The Libra Affair

by Daco

  Jordan walked to the edge of the bed and sat down. “You could have killed me.”

  “You were warned to get out.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Think of it like this: if you had,” Sonya raised a single brow, “then you’re unqualified for the job.”

  “Tell me why I like you?”

  “I have something for you.” Sonya tossed her a new passport. “Meet your new alias: Jarrat Ahed.”

  “You have a heck of a way of making a delivery,” Jordan replied, grateful Snake went the extra mile to activate Sonya so that she could create this diversion. Leaving a room full of dead bodies bailed Jordan out because now the dead woman could be tagged as Ava Ankasa.

  “And one more thing,” Sonya started.

  “I know,” Jordan said, after checking out the passport, “lose the brown eyes.”

  Sonya continued. “Let’s talk about some chump from your Agency who has been poking around in holes.”

  “Yeah, Knox.”

  “He certainly has stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

  “I’d like to — ” Jordan stopped before saying she’d like to smack the idiot into another universe and time.

  Reading her, Sonya replied, “I would be happy to — ”

  “No, no,” Jordan interrupted her. “I can’t, not that way.”

  Hoping to change the subject, Jordan asked, “So now that you’ve delivered my new alias, are you going to tell me why you’re still here? Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I haven’t exactly dressed for the occasion.” Jordan brushed back her hair and wiped the blood from her face and neck onto the collar of the robe.

  “Yes, I was going to ask you the same thing. My part in Libra was only supposed to be a pair of eyes. Next thing I know, some friend of yours, Knox, to be specific, decides he wants me to do some work for him.” Sonya made a snide laugh to reveal her disgust.

  “He’s an idiot with a high school mentality. He thinks I left the Agency and can’t figure out why. He’s digging for anything he can get on me, even if it risks exposure of an asset.” Jordan wiped her hands on the robe, extracting remnants of blood left between her fingers.

  “What did you do to that man?” Sonya stared at her, waiting for her to explain.

  “What makes you think I had to do anything?” Jordan answered her. Because what was the point in explaining? She’d humiliated Knox more times than she could remember by beating him out of a job or special op. And why go into the details of a night that should never have happened — courtesy of Rohypnol, a date rape drug.

  Sonya let it slide. “You’re lucky Knox is stupid and you’re lucky Snake has eyes in the back of his head. Otherwise, this whole op would have been blown out of the water.” Sonya swirled the gun around her index finger. “But to tell you the truth, I still feel like I’m on a rollercoaster.”

  “Oh?”

  “Right after someone pulls the plug on Knox, and I’m talking about someone at the highest level, Knox decides he isn’t done, so he turns around and calls me back … thinking he is being ever so sly.”

  “Go on,” Jordan said.

  “He tells me he will owe me a favor if I can figure out what you’re doing here in Iran.”

  Jordan hacked with repugnance.

  “So,” Sonya continued, “I decided why not play with him a little, see if he can hang himself.”

  “Don’t you have better things to do than to waste your time watching some jackass chase windmills?”

  “Oh, it gets better; you see, then he tries throwing me an incentive, not knowing we’re way ahead of him.”

  Jordan knew exactly what incentive Sonya was referring to — Ben.

  “Seems you brought a friend to keep you company on the ride over, only it doesn’t look like he made out too well when you landed.” She paused for effect, then said, “It doesn’t make sense for you to bring a friend, Jordan, not when you’re trying to stay buried.”

  “What else did Knox say?”

  “He said you are in love with this man.”

  “Knox is an idiot.” She also knew that Knox had dug deeper than she wanted. He was still sexually obsessed with her — if he couldn’t have her, then no one would. Somehow, he’d found out about Ben, but not what she was doing with him or why she was in Iran.

  Sonya got serious. “There are two choices here, Jordan, and you know them both. But let me spell them out for you so we don’t have any misunderstanding.”

  Jordan let her go on; she knew there was no stopping the woman.

  “Either your boyfriend gets labeled a Russian terrorist, which puts me in a distasteful situation, or he’s labeled an American terrorist fronting as a Russian. Neither option appeals to me as both angles point fingers at us. If I stick my neck out, I risk exposure as a Russian working with the Americans.”

  Jordan stared at her without speaking. Sonya had it right.

  “We both know what happens in the end if we sit back and do nothing. Your boyfriend gets convicted as a spy — Russian, American, who cares — then executed, and that means — need I say — everyone loses.” In a stronger voice, she let Jordan have it. “You should have taken him out when you had the chance. And don’t tell me you thought the Americans could get him out.”

  Sonya was right — she’d let it go too far, but it wasn’t entirely her fault. “He boarded the plane at the last possible minute. There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t let him come into the country as an American, especially not as a scientist. I did what I thought I had to.”

  “You’re putting up a big front, Jordan. You think I can’t read the truth in your eyes. You did nothing to control the damage. If you had, it’d be your boy in the body bag.” She stopped to reposition herself, then continued. “Do you know what uproar this has caused?”

  “I did what I thought was best.”

