Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2) André Gallo (top 100 books of all time checklist TXT) 📖

into his first meeting with Yazdi and reported the information on the centrifuges and locations.

“XYSENTINEL’s recruitment is holding. However, the information on the new centrifuges and the further dispersal of the enrichment centers are not absolute proof that SENTINEL is not a double. I defer to your analysis on that point. If, over time, he keeps producing that level of information, it will establish his bona fides. Mousavi would not allow sensitive strategic information to flow into our hands just for the sake of running a double agent case. Mousavi could have had me arrested tonight--game, set and match.”

He took a sip from a plastic bottle of water on the nightstand. “Clearly, Yazdi has been around the block, and we both know that he has more experience than I do. But I’m his handler, and that’s not easy for him to accept. He probably assumed that my father would show up, and he may have guessed that the resemblance between us is not coincidental. But none of these factors will be show-stoppers, I hope.” He grinned. As he spoke, he again felt that fate was manipulating him. He had vowed to run his own life but he was acting on his father’s behalf. In terms of occupation, he was his father. It was frustrating and confusing.

He continued, and Kella resumed her typing. “SENTINEL’s self-confidence, however, is worrisome. It could lead him to step over the edge. I will have to keep his actions within the limits of operational security.”

Kella looked up, “Self-confidence is a problem?”

“I’ve heard from my father that intelligence officers spying against their own countries have done stupid things and gotten caught because of their arrogance, thinking they were more clever than their colleagues in the local security forces. Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, FBI and CIA officers who worked for the KGB, are now in prison because they didn’t practice their own tradecraft. They thought they were too smart.”

Steve then repeated Yazdi’s request for help on Steltzer. He added, “He’s right that we can’t have him travel outside Iran during this period. However, Mousavi needs to be satisfied. Could we give SENTINEL enough information, as well as a plausible source for the information? That would keep Mousavi quiet for the time being.”

Finally, he asked for traces on the two men he had met at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Hans Brauer and Ali Pakravan. He guessed that those two gentlemen would resurface. If the agency had any information on them, he needed it.

Kella put her Chanel palette away and stretched. “It’s been a long day. I’m going back to my room. It’s 408 by the way, one flight up. I did meet someone on the plane, an Iranian woman. I think that she’s going to be my best friend and cover. She can help me be a travel writer. Not in so many words, but she warned me not to take this writing too seriously. People have gotten arrested for writing the wrong things. Tomorrow, she’s going to take me to some tourist attractions.”

“Good. Sounds safe enough. Might as well ask for traces on her too. Do you have a last name for her?”

“Yes, Khosrodad. I already did.”

After she left, Steve reflected that they had not been more at ease together since their adventure over a year ago in the Middle East. Was Washington too bland? Was high external stress the glue to their romance? Why had neither broached the M word during their time together in Virginia? He knew that he didn’t want to raise it from fear that she was too independent to say yes. Was this a temporary arrangement for her? Was she thinking of returning to Paris?

He wanted to take her to see his old school in the northern part of Tehran and to show her where his school bus had been stopped by a crowd throwing rocks. He wanted to drive by his old house where his father had taught him to rappel from the first floor balcony down into the empty pool. He wanted to retrace the route that his mother had driven him twice a week during the fall of 1978 when, at five a.m., she would take him to hockey practice at the “Ice Palace.” She had been confident that, “By five in the morning, all the revolutionaries have stopped rioting and shooting at each other. They’re in bed sleeping. It’s probably the safest driving part of the day.”

He wanted to draw Kella closer to him by sharing those childhood memories.

 

17. Tehran: Canadian Embassy

“Please come this way,” Charles Mulcahy, the Canadian Commercial Attaché, said as he led Steve and four other men to a conference room down the corridor from his office. A thin grey-haired man with half glasses over which lively eyes surveyed the newcomers sat at the head of a long mahogany table.

Mulcahy introduced each of the men in turn. “Ambassador Hill, I asked all the Canadian businessmen I could reach on short notice this morning to come in, as you requested. Christopher Breton is our most recent arrival.”

The ambassador, tall, rather gaunt, with a few white hairs decorating his otherwise bald pate, looked around the table with an uneasy grin.

“Gentlemen, welcome to all of you. My meetings with our business people are all too rare. Unfortunately, what brings us together today is not good news. I know you are busy and I will get to the bottom line,” he grinned at his use of a business expression. “I just had a meeting with the Iranian President, and I want to share with you the brunt of his message. Last night, our Prime Minister in Ottawa made some comments about the arrest of twenty Bahais in Iran a few days ago. He said that their arrest was ‘unacceptable.’”

Steve saw heads shaking around the table. He heard the word “stupidity” from one of the other businessmen. The ambassador