The Shield of Darius

by Allen Kent

  Diagonally across the boulevard to his right another small street intersected the avenue. He crossed to it, shuffling unnoticed among the few passersby, and followed it until it ended in a T-intersection. Again for no particular reason, perhaps to move farther from the square, he turned right and at the next corner left, away from the boulevard. Carefully he mapped his movements in his mind; across two more streets to another T-intersection, right again, then left.

  As he made this last turn, he feared for an instant that he was disoriented and had turned in a circle. A block ahead was another broad, well-lighted avenue. But as he approached it, he knew that it was not the street with the square and the bronze statue. Across the new street, barely discernable in the dusk and mist of the evening after-shower, rose a high wall of pale brick, much of its face covered with graffiti and topped with a spiked grillwork of black wrought iron. He stopped and peered ahead at it through the narrow window of his chador, fitting it into the picture that had begun to emerge when he saw the statue in the square, like the hazy first images of a Polaroid snapshot. He edged forward. There were the gates. High black iron gates, and behind them in dark evening shadows cast across the broad lawn by a dozen street lamps, the long imposing face of another brick building. Ben knew the building and it sucked his breath away like an unexpected blow to the stomach. Slowly he felt the city about him turn a hundred and eighty degrees and settle into place. He knew that he was indeed looking north. In fact, he knew exactly where he was and that he was very lost. He knew also why he’d turned away from the square when he saw the statue, fearing in his deep subconscious that it was not of a war hero, or a great liberator, or even a dictator. He had feared that it was a poet. Ferdowsi. So he had turned away and crossed the avenue, and made his way to this street. In front of him stretched the broad thoroughfare he knew as Takht-E-Jamshid and beyond it, rising imposingly above its spike-crowned wall of yellow brick stood the dark, ominous outline of the former United States Embassy, Tehran, Iran.

  FIFTEEN

  Of all professional athletes in the United States, none are mimicked quite as precisely by aspiring young players as are baseball stars. Baseball is indeed the national pastime, and on any park or sandlot diamond on any sunny day from May to September, major leaguers in miniature strut their stuff, chewing on sunflower seeds and rehearsing the gestures, moves and dugout vocabulary that have raised the sport to an art form. No one does this with quite the skill and aplomb as do little leaguers. By the time a young player is eleven, he may still lack the physical skills to go deep into the hole to backhand a ground ball and make the long throw to first, but he has perfected all of the affectations of the play. He and all of his teammates have distilled the essence of baseball mannerisms into a personal ‘style’ which they begin to play out from the moment they reach the diamond until they walk off the field following the final out.

  Katherine Sager knew the game and her son’s team well. She realized as she watched PJ and the rest of the Rebels take the field in their Bob’s Cadillac jerseys that she was about to see the boy’s best re-enactment of the Baltimore Orioles’ victory over the Yankees the night before. Kate also knew that PJ would not be a shortstop much longer. If he stayed small, within a year larger boys with stronger arms would wrest the coveted position from him and send him to second. But for now, he covered the critical left side of the infield with better speed and throwing accuracy than any of the others. And though a devoted Orioles fan, PJ preferred to think of himself as cut from the same cloth as Cardinal legend Ozzie Smith.

  The bleachers at Edison Park Field were almost full, but Kate found herself sitting in a small, solitary pocket. She had learned a great deal about human nature since Ben disappeared and was beginning to understand the loneliness her mother had talked about when her father died. Kate had still been in high school.

  “You lose more than just your husband when something like this happens,” Elsie confided during one of those evening moments when Kate knew it was important to just listen. Her mother’s voice had a slow, other-worldliness to it and Kate knew she was really talking to herself.

  “Somehow your whole status as a woman changes. Your value as a person. You realize that so many of your friends weren’t really your friends, but his…Or were friends as couples…and that the ‘couples’ thing seemed to have a lot to do with it. When there’s just one of you, you don’t fit in anymore.”

  Elsie had started to take a sip of her coffee and stopped with the cup poised in mid-air, halfway to her lips, then lowered it again, her eyes distant.

  “The worst thing’s that people won’t talk to you about it. The most important thing that’s happened in your life in years... maybe ever... and nobody’ll talk about it.” She put the cup back down and gazed absently out the window.

  “It’s like I’ve come down with some strange kind of skin rash. I see people look at me and know they’re thinking ‘what a terrible thing! She looks so uncomfortable and so…so contagious.’ They just stay away.”

  Her mother had eventually found a group of other young widows with whom to associate until one by one they established new relationships and restored their legitimacy. Though she had been given ample opportunity to do otherwise, Elsie had chosen to stay single and sought satisfaction in going back to school, traveling with tour groups, and in becoming more intimately involved in the lives of Kate’s older brother and sister. Neither was thrilled by the extra attention from their mother, and for some reason she had left Kate alone. Probably because Mrs. Fitzgerald had never really felt comfortable with Ben.

  “Kate, he’s so impulsive. Every time you come by he has some new scheme up his sleeve. What is it this time? Little computers that speak in different languages when you talk into them?”

