by Greg Rucka
“Very well,” Crocker said.
“Earliest possible moment, Paul. Where are you with the planning?”
“Still waiting to hear from Tehran. Once we have the details, Mission Planning will work on creating a cover for Poole.”
“Poole? Not Chace?”
“Chace is home with her daughter today. My intention is to send Poole.”
C studied him. “This is a high-value target in a high-threat theatre, Paul. As I understand it, the job should go to the Head of Section.”
“And as I informed you Monday morning, ma’am, Chace has tendered her resignation from the Special Section.”
“Pending the arrival of a replacement, Paul. And I’ll thank you to keep that condescension out of your voice when speaking to me in the future.”
Crocker hesitated, then offered the barest nod.
“Poole?” C asked again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very well,” she said.
Crocker had wondered, at the time, why C had seemed so willing to let him send Poole rather than Chace.
Now, sitting at his desk, feeling both old and tired, the echo of Julian Seale still ringing in his mind, if not in his office, he knew why. The decision had already been made, most likely as part of the terms of the CIA’s involvement in Coldwitch. C hadn’t fought him because she hadn’t needed to.
He raised his eyes to the clock on the wall, saw the second hand sweep time into the next hour, now eleven o’clock. If Seale had gone directly back to Grosvenor Square to report to Langley, then it was long past when Langley would have raised holy hell with the FCO. That Kate still sat at her desk with her paperback, that no phone had rung, puzzled him, and gave him hope that, perhaps, Coldwitch would die stillborn.
Then he heard the door to the outer office open, and from where he sat behind his desk he saw Kate straighten and then quickly get to her feet behind hers, and Crocker knew it was not to be.
“Ma’am,” Kate said.
“Go home, Ms. Cooke,” Crocker heard C say. “And if you find this office vacant in the morning, try not to be too surprised.”
Kate glanced his way, her expression pained, then began gathering her things in preparation of heading home. She was still doing so when C walked into Crocker’s office and shut the door softly behind her. Crocker got to his feet, thinking several things at once. The first was that wherever Alison Gordon-Palmer had been prior to returning to Vauxhall Cross, it hadn’t been at home, unless she normally spent her evenings at home wearing a ball gown and her best pearls. The overcoat she’d donned to protect her from the cold made her seem all the more surreal, the fairy godmother of SIS come to wreak vengeance.
The second thing he realized was that her dress explained the delay. She hadn’t been at home when the word had come down that Crocker wasn’t playing ball. That led to the third, the fact that wherever Alison Gordon-Palmer had been that evening, it was clear from her expression that she would much rather still be there than here, and that she was as close to furious as Crocker had ever seen.
When she spoke, her voice was soft, and dangerously controlled. “I’ve just returned from being summoned to Downing Street, where the Prime Minister asked me why the President of the United States had felt it necessary to telephone him and inquire as to whether or not SIS was planning on lifting Falcon. When I told the Prime Minister that Coldwitch was to commence shortly, he said to me that he had been led to believe otherwise. He said to me that one of my Senior Directors had told COS London that there would be no Operation: Coldwitch, because he was refusing to brief or clear to run the agreed-upon agent for the mission.”
“Poole—”
“Shut up, Paul,” C said with such venom that Crocker was certain he could feel it pushing through his own veins. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? Do you understand that I was dressed-down by my Prime Minister less than an hour ago, made to look a fool, made to appear incompetent? Do you understand that you managed to do the same to the PM himself? Do you understand that you not only humiliated us, you humiliated the service?”
“I’m trying to protect the service,” Crocker said.
“I am eager to hear how that can possibly be the case.”
“If we send a Minder into Iran, if it’s a trap—”
“And you have proof of that?”
“I have too many convenient explanations! I have an asset who’s risen from the dead, an asset who, it turns out, is such a prize we’re willing to shoot first and ask questions later! I have everything that makes this look irresistible, but the one thing I don’t have is the time to check the facts!”
