For Iranian atmospherics, I drew on one of my most memorable tours with the CIA, which took my family and me to Tehran at the outset of the 1978–79 Revolution.
Since our house was near a mosque where the rioters would assemble after the daily curfew, each night was “Ground Hog Day.” Punctuated by the full-throated “Allahu Akbars” of our neighbors on their rooftops, crowd noises usually peaked around 11:00 p.m., overpowered an hour later by the clanking of Centurion tanks followed by shots and silence until the next day. The following morning our Iranian neighbors’ children would knock on our door to ask our children to come out and play. One night I found a note under the door, which threatened to kill my family if we were not all out of Iran by December 1st.
The roadblock scene is not atmospheric; it is based on an actual event.
The friction between the CIA and the State Department’s Foreign Service Officers goes back to the beginnings of time. Although most FSOs are professional, comfortable in their skin, and accepting of the CIA’s mission to collect “otherwise unobtainable information,” there are others who see CIA reporting as threatening to their careers and who suffer from clientitis.
As far as the role of the intelligence oversight committees of Congress, current events have shown that some of its members prefer partisanship to the national interest.
One day we may learn that the CIA is currently running high risk operations in Iran that are similar to Steve and Kella’s adventure.
—André Le Gallo
Marin County, California
December 2011
1. Manama, Bahrain
Steve Church was jogging on the treadmill in the fitness center of Manama’s iconic Panorama Hotel when his cell phone beeped. The Al Jazeera newscast from the flat-screen TV in front of the aerobic equipment showed Iran’s sulfurous but always entertaining president vigorously defending his country’s right to build a nuclear weapon that, he insisted, Iran was not building. While mentally incorporating the Iranian’s belligerent tone into a presentation he was scheduled to make later that day to the Bahraini Special Forces, Steve checked his phone but did not answer it. It was the second time this morning that the special assistant to the CIA’s Director of the National Clandestine Service, Thérèse LaFont, had tried to reach him, but he wasn’t sure whether he was ready for another dance with the NCS bureaucracy.
He returned his attention to the news when a series of muted popping sounds immediately refocused him on his surroundings. None of the other four ambitious souls in the small gym reacted, hypnotized by the digitized product of their work—heart rate, distance, calories, heart rate, distance, calories—and on the TV now showing a student demonstration in Tehran. Steve stepped into the carpeted corridor but heard nothing more. Back inside, he took a swig from his water bottle and decided the sounds must have come from the television.
He resumed his running mulling over the wording for his speech. As a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Bahrain had recommended that the GCC create a Rapid Reaction Force. The other GCC members, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, favored the idea but were worried about Iran’s reaction. Steve, who had successfully introduced his employer, the Northern Virginia-based consultant company West Gate, into Morocco now saw a similar opportunity in the Gulf.
This time the sounds were unmistakable: muffled screams and gunfire. His gym mates, now looking confused, stopped their exercises. Steve jumped off the treadmill and ran to the corridor heading for the stairs. Wiping his brow and running the towel hanging from his neck over his short brown hair, he stopped and ran back to the gym before reaching the stairs.
“I don’t know what’s going on but everyone should leave the hotel – sounded like shots,” he said from the doorway raising his voice over the TV. His six-foot-one runner’s build looked fit without being imposing; nevertheless, his audience was attentive. “There must be a delivery entrance in the back, out through the basement,” he said. He then ran back toward the red exit sign over double doors leading to a stairwell, this time with the small group in tow.
Before he could open the door, a younger man who had been in the gym caught up with him and handed him his bag. “If we’re not coming back,” his new best friend said, “you probably want this. I saw you had a phone in there.” Steve nodded politely, retrieved the phone and a couple of personal items that would fit in his pockets, dropped the bag, and started running down the metal steps.
One floor down, shouting behind the door that led into the lobby made Steve stop. Urging the group to continue on down the stairs without him, Steve cracked the lobby door open, conscious of the puzzled looks from his group and wondering himself why he simply didn’t follow his own advice and get out.
Partially hidden by a massive elevator tower twenty feet away, the spacious lobby was sunlit from skylights fifteen floors up looking down on a central atrium. Walkways overlooked the lobby and provided access to guest rooms. In a crouching run and glancing from side to side, Steve left the safety of the stairwell to peer from behind the elevator tower.
Men and women’s shoes, shirts, and other items of clothing littered the lobby. A red streak the width of a body ran through the middle of the confusion. Two people lay just beyond Steve’s hiding place. One in a hotel uniform was motionless and on his back;
