Satan's Spy

By Andre Le Gallo

When Islamic terrorists attempt to take over the hotel where Steve Church is staying in Bahrain, he uses his CIA training to blunt the attack. That same day, the Director of the National Clandestine Service calls Steve to tell him he is needed at agency headquarters--urgently. Soon thereafter, Steve and his live-in girlfriend Kella, a former French intelligence officer, are off on a dangerous mission to collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. In the process, they learn the Islamic state is also preparing a massive cyber attack against the United States. Like The Caliphate, its predecessor, Satan's Spy is a whirlwind adventure bristling with exotic locales, dangerous and desperate characters, and international intrigue, all crafted by former master spy Le Gallo, who experienced many of the same dangers and challenges firsthand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Jul 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780990808978

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Agency

Introduction

Are you keeping Steve and Kella in your new novel? I was asked at a book signing for my first novel The Caliphate. When I said I was, the middle-aged man who had asked the question said, Great! That Kella is a beautiful girl! His wife pulled on his sleeve to have him sit down and, in a stage whisper, said, Arthur, she is only a fictional character. With encouragement like that, I had no choice but to revive Steve and Kella for Satan’s Spy.

Write about what you know goes an old saying, so the background tapestry for Satan’s Spy is drawn from personal experience. Intelligence operations do not exist in a vacuum, and the story provides a glimpse into some of these external factors: the friction between the CIA and the Department of State, the professional and competitive culture in the world of clandestine operations, and the now long running Iranian hostility toward the United States. We know that politics no longer stops at the water’s edge from the public partisan wars over foreign policy that the media serves up, and participates in, daily.

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; the other, in slacks and a blazer, faced away from him moaning softly, blood seeping onto the floor from under his body. Two back-packs seemed abandoned, one near the reception desk and the other by itself in the middle of the lobby; booby-trapped IEDs left for unwary first responders thought Steve.

Two men in camouflage pants with backpacks and assault rifles ran across the white marbled floor toward a large seating area filled with zebra-striped chairs and shiny red sofas. One of them, dressed in crimson Harvard T-shirt, stopped and fired at a heavyset man in Bermuda shorts and a golfing shirt trying to reach a side door. Bullets punctured the man’s shirt and pierced his soft flesh before he went down out of Steve’s sight. Inside and to the right of what remained of the glass front wall, a bearded young man with a black bandana around his head stood behind the concierge’s chest-high counter and scanned the street in front of the hotel, the muzzle of his AK-47 leading his gaze back and forth. Glass shards littered the floor around him.

Looks like Mumbai all over again, Steve thought of the 2008 terrorist attack against the Taj Mahal Hotel. There, it had taken the local police and army hours to show up while the terrorists went from room to room on a killing spree.

Still crouching, he retreated to the stairwell from which he had emerged, and pushed the door open carefully while looking back toward the lobby. The stairwell lights were now off, but a weak battery-powered emergency lamp gave off some light.

Have the authorities cut off the power? Or do the terrorists prefer darkness for their murders?

He reached for his phone wondering whether Bahrain had an equivalent to 911. Instead, he tried zero and reached an alert operator who promised to call the police. Steve gave him his own number and pocketed the phone before he heard the door from the lobby begin to open.

He barely had time to flatten himself against the wall behind the door before the Harvard shooter stepped through and, after a cursory look into the dimly lit stairwell, walked quickly toward the stairs going up. When the door closed, Steve rushed him from behind and tripped him. As Harvard fell forward, he squeezed the trigger of his AK-47, the deafening sound of 7.62 mm bullets bombarded Steve’s eardrums, and the sharp smell of gunpowder penetrated his lungs. The man’s head hit the first step, and his body was limp when Steve stepped over him to strip him of his weapon and ammunition.

Steve quickly staged the body at the bottom of the steps, ran up around the turn past the first landing and loaded a new thirty round banana clip. He shot the emergency light out and waited in the pitch darkness for Harvard’s pals. His heart was racing, and he wondered why he just didn’t get the hell out, following his friends from the fitness center.

Before he could change his mind, the door opened again allowing a spear of light to reveal Harvard’s body for an instant. Steve stayed crouched and hidden as one man stepped into the stairwell below him and quickly moved to the left toward the wall while a second man went to the right toward the down staircase. Steve regretted that he hadn’t fired immediately. His eyes were more adjusted to the darkness and, wanting to take advantage of the night-vision he had acquired over the previous few minutes, was preparing to fire at one of the two men when melodious ring tones coming from his pocket with the impact of a ten-alarm fire broke the silence and sent Steve’s heart into a somersault.

The sound triggered almost simultaneous shooting from the three men, all within twenty feet of each other. Steve, whose weapon was already pointed at the terrorist on his right, fired first. His target’s bullets smashed against the wall to his right within a millisecond. Steve heard his man fall and his weapon hit the floor.

