The Peregrine Spy Read Online Free PDF Page A

the tray in front of him. Whatever comes, he told himself, I have to do this. He knew that the intelligence he could glean from his military counterparts, and the Shah, would be a vital part of the job, but he saw intelligence gathering as a cover for the task that really mattered: recruiting Lermontov. He realized he would be going against the directions given him by Near East Division and instead taking his guidance from Pete Howard. Again. Metamorphosing from a lazy fly on the wall to a hungry, circling falcon. He felt thirsty but did not order a drink. The thirst was for the job. He crumpled the empty plastic cup and stuffed it into one of the seat-back pockets. He pushed the tray up and locked it in place.
    He knew he’d been hooked and resented the disappointment he had caused Jake. Again. He wondered when, if ever, they would begin the life both had looked forward to. Father and son. School. Trying to be a friend, role model, and teacher to an adolescent who often mystified him. Holding down a job that would seem like a regular job with a suburban office to go to every day. Eventually, a suburban house. What Jackie, if they were still together, would call “a normal life, for a change.”
    Gus Simpson, who had boarded in Rome, had stretched out across a vacant row of middle aisle seats, securing seat belts above his knees and across his waist. Frank, standing in the aisle, had watched. “Snug as a roach in a hooch,” said Gus as he tucked two square white pillows under his head and pulled a gray blanket around his shoulders.
    Frank looked down at the trussed-up form of the man he had heard so much about. He sensed the curiosity he felt about Gus must be mutual, but even in the plane’s secure, humming cocoon they remained wary, cordial, distant. Frank went back to his seat by the window and picked up the remnants of the previous day’s Washington Post and Wall Street Journal . He again scanned the key stories. Only two in the Post . Both on the front page. “Workers Strike Iran’s Oil Fields; Army on Guard,” read one headline. “Shah of Iran Given Assurance of U.S. Support,” said the other. Three of the Journal ’s inside stories focused on the global impact of the oil strike. The main story warned, “Iranian Oilfield Strife Adds to Doubts About Shah’s Ability to Hang On As Ruler.” A page-one summary mentioned an “Ayatullah Khomaini” who called for more mass demonstrations near Tehran’s bazaar. A newspaper strike had shut down the Times and the other New York papers since August. Frank missed them. He considered himself a newspaper junkie and hoped the strike would not diminish the number of New York dailies. He believed no one newspaper, and no single source of intelligence, could ever get complex stories right. The newspapers couldn’t even agree on the spelling of Tehran. The Times, as he remembered, had it Teheran. It was Tehran in the Post and the Journal . He wondered if anyone had anything right about the country.
    The plane rocked, and a brusque order to prepare for landing signaled a swift, bumpy descent. The clouds thinned; the plane stabilized, and patches of landscape shifted like a cubist collage in and out of focus: snow-smeared mountains sloping down through a desolate tree line; huge houses with brown, sprawling gardens and tin-roofed shanties.
    A looming construction crane caught his attention. Pitched at an odd angle, it looked like a giant, distant, wounded bird, a pterodactyl fossilized into steel. A low cloud, swollen by smoke, swallowed it. The plane seemed to accelerate as it descended, suddenly free of the clouds. Frank counted the towers of smoke rising from the city—four, five, six, seven—and wondered what circle of hell waited. In some of the spiraling gray towers he could now see flashes of orange flame. What are we doing here? he said to himself. How did I let this happen to me? Again. He glanced up the aisle and saw Gus’s face peering around the seat. His