by Greg Rucka
"We are designating her package as Cougar, do you understand?"
"Cougar, yes, sir."
"Do the locals know that Cougar has gone walkabout?"
"Think so, yes, sir."
"Explain."
"Station Number One has been making inquiries, sir, he's out of the office at the moment, still pursuing, but he called in twenty minutes ago to say that there's been a hell of a lot of Sepah activity around the MOIS. Mission Security is reporting active surveillance of the embassy, as well."
Crocker swore. He'd hoped for more of a lead, but if the embassy was being watched, then there was no question that VEVAK knew what was up. If the pursuit of Chace prior to her capture had been intense in the face of Hossein Khamenei's death, the effort to keep her leaving the country with the now-former Chief of Counterintelligence would be monstrous. In the first, it had been an issue of political value; this time, the value was far more concrete, a target with direct strategic and tactical knowledge that the Iranians could, under no account, allow to escape.
For a moment, Crocker wondered who would have to prepare the list of operations compromised by the defection of Youness Shirazi. He shut down the thought as grossly premature.
"Sir?"
"Just thinking, Caleb. There was nothing in your signal about her health."
"She said, and I quote, 'no exfil by air.' "
"And Cougar didn't have an exfil plan of his own?"
"My impression was that he had been relying on us to provide one, that he had believed the Caspian route was still viable."
"It isn't," Crocker said.
"No, sir, Minder One had already determined that. She didn't say which way they were headed. I think she was concerned the call might be intercepted."
"It probably was. All right, inform immediately if anything else develops. We'll be in touch."
"Yes, sir."
Crocker pulled the headset free, tossed it back to Lex, staring up at the board. Poole came in at his shoulder, mimicking his pose, both of them staring at Iran.
"So who's Cougar when he's at home?" Poole asked.
"Right now?" Crocker said. "He's the man who's saved Chace's life."
Gordon-Palmer, Rayburn, and Szurko were all in their regular seats in the sitting area of C's office, and each of them stared at Crocker as if he had dropped, naked, from the womb, in front of them.
Then Szurko began to laugh, a hearty, gleeful roar that had the merciful effect of pulling both C's and the DC's attention from Crocker to D-Int for the moment. "Oh, that's brilliant," Szurko managed. "That's just-that's bloody brilliant, that's what it is."
C glared at him for a second longer, then pulled her attention away, placing it on Crocker. "Clearly Daniel sees something I don't."
"It worked, though," Szurko said, trying to control himself. "The problem was she was too good, don't you see? If she'd been worse, if she'd been slower or stupider, if she hadn't realized Falcon was wrong, it'd have come off perfectly!"
"I still don't-"
Crocker opened his mouth, but Szurko beat him to it, leaning forward on the couch, holding out his hands, index fingers pointing at C as a visual aid. He wiggled the left one, said, "Falcon," then the right, "Shirazi," and then crossed their positions, saying, "Just say Shirazi everywhere you would say Falcon, makes perfect sense."
"We thought we were lifting Hossein Khamenei," Rayburn said. "When in reality we were lifting Youness Shirazi."
"That must have been his initial plan," Crocker said. "It went wrong in Noshahr, when the shooting started. My suspicion is that Shirazi had intended for Chace to be captured unharmed, at which point he would have freed her and taken Falcon's place in the RHIB for the rendezvous."
"But it went wrong," C insisted.
"Bullets," Szurko supplied, unhelpfully.
"Chace was shot, and she did what she was trained to do," Crocker said. "She ran, and she ran exceptionally well, well enough that Shirazi had to hit the embassy car. Even if he had only been considering defection before that point, as soon as Hossein died, he had to know it was all or nothing, that he wouldn't be able to stay."
"Did Chace actually kill Falcon?" C asked.
"I doubt it, but we've no way to be certain," Crocker told her. "I suspect it was accidental. It certainly would have been the last thing Shirazi would have wanted, because it would have drawn attention to the operation. Again, if everything had gone to plan, he'd have been on board a Coast Guard ship before his own people even began to suspect he'd left the country. He could've been at the Farm, being debriefed, before they'd been able to confirm it."
