Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2), André Gallo [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

The traffic cleared somewhat as he neared the outskirts of Tehran, and he headed for Ayatollah Imam Khomeini Airport to pick up his nephew Firuz. He had tried to call his brother in Los Angeles but had not reached him. How had Firuz allowed himself to get involved with al Quds activities in California? Mousavi had not briefed him on the project that Firuz was expected to work on, but knowing that Firuz had majored in computer sciences gave Yazdi a general idea. Perhaps the goal was to reinforce the regime’s information security systems against foreign, i.e., American, capabilities.

He wondered briefly what Kozak was up to. Whatever it was, Mousavi had sent his car for him, an indication that it was a high-priority project.

9. Alexandria, Virginia: Old Town

Steve got up on one elbow and looked at Kella. She was sleeping. The sun, still low on the horizon, sliced through partially drawn curtains like a spotlight on an expensive painting, highlighting her tawny skin and the copper highlights in her black curls. A beautiful and serene face. A sleeping tiger, he thought. He got up to better close the curtain to let her sleep and went to the kitchen to make coffee.

How different she was from Vera, who had died the day he was going to propose to her during a skiing vacation in British Colombia’s glaciated Coast Range. Eager to try the ungroomed slopes at the higher altitudes, he had gone heli-skiing for a day while she had gone off with another group with a guide on less demanding terrain. She and her entire group had perished in an avalanche.

He knew, had he not selfishly gone off on his own, that Vera would be alive. The guilt, the what-ifs had almost paralyzed him. Vera also had been tall and slim without a model’s anorexia, like Kella. He had loved her spontaneity and quicksilver intelligence. It had taken him over a year and Kella’s appearance in his life to accept his devastating loss. Only those who had not gone through a similar experience could talk about “closing the loop.”

When they had met in Paris, their mutual attraction had a lot to do with the similarity of their personal tragedies. Kella had suffered a deep personal shock through the death of her best friend at the hands of her extremist father. Obeying his version of Islam, he had slit her throat, and Kella had witnessed the honor killing. Steve and Kella had met the day before.

Later in Morocco, Steve had escaped assassination attempts from thugs motivated by the same ideology. They thought he was assisting in proving that the immutable Quran was not the only version of Allah’s words. As a result, both Steve and Kella had deep-seated feelings about murder as a means of enforcing religious beliefs.

The consequences had changed both their lives. The CIA, through his father Marshall, had recruited him for a so-called short-term mission that had taken him into the vortex of Middle East politics and medieval motivations. Kella had grown up in the hardscrabble environment of the Sahara where nature’s deprivations and man’s shortcomings combined to either kill you or make you stronger. Her parents had been killed by Malian army troops during a Tuareg rebellion. Somehow she had survived, wound up in a Catholic orphanage, and had been adopted by Jack Hastings, an American diplomat married to a French woman with Parisian society connections.

Kella had done more than survive adversity. She had earned a degree from France’s most prestigious school, L’Ecole Nationale d’Administration, had undergone training from the French external intelligence organization, the DGSE, and had been an intelligence officer for a year. Then, like Steve with the CIA, she had concluded that the organization was flawed by bureaucracy and careerism. She and Steve had struck out on their own and succeeded without either the DGSE or the CIA.

Telling Kella that he was about to leave again had not improved their relationship.

“Iran? Iran? Are you nuts?” she had said last night.

“Doesn’t the CIA have its own people? Maybe they only get the safe diplomatic assignments? Why you for heaven’s sake? You’re not exactly unknown. Your picture was in the paper in Paris, remember?”

Steve refrained from replying, preferring Kella’s anger to run itself out. Kella continued, “Iranian security will arrest you at the airport. Besides, didn’t your father serve there a long time ago? I remember he said that he worked in liaison with the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret service, using his real name for God’s sake!’”

Steve had not come up with any answers that pacified her.

Kella came into the kitchen barefoot and wearing a short satin slip that showed her long legs and figure to advantage.

“The coffee is almost ready,” Steve said in a peace bid, his eyes embracing her body.

She disappeared into the bathroom for a minute to brush her hair and came out wearing a flimsy bathrobe that did not hide her multiethnic beauty. Born and raised to the age of eight in the Southern Sahara town of Timbuktu, her Tuareg ancestors predated the Arab invasion of North Africa and included a New England ship’s captain taken hostage and sold in Timbuktu after being marooned on the West African coast, and at least one French Foreign Legion officer who went native and stayed with the Tuareg tribe when his regiment went back to France.

“So, how was your trip? Where did you go again?” she said with apparent indifference.

Steve was fully aware of need-to-know when it came to his classified work. He was happy, however, that her fury seemed to have dissipated. Wishing to keep it that way, he answered her question, “St. John’s in Newfoundland. The trip was about cover. I met my cover boss, a great guy, who showed me around the town so I could decide where I had lived,