  “His schemes work out though, don’t they mother,” Kate reminded her with satisfaction. “We’ve missed on a few, but you have to admit the business has been a success. It beats begin a dock worker.”

  “Kate, don’t speak ill of your father, bless his soul. And it troubles me to see you two together, with him being so... small. Your father could be so massive sometimes.”

  “Mother, we’ve been over this before. I’m very happy with my choice.”

  Kate had always found Ben to be wonderfully satisfying, and as she sat in her ring of solitude on the bleachers at Edison Park, she missed him terribly. She missed him sitting beside her, talking about the game. She missed the momentary lapses when he would slap the bench, jump to his feet and shout “Oh, come on now, ump!” She missed him coming into the room when the children were asleep and she was sitting in bed reading, lifting the book from her hands and grinning at her in his dark, suggestive way. She missed his solid, sinewy body and how overpowering he could be when he made love to her.

  On the field the Dragons, sponsored by the Canton House of Fine Cuisine, had their lead-off man at first on a throwing error by the Rebel’s pitcher.

  “Let’s double them up,” the coach called from the dugout and the woman on the edge of Kate’s circle to her right laughed through a haze of her own smoke and jabbed the blue-haired lady beside her.

  “Double play. Did you hear that, Janie? If those little kids can get a double play, I’ll give ‘um the game and take my Aaron and go home.”

  The Dragons’ number two batter, a boy PJ’s size whose batting helmet engulfed his head like a mixing bowl cradling a grapefruit, stepped up to the plate, kicked a foothold into the red earth, and measured his stance with the bat.

  “Rip it, Aaron!” the woman shouted. “Let’s see if they can get the big double play!”

  The first pitch was high and away and the stocky Rebel catcher flung himself at it, stabbing it with his circle of glove and rearing to fire to second. The boy at first retreated, suspecting that the catcher would have trouble throwing him out, but not wanting to violate his role as a heads-up base runner. The next pitch found the strike zone and Aaron rapped it sharply to the right side of the infield. It was Baltimore Oriol
es time for the Rebels. Nathan Brisco, the second baseman, took two quick steps to his right, gloved the ball neatly, and flipped it underhand toward the bag at second. PJ timed the toss perfectly and caught it as his right foot dragged across the base, leaping and twisting to avoid the slide, even though the runner was only halfway down the base path. His throw beat the runner to first by two steps, bringing Kate and the Rebel fans to their feet in wild applause.

  “Atta boy, Peter,” she yelled, shaking a triumphant fist. She used his given name only when extremely upset or very pleased. “Great feed, Nathan! That’s the way to turn the double.”

  “Aa-ron!” the woman to her right shrieked in two long smoky syllables. “You’ve got to get moving once you hit the ball! You should have beat that throw by a mile.”

  “The little kid’s busting his buns and she blames him,” Kate muttered as she began to sit down, straightening again as she realized someone had intruded upon her private circle. She turned to find Christopher Falen seated directly to her left.

  “Nice play,” he said.

  “Well, this is an unexpected surprise! What are you doing here?” She made no attempt to veil the irritation in her voice.

  “I stopped by your home and your neighbor said I’d find you here.”

  Kate felt her insides sink and sat quickly to arrest the feeling. “You must have something pretty important to come in person.”

  “I have something. But it isn’t definite. I stopped mainly because I was on my way back from Philadelphia and thought it would save trying to catch you with a call.”

  “This isn’t exactly the most direct route back from Philly – and I’m usually pretty available by phone,” she said.

  “Not far out of the way. And I wanted to see you.”

  Kate looked at him coolly, trying to pierce that pleasant, impenetrable face.

  “What I mean is,” he said calmly, “this isn’t exactly telephone information. I wanted to tell you in person.”

  “Let’s move somewhere else,” she said, realizing as he stood that he was dressed too casually for comfort. If he’d had on a business suit, the friends who now preferred to scrutinize her at a careful distance might assume he was exactly what he was; a person on official business. In deck shoes, wheat-colored slacks and a navy pullover shirt, he looked too much like a friend. An attractive friend at that.

  “You’re dressed casually for an official visit,” she said as they walked down the waist high, chain link fence that separated them from left field.

  “Travel day. When I’m spending a lot of time in the car, I dress down.”

  “You have some new information?”

  Mr. Falen leaned with one hand on the fence top, looking easily about him as if to insure that no one else was within earshot. “We picked up the man who used your husband’s passport. He was still in Paris. He’s an Argentine who’s wanted in half the western hemisphere for smuggling drugs. Cocaine mostly. From what we can tell, he got the passport ‘on order.’”

  “What does that mean,” Kate asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it before she believed.

  “I’m afraid it means that an order was placed for a passport with a description similar to your husband’s. The people who meet the orders watch international airports for travelers who fill the bill. Then steal the passports, or in the worst cases, grab the owners.”

  “Grab them…?”

  Mr. Falen paused. “These people are professionals. They don’t leave a trail. In the cases where we find victims, none has survived.”

  Kate’s heart shuddered and she leaned against the fence.

  “How did this man get the passport?” she asked.

