The Last Man in Tehran

by Mark Henshaw

  She was surprised to find that she had an Internet connection. No doubt it was monitored. She launched the Virtual Private Network (VPN) app on her iPad, a utility that set up an encrypted communications tunnel. She tapped out a message to Langley on the keyboard.

  Arrived. Our cousins promised to make introductions. Waiting for a call.

  The portable computer spent a few seconds scrambling the words using a mathematical algorithm that no Iranian supercomputer could crack in less than a few billion years, then tore the entire mass of unreadable numbers into digital packets and fired them off into the ether. That act might raise some suspicions, but she doubted that she was the first foreigner to communicate securely with home using that particular technology. Besides, there were probably cameras and audio bugs in the room anyway. They would watch her no matter what she did. Just let me have the bathroom to myself, she implored them silently. They wouldn’t, of course.

  She closed down the VPN, brought up an e-book, and sat back in the recliner to read.

  • • •

  The telephone rang three hours later. “Salâm,” she answered. She spoke no Farsi but had memorized a few of the more useful phrases during the flight across the Atlantic.

  “Salâm. This is the front desk,” came the answer, the latter bit in English. “There is a message here for you, delivered in the last few minutes. You may retrieve it at your convenience.”

  “Thank you,” Kyra answered. She cradled the phone. A message? It would not be from Langley or from Jon. No one from Langley would be so stupid as to try to communicate with her through such an obvious channel when she was in hostile territory. Grayling? That made a little more sense, as the British knew more about her plans than her own people at the moment. But she imagined that the SIS wouldn’t use a straight call to the hotel to reach her any more than Langley would.

  That left one obvious candidate. Amiri.

  Grayling had already talked to the asset somehow and the man was sending her directions for the meet? Maybe. It still felt wrong, her gut twisting, but she had no other leads to the man’s location. There was nothing for it but to take the message.

  She set the iPad down and went for the door. She checked the hall, both directions, before stepping out and locking the door behind her. The corridor was as empty as it had been hours before when she’d come up, the dark carpet soaking up the light from the ceiling. There was no one as far as she could see, all the way to the end of the hallway. She made her way back toward the elevator.

  A few feet from the small foyer, one of the room doors opened. Kyra shifted to the other side of the hall to put distance between herself and whoever was coming out . . . a man, young and bearded, a nationality she could not determine on sight. He turned his back to her to lock the door as she passed him—

  She heard the door on her side of the hall just behind her open. She started to turn, but a Taser touched the back of her neck and she gasped in pain as every muscle in her body locked up in an instant. She heard the crackle of the weapon as it jammed her nervous system with electricity, but she could not think, pain replacing every thought that tried to enter her mind. She toppled forward, saw the floor coming up to meet her face, then hands grabbed her from behind, catching her inches from the carpet. Something stabbed into her neck, small, a needle, and a cold chill flooded into her veins, rushing outward. It reached her heart and she felt it fill her chest. It surged upward, into her head, and then the whole world went as black as space itself. Even the stars went dark.

  • • •

  Adina Salem sipped her ginger ale and stared across the street. She would have preferred something considerably stronger, but the soft drink gave the appearance of an alcoholic beverage without interfering with her ability to think clearly. She had been here for an hour, trying to get a feel for the rhythm of the streets. Kish Island was another world from Washington, DC. She’d barely had time to settle into that city before she’d found herself ejected from the country. She truly lamented that loss. There had been much there that she’d wanted to see, and she liked the Americans she had met during her few months in their homeland. She’d even liked the food. Now she could never return and all she would miss there had made her list of life regrets considerably longer.

  Amiri was here, somewhere. It was not a big island and the ramsad had thrown an unusually large team at this operation. She’d been surprised to find herself assigned to the unit so soon after her failure in the US, but grateful. It left her no time to brood about her mistakes there and proved that Ronen had not lost faith in her skills or her potential . . . or that he was desperate, but she hoped it was not so. In any case, there were a dozen others like herself on Kish now, searching this little false paradise for Amiri and his known associates. She wanted to be the one to find the man. Shiloh had passed his name and she should have been the one to recover that intelligence. Now she had a chance to put Shiloh’s information to its proper use and pay the American spy his due respects.

  It would not be easy, she was sure. Amiri had managed to stay active in the world’s nuclear market for more than a decade without getting himself killed or detained. To survive so long when Mossad was watching—and Mossad was always watching—was no small accomplishment.

  Another ten minutes passed before she saw her mark—one of Amiri’s likely associates, a younger man, but one who had previously been connected to another Iranian operation for the nuclear program. That one had been nothing significant, a contract for a few minor parts that Mossad had determined were destined for the uranium centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment plant. But this man had smuggled the parts into Iran through Kish Island. That lone fact was enough now to make him much more interesting than he had been before.

  The man went into the Cbon Cafe from the lot behind the building where he had left his car, and Salem made her way to the crosswalk by the bus stop. She watched the street for a break in the traffic. A bus came up and made a clean sweep of the commuters waiting, then pulled away, a bit of smoke spewing from the exhaust. Salem saw her opening and made her way across the street.

  The man was standing at the counter, waiting for some order that he’d already placed. Salem walked up and stood near him, just close enough that he could see her. She didn’t look back at him. Instead she waited until the server took her order, then she stepped back and turned. She made eye contact with the mark and smiled. He returned it. “Excuse me,” she said in Farsi, a language that she knew the man understood. “Do you know how I can get to the Pardis Mall? I’m supposed to meet a friend there in an hour.”

  “It’s not far,” he said. “A half kilometer north of here on Khayyam Boulevard.” He pointed at the street outside the window.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  “You are a tourist?” he asked.

  “No, I’m here on business,” she said. “Only for a few days. It was a last-minute trip, so I didn’t have much time to buy a map before I left.”

  “Ah,” the man said. “Then perhaps you need a guide.”

  “Perhaps. Are you offering?” Salem asked. She smiled at him, a very friendly look.

  “That depends on the reward, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps we can start small,” Salem suggested. She extracted a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, Cleopatras. “Would you care for one?” she asked. “North African tobacco.”

  The man shrugged and took one of the smokes from the pack. He lit up and sucked in the nicotine, which sent his synapses firing in a frenzy of satisfaction. He also sucked in the small bit of radioactive dust that Mossad had injected into the tobacco roll and dusted on the paper, not enough to kill him, but enough that Salem and her colleagues would be able to track him using the Geiger counters they’d brought with them. All cigarettes already contained polonium-210, just not in the amounts of these doctored ones. Salem thought it ironic. Russia had assassinated Alexander Litvinenko by poisoning him with the very element that every smoker in the world ingested on a daily basis, just in much smalle
r quantities. Whether the amount in this man’s cigarettes was enough to poison him, Salem didn’t know and didn’t care. He was a threat to Israel, no matter how minor, so if it killed him, it was justice. She only required the radioactive material to not kill him too quickly. She and the rest of the Mossad officers needed a day so they could put the polonium to a far more constructive use.

  He blew out the first breath of smoke. “Very nice,” he said, staring at the beautiful woman.

  “I’m glad you think so.” They chatted for a few minutes until the server called their orders. They picked them up and the man offered to escort her to the mall, but Salem begged off with a story of having other errands to run first. To satisfy his enthusiasm, she made a promise she had no intention of keeping to meet him for dinner, and slipped him a false business card with a number that would connect him with an answering service that she would never bother to check. He watched her go, appreciating the view from behind as she made her way outside.

  A sedan was waiting for her behind the café, there as promised, dark windows, engine running. She walked up, opened the rear door, and let herself in. “Any problems?” the Ayin asked.

  “None,” Salem said. “How long will he stay tagged?” This had been the first time she’d used this particular tool.

  “Until he dies,” the Ayin said. “If he smokes it down to the nub and we left him alone, a few months at most. But he is one of Amiri’s men, so he will not have so long to wait.” Polonium was orders of magnitude more deadly than cyanide. A microgram of the element, smaller than a speck of pepper, was more than enough to kill a man within a few weeks. It would be an ugly death, slow and painful, as the radiation emanating from the substance lodged in the bones ate him from the inside out.

  The Ayin looked back at the woman in the rear seat. Salem was staring at the open cigarette pack in her hands. “You should give those to one of the Hets when you get back to the safe house. I would not want you to consume one in a forgetful moment.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Salem assured him.

  • • •

  She felt a different kind of cold on her face now. Kyra opened her eyes and a stainless-steel field stretched out before her until it met a painted cinderblock horizon. The world was sideways, something hard pressed against her face. She was seated in a chair, her torso leaned forward over a metal table. She pushed herself up, a harder task than she’d imagined. Whatever drug was in her system was not going quietly. The room moved around her in a wobbly circle for a few minutes before she could regain its sense of balance. She was awake now, but her mind was still struggling to think, her reflexes slow and control over her body tenuous.

  The room was mostly empty, clean enough to surprise her, and too bright for comfort. The light above was LEDs hidden under a glazed cover that softened any harsh brilliance. The floor under her feet was covered in industrial carpet and she could tell the pad underneath was thin, lying over plain concrete. Those cinderblock walls were painted a monotone yellow color, with windows high up near the ceiling in a row, but little daylight was coming through. She looked at her watch. It was twilight now and the streetlights outside had come on. The sun would be gone within fifteen minutes and the moon was already up.

  She tried to stand, her head feeling remarkably heavy, but she was stopped short when her arms refused to come up. She looked down and saw the metal handcuffs chaining her arms to the table. Her arms were numb and spread far enough apart that she couldn’t even touch her own fingers together, a precaution to keep her from picking the cuffs, she was sure.

  Kyra looked to the door. It was locked, of course, with a heavy dead bolt set above the knob. She had no tools to pick it open, even crude ones. It was metal set in a frame made of the same material, so she wouldn’t be kicking it in. The hinges were set on the other side, so she wouldn’t be lifting it off them.

  The windows were too small to climb through and the ceiling vents were smaller still. There was a fish-eye camera mounted in the ceiling. She supposed she could find a way to smash it if she could free herself. That would bring someone running—

  The door opened and a man walked in, bearded, his skin rough and heavily lined, too much exposure to a harsh sun. His Western-looking features suggested he was no more a native than she was, assuming she was still on Kish Island. Kyra realized that she hadn’t checked the date on her watch and had no idea how long she’d been asleep.

  “Ya look like fresh rubbish,” he said, his British accent thick. “It’s not the nicest sleepy medicine in the world, but there are worse concoctions they could give ya.”

  “You’re Amiri,” Kyra said. Her voice came out hoarse.

  “I am,” he confirmed. “And you’re Grayling’s girl.”

  “Nice way to welcome a woman to your flat,” Kyra said. Her words came out slurred. Her mouth felt numb.

  “What, Grayling didn’t tell you about our little protocol.” It clearly wasn’t a question. “You are a new one. Nothing he hasn’t gone through. I have to keep up appearances, especially with a Westerner. And you’re a bleedin’ American by your accent, so I did ya a favor when I told ’em to dose you. If you’d given ’em a moment’s trouble, they would’ve killed you and been done with it all, though maybe they’d have decided to have a little fun with you first. These Quds Force boys would cut your throat just for talking . . . or they might pay me to hand you over. They always like to have another hostage to offer back when it’s time to sit down and talk sanctions.” He tossed his cigarette stub onto the table and didn’t bother to stamp it out. “It’d be safer for me if I just made you go away, ya understand. Everyone on my crew is tied to the Quds Force, given to me by the mullahs, and that’s what they’re expecting me to do. So when Grayling tells me that someone who’s not one of his needs to talk, I have to leave my options open, in case things go all pear-shaped.”

  “You’ve given people up to the mullahs?” Her mind was finally thinking more clearly now.

  “Not many. A few. I’m sure Grayling told you I’m trying to earn my way back home, but I can’t do that if I’m not still free and breathing. He understands how it is, the price of business. He’s learned not to send anyone my way who isn’t worth the time. Which means you’re an interesting one. CIA? FBI?”

  Kyra looked at him, then nodded up toward the camera in the ceiling. “Oh, don’t worry about that one,” Amiri said. “Picture, but no sound. These Quds Force types got tired of listening to people in here yell for help or whatever. And none of them speak English anyway.”

  “Grayling didn’t tell you who I work for?”

  “No. It don’t really matter. You all answer to the same people. But you do need to get down to the business here before the boys watching start wondering what we’re talking about. They send someone in here and I’ll have to treat ya just like any other curious type.”

  “That would be a dangerous thing to do,” Kyra advised.

  “So what little tidbit of information am I missing, then?”

  “Langley’s looking for a mole. I got your name from a report we recovered from a dead drop he left. Our traitor was trying to pass your name on to his handler so they could come looking for you,” she told him.

  “And who was his handler?” Amiri asked.

  “Mossad.”

  “Well, that ain’t exactly news. They been looking for me for a long time.”

  “They’re not just looking anymore. Mossad gunned down the last man this mole named in the middle of a London street in front of a hundred people,” Kyra said.

  “Salehi? That one?”

  “That one,” Kyra confirmed.

  “Smashing. Just smashing,” Amiri muttered. “So how does helping you help me? Because you’re not Mossad.”

  “Israel is getting the intel they want from the mole and not from official channels at Langley. You answer some questions, it helps us find him. We find him, we get leverage with Israel again and tell them we won’t help them unless Mossad leaves you alone.” />
  “You got that kind of pull back home?”

  “I’m here on the director’s orders,” Kyra assured him. “Another reason you don’t want to hand me over to Tehran, by the way. You do that and you’ll have Mossad and the Agency looking for you.”

  Amiri frowned. He sat down in the chair across from Kyra and rubbed his beard. “I got no desire to tangle with Mossad, I will say that. No one in their right mind wants the Israelis after ’em. I’m not so worried about CIA, but those Jews, they’re a vengeful bunch. I’ve known a few men they snuffed. They don’t just kill you, they do it with style. They like to send a message. You hear how they took out Hamas’s best bomb maker?”

  “No,” Kyra admitted.

  “Ho, good one, that story,” Amiri said. “I’d done business with him. So had the PLO, Hezbollah, and every other group over there. Mossad went looking for him and found out where his workshop was. They waited until he went out, I don’t know, to lunch or whatnot, and they let themselves in. They found his phone, took it apart, packed some plastique into the empty spaces, wired it all up, and then left it like they found it. When he came back, rumor has it that the head of Mossad himself called him up. ‘Hello, is this Rafi?’ he asks. ‘Yes,’ Rafi says. And then the phone blows up. Shaped charge took his head right off his shoulders and his hand off his wrist. At least that’s how I heard it. Probably not right in all the particulars, but close enough. I know I never heard from Rafi again.” He frowned then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, extracted one, and lit it up. “Yeah, I’m not too keen on having that bunch after me. A man likes to sit on the loo and know it’s not going to blow him through the ceiling. It’ll make a man crazy if it goes on too long and those Jews aren’t the kind to just up and quit. Long memories they’ve got, and they hold a grudge.”