That night, fifty small teams of Hezbollah fighters fanned out along the southern border with Israel, taking advantage of the heavy cloud obscuring the moon, and using the orchards and olive groves for cover. Each team carried an Iranian-modified Soviet Katyusha rocket launcher that struck fear into the hearts of ordinary Israelis.
Chapter 12
O’Connor breakfasted in the hotel and ordered another Samand cab. The driver dropped O’Connor outside the main entrance to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, in Khordad Avenue; but instead of disappearing into the myriad laneways and corridors of the bazaar, O’Connor made his way into the courtyard of the adjacent Imam Khomeini Mosque. It was an ironic choice for a dead-letter drop but fortune favoured the bold, he thought.
A guide was addressing a large group of tourists in the mosque courtyard and O’Connor melded into the rear of the group while he cased the surrounds. Two minarets and a clock tower dominated one end of the courtyard while the dome of the mosque towered over the opposite side. A large pool and fountains filled the middle, and the courtyard itself could be accessed from several areas of the bazaar. As a result, the pedestrian traffic across it was heavy, which suited O’Connor admirably. He focused on the area around the drop zone. The courtyard was lined with dozens of pot plants, including two particularly bushy plants either side of a red wooden box containing a fire hydrant. The tourist group moved towards the mosque and O’Connor moved with them, stopping to admire the exquisite tiling around the large main entrance. Then he saw him.
The thickset older man moved to the fire hydrant and sat on the pool wall beside the larger of the two pot plants. He casually lit a cigarette, as if to take in the early morning sunshine. Although O’Connor knew his contact would have been paid handsomely, he was still wary. He looked for any sign of communication between his contact and the Basij, who could be concealed in any one of the busy entrances to the bazaar. The contact finished his cigarette, removed a parcel from within his coat, placed it behind the pot plant, stood up and walked away. O’Connor waited. There was one gardener in the courtyard, tending the pot plants, but he was at the far end of the square. O’Connor carefully checked each entrance, and then turned his attention to the galleries on the minarets from whence, five times a day, the mosque’s muezzin would face Mecca and issue the call to prayer. O’Connor was more concerned with the uninterrupted view the minarets afforded the courtyard. Had he been in the Basij, that’s where O’Connor would have been. The galleries were devoid of movement, and O’Connor wandered across and sat down on the pool wall. Again he watched, aware that the gardener was approaching with his watering can. Another group of tourists came by and O’Connor waited until they assembled in front of him. He reached behind the pot plant, retrieved the package, tucked it inside his leather jacket and casually walked towards the main entrance of the bazaar.
Women in full-length black chadors and younger women in elegant hijabs jostled through the crowds, somehow avoiding contact with the men. Porters wearing padded harnesses struggled under impossibly heavy loads, delivering goods down the ten kilometres of narrow corridors that formed the largest bazaar in the world, one that dated back before the sixteenth century. Some corridors featured gold, jewellery, copper, paper or precious stones, while others exuded exotic aromas from brightly coloured spices. Huge brass bowls of red paprika, yellow turmeric, black pepper, orange saffron, nutmeg, curries, mustards and chillies, pistachios and pecans, apricots and dates were accompanied by shelf upon shelf of large glass jars of olives and oils. Other corridors were made even narrower by bolts of cloth, silks, and colourful scarfs and dresses suspended from racks protruding from every available anchor point. Bookbinders competed with shoemakers, knife artisans with tinsmiths, saddlers with tailors. Beams of light, diffused through opaque glass in the tiled domes above, probed through the dust and on to the cobblestones.
As O’Connor stepped aside to allow a wizened old porter past, he spotted them. The Basij were instantly recognisable. Two young thugs had pulled up on a motorcycle and were watching him. O’Connor moved casually into a corridor lit by naked bulbs suspended from tiled archways festooned with frayed cabling and rusted pipes. The stores here were jammed with glass-topped brass tables, mirrors, heavy brass chandeliers and ornate trays supported by metre-high brass statuettes. O’Connor used the mirrors to his advantage and grinned. The Basij were following close behind. They wouldn’t, he thought, pass even the basics of any surveillance course back at ‘the farm’.
