The Counterfeit Agent

Book 8: A John Wells Novel

by Alex Berenson

Genres: Crime Fiction; Spy Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

John Wells goes undercover as the threat of nuclear war skyrockets between the United States and Iran, in the cutting-edge new novel from the #1 New York Times- bestselling author. In an Istanbul hotel, a deep source warns a CIA agent that Iran intends to kill a CIA station chief. Quickly, John Wells is called in to investigate, but before he can get far, the tip comes true. Which means that the next warning the source gives will be taken very seriously indeed. And it' s a big one. We' ve put a package on a ship from Dubai to the United States. A radioactive one. A bomb? Not yet. It' s a test run. As the threat level jumps and the government mobilizes, something still doesn' t smell right to Wells' s old CIA boss Ellis Shafer, and so he sends Wells on a private mission to find out what' s going on. But the two of them are swimming against the tide. From Guatemala to Thailand to Hong Kong to Istanbul, Wells uses every skill he has, including his ability to go undercover in the Arab world, to chase down leads. But it might not be enough. Soon there might be nothing anyone can do to pull the United States back from the brink of war.

Release date: February 11, 2014

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 496

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof.***

Copyright © 2014  by Alex Berenson

3

ISTANBUL

Brian Taylor stood by the window in room 1509 of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Istanbul, looking at the dark water of the Bosphorus down the hill to the east. In twelve years at the agency, he had never been so excited.

Taylor was the CIA’s deputy chief of station for Istanbul. His dream job, his dream city. He’d fallen for it backpacking across Europe at the end of the nineties. The last flash of American innocence, when taking a summer to drink cheap wine and run with the bulls still seemed adventurous. Taylor followed the usual route. He saw the sun rise over Montmartre, jumped off the rocks in Cinque Terre. He met his share of women. Always Americans. He never cracked European girls. Maybe if he hadn’t tried so hard . . . He had fun. Yet he felt he’d arrived a couple generations late. The cities were open-air museums. Even the beautiful couples walking along the Seine seemed to hold hands almost ironically. Like they were reenacting movies about Paris instead of living there.

Then he found Istanbul. Its history stretched millennia, and it was as picturesque as anyplace he’d ever seen. Its giant mosques loomed over the Bosphorus, the mile-wide waterway that separated Asia and Europe. Yet it wasn’t a museum. It teemed with life. Shopkeepers and students hustled along its hilly streets. Gleaming white yachts sped past packed ferries and rusted container ships. The Turks were hardworking and silver-tongued, loud and showy. Taylor had grown up in a stuffy town outside Boston. He liked them immediately. He even developed a soft spot for the devious shopkeepers in the Grand Bazaar. Those guys weren’t exactly trying to take advantage, he decided. They wanted to deal. They wanted drama. Any tourist who didn’t understand the game—which every guidebook explained in detail—deserved to be fleeced.

Taylor expected to be in the city three days. He stayed three weeks, flying home the afternoon before fall term started. He knew his sudden ardor was silly, but was falling for a city more absurd than falling for a woman? Both required a willingness to suspend disbelief. Anyway, now he had what every college student wanted. A goal, and a path to reach it. He would learn Turkish, move to Istanbul after graduation. Turkey had eighty million people and a fast-growing economy. Big companies needed Americans who spoke the language. And the University of Massachusetts shared an excellent Turkish program with other colleges around Amherst. He expected his parents to push back. They didn’t. Dad: It’ll make you a lot more hirable than a history degree. Mom: I always wanted to live somewhere exotic. Turkish was tough, but Taylor worked hard. By the start of senior year, he was nearly fluent.

Then al-Qaeda attacked the United States.

 

Like his friends, Taylor was terrified and enraged and wanted revenge. Unlike them, he could help. Turkey shared borders with Iraq and Iran. The FSB, Mossad, and Revolutionary Guard all ran major stations in Istanbul. The CIA was badly outgunned. Just four agency officers spoke Turkish. By November, the agency had contacted language programs all over the country in search of candidates. With his 3.8 GPA and spotless background, Taylor jumped out. A recruiter invited him to Boston for a meet-and-greet. The remains of the World Trade Center were still smoldering. He never considered saying no.

