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For Amanda

‘Sabr talkh ast, valikan bar-e shireen dārad.’

‘Patience is bitter, but it has a sweet fruit.’

PERSIAN PROVERB

Prologue

‘SALAAM, ALI-JAAN. IT’S me.’ The voice, thick, gravelly and unmistakable, came over the encrypted line as tinny and distant. ‘So. It’s all in place?’

Ali didn’t answer straight away. He removed his earpiece, tipped his head back, closed his eyes and wiped the palm of his hand over the stubble that covered half of his face. Still in his thirties, but already the coarse hairs that crept up his cheek were grey. He sighed. How many times had they been over this, he and the man at the other end of the line, whose name could never be mentioned? He replaced the earpiece and spoke into the mike. ‘No,’ he replied patiently, ‘there are no changes. Everything is exactly as we discussed.’

‘So much? So much? Are you playing with me, Ali-jaan? Have you forgotten all the meetings in Qom? The pledges of loyalty? The instructions? This is everything! Everything we have ever worked for. Remember, we are just the facilitators here, nothing more.’

Ali waited for him to finish. He closed his eyes once more and pinched the ridge of flesh between his eyebrows. So many weeks of planning, so many contingencies to think of, so many what-ifs. By God, he was tired. But the other man was not done yet.

‘So, Ali-jaan, I am counting on you. We are all counting on you. No mistakes. Nothing left to chance.’ It was part question, part order. ‘Are you certain you can do this?’

‘Yes,’ said Ali, abruptly, just a hint of irritation creeping in now. ‘I am certain.’ A pause. ‘And if they don’t accept the ultimatum …’

‘And they won’t, we already know this.’ The gravelly voice was stern now, authoritarian, unflinching. ‘We carry it out, without hesitation. This is a lesson they must learn. Our government is weak and it cannot hope to survive this. A new era is coming, Ali-jaan, and it will be our time. I will see you on the island.’

Chapter 1

THE PITCH. THE proposal. The moment of truth. That split second when the man or woman in front of you realizes with a start exactly what you’re suggesting. That they should risk everything, maybe even their lives, their families, to betray their own organization, their own country, to steal a secret and hand it over to British intelligence. Get it right and you might reel in a big fish, a top-access agent, who keeps on giving, propelling you into the upper echelons of MI6, perhaps retiring gracefully to the shires with a knighthood, a valedictory lunch with the PM and some quiet recognition from your peers. Get it wrong and you’re toast.

When Luke Carlton arrived for the rendezvous that morning in the back room of the café he had just four words reverberating in his head: ‘Don’t screw it up.’ This was their third meeting and his contact was nervous as hell – that much was obvious. The man was sitting at a table in the corner, visibly sweating, perched half off his chair, twitching like a bird, glancing repeatedly behind him at the door, as if expecting trouble to come flying through it at any second. A television set, mounted on the wall, was tuned to a football match with the sound turned down. Luke held out his hand and gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. The hand he gripped was damp and slippery.

The man’s shirt collar was frayed, his suit jacket old and stained. He definitely needed the money, or he probably wouldn’t have turned up. ‘Well, thanks for coming anyway,’ said Luke, breezily. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘No, of course,’ said Luke. ‘So, er, have you had a chance to think about what we discussed, the last time we met?’

‘I’m not clear on what you’re proposing,’ he replied, shuffling his chair closer to Luke’s. ‘Please. Tell me what exactly you want from me.’

Here we go. Deep breath. Take the plunge. This was the watershed moment when Luke would shift from one dimension to another, from legit to illicit. He reached into the inside left pocket of his jacket, drew out an unmarked envelope and put it on the table, keeping it covered with his hand. ‘I’d like to offer you a job,’ he said. No reaction. Okay, keep it going. ‘A job that pays good money.’ The man’s eyes flicked down towards the envelope. Luke kept it covered. ‘In here,’ he continued, tapping the envelope with his fingertips, ‘is something to get you started. Think of it as a welcome present from my employers.’

The man looked perplexed, his brow furrowed. ‘But I still don’t understand,’ he protested. ‘What is it you want me to do?’

Enough. Surely we’ve been through this already. It was time to stop beating about the bush. Luke needed to lay his cards on the table. ‘I need you to …’ he hesitated. He had to phrase this just right. There could be no misunderstanding. The contact was watching him intently now, waiting to hear how he would finish the sentence. His eyes, keen as a hawk’s, met Luke’s. ‘I need you to get me the passcode for the state security data files.’ There. He had blurted it out in one breath, as if expelling some toxic object from his system.

What happened next took place in a dizzying blur. Before Luke had a chance to react he saw the contact reach beneath the table. Suddenly a high-pitched alarm was sounding and the door crashed in. Two bulky figures dressed in uniforms he didn’t recognize came barrelling through the open doorway and lifted Luke out of his chair, then pinned him hard against the wall. It was too late to resist: one already had a hand clenched around his balls while the other held a baton to his throat.

