The Last Run

CHAPTER EIGHT

Paul Crocker sat on the edge of his desk, eating his dinner of takeaway salad from the commissary, and contemplated who he would most like to stab first with his plastic fork. On any given day, he would readily admit, the list would be a long one, populated by anyone from the file runner who didn't seem to understand that now meant now-god-dammit and not now-but-after-you've-had-a-nice-chat-with-my-PA, to the Head of Station in, say, Sucre, who couldn't mount an operation on his own without a coloring book and large-type instructions relayed in triplicate and signed by everyone from the PUS at the FCO to C to the Head of the Janitorial Staff.

And that was the list without the addition of politicians.

"I know that look," Julian Seale said. "Just tell me it's not me you're planning to murder."

Crocker shook his head, forcing down a particularly limp piece of cucumber. "You can relax. You're so low on the list they'll have caught and killed me long before I reach you."

Seale leaned forward in his seat, swiping a broad palm across his thigh to clear it of crumbs from his sandwich, before taking hold of the edge of the map laid out on Crocker's desk. He was a tall man, like Crocker, but broader, the body of an American footballer, as opposed to a British one. One of the few African Americans holding senior posts with the CIA, he'd held the Chief of Station office at the embassy in Grosvenor Square for just under five years now, an exceptionally long time for such a tour, and one that was due to end at the turning of the year. If Operation: Coldwitch resolved as everyone from Downing Street to the White House hoped it would, Seale would be leaving London on a high note, indeed.

"I like the placement of the safehouse," Seale said, after a moment. "That's, what, five klicks from the airport in Noshahr?"

"Just over four, yes."

Seale gulped the rest of his coffee, then got to his feet, craning his head for a better look at the map. "It's a sweet-looking operation, Paul. Your boys and girls really outdid themselves on this one."

"They damn well better have. Coast Guard is aboard?"

"Langley cleared it with the White House earlier today. Orders forthcoming."

Crocker made a last, halfhearted attempt to stab at an asparagus spear, just as limp as the cucumber, then gave up and dumped the remains of his dinner into the trashcan beside his desk. "I'll want confirmation."

"Obviously." Seale checked his watch. "When's Chace due to brief?"

"She's not." Crocker slid off the desk and began folding up the map. "The job belongs to Poole. He briefed this evening, will be on his way to Tehran at dawn."

Seale put a hand down on the desk, trapping the map, and Crocker was forced to look at him. "You can't do that. Paul, you can't do that, the terms of our involvement are that you send Chace. That's direct from Langley, this has to be handled by your most senior operations officer."

"You're moving up my list, Julian."

"This isn't a joke. The job has to go to Chace."

"Poole can do it just as well as she can."

"That may be, but those aren't the goddamn terms, Paul! Jesus, are you trying to kill the operation? It's Hossein Khamenei, it's not some fucking clerk in the post office, it's a high-value target of incredible intelligence value. You have to send your senior operations officer, you have to send Minder One."

"She's put in her resignation from the Section. I've accepted it. She is not, therefore, the senior Minder. And get your fucking hand off my fucking desk, Julian."

Seale stepped back, glaring at him, and Crocker fought the map closed, fuming. The demand that Chace be the agent of record for Coldwitch was yet another of the many things he didn't like about the Tehran job.

"Why the hell weren't we told about this?" Seale asked.

"Because no one fucking asked me!" Crocker roared. "Because no one has listened to a word I've said for the last twenty-four hours! Ever since Chace made her report I've been fighting against this operation, and at every turn I've been either ignored or overruled."

"If I have to go back to Langley and tell them that she's not doing the job, that it's going to Poole, it'll scuttle the whole damn operation."

"Good."

Seale stared at him. "Is this about Chace or you?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Are you trying to end your career? Or protect hers?"

"I'm trying to protect my agents."

"So you're saying that even if Langley does approve Poole, you'll find a way to scuttle that, as well? And again if they agree on Lankford?"

"Too right I will."

"Have you lost your mind?" Seale asked after a moment, and Crocker thought he was genuinely curious. "They'll fire you, you realize that? They'll fire you and they'll fill that Desk with someone who, I don't know, believes in the radical notion of following their fucking orders!"

Crocker took his seat, looked up at Seale, now glowering down at him. "Hossein Khamenei is bait. That's all he is. You've got to see that."

