#KillAydaKhoury

A Beautiful Piece of Brinksmanship

A/N: Last post was short; here's an extra one!

Jack Kolda

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Raoul Felice's wife, or more likely Felice with her phone, texts me in the clear from Istanbul. TURN ON THE NEWS. If it's about Ayda Khoury, I've already seen it. Blindfolded and bound, she just gave a statement claiming she's a prisoner of Hezbollah and the whole Party implosion is a CIA operation. Because I tried to help her and she couldn't stick to the script, she's going to die like Buckley. Where the hell is Silver?

I should call Raoul at the hospital.

I flip news channels like he asked, but the networks are all showing typical fare. I try CNN, even though their translator wrote whole sentences about the Holocaust into something Hassan never said. They're running a subtitled re-reporting of a statement Hassan made earlier for the FARS News Agency, which has its own history of fabrication.

Hassan claims the story that the Hamadeh children bombed the Bab al-Hawa is a complete fabrication, "Zionist lies" backed by Ayda Khoury's false testimony. The ticker below the video is running alarmist text about the nuclear reactor in Natanz.

A beautiful piece of brinksmanship, spinning up the reactors to threaten us into coming back to the table. I couldn't have done it better.

Hassan has "an expert in cybercrime," a girl no older than Ayda in a conspicuously green hijab, lie and describe how Zara bint Husayn and American hacktivist defector Ayda Khoury spoofed al-Beyruthi to turn Iran against the Hezbollah. She gives her sympathy to the Party for being victims of such a thing, offering tips on preventing that sort of thing from happening in the future. I have to admire Hassan's balls. The lower third of the screen identifies the girl as Nazar, a Green Movement hacktivist. I hate that word.

Hassan's choice of spokeswoman sends a message. See how progressive we are. See how the survivors are alright. Never mind Mousavi under house arrest. Never mind the kids who'll never recover from what the Basijis did to them at Evin Prison outside Tehran. This one's fine, see? Never mind the American journalists they're still holding on charges of espionage. Those charges are false. I would know if they belonged to us. I'll put their freedom on the table if we can negotiate, but I know that's all for the second round. I know how to force State back to the table. Good luck to you, hacktivist Nazar.

I call Beirut Station figuring they're my best bet for an update on Silver. Farah. I'll call her whatever she wants if she stays in the States with North Ridge.

I need her to give me a leak. Not even a real leak, necessarily, though I'd prefer it that way. Something I can tell State that Bibi Netanyahu's boys are going to do if we don't get ahead of this right now. Hassan's act of brinksmanship calls for a face-saving turnabout from Washington.

Nothing. Beirut Station has heard nothing.

She's an Israeli agent in Beirut. I know better than to call her. I know a few of her service, but we don't talk about her, and if she's still talking to them, they'd deny it anyway.

Against my better judgment, I dial Silver's number from my personal cell phone. No status updates, no questions. I just want to hear her answer from the town we escaped once before. Silver, this is Jasper, call back.

A man's voice picks up, smug, triumphant. "She's not here right now, can I take a message?"

I can feel my heart.