’s greatest foe, and only after they had proved themselves in many other hostile stations abroad. The two MISIRI officers here in the four-bedroom suburban Falls Church home were experts at shaking surveillance, and they’d arrived here free and clear after a several-hours-long surveillance-detection route.

  Mohammed Mobasheri and his four subordinates sat for a briefing from the two “local” officers. Information integral to their mission here in the United States. Not that the MISIRI officers knew anything about these new men or their mission. They knew the young-looking Revolutionary Guards operative only as Mohammed, which was more common in Farsi than John was in English, and all they knew about his operation here was that he was traveling here with four Quds Force “body” men on a special task, and he was to be extended every courtesy and afforded every resource he needed.

  All on the orders of Tehran.

  The spies from the embassy knew this to be highly unusual. They didn’t much like the fact that this stranger from another organization was working on their turf, but it didn’t much matter what they liked, because he had sanction from the Supreme Leader, the highest level of Iranian government. That they weren’t read into his mission was bewildering, but that really wasn’t the strangest part of their day.

  Mohammed himself was the strangest part.

  The MISIRI spies had worked with many Revolutionary Guards officers in their careers, of course, and they knew them all to be, by necessity, strong and confident and powerful alphas. No one could rise through the ranks of Iran’s military in any capacity whatsoever without possessing leadership prowess and intrinsic personal dominance.

  But immediately upon meeting Mohammed they thought him to be something of a strange bird, not a typical Revolutionary Guards officer at all. He was clearly highly intelligent and intellectual, and he seemed to be in fair physical condition, but he was smallish, somewhat baby-faced, and his demeanor was shy, introverted, and almost pathologically mild-mannered. His voice was thin, and he seemed unsure in his actions around the MISIRI officers, almost as if he was intimidated by their presence.

  He asked relevant questions, so he wasn’t a bumbling fool, but he looked to the experienced MISIRI men like a grown-up kid who’d never left his parents’ house before being sent to the U.S. on a mission of obvious national importance.

  What the fuck was that all about?

  During a cigarette break in the backyard, one of D.C.-based MISIRI officers said to the other, “If he is fucking scared of us, his own countrymen, what the hell is he doing here around real enemies?”

  The other quipped, “That little lamb has flown a long way just to go to the slaughterhouse.”

  The men who arrived with Mohammed, by contrast, were typical Quds. While they dressed like businessmen and would pass as such to the uninitiated, to the MISIRI officers they were appeared to be ex-military, special operations forces, perhaps commandos from Takavar, elite handpicked operators who then endured a special twenty-month training program before being put into the most dangerous combat and missions around the Islamic Republic.

  These men would have made the cross-border runs into Iraq during the war there, bringing materiél and expertise training Iraqi Shiites to engage coalition forces and destroy them. They would have fought Israelis in Lebanon, they would have worked with militias in Pakistan and insurgent groups on the Afghanistan border.

  The Iranian spies knew enough about Quds Force to recognize they were in the presence of some seriously scary dudes.

  But the four stood in stark contrast to their mild-mannered leader, who looked like he’d probably not held a gun since his mandatory army service, which would have begun on his eighteenth birthday.

  The embassy spies were correct on all counts. Mohammed Mobasheri was not an ex-commando like the rest of his team. He’d been a young computer geek, the son of well-connected government employees, when he went into compulsory military service. There he was trained how to stand and march and in the use of weapons, but then he’d left infantry operations and moved into something that utilized his existing skill set, a special program for computer operations.

  As the MISIRI men had guessed, this was Mobasheri’s first time in the United States, but he spoke English well. His father was ex-MISIRI himself, a general in the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, and these D.C.-based MISIRI would have all but bowed down to this boy-man if they’d known his true identity and his parentage.

  Young Mobasheri learned English in school in Tehran as a child, then spent several years living abroad in Australia and in Ireland and in the United Kingdom, following his father’s cover postings as an agricultural official.

  It was his father who pushed him into computer operations in the military, mostly to protect him from the dangers of combat but also because Mohammed had shown interest and aptitude with computers as a child. Moreover, General Mobasheri was a forward-thinking spy, and he knew much of the espionage of the future would involve computerized information systems, and he wanted his son involved in a growth industry that also served the Islamic Republic.

  After compulsory military service Mohammed was sent to study computer science at Imperial College London. He returned to Iran with a doctorate and ideas about the future of IT and its application to intelligence, and by his late twenties he was a chief strategic planner for the Revolutionary Guards’ fledgling offensive cyber-ops division.

  Over the next few years he developed offensive cyber ops capabilities for his nation, and he started a forward thinking unit called the Markazi Digital Security Team, one of the most elite offensive cyber hacking groups in the world.

  Most Americans are unaware that Iran’s military has such robust computer-hacking capabilities, but Mobasheri had been one of the leaders of this all but unheralded success of the Islamic Republic. He and his team of hackers had broken into American defense networks, and had placed infiltration agent programs into U.S. wireless companies that had taken years and tens of millions of dollars to clean out.