C stood motionless, and Crocker heard his own voice fading, the embarrassing desperation in it.
“Seale said CIA support was contingent on Chace being allocated,” Crocker said, trying again. “Didn’t it occur to you that’s because they’re suspicious, as well, that they don’t want to risk any of their own people being caught and paraded on Iranian national television?”
“Of course it did,” C said. “But that is neither here nor there. I told you that all consideration was given to your reservations, and that despite them, the operation was to go forward. From that point, your duty was to facilitate the operation, not to stonewall it, not to sabotage it. But since you couldn’t have your way, you decided it would be best to try to undermine Coldwitch. In so doing, you caused embarrassment to myself, HMG, and the Service.”
“That was not my intention.”
“Paul, I know what your intention was. And now I’m going to tell you what you will do.”
C stepped forward to the desk, lifted the handset for the red circuit and, with acute deliberation, pressed the button for the Ops Room. She put the phone to her ear, but not before Crocker heard the Duty Operations Officer identify himself.
“This is C. Hold for D-Ops.” She lowered the handset, covering the mouthpiece with her free hand. “You will direct the Duty Ops Officer to bring Minder One in for immediate briefing. Then you will call COS London and tell him that Coldwitch is go, and you will do him the courtesy of inviting him to attend Minder One’s briefing, as we have nothing to hide from our partners, and desire the CIA to be involved in every stage of the operation. Upon completion of briefing, you will contact Tehran and inform them they are now hands-off until rendezvous at the Noshahr safehouse.
“If you do all of these things, then you will find yourself still with access to this office come the dawn. If you do not, I will have Security remove you from the premises this instant, and tomorrow you’ll be wandering up and down Whitehall in search of an open vacancy.”
She held out the handset to Crocker.
“Make your decision now.”
He took the handset, raised it to his ear.
“Minder One to the Ops Room,” Crocker said.
CHAPTER NINE
IRAN—KARAJ, 22 NILUFAR STREET
10 DECEMBER 1821 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
If there was anything useful to be found in a roundabout, it was that it made flushing a tail easy; if a car followed you around it once, that was just some bloke heading the same way you were; if that car followed you around it twice, that was some bloke following you.
By the time Chace had made her second turn around Sepah Square, she was as sure as she could be that she wasn’t being followed. She continued west another fifty meters before turning right, onto Bustan, then turned right again, onto Nilufar, looking for a place to park. The neighborhood wasn’t what she’d expected, the dull utilitarianism of the buildings offset by the multitude of trees growing on each side of the street, denuded by the cold and the recent rain. It had turned dark, and a wind had come up, and as she guided her rental down the block her headlamps revealed quick glimpses of leaves as they flipped through the air like wounded birds.
At the east end of the street she turned right once more, and then immediately again, into a wide alley that ran parallel to Nilufar. Several cars were parked along here, and she found a space
perhaps midway down and stopped, dropping the manual shift into neutral and letting the vehicle idle. The car was a Samand, essentially the Iranian version of a Peugeot 405, produced under license from the French, and while it was neither fast nor particularly reliable, it had the clear merit of being ubiquitous, something Chace had been able to verify during her long fight with the traffic out of Tehran.
With one hand, she adjusted the rearview mirror, as if inspecting herself in the reflection, and adjusted the black silk scarf she was wearing to hide her hair. A set of headlights flashed towards her, another car turning down the alley, and she watched from her periphery as it rolled slowly past, seeing two occupants, both men, neither of whom gave even the slightest glance in her direction. The car continued, made a left at the end of the alley, disappeared back onto Bustan.
Chace closed her eyes, trying to conjure the man from the photograph Crocker had shown her during the briefing, the man who was supposed to be Hossein Khamenei.
Instead she saw Tamsin, her cheeks flushed pink with heat, and she wondered if her daughter’s fever had broken yet.
