The Last Man in Tehran

by Mark Henshaw

  The door slammed open and Kyra came out of her chair like a small rocket until the metal cuff stopped her.

  Amiri rushed inside, a pistol in his hand. He took cover by the door frame, looking at some unseen invaders in the hallways. He reached around, fired at someone, then jerked his hand back inside as his target returned fire.

  “Unlock me!” Kyra yelled. The man ignored her, firing again—

  —Amiri screamed as a round punched into his gun hand, tearing muscle and breaking bone. His pistol flew off somewhere and he jerked his mangled limb back. His blood was flowing freely out of a hole that Kyra could see ten feet away. The man looked at her, his eyes wide in panic and fear.

  “Unlock me!” she yelled again. She jerked against the cuffs.

  Amiri said nothing as he gripped his crippled hand, squeezing it at the wrist with the other, as though he could force the pain out of his body along with the blood that was now dripping onto the floor. His eyes jerked around as he searched the room for a way out—

  Amiri saw Kyra’s focus shift from him to something behind and he turned. The Mossad invaders came in, both men, Tavor rifles raised and aimed at Amiri. A woman followed, her own gun raised as she covered the hallways. Kyra’s own eyes went wide as the woman stepped in from the darkened hallway into the light of the room, then turned and faced the wounded man.

  Adina Salem.

  “No, please!” Amiri yelled in English, then something Kyra didn’t understand in Farsi. He held his hands up as though to deflect the bullets that these soldiers would surely fire. “I’m not one of them! I’m working for the British!”

  Salem stared at the man for several seconds, no emotion on her face . . . no anger, no pity. Then she spoke. “You brought the RTGs to Iran,” she said in English.

  Amiri’s eyes went wide with fear. “I didn’t know—” he started.

  “For Haifa.”

  Salem pulled the trigger, a three-shot burst. Kyra recoiled at the sight and sound of the back of Amiri’s head erupting as the bullets passed through it. The image seared itself into her memory as Amiri’s head shattered. His body dropped to the ground.

  Kyra finally pulled her eyes away from the corpse and looked at the shooter who had just killed Amiri. Salem looked back at her, then raised her rifle again.

  • • •

  Salem said something in Farsi. Kyra shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice shaking from the shock of what she had just seen.

  “He said he was working for the British,” Salem told her, switching to English and pointing at the body on the floor with her rifle. “You are British?”

  “American.”

  “CIA?”

  “Yes,” Kyra replied. She straightened her back. Her heart was still hammering away, but a peaceful calm settled on her. “You’re Mossad.” She regretted saying the word the moment it came out. It was possible that the shooters might have orders to leave no witnesses who could point the finger at Israel.

  Salem ignored the comment, as good as confirming the other woman’s assertion. “Was he lying?” she asked, nodding at Amiri’s bloodied form.

  “No,” Kyra said. “He was a Brit, trying to earn his way back home. He didn’t want to work for Iran anymore.”

  “A decision he made years too late.” Salem turned to her companions and exchanged words in Hebrew. The men nodded in agreement, turned, and walked back out into the hallway, raising their guns again. More shots sounded in the distance. Neither woman flinched or looked away from the other.

  “Why were you talking to him?” Salem asked.

  “He had information on one of our officers who went missing a few years ago.”

  “And why did he capture you?” Salem nodded toward the cuffs still bolting Kyra to the table.

  “Appearances.” It was only a partial lie.

  “A man who helps one of your officers disappear and you think you are chained here for appearances?” Salem scoffed. “I think you are either a liar or naive. It does not matter which. If I leave you chained here, the Iranians will find you when they come and you will disappear, too. So I will help you if you help me.”

  “What do you want to know?” She had nothing to offer but information.

  “You know why we killed him?”

  Kyra nodded. She held herself very still, trying not to give this Israeli woman the slightest cause to use her weapons. “The RTGs that he bought from the Russians were the source of the strontium used in the Haifa dirty bomb.”