Seale rubbed his eyes, and seeing that Crocker was still at his desk, that this wasn't a bad dream, turned his attention to the bust of Winston Churchill in the corner. It was a small bronze, capturing the former Prime Minister during the height of World War Two, one of only two decorations that Crocker kept in his office. The other was a black-and-white silkscreen print of a Chinese dragon, which hung on the wall opposite the door.

"Of course he's bait," Seale said, finally. "But he's a hell of a piece of bait, Paul. He's an irresistible piece of bait. And if we can pull him, it'll be worth the price."

"Not to me."

For several seconds the two men stared at each other. They'd never managed to become friends, but for the past several years had managed the pretense of professional courtesy, if not camaraderie. Crocker found himself again wishing for Seale's predecessor, Angela Cheng. It wasn't that Cheng had been more capable than Seale, but with her, Crocker had shared a fundamental understanding, that politicians were not to be trusted, that it was their duty to protect their respective services, the CIA and SIS, and their agents. Even when they argued-and they had argued often-they had stood on the same side.

From Seale's expression now, Crocker knew that wasn't the case.

"Get me an escort out," Seale said.

Crocker stabbed his intercom, Kate answering immediately. "Mr. Seale needs an escort out of the building."

"Yes, sir."

"They'll make you send Chace." Seale reached the door to the outer office. "And if you don't do it, they'll fire you and then they'll replace you with someone who will."

He stepped out, and Crocker waited until he heard the escort arrive and then depart again with Seale before getting to his feet. Kate was still at her desk, a paperback novel open in one hand, chewing on the end of a pen.

"She is technically still Minder One," Kate said, not looking up.

"Did you press a drinking glass against the door?"

"Didn't need one. You two were loud enough, the whole floor heard it."

"Go home, Kate. It's almost nine."

"You're done for the day?"

"Not yet."

"I'll stay."

Crocker glared at her, trying to determine if it was loyalty or pity that was keeping Kate at her desk. Then he went back to his chair, to await the inevitable call from C. The problem was that Crocker had seen this all before.

Chace had no sooner finished telling him that Falcon was, potentially, Hossein Khamenei, than Crocker had known there would be an order to lift, an operation mounted, and he was just as certain Chace knew it, too. It was as inevitable as a car crash, and, worse, as potentially fatal for all those involved. As soon as their political masters in Whitehall and Downing Street heard that SIS might, just conceivably, be able to bring a member of the Supreme Leader of Iran's family to the West as a defector, they would go blind. They would see the result, not what was required to achieve it. What they wouldn't see, Crocker was certain, was the risk. And once those same men and women in Whitehall and Downing Street set their eyes on this new prize, there would be nothing Paul Crocker could do to stop them.

But he would damn well try anyway. His first act after Chace finished her report was to demand that Kate get him D-Int, either on phone or in person; he had no preference as long as it was done with all due haste. All due haste, it turned out, had been via phone.

"Paul?"

"Daniel, do we have anything on Khamenei's extended family?"

"We have quite a lot, actually," Szurko said. "As he has quite a lot of family. But what we have I'm not in love with, if you understand; I don't trust most of it."

"He has a nephew named Hossein?"

"Yes." Szurko said it slowly, dragging out each sound in the word. "Should be in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. Was Sepah in his youth, went to Paris after the Revolution, I think, but came home and went back into harness. Republican Guards, served a bit in the Iran-Iraq War. Not much more than that, I'm afraid. Married, at last report, with children, several of them, but no details. I can dig if you need digging. Do you need digging?"

"Everything you can, and anything that might indicate if he's in trouble. And if you can scrounge up a photograph or, better yet, a set of fingerprints, so much the better?"

"We're targeting the nephew of the Ayatollah?" Szurko sounded gleeful. "I'll have the Iran Desk get all over it."

Crocker hung up, hoping that Szurko wasn't as good at his job as he appeared. His next act had been to inform the Deputy Chief. He'd made the report in person, heading down the long fifth-floor corridor to Rayburn's office.

"We have no confirmation that Falcon is Hossein Khamenei," Crocker told him. "Newsom is suffering Alzheimer's, and Chace said he has both difficulty focusing and staying in the present. There's no way to verify that what he told her is true."

"All the other participants are dead?" the Deputy Chief asked.

"Newsom's the only one still living, yes, sir. Minder One and Minder Two are going through Archives again for anything they might've missed the first time. But given the state of things when Newsom left post, what was happening on Station around the Revolution, I doubt there's more to find. I've already asked D-Int to dig up anything he can on Hossein Khamenei."

