Warning Light

by David Ricciardi

  The room became uncomfortably still. The grand ayatollah was known to occasionally lash out at his ministers and military chiefs, but few had ever seen him so angry. He sat in his chair and waited, as if daring his subordinates to speak.

  “Leader, if I may,” offered Major General Behzadi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. “We have taken control of the situation and detained a foreign national.”

  “Go on.”

  “The plane claimed to be having engine trouble and refused orders to land elsewhere. We ran the passengers through the Guardian system for anything suspicious and are now examining the aircraft.”

  “What is the status of the Sirjan facility?”

  “There is some superficial damage due to the earthquake, but it is at least 85 percent operational.”

  “There have been no alerts?”

  “There were, but they were investigated and attributed to aftershocks. There have been no alarms since the British plane landed.”

  “What of the man you have in custody?”

  “He’s an American, traveling alone. He was undertaking surveillance of the base.”

  “He admits this?”

  “He claims he was taking pictures of the sunset, but it is a lie of course. We have asked the pilots and crew to stay behind, ostensibly to look after their aircraft, but we are interviewing them carefully. We sent the rest of the passengers on their way early this morning to avoid arousing suspicion. You see, no one is aware that we have the American in custody.”

  The supreme leader addressed the minister of Foreign Affairs. “Have we heard anything from the British or the Americans about this?”

  “Only a thank-you and offer of payment from the British Foreign Office for accommodating the plane and passengers. Nothing direct or back channel from the United States.”

  “Excellent work, General Behzadi,” the leader continued. “I am glad to see that someone is paying attention. Please update me personally on your investigation. Leave nothing to chance. We must know what this enemy agent has discovered and what he has done with the information.”

  “Yes, Leader. I have my top counterintelligence man on it, a Colonel Arzaman. He is a decorated veteran of the Holy Defense War.”

  “Arzaman . . . I know of this man. He is both relentless and ruthless. He has my blessing to do whatever he must to protect the republic. And, General, if you confirm that this American has put our security at risk, or attempted to put our security at risk, I want him to feel the pain of a hundred thousand deaths, and may Allah have mercy on his soul.”

  NINE

  THE BIG BOEING jet touched down gracefully at Changi International Airport in Singapore and another batch of world travelers was returned to the twenty-first century. Before the jet had even turned off the runway its passengers had switched on their mobile phones to call hotels, reschedule meetings, and book new connecting flights.

  Inside the airport, the Iranian agent posing as Zac Miller approached Singapore Immigration and Checkpoints and handed his passport to the officer behind the desk.

  “Welcome to Singapore, sir.” The officer scanned the passport and typed on his computer. He glanced at the traveler. “You listed your departure point as the U.K. but the computer shows you coming from Iran.”

  The Iranian forced a smile. “Yes, we made an unplanned stopover. I wasn’t sure what to write down.”

  “Right, you’re with that British Airways flight. I should have recognized the flight number. I’ve had a few of you through here already.” The agent typed into his computer again, asked a few questions about the nature and length of the visit, and handed the passport back.

  “Enjoy your stay.”

  “I am sure I will.”

  A gray-haired woman in an expensive suit tugged at the Iranian’s elbow. He turned around quickly and his eyes bored into hers.

  The woman recoiled slightly. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said with a posh English accent. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Not a problem,” said the Iranian. “It happens all the time.”

  He excused himself and walked toward the baggage claim hall, wondering if the encounter with the old woman was something he should be concerned about.

  He quickly retrieved his luggage and caught a taxi. On the ride to his hotel the agent dismissed the Englishwoman as a threat. He hadn’t seen her at the baggage carousel and her old eyes probably weren’t that sharp. Besides, he had more important things to think about. It was almost nine o’clock in the evening and his workday was just beginning.

  Imprints of Zac’s hands had been taken while he was unconscious and a special set of latex gloves had been formed just hours before the flight left Iran. Wearing the nearly transparent gloves, the imposter unpacked Zac’s suitcase and touched the phone, toilet, faucets, and several other items in the hotel room, leaving a trail of false fingerprints. He left Zac’s passport atop the dresser and by nine thirty he was downstairs in the lobby speaking with the female concierge. She politely deflected the agent’s pointed questions about Geylang, an unsavory area known for entertainment that occurred on the fringe of the law or well outside it. Five minutes later he was in a taxi and on his way.

  Over the course of the next two hours, the agent used Zac’s credit cards to buy drinks at several seedy bars. Though he discreetly poured most of the cocktails onto the floor, by midnight he was acting quite drunk and making a spectacle of himself, salaciously asking every bartender and many of the patrons where he could find a good young girl. Though prostitution was legal in Singapore, criminal gangs were active in the sex trade and ran many of the brothels. He would avoid those places. Where there were money and criminals, there would be guns. He didn’t want armed men around for the job he was to perform tonight. He needed a soft target.