They had been sleeping when the call came, curled together in Chace’s bed, each exhausted, but for different reasons. The previous night had been a marathon of sickness, with Tamsin ultimately reduced to spastic dry heaves that had made her sob.
“Why, Mommy?” she’d asked more than once. “Why am I sick like this?”
“It’s your body trying to make you better, baby,” Chace had told her, stroking her daughter’s matted hair back from where it was clinging to her brow. “Just let it happen, don’t fight it. You’ll feel better soon.”
It had been a half-truth. The vomiting had ceased, but the fever had increased, and after a second round of Calpol at four in the morning, Chace had begun to worry that perhaps this wasn’t a cold but something else. She’d spent the rest of the darkness on her laptop, working up a fear that contained both the words “swine” and “flu,” and by morning had already made an appointment to take Tamsin to the doctor.
No, not the flu, the doctor had said. Just a nasty bug. Home, rest, fluids. If the fever doesn’t go down by tomorrow morning, I’ll want to see her again.
Only marginally reassured, Chace brought Tamsin back to their home in Camden, tucked her into bed, and tried to do all the things a good mother should do. That Tamsin was willing to let her do such things was a sign of how sick she was; normally, getting her to stay still for more than four or five seconds at a time was a chore, and that included while her daughter was sleeping.
When the phone called out at just past midnight, it needed several rings before it could penetrate either of their sleeps, and Chace felt uncharacteristically groggy as she fumbled for the handset.
“Chace.”
“Duty Ops Officer. Minder One to the Ops Room.”
For an instant, the incandescent rage that consumed Chace threatened to make her say things, many things, she would regret. She was exhausted, her daughter was ill, for the love of God, and at—what was it, half midnight?—half midnight she was expected to summon a nanny for Tamsin and just rush off to the office? There were three Minders, dammit, why the hell weren’t they calling Nicky?
But she didn’t say any of those things. She said, “An hour.”
“Confirmed.”
Dial tone, and Chace blinked at the phone in her hand for several seconds, then pressed the speed dial for Missi Hegland. While it rang, Chace extricated herself from the bed and slipped out of the room, into the hall.
“Hello?”
“Missi, it’s Tara,” Chace said. “I’m sorry to be calling so late.”
On the other end of the line, the nanny groaned. “Again?”
“I know, it’s awful of me. Can you be here in half an hour?”
Chace heard a yawn. “How long will you be gone this time?”
“Only a couple of days, I shouldn’t think. It’s Australia, Hong Kong, and back.”
“They do have other flight attendants, don’t they?”
“You’d think,” Chace said. “Can you be here in half an hour?”
When Chace returned to the bedroom, Tamsin was sitting up, bleary-eyed and disoriented. Chace climbed back onto the bed and wrapped Tamsin in her arms. They stayed that way until the knock came at the door. Missi was knocking a second time before Chace could let her inside.
“Tam’s asleep?” Missi asked, removing her coat. She’d brought a small duffel bag with her, and Chace found it bitterly ironic that her daughter’s nanny had, in essence, a go-bag. Chace’s own was stocked and waiting in the Pit.
“She’s down now, yes. She’s been ill, running a fever all day. I took her to the doctor, he said rest, fluids, like that. If the fever hasn’t broken by tomorrow, she’ll need to see him again, and if it spikes, you should take her in right away.”
“Tara,” Missi said, her tone just shy of a reproach. She was a young woman, mid-twenties, a pretty blonde with an almost perpetual smile. “Why didn’t you tell them no?”
“I can’t, I just … I can’t. This’ll be the last time. On my word, this is the very last time.”
“And you’ve got to go now, have you?”
“I do, I’m already late.”
“Going?” said a small voice from the end of the hall, and both women turned to see Tamsin wobbling in the doorway of the master bedroom, matted hair and dazed understanding on her face.
“I’m sorry, baby, I’ve got to go to work—”
“Don’t go!”
Chace moved to her daughter, scooped her up, held her close. “I’m sorry, baby.”