  Salem stepped forward and slammed her Tavor against the metal table. “Where are they?”

  Kyra raised her hands as far as the cuffs would allow. Salem frowned, then walked over to Amiri’s corpse. She searched the body for a minute until she found the handcuff key in his pocket. She turned back and unlocked one of Kyra’s handcuffs, then tossed the key on the table. “Where?” she repeated, impatience in her voice.

  “Here on Kish. That’s all he would tell me. He wanted to barter them for a trip home,” Kyra replied, trying to keep the shaking out of her voice. She picked up the key and unlocked the other cuff. It fell onto the tabletop, the clank of metal on metal. “Our officer was investigating the sale of the RTGs when she went missing.”

  “In another warehouse?” Salem demanded.

  “I don’t know. But he said the mullahs weren’t responsible for Haifa. He didn’t tell me who was, but I think he was telling the truth.”

  Salem checked her rifle, then looked back at Kyra. “I suggest you do not go outside for a few minutes. We have men around the perimeter who will kill anyone who tries to leave. We will be gone in ten minutes. Then it will be safe.” The Israeli turned, raised her rifle, and walked through the door, leaving Kyra alone with Amiri’s broken corpse.

  She found Amiri’s gun on the floor, picked it up, and checked the action. The grip was dented where the bullet had struck after passing through his hand, but the weapon appeared functional. It could at least fire the round in the chamber. Kyra walked to the door, closed it, crouched beside it with the pistol raised, and stared at the dead Brit on the floor as she waited for the shooting to stop.

  • • •

  After a few minutes, the building was silent. Kyra stood, inhaled deeply, raised her weapon, and opened the door. She moved out into the hallway, leading with the pistol. Several of the lights were blown and the corridor was dark. Only the emergency light at the end revealed the bodies in her path. An AK-47 lay beside one of the dead men. Kyra lifted it off the floor, keeping her pistol raised to cover the hall. The rifle was still loaded and functional. She slid the pistol into her waistband, then raised the AK and began walking toward the lights.

  She hadn’t been conscious when these men had brought her in, so she did not know the way out. She reached the intersection and turned left, a random choice. That led to another hall. There was blood on the floor here, but no bodies. Someone had dragged away at least two people, maybe three. The walls were blackened and perforated with holes, evidence that grenades had been thrown. She retrieved a full AK magazine from another man’s dead form, then kept stepping quietly forward.

  There was no sound but her own light footsteps and the buzz of broken lights. Kyra kept her eyes focused past the end of her rifle barrel, but there was no movement, no other sounds. The smell of the blood was powerful and she could taste iron in the air. She’d smelled death before and seen blood spilled, including her own. She breathed deep, trying to slow her pounding heart and labored breathing. Kyra closed her eyes for a single second to center herself, then looked down the hallway again, focused on the moment, only on the scene ahead of her.

  She turned another corner. An Iranian man was propped against the wall, his hands covered in his own blood. His head turned up toward her, lolling on his neck like it was too heavy to hold up. He said something in Farsi and she heard the gurgling of blood mixing with his words. He tried to raise a pistol at her, but his arm refused to bend at the elbow, the tendons in his arm shot away.
Then his head fell forward and he didn’t move again.

  The bile rose in her throat and she pushed it back down. She swapped her damaged pistol for the dead man’s sidearm, then raised the AK again. Keep moving, she thought. Someone here would have gotten off a distress call. Someone from the outside would be coming and they would not be merciful to anyone they found left inside among their dead brothers.

  She moved forward again, more random turns, more of the dead lying in her path. How many had she seen? A dozen now, at least, all Iranians, she was sure. Salem and her Mossad team would not have left any of their own behind. That would be whose blood she’d seen smeared across the floor outside the interrogation room, she realized. Mossad had taken its own casualties.

  Another turn and she saw a door at the end of a hallway, metal, a different color from the rest. This corridor was empty. She moved ahead, more quickly now, until she reached the end.