  His power grew in the Revolutionary Guards, and the Supreme Leader himself took special interest in young Mobasheri’s operations, clearing the way for him to expand into plans that were more and more audacious.

  Which led him all the way to Falls Church, Virginia. Now, after months of preparation and groundwork, Mohammed Mobasheri was here in the U.S. on a special operation with a powerful sanction.

  Mohammed was disarmingly calm and polite, even shy, especially when compared to the hard Takavaran around him. But he’d not made it this far in his organization by exhibiting weakness. He was a man with big ideas, high aspirations, and he was certain he’d be reaching out to Tehran via encrypted means soon enough, asking for—no, demanding—approval to add to his mission parameters.

  The MISRI men from the embassy thought their support of this team working out of Falls Church would be limited to information, perhaps some vehicles, and documentation. But Mohammed made it clear, in an offhanded and almost apologetic manner, that he would require a surveillance team first thing in the a.m., and they might be put to work for several days straight.

  And guns. The little man who looked like a college student gave a handwritten sheet of paper to the MISIRI officers, and on it was a list of pistols, shoulder holsters, ammunition, and sound suppressors.

  The MISIRI officers were not happy, but they were compliant. This mild-mannered oddball had the backing of the Supreme Leader, after all, so they had no choice but to do whatever the hell he demanded, as if the Supreme Leader himself was standing before them giving the orders.

  10

  ETHAN ROSS SPENT the entire afternoon piddling around his office, doing everything within his power to portray relaxed confidence. No
rmally this wouldn’t be hard to manage—it was his default state of being, after all—but since the meeting in the conference room this morning, his world had been knocked off-kilter and he could do little more than sit quietly with a distracted gaze on his face.

  At lunch the talk in the dining room had been, not surprisingly, on the data breach. Ethan remained quiet while most of the rest of his colleagues speculated that some IT geek had accessed the files and then covered it up, either because he’d screwed up in the first place or, just maybe, because he was spooking for a foreign power.

  Ethan’s only comment on the subject was a hope that his poly didn’t interfere with either the staff meeting in the West Wing on Thursday afternoon or his appointment to get his teeth cleaned on Friday afternoon. He forced out the words, knowing he’d look guilty as hell if he didn’t bitch about the intrusion along with everyone else.

  He’d attended a directors’ meeting just after lunch, and he’d strolled with other staffers to a conference room on the north side of the Eisenhower Building, their voices echoing up the ornate marble corridor as the topic of conversation remained on the investigation. At the meeting there was more small talk about what most of the staff saw as the FBI’s heavy handed encroachment of the NSC, but Ethan said little. He only thumbed through pages of a briefing booklet he’d been working on, and did his best not to show any signs of concern.

  By mid-afternoon he was back at his desk; in front of him was a print out of a letter he’d written requisitioning a paper on popular opinion in Jordan of the new U.S. ambassador. It was something to get his mind off his situation—busywork.

  Except it wasn’t working.

  Every time someone passed his office he felt a tightening in his stomach, and his hands, already dry and papery, burned at the palms. He had visions of G’s like that Albright character he’d seen this morning marching into his office, storming around his desk, and telling him to stand up and put his hands behind his back.

  Ethan felt nauseated about the possibility his breach could be uncovered, but more than this, he was disoriented. He knew he had done everything right. His breach should have gone undetected.

  What the hell went wrong?

  IT IS SAID THERE are four major motivations for committing espionage, and in the intelligence realm the collective is abbreviated as MICE: money, ideology, compromise, ego. In Ethan’s case, money and compromise were not relevant. His mother was wealthy and she shared her largesse with her adult son, and Ethan had no real skeletons in his closet that could have led to his being compromised.

  Instead, his motives could be best characterized as a combination of one part ideology and four parts ego. To those very few who really knew him, this would come as no great surprise, because Ethan Ross was somewhat opinionated, but he was most definitely a narcissist, and if these predilections were built into him by nature, his nurture certainly did nothing to help him overcome them.

  Ethan’s parents, like all parents everywhere, were convinced their child was brilliant and special. Unlike most parents, their conviction was confirmed by outsiders when, at the age of four, young Ethan earned a Very Superior classification on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale IQ test. After this verification of his excellence, he became the family prodigy and was forever after treated as such. He was placed in the best schools, tutored in math and science and language, and told regularly that he’d have a future not just of importance but of power, as well.

  Ethan grew up like a member of royalty, living first among socialist Europe’s upper class when his parents were in government and education abroad, then as the child of tenured professors in academia here in the U.S. His parents’ core political beliefs in the strength, power, and certitude of UN resolutions, multinational peace treaties, and international law ensured that Ethan was brought up with the conviction that a benevolent governing class should rule over those incapable of making decisions for themselves.