"Clever for another reason." Szurko was smiling, eyes closed, as if admiring the plan in his mind's eye the way a jeweler examined a particularly well-cut diamond. "Dangling Falcon guaranteed CIA support, it guaranteed that we would send our best possible agent to execute the lift, it guaranteed that we would give that agent the best possible cover and exfil possible, and that we would do everything within our power to support the operation should something go wrong. Which we did."
The room went silent again, broken only by another giggle from Szurko, who then opened his eyes, and seemed surprised to find he wasn't alone. C sank back in her chair, clearly sorting her thoughts, and Rayburn likewise was lost in his own, the tip of his tongue just visible between his lips.
"I have to ask this," C said, finally. "Is it possible this is just another dangle, a means of getting us to further expose ourselves in Iran?"
"No," Crocker said, firmly. "Tehran Station confirms that VEVAK has pulled out the stops, they've actually put surveillance on the embassy itself at this point. I'm certain the next report we get from Barnett or Lewis will tell us that the Republican Guards are out in force, and that there's a nationwide manhunt under way. Pursuing Chace was one thing-if she got away, they materially lost nothing, because all she was to them was a gain. But losing Shirazi, that would be devastating. They will do everything they can to prevent that. They'll mobilize every asset, they'll put up jets, they'll roll tanks if they need to. They absolutely cannot allow him to leave the country alive."
"And by that same logic, there's no going back for Shirazi? He won't turn around and betray Chace?"
"It would be suicide."
She nodded. "Then the real question is this: can we get them out of the country?"
Crocker tried very hard not to smile.
"With your permission, ma'am, I think I can manage it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IRAN-YAZD PROVINCE, 34 KM WSW OF TAFT
13 DECEMBER 2109 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
They had been driving ever since leaving Natanz, even when Chace had used one of the three cell phones Shirazi had taken from the dead men to call the embassy, to make contact with Caleb Lewis. She was wearing a new manteau, this one black, and a new scarf to hide her hair, also black, both provided by Shirazi.
They had taken the dead men's weapons and their ammunition, and all of the bottles of water in the refrigerator, four of them, and some of the food, mostly dried fruit, but some bread, and a wedge of very pleasantly sour cheese. Then, just before they stepped out of the house, Shirazi remembered the surveillance monitor, and stepped back inside long enough to put two bullets into the hard drive that had recorded the video of Chace in the cell.
Then they were in the car, Shirazi climbing behind the wheel of his own Mercedes-Benz, a new E-Class model this time, as far related from the embassy car Chace had been pulled from as was possible. It was only then, when they were pulling out, that he did anything that might've betrayed his own excitement and fear, accelerating so sharply that the wheels cried, spinning uselessly before catching pavement. Then they were speeding along the road.
"Not that I don't appreciate everything you've done," Chace said, "but where are we going?"
"North, again," he told her. "The Caspian."
"You've got a boat?"
"No, we'll use your route."
"My route's fucked in the ear, mate," Cha
ce said. "There is no route."
He'd slammed the brakes, bringing them to a halt as quickly as they had pulled out. "You had a fallback?"
"Tabriz, and it wasn't prepared," she said. "We're not getting out to the north."
"Your people must have another route." Shirazi looked at her, incredulous. "There must be another route!"
"My people have written me off. Because your people shot me, then arrested me."
Shirazi swore in Farsi, the car idling on the side of the road, and Chace realized he didn't know what to do.
"Turn around," she told him. "Take us south, just keep us moving south."
"There is nothing to the south," Shirazi said, but he put the car back in gear, spun them around. "Only the ocean is south."
"Can you swim?" she asked.
He glanced at her sharply, saw that she was smiling, and then burst out laughing.