Steve tossed his still screaming phone up the stairs as the second terrorist’s bullets whistled over his head and ricocheted against the steel railing. He jumped to the other side of the staircase flattening himself on the platform and fired again. Bullets hit the wall around him sending sharp pieces of masonry through his light workout shirt and stinging his back. He jumped down the stairs, rolled to a kneeling position, and shot a burst toward the second terrorist’s position. However, in the dark his target had moved closer, and the burst caught him at point-blank range throwing him backwards. The phone finally stopped ringing. After the sound and light show from three AK-47s in a closed black space, the silence was almost as startling, and Steve’s ears were ringing. The only sounds were his quickened breathing and the pounding of his heart. He consciously took a slow and deep breath and listened for the arrival of more visitors, but it was useless. He collected the dead men’s weapons and ran up the stairs.

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER a thorough debrief by the police, Steve finally met with Colonel Jawad Salem al-Fadhel.

Thanks to you, the problem was settled quickly, the colonel, a large man with a neat dark beard, told him. Eighteen people were killed, besides the six terrorists. But it could have been much worse. The terrorists were all Shiites. Obviously a suicide mission.

They were in the colonel’s office in the Ministry of Defense on Al Fuhaidi Street. An aide was taking notes, and two boys brought tea and sweets that they placed on a large round handcrafted copper table. Steve sat on a sofa on one side. The colonel, wearing a white dish-dasha, a long sleeved robe, under a light black and gold over-garment, sat on the other side in a tan leather chair.

I have been told, the colonel said, leaning back comfortably with his steepled hands in his lap pointing at Steve, that you were our eyes and ears inside the hotel and that you directed the counterattack. Our government is beholden to you. Oh, he smiled, and three of the terrorists were already dead when our special forces went in. You have interesting skills for a businessman, he paused and added, How did you know that the bags in the lobby were booby-trapped explosives?

Steve took a sip of the sweet tea. Just a guess. I’m glad I was able to help. Shiites? he asked, avoiding the question implied by the colonel who certainly didn’t need to know of Steve’s training at a CIA base in North Carolina some years before. Is there an Iranian hand here?

The colonel laughed. Does a camel give milk? Seventy percent of our population is Shiite, and our northern neighbor is definitely in an expansionist mood. The terrorists communicated with an Iranian navy ship before and during the attack.

This type of problem could be solved by the Rapid Reaction Force if it was based here in Bahrain, Steve said. And that’s why I’m here. We, West Gate that is, can handle it all from the conceptual phase to hands-on training.

The colonel’s quizzical grin told Steve that he might be moving too fast and he changed gears. Do you think these terrorists were Bahrainis? Homegrown and trained here?

The colonel moved his bulk forward. Homegrown? Maybe. But definitely trained in Iran. The main actor in this and other terrorist attacks is al-Quds, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ flying squad, he said slapping his arm rest. "The IRGC uses al Quds as an elite action arm. They are behind Hizballah in Lebanon, and they are responsible for the assassinations of opposition leaders outside Iran. One of the victims yesterday was Ali Karrubi, who has been in open opposition to the current Iranian regime for years and who happened to be in the hotel, not a coincidence.

Al-Quds also play an important role in funding and arming the militias in Iraq. It is the vanguard of Iranian imperialism. Ali Mousavi, their intelligence chief, is a snake, he said, raising his eyebrows. But you have gained credibility for the project you want to speak to us about. I’ll arrange meetings for you tomorrow. Your timing is impeccable. In the meantime, if you want to visit the gold market in the morning, one of my men will take you. We’ll have lunch and then you can make your proposal. He paused and, looking in Steve’s eyes said, None of this would be happening if your government cut the head of the snake.

On the way back to a private apartment that the colonel had arranged for him, Steve was thinking about the colonel’s snake comment when he received another call from LaFont’s Special Assistant.

Steve, you’re hard to reach, she said quietly, a reminder that the head of the National Clandestine Service deserved more courtesy. Uneasy that he was in the back of an official Bahraini Government limousine and that his part of the conversation was probably being taped or at least listened to by the driver, Steve nevertheless felt that he had to take the call. Courtesy.

LaFont came on before Steve could reply. Steve, your name just came across my desk, she said after a brief greeting and mention that Steve’s father, Marshall, a semi-retired CIA officer, had told her that Steve was in Bahrain. The Bahrainis are asking for background information on you. I gather you played a role in bringing the hotel attack under control. Congratulations. How do you get yourself in these situations? she chuckled.

Impeccable timing, I guess, he replied borrowing from the colonel’s comments. I was a guest in the Panorama Hotel at the time, so I didn’t have a lot of choice. Waiting in my room to get shot is not my style. When I helped the Moroccans a couple of years ago after barely escaping getting killed in Rabat, that wasn’t by choice either. Stuff happens.