And he had never regretted his decision—not even during his ten-month posting to Iraq, when he’d left the Green Zone only four times. He’d spent most of his career at CIA stations in Istanbul and Ankara, the Turkish capital. Taylor knew he wasn’t a star case officer. The stars worked in Beijing or Kabul or Moscow. But he was reliable, dedicated, and a good fit for Turkey. Though he had joined after September 11, Taylor was something of a throwback. He disliked drones, preferred old-school spying, the careful recruitment of agents from government and business. Guys who lived in mansions, not mud huts. His best sources were mid-level officers in the Turkish army, bureaucrats in the Ministry of Finance.

So Taylor’s career progressed, and his social life, too. He made a habit of American twenty-somethings who came to town on two-year stints for multinationals. He replaced them easily enough. His years with the agency had given him an appealing air of mystery. His apartment had a killer view of the Bosphorus. Plus he knew every restaurant in town, and he always picked up the check. Case officers had practically unlimited expense accounts. No accountant at Langley would question a two-hundred-dollar dinner for “recruiting.”

The CIA promoted Taylor to deputy chief of station in Istanbul on the eleventh anniversary of his hiring. He planned to stay three years, then head back to the United States. He was ready to settle down, have a family. He didn’t think he would ever be a chief. Taylor still believed in the mission, that in some small way he protected the United States. But he supposed that he’d become a careerist. September 11 had faded in his memory, along with everyone else’s.

 

Then the letter arrived.

Almost half a year later, its details were etched in his mind. Noon on a Friday in early September. The consulate mostly empty as the long Labor Day weekend approached. Istanbul stuck in a heat wave, smoking like a kebab on a spit. Taylor’s office was air-conditioned, of course, but through its narrow bulletproof windows the men on the streets looked sullen and irritable.

A knock on his door. His secretary, Alison. She carried an envelope, holding it by her fingertips. Like it was contaminated. Though the consulate scanned local mail for anthrax and other nasties. She handed it to him without a word.

It was addressed to Nelson Drew, Associate Director for Citizen Services, United States Consulate, Istanbul. Taylor’s cover name and job. Inside, a single page of staccato laser-printed sentences.

“Nelson.” You are spy. CIA. Real name Brian Taylor. Speak Turk/ Farsi. I am Rev. Guard Colonel. “Reza.” I need to meet.

Gran Bazaar 6 Sep 3 p.m. Ethcon Carpet.

 

Taylor felt like he’d gone to the doctor for a routine physical and been told he had an inoperable brain tumor. Impossible. The letter’s plain white paper burned his fingers. You are spy . . . He couldn’t be blown like this. But wishing wouldn’t erase the words.

He handed the letter and envelope back to Alison. “Make a copy for me, one for Martha.” Martha Hunt, the bureau chief. “Bag the original and the envelope. Try not to touch them, in case there’re fingerprints.”

Though he didn’t expect forensic evidence. Whoever had sent this was smart. And knew much too much about him. That he worked for the agency. His real name. Even that he knew Farsi. He’d learned the language working with Iranian exile groups in Ankara. He hadn’t liked the exiles. Most just wanted to hang out in Turkey on the CIA’s dime. They found excuses whenever Taylor proposed operations that would send them back into Iran. Still, every so often one had decent intel, so the agency tolerated them.

Now that work had bitten him. As he’d assumed, some exiles were double agents spying for Iran. Still, he couldn’t imagine how they’d found his real name. He’d been careful. But he’d been stationed in Turkey for a long time. Probably the Guard had put the pieces together bit by bit. Finding the answer would be impossible. He’d left Ankara four years before. The exiles had scattered. What mattered was that his cover was blown. What if the Guard knew where he lived? Part of him wanted to get on the first flight home.

But he knew he had to stay. The man who’d written this letter could be an enormously valuable source. The United States was desperate to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Washington had imposed sanctions and attacked the program covertly. Still, the Iranians hadn’t quit. Policymakers badly needed to know how close Iran was to a bomb. But the United States had few agents anywhere in the Iranian government, and none in the Revolutionary Guard. Instead, the CIA and National Security Agency relied on their usual technical wizardry. But Iran had buried its enrichment facilities to keep them from satellites, drones, and radiological sniffers. Following a joint American and Israeli attack on their computer systems in 2009, Iran’s scientists had removed the computers from their labs. They solved equations with calculators now, used plaster to model bomb designs. Still, they were making progress. After all, the American scientists at Los Alamos had designed the first bomb in the 1940s with slide rules and hand-drawn blueprints.