The ‘contact’ rose slowly from his chair, took out a handkerchief and wiped a layer of shiny theatrical grease off his face, then folded it away, tucking it neatly back into his pocket. He sauntered over to where Luke stood, restrained by both arms, and smiled affably. ‘Better luck next time, Carlton. I’m afraid that was a failed pitch. You showed your hand much too soon.’ He patted Luke on the shoulder and nodded to the two ‘guards’ to let him go. ‘There’s tea and biscuits in the debriefing room when you’re ready. They’ll play back the tapes to everyone in there.’

‘Listen,’ the ‘contact’ added, ‘practically everyone fails this part of the course the first time round. You’ll get another shot tomorrow.’ He left with a wink, calling over his shoulder: ‘Nobody said agent running was easy.’

Chapter 2

UK National Security Council, Whitehall

OUTSIDE IT WAS drizzling. Not enough to bring out the umbrellas in force, just a slow, sad seepage from the colourless November sky, turning the stained pavements of Whitehall wet and sleek. Sir Charles Bennett disliked November: it came too late in the year for a warm weekend in the Mediterranean and too early for the ski season. But this November, as Britain’s National Security Adviser, he had rather bigger things to worry about.

‘Let me bring you all up to speed,’ he told the room, which was full of concerned faces. ‘Iran …’ There were some knowing nods. ‘Or more specifically,’ he continued, ‘the Strait of Hormuz. This is threatening to turn into a full-blown international crisis. Already this month the US Navy has recorded three hostile approaches towards their vessels by Iranian missile boats in the strait. One got within six hundred metres of a US warship and only stopped when it was fired upon.’

He paused, aware that all eyes around the table were focused on him, from the PM down to the Cabinet Office minute-taker, a young lad in a blue checked shirt and no tie, fresh out of university.

‘And, yes, you might be thinking, So what?’ resumed Bennett. ‘Surely we’ve been here before. And we have – under the previous US administration. But things are very different in the White House now. The current administration has made it abundantly clear it sees Iran as the number-one enemy.’ He could see the Foreign Secretary waving, trying to catch his eye. Geoffrey Chaplin was a notoriously ambitious member of the Cabinet and Bennett did not welcome this interruption. ‘Yes, Geoffrey? You wanted to say something?’

‘That is not, I should point out, a view shared by this government,’ said the Foreign Secretary. ‘We reopened our embassy in Tehran just over two years ago. In fact, I was thinking it’s probably time I paid a visit there. Pour a bit of oil on troubled waters, so to speak.’

‘Thank you, Foreign Secretary.’ Bennett moved on to his point: ‘So, we are getting dangerously close to a flashpoint in the Gulf. The Iranians have test-fired a number of ballistic missiles this year and Washington has very publicly “put them on notice”, whatever that means.’

‘What does it mean, precisely?’ asked the Prime Minister, who tried never to miss the weekly National Security Council meeting.

Bennett turned for help to the woman on his right, Jane Haslett, the Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, an absurdly pompous title. ‘Jane? Any clues?’

‘Prime Minister, we’re still trying to decipher the smoke signals from Washington,’ she replied, ‘but our best interpretation is that the White House has drawn a line in the sand, so to speak.’ There was a short silence, and even the young graduate paused in his minute-taking to look up.

‘Meaning,’ replied the FCO Chief, ‘that the next major provocation they see coming from Iran will be the cue for a military response. There are certain figures in the Pentagon – and I’m not going to name names – but some people in Washington are just itching to have a go at the Iranians.’ Further down the table the Minister for International Development groaned and covered her face with her hands, shaking her head in despair.

‘The problem is,’ continued Jane Haslett, ‘there are also certain people in Iran, some of the so-called hardliners, who seem to want exactly the same thing.’

‘What – war with the United States?’ asked the Home Secretary, incredulous. ‘Why would they possibly want that? It would be suicide!’

‘Yes … and no.’ A career diplomat, Jane Haslett had spent a lifetime evaluating all the options, all the angles, yet never quite committing herself to one course of action or another, just in case it turned out to be wrong. ‘They don’t want all-out war, of course not, but they know it won’t come to that. Russia and Turkey will step in and stop it before it goes too far. No, what they want is an end to peace. They don’t like all this rapprochement with Europe – they don’t even like the Vienna deal, the nuclear pact that saw the sanctions lifted. Isolation suited them just fine. They made a lot of money out of those sanctions, which gave them extraordinary power.’

‘So, Prime Minister, if you’ll allow me?’ Bennett held up his hand. ‘I think we should focus today on what this actually means for this country. And I have to tell you that the latest Joint Intelligence Committee assessment makes for pretty grim reading.’ He opened a file on the table in front of him and took out a thin pile of documents, each bordered with a scarlet edge and marked ‘Strap 2 Top Secret’. He held them up vertically, tapped them once to shuffle them into line, then passed them down the table. ‘These are all numbered and we expect them back when we finish here.’