I remember, she said. Steve’s success in stopping an Islamic cell in Morocco had prompted the CIA to ask for Steve’s help in gathering information on the movement’s leader since Steve had met the jihadist leader when getting his master’s at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Steve had gone beyond his brief. Eventually breaking off the CIA connection out of frustration with an overly controlling headquarters support officer, he had nevertheless continued his part of the operation, which had ended in an underground secret military weapons bunker in Israel.

Bahraini Security sounds grateful and impressed and also extremely suspicious, LaFont added. They were really asking if you were one of our deep cover officers. They’re lucky you were there.

If any one suspects me of intelligence activities, they’re badly informed. I’m here only on business, Steve said speaking directly into the microphones he assumed were in the backrest of the car’s front seats.

Don’t worry. Nothing we said will get you in trouble. But I have something to ask you that I would rather discuss with you in person. It involves travel, and I have the green light from your CEO. When can you come to my office? You can also tell me about the nature of your business in Bahrain. I understand you want to create and run a mercenary army for the Gulf emirates?

To be determined. ‘Mercenary’? Where did that come from? If Bahrain wants a force made up of foreigners, I guess that’s up to Bahrain. I’ll come to see you as soon as I get back, two, three days.

I have a plane in Bahrain now. It’s coming back tomorrow night. We’ll make arrangements to get you on the passenger list.

LaFont hung up before he could say no, and Steve slapped the seat beside him in frustration. How could the Bahrainis avoid thinking he was with the CIA when he used CIA aircraft?

Steve felt irritated he might not have time to finish his business in Bahrain. However, he couldn’t deny that the prospect of another CIA assignment was getting his juices going. Besides, he told himself, his West Gate CEO had already said yes, and his father was apparently aware of the new mission.

LaFont was not his boss, but the CIA gave West Gate a substantial amount of business. The agency’s hiring spurt after 9/11 had added bodies; however, a new officer needed at least five years before he could be trusted on the street and another two before he had a track record to show whether he had developed the right skills and instincts. As a result, the experienced operations officers who had been hired by private companies when they left the CIA were being rented back at twice their prior GS salaries, and West Gate and others were profiting. But Steve’s counter terrorist success had placed him in a special category with a membership of one.

He hadn’t seen LaFont since her promotion to Director of the National Clandestine Service, and he should have congratulated her. He would try to remember to do the right thing when he did see her. What in the world would suddenly prompt her to call him anyway?

Having reached his new luxurious address, which was presumably also wired for sound and video, Steve turned his thoughts to the conversation of the night before with Kella, his French girlfriend whom he had met at a diplomatic reception in Paris, an event with unforeseen consequences. A day later, she had witnessed the honor killing of her best friend in Paris, an Algerian girl living with an Islamist father, an event that convinced Kella to join Steve in his CIA-sponsored mission.

She now worked for the biggest defense contractor in the D.C. area. A former French intelligence officer, she spoke English, French, Arabic, and Tuareg, the Berber dialect of the Sahara, languages that reflected her ancestry. Both Steve and Kella traveled frequently but separately and had spent little time together in the last year. It had become a strained relationship. She had told him that she was getting ready to travel to Ft. Huachucha to give a series of talks at the army’s intelligence school. She had also mentioned that her French grandfather in Paris was sick.

He worried he and Kella were drifting apart. Her wish that he conform to the model of an up and coming executive was not a mystery to him. The CIA and all the other spy agencies are not the real world, she had said. Besides, does anyone in Washington pay attention to this intelligence? Aren’t you risking your life for nothing?

He had no good answer. Policy makers used intelligence to support their own points of view, and since intelligence was, by definition, hardly ever precise, interpretation allowed politicians to claim that heavily caveated estimates supported their policies. More to the point, he suspected that Kella was laying the foundation for an exit using her sick grandfather as a pretext. Was she waiting for a marriage proposal from him?

He smiled at his own naiveté. His mind veered away from an uncomfortable topic steeped in emotions to his upcoming meeting in Langley. He liked and trusted LaFont, who had honed her operational skills against Greece’s 17 November gang, but he couldn’t say the same about some of the officers who worked for her. When large numbers of senior officers left the agency, the domino effect had filled midlevel positions with time-servers who had no significant operational experience and who, relishing their new power, became control freaks.

In spite of Kella’s skepticism that clandestine operations were worth the risk, Steve believed in the CIA mission, stealing other countries’ secrets and taking the lead when diplomacy was ineffective and military action counterproductive. But, due to inconsistent Congressional support, the agency was too frequently in a rebuilding phase, like the Chicago Cubs. The CIA was alternately criticized as either too aggressive, a rogue elephant, or a risk-adverse bunch of wusses.

