Oath of Office

Reza Kazem did as he’d been instructed, more or less. The Russians were, after all, experts in tradecraft. He couldn’t see anyone but knew they were with him every step of the way, watching for signs of a tail.

The twenty-seven-year-old Iranian had spent four years at Georgetown earning a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and had no difficulty navigating in Washington, D.C. He’d certainly been here long enough to know that there were spies and, more important, counterspies behind every tree and under every stone.

At just under six feet tall, with olive skin and a full head of dark, wavy hair, Kazem did not stand out in a crowd in Iran or Washington — until one looked at his eyes. Deep green, the color of the sea in a gale, they’d garnered him plenty of female attention during his time at Georgetown. A dreamer at heart, he often forgot to eat — especially now, with so much on the line. This gave him a gaunt appearance, which American girls also appeared to like. He enjoyed football — what the Americans called soccer — and ran two miles every morning to stay in shape. He was not particularly strong in a physical sense, but that didn’t matter. People didn’t bend to his will because he muscled them. He simply told them what he wanted, looked at them with his stormy-sea eyes — and they did it.

Kazem had taken a cab from his hotel to the Metro station at Tysons Corner, where he boarded the Silver train toward Largo Town Center. As instructed, he got off the train at Rosslyn, taking the impossibly long escalator up to street level, where he walked two blocks east to a Starbucks. It was early, and he had to wait in line with all the other morning commuters to buy a cup of coffee and a slice of lemon cake, which he ate outside the doors on the street. The sidewalks teemed with people wearing earbuds, carrying newspapers, drinking coffee, but no one looked anything like an intelligence operative, Russian or otherwise. Whoever was out there must have been highly skilled. Kazem finished the lemon cake — which was moist and as good as anything he’d ever had in Iran, though he hated to admit it — and retraced his steps to the Metro station. This time he took the Orange train that ran parallel to the Silver. At L’Enfant Plaza, he changed to the Blue Line, where he retraced his journey yet again, this train turning south as it sped across the Potomac, through Foggy Bottom — where the State Department was headquartered — and bypassing Rosslyn altogether. Above ground now, Kazem stood, holding on to a steel bar above his head, the train packed shoulder to shoulder. He caught a glimpse of the endless rows of white stones on the hillside at Arlington Cemetery, and the expansive parking lot of the Pentagon. He was indeed in the belly of the beast.

Kazem exited the train at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, returning again to ground level and walking east on 15th until he reached the Crystal Gateway Marriott. He made his way through the hotel lobby and down a long, sterile-looking tile hallway into the Crystal City Underground shopping area, redolent with odors of starched shirts and polished shoes — where he was finally supposed to meet his contact.

He pushed his way through the crowds of freshly showered government workers and uniformed military personnel arriving via Virginia transit trains on their way to the Pentagon or one of the myriad other offices in this little corner inside the Beltway.

Kazem found who he was looking for outside yet another Starbucks across from a restaurant called King Street Blues.

She sat at a small, black metal table, situated among a half-dozen other identical tables. Even though she was seated, he could tell the woman was tall, and willowy thin — a long-distance runner often seen jogging on the paved trail along the Potomac between Arlington and Mount Vernon. Amber hair curled slightly at her shoulders, framing high cheekbones and a prominent, but still attractive, Slavic nose. Her charcoal-gray business suit looked expensive, though Reza had never concerned himself with things like women’s fashion. Contrary to the rules of tradecraft, he knew his contact’s name — or at least the name under which she’d registered at the embassy — Elizaveta Bobkova, first assistant to the Russian economics attaché in Washington. Reza also knew Bobkova worked for SVR, Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. More specifically, she was assigned to SVR’s Political Intelligence Directorate, Iran Department.

He had met her face-to-face once before, at the national zoo, after going through a similar surveillance-detection run. This morning, two cups of coffee and two slices of lemon cake sat on the table in front of her — exactly what he’d ordered in Rosslyn, the signal that all was well.

Bobkova waved Reza over with a flick of her long fingers, the nails painted bright red. She certainly wasn’t trying to remain unnoticed. She smiled broadly and gestured to the chair opposite her.