  The door was unlocked. She pushed against it slightly, just enough to crack it open. It was night outside, the only light coming from distant streetlights. She moved the door farther. No bullets slammed into it, and she assumed whatever perimeter guards Salem’s team had left outside had retreated with their comrades. She pushed the door open and stepped outside, crouching low in case she was wrong. There were no gunshots, only the sound of waves against the docks in the distance.

  Kyra kept the rifle raised until she reached the edge of the parking lot, then tossed it under a van. Walking with a machine gun through the streets of Kish would draw too much attention, but she kept the pistol, hidden under her shirt. It was a smaller weapon than she had ever carried and the shape and weight of it felt strange pressing against her abs. She couldn’t identify the model and had neither experience shooting it nor spare magazines for it, so it was small comfort, but better than her bare hands.

  She looked back at the warehouse, the side door still hanging open where she had left it. There was no movement anywhere in sight.

  Kyra finally heard the sound of cars, one at first, then several, a half mile away and getting closer, their engines screaming. She looked for the lights of the city in the distance and then ran into the dark.

  • • •

  Kyra ran behind warehouse buildings to stay out of sight of the approaching cars, then followed the coastline. Navigating by the North Star, she walked east, then south, as the coast bent to her right. She looked back. She could no longer see the warehouse or the docks.

  Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t steady them. She stopped and dropped to her knees. It was a mistake. For the first time in more than an hour, her mind could finally focus on something other than fight or flight. The memory of the few seconds when Salem had shot Amiri in the head filled her thoughts. Her heart began pounding again. She felt anxiety surge in her stomach as the mental movie replayed itself in her head in all its bloody detail over and over. She’d seen men die before, but only once had she seen one killed so very close. Now, in her mind, Kyra saw Salem point the weapon at her again—

  Kyra leaned over, her weight on her arms, and threw up in the sand until she dry-heaved. Then she sat back up, closed her eyes, and tried to calm herself, but her emotions listened to her mind only slowly. You’re alive. It didn’t happen.

  Ten minutes she sat there before her heart finally slowed again. Time to go. She forced herself to stand and start walking again, still shaky. Putting her focus on the mission was the best way to clear her thoughts. It would give her battered mind something else to think about.

  After another hour, she saw a landmark she recognized, a building she’d seen from the window of her hotel room. She turned the mental map in her head until she lined herself up and could set her course. She found the hotel a half hour after.

  She came through the front doors. A few patrons sat in the grand foyer, talking quietly. No one looked up. She made her way to the elevators, then up to her room.

  Everything was where she had left it, as though she had been out only for dinner. Now she wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the bed and sleep, but there was no time for that. It had taken her hours to find her way back to the Grand Dariush. Doubtless, the Iranians had found Amiri and his team dead some time ago; they would be looking for the killers, and it was a small island. The Quds Force and the rest of Iran’s security services would be searching through their holdings, looking for any tidbit that would single out any foreigner on Kish as an intelligence officer. Salem’s team likely had their own way off the island, perhaps an Israeli submarine stationed offshore waiting to surface, but Kyra had no such help on her side. She had only one way off and could only hope that the Iranians wouldn’t be stopping every foreign tourist on the way out.

  One problem at a time. She had to get her intel home. Kyra retrieved her iPad, fired up the encrypted VPN, and began to type.

  1. Contact made with Amiri. Todd report confirmed. He agreed to meet with Todd but meeting didn’t take place.

  2. Amiri said that rumors indicated Todd was taken to Evin Prison shortly after her detention. Todd’s present condition and location are unknown.

  3. Amiri reported that the source of the radioactive material used in Haifa was one of three RTGs sold by the Russian military to Iran, but that Iranian government was not responsible for Haifa. Also said that all RTGs are still on Kish, location unknown.

  She paused, looked up and stared out the window into the dark, trying to find the best words to recount the rest of the story in the dry language the Agency preferred to use in such messages.

