#KillAydaKhoury

Trading on Friendship

Jack Kolda

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

The Lebanese government has Silver.

Mossad came through with the escalation, bigger than I would have wanted and without telling us anything; bombing at Natanz. It does the trick. State's just worried enough to go back to the table with Hassan. But the Lebanese government has Silver.

I need to talk to Hassan. I turn off my personal phone to give it up to the security staff at the secure communications room. Suspended above the floor, double-layered and air-gapped against Ayda's kind of spy, the secure communications room at CIA is the safest place in the metroplex.

The phone I carry for the Agency rings one last time before I can turn it off, and I pick up, wordlessly.

"Heya Jasper," says a young male voice, "Don't hang up. You have no idea how much trouble I had getting this number. I'm the Omar Tamimi in Ayda's contact reports. She had a tracking device; it's abandoned in a cab in Beirut; the Party's got her and we have no idea where she is—"

Everyone knows she's Hezbollah's prisoner; why does he want me to hear it again? He's threatening me on behalf of his service. Ayda invited the Qataris into our operation and now if we go to the table with Iran, Al Jazeera is going to make the loudest media storm about us negotiating with Iranian terror sponsors while their proxies have one of our spies. Omar Tamimi was part of the operation, and any attempt to disavow Ayda's work will be met by Qatari proof that the operation existed.

"Get me the path she traveled through while she still had it?" I ask him. Pretending to think he's on my side a little longer, giving myself time to think.

I listen to him tell a circuitous story about Ayda passing through the waterfront and Bourj Hammoud, laying it out in my head over a mental map that's far out of date. NSA wouldn't talk to me to confirm Ayda's contact reports on Omar Tamimi. Half the NSA then think I helped a traitor from their service escape, the other half thinks I got one of their own captured by Hezbollah. I finally got Ayda's contact reports over their objections by calling in a favor with Homeland. She had never filed any contact reports on him after DEF CON, when she acknowledged him as a Qatari spy and part of Anonymous's OpsIran.

And she let him hijack Silver's operation. Ayda Khoury was already a double; Silver's too trusting as ever, and we should never have let this AnonOps girl out in the field. She's long gone; either defected to the Qataris who are covering for her and planning to use her for one last slap to the idea of Vienna, or she's disappeared native into her parents' country.

"I'll tell Beirut Station," I tell him, "I'll call you back."

I give up the cell phone and lock myself in the Bubble with the secure line.

"Hassan, this is Jasper, call back."

It's not the same number as it was back then, and calling Iran no longer carries the same sick fear that I'll say the wrong thing, piss off our best hope of negotiating with Hezbollah, and get someone else killed.

Hassan calls back, furious, but at least he's speaking to me.

"Call off your dogs, Jasper," he says.

Natanz. God damned Natanz.

"You've worked with proxy armies. We give them money and they do whatever the hell they want. I've been watching yours bomb border crossings and kidnap my agents."

"They did no such thing; aren't you watching the news?"

Good, we're still on the same side.

"Listen, our press is already predicting the Iranian nuclear apocalypse, but State is dragging their feet on going back to the table, given the Ayda Khoury videos. They want a guarantee that Iran will cut funding to Hezbollah—spare me the party line; I know. It's not possible, it's not enforceable, you know it; I know it. You know how the War on Terror works. Give them someone with a big name, someone who's going to get people re-elected."