‘The headline point here,’ said the National Security Adviser, speaking as they read the document before them, ‘and it absolutely cannot leave this room, is that if even a limited conflict breaks out between Iran and the US, we can expect the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, to mine the Strait of Hormuz and make it impassable to shipping. That strait …’ he paused for emphasis ‘… is the world’s most strategic chokepoint. Over sixteen million barrels of oil pass through it every day and it’s where at least thirty per cent of our oil comes from. So, what does that mean for us here in Britain if it’s blocked for any length of time?’ He was now looking straight at the Home Secretary. ‘It means a chronic fuel shortage, disruption of food deliveries, then hospitals, factories, lifts, generators all going without power. In short, it means the lights going out.’

He rarely showed emotion but now he was picking up tempo, enunciating every word, every syllable. ‘You can forget about switching over to renewables if this happens. That won’t be enough to bail us out. Let me be blunt. If war breaks out in the Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, people are going to die. Not just over there but right here in Britain, in our hospitals and in our homes. Which is why …’ again, the pause ‘… it must be our number-one priority to stop it happening.’

Chapter 3

Shahid Beheshti airbase, Iran

WHEN IT CAME to certain things, such as how he took his tea, Karim Zamani was fastidious. No glass was complete without the addition of nabot, the uniquely Persian sticks of crystallized sugar, tinged yellow with saffron. Wearing the dark green uniform and gold braid of a senior officer in the Sepah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, he held the teaspoon between the tips of his thumb and forefinger and slowly twirled it, the scalding liquid swirling around the tulip-shaped glass, which had been handed to him moments earlier on a patterned saucer. It was an oddly dainty gesture for a man who wielded such power, such influence. He blew on the tea and took a sip. No, still too hot.

Placing the glass on the small table beside him, he turned to his host, the investigations officer. Through the cracked, stained window of the room in which they sat, the sun streamed in, glinting off Zamani’s rectangular spectacles and picking out the flecks of grey in his neatly trimmed beard.

‘How serious is the problem?’ he asked quietly, regarding the man with unblinking eyes.

The other was about to answer but had to wait as the roar of an aircraft engine rose, then fell, outside the window. An ageing US-built C130 transport plane, cannibalized for spare parts during the long years of sanctions, was lumbering into the air.

‘It could have been very serious,’ the investigations officer replied, ‘but we have everything under control now.’

Zamani said nothing. How many times had he heard that glib line from his subordinates? How many times had he checked up on them only to find it wasn’t so? How many times had he been forced to make an example of them so they would never lie to him again?

‘We discovered all three had secret social-media accounts,’ continued the investigator. ‘Under false names, of course. They were using a proxy server in Dubai, thinking they could hide by going through VPN.’

‘Virtual Privacy Network. I’m told people use it to hide what they’re up to online. But we caught them all the same.’

‘And how,’ Zamani asked, as he picked up his glass of tea again, ‘did you manage that?’

‘Our Chinese friends have been most helpful. You remember the ZTE monitoring system we bought from them a few years back?’ Zamani looked blank. The acronym meant nothing to him. ‘Well, it’s more than serving our purposes. We can pinpoint users right down to the room in their house, intercept their text messages, see everything and everyone they’re accessing online. I tell you, Karim-jaan, it’s like we’re standing over their shoulder and they can’t see us!’

Karim Zamani finally took another sip of his tea. It had cooled just enough to drink but a thin curl of steam still rose from its surface.

His host now came to the point. ‘So, the three we caught, they were importing some dangerous ideas and spreading them here on the base. By God, Karim-jaan, it was like a cancer.’

‘Dangerous ones. A threat to our national security. Misguided, liberal, Western ideas. Foolish delusions about democracy and free speech. Questioning the wisdom of the Supreme Leader. These are ideas that could threaten the Jumhuri Islami, the Islamic Republic. They were even messaging people in the US, in London, in Germany …’

‘And in the Zionist Entity?’ prompted Zamani, using his organization’s expression for the State of Israel.

‘We haven’t found proof of that yet. But I am certain they will confess to it in good time.’

‘Make sure they do,’ said Zamani. ‘And where are they now, these three kha’in?’ Already he was calling them traitors. ‘Have they been processed yet?’

‘We have carried out initial interrogations, naturally. But we’ll be sending them to the Revolutionary Court for trial.’

Karim Zamani stood up, smoothing the creases in his tunic as he did so. ‘I would like to see them,’ he said abruptly.

The smell hit them the moment the heavy steel door was yanked open. Sweat, fear and faeces. Three things that come with the territory for those unlucky enough to see the inside of a Sepahi holding cell. The prisoners were sitting in a row against the opposite wall, still wearing their military uniforms but stripped of their ranks, their knees drawn up close to their chests, their ankles shackled to chains fixed to heavy iron rings on the wall. On the ceiling, a single neon striplight, blotched grey with the collective bodies of long-dead insects, fizzed and flickered but never went off, day or night. No windows. In the corner an open toilet bucket hummed with flies.

Karim Zamani stood in the middle of the cell and surveyed the men, the investigations officer at his side. ‘Which one is the ringleader?’ he asked.