  4. Amiri assassinated earlier today. Mossad located his warehouse through methods unknown and executed him and an unknown number of his associates.

  5. Officer Stryker interrogated by Mossad officer Adina Salem. Told Salem about the RTGs under duress in return for release.

  Kyra added the GPS coordinates of Amiri’s shattered warehouse to the paragraph. She stopped typing and squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them, trying to focus on the blurry screen. Now what? Her mind was foggy. She stared at the iPad until the thoughts finally came.

  6. Unless directed otherwise, Stryker will return to Tehran to report Amiri’s execution to SIS. Would appreciate any help available to plow the field for that request. Will return to Langley after, as soon as practical.

  She sent the message through the VPN’s encrypted tunnel back to Langley. That task done, she turned the iPad off and fell back onto the bed. How to get off Kish? She ran through the possibilities. There were always only two ways off any island, by air or sea. Was the first really denied her? She picked up the phone and called the front desk.

  “Mitoonam komaketoon konam.”

  The words flew by her. She assumed they were some variant of may I help you? She dug through her memory for the few Farsi phrases she had tried to memorize on the flight over. “Aya shoma Engilisi harf mizanid?”

  “I do,” the man replied. “May I be of service?”

  “I need a shuttle to the airport,” Kyra said, trying to affect her best British accent. She was sure it was as horrid as her Farsi certainly had been a moment before.

  “I can arrange a shuttle in one hour. A taxi will be more expensive but can be here in ten minutes,” the clerk said in a British accent better than her own, she was sure.

  She wondered whether choosing the faster option wouldn’t raise suspicion. “Thank you, sir, the shuttle will be fine.” Kyra hung up the phone and lay back on the bed. She left the light on to ensure she wouldn’t sleep, but her body disobeyed, the stress finally lifting off her enough to let the exhaustion take her, and her mind descended into the darkness.

  Kish Island

  The phone pulled her out of sleep after a half-dozen rings. “Madam, your shuttle has arrived.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be right down,” Kyra said, her words slurred. She put the phone down and sat up, silently cursing herself for succumbing to her exhaustion. The image of Adina Salem shooting Amiri in the head had played in her dreams, robbing her of any rest the nap m
ight have granted. She was sure that would not change for a while.

  She looked down at the iPad on the nightstand and saw the notification on the lock screen that Barron’s message had come through. It took the device a few moments to decrypt the cable after she entered her password.

  1. Director regrets Amiri’s death and will inform SIS.

  2. Warehouse located at the coordinates provided is owned by Morning Sun Imports, which company is controlled by the Khamenei family. The company has a second building in the dockyard one half mile north of the first facility. Technical assets will be deployed to monitor the site.

  3. Proceed to Tehran as described. Do not meet with SIS. Return home at earliest opportunity.

  I guess they really don’t want me checking out that second warehouse. Fine by me, Kyra thought. It might’ve been worth a try the day before, but now it would have been stupid in the extreme, what with Iranian security swarming the building. She was under no illusions that her good luck was inexhaustible.

  The Khamenei family owns Morning Sun Imports? The thought tumbled around in her mind. Then Amiri worked for the Khameneis. That made sense. He had procured nuclear material for the Iranian government and Ali Khamenei had been the supreme leader.

  Did Khamenei order Todd’s kidnapping?

  Whether he had or not, it was almost certain that the supreme leader of Iran knew of it. She had no doubts that there were very few men in Tehran who could issue the orders to keep that secret.

  She looked back down at the iPad. The cable included a map with the second Morning Sun warehouse marked, a half mile distant from the one where Amiri had held her. It was a recent photo, taken no doubt by one of NRO’s satellites tasked by Barron to watch the site. There were a number of military vehicles around the building and soldiers standing in the open. Good luck getting inside that one, Salem.

  She closed the browser, deleted Barron’s message, and shut down the computer, then finished packing and left the room. The hallway was empty again. This time she made it to the elevator.