Was LaFont going to ask him to take care of a loose end from his previous CIA mission? Another offer to join the professional ranks of the CIA? Her request to see him urgently made him wary.

The visit to the gold market in the morning would be a great opportunity to show Kella he didn’t want her to go back to France. Would it be enough?

2. Tehran: Revolutionary Guard Corps Detention Center

DR. ZORAN QAZI CLIMBED out of a deep black hole, more asleep than awake, still trapped in a horrific nightmare filled with pain. For a second, he hoped that the pain was only the lingering memory of a shock so awful it had jolted him awake. What had prompted the torment? As he edged toward consciousness, his senses took inventory of his immediate environment. He lay on a hard floor. The air was damp. A harsh light tried to penetrate his closed eyelids.

He felt drugged and cold. His hands searched for a cover but only found the clammy surface of his skin. His fingers went to the throbbing ache in his left arm and discovered it was covered with a sticky substance. When he felt the jagged edge of a broken bone piercing the skin, fear and shock woke him completely.

He sat up but didn’t open his eyes until he turned away from the fluorescent lamp that gave his world a bluish glare. The cell was only slightly longer than his five-foot-nine body length. The metal door had a narrow opening at the bottom that he assumed was for food. He was lying next to a cot attached to the wall. A pot in one corner completed his new world, its odor permeating the cell. He moved to sit on the cot and gasped as his left arm sent a lightning flash of pain to his brain. There was a blanket on the bed, which he draped awkwardly around his shoulders with his good hand. The pain had not been a dream. He ran through recent events to try to understand what he was doing in this cell with his arm broken, his body battered, and his mind possessed by fear.

IT HAD STARTED IN Hamburg where he was studying nuclear physics on an Iranian Government grant. He had not found the German community particularly welcoming and began to hang out with other foreign students, many of whom were finding social support and friendship at the mosque. Although not religious, Zoran had gone to the mosque occasionally.

Following graduation, he received word through the Iranian Consulate that he would be assigned to the Natanz Nuclear Center, one of Iran’s uranium enrichment installations, and shortly thereafter he was invited to the home of one of his professors, Dr. Klaus Steltzer. The two had formed a close friendship. Steltzer had said that Zoran would be his son’s age now had he not died in childbirth. More often than not, Zoran would have dinner at Steltzer’s house en famille with the beguiling Lisa, the professor’s daughter.

In time, Zoran had revealed his pent up anger at the Iranian regime. Although it had been many years since the mullahs had hung his grandfather for taking a role in the failed creation of a Kurdish State, revenge was a matter of honor with no statute of limitations. His father had not been able to strike the blow himself, and before he passed away, he had handed the responsibility to his son reminding him that the murder was still on the family’s books. Zoran had wisely kept his resentment hidden from Iranian authorities, which had recognized, and rewarded, his scholastic achievements and eventually sent him to the University of Hamburg where Zoran was about to become Dr. Zoran Qazi, Ph.D.

Over several after-dinner sessions, Dr. Steltzer had provided Zoran with the means to get back at the mullahs: report back on the progress being made at Natanz, but without taking undue risks, Steltzer had emphasized. The information would help him in his own research, Steltzer had said, and he could share with Zoran the generous funds that the university was making available for the study. After getting practical experience at Natanz, Zoran could come back to Hamburg where an important position would be waiting for him at the university.

When you’re ready, when you have a good grasp of the goals and progress so far, then ask for a few days off and travel out of the country, back here if possible, Steltzer had told him. If not then go to Dubai or somewhere else in the Gulf. Let me know after you arrive and I’ll meet you there. That’s when Zoran understood that the final user of his information would not be either Steltzer or his university. Was Steltzer fronting for the German Government? The more obvious sponsor had to be the Americans, the CIA. He knew that Steltzer had done graduate work at M.I.T. During their infrequent political discussions, he and Steltzer agreed that the current Iranian regime was on a dangerous course that could only lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region and to their eventual use. But Zoran’s political horizons were narrowly focused on revenge. He was relieved that he had found a way and was confident that it would be easy.

After arriving at the Natanz Center, Zoran became emboldened about the mission. Did Steltzer only want information? Wasn’t the eventual goal to somehow interfere with the project? Whatever Steltzer’s real agenda was, reporting on information to which he had direct access seemed insufficient, passive, what his impotent father would have done. He would cross the debt off the family books; he began to look for sabotage opportunities.

Because a consistent level of power was crucial for the proper function of the centrifuge cascades, he paid a visit to the Tehran offices of Kama Electric, created by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for the nuclear program, for the express purpose of supplying power to the Natanz Center. He also used a weekend visit to a nearby village famous for its pears to visit the Kama power station, the direct source of electricity for the center. But he didn’t know what to do with his newly acquired knowledge. Sabotaging the power station would require help from one of its employees, impossible in the short run but something to keep in mind.

At the lab back at the Natanz