"I was right about you," Shirazi told her. "You were the one I wanted all along." After the first call to Caleb, she'd turned off the phone and then rolled down the window, flinging it out of the car. It was useless now, compromised, and as all of the phones were the same model, identical in all respects, she didn't want to confuse herself and use it again by accident. She let the window remain open for a few minutes after that, breathing the cold air, feeling the steady throb of her chest with each inhale, each exhale, but there'd been no real difficulty in breathing, certainly nothing like what she'd experienced previously. Then she'd rolled the window back up, readjusted the scarf around her hair.
"How long until they know what you've done?" Chace asked him.
"They may know already," Shirazi said. "My deputy, Zahabzeh, he went back to Tehran early this morning, against my orders, and with your things. I am sure he told our Minister that you were in custody."
"Tall guy? Beard and mustache? Youngish?"
"Thirty, and yes, beard and mustache and tall."
"He questioned me."
Shirazi glanced at her, hearing something in the tone, then back to the road. "My apologies."
"Yes," Chace said. "He was rather insistent."
"You are all right?"
"I'm bloody aces right now, my friend. I've got a bullet lodged somewhere in my chest, an occlusion bandage covering a hole in my back, and a one-way valve sticking out above my left tit. What could be better?"
"I can think of three things, immediately."
Despite herself, Chace laughed, then wished she hadn't. Laughing made the pain in her chest worse.
"Zahabzeh," Shirazi said. "He is a hard-liner, you would say. Always suspicious, always… self-serving."
"You think he suspected what you were doing?"
"He knew something was not right. We had opportunities to take you before Noshahr, and I told him no, and that certainly made him suspicious. It was only Hossein's death that kept him beside me for so long, his fear that he would be held responsible for it. Now, of course, I have freed him from that, because he will blame me."
"He smart?"
"Smart enough."
"Does he know you well? Well enough to guess what you're thinking?"
"No. He doesn't know me at all."
Now it was his tone that caught, made Chace look at him again, more closely. "How long have you been planning this?"
"For years, Miss Chace."
"You can call me Tara."
"Then you must call me Youness."
"Years?"
"Ten years now, I should think. Once the reforms began rolling back. But it was only in my mind to do it, an idea, not a plan, then. After the Green Revolution, that was what made me realize it was time to act. The election, you know, was a complete fraud. I am still somewhat surprised that anyone thought it would be otherwise. We are a police state, Miss Chace, not an Islamic Republic. There is no rule of law, only a rule of power."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Ah, well, I am not sure I am explaining myself very well." His shoulders lifted, dropped again in an exaggerated shrug. "It is the difference between the reality and the promise. The promise brought people into the streets, particularly our women, you see, because they believed what they had been told. But the reality brought the Basij into the streets, with their sticks and their batons, with the Republican Guards holding their leash, and the two could not coexist. They cannot coexist. Until the promise is realized, I cannot, before God, serve the reality."
Chace nodded, not speaking. They were racing along the road, and if it had been any other country, she would have suggested Shirazi slow down, to try and not draw attention to the vehicle. But it was his country, and he knew it, and if nothing else, she couldn't argue with wanting to put as much distance between themselves and Natanz as possible. The landscape was radically different from what she had seen in the north, along the Alborz, much more like the deserts of the American Southwest, bare and hard, bathed in gold by the setting sun.
"Do you believe in God?" Shirazi asked her.
Chace thought of Tamsin. Then she thought of Tom Wallace, and the way he had died in Saudi Arabia.
"I want to," she answered. Chace called the embassy again just past five-thirty in the evening, thinking that enough time had surely passed by now for Caleb to have relayed her initial message to London, and for London to have responded, to have prepared an exfil plan for her and Shirazi. She debated with herself before making the call, however, worried about the exposure, afraid that she was being too hasty. If Shirazi was correct, the search for them was certainly on by now, and there was a good chance that any conversation would be overheard. Having to call a third time would only create greater risk.
She dialed the number from memory, asking again for Caleb Lewis, and the call went through much more quickly than it had the first time, which she took as a good sign. That Lewis answered before the phone had finished its first ring she took as even better.