  “You thought he’d be safe, you thought he’d slip through customs with a Russian passport, but you also knew, if it didn’t work, I’d be caught in the middle. You thought the paperwork would get straightened out and he’d be sent home via Russia.” Sonya’s voice intensified.

  “He should have gotten through.”

  “That was never going to happen,” Sonya said sharply.

  “Why not?” Jordan took a stronger stance.

  “Don’t play me. The man doesn’t speak a word of Russian.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes. Stalemate.

  Sonya broke the ice. “The prison officials are already working him over. They think he’s American, even though one minute he says he’s Russian, then the next he says he’s American. They think he’s here to spy, they just don’t know for which country or for what reason. Then there’s the dead body.”

  Jordan didn’t speak. What could she say?

  “So why is he here?” Sonya asked pointblank.

  “I told you.”

  “Come on, Jordan.”

  Jordan stood and looked up at the ceiling. “He’s a crazy fool,” she finally admitted.

  “Him?” Sonya shot back.

  “I’m telling you he followed me. I couldn’t let him come in as an American. If he was Russian, he could get in and out of the country without suspicion. But he blew it before he got out of the gate. Look, all I had was an old Russian passport. I used what I had with me. There’s nothing more to it.”

  “How is it that an American managed to get into Iran in the first place?”

  “Someone on the inside helped him in.” Jordan plopped down on the bedside again and rubbed her face. She was suddenly tired. This was the last conversation she wanted to be having. “And then Knox waltzes into the party.” Jordan dropped her hands to her legs and looked up at Sonya. “Do me a favor; if you ever see that idiot, just put him out of his misery.”
/>   Sonya smiled. “Be happy to.” Then, on a more serious note, she said, “We’ve got a problem.”

  Jordan knew by the tone of her voice what was coming next. Ben had to be dealt with one way or the other, especially since Sonya was there barking down her throat. “I tried to stop him.”

  But Sonya wasn’t buying her story. “You’re in love with him … that’s why you’re protecting him,” she said.

  “No,” Jordan protested.

  “If he meant nothing to you, you would be begging me to take him out of his misery.”

  Jordan was dumbstruck. Suggesting that Ben should be put out of his misery meant the one thing she feared most for him.

  “I’m right,” Sonya said. “You’re in love with him, admit it.”

  Jordan closed her eyes. The tension in her body was tight. “He doesn’t even know who I am,” was what she admitted.

  Sonya didn’t respond to the comment.

  Jordan knew she was waiting for her to say the word, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t ask Sonya to take Ben out. So instead she asked, “Have they resorted to techniques?” meaning have the prison officials begun torturing him yet. Why did she bother? She knew based upon what Sonya just said about putting Ben out of his misery, and her own knowledge of the Ministry of Intelligence and how they still used the tactics of the Shah’s brutal secret police force, that this was exactly what was happening.

  “They won’t let me see him just yet, which means whatever they’re doing, it’s not — ”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Jordan said suddenly to stop Sonya from spelling it out. She felt her throat constrict.

  “You’d better find the time,” Sonya spoke harshly, “or we’re going to have a real crisis on our hands.”

  Jordan relaxed her shoulders in resignation. “Okay,” she exhaled, “what’s the plan?”

  Chapter 9

  “I’ve got a call into the Ministry,” Sonya said. “I’m waiting on a return.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Depends on what I have to offer them.”

  Jordan didn’t ask. She knew for the Russians to get Ben back, it’d take money and then some, maybe even a lucrative weapons exchange to seal the deal.

  Sonya continued. “I’m trying to keep the ambassador out of the picture, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s in on the action.”

  “That means we have to act quickly.”

  “The authorities won’t let me inside the prison.” Sonya didn’t have to explain. Foreigners, even friendly ones, just weren’t allowed in some places; and especially not Evin Prison.

  “So what’s the plan?” Jordan pressed on.

  “If they let me see him, they’ll arrange for us to meet offsite at a neutral location.”

  “Do you know where?” Jordan shifted her position.

  “A city jail downtown.”

  “That could work for us.”

  “You know your boy’s beat up. And you know they’ll claim to know nothing about it, saying he was fine when they delivered him downtown.”

  Just hearing Sonya say the words made Jordan’s stomach turn; it wasn’t like her to become emotional on the job. There was too much on the line to be anything other than rational and objective. Love never turned out to be anything other than a liability.

  “Where is he?” Jordan asked her.

  “They say he’s isolated, but you could guess that.”

  Jordan cringed. Isolation meant a hole, a cage, or something unimaginable. “You know what, never mind,” she said, because no matter what Ben was going through now, there wasn’t anything she could do about it other than stress. “Let’s get back to the plan.”

  Sonya continued. “You come in during the transport and make the intercept.”

  “Which way will they go?”

  “When they transport, they always exit from the main gate at Evin Court and head east to a street called Shahid Suri. I take it you can read Arabic?”

  Jordan nodded.

  Sonya continued. “They’ll head south on Shahid Suri until they pick up Chamran highway. It’ll be close to the International Fair grounds.”