The tears started, hot and fat. “Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”
“I’ve got to go. This’ll be the last time. I promise, Tam, this is the very last time.”
The sobbing accelerated, becoming thicker and louder, and Chace carried Tamsin back to where Missi was standing. Tamsin refused to release her grip, wrapping Chace’s hair in her tiny fists, pulling and screaming, until finally she worked herself into such outrage she was choking on her own tears. Chace managed to free herself from her daughter, and placed Tamsin into Missi’s arms.
“You better leave,” Missi told her, and though Chace knew better, she was certain it was a condemnation.
Hating herself, Chace headed to the Ops Room.
The wind cut into her as soon as she stepped out of the Samand, grabbed the tail of her manteau, and crushed it against the backs of her thighs. Chace tugged at the hem reflexively, making certain it stayed below midthigh. Iran wasn’t as forbidding to women as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, at least not this close to the capital, but there was still a standard of modesty that even Chace, as a foreigner, was expected to observe. Here, the maqna’e for her hair and the manteau, a shapeless trench-dress, sufficed enough that she could get away with blue jeans and boots.
It was quiet in the alley, quieter than Chace had expected considering the volume of traffic running on the road just to the south, the buildings on either side of her serving as a sound buffer. She locked the door of the car, tucked her chin against her chest, and began walking towards Bustan, eyeing the apartments on her right. As she passed the third from the end, she noted a rear door up a short flight of stairs, a single bulb in a fixture above it.
At the corner, she turned north, towards Nilufar, and immediately spotted four policemen standing beside two parked cars. There was nothing urgent in their manner, and as she approached she saw that three of the four were participating in some discussion with a group of locals, voices rising and falling with enthusiasm and laughter. Chace kept her eyes down. Almost everywhere else she could think of, avoiding an authority’s eyes was a sign of guilt, guaranteed to raise suspicion; here, meeting a man’s eyes could be perceived as a come-on.
“Khanom.”
Now she raised her eyes, saw one of the officers beckoning to her.
“Khanom,” he said. “Shab bekheyr.”
“Pardonnez-moi,” Chace replied. “Mais je ne parle
pas Farsi.”
The officer jerked his head back in surprise, realizing, perhaps, that she was a foreigner. He tapped one of his colleagues, which brought the attention of the remaining two, as well, and Chace heard the first officer speak, caught a word that she assumed was Farsi for “French.”
“Non,” said the smallest of the policemen to Chace. “Non français. Anglais?”
“Oui,” Chace said. “I speak English.”
“Are you alone?” he asked. “Are you lost?”
“Traveling alone, oui. But I have a … a colleague? He lives on Nilufar, I am visiting him.”
“You are married?”
“Non. A widow.”
The policeman’s face fell in sympathetic grief. “May I see your papers, please?”
“Of course.” Chace turned slightly, reaching beneath her manteau, then offered her passport and visa card to the policeman, watched as he and another of his colleagues examined them with a flashlight.
“You are a Swiss?”
“Oui.”
“You are a doctor?”
“Comment vous-parlez … scientist?” Chace clamped her lips together and blew, inflating her cheeks. “Poisson?”
“Fish?”
“Oui! Sturgeon!”
There was a general sound of understanding from the group of officers. “Caviar,” one of them said, and Chace nodded.
“Our caviar is the best in the world.”
“Oh, yes,” Chace agreed, taking her papers back as they were offered to her.
The policeman who had done most of the talking with her, the smallest of the group, indicated the street off to his left. “Nilufar is that way. Have a good visit to our country, Dr. Gadient.”
“Merci. Salam aleykum.”
“Salam aleykum.”
“Tehran went sterile this afternoon at roughly fifteen hundred zone,” William Teagle told Chace. “Your flight will touch down early evening tomorrow—well, today, really—so by the time you get your legs under you for the rendezvous, Falcon should have had seventy-two hours clear, no contact with anyone from the Station.”
