by Greg Rucka
“They understand they need to keep the hell away from him?” Chace asked.
“Barnett knows the rules,” Crocker said. “They won’t go anywhere near Falcon prior to the lift.”
“Cover identity is that of Dr. Pia Gadient, with the University of Fribourg. You’re a marine biologist, in particular concerned with the declining sturgeon population in the Caspian Sea.”
“I’m a marine biologist?”
Teagle slid a folder across the briefing table towards her. “You can read up on it. You’ve published a couple of very well-received papers on the subject, in point of fact. It’s a very good cover for the job, Tara. Of all the countries on the Caspian, Iran is the only one to make any effort at sustaining the sturgeon population, and they’re quite proud of the fact.”
“I never did like caviar,” Chace said, leafing through the folder.
“The cover also justifies why you’ll be in the north, why you’ll have access to a boat, why you’ll be carrying a GPS, a sat phone. You can even get away with carrying a knife, if you like. After all, you’ve got to open those fish somehow.”
“GPS will have the RZ coordinates?”
Julian Seale, sitting silently by Crocker and nursing a cup of coffee, spoke up. “Coast Guard will begin overflight of the rendezvous on the eleventh at twenty-three hundred hours. They’ll continue fly-bys once an hour until oh-three-hundred morning of the twelfth. You’ll have four shots at pickup before they have to break off and refuel.”
“How do I signal them?”
“You don’t. They’ll be flying dark, using NVG. If you’re there, they’ll spot you.”
Chace looked at the man, considered pressing the point, then decided against it. There was tension running between Seale and Crocker, even if both men were doing their best to conceal it, and she didn’t want to inadvertently poke a nerve in the middle of a briefing.
“Exfil plan?”
“Tehran Number Two will be present in the safehouse on your arrival. He has acquired a RHIB, small Zodiac, already secured in Dr. Gadient’s name, and will have the boat in position and moored by the time you arrive at the safehouse with Falcon. Once Falcon’s bona fides are confirmed, you’ll be free to proceed to departure. Sat phone to check in with London once you’re on the water, then again after pickup by USGS.”
Chace studied the maps on the table for the better part of another minute, then went through the documents again. The passport was Swiss, and according to the stamps, she’d made several visits to the countries that bordered the Caspian, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Russia. This was her second visit to Iran in the last three years.
“Good,” she said finally. “Now the big question: what’s the fallback if it all goes to hell in a handbasket?”
“Instead of exfil to the north, you track west, to Tabriz,” Teagle said. “From there you have your choice of borders, either into Iraq or, better, into Turkey.”
“Is there a bolt-hole in Tabriz?”
“No.”
Chace turned to Crocker. “Can we fix that, please?”
“I don’t see how,” Crocker said. “Not with the time we have left.”
“So if it goes wrong I’m out in the open and on my own, that’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s correct.”
“Lovely. And I’m going unarmed?”
“Again correct. You get stopped carrying a knife, your cover supports it. You get stopped with a gun, they’re liable to use it on you.”
“Agreed,” Chace said, immensely relieved that no one from on-high had insisted on her going armed. “All right, I’ll need time to study all this, so if you want to sod off now, that’d be grand.”
Teagle laughed, but neither Seale nor Crocker shared it.
“You make the approach to the apartment,” Crocker said. “You make sure of the ground, Tara. You see anything—anything—that makes you unhappy, you abort back to your hotel in Tehran, take the next flight home, you understand?”
“Hold on—” Seale began.
“When it’s your fucking agent, you can give the fucking briefing,” Crocker snapped. “She’s happy, or she doesn’t do the job. It’s that simple.”
“Boys, don’t let’s fight,” Chace said. “I’m a big girl, and I’ve played outside before. I know what makes me happy and what doesn’t.”
There was no security that she could see at the entrance of Number 22 Nilufar, just a set of three wide steps that followed the slope up to the front door of the apartment building. Chace took them with purpose, doing her best to appear like she knew exactly where she was heading. The door was unlocked, and she pushed into the narrow lobby of the building, smelling broiling meat and a mélange of spices that would have made her mouth water if it hadn’t been filled with cotton.
To her right, running straight down, was a hallway that ended with another, smaller door, apartments alongside. The stairs to the first floor were at the end of the hall, so that one ascended facing towards Nilufar. She headed past them, to the door opposite the entrance, and it opened without difficulty, and she found herself looking out into the alley where she’d parked the Samand. She checked both directions, then looked up and, seeing no one, took the folding knife from her jeans pocket and, shielding her face with her free hand, whacked the closed blade against the lightbulb hanging over the door. The glass shattered, the light went out, and she slipped back into the building.