O’Connor sped up and the young thugs matched him. He slowed down, and so did they. O’Connor had long ago memorised the bazaar’s layout, and he waited until he was 50 metres from the next corridor before suddenly turning into one of the shops crowded with brass tables and chandeliers. Just as quickly he dropped to a crouch, and using the piles of brass as a cover, re-emerged into the crowded thoroughfare. Bent double, O’Connor threaded his way through the shoppers and turned into a lane of Persian carpets. Woven in every shape and size, from the tiny ‘rugs’ for the tourists to the exquisite masterpieces destined for palaces, castles and mansions around the world, they were coloured in deep reds and blues, ochres, chocolate browns and greens of every hue.
Using a large pile for cover, O’Connor scanned the laneway behind him. The two Basij thugs, openly brandishing their wooden clubs, were arguing at the intersection of the two corridors, looking in all directions. O’Connor slipped down a side alley leading to an entrance the carpet porters used. He closed the old wooden door behind him, leapt down a flight of rusted metal stairs on to the sidewalk below, disappeared into the throng of shoppers on the other side of the tree-lined road and hailed the first passing taxi.
‘Zayandah Rud, loftan … please.’
The Raees coffee bar was only a few hundred metres from his hotel, the green and white logo identical to Starbucks, save for the mermaid with the flowing locks of hair, who had been replaced by a man in a top hat. The bar was full of young men and women, all smoking, but most sitting separately. Those sitting together who were not married ran the risk of being arrested by the Basij or worse. When Ayatollah Khomeini had taken over in 1979, scores of coffee shops were closed on the grounds of immoral intermingling of the sexes outside marriage. Any fraternisation between young men and women was banned under the Iranian hardliner’s strict interpretation of Sharia law.
O’Connor ordered a black coffee and took stock. There was no doubt he was being watched, and he wondered if the Iranians had tumbled to his alias. Time would tell, and perhaps there was a connection between the hotel desk and the Basij. It was time to get out, but first he would have to check the contents of the drop. After finishing his coffee, he walked the two blocks back to his hotel and took the stairs to the fourth floor, two at a time.
He sat down on the bed and undid the heavily taped package. As DDO McNamara had promised, it contained an Iridium satellite phone, a razor-sharp Ka-Bar Hawkbill Tanto knife and a brand -new 45-calibre Glock 21, along with 200 rounds of ammunition and a note from the DDO: If you need any more than this, we’ll need to come and get you. M.
O’Connor cradled the Glock in his right hand, testing it for balance. The Austrian pistol had been O’Connor’s weapon of choice ever since he’d joined the CIA. He removed the magazine and, out of habit, checked the chamber was empty and removed the slide. Satisfied, he reassembled the weapon, removed the thread protector from the specially modified barrel and fitted the silencer. Although it was superbly engineered, the Glock 21 shared one disadvantage with all other 45s – it was loud. But the silencer contained a series of small chambers that sequentially absorbed the enormous pressure behind a bullet so effectively that the ‘click’ of the slide-reloading action was louder than the pistol shot itself.
He then checked the contents of the sat-phone pack: solar and wall charger, an additional rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a specially designed antenna, all compatible with US satellite communications in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the moment, he would stick with his
encrypted cell phone, but as he put his computer into his backpack, he had a feeling he would finish up in areas where cell phones were about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.
O’Connor descended the stairs to the lobby, only to find the same two young thugs he’d given the slip earlier walking in through the front door. O’Connor retreated to the first floor, doubled down the corridor and took the fire exit to the loading dock he’d reconnoitred earlier in the day. A battered old Khawar truck loaded with water bottles had pulled in, and O’Connor waited until the driver disappeared with his first load on a trolley. He slipped by the truck and doubled down past the tennis courts at the back of the hotel and on to Vanak Street, where he hailed a cab.
‘Loftan man o bebarin be … take me to the South Bus Terminal.’ The driver gave him a toothless grin, let out the clutch with a grinding crunch and they lurched into the traffic, leaving a plume of blue smoke behind them.