  And Ethan was raised as an heir apparent to this ruling class. He thought nothing of the fact both the vice president of France and one of the Belgian princesses were close family friends. He skied in Zermatt and beached in Monaco, and the home in Georgetown Heights where he spent his teenage years was in the same cul-de-sac as homes owned by a senator, three ambassadors, a Pulitzer-winning playwright, and one of the best-known national television anchors.

  Even before he left home to pursue an Ivy League education, he was introduced to world leaders at parties as a future secretary of state, or even as a future President, and Ethan Ross grew into manhood believing his own hype.

  At Yale he studied with an eye toward the family business, diplomacy, so he majored in international affairs, but like many his age, he’d developed a passion for computers as a teen, and his keen intellect advanced his love for technology to a level far beyond most. He sought a minor in computer science at Yale, much to the chagrin of his parents. They thought it pedestrian of him to spend so much time with his head in the minutiae of computers instead of on the big macro issues that would lead to the betterment of society. His father called computer scientists nothing more than glorified blue-collar workers. His mother treated his obsession as a fad and a fancy, as if he was spending his time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of what he actually was doing, learning Linux-based programming and developing his own software.

  But he did well at Yale in both of his chosen disciplines, and then, to his parents’ everlasting relief, he attended Harvard’s Kennedy School to focus exclusively on statecraft.

  After university he took a job with the Department of State in the Foreign Service. He spent the bulk of his twenties in consular affairs, but where most foreign service officers had to do their time in the lower rung of consular postings like Djibouti, Haiti, or El Salvador, Ethan Ross’s family pedigree and a few calls from senators who were good friends of Mom and Dad steered him away from the hardship areas, and instead his three foreign postings were at three of the diplomatic corps’ most sought-after locations; Vienna, Amsterdam, and Paris.

  At age twenty-eight he left State to work in the democratic presidential administration as a junior foreign policy adviser. Soon he had his eye on a position under the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the job prospect fell through, so he moved laterally from the White House into the National Security Council to acquire some practical training under his belt before taking the next high-ranking United Nations post that came along.

  But his career path hit speed bumps when his personality clashed with both hawkish NSC staffers with military backgrounds as well members of the new Republican administration in power, and with his darkening prospects came the darkening mood common with those who feel their work beneath their abilities and their talents unappreciated. Staffers he considered inferior took plum UN postings, while Ethan stayed at his desk in the Eisenhower Building, watching his life pass him by.

  By his early thirties, Ethan’s narcissism was on full display. His self-confidence had morphed into cockiness, and then finally what a few in his department considered unbridled arrogance. In his third year in his position at NSC he had become indignant about what he considered his small role in the U.S. diplomatic realm, and this, partnered with his feelings of superiority, made his working relationship with many of his colleagues particularly icy.

  All that said, no one had any suspicions he was responsible for passing secrets.

  ETHAN ROSS’S FIRST FORAY into the nebulous world of intelligence trafficking began aboveboard, when he was selected by the deputy director of the Middle East region to pass a small piece of information on background to an acquaintance, a reporter at Politico.

  Authorized government leaks are a common tool in state craft. Officials speaking on background to a friendly reporter often relay an item of coveted information, careful to secure a promise from the reporter that he or she understands no attribution should go along with the nugget.

  Ethan’s leaked item to Politico made the paper the next day. It wasn’t interes
ting enough to extend beyond the Beltway or even outside the conference rooms around downtown D.C. and Foggy Bottom, but he appreciated the laserlike impact of the well-timed chat with a compliant member of the fourth estate.

  After this successful tipoff to his Politico acquaintance, he was used by NSC staff on other occasions to pass further items of interest, most of which amounted to little more than gossip.

  But Ethan began to get a taste for it. A feel for how to leverage secure information for low-risk impact, and a hunger for the feeling of power that came from pushing policy through his own actions.

  It was his ego, ultimately, that convinced him he didn’t really need supervisory approval for his disclosures, he was more than competent to make the decision what to spill himself. And it was his ideology that gave him the desire to drop specific bits of intelligence to the media. He believed U.S. foreign policy had become too meddlesome and overbearing since the new administration had come to power. He saw too many violations of international law under the guise of national security, too many American soldiers and spies working together with too many foreign soldiers and spies. The institutions he truly believed in—the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, and other large world institutions—could never flourish as long as world powers like America continued to act in the shadows to tip the scales in their own favor.

  Ethan had the means and the motive to make small gestures to combat such imperial overreach. But he knew he could no longer use the reporter at Politico for unauthorized disclosures, because it would be only a matter of time before Ethan was outed as the conduit of the intelligence.

  He needed to find himself a new cutout.

  He first learned of the International Transparency Project after reading an article translated from Der Spiegel. The German magazine produced a series of investigative reports into the U.S. military-industrial complex and its purchase of weapons of war from German companies such as Diehl BGT Defence and Atlas Elektronik. Using confidential memoranda from inside the companies, Der Spiegel revealed precise budgets, specific weapons capabilities, and exact delivery dates. As evidence, they showed the leaked e-mails between the defense contractors and the U.S. Department of Defense.