"Most of the Station records have been purged, if I remember." Rayburn used his chin to indicate to Crocker that he should take a seat, waited until he had, before adding, "There might be copies surviving in Whitehall. But Khamenei does have a nephew named Hossein, Paul-I remember that from my own days as D-Int. It's plausible he's asking to be lifted."

"But we've no verification he was even one of ours."

"He knew the Park-e Shahr drop. He used an established, albeit old, book code. I'd say he was definitely one of ours, at least for a short while."

Crocker shook his head, knowing the argument had been feeble, and already feeling that the coming battle was lost. Of all his peers in SIS, it was with Rayburn that he felt he had the best relationship. Not strictly a friendship, perhaps, but certainly they shared a mutual respect that had come from shared time in the trenches, Rayburn working his way through the Intelligence Directorate even as Crocker had climbed the rungs of Operations. When Alison Gordon-Palmer had been named C, she had needed to choose between her D-Int and her D-Ops to fill the position. Ultimately, she had gone with Rayburn, despite unspoken promises to Crocker that the job would be his. It wasn't a decision that Crocker could find fault with, even as he managed to resent it.

"Thirty years he runs silent, then he suddenly asks to be lifted?" Crocker said. "That doesn't sound plausible to me. That sounds like he's been flipped. We're being set up."

"Did you ask Daniel if there was any reason to believe Hossein might be about to have the skids put under him?"

"He's checking. According to Chace, Newsom indicated that he might be homosexual, but she advises that may be Newsom's own machismo speaking, rather than known fact about Hossein. When I checked with D-Int, he didn't mention it."

"Would his homosexuality be enough to have him executed?"

"I honestly don't know. Shi'a Iran isn't Sunni Al-Qaeda; they're not running a fundamentalist agenda despite what their mouthpieces are crowing. The Revolution ended in '81, when Khomeini realized he couldn't control the country with religion alone. Since then it's been less about religion per se than about expanding their power base."

"There's the Basij."

"More for propaganda than anything else. But at the same time, they might be willing to make an example of him. I think that's a stretch, Simon. As I said, I think we're being set up."

Rayburn tented his long fingers, rested them against his chin. It was a mannerism Crocker knew well, had seen him do hundreds of times as D-Int when he was sifting facts, trying to reach a conclusion. "To what end?"

"How much time do you have?"

"Moving on Basra?"

"Or something with the Kurds. Or something in Afghanistan. They're remarkably good at occupying our attention in one place while they bury another hundred Silkworm missiles along the Gulf."

"Might even be internal," Rayburn mused.

"Or it could be that they want to hurt us," Crocker pressed. "For the first time in decades we've actually got the start of a viable network in-country, Simon."

"And if we move to lift him, we risk exposing the network."

"Without question."

"To lift him would require Special Section support. You'd send a Minder."

"But the Station would have to prep for the operation."

Rayburn exhaled, brought his fingers down. "I have to present it to C, Paul. I've no choice."

"You know exactly what will happen if you do. We both do."

"I will stress to her your reservations."

"For all the good it'll do."

That earned him a look of reproach. "You've been in this job for too long to be making sullen asides. We both have."

"She's a political C, Simon, she's going to want to make the Prime Minister happy. And this will make the PM happy, with the added bonus that he'll be able to make the Americans happy."

"With good reason. We have an authenticated message from Falcon using an established lift code."

"I want more than that. I want fingerprints, some physical proof that Falcon is who he claims he is."

"Paul," Rayburn said, slowly. "You're not telling me you'd refuse to undertake the operation if the order should be given, are you? I know you, I know you're perfectly capable of sabotaging this before it gets off the ground."

"Iran is the single greatest threat to stability in the Middle East, I've felt that for years," Crocker said. "We handed them Iraq following the invasion, and we've all but handed them Afghanistan. They're deep in Lebanon, they're deep in Gaza. If someone-anyone-can prove to me that Falcon is for real, that this cry for help is legitimate, I will go to Tehran and get him out myself."

"Remember you said that, Paul." Rayburn got to his feet, watched as Crocker did the same. "Because I'll be sharing that with C, as well." He'd been back in his office for all of eleven minutes following the briefing to Rayburn when Kate buzzed him on the intercom, saying that C wanted to see him. He'd gone directly up to the sixth floor, entered her office, and before he could even open his mouth, Alison Gordon-Palmer cut him off.

"Simon has explained your concerns, Paul, and I have to say I share them," C said, much to Crocker's surprise.

"I'm very glad to hear it."