According to the briefing on Coldwitch, Falcon was on the third floor, either in apartment three, or in the third apartment there, but when she came off the stairs, her first thought was that their intelligence had been wrong. There were six separate apartments and none of them, at first glance, was marked with a three. The lighting in the hallway was weak, as well, and it made determining details even more difficult.
For a moment, Chace held on the landing, waiting and listening. From one of the apartments she could hear conversation, animated and happy, and from another broadcast voices, either the State-run television or the State-run radio, she had no way of knowing. Somewhere below she heard a door slam closed.
She moved forward along the hallway, checking each door in turn, and had reversed, was heading back towards the stairs, when she stopped, her eye catching on a chalk mark high on the wall. Three short lines, running parallel to the ground on the right side of one of the doors, and three more, barely visible, on the left.
Three and three again.
She knocked gently and waited, and after a moment, she heard a lock turn. The door pulled back, and the man who stood revealed matched the photograph, and Chace stepped immediately forward. She covered his mouth with her left hand, pushing him inside, then shoved him backwards against the wall, pinning him in place. With a foot, she shut the door. She put the index finger of her right hand up to her lips, and the man looked at her with eyes wide.
For nearly a minute she held him in place, neither of them moving, feeling his breath hitting the back of her hand as it left his nose, hearing her own heart pounding. Noise from the rest of the building filtered into them, a cough, the broadcast voices. A strain of music from somewhere above them. A laugh from the street.
Finally, Chace moved her hand from the man’s mouth.
“Falcon?”
He nodded.
“It’s time to go,” Chace told him.
CHAPTER TEN
IRAN—KARAJ, 22 NILUFAR STREET
10 DECEMBER 1839 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
Shirazi stared at the flickering image on the video monitor, the live feed of the hallway outside the apartment, watched as the woman made her way carefully along the hall, her pace measured as she passed each door in turn. If he didn’t know what he was looking at, he could believe she was simply lost and trying to find her way.
Then she saw the chalk marks, turning away from the camera, to look at the door to the apartment opposite where Shirazi and Zahabzeh now sat, and she knocked, and Hossein answered. She had him muzzled and inside so quickly, Shira
zi was certain that if he had dared to blink, he would have missed it.
He motioned to the technician to his right, showed him two fingers, and there was the softest click of a button, and the image on the screen flickered and changed, now showing the interior of Hossein’s apartment. On his left, he heard Zahabzeh inhale slowly through his nose, struggling against his desire to speak. Shirazi turned his head from the monitor, saw that Zahabzeh was looking at him, the question clear in his expression.
Shirazi shook his head, and Zahabzeh’s mouth twitched, fighting off a frown.
Both men turned their attention back to the monitor.
The woman hadn’t moved at all, still holding Hossein silent against the wall, so still that Shirazi could imagine the video was malfunctioning, that the image was no longer live but frozen, a moment trapped in time. The angle for this camera was such that he couldn’t see her face, and the lack of appropriate illumination washed all color into shadow. Even if it hadn’t, the maqna’e she wore concealed her hair.
It didn’t matter. Shirazi knew who she was, and it took all of his self-control to keep from displaying the relief he felt at seeing Tara Chace, at knowing she was less than ten meters away from him. SIS had cut it close, had cut it very close. Another day and Hossein’s absence would have been noted. A day more, it would have been inexplicable. Even now, Shirazi knew there wasn’t much time left to him.
On the screen, the woman moved her hand from Hossein’s mouth, speaking. Zahabzeh reached for the headphones running from the monitor, but Shirazi put his hand out, stopping him. There was no need, and despite knowing better, he feared that listening in might somehow, someway, reveal an unintended noise of their own.
Now the woman stepped back, and Hossein moved quickly down the hall, into the little room that served as the apartment’s main living space. Shirazi showed the technician three fingers, but it was unnecessary, and even before he had done so the camera changed to the one placed on the far wall of Hossein’s apartment, the one that granted the best view of the room. The woman had followed Hossein at a distance, staying in the mouth of the hallway, and Shirazi thought that was smart of her, that she was blocking the only exit, in case her defector suddenly tried to run.
But Hossein wouldn’t run, not after waiting a week to prove his innocence to Shirazi, and by extension, to his uncle. He had already gathered up his meager belongings, one small satchel, and now the woman came forward and took him by the elbow. For a moment light and lens united, and Shirazi could see her face clearly, the look of concentration and focus, the restless eyes sweeping past the hidden camera. Despite himself, he smiled.