The other man pointed to the figure sitting on the right. He was a good-looking young man, or he might have been before the purple bruises had so disfigured his face. When he raised his head to look up at them, Zamani thought he saw something flash in his eyes. What was it? Defiance? Arrogance? No matter. They all had that when they were first brought in. It rarely lasted more than a few days, a week at most.

Zamani walked over to him and crouched down to his level. He took the man’s jaw in his hand, exerting just enough pressure on his bones to cause him pain. Zamani stared straight at him for some time, saying nothing, then turned back to the investigator. ‘Break his bones,’ he said quietly. ‘And make the others watch while it’s done.’

Chapter 4

South coast, England

‘WELL, CONGRATULATIONS TO all of you. You’ve made it this far so give yourselves a pat on the back.’ The training director stood at the far end of the long room, facing his students with both hands thrust into his trouser pockets. To Luke, it looked like contrived nonchalance.

‘My name is Jim Donaldson – and that is my real name by the way.’ He gave a short chuckle. ‘I’m your course director on the agent-running course. First off, a bit of background about me …’

Luke cast a discreet glance around the room. He knew first impressions could be deceptive but he was pretty damn sure no one else here had the same sort of operational experience he had. Iraq and Afghanistan with the Royal Marines, then places he could never talk about from when he’d done his four years with the Special Boat Service. All that followed by a horrendously dangerous mission on contract for SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, in Colombia. How many others here, he wondered, had ballsed up their practice pitch like he had just now?

Now that he had joined the Service, as a full-time case officer, Luke was surprised to find what a steep learning curve he was on. Of the three career streams he had had to choose from – reports officer, targeting, and agent running – there had never been any doubt as to which one he would head into. His psych assessment profile had been unequivocal on that. It had to be agent running. The sharp end. The most difficult and dangerous job in human intelligence work.

‘Luke Carlton,’ it had read, ‘has exactly the right temperament and aptitude for recruiting and running agents in hostile environments. He is recommended for Category 1 operations.’ It was the path that everyone with him in this room had also been selected for. The young man on his left had introduced himself that morning. Ginger-haired, freckled, well spoken, a 2:1 from SOAS in Middle Eastern studies, he was wearing a green gilet over a checked shirt, fawn trousers and polished brown brogues. All a bit Horse & Hound, thought Luke, but the woman on his right was intriguing. At thirty-seven, Luke had reckoned he would be the oldest trainee on the course but she must have been a good five years older, her bare, muscular arms coated with a liberal scattering of tattoos. ‘Spikes’, read one, in a florid purple italic. He wondered what special skills had brought her to this room today.

‘I take it,’ Donaldson was saying, ‘that you’re all familiar by now with what we like to call the intelligence cycle.’ He had finished talking about himself and was on to his main brief. He looked around the room, hands still in his pockets. ‘Whitehall sets the requirements, our targeting officers identify the potential agent, we work out a way to get you in front of them, you try to recruit them and if you’re successful … if you’re successful …’ Donaldson looked meaningfully at the first row of faces just in front of Luke ‘… then the material you produce will go to a reports officer who will make their own judgement of whether it’s credible. Then he or she will send the final version to Whitehall. Are we all clear on that?’

‘And what if they don’t think it’s credible?’ It was a man in the third row, late twenties, sitting just behind Luke. A Brummie, Luke guessed from his accent. Sideburns, gold stud earring, cheeky smile.

Donaldson took his hands out of his pockets, placed them on his hips and grinned. ‘That’s a fair question, young man,’ he replied. ‘These days, there are strict Chinese walls in place between agent runners – that’s you – and the reports officers. If something doesn’t smell right about the product you’re sending them, they’ll send it right back to you, believe me.’

Luke heard the door open behind him and turned in his chair to see half a dozen of the training staff file in and take their places against the wall at the back, arms folded across their chests. He knew exactly what they’d been doing: watching him and the others through CCTV cameras from a monitoring room upstairs as they made their practice pitches. The ‘agents’ were there, too, all retired intelligence officers acting their parts. They must have been writing up their appraisals just now, so ritual-humiliation time was coming up.

‘Anyway,’ Donaldson was saying briskly, rubbing his hands together, ‘let’s move on.’ He surveyed the room, as if searching for something in the rows of faces that stared back at him. ‘Cover profiles. Your alter ego. Your “legend”, as our friend John le Carré would call it. I believe you’ve all had a chance to talk these through with your team managers and the security advisers.’ Luke looked around for reactions. No one had had this conversation with him yet. It wasn’t supposed to be scheduled until next month.

‘Brendan!’ declared Donaldson, projecting his voice a little more than usual. He was looking straight at Luke.

‘That’s right. Fellow in the second row. Yes, you, sir. Brendan Hall. How well d’you know your cover?’

Luke couldn’t help it: he laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, trying to keep a straight face. ‘I don’t think you mean me. I’m not Brendan Hall.’ What a ridiculous cover name, he thought. Who would choose that? It sounded like a stately home.