"But as Simon has also no doubt made clear, I must bring this to the PM's attention. He's not an unreasonable man. Our reservations may carry some weight."

"But you doubt it?"

"I do, yes. The one thing you seem to have not taken into account is the American interest, and that is something the PM most definitely will do."

"There's no reason for the Americans to be involved at this point. They shouldn't even know about Falcon."

"But they will, no doubt in short order. And if it comes down to a choice between allowing CIA to lift Falcon or SIS, then I'm sure we're all agreed it should be SIS who takes the prize."

"It would have to be SIS anyway," Crocker said. "CIA doesn't have the backing in-country to mount a lift. They'd have to go for a military extraction."

"Yet another reason why I think we'd all prefer this stay with the Firm."

"If it's going to happen."

"If. Indeed." C shook her head slightly. "Get on to Tehran Station and have them begin prepping the ground for a possible lift."

"I'd rather wait, ma'am."

"I'm sure you would. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury. Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't wish to keep the PM waiting." "You're going to have a hell of a time getting him out of the country," Chace told him later that afternoon as she and Poole discussed the operation in Crocker's office. "West you're in Iraq, east you're in Afghanistan, south you're all wet, north, you're not only wet but very cold."

"Gone swimming in the Caspian in December, have you?" Poole asked.

"Skinny-dipping, if you must know." She brushed hair back from her face, pondering the map on the wall. "None of the regional neighbors are going to be particularly helpful."

"Even if they were so inclined, they wouldn't," Poole agreed. "They're all scared to death of Tehran shutting off the tap."

"Caspian route would be your best bet. Get Falcon out in the middle of the water for a pickup."

"Provided we can get him that far," Crocker said.

Chace put her index finger on the center of the Caspian, marking an imaginary point. "The Americans involved yet?"

"Imminently, I'm sure."

"They going to try to steal it or support it?"

"C already marked the territory. It'll be ours if it goes through."

"What're you thinking?" Poole asked Chace.

"I'm thinking that there was a circular a couple months back about the United States Coast Guard's involvement in CTAP." Chase dragged her index finger across the water, until she reached the Republic of Georgia. "Training the Georgians, I believe."

Crocker heard Poole make a noise of pleasure that sounded distressingly close to sexual. "Oh, that's very good."

"Like that, do you?"

"Getting the American Coast Guard to pick us up under the cover of the Counter Terrorism Assistance Program? I think that's bloody brilliant."

"And I think you both are getting ahead of yourselves," Crocker interposed. "The Americans aren't involved yet. We have no reason to believe Falcon is who he says he is. And Tehran hasn't even begun to prep the terrain."

"Well, we can give them a place to start with Falcon, at least." Chace flashed him a smile, pulled a folded piece of paper from her jeans pocket, handing it over. "Not quite an address, but it narrows down the location on where Falcon's hiding. Nicky cracked it."

Crocker unfolded the sheet, saw that it was a copy of Barnett's initial signal from Tehran. The substitution code had been worked over in pencil, the string of letters converted into two sequences of eight-digit numbers.

"GPS coordinates?" Crocker asked.

Poole put a finger to the tip of his nose. "He used his name for the key. Hossein Khamenei, with 'H' as zero. Reasonably clever. You can't crack it if you don't know who sent it."

"And these coordinates are where, exactly?"

"West of Tehran, a city called Karaj," Chace said. "Fairly crowded area, too, from what the Iran Desk says, a good place to hide in plain sight. Presumably, that's where Falcon's gone to ground. It does make sense, Boss. He had to know that whatever lift plan he and Newsom established back in the day was dead and buried by now, that we'd have to work up a new one. He leaves us his location so we know where to find him."

"And stays there, one hopes, until the new lift plan is prepared," Poole said. "I like the Caspian exfil, too, Boss. If the Station can fix it so there's a RHIB somewhere near the shore, we can just shuffle Falcon aboard in a life jacket and zip north to the pickup."

"Seaplane," Chace said.

"Helo," Poole countered. "USGS, it'll be a helo."

"Have to do it at night."

"Absolutely, that's a given."

Crocker watched the two Minders at the map, listened to them discussing the relative merits of a pickup via airplane versus helicopter. Although neither of them had said as much, he knew that, as far as they were concerned, the job had already been confirmed, and Chace assigned to it. It was the logical expectation. The target was of exceptional importance to the Government, and the operation, if it should come to pass with a successful outcome, would reflect well on SIS. By necessity, then, HMG would demand SIS task the best agent for the job. By definition, that would be Minder One.