Then she was guiding Hossein back down the hallway, to the door, still holding him by the elbow, and the camera flickered, changed back once more to the very first position, and there she was, emerging with Hossein. They moved briskly to the stairs, then out of shot, and Shirazi wondered at how quickly she had taken control of Hossein. Even if Hossein hadn’t been told to go with her, to do what she said, Shirazi doubted he would’ve been able to resist. Her presence had commanded him from the moment she had entered his apartment and taken his voice, and Shirazi had to wonder how long it would last.
Zahabzeh started to open his mouth, but Shirazi shook his head again, then carefully got out of his seat and moved to the window that overlooked the alley. With two fingers, he pulled the curtain back enough to look down, just in time to see the woman load Hossein into the Samand parked there. She moved to the driver’s door, took one last, quick look around to all sides, and Shirazi let the curtains close before she could look up, as she had done when she’d first arrived. The glare from the light below had spared him there, and the move on her part had surprised him. In his experience, most people forgot to look up.
He listened for the sound of the car starting, waited until it pulled away, and only then was he willing to speak.
“Very well done,” Shirazi said, aware that the others in the room, Zahabzeh and the technician and another one of the guards, would think he was praising them. “Farzan, get Javed.”
Zahabzeh nodded and all but ran from the room.
“Break it down,” Shirazi told the others. “We’re done here. Leave no signs in either apartment.”
Murmurs of assent, and Shirazi watched to make certain the two men were absorbed in their task, quickly disassembling the surveillance equipment, before he allowed his body to relax. Just for a moment, just for an instant, while nobody was watching; a moment of peace, a breath of relief.
Still far to go before this would be over, Shirazi knew. But now, at least, all the pieces were on the board, on his board, and that meant they were under his control, even if some of them did not yet know it.
Zahabzeh returned, Javed following close behind.
“It’s placed?” Shirazi asked.
“Yes, sir,” Javed said. “After she rounded the corner, I fixed one device to the rear bumper, as directed, and placed a second inside the car, beneath the driver’s seat, just to be sure.”
“Check them,” Shirazi said, only to see that Zahabzeh was already doing so, the small GPS tracker in his hand.
“Good signal on one,” Zahabzeh told him. He twisted the dial on the side, pressed the black button at the center of the unit. “And good signal on two.”
“And Hossein’s?”
“Still reading strong. If she takes him anywhere from here to Delhi, we’ll know about it and be able to find them.”
“I doubt she’ll take him that far. Which direction is she heading?”
“North.” Zahabzeh paused. “Not very quickly.”
“Traffic. She’s using the traffic to make certain they’re not being followed, and that is why we use this method instead, Farzan, you see?”
“Yes, sir.”
Shirazi rolled his shoulders, attempting to work some of the stiffness and tension that had settled in them free. “We have some time now. Come, let’s get a cup of tea while the others clean up.”
In the coffeehouse, the same coffeehouse where Hossein had met the thin British tourist who hadn’t been a tourist at all, Shirazi and Zahabzeh sipped their cups of chay. Caleb Lewis had surprised him, Shirazi had to admit. Of all the new members of the British mission in Iran who had come in replacement of the old, he had been ready to dismiss Lewis as a possible replacement for Ricks. If it hadn’t been for the constant surveillance on Hossein, it was likely Lewis would have remained unidentified as SIS for months to come.
“I do not understand why we didn’t take her in the apartment,” Zahabzeh said.
“You don’t close the snare when the rabbit has only put his nose in, Farzan.” Shirazi allowed himself a smile. “You wait until his whole head is in the noose.”
“But we have identified at least one other, Lewis, from the embassy. Surely if we were to arrest either of them, we would get everything we could want to know from their interrogation.”
“Perhaps, yes. But if this new agent can lead us to the larger network, if she can reveal all of their spies to us without ever meaning to, is that not better? There must be a plan to get Hossein out of the country, Farzan. We do not know how many people are involved, how much help she has.”
“I just worry that we’ll miss our opportunity.”
“A concern I share, believe me. But we must balance what we have with what we may gain. The more we uncover of their network, the better.”
“Yes. Yes, I agree.” Zahabzeh looked into his empty cup, then up at Shirazi. “So now we follow them?”
“Until they have revealed all of their secrets,” Shirazi confirmed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IRAN—NOSHAHR, 2 SHIR AQAI (SIS SAFEHOUSE)
11 DