Steve and his opponent/partner started the dance. Suddenly the big stick swung parallel to the ground aiming at Steve’s ankles. Steve jumped over it and hit the other man on the shoulder before he could regain his balance. The crowd shouted in surprise and encouragement.
Then a tribesman rushed in and whispered to the Khan who took Mike aside. An instant later, Mike gathered Steve and Kella, and the Khan stopped the contest. Mike said, “We’re leaving. There’s a police vehicle coming this way.”
As he led them away, he added, “There’s an agreement with the police. They get a generous donation every year, and they leave the Qashqai camp alone. They wouldn’t be breaking the rules unless there was major reason and you’re probably it. Get whatever stuff you have and meet me by that truck over there in one minute.”
Steve and Kella ran back to their tent. Steve made sure that Firuz’s CD’s were in his small knapsack, and Kella put her make-up kit/communications device in her bag. They ran to the truck where Mike and Ali were loading two motorcycles and setting them upright on the truck bed with tie-downs and straps. Each man double-checked the contents of the saddlebags and Mike shouted, “We’re good to go. How about you guys?”
59. Nayband Marine Coastal National Park, Iran
As they pulled out of the camp, the Khan stopped them and told Mike, “A truck full of soldiers is following the police car, about one kilometer behind.”
Taking a dirt road, Mike drove quickly away from the camp. Ali was in the back with the bikes while Steve and Kella were in the cabin, Kella seated in the middle in front of a dashboard-mounted GPS showing roads and trails with altitude contour lines.
“See, things are looking up, we’re riding up front,” Steve said. Kella, rolling her eyes up, said nothing.
Steve, smiling at Mike said, “I don’t know why you were nervous. I could have taken that guy.”
“Maybe, or he could have broken your leg. I wonder how long our friends are going to be able to stall the police. Khosrow is named after a Qashqai leader killed by Iranian troops during the last Qashqai uprising in the 60’s,” he explained. “There’s no love lost there. He’ll think of something to slow them down.”
Mike shook his head. “A truck full of soldiers,” he said quietly. “They’re smelling blood.”
Downshifting over the bumps, Mike told them, “There’s a good paved road heading south toward the coast. We’ll make better time if we take it than go cross-country. Except if they knew you were in the camp, they’re setting up road blocks as we speak.”
After twenty minutes, they stopped. Mike said, “The paved road is up ahead about five hundred yards. We’re going to send Ali ahead on his bike. He’ll signal us if there’s a road block.”
They all got out, and Mike helped Ali roll one of the two BMW R1200GS bikes down the ramp. The bike looked well-scuffed. However a closer look revealed a machine in A-1 condition and somewhat bigger than the bikes that were seen in Iran.
“It’s altered for military use,” Mike explained. “We had the manufacturer put ‘150 cc’ on the side here,” he said, pointing, “because anything bigger is illegal in Iran. It’s really an 1170 cc bike and anyone who knows bikes will realize it.
“In your honor, we put bigger tires on it in case we need to cross the sandy hills of the Zagros Mountains between here and the coast.”
Both Mike and Ali put on black helmets giving them communications. Ali mounted and gunned his machine toward the road. They waited a few minutes in silence, listening for sounds of vehicles in back and of gun fire in front.
Finally, Mike said, “Battle of the Granicus River, Alexander the Great, hammer and anvil. Why do I feel we’re on the wrong side of this tactic?”
He listened attentively then said, “Okay, all clear ... so far. Ali is heading south on the road. He’ll be our recon.” They got back in the truck and moved down the trail toward the road.
A short while later, the sun set to their right over the Gulf, on the other side of the mountains. Steve looked at Kella with mixed emotions. She had been right about being needed on this mission. He had needed either her or someone just like her, steady, with personal insights into human nature that he knew were beyond his own, and with technical skills she had learned from her time with the French intelligence service. Why didn’t he feel right about having accepted her help?
That day in Alexandria neither of them really knew what would be involved. Any CIA mission was by definition risky. Breaking other countries’ laws always was. If the policy makers felt they needed more than what legal methods could produce, then it became the role of the CIA to obtain that information, necessarily using extraordinary means to break through the obstacles that the host country had built around the information.
That forces in Washington would give them away before they even got started; that the mission would become a sort of rallying cry for Iran’s leadership looking for a foreign boogeyman to get the Iranian population’s mind away from domestic problems, from the price of tomatoes to the right to have your vote counted; that there would be leaks both in Washington and Tehran making their jobs almost impossible, all of these unknowns trumped the clandestine trade craft that they could bring to bear.
Steve told himself he had been naive to think otherwise and assume that his judgment and ability to weigh risks would be sufficient to keep Kella safe and get the job done. There were forces at work that he had not even imagined, let alone could control, that made his own capabilities seem puny