Crocker had to wonder what it meant that, not a day earlier, he'd accepted her resignation from the Section, and yet here she was, tete-a-tete with Poole, deep in mission planning. Nothing in what she had said to him the day before had indicated regret or even hesitation about her decision to leave. Yet all her actions now were to the contrary, and whether that was simply Chace doing her job, or being caught up in the moment, or in the excitement of an operation in the offing, he couldn't tell.

He was still pondering the question when Kate tapped on his door, then opened it without a word.

"What?" Crocker asked.

She ignored him, leaning past the edge of the door to find Chace. "Tara?"

"Me?"

"There's a Ms. Palmer calling for you from the Emmanuel School. It's about Tamsin."

"Oh, God," Chace said.

She had already slipped past Kate to the outer office before Crocker could say that it was all right, she could take the call at his desk. From outside, he heard Chace picking up the phone, identifying herself, and he looked sharply at Kate for further explanation.

"No idea," Kate whispered.

All three of them waited in silence for the better part of a minute before they heard Chace set the phone back down.

"She's taken ill," Chace explained, returning. "Been throwing up all afternoon."

"Go," Crocker said.

"I am sorry."

"It's understood."

She turned to leave, but Crocker caught her throwing one last glance back at the map before she was out of the room.

"Caspian route," Chace said to them. "It's the only viable exfil." At twenty-two past eleven the next morning, Poole walked into Crocker's office carrying the latest signal from Tehran Station. The signal included a photograph of a middle-aged, gray-haired Iranian of Persian extraction, sporting a trimmed beard and looking absurdly stoic while a somewhat goofily smiling Caleb Lewis stood beside him.

"The book that Lewis is holding," Poole said. "Falcon gave it to him."

"Message?"

"Same book code, yes. 'Three west and three and third again.' "

"What do they make of it?" Crocker asked, examining the photograph closely and finding nothing in it that would allow him to call the operation off.

"Lewis thinks it's the direction to Falcon's apartment on Nilufar. The signal states that the book used for the code is quite ancient, and wouldn't allow for anything comprehensive with regards to direction. Therefore Falcon is working with what he has."

"Which puts the apartment where?"

"On Nilufar Street, number twenty-two. The apartment in question would be on the third floor, either number 3 or the third apartment on the floor, though if it's the latter, it's so vague as to be useless."

"Then it's the former." Crocker tossed the photograph onto the desk, annoyed by its unwillingness to help him. "Nothing so far has been vague, only inconclusive."

"That was my thinking. You want me to get onto Mission Planning about the initial exfil route?"

"They've worked up a cover?"

"They're holding off until you tell them who it'll be for." If Poole was feeling any expectation or anticipation about the job, or even any desire to take it, he was being as restrained about it as Chace had been the day before. "Tara's at home?"

"She called in this morning to say Tam had been up all night with a fever. She was taking her to the doctor this morning."

Poole nodded.

"Right," Crocker said. "Go bother Mission Planning, Nicky." "We're going to lift him, with the Prime Minister's blessing," C told Crocker after she returned from lunch. "Operation to be initiated at the earliest possible moment. The Americans are aboard, and willing to offer any and all support we might need. You can expect to hear from Mr. Seale before noon."

"Very well," Crocker said.

"Earliest possible moment, Paul. Where are you with the planning?"

"Still waiting to hear from Tehran. Once we have the details, Mission Planning will work on creating a cover for Poole."

"Poole? Not Chace?"

"Chace is home with her daughter today. My intention is to send Poole."

C studied him. "This is a high-value target in a high-threat theatre, Paul. As I understand it, the job should go to the Head of Section."

"And as I informed you Monday morning, ma'am, Chace has tendered her resignation from the Special Section."

"Pending the arrival of a replacement, Paul. And I'll thank you to keep that condescension out of your voice when speaking to me in the future."

Crocker hesitated, then offered the barest nod.

"Poole?" C asked again.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Very well," she said.

Crocker had wondered, at the time, why C had seemed so willing to let him send Poole rather than Chace.

Now, sitting at his desk, feeling both old and tired, the echo of Julian Seale still ringing in his mind, if not in his office, he knew why. The decision had already been made, most likely as part of the terms of the CIA's involvement in Coldwitch. C hadn't fought him because she hadn't needed to.

He raised his eyes to the clock on the wall, saw the second hand sweep time into the next hour, now eleven o'clock. If Seale had gone directly back to Grosvenor Square to report to Langley, then it was long past when Langley would have raised holy hell with the FCO. That Kate still sat at her desk with her paperback, that no phone had rung, puzzled him, and gave him hope that, perhaps, Coldwitch would die stillborn.

Then he heard the door to the outer office open, and from where he sat behind his desk he saw Kate straighten and then quickly get to her feet behind hers, and Crocker knew it was not to be.

"Ma'am," Kate said.

"Go home, Ms. Cooke," Crocker heard C say. "And if you find this office vacant in the morning, try not to be too surprised."

Kate glanced his way, her expression pained, then began gathering her things in preparation of heading home. She was still doing so when C walked into Crocker's office and shut the door softly behind her. Crocker got to his feet, thinking several things at once. The first was that wherever Alison Gordon-Palmer had been prior to returning to Vauxhall Cross, it hadn't been at home, unless she normally spent her evenings at home wearing a ball gown and her best pearls. The overcoat she'd donned to protect her from the cold made her seem all the more surreal, the fairy godmother of SIS come to wreak vengeance.

The second thing he realized was that her dress explained the delay. She hadn't been at home when the word had come down that Crocker wasn't playing ball. That led to the third, the fact that wherever Alison Gordon-Palmer had been that evening, it was clear from her expression that she would much rather still be there than here, and that she was as close to furious as Crocker had ever seen.

When she spoke, her voice was soft, and dangerously controlled. "I've just returned from being summoned to Downing Street, where the Prime Minister asked me why the President of the United States had felt it necessary to telephone him and inquire as to whether or not SIS was planning on lifting Falcon. When I told the Prime Minister that Coldwitch was to commence shortly, he said to me that he had been led to believe otherwise. He said to me that one of my Senior Directors had told COS London that there would be no Operation: Coldwitch, because he was refusing to brief or clear to run the agreed-upon agent for the mission."

"Poole-"

"Shut up, Paul," C said with such venom that Crocker was certain he could feel it pushing through his own veins. "Do you understand what I'm telling you? Do you understand that I was dressed-down by my Prime Minister less than an hour ago, made to look a fool, made to appear incompetent? Do you understand that you managed to do the same to the PM himself? Do you understand that you not only humiliated us, you humiliated the service?"

"I'm trying to protect the service," Crocker said.

"I am eager to hear how that can possibly be the case."

"If we send a Minder into Iran, if it's a trap-"

"And you have proof of that?"

"I have too many convenient explanations! I have an asset who's risen from the dead, an asset who, it turns out, is such a prize we're willing to shoot first and ask questions later! I have everything that makes this look irresistible, but the one thing I don't have is the time to check the facts!"

C stood motionless, and Crocker heard his own voice fading, the embarrassing desperation in it.

"Seale said CIA support was contingent on Chace being allocated," Crocker said, trying again. "Didn't it occur to you that's because they're suspicious, as well, that they don't want to risk any of their own people being caught and paraded on Iranian national television?"

"Of course it did," C said. "But that is neither here nor there. I told you that all consideration was given to your reservations, and that despite them, the operation was to go forward. From that point, your duty was to facilitate the operation, not to stonewall it, not to sabotage it. But since you couldn't have your way, you decided it would be best to try to undermine Coldwitch. In so doing, you caused embarrassment to myself, HMG, and the Service."

"That was not my intention."

"Paul, I know what your intention was. And now I'm going to tell you what you will do."

C stepped forward to the desk, lifted the handset for the red circuit and, with acute deliberation, pressed the button for the Ops Room. She put the phone to her ear, but not before Crocker heard the Duty Operations Officer identify himself.

"This is C. Hold for D-Ops." She lowered the handset, covering the mouthpiece with her free hand. "You will direct the Duty Ops Officer to bring Minder One in for immediate briefing. Then you will call COS London and tell him that Coldwitch is go, and you will do him the courtesy of inviting him to attend Minder One's briefing, as we have nothing to hide from our partners, and desire the CIA to be involved in every stage of the operation. Upon completion of briefing, you will contact Tehran and inform them they are now hands-off until rendezvous at the Noshahr safehouse.

"If you do all of these things, then you will find yourself still with access to this office come the dawn. If you do not, I will have Security remove you from the premises this instant, and tomorrow you'll be wandering up and down Whitehall in search of an open vacancy."

She held out the handset to Crocker.

"Make your decision now."

He took the handset, raised it to his ear.

"Minder One to the Ops Room," Crocker said.