The Red Cell. André Le Gallo
the coast with Iranian security close behind, my name was outted to the Iranian media and they gave me a nickname,” Steve said with a grin.
According to Kristen’s office colleagues, the other half of the “we” was Church’s partner and girlfriend, Kella Hastings, a French girl with a bizarre background. Born of a North African desert tribe and later adopted by an American diplomat and his French wife, Steve and Kella had met at a diplomatic reception in Paris. They later had been recruited by the agency to gather operational intelligence on a radical Muslim leader, whom Steve had met while studying in Brussels. They had eventually stopped the Jihadist from pulverizing several Middle East capitals with a captured Israeli space gun in an effort to turn the clock back to the time of the Caliphate. Kristen wondered if Kella was still in the picture.
Kristen’s conjectures were interrupted when Vice President Harry Baxter, a bald, heavy-set man, entered the room.
“You get yourself in the damndest situations, Steve,” said Baxter. “And now that you’ve killed them both, we can’t interrogate them.”
“Iranians are notoriously bad drivers, Mr. Vice President,” Steve said. “They killed themselves. But I agree they would have been a source of valuable intelligence. They were obviously members of the Quds Force, Iran’s equivalent of SMERSH, the old Soviet assassination unit.”
Kristen knew Baxter was said to often act like a bull in a china shop but was also a man who got things done.
“I spoke to CIA director LaFont this morning,” Baxter said. “She’s going to initiate a Covert Finding. We need to get more aggressive with these thugs who come to our country to kill our officials.”
“A lethal finding?” Steve asked.
“You bet your ass. Are there any other kinds?” Baxter chuckled.
Steve smiled. “Game on.”
2. Fairfax County, Virginia
The CIA recruiter, “Just call me Bob,” had first interviewed Um in a rented office a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. He seemed friendly, as a recruiter should be. He said he served in Iraq and showed off his few words of Arabic, as they both laughed at his accent. Three weeks later, she responded to his invitation for a second interview, this time in Northern Virginia.
As Um followed Bob’s directions, her heart beat faster than normal. She steered her used red Mustang into a parking lot dominated by a twelve-story office building, turned again, and stopped in front of a lowered white barrier across the entrance to a side lot. The secondary lot was not visible from the street, nor did her GPS acknowledge the presence of the red brick building she could now see beyond the guardhouse. A uniformed Federal Protective Service officer in his late twenties emerged. He examined her Mustang then studied her face a moment before smiling. She wondered if the sports car was too high profile.
About to enter a CIA building for the first time, she was tense. She replayed Ahmed’s words, “Stay calm, think of the beach in Beirut, the water skiers, the kids playing in the sand, the ice cream peddlers ... You haven’t done anything wrong, you have broken no American laws. The lie detector—they call it a polygraph—is nothing. It’s just a machine. Those wires and clips and computers are there to scare you into saying things you don’t have to say, don’t want to say. Stay calm inside. Within yourself. Be peaceful. They need translators. With your Arabic and your Farsi, they will be easy on you, Insha’Allah.”
Inside, the guard took her driver’s license and, with his eyes still on her in a way that made her anxious through the bullet-proof window, made a phone call. He nodded to the voice on the line, hung up, returned her license, and gave her a parking permit. “Space twenty-three is in the second lane.” He pointed to the right and gave her another smile. “Good luck.” He winked and opened the gate. She gave him a grateful nod, as she pushed back her dark hair and wondered if their common age had elicited the unexpected encouragement.
She parked and lowered the visor, the mirror reminding her yet again that her nose was too sharp, too Semitic, too much like her father’s, who had died in the Shia rebellion following the First Gulf War. Lamina, her best friend in Lebanon, had told her, “Be pretty, or be smart.” She had found, however, that being a smart woman in the Arab world, even in Beirut’s relatively liberal atmosphere, wasn’t often to her advantage.
She refreshed the light makeup on her olive skin, starting and ending by dusting the sides of her nose. She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse and got out of the low-slung Mustang long legs first. As she smoothed out her slacks she wondered if she should have worn her mid-thigh black skirt, instead. She took a breath, and pointed her high heels toward the building’s entrance.
I have broken no American laws.
She tried to recall her time as a student at the American University of Beirut, of her Sundays on the Corniche with its nightlife, oblivious of the daily violence. Although the Civil War was over, there seemed to be no end to the killings, the car bombs, and the hostage takings. Now, it seemed so long ago.
An hour later, she was sitting in a small, windowless office in the basement of the red-brick building.
John, an African American polygraph operator with rimless glasses, sat across the desk and explained at the outset that all answers had to be yes or no. He then reviewed the ten questions he intended to ask during the test. “If any of your answers need discussion, let’s clear them up beforehand.”
Um nodded, and John ran through the questions. She said she understood. He attached sensors to measure her pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and galvanic skin response. She didn’t ask about the wire coming out of the cushion on her chair.
“Only yes or no during the test. Okay?
“Is your name Um al Ali?”
“Yes.”
She maintained a friendly expression, just as Ahmed had instructed her. “Establish rapport with him,” he had said.
“Is today Monday?” Another control question, John had told her, to establish her reaction during a truthful response.
“Yes.” She tensed the muscles of her legs as she spoke, just as she had for the first question. Would Ahmed’s instructions work? John lifted his eyes from the screen to her face.
“Let’s try that again,” he said. “Is today Monday?”
“Yes.” This time she tensed only one leg.
“Were you born in a Shiite family?”
“Yes.” She tensed her muscles a bit less this time.
“Did you move to Beirut at the age of twelve?”
“Yes.”
“Did you come to California to join your brother Malik?”
“Yes.” She tensed with the other leg this time. Perhaps she should have followed him to Montréal as well, she thought, and she would not be going through this insane test.
“Do you have any contacts with government officials from any country’s intelligence service?”
“No.”
She stayed relaxed. Ahmed was not with a government. He hated all governments.
John studied her again and repeated the question.
“No.” She moved her foot slightly under the desk.
“Did you apply for this translator position of your own free will?”
This was crucial. She found the part of her mind that revealed a wide expanse of beach with the Riviera Hotel on the left as she gazed to the west.
“Yes.”
She remained still. No one had actually forced her. When she had met her brother’s friend Ahmed in Montréal, he suggested it one day. Being a substitute teacher of Arabic at San Francisco’s Transworld School didn’t pay enough, and he