  “He bought it from a dealer in Manchester. Apparently he had been hiding in England for some time and needed a new passport to move beyond Europe. He was headed back to South America when he was picked up by French police.”

  Kate’s jaw tightened and she blinked back tears, looking out onto the field where PJ crouched intently eyeing the third batter.

  “So you think Ben’s dead.” It was as much a statement as a question.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “But if this was an ordered buy and he hasn’t shown up for this long, it doesn’t look good.”

  She turned on him suddenly, feeling the frustration of the past ten weeks boil to the surface. “Why did you have to come tell me this here? Couldn’t you wait till I came back to the house and was away from all this?” She waved back at the curious bleachers.

  Mr. Falen looked down sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but the neighbor wasn’t sure how late you’d be. She said you left your daughter with your mother and sometimes stayed there late…. I just learned this when I was in Philadelphia and you’d asked that I let you know right away if things changed. As I said, I thought it best to tell you personally. I didn’t do a very good job of it.”

  She thought of apologizing and decided she didn’t need to.

  “Well, I guess that about takes care of it,” she said. “Thanks for stopping.”

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  She nodded.

  “If you want to talk, maybe we could go somewhere a little more private after the game and I could listen.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said and walked back toward her still empty, but carefully observed circle on the bleachers. Falen watched her walk away, then turned back to his car. There had been no Argentine in Paris, and Ben’s passport had not been recovered. But he wanted her to stay out of the way and quit asking questions. He also was finding this Kate Sager a fascinating challenge.

  SIXTEEN

  The Galen Broom seizure moved along even faster than Falen had expected and within ten days of Javad’s call to his contact in Salt Lake City, Falen had all the information he needed to confront the carpet merchant. Following instructions from Fisher, he drove west out of Washington on I-66 past Manassas to the Markham, Virginia exit and turned south. At Hume he took Highway 635 west toward Huntly to the mailbox Fisher had described; a plain black box mounted on the spoked iron wheel of an ancient hay rake. Taped to the wheel was a rectangular red and white sign that declared “NO TRESPASSING! THAT MEANS YOU!”

  A hundred yards down a dirt lane to the left, a nondescript frame farmhouse stood in a grove of ragged maples. The house was freshly painted, white with gray trim, but there were no signs of occupancy. No dogs or cats. No chickens scratching below the open hayloft of the barn that stood behind the house.

  Falen tried the front door and as Fisher had assured him, found it open. Inside, the entryway divided into a hall that ran straight into the back of the house on the left, and a stairway that climbed directly in front of him on the right. He took the stairs, turned right along a short hall at the top and pushed open the door of the last room. The Iranian sat on a low cot diagonally across to the left as Falen entered. His left wrist and right ankle were shackled to the wall, the cuffs linked by lengths of sturdy chain to steel rings, welded solidly onto a strip of boiler plate that stretched along the baseboard of the room. The rings were spaced to allow the prisoner to lie or sit on the cot without being able to reach wrist and ankle together. The room was warm and stuffy and the prisoner’s shirt was open, showing a braided gold chain about his neck that held a small circle of hammered bronze. In the corner along the window wall stood a table and television set. Otherwise, the room was empty.

  As Falen entered the bedroom, Javad looked up vacantly, showed mild surprise at seeing a new face, and straightened defiantly on the cot.

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell’s going on here,” he demanded. His clothes bore the wrinkles of days of continuous wear and his dark face bristled with ragged whiskers.

  “I suspect you already know,” Falen said, leaning against the wall by the door and folding his arms.

  “I don’t know anything,” the Iranian snapped back. “Those other guys haven’t said a word to me since I got here.”

  “What do you want to know?”


  “What I’m doing here. Why am I being held?”

  “It’s sort of a trade. You take someone. We take someone.”

  Javad looked at Falen with steady, sullen eyes. “I don’t like riddles. Tell me what you want of me.”

  “I think you understand very well,” Falen said, standing erect again and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. “I’m talking about Galen Broom, Arthur Ramirez, Benjamin Sager and the others you kidnapped.”

  The Iranian showed a flicker of surprise, but quickly masked it with an irritated scowl.

  “You’re crazy. You’re also in very big trouble. I’m an American citizen and have rights that protect me against this kind of thing.”

  “Of course you do,” Falen said. “You have the right to talk to me, or the right not to. If you choose to talk, I’ll listen. If you decide not to, you’ll find I don’t give a tinker’s damn about your rights. In fact, we’re in a situation here where rights don’t even enter into the picture. You cooperate, or you’re gone. It’s that simple.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” Javad hissed. “I am a very influential businessman in Philadelphia and I’ll have my lawyers on you in a minute.”

  “I know exactly who you are,” Falen said. “Unfortunately, no one else knows where you are. You’ve just disappeared, and unless you cooperate with me, you’ll disappear permanently.”

  The man turned and spit defiantly onto the floor beside the cot. “You don’t frighten me. You wouldn’t dare do anything to me.”

  Falen smiled calmly. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Esfarjahni. That is your real name, isn’t it? Esfarjahni?”