Donaldson’s face clouded. The false bonhomie, the practised nonchalance were gone. ‘So you think intelligence work is a bit of a joke?’ he shot back. ‘A bit of a laugh, is it? Well, let me tell you, your cover story is everything. It’s what you live by. It’s the difference between a successful agent runner and – and a total failure! It could even cost someone their life. Just think about that for a moment. If you can’t maintain a convincing cover, you’re no use to us in the field and furthermore—’

Donaldson stopped in mid-flow. A woman in a charcoal business suit had come up to the front of the room and was now whispering something in his ear. Both were looking at Luke as she spoke.

‘Ah. It seems,’ resumed Donaldson, his tone towards Luke rather more conciliatory, ‘that I’ve been a little premature in your case. I do apologize. If I could ask you to step outside the room, please, some people from Vauxhall Cross are waiting to see you.’

Chapter 5

LUKE FOUND ANGELA Scott outside the lecture block. She was standing, facing out to sea by the Napoleonic fort’s low wall next to the cannons, a place that had seen generations of trainee spies pass through. Hunched into the collar of her Halifax Traders windbreaker, she was taking a long drag on a cigarette. Luke could not remember ever seeing his MI6 line manager smoking, but then again, this was a woman who kept her private life strictly to herself.

‘Cover names,’ Angela said, as he walked up to her. He watched her turn her delicate freckled face towards him and smile in greeting. Pale, interesting, dedicated Angela. Forty-one, unmarried, half a lifetime devoted to the Service and someone he trusted completely.

‘Yes. D’you want to explain what that was about in there?’ said Luke. ‘I thought we weren’t discussing mine till next month.’

‘We’re not, you’re right. Don’t worry about that for now. We’ve got something more important to discuss.’

She was wrapped up against the November chill while he was still in his shirtsleeves. ‘Hey!’ she exclaimed. ‘Aren’t you freezing?’ As if to emphasize her point, a gust blew in off the English Channel, whipping the hair across her forehead. Angela stubbed out her cigarette, flicked it over the sea wall and looked at him questioningly. ‘We can go inside, if you’d prefer?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said, as a blast of sea spray splashed across his cheek. ‘It reminds me of my time in the Corps.’

‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘In a couple of minutes a man will come through that door and join us out here. He’s called Graham Leach and he’s our Head of Iran and Caucasus.’

Luke glanced instinctively at the door he had come through but it remained shut.

‘He’s come down here to see you, Luke, and the job he’s going to ask you to do is not without risks. I’m here to remind you, as your line manager, that you don’t have to accept it if you don’t want to. We’re not the Stasi. Okay, here he comes now.’

Leach shut the door behind him and strode over to join them. Luke immediately clocked the faded purple scar below his right eye. In another time, another age, it might have resulted from duelling, and it gave him a certain swashbuckling appearance. Later he’d ask where it had come from.

‘Graham Leach.’ He held out his hand and Luke gripped it. ‘How’s the course going?’

‘So-so,’ replied Luke. ‘Not sure I impressed anyone this morning with my pitching skills. But I’m guessing you haven’t come down here to talk about that.’

‘No, I haven’t. In fact, we’re pulling you off the course.’ Leach caught the look on Luke’s face and quickly reassured him. ‘It’s all right, we’re not failing you. We’ll put you on the next one. It’s just that something rather urgent’s come up, let’s call it an opportunity, and we’d like you to be involved.’

‘The Service has been tasked to increase its penetration of Iran.’ Luke kept a straight face. Of course he knew exactly what that word meant in intelligence terms, but even now, after all these months of working for MI6, it still made him smile. ‘Penetration’ made him think of sex. ‘I’m talking specifically here about the IRGC,’ Leach continued. ‘You’re familiar with them, I take it?’

‘The Revolutionary Guards. Yes, I am,’ Luke said. ‘We had a few close encounters with their boats in the Gulf when I was serving as a Royal Marine.’

‘I’m sure you did. Well, we’re picking up signs that a hardcore element within that organization is hell-bent on sabotaging the 2015 nuclear deal. The fact is, it’s set back their nuclear ambitions by fifteen years but now it’s under threat from both sides. Washington doesn’t like it and wants to rip it up, and in Iran the hardcore revolutionaries don’t like it. They’re trying to trip up the moderates in their government and undermine anyone who’s looking to open up Iran to the rest of the world. Especially since the election in May. Plus they seem to be spoiling for a fight with the US Navy right now, which would clearly be disastrous for everyone.’

Luke turned his face towards the breeze as it blew in off the grey chop. A trawler was making heavy progress through the swell, its bow rising and falling. He had done time on ships in seas like that, clinging to a slippery bulkhead, and didn’t envy the men onboard. He turned back to face Leach. He was still waiting for the punchline. ‘So where do I come in, sir?’

Leach gave a short, embarrassed laugh. ‘Come on, Luke. You can drop the “sir”. You’ve been with us long enough now to know we don’t do formality.’

‘We need to know more about what the hardliners in Iran are up to.’ It was Angela who spoke this time. ‘We have agents there, obviously – we wouldn’t be much good as a service if we didn’t. But the Chief wants us to get someone placed upstream who can tap right into what the hardliners are thinking, what their next move is.’

