Siro Page 12

“How do you mean?”

  “You know, a Persian. Creepy-crawly. Touchy-feely. And he wants money.”

  “Of course he wants money,” said Howard. “I’d be nervous if he didn’t. Nothing so clean as money.”

  “Can we pay him?”

  “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 own loony direction? It wasn’t that he was intimidating. He was a fat, ugly little man with no appeal or charm, and Anna half suspected that she could break his arm if she had to. It was that he refused to play by the rules. He was the kind of man Anna loathed, the kind she had been smart and pretty and wellborn enough to have avoided dealing with her entire life. Now she hadn’t that luxury.

  “Listen to me,” said Anna carefully. “I have a message from my friends at the embassy.” At the mention of the word “embassy,” Ascari seemed to cool off. He sat back in his chair. “My friends,” she continued, “said they were very interested in the information you gave me when we met before. They asked me to meet you again.”

  “Interested?” He beamed.

  “Yes. Very interested.”

  “Thanks be to Allah! How much money will they pay me?”

  “They’re not ready to talk about money yet.”

  “I am so sorry, then,” said Ascari. “No money, forget it.” He folded his arms and pouted, as if he had been cruelly insulted. I hate dealing with this man, thought Anna. I hate it! Yet she was a professional, or wanted to be, and he was a client.

  “Calm down,” she said. “I didn’t say no money. I just said not yet.”

  “No money, forget it,” repeated Ascari.

  “I’ll tell that to my friends at the embassy. But first, they say they need to know more about you.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Fine. What they want to know?” He adjusted his ascot. He was vain, for such an ugly man.

  “When were you born?” asked Anna.

  “In 1940, 1942. I don’t remember.”

  “What does your passport say?”

>   “Which one?”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Two, I think. No, three.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “One from Iran.”

  “Do you have it? Let me see it, please.”

  “Yeah, okay. Fine.” He gave her the Iranian passport. She began copying the information in a small spiral notebook.

  “Hold on!” said Anna sharply. “It says here you were born in Baku, in Soviet Azerbaijan.”

  “That is right. Baku.”

  “How did you get to Iran?”

  “It was during the war. Everybody went everywhere. No problem.”

  “But what was your father doing in Baku?”

  “He live there, lady. That was home, okay? But not now. Ali Ascari’s home is Tehran. Understand?”

  She looked at him dubiously. “Where are the other passports from?”

  “One from Spain, I think.” He fished around in the alligator-skin purse he carried and removed a Spanish passport. It looked brand-new. Anna wrote down the information, none of which matched what was on the Iranian passport. The Spanish passport said he had been born in Madrid.

  “Nice job,” said Anna, handing the passport back to Ascari.

  He looked at her strangely. “Thank you,” he said.

  “What’s the third?”

  “Greek,” said Ascari. “But I keep this one. I have to have some secrets, even from you, lady, and your friends at embassy.”

  “They’ll be upset when I tell them that you wouldn’t show it to me.”

  “Eh. So what.”

  Anna decided to let it go. Two passports were enough for now. Baku was a potential problem, but let headquarters worry about it.

  “I like that dress,” said Ascari, leaning forward in his chair again. “Brown is very nice color for you.”

  Ignore him, thought Anna. Don’t answer. Stick to your game. “What do you do for a living?” she asked.

  “Business,” said Ascari.

  “What kind?”

  The Iranian leaned closer to Anna, so that she could smell the garlic on his breath, not quite covered by the mint smell of his mouthwash. She cocked her ear, thinking he would confide the nature of his work. But no.

  “Lady,” he said. “I know that you want to sleep with me.”

  Anna pulled back with a start. “You’re wrong!” she said. “Flat wrong! And I told you, I am not going to permit this kind of talk.”

  “You know how I know?” continued Ascari, oblivious to Anna’s protest. “I know because you call me back. After I put my hand on your knee. So I say to myself, if this American lady not CIA lady, and she let me put my hand on her knee, then she must like me very much. Or she want money. Do you want Ali’s money?” He winked as he said it.

  “No,” said Anna through her teeth. “I do not.”

  “Then you must like me very much. Then you will sleep with me. I am happy. We will drink champagne.”

  “No! We will not drink champagne. And I certainly will not sleep with you. That is out of the question. Do you hear me?”

  Anna worried that she was beginning to sound hysterical. But even the waiter didn’t pay any attention. The few people in the restaurant seemed to assume that any Western woman with a man like Ascari was asking for trouble. Hold on, Anna told herself. Keep cool.

  “I have surprise for you,” said Ascari sweetly. “For your friends at embassy, I mean. Big surprise.”

  “That’s nice,” said Anna. “But first let’s finish with your background. What is your occupation?”

  “Business. I told you.”

  “But what kind?”

  “You know, business. Any kind. If you want to buy, I sell. If you want to sell, I buy. You know. Business.”

  “Why don’t we just say ‘trader,’ ” said Anna. She opened her little spiral notebook again and wrote: Trader. As she did so, she noticed that Ascari had leaned over and was looking at her legs.

  “You know what?” he asked.

  “No. What?”

  “I hate panty hose. Hate them.”

