“And there is an error on your occupation. You are not the owner of your own international purchasing and exportation firm. You are, in fact, employed by the CIA.”
“The C. I. — are you for fucking real?” Brooks launched to his feet, startling the three men, but he turned away from them, began pacing the floor by the mirror. “What’s the game here? Are you guys shaking me down for money?”
The three men just looked at one another.
“Get me someone in charge. I work very closely with some extremely important men in your government.”
The man with the gray beard gave a heavy shrug. “And that is of great concern to us, obviously. Trust me when I say everyone you’ve come in contact with on your visits here will be collected, detained, and questioned at great length about their affiliation to you. General Rastani included.”
Ron pointed an accusatory finger at the seated man. “This is complete and utter bullshit. You have to show me proof. You can’t just—”
Gray Beard was shaking his head before Brooks finished speaking. “We don’t have to do anything, Mr. Collier. You, on the other hand, have to do exactly what we ask of you. And now I ask you to remain very still, for your own safety, of course.”
“Huh?”
One of the standing men opened the door to the hall. All eight of the men in tactical gear moved into the room now, converging on the man the Iranians called Stuart Collier, and they turned him around, pushed him against the mirrored wall. He didn’t resist, but he shouted loudly while they removed his suit coat, his belt, and his shoes, and they frisked him thoroughly.
“I’m not Stuart Collier! Hey! Listen to me, you sons of bitches! I’m not Stuart Collier! I’ve never even heard that name. And I’m not in the CIA!”
“Faraj! Where is Faraj Ahmadi? Somebody talk to Dr. Isfahani! And General Rastani. Tell them to let these guys know I’m not Stuart Collier, and I’m not CIA.”
He was surrounded by the tactical team as they moved through back hallways of the airport, no one speaking but him, though eight sets of polished black boots on the tile flooring made considerable noise.
The Westerner shouted over the footfalls: “This is a big mistake! Somebody call the Canadian embassy! I’m Ron Brooks! I’m Ronald Charles Brooks, of Toronto. I’m not Stuart Collier!”
He found himself in a parking garage, the door to an SUV was opened, and dozens of men stood around, all of them clearly police or security officials. Ron saw Faraj now, but he was being led into the backseat of another unmarked vehicle.
“Faraj! Tell them! Fucking tell them!” Once more before his head was pushed down and he was virtually body-checked into the side door of the SUV, he looked back and screamed, “My name is not Stuart Collier, and I’m not CIA!”
5
In the Oval Office, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency looked across the oaken desk into the worried eyes of the President of the United States and said, “His name is Stuart Collier. He’s CIA.”
Director Jay Canfield did not mask his frustration as he told President Jack Ryan about the arrest of a CIA officer in Tehran. “We have no clear answer on how he was blown.”
“He’s a NOC?” Ryan asked. Non-official cover operatives were the most secret of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. They operated as private citizens abroad while serving as spies, and received none of the diplomatic immunity offered to “covered” diplomats.
Canfield nodded. “Yep. A damn fine one, too. He was operating under the name Ronald Brooks, a Canadian. He’d been working this cover for nearly four years. Been traipsing around inside Iranian tech firms for over three.”
The rain outside the thick windows of the Oval Office beat down in sheets, and the midafternoon skies were as dark as dusk. Ryan noted the bad weather matched the news from the CIA director.
The President took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “How long ago?”
“Eight to ten hours. We just heard from the Canadians, who heard directly from the Iranians.”
“The Canadians knew we were running a NOC using a Canadian alias?”
“They did. They issued him a real passport, so there was no chance at all that the Iranians found forged documents on him and discovered his alias.”
“The work Brooks — I mean Collier — was doing. What kind of access did he have?”
“Not going to say he was the tip of the spear on what we know about Iran. His role to the Iranians was that of a procurer of dual-use equipment that was legal under current sanctions. Their military procurement people would give him a shopping list of tech items, and he’d go out into the West and secure suppliers, negotiate terms, arrange transport and paperwork. Nothing illegal, but we were expecting the Iranians to ask him to help them with more nefarious equipment sooner rather than later.”
Ryan reacted with surprise. “So the Agency was helping Iran’s military get what it needed from the West?”
“They were going to get it anyway and, like I said, it wasn’t equipment subject to sanctions. We put Collier in the mix because this way we’d know what they had, where they were procuring it, and how it was getting into the nation, in case we managed to get tougher sanctions in place. And when they started asking him to get sanctioned items, we’d know about it first, we’d be in a position to stop it, and we’d be able to provide evidence to the UN.”
Canfield rubbed his own face now. “But none of that matters anymore. That op is dead. The only issue is…”
“The only issue is,” President Jack Ryan said, “how the hell was Collier compromised?”
“Exactly, Mr. President. The total number of people who know about his operation is fewer than two dozen, myself included, and we are as vetted as anyone can be in the intelligence community. Electronic systems are stable, no compromise there. So far, this is a complete mystery. Obviously we are shaking the trees, trying to find out what happened.”
“What will they do to him?”
“He’s a NOC, so they can do whatever the hell they want. Still… With your permission we can quietly go to a third-party nation, the Swedes, for example, and let it be known Canadian businessman Ronald Brooks has value to us. Humanitarian concerns, something like that. They’ll know that’s a bunch of baloney, but they’ll keep him secure, something to trade down the road. Obviously it’s tacit admission by us that he’s Agency, but otherwise they might hang him from a construction crane.”
Ryan nodded. “Approved. I want him out of there.”
“Yes, sir. But you know how this works. They’ll hold on to him for a while and turn the screws, on him and on us. The more precarious and miserable his situation is, the more the Iranians will get from us to let him out. If they agreed to go light on Collier at the outset, he’d become a weaker bargaining chip.
“Mr. President, be under no illusions. Stu Collier is going through hell right now, and he will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Not a damn thing we can do about it.”
Ryan leaned back in his chair, looked off at the wall across the room with a gaze that made it appear as though he were searching a point a thousand yards distant. After a moment he turned back to Canfield. “Use back channels to test the waters. See what getting Collier back is going to cost us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do we expect the Iranians to bring him in front of the media?”
“You can bet on it, sir.”
Ryan sniffed. “Disavow publicly. We’ll get him home as quietly as we can.”
“Of course, sir.”
Ryan asked, “Why isn’t Mary Pat here?”
Mary Pat Foley, director of national intelligence, made a point of coming to the Oval whenever an intelligence community crisis anything like the magnitude of this had to be delivered to the President. Ryan and Foley had a long, tight bond, both professionally and personally.