‘And you’ve found someone?’ Luke looked from Angela to Leach and back again.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Targeting have come up with someone perfectly placed – if we can get close to him. Karim Zamani is a very senior official in the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards. He’s also on their Supreme Committee for Peaceful Nuclear Development.’

Luke was getting seriously cold, standing by the sea wall in his cotton shirt, but he was damned if he was going to admit it. ‘You do know,’ he reminded them, ‘that I don’t speak a word of Farsi? That I’ve never been to Iran? And that I’m quite probably on some list of theirs from my time in Special Forces?’

Angela laid a hand on his arm. ‘Yes, we know all of that, Luke,’ she said soothingly. ‘Come on, I think it’s time we continued this conversation indoors. You may be hard as nails, but Graham and I are absolutely freezing out here.’

‘Oh!’ said Leach, noticing Luke’s missing finger for the first time. ‘Mind if I ask what happened there?’

Luke gave a weary smile. He had had to tell this story so many times. ‘Afghanistan,’ he answered. ‘I lost the middle finger to a Taliban bullet in a firefight. Could have been a whole lot worse.’

‘Can I ask how you got the scar?’ Luke nodded towards the purple line just below Leach’s eye.

‘This? Kinshasa. A long time ago, on my first overseas posting. Just a misunderstanding.’

Nothing more was said but an unspoken connection had been forged between the two men.

‘Right, well, back to Iran,’ continued Leach, briskly. ‘Zamani himself is not a good target for us. He’s fiercely loyal to his masters in the Sepah, the Revolutionary Guards Corps. It’s in his blood. But his family are a different matter.’ He nodded at Angela, who produced a thin sheaf of photographs from her bag and passed them to Leach. He selected one and handed it to Luke. ‘This is his wife, Forouz Zamani.’

Luke tilted the photograph to avoid the reflective sheen from the neon light on the ceiling. The face that looked back at him was that of an attractive woman in her forties, with intelligent brown eyes. Perhaps a little work had been done here and there: the nose seemed a little too delicate for the rest of her face.

‘She comes from a very well-connected family,’ Leach went on. ‘Business interests right across the country, so plenty of money there.’

‘She collects art,’ said Angela. ‘Persian art, mostly. And she travels a lot on business. Berlin, London, New York, the Gulf.’

‘They sound an oddly matched couple. She’s hardly the revolutionary zealot,’ Luke remarked.

‘She’s quite the opposite,’ said Leach. ‘We’re hearing there may be serious strains in their relationship.’

Luke pushed his chair back from the table and folded his arms. ‘Okay, so I’m guessing where this is going,’ he said. ‘You want me to get myself in front of her and try to recruit her?’

‘Good guess, but no.’ Leach handed him a second photograph. ‘This is the person we want you to recruit. She’s his daughter, Tannaz Zamani. She’s twenty-two, attends Tehran University, she’s the apple of her father’s eye, and she absolutely hates him.’

Chapter 6

Tehran

THE PARTY WAS strictly word-of-mouth, invitation only. Parked in the leafy side-streets of north Tehran, off Fereshteh Street, the drivers of the imported luxury 4x4s sat patiently in the dark while their passengers lost themselves in another world inside the darkened three-storey house. The drivers kept their engines running, watching, wary, ready with the denial story in case the Gasht-e-Ershad, the morality police, came banging on the window and asking awkward questions.

It was a substantial mansion set in substantial grounds, built in the 1900s, its creamy walls fronted by imposing faux-Roman columns and a flight of wide, sweeping steps guarded by a pair of stone lions. There were domed cupolas, balconies and balustrades. It had once been home to a wealthy family with close connections to the Shah, long ago departed for a different life in Santa Monica. Back then, in the 1970s, before the seismic upheaval that was Iran’s Islamic Revolution, the lights would have been blazing late into the night, the sound of Western music – the Bee Gees, Blondie, Boney M – spilling out into the street, neighbours dropping by to join in. Not these days. You could still have fun in Tehran, a lot of fun, if you moved in the right circles, but you had to be careful and you needed to know which parties to avoid. All it took was for word to get out to one wrong person and you could land yourself in a whole world of pain.

Pulling up in a taxi, Tannaz shuddered to think of what had happened to her friend Farah, swept up in that police raid back in April, carted off in a windowless van to the detention centre at Vozara. Still wearing that designer dress of hers and the earrings, questioned, humiliated, searched in the most intimate, invasive way imaginable, then weeks later forced to sign a confession to immorality. She was out now, with a stern caution, but everyone agreed she had never been the same since.

Tannaz chose her friends carefully, perhaps even more carefully than most, given who her father was. Coming to this party was far more than a social call: it was a deliberate act of rebellion against him. She loathed what he stood for, all those killjoy religious rules and telling people to cover up in public. She was sick of hearing how the Islamic Revolution had cleansed Iran in 1979 and how terrible life had been under the Shah. What did she care? The Shah had been dead for fifteen years by the time she was born. And yet, despite everything, she knew that her father, Karim, loved her, doted on her in his way. It was as if he saw in her what had once made him fall in love with her mother. She shuddered, repulsed by the thought.