The huge South Bus Terminal beside the Be’sat motorway was packed, with seventy buses docked at a circular hub which handled over 70 000 passengers a day. The hourly service to the city of Qom, 150 kilometres to the south, was about to depart, and O’Connor handed over 2000 rial and boarded, taking a seat at the back from which he could observe the rest of the passengers. Thirty minutes later, the suburbs of Tehran gave way to ploughed fields, then to salt-pans and desert, and O’Connor’s mind turned to how he and Jafari might gain access to the Iranian nuclear program, without having to fight their way out.
Chapter 13
‘I want Ahmed to read me a story!’ Rashida demanded of her mother. Jamila kissed her daughter and retreated towards the deck, where Ahmed was deep in conversation with his father. ‘I’m afraid the after-dinner conversation will have to wait,’ she said. ‘Rashida won’t have anyone other than her big brother read the story tonight.’
Ahmed grinned and headed for his little sister’s room, leaving his mother and father on the deck.
‘There was more trouble with the Sunnis in the village today,’ Jamila confided in her husband.
‘I heard. They will just have to learn to get along with us,’ said Mansoor. ‘We have enough enemies across the border without fighting amongst ourselves.’
‘Tell that to Omar,’ Jamila complained. ‘Did he really throw a shoe at the imam?’
‘Yes, although he was immediately bundled out of the mosque.’ Their next-door neighbour, Omar Abbasi, was vehemently Sunni; one of those who considered all Shi’ites to be heretics and deserters of the true Islam.
‘Although we need to cut him a little slack,’ Mansoor added. ‘He’s just lost his brother in Beirut.’ Shia Hezbollah forces had taken over parts of Sunni West Beirut and Omar’s brother had been killed in the ensuing violence.
‘How about The Princess and the Pea?’ Ahmed suggested as he sat on the side of Rashida’s bed and reached towards her bookcase.
‘The pirate book,’ Rashida demanded.
‘The pirate book! That’s not a book for girls. What about A Bear Called Paddington?’
‘No, the pirate book,’ Rashida pouted, her dark eyes flashing. ‘I’m a big girl now!’
‘So you keep reminding me,’ Ahmed said, suppressing a smile and opening So You Want to be a Pirate, one of the few children’s books on pirates that had been translated into Arabic.
‘Pirates come in all shapes and sizes,’ Ahmed began. ‘Some are tall and skinny, others are big and muscled,’ he read, lowering his voice to give it a sinister tone. ‘But they’re all …’
‘Very mean and very wicked!’ Rashida cried, completing the sentence. ‘And they all wear spotted handkerchiefs on their heads, and some … some have wooden legs, and some have hooks instead of hands!’
‘Yes, and black patches over their eyes and the captain of the pirate ship has a parrot.’
‘Aarr!’ Rashida growled, giving a remarkably good imitation of the universal pirate expletive. ‘Eight pieces and shiver timbers!’
‘Yes, pieces of eight and shiver-me-timbers … and the pirate ships have a big, black flag …’
‘And it’s very nasty and it’s called the Happy Roger!’ Rashida cried. ‘And it’s got a mean and horrid skull and bone-crosses!’
Close enough, Ahmed thought. ‘Avast, me hearties!’ Together, he and his sister roamed the seven seas. They stormed desert islands and explored the secret map in the centre of the book that gave directions on how to find the buried treasure, until at last, Rashida’s eyelids began to droop. Ahmed quietly closed the book, kissed her softly on the cheek, turned out the light and retreated to the deck. His mother had retired to finish clearing up in the kitchen, and Ahmed resumed conversation with his father.
‘Now they’ve moved in, the Israelis will never give up the Palestinian land in the West Bank,’ Ahmed observed. ‘All this talk of peace is just that – talk. The Israelis have stalled for decades, and all the while they build more and more settlements on Palestinian land in the hope the Palestinians will give up and move out.’ The evening dark had cloaked the village of al-Bazourieh in velvet. Heavy clouds scudded across the sky above Lebanon’s border with Israel.