"It's me," Chace said.
"Your father called," Caleb Lewis said. "He has the following message for you: delighted you have acquired rare cougar. Stand by to record the following."
Chace swore silently, with her free hand began searching around her in the car, yanking open the glove box, then the compartment in the armrest beside her. Shirazi shot a worried glance her way, and she saw that he had a pen clipped to his breast pocket, reached out and plucked it free, clicking its end. She bared her arm, wedging the phone.
"Proceed."
"First sequence, F-T-R-E-A-F-L-T. Second sequence, E-Y-E-I-E-Y-R-A. Third sequence, R-R-E-L tomorrow. Confirm."
"Confirmed."
"Dad says you know it like you know yourself."
She grinned. "Understood."
The line went dead, and Chace switched off the phone, lowered the window, and winged the mobile out of the car. She closed the window again, examined her arm, began decoding the message with the pen, still writing on her skin. It was dark enough in the car now that halfway through the process she was forced to turn on the interior light, but once she did, the work was completed quickly enough.
Chace stared at what she'd written on her arm, then clicked the light off again, offering the pen back to Shirazi, who shook his head, vaguely amused by the gesture.
"They have a plan?"
"Yes," Chace said. "Exfil location and a time. Do we have GPS?"
"I had hoped to use yours, but Zahabzeh took it."
"The car doesn't have one, the sat nav?"
"See for yourself."
Chace leaned forward, grimacing as she did so, fiddling with the control dial for the display on the center of the dashboard. She brought up the map screen, and instead of seeing a display of Iran, instead found a message in Farsi.
"Translation?"
" 'That feature has been disabled in this vehicle,' " Shirazi told her. "But we're near Yazd, and I was thinking it was time we switched vehicles there. We should be able to find an Internet cafe, or, at the least, a store with a map. The coordinates, what are they?"
"To the west of here, ne
ar the border with Iraq, I think." Chace read the numbers off her arm in the weak light. "Know where that is?"
"Not precisely. You are correct, though, it would be near the border. They'll take us overland?"
"Possibly."
"That does not give me comfort. The border is well guarded since the war, will be even more so with Zahabzeh looking for us."
"I can call them back if you like," Chace said. "Tell them it's not going to work for us."
Shirazi's laugh, this time, was more forced. "No, no. That would be even less wise." They dumped the car outside of Yazd fifty-six minutes later, Chace standing watch while Shirazi removed the plates, locking them away in the trunk. He had a satchel, a shoulder bag, and he put the water and food and two of the pistols inside of it, he and Chace each carrying another, concealed. When she saw the bag, Chace had a good idea what it carried, and a glimpse inside while Shirazi was loading it confirmed it; it was his go-bag, stacks of rials and American dollars, some clothes, and several reams of paper. A rainbow flash of light caught her eye, the refraction from a CD.
"What's on the disk?" she asked.
"Disks," Shirazi said, zipping the satchel closed and slinging it over his shoulder. "And every personnel file I could lay my hands on. This way. Keep your eyes down, try to conceal your face, and do not speak. I will do the talking."
Chace lowered her eyes as much as she dared, Shirazi taking her by the elbow, and together they walked along the streets of Yazd, bustling with dinner-hour traffic. The further south in Iran one went, the more conservative the country became, and here, wherever she looked, Chace saw women wearing the chador, hiding everything but their eyes, and even with her manteau and maqna'e, she felt underdressed and exposed. Shirazi set a brisk pace and, shuffling to keep up, despite her long legs, Chace felt a burn in her chest, joining the ever-present background ache.
There were soldiers at the corner ahead of them, nearly a dozen that she could see, milling around a vehicle, and Shirazi turned them left, heading east along a narrow street, past ancient mud-brick buildings. The lane twisted, wandering, and she was having trouble catching her breath now, was about to tell Shirazi they had to stop, to slow down at the least, when they emerged suddenly into a newer part of the desert city, hearing music, bright lights shining from windows opposite them. Shirazi halted.