Tonight it was a trusted crowd – she would know everyone – but still she chose to come by taxi. The family driver was not a risk worth taking. She let herself out of the rear door and pulled the black folds of her chador tight around her face. There had even been stories of the Gasht-e-Ershad hiding in the shadows outside parties like this, quietly taking pictures and, days later, presenting them as irrefutable evidence in a police interrogation room.

Outside the blue-painted steel gates she pressed the buzzer twice, then once again. The agreed signal. A tiny window with a grille opened and a man’s clean-shaven face peered out at her. There was a pause, then the gate slid back just far enough to let her slip through. Once inside the inner courtyard she swept the veil off her face and let it hang loose across her shoulders. Two young men with walkie-talkies nodded to her in recognition. They pointed over their shoulders to where a single, fat candle cast a flickering pool of light onto the path. Encased in glass against the chill evening breeze, it had been planted in a bucket of sand. Tannaz strode past it in her Valentino sandals. She knew the way. She had been there before. If she stood still, which she did now, and held her head to one side, she could just make out the faint sound of voices laughing from upstairs. And music. Not the Bee Gees, these days: ‘Saturday Night Fever’ had given way to Beyoncé, Rihanna and, more often, Iranian singers, like Kiosk and King Raam, now trending in twenty-first-century Iran.

Tannaz pushed open the door on the ground floor, removed her chador, and handed it to a boy in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. Revealed in her strapless black minidress, split right up the thigh, and her metallic leather sandals, she was like a different being. Down a carpeted corridor, the music pumping louder now, then through another door – and suddenly she was in a world of kaleidoscopic lights and sinuous, gyrating bodies, dancing, twirling, embracing. A young DJ was nodding rhythmically to the music at a deck, earphones on, eyes shut, a sweet smile of contentment on his face. That would be Rami, she thought, stoned again.

From out of the shadows friends emerged and hugged her wildly, dragging her straight onto the dance-floor. Someone offered her a shot of vodka, and she tossed her hair to one side as she knocked it back. A boy with gelled hair and a designer leather jacket draped an arm around her, planted a wet kiss on her cheek and offered her a joint. Tannaz laughed, waved it away, then changed her mind, took a long drag and handed it back. The boy blew her another kiss, then wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s waist, their hips grinding together in time to the music.

Upstairs it was a different scene, more chilled, less manic. As Tannaz went in search of a bathroom she found herself stepping over slumped figures in the corridor. Through an open doorway, several of her friends were sprawled on cushions. Between them, on the table, lay a small mountain of coke. Not her thing. There was a queue outside the bathroom so she moved on, making her way upstairs to the top floor. There was a master bedroom, she remembered, with an ensuite. Probably, she thought afterwards, she should have stopped and turned the moment she heard the sounds but she really, really needed the loo so in she went.

She froze in the doorway. How many were on the bed? Five? Six? Seven, even? With all the thrusting and groaning and gasping, it was hard to tell. The room was a blur of intertwined limbs, of hairy buttocks and heaving breasts, shiny with sweat in the yellow glow of the bedside lamps.

‘Goh khordi. Oh, shit.’ Her mobile was going off in her bag. She turned away and pulled out her phone. Her father. At this time of night. Not good: four missed calls and a text: Where are you? Nana is unwell. Come home now or I will send someone to find you.

Tannaz knew exactly what that meant. Two minutes later she was outside, back in her all-enveloping black chador, flagging down a taxi in the street. No one would have guessed she had come from an orgy. She crammed a stick of menthol-flavoured chewing gum into her mouth and spritzed a squirt of perfume on her face to hide the smell of alcohol. The driver caught her eye in his mirror and grinned knowingly. She averted her gaze, staring intently at the lights of north Tehran as they flashed past the window. How long could she keep up this secret double life, this lie? Free-spirited, hedonistic, party-going twenty-two-year-old by choice, conservative citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran by birth. Her father would kill her if he knew what she got up to and, she reminded herself, he was not just anyone. He was a very senior officer in the Revolutionary Guards. He was Karim Zamani.

Chapter 7

Parchin Military Complex, Iran

DRIVING SOUTH-EAST OUT of Tehran down Highway 44 or, rather, being driven, Karim Zamani squinted up at the early-morning sun. Slanting low over the powdery, ochre-coloured hills, streaked red with ore and dusted with the first snows of winter, it glinted off the golden domes of a roadside mosque. He liked winter. It reminded him of his childhood, growing up in the foothills of the mighty Elburz Mountains. Old enough, just, to remember standing shoeless by the side of the road, watching the convoys of rich people’s cars going past, heading up to the ski resorts of Shemshak and Dizin in their furs and aviator sunglasses. The Shah’s people. The enemy. Long gone now but what had replaced them? Another elite, the new rich of Tehran in their Lexuses and Porsche Cayennes, clogging the weekend roads out of the capital. Karim Zamani disapproved of this flagrant display of affluence, with its connotations of Western cultural decadence. And then there was his wife, Forouz, elegant, fragrant Forouz, her curious obsession with art and all the costly visits to galleries in Europe. Some of her tastes were anathema to him but he tolerated them because her family were rich and powerful, and she had defied them to marry him when he hadn’t had a pot to piss in. But his daughter, Tannaz? Now she was a worry. He had resisted allowing her to attend Tehran University. And now look what was happening. He was convinced that, as he had feared, she was mixing with the wrong sort of people. He should have her followed, or married off, or both.