  The streets were surprisingly busy for the late hour. Taxis dotted the road, dropping off and picking up all manner of men and women. The hot and humid night air was filled with spicy aromas emanating from the neighborhood’s numerous open-air restaurants. The agent cruised the area on foot and soon realized that selecting his prey would not be difficult. There were many streetwalkers about. Heavily made-up and barely clothed, they chatted in small groups while marketing their wares. These independent contractors operated outside the law.

  As he surveyed the scene, he decided that such immodesty was unfair. It was designed to arouse him, after all, and he could not be responsible for his actions when confronted with such brazen sexuality. One girl in particular, waif-thin and barely clothed, caught his eye. He guessed she was at most fourteen years old. She would make a nice bonus for such a strange mission. Besides, Allah would not object, for the Prophet Muhammad himself, peace be unto him, had once taken an even younger bride.

  It took less than a minute to negotiate a price, and the girl led him to an unmarked doorway among the dilapidated buildings. The tiny room that passed for a lobby was dark and filthy, and a rough-looking man behind a broken table handed over a room key. The Iranian studied the girl’s body as he followed her up the stairs.

  He had admired her lean figure when they were outside, but now as he looked more closely he thought that her thin legs were perhaps too thin, maybe from drugs or even hunger. She wore heavy makeup, but some of it had been applied over deep bruises. A sliver of conscience began to wedge itself into his mind. As they climbed to a third-floor room, he remembered that Muhammad had indeed married Aisha when she was very young, but that had been nearly fourteen hundred years ago when an old man lived to be twenty-five or thirty years old. In his heart, the agent knew that Allah would not forgive him for everything he did in His name. The Iranian would complete his mission tonight, but the poor girl would not have to submit again before she left the world.

  Ten minutes later, he climbed down the fire escape and stripped off the bloody gloves that had left Zac’s fingerprints in the room and on t
he knife. He placed an anonymous phone call to the police to complete his distasteful mission.

  By sunrise the agent was flying to Hong Kong on a forged Omani passport. Fatigued, but unable to sleep, he had several stiff drinks, wishing he could close his eyes and clear his conscience of what he’d done. He was not a killer. He was a cryptographic analyst who’d been drafted into this hellish assignment only because he spoke English and looked like the American, Zachary Miller. After two more drinks the agent finally drifted off to sleep, unaware that he was about to experience the first of many nightmares that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  TEN

  HALF A WORLD away from Singapore, two deliverymen in matching jumpsuits exited their van and let themselves into a five-story apartment building in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. The pair struggled as they carried a large trunk up to the apartment of Zac’s college friend. After they let themselves in and locked the door behind them, the men donned gloves and opened the trunk, carefully removing a large rubber bag. They looked at each other and prayed silently for forgiveness for what they were about to do.

  The men carried the rubber bag into the master bedroom before removing the corpse of a young woman. Though she had been beaten and violated before being stabbed to death, the men moved the body delicately onto the unmade bed, careful to avoid marking or bruising it in any unintended way. She had been dead for many hours, yet the body was warm, almost feverishly so. It had been heated to accelerate decomposition and make the time of death appear to coincide with Zac’s stay at the apartment.

  The men removed sealed glass vials from their jumpsuits. The first contained bodily fluids from the victim. The second held blood taken from Zac’s arm while he was unconscious. It had been flown in just hours ago in a diplomatic pouch from Iran.

  Each man had been carefully instructed by a forensics expert on how to create a convincing crime scene. The blood and fluids were applied to sheets, clothing, and the victim’s body. A third vial containing skin cells scraped from Zac’s body were pressed under her fingernails and several of his hairs were scattered about the room.

  Satisfied with their work, the men returned the empty trunk to the van and rejoined their driver, who had been watching the building’s entrance. The trio rode in silence for several minutes through downtown Paris until the driver made a brief call on a prepaid cell phone. He spoke to his accomplices when he’d finished.

  “I just made an anonymous tip to our man in the police judiciaire. He assures me that by tomorrow the murder will be the lead news story in all of Europe, and we will have used our enemy’s hand to catch a snake.”

  ELEVEN

  ZAC STRUGGLED TO comprehend where he was. Only when he saw the bloodstains on the floor did he recall the beating he’d suffered at the hands of Arzaman’s goons. There was a guard on the other side of the room, but he walked out as soon as they made eye contact. Zac’s body ached as he rolled onto his back.

  Even though his career track at CIA was to be behind a desk, Zac had spent a month at the Agency’s clandestine operations training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia, when he’d first joined. The experience was designed to give analysts a better appreciation of the realities and limitations of human intelligence gathering. While there, Zac had learned some basic hand-to-hand fighting techniques and, much to his surprise and the surprise of his instructors, he had a natural talent for it. He’d studied Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when he’d finished at Peary, using his natural speed and athleticism to augment the time-tested techniques of the martial art.

  Zac saw an opportunity when the guard returned and began to untie the ropes from his wrists and legs. He knew that if he could reach the guard before the man could get his weapon out, Zac could take him down.