  “Right.”

  “The best point of play is after they turn on Shahid Suri, but not until after they’ve passed underneath the elevated highway and are buried inside the residential neighborhood.”

  “Got it.”

  “He’ll be in the back of an unmarked van, no windows. I’ll be in the embassy vehicle playing motorcade with my driver. Once you have him, I suggest you hop on Chamran and head east to Hemmat Highway, then Lashgarak to I-425, and get out of town.” Sonya stared at her. “Can you do that?”

  “Sounds straightforward,” Jordan said.

  “Make it clean, Jordan, and try not to kill anyone. It will only make matters worse. Do we have an understanding?”

  “Not a problem.”

  “And another thing — this conversation never took place.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “No matter what happens, and I mean it, I do not know you. I don’t care if I hear you screaming from inside the walls of Evin all the way to the Russian Embassy.”

  Jordan nodded.

  “Get your boyfriend out of here and don’t ever let anyone know his real identity. Ever. Or that he was even here.” Sonya tossed Jordan another passport with Ben’s photo inside it and his new name, Reza Ahed. “If anything goes wrong on this one, Jordan, I’ll personally see that Knox eats you for lunch.”

  “I’m cool,” Jordan said, shifting her position to a more relaxed one. She knew Snake was behind all of this. Sonya would never put herself out like this. Jordan also knew Snake was trying to get Ben out of the country fast — before he said too much about himself and his experiment on board the Falcon 9. There were other ways to minimize a political crisis — like eliminating the liability — they all knew that, but they all also knew that getting inside Evin Prison to do the job would take more time than they had. A hijacking made better sense. Jordan met Sonya’s intense look, adding confidently, “I can handle this.”

  “If you don’t … ” Sonya paused to drive home her point. “I will personally make it my priority in life to make sure you get exactly what you deserve.”

  The longer Sonya spoke, the more Jordan sensed there was something beyond Sonya’s personal relationship with Snake. “You don’t have to do this,” Jordan said.

  “No, I don’t. I’ll contact you as soon as I have the time of departure. What’s the best number to reach you at?”

  Instead of a phone call, they agreed to leave a message on some miscellaneous blog site on the Internet. No one would ever be the wiser. “You’re going out on a limb. And it’s not for me, or Ben Johnson.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do.” Sonya rose from the chair.

  Where had Jordan heard those words? From her own mouth, was where. They both knew that, and they both knew Sonya was replaying a version of Jordan’s own words as a warning to get focused and get the job done.

  After Sonya left, Jordan changed hotels to the one across the street. The view wasn’t the same, but safety was more important. Once settled in her new digs, she called Farrokh. She was about to make a deal with him that would turn him from a liability to an asset.

  When he answered, she said straight out, “We’ve got a situation.”

  • • •

  It drew late into Wednesday night before Sonya left word on the blog site. The start time for the intercept was 6:45 that next morning. The timing was perfect; Sonya had managed to arrange for the meeting with Ben and the authorities to be held before the launch took place. That’d give her enough time to get Ben out of the country and get back to work without so much as a wrinkle.

  Crawling into bed, Jordan
lay with her eyes open. Every tick, click, or bump in the night had her on edge. This time there’d be no second chances.

  Then it hit her.

  If anything went wrong with her trip to the silo and a finger pointed back at the U.S., Snake planned to use Ben as their scapegoat. This way, head of NASA David Dunn came out of the deal with clean hands. The U.S. government would simply report that a mad scientist went rogue. That’s why Sonya was bailing Ben out of prison — because Ben had to be on the run at crucial moments in order to be blamed, not locked behind bars.

  How could she have missed this?

  Snake was one step ahead of her was how. And while he was protecting her for the time being, she also knew he would avail himself of every potential opportunity. He’d set her up to take the fall if he had to, which meant she could make no more mistakes.

  • • •

  Jordan kick-started the motorcycle she had stolen last night and headed toward Shahid Suri Street to lay wait, but not without first driving past Evin Court and the surrounding area to take notes.

  The Russian Embassy car arrived at 6:42 A.M. Next, the van appeared.

  Jordan radioed Farrokh. “The van just pulled up. We’re a go,” she told him.

  Farrokh said, “I’m in position. I’ll radio Isbel.” Then he radioed his thirteen-year-old daughter, Isbel, riding a bicycle. She was part of the plan.

  Once Isbel was in place, Farrokh would drive his vehicle straight toward the motorcade. He’d oiled the pavement early that morning so if all went well, the van would skid as soon as the driver applied the brakes. He could have had Isbel driving another vehicle toward the motorcade, since he’d taught her to drive, but putting her on a bicycle as a pedestrian, crossing in front of the motorcade, would ensure the motorcade would stop if the oil didn’t work, especially when Isbel staged a fall. This would give Jordan time to make her play.

  Jordan waited out of sight and watched.

  Farrokh radioed Jordan. “What’s going on? What’s taking so long?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “The main gate is still closed. A man is getting out of the van. He’s at the gate.”