  “Shut up!” said Anna. Her voice was almost a shout.

  “You know why?”

  “Shut up! Stop it!” She could feel herself losing control.

  “Because,” he said with a giggle, “you can’t get finger inside!”

  “You slimy bastard!” She slapped him, hard. Then she walked to the ladies’ room.

  Anna doused her face with cold water and considered the situation. She was furious, as much at herself as at Ascari. It was her fault that she had lost control, first of him, then of her own feelings. She felt humiliated and abused, but worse than that, she felt incompetent. After a few moments of sober reflection, she decided it was time to cut her losses. For some bizarre reason, Ascari had her number. She would drop the case—walk out the door of the restaurant, call Howard from a pay phone, and tell him to get someone new. She was brushing her hair when she remembered Ascari’s “big surprise.” He had said he had a big surprise for the embassy. What the hell was that about? She probably should find out. At least ask the question. That would be her last contact with Ascari, absolutely the last word. Then she would leave. Anna finished brushing her hair, took a long look at herself in the mirror, and returned to the table.

  Ascari was sitting contentedly when she emerged, smiling and drinking a whiskey. He looked slightly sheepish, if it was possible for a pig to look sheepish.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” said Anna. “Do you hear me?”

  Ascari nodded. There was a long silence, broken by the Iranian. “I am sorry that I treat you like a prostitute,” he said. “You are not a prostitute. You are CIA lady.”

  “I told you where I work,” said Anna evenly.

  “Of course you are CIA lady!” said Ascari again. “I am not so stupid.”

  Anna didn’t answer. Let the little prick think whatever he wants, she thought.

  “You should have told me. Then I would not be so sure that you want to go to bed with me.”

  “Drop it,” said Anna. “What is your big surprise?”

  “Ah! My surprise. Okay, CIA lady. Listen very careful, because this is big stuff. Big stuff.”

  “I’m listening.” Finish your business, she told herself, and get out of here.

  “Khomeini men hate America,” began Ascari. “You know that? America put in Shah. America made Iran its little whore, dress it up like cheap woman. So Khomeini men hate America.”

  “Yes. I know that. I know they hate America.”

  “They have plan for revenge. Next year is American presidential election, right?”

  Anna nodded.

  “So Khomeini men planning to kill presidential candidates.”

  “What?”

  “You heard right. Kill. Boom! Bang-bang.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The President, all the other candidates. And people who work for them.”

  “Say that again,” said Anna. Her head felt as if it were spinning.

  “What I said. Khomeini men have plan to kill all presidential candidates next year, and other big people.”

  “Where? At the conventions?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe at conventions.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “That’s all I tell you now. For the rest, you pay money.”

  “Who is involved? Do you have any names?”

  “Hey! I told you. No more unless you pay money. You tell friends at American embassy. No more bullshit.”

  “How can they reach you?”

  “Same number I gave you. Except I am going away on business trip tomorrow.”

  “Where?”

  “Turkey.”

  “Where will you be staying?”

  “In Istanbul. At Hilton, of course. Best hotel.”

  “What passport?”

  “Iranian. I save others for tricky business.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “A week. Two weeks. I do
n’t know.”

  “Thanks for the information,” said Anna. “But you’re still a skunk.” She rose from her chair.

  “Hey, wait, lady!” said Ascari.

  “Let’s skip lunch, shall we?” said Anna, heading for the door. She had never been more happy to end an engagement in her life.

  “Dynamite!” said Howard several hours later when he finished debriefing Anna. This time she gave him a thorough summary of the meeting. She omitted nothing, narrating every loathsome gesture, every filthy insinuation, every demand for money, every nasty assertion that she worked for the agency. It was all supposed to lead up to her demand that she be taken off the case. But she never quite got there. Howard was too excited about the assassination plot.

  Anna tried to slow him down. “He’s blown my cover,” she said. “He knows I work for the agency.”

  “Naaa,” said Howard. “You didn’t confirm it, did you?”

  “No,” said Anna. “Of course not.”

  “Then don’t worry about it too much. Iranians are spook-crazy. They think everybody works for CIA, so what does it matter?”

  Anna frowned. “Okay,” she said, still unconvinced.

  “Did he really say that about panty hose?”

  “Give me a break, Howard. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Okay. Sorry. We have work to do anyway. We’ve got to get this little item moving to headquarters, pronto. Which means that you get to help prepare your very first field intelligence report.”

  Howard removed a printed form from his briefcase and showed it to Anna. “You know how the grading system works?” he asked.

  “Not really,” said Anna.

  “Okay,” he said, going into his professor voice. “We rate every intelligence report according to two standards. The quality of the source and the reliability of the information. We grade the sources A to F. A means completely reliable. B means usually reliable. C means fairly reliable. D means not usually reliable. E means not reliable. F means reliability can’t be judged. Got it?”

  “Sure.” Said Anna. “I mean, it’s not very complicated.”

  Howard looked slightly disappointed. “No, not very,” he said. “We grade the content the same way, from one to six. One means confirmed by other independent and reliable sources, two means probably true, three means possibly true, four means doubtful, five means probably false, six means can’t be judged. Easy, right?”