Karim Zamani put aside these thoughts as he sat up in the back seat and placed the braided peaked cap on his head as they approached the first gates. He was wearing his dark green dress uniform, the gold wreath and crossed-sword epaulettes on his shoulders denoting his IRGC rank of Second Brigadier General. It was a rank to be respected and even now, after all these years of service to the Islamic Revolution, he felt a twinge of pride each time he put it on.

A large sign read in Farsi and in English: ‘Parchin Military Complex. No photography’. ID check, three armed guards, weapons lowered as they recognized him, saluting him smartly and waving his car through. Down a dusty road beside a chain-link fence, guard towers, red-and-white-striped barriers, speed bumps, more security checks, and then a smaller, narrower road, unpaved, hugging the contours of the mountain, leading away from the main complex until it reached what might, at first glance, have been taken to be a natural cave. It was no cave. A reinforced-steel door sealed the entrance to a tunnel bored deep into the rock face. No guards this time, but Karim Zamani understood what he had to do. Slowly, carefully, knowing he was being watched by hidden cameras, he stepped out of the car and walked to the steel door. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small digital LED device, then peered closer at the flickering green numbers displayed on the screen. He keyed them into a console on the side of the door. For a moment nothing happened. Then, quietly, it slid open. He nodded at the car and it drove off to park in the shadow of a nearby cliff.

Inside the tunnel Zamani adjusted his eyes to the semi-darkness. The sodium bulbs embedded in the walls at intervals gave off a half-hearted light as if nearing the end of their useful life. He walked on, down the empty tunnel, and stopped at a door. Another console, set into the wall, this time with an iris scanner. He removed his spectacles, placing them carefully in the pocket inside his tunic, then placed his hands on the console and leaned forward slightly, bringing his eyes level with the scanner. Four seconds later there was a discreet click and the door opened to reveal two armed guards wearing gloves and off-white face masks. They spoke into a radio, then handed him his own pair of protective gloves and a mask. Flanking him, side by side and saying nothing, they went down in the lift together. Down and down they descended, into what felt like the very core of the Earth. The lift had no sides and seemed to scrape the surface of the exposed rock until it stopped with a jolt and the guards clanked open the mesh gate.

Zamani stepped out into the subterranean corridor and smiled. The team were all assembled, waiting for him, expectant and deferential in their white lab coats.

‘Khosh amadid, Rais,’ said the man in front, the chief scientist, stepping forward to greet him. ‘Welcome, Commander.’

Zamani moved down the line, greeting each one in turn, telling them how important their work was in the service of the nation. He resisted the temptation to look at his watch. With so many responsibilities in the Revolutionary Guards Corps, he was always pressed for time. But then he remembered. Time was of little importance on this visit. This was a strategic project that transcended all timetables.

They moved down the narrow corridor in single file, turned left, through another doorway, more guards, weapons clasped tightly to their chests, and on down a passageway until they came to a door marked with a large yellow-and-black triangular nuclear hazard symbol. The chief scientist stepped forward and slotted his electronic pass into a reader. The door opened into a control room where more men in white coats were working at a bank of computer terminals. After the catastrophe of the Stuxnet virus, a piece of computer malware developed by US and Israeli scientists, introduced via a USB stick that had wiped out around a thousand of Iran’s nuclear-enrichment centrifuges at Natanz, everyone in the room had had their backgrounds and family connections exhaustively checked and rechecked. The project under way down here, hundreds of feet below the wrinkled deserts of northern Iran, was such a closely guarded secret that almost no one in government even knew it existed.

When they were all assembled inside the control room, the scientists looked at Karim Zamani, waiting for him to give the order to begin.

‘Run the sequence,’ he said quietly, then stood back, arms folded, waiting and watching intently. All faces turned towards a chamber, separated from them by a thick glass screen. On the other side a long, thin ballistic missile rested on a metal stand. It was painted in khaki camouflage but marked with the Farsi letters spelling the word Zolfaghar. A serial number was stencilled on its side, B-313-92-05, and next to that the tricolor of the Iranian national flag: green, white and red. But where the business end of the missile should have been, at the pointed tip, there was a gaping hole, a cavity waiting to be filled. That was as it should be.

Also by Frank Gardner

Ultimatum

Frank Gardner

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

UK National Security Council, Whitehall

Chapter 3

Shahid Beheshti airbase, Iran

Chapter 4

South coast, England

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Tehran

Chapter 7

Parchin Military Complex, Iran