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“That depends. We’ll see how what he told you checks out with headquarters and Tehran.”

“And then?”

“I dunno. Do you think you can work with him?”

Anna thought a moment. Could she work with this obnoxious pig? Not if he kept trying to feel her up. She would need to establish more distance. She would need to stop his lecherous behavior, period. The alternative was to admit failure in her first assignment as a case officer.

“Sure,” said Anna. “I can work with him.”

“Great,” said Howard. “Because I think we ought to try for another meet.”

“Terrific!” said Anna. “By the way,” she added. “I’m not sure SDFIBBER is worth what we’re paying him.”

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

“He was very unprofessional today. Left after half an hour. Damned near blew my cover right off the bat. Bad news.”

“Thanks for the warning,” said Howard. “I’ll put in his 201.”

Ali Ascari’s information proved surprisingly accurate. A quick check by the Tehran station identified Hussein Madaressi as an Iranian businessman living in Stuttgart who had helped raise money for Khomeini while he was in exile. Headquarters queried the CIA base chief in Stuttgart, who checked with his local contacts and reported that an Iranian named Madaressi had, in fact, met during the last month with a prominent European arms dealer. As for the bearded Khomeini agents invading European embassies, Tehran said it couldn’t confirm the report. But one of its local assets had mentioned during the past week that the mullahs might be organizing some kind of shadow foreign service.

“Headquarters thinks your man has possibilities,” said Howard with a wink at his next meeting with Anna, several days later. “But they need more information to evaluate him.”

“Do they want a PRQ?” asked Anna. That was how Howard and Dennis liked to talk, in the acronymic gibberish that, in this case, stood for the prospective agent’s life history, known as a Personal Record Questionnaire.

“Slow down,” said Howard. “We’ve got a long way to go before that. And we don’t want you to break cover with him.”

“What do you want?”

“Basic information. Date of birth, place of birth. How he makes his living. Who he has worked for in the past. Passport stuff.”

“Isn’t that going to seem odd? An investment banker asking him his birthday?”

“Tell him that your friends in the embassy want to know more about him. Tell him they were very interested by what he passed along at the first meeting, but they need to know more about him. Otherwise they can’t evaluate him.”

“Where should I meet him? A safe house?”

“Hell no. Where would a lady investment banker come up with a safe house, for chrissake? Just meet him in a restaurant. Call him on the phone and arrange to meet him at a restaurant.”

“He may get the wrong idea.”

“How do you mean?”

“He may think it’s a date. You know, boy-girl, kissy-kissy.”

“So what. Let him think what he likes. No matter what he thinks, you’re holding the strings, right?”

“Sure,” said Anna, nodding her head. It felt like a prison sentence.

Her concern must have been apparent even to Howard, for he stopped a moment and scratched his head. “How’s the rapport between the two of you anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how do you get along? Does he like you? Do you like him? You know, rapport.”

“It’s okay. He can be quite manipulative. I’ve got to be a little tougher with him. Middle Eastern men look at an American woman and all they see is a cunt. Pardon my French.”

Howard laughed at Anna’s vulgarity. Maybe she was one of the boys after all.

Anna called Ascari on the telephone that afternoon and proposed that they meet for lunch the next day at a quiet restaurant off Edgware Road.

“I knew you would call,” said the Iranian.

“You did?” asked Anna.

“Oh yes!” said the Iranian. “I knew it.”

14

Ascari showed up for the second meeting wearing a silk ascot and smelling as if he had bathed in cologne. He had trimmed his beard, from porcupine length to raccoon. He looked even more unattractive than Anna remembered. She was determined this time to be businesslike, tough, manipulative. She had dressed in the least flattering outfit she owned, a shapeless brown wool dress that looked like a carpet remnant. She had deliberately not washed her hair that morning and wore no makeup. For the first time in her life, she wished she had a pimple on her nose.

The restaurant was a rather dingy little place, tucked among the car-stereo shops and electrical-supply outlets that lined Edgware Road past Sussex Gardens. It was nominally an Italian restaurant, but in London that could mean anything. Greek, Turkish, Portuguese. It was the sort of place where people went when they wanted to hide, a place where the curtains were drawn and the waiters avoided eye contact. Dennis had recommended the restaurant, but it seemed to Anna, once she was seated, that it was all too obviously the sort of place for spies and whores. And it was no insult to Anna that the headwaiter treated her like the latter, even in her baggy brown dress.

“I love you,” said Ascari when they were seated. He was leaning toward her with his hand on his heart.

“Shut up!” said Anna. She said it loudly. The restaurant was almost empty, and she didn’t care if anyone heard. She was not going to take any more bullshit from the Iranian. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Ascari,” she said. “I am a businesswoman, and I want to be treated like one, with respect. Is that understood?”

“Oh yes,” said Ascari soothingly. “I know you American women. You want to be just like man. Okay, I don’t mind. I love you anyway.”

“Shut up, dammit! I mean it!”

“Okay, miss. You can talk dirty with me. I don’t mind. Whatever you like.”

What was it about this man that made him so impossible? That allowed him to jump the tracks of ordinary conversation and go careening off in his