Mansoor Shahadi didn’t reply immediately. He puffed contentedly on the silver stem of his hookah. The smoke from the scented tobacco was cooled as it passed through the water in an ornate green glass bowl that formed the hookah’s base. The water pipe had been a part of the café culture of the Arab and Persian worlds for centuries.
‘Ordinary Israeli people want peace, just like we do,’ Mansoor said finally. ‘And many Israelis don’t support the settlers. It’s the hardliners, the extremists, who claim God gave them the land. They’re never going to change their view.’
‘Exactly,’ Ahmed said.
‘But it’s not as simple as that, Ahmed. Over half the Israeli population are not religious at all, but it’s the ultra-orthodox hardliners who hold the balance of power in the Knesset, particularly in the current government, and they effectively veto any moves that would halt the settlements and achieve peace.’
‘Which is why I support Hezbollah,’ Ahmed replied, his eyes blazing with indignation. ‘The only way we’re going to force Israel to negotiate is at the point of a gun.’
‘When I was your age, I probably would have said the same thing,’ his father responded, ‘but now I’m not so sure. Israel is becoming more and more aggressive, and as a result, more and more isolated. She has very few friends left in the international community, and even the Egyptians and the Turks are beginning to distance themselves. Ultimately, I think international pressure will force Israel to negotiate.’
‘In the meantime, I’d still like to join Hezbollah,’ Ahmed protested. ‘Cousin Kazim’s now a team leader,’ he added wistfully.
‘And your cousin Kazim doesn’t hold an engineering degree,’ Mansoor admonished his son gently. He puffed on his hookah and stared into the night. Way in the distance, he could just pick out the faint glow of the security lights that marked the Israeli border fence.
Kazim focused his treasured pair of battered binoculars and searched the barbed-wire fence and the dusty road beyond that marked the UN Blue Line border between Lebanon and Israel. For the moment, the road was empty. The stocky team leader from the Lebanese border town of Aita Ech Chaab was a veteran of more than a hundred raids against Israel. He knew every detail of the rocky hills covered with abundant laurel trees from which his family extracted oil and made soap.
Kazim motioned the two younger members of the team to begin setting up their Katyusha rocket launcher behind a thick clump of laurel trees. The bearing to the town of Ma’alot Tarshiha in Israel, five kilometres to the south-west, was 217 degrees magnetic. Kazim stood behind the short, stubby missile, with its eight-kilogram projectile, signalling the team to adjust the launch direction and elevation. Tonight, Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut had ordered all teams to set their timers for ten-fifteen p.m., when Israelis in the northern border towns would be in their homes. Once the missiles were positioned,
a simple battery would trigger the firing remotely. As well as Ma’alot Tarshiha, the Israeli towns of Safed, Nahariya, and Karmiel were all on the target list. The Katyusha rocket, Kazim knew, was not known for its pinpoint accuracy, but that didn’t matter. The powerful payload of explosive was designed to strike terror into the hearts of the Israelis, and as long as they landed somewhere in each town, that was all that mattered.
‘Sooner or later, Insha’allah,’ Kazim muttered to himself, ‘the arrogant Israelis will get the message and stop building their illegal settlements on Palestinian land.’
Kazim set the timer on the battery and again scanned the border, less than a kilometre from his position. Suddenly, two Israeli armoured Humvees rumbled to a halt and then reversed onto the bend on the border road, just north of the Israeli settlement of Shtula. Clouds of dust rose into the circle of arc lighting from the fence. Fearing the Israelis might have their night-vision goggles trained for any sign of movement, Kazim took cover and signalled for the two younger guerrillas to do the same. The Israeli Defense Force was more active than usual, he thought, but by the time the deadly Katyusha arced into the night sky, he and his team would be long gone. Lying on his stomach, he focused his binoculars.
Reservists, he thought contemptuously. The Israelis had dismounted and put on a brew of coffee, leaving their vehicle-mounted machine guns unmanned. Kazim reflected on the secretary-general’s command that it was every member of Hezbollah’s sacred duty to capture Israelis. This might just be the chance they’d been waiting for. He signalled the other members to move forward and join him.
The Inca Prophecy Page 8