Without hard evidence, the United States could only speculate at Iran’s capabilities and intentions. Some analysts thought Iran would finish its first bomb in less than a year. Others said five years was more likely. This Revolutionary Guard colonel might have the answers.

If he was real. And not luring Taylor into a trap.

 

Martha Hunt was named Istanbul station chief four months after Taylor became deputy. She was two years younger than Taylor and didn’t speak Turkish. But he didn’t begrudge her the job. She had served three years in Kabul, two in Islamabad. When they disagreed, she was usually right. The fact that she was shockingly good-looking, tall and slim, with killer blue eyes, didn’t hurt. He’d never hit on her. He knew his league. She wasn’t in it.

They met in the safe room beside her office. It had no windows and was swept weekly for bugs.

“I don’t like it, either,” she said, as soon as he closed the door.

“Hello, Martha.”

“For all the obvious reasons. Who sets a meet in the Grand Bazaar? Must be five thousand security cams in there. But you’ve got to go.” She didn’t wait for him to agree. “We’ve got a week. Let’s use it. Get a camera to put eyes on the door. He’s dressed wrong, looks like he’s hiding a vest, you abort. He wants to blow himself up, not your problem. Meanwhile, you want to stay in the safehouse until this is done, I’m fine with that.”

“I’ll stay put. Can’t give up that view.” No way would he let Hunt think he was scared.

“You have a view? I hadn’t heard.” A joke. Taylor’s apartment was a minor legend.

“Come on over sometime, see for yourself.” He snorted, so she’d know he was kidding. Though he wasn’t.

“Tell you what. Get us inside the Iranian nuclear program and I will.” She smiled a smile he’d never seen before.

He spent twelve hours wondering if she was flirting. Until he realized what she’d done. She’d given him a tiny ambiguous signal to chew over. To take his mind off the letter. Taylor had heard some men weren’t suckers for beautiful women. He’d never met one.

 

The week dragged. Taylor looked over his files from Ankara, but nobody jumped out as a possible double agent. The station’s tech-support team—two chubby guys named Dominick and Ronaldo—placed a thumbnail camera to watch the front door of the carpet store. The same night a cleaning crew threw it away. Hunt and Taylor decided not to risk placing another.

Two days before the meeting, Taylor checked out the shop himself. It occupied expensive space a few feet from the domed square where the bazaar had begun five centuries before. Rather than traditional patterned carpets, it specialized in modern, brightly colored rugs. Under other circumstances, Taylor might have bought one. Instead, he wandered into a pipe store and watched Ethcon’s entrance as he pretended interest in an overpriced meerschaum.

He’d come early. The bazaar was almost empty. After a few minutes, the Ethcon clerk poked his head out to talk to his counterpart across the corridor. Taylor recognized his accent as from southeastern Turkey, near Iran. Probably a coincidence. Hundreds of thousands of the region’s villagers had migrated to Istanbul. The letter writer had likely chosen Ethcon at random. The company didn’t show up on agency databases, and when Taylor had checked its Turkish records he’d found nothing suspicious. Taylor eavesdropped as the clerk talked about very little. Finally, he handed back the meerschaum and left, ignoring the curses the pipe store owner tossed at his back.

He spent that night staring at the Bosphorus. He hated the way this meeting had come together. Simply by showing up, he was confirming his identity to whoever had sent the letter. Plenty of terrorists, from al-Qaeda to Greek anarchists, would gladly take a CIA scalp.

 

“Good night’s sleep,” Hunt said the next morning.

“We don’t all have your cheekbones.”

“Why don’t you take the day off, practice your shooting.”

The agency had a deal with the Turkish army to let officers use a range at a base near Istanbul. As usual, she was ahead of him. Taylor hadn’t fired his pistol in a year. A day shooting would help him relax and might save his life. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

The bazaar stretched across a dozen blocks in Sultanahmet, the heart of Istanbul’s Old City. On Friday afternoon, Taylor sat at a nearby McDonald’s, watching tourists and Turks slurp down Cokes against the late-summer heat. He wore a tiny receiver in his right ear for updates from the surveillance team, a baggy T-shirt to hide the pistol in his waistband. At 2:44, his receiver buzzed.

“Pico One. Possible Gamma sighting. In the forest now.” Taylor. He could no longer bear the plastic friendliness of the McDonald’s. He shouldered his way to the bazaar’s southeast entrance. Two minutes later, his earpiece buzzed again. “Pico One. False alarm on that Gamma, unless he has three kids.” Finally: “Pico Two. Empty forest. No Gamma, no X-rays.” Picos One and Two were the CIA team around the store. Gamma was the letter-writer, whoever he was. X-rays were a potential enemy team. X-rays almost certainly meant a trap. Reza would arrive alone if he was genuine.

At 2:55, Taylor entered the bazaar. Six minutes later, he reached the store. Pico One was gone, but Two stood down the corridor. He wore his Real Madrid cap backward, signaling to Taylor that the store was empty except for the clerk. Reza hadn’t shown. Unless the clerk himself was Reza, a long shot.

Taylor walked inside. The Ethcon clerk was dark for a Turk, with oily black hair. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, both too tight to conceal a bomb. “You are Mr. Nelson?” Taylor controlled his surprise. The store was a single room, its only entrance the front door. Rugs were piled high along the walls. Nowhere for anyone to hide. Taylor took the bait. “Nelson Drew, yes.”

The clerk picked an envelope off his desk. “Boy come yesterday, say you come to the store today, I give you this. He say you want many rugs.”

“How old?”

“Our rugs are new—”

“The boy. How old was the boy?”

“Ten years, maybe.”

“Iranian?”

“Turk.”

Reza had figured the agency would be watching the store. He had used a runner to get a letter into the store safely. Basic tradecraft. The clerk handed Taylor the envelope. NELSON was printed across the flap in black letters. Taylor tore it open, found a single sheet.

Tram to Cevizliba?g. Down stairs to gas station. Arrive by 3:30. ALONE. Other Wise I will go and never contact you again. “Reza”

 

On his way out of the bazaar, he called Hunt, read her the note.

“As a meet, it makes sense,” she said.

“It’s no fun at all.”

“No cameras, we can’t box him. When he’s done, he gets back on the tram or finds a cab and disappears onto the highway. I think this increases the odds he’s real.”

“You’re not the one with no backup.”

“It’s nice and public. Nobody’s gonna touch you there. Just don’t go further. He tries to get you into a vehicle, tell him no.”

“What if he says I can have a puppy?”

He hung up, dodged through a busload of Chinese tourists blocking the bazaar’s main entrance.

The tram stop was close to the bazaar. Istanbul had lousy public transportation—the city had promised a subway line under the Bosphorus for decades. But the trams came often and were the fastest way around the Old City. Taylor waved his pass at the entrance gate’s scanner and joined the Turks crowding the platform. A tram was just arriving. He pushed his way on. The car was packed, and he wedged his hands against his sides. The butt of his Sig bulged under his T-shirt. A woman stared until Taylor shook the shirt loose to hide the pistol.

The stink of onion and garlic and summer sweat overwhelmed the tram. Many older Turkish men still preferred traditional baths to everyday showering. Taylor fleetingly wondered if Hunt had given him this mission as a prank. Maybe she thought his life of expense-account dinners was too comfortable.

The tram chugged along, passing cars that were barely moving on either side. At 3:26, a cheery automated voice announced Cevizlibag?. Taylor shoved himself out. Sweat coursed down his chest. He unzipped his jacket, fought the urge to draw his Sig.

The gas station lay below the tram platform, beside the highway, an eight-lane monster that connected the airport with central Istanbul. Taylor joined a line of men walking down the spindly steel stairs and looked for his contact. There. A man leaned against the concrete retaining wall that supported the tram tracks. He had brown Persian skin. He wore wide mirrored sunglasses and jeans and dragged on a cigarette. His T-shirt and jeans were too tight to hide a bomb.

Taylor stopped halfway down, checked out the lot. Dozens of pumps and a busy minimarket. Lots of gas being sold, no sign of a kill or kidnap team. Men pushed past him, annoyed that he’d blocked their path. The guy in the sunglasses stepped toward the stairs. Taylor had reached the point of no return. Choose or lose.

He walked down.

 

Up close the man was older than Taylor expected, early forties, though Iranians could be tough to judge. He wore blue jeans and knockoff Doc Martens. He was tall and handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m glad you came,” he said. In Farsi. He sounded native, as best Taylor could judge.

“What about the store?”

“This is better.” He led Taylor to the retaining wall, took a final drag on his smoke and scuffed it under his shoes. His first mistake. Taylor would grab the butt after he left. The agency would test any fingerprints and DNA against its databases.

“What’s your real name, Reza?”

“Cigarette?” He offered Taylor the red pack of L&Ms.

Taylor shook his head. “You know my name, I don’t know yours.”

“You have a weapon, I do not.” He lifted his arms over his head, made a single slow twirl so Taylor could see the truth of his words. Like a middle-aged Iranian ballerina.

“Playing the fool, drawing attention to yourself.”

“If someone has followed me here, I’m dead already.”

“How does the Guard know my real name?”

“They don’t. Only me.”

“How’s that?” In Ankara, Taylor had used a different cover identity.

“We have a photo of you from Ankara in our files. Nobody ever bothered with it. I saw it a few months ago, I had an idea. Our man said you spoke excellent Turkish—”

“Who was the man?”

“He called himself Hussein al-Ghazi when he was in Ankara. A nobody. Back in Tehran.”

Taylor didn’t remember the guy. But the Ankara exile groups had hundreds of members. “And this man Ghazi gave me up?”

“All he said was that you spoke good Turkish—”

“Excellent.”

“Excellent, yes. Shall I explain, so we can put this behind us, I can tell you why I’m here? We don’t have long.”

Taylor nodded.

“I guessed your age and found all the Turkish-studies programs in America and looked up the graduates on the Internet. You don’t look Turkish, so I imagined you must learn at a university.”

“What if I knew the language because I had some family connection to Turkey instead?”

“Then I wouldn’t find you. A small risk. All I would lose is time.”

“Every program?”

“They’re not large, and most students are Turkish. All the way from 1995 until 2000 I saw only about three hundred Americans. I checked yearbook photos until I found your real name. It took less than a month from beginning to end.”

Taylor was speechless. A monstrous security flaw, one he’d never considered before.

“Then I looked at our photos of American consular and embassy officers. We take those as a matter of course. I was fortunate you were still in Turkey, under official cover. And that you’d been here long enough for us to have your official name and title so I could know where to address the letter. I imagined if I’d guessed correctly, you would come. As you have.”

“But no one else in the Guard—”

“Correct. Only me. And I don’t intend to tell anyone.”

The words Taylor had hoped to hear. If they were true. “You want to work for us, Reza? A man in your position must have valuable information.”

“I’m not here to sell out my country.”

If a decade as a case officer had taught Taylor anything, it was that agents always said that before they sold out their countries. The Iranian lit another cigarette, dragged deep.

“Our leaders, they’ve swallowed their own poison. They believe this bomb will make them safe. They hate you and the Jews for trying to stop them.”

“How close is it?”

“I don’t know exactly. I have a friend in the program, he tells me very close. Though our engineers have been too optimistic before. But what your country needs to understand, it is already affecting our policies. Sometime next week, we will bomb two Israeli embassies.”

The surprises kept coming. “Where?”

“One Africa, one Asia. There was supposed to be a third, in Bulgaria, but it got pulled. Security was too tight. That’s how I know.”

“This is Hezbollah or the Guard?” Iran used Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia, for most of its attacks on Israel.

“Hezbollah. But we’re helping even more than usual. It’s complicated. Two simultaneous bombs, two continents. Also they’re very focused on Syria right now.”

“Why not delay, then?”

“If we had any choice, we would, but the orders come from the top. A message to the Israelis, stop shooting our scientists.”

“Which embassies?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bombs? Does that mean truck bombs, suicide bombs?”

“Bulgarian was truck. I think the others, too.”

“This is confirmed? Two embassies?”

Reza turned to Taylor, raised his sunglasses so they were eye-to-eye. “I don’t have much respect for your agency. Technology, yes. Officers, no. You, you speak Turkish, your Farsi isn’t bad, so I hope you’re not stupid. Then you ask questions like this. Yes, it’s confirmed.” Reza took a last drag of the L&M, crunched it under his heel. “I must go.”

“Reza, I need to know more about you. We need to know more. Why you’re offering this information—”

“I’m sick of these fanatics who run my country. I don’t like the idea of a nuclear war. You need more reasons?”

“If you have them.”

“A friend of mine, the Basij-e beat his cousin to death during the Green protests.” Following a disputed election in the summer of 2010, college students and other young Iranians filled Tehran with anti-government protests that became known as the Green Wave. The regime struck back with paramilitary gangs called the Basij-e Mostaz’afin—the name meant Mobilization of the Oppressed. The Basij-e were poor and devout and hated the protesters, who were wealthier and less religious. They attacked viciously, killing dozens and wounding hundreds more. The police didn’t stop the violence. Sometimes they even worked with the Basij-e.

“At least tell me your name.”

“I’ve told you the truth. You don’t believe me, watch the news next week. See that bag behind that piece of concrete.” Taylor followed Reza’s gaze to a brown paper bag. “A phone for you. I’ll call when I have something. It may be a while.”

“I can’t—”

“It’s not a bomb. Just a phone I bought today. Still in the package.”

“I need a way to reach you.”

“I don’t want you to reach me. Or pay me. Or take my photo. Or put my DNA in a file.” Reza picked up his crushed cigarette butts, tucked them in his pocket. “The Guard have a prison near Qom, underground. They keep rabid dogs. They take off your clothes, handcuff you to a post, open the cage. They tell about the rabies so you’ll know what happens after the bite.”

“We can’t protect you if we don’t know who you are.”

Reza flipped his sunglasses down. “Tell the Israelis. The end.”

Three pumps down, a taxi had just finished filling up. Reza strode to it, spoke to the cabbie. He slid inside and didn’t look back as the taxi rolled off.

Taylor squatted down beside the paper bag. He couldn’t see what was inside. Anyway, what was he expecting? That it would be ticking? He unrolled the top, nudged it over with his sneaker. A little mobile slid out in a clamshell case. Taylor decided to take a cab back to the consulate, just in case. If the phone blew up, there’d be less collateral damage.

 

When the Marines at the consulate’s front gate checked the phone with their explosives scanner, it came back clean. Taylor left it with the station’s techs. “Make sure it’s not bugged.”

“Can I take it apart?” Ronaldo said.

“Do what you want, long as you don’t break it. You break it, I break you.”

Hunt waited in the conference room, two digital tape recorders on the table. “Tell me just as it happened. No opinions. Facts, as you recall them. I want every detail while it’s fresh.”

For a half hour, he recounted the meeting. “You did well,” she said when he finished.

“Thank you.”

“One question. Did you get the cab’s plate?”

His elation vanished. “No, it was too far—”

“Forget it. I meant what I said, I think you handled it about as well as anyone could have. But I have to know one thing. Don’t hesitate. Just yes or no, from the gut. Is he real?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“His anger at the regime felt real. His Farsi sounded native. Even the way he described the op, that it’s in trouble but the top guys are pushing. Whichever team you play for, we’ve all had that. And it doesn’t make sense otherwise. He gave us a very specific tip. We’ll know in a week if he’s lying. If the point was to set me up, why not just shoot me today? We both know I couldn’t have done much.”

“Okay. Write up your report, I’ll cable the desk.”

“I wish I’d gotten a picture somehow.”

“Maybe we can convince the agency to put a sketch artist on a plane tonight before your memory fogs.”

“You think he’s real, Martha?”

“I trust you.”

An answer that wasn’t exactly yes. And, more important, left the judgment squarely on him. He was disappointed in her—and in him- self for letting her beauty fool him. She was chief. He was deputy. Ever thus.

 

Taylor spent the next two days on conference calls with Langley, answering the same questions again and again. How the letter had come in. What had happened at the carpet store. Finally, he reached Bart Regina, an assistant deputy dir