  But all thoughts of hand-to-hand combat vanished the moment he tried to stand. The beating had left him barely able to move his arms and legs, much less overpower the guard. The two men walked slowly to a bathroom, where Zac ran his head under the faucet. He rubbed his face and rinsed his hair as he tried to wash away the harsh new reality.

  Arzaman was waiting back in the room with two burly soldiers. They grabbed Zac by the arms and forced him into a chair.

  “When can I go?” he asked.

  “When will you tell us the truth?” Arzaman countered.

  “I told you everything I know.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  The circular questioning went on for several minutes until Zac could no longer contain his anger. He leapt from the chair and lunged at Arzaman. The two soldiers caught him and shoved him back down. This time they handcuffed him.

  “You think I’m a spy? My plane was going to Singapore. It nearly crashed. Then there’s some top secret facility right next to the airport? Don’t all those coincidences seem a little ridiculous?”

  “I do not believe in coincidences.”

  “This is some game that you’re playing, isn’t it? You’re setting me up. You don’t listen to anything I say and keep accusing me of photographing some secret place that I couldn’t even see. Why would you even put a secret facility next to an airport? Who would believe that?”

  Arzaman ignored him. “Do you know what I find odd?”

  Zac shook his head, knowing there was no right answer.

  “Do you know what a ‘flight data recorder’ is?”

  Zac considered ignoring him for a moment, but the question was easy.

  “That’s the black box, right? It records all the information on the plane in case it crashes.”

  “Correct. It records the instrument readings, the positions of all the controls, and even the voices of the pilots. It is a very robust piece of equipment, as you said, designed to withstand even the crash of an airplane.”

  Zac said nothing.

  Arzaman spoke again. “Since the emergency occurred on our soil, we requested to see the data from your flight. The recorder on your plane was completely blank. None of the data was retained. Absolutely nothing. Only the voice and radio communications were recorded. Do you know how rare that is?”

  “I have no idea. I was a passenger. How many flights have you been on when they’ve asked you to test the black box?”

  “But it’s curious, isn’t it? We asked the repair crew for a copy of the tape when they started working and they told us it was blank.”

  “So the repair crew is here? Please keep the phone, keep the laptop, just let me leave.”

  “I am afraid that is no longer possible. You see, the other passengers from your flight are already in Singapore. They left eighteen hours ago on another aircraft. In fact, your plane surprisingly required only minor repairs and departed about six hours ago.”

  “They wouldn’t have left without me. They checked everyone’s name when we got off. They’d be looking for me.”

  Arzaman leaned forward and spoke just above a whisper. “Ah, but they are not looking for you.” He smiled. “And even if they were, they would never find you, for you have vanished like a ghost; a sad, pathetic, lying little ghost.”

  Arzaman walked toward the door and paused as he crossed the threshold. He looked back over his left shoulder until the scarred side of his face was all that Zac could see.

  “Good-bye, ghost.”

  The colonel had barely left the room when the two soldiers wrenched Zac out of the chair and tied a burlap sack over his head. They led him into the hallway and one of the Iranians shoved Zac from behind, sending him to the floor. The soldiers laughed and yanked him to his feet. The muzzle of a rifle prodded him in the back as he walked.

  The trio turned into another room and the soldiers tied a rope to Zac’s handcuffs. Looping the rope through a pulley attached to the ceiling, they hoisted his arms high over his head, tugging on the rope until the metal cuffs dug into his wrists. Zac raised himself up onto the balls of his feet to ease the pain. One of the soldiers said something
in Persian, but Zac didn’t understand. The soldier repeated what he’d said. The other soldier stepped closer and began shouting.

  Zac protested that he didn’t understand, but the two soldiers only yelled louder. One of them punched Zac in the stomach. The other soldier struck Zac’s thigh with a heavy object and his legs gave out. He hung in the air, the steel handcuffs cutting into his wrists as they supported his entire weight. Blood trickled down his forearms and the butt of a rifle smashed into his kidney. Zac vomited inside the hood as the soldiers left the room.

  He dangled from the ceiling for several minutes with the wind knocked out of him, concentrating on each breath, forcing the foul air into his lungs. But he could ignore the pain in his wrists no longer. The handcuffs were going to tear his hands from his body. He cried out as he stretched the knotted and bruised muscles in his legs, but the relief to his wrists was palpable as his toes reached the ground.

  Eventually his calves could no longer support his weight and Zac forced most of his weight back onto the handcuffs. He stood there until the pain in his wrists again became unbearable. Every few minutes he would shift his position up or down by an inch or two, trading one agony for the other.

  The cycle of hell continued for what seemed like hours. When the soldiers finally returned, they released the rope and Zac collapsed in his own filth, trembling on the ground until he passed out.

  TWELVE

  THE TWO SOLDIERS had removed the hood from Zac’s head after he’d passed out, but several hours later he was still lying motionless on the floor. One of the men kicked him in the ribs and Zac mumbled something. The soldier kicked harder and Zac sat up, trying to make sense of what was happening. It came back to him as he looked around the room.