fiaAu. Azerbaijan Sunday, 11:33 p.m.
David Battat looked impatiently at his watch. They were over three minutes late. Which is nothing to be concerned about, the short, agile American told himself.
A thousand things could have held them up, but they would be here. They would come by launch or motorboat, possibly from another boat, possibly from the wharf four hundred yards to his right. But they would arrive.
They had better, he thought. He couldn't afford to screw up twice. Not that the first mistake had been his fault.
The forty-three-year-old Battat was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency's small New York field office, which was located across the street from the United Nations building. Battat and his small team were responsible for electronic SOS activities: spying on spies.
Keeping track of foreign 'diplomats' who used their consulates as bases for surveillance and intelligence gathering activities. Battat also had been responsible for overseeing the activities of junior agent Annabelle Hampton.
Ten days before, Battat had come to the American embassy in Moscow. The CIA was running tests in the communications center on an uplink with a new highgain acoustic satellite. If the satellite worked on the Kremlin, the CIA planned on using it in New York to eavesdrop more efficiently on foreign consulates. While Battat was in Moscow, however, Annabelle helped a group of terrorists infiltrate the United Nations. What made it especially painful was that the young woman did it for pay, not principle. Battat could respect a misguided idealist. He could not respect a common hustler.
Though Battat had not been blamed officially for what Annabelle did, he was the one who had run the background check on her. He was the one who had hired her.
And her 'seconding action,' as it was officially classified, had happened during his watch. Psychologically and also politically, Battat needed to atone for that mistake. Otherwise, chances were good that he would get back to the United States and discover that the field agent who had been brought in from Washington to operate the office in his absence was now the permanent New York field director.
Battat might find himself reassigned to Moscow, and he didn't want that. The FBI had all the ins with the black marketeers who were running Russia and the Bureau didn't like to share information or contacts with the CIA. There wouldn't be anything to do in Moscow but debrief bored aparatchiks who had nothing to say except that they missed the old days and could they please get a visa to anywhere west of the Danube?
Battat looked out over the tall grasses at the dark waters of the Bay of Baku, which led to the Caspian Sea.
He raised his digital camera and studied the Rachel through the telephoto lens. There was no activity on the deck of the sixty-one-foot motor yacht. A few lights were on below deck. They must be waiting. He lowered the camera. He wondered if the passengers were as impatient as he was.
Probably, he decided. Terrorists were always edgy but focused. It was an unusual combination, and one way that security forces zeroed in on potential troublemakers in crowds.
Battat looked at his watch again. Now they were five minutes late. Maybe it was just as well. It gave him a chance to get a handle on the adrenaline, to concentrate on the job. It was difficult.
Battat had not been in the field for nearly fifteen years.
In the closing days of the war in Afghanistan, he had been a CIA liaison with the Mujahideen guerrilla fighters.
He had reported from the front on Soviet troop strength, arms, deployment, tactics, and other battlefield details. Anything the military might need to know if the United States ever fought Soviet or Soviet-trained soldiers.
That was back when the United States still had people on the ground collecting solid, firsthand intelligence instead of satellites gathering pictures and audio transmissions, which teams of experts then had to interpret.
Former operatives like Battat who had been trained in HUMINT--human intelligence--called those experts 'educated lucky guessers,' since they were wrong just as often as they were right.
Now, dressed in black boots, blue jeans, leather gloves, a black turtleneck, and a black baseball cap, Battat was watching for a possible new enemy. One of those satellites Battat hated had picked up a communication during a test run in Moscow. For reasons as yet unknown, a group known as 'Dover Street' was meeting on the Rachel, presumably a boat, to pick up 'the Harpooner.' If this was the same Harpooner the CIA had missed grabbing in Beirut and Saudi Arabia, they wanted him. Over the past twenty-five years, he had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in terrorist bombings. After discussing the contents of the message with Washington, it was decided that Battat would photograph the individuals and return to the American consulate in Baku for positive ID. After that, the boat would be tracked by satellite, and a special ops team would be dispatched from Turkey to take him out. No extradition debate, no political hot potato, just a good, old-fashioned erasure. The kind the CIA used to do before Iran-Contra gave black ops a bad name. Before 'do something' was replaced by 'due process.' Before good manners replaced good government.
Battat had flown to Baku. Clearing customs, he had taken the crowded but clean metro out to the Khatayi stop on the sea. The ride cost the equivalent of three cents, and everyone was exceedingly polite, helping one another on and off and holding the doors for late arrivals.
The United States embassy in Baku maintained a small CIA field office staffed by two agents. The agents were presumably known to the Azerbaijani police and rarely went into the field themselves. Instead, they brought in outside personnel whenever necessary. The embassy would not be happy to be presented with the action as a fait accompli. But there were increasing tensions between the United States and Azerbaijan over Caspian oil. The republic was attempting to flood the market with inexpensive oil to bolster its weak economy.
That represented enormous potential damage to American oil companies, who were only marginally represented here--a holdover from the days of the Soviet Union. The CIA in Moscow did not want to inflame those tensions.
Battat spent the late afternoon walking around a section of beach, looking for a particular boat. When he found it, anchored about three hundred yards offshore, he made himself comfortable on a low, flat rock among a thatch of high reeds. With his backpack, water bottle, and bag dinner at his side and the camera hanging around his neck, he waited.
The smell of salty air and oil from the offshore rigs was strong here, like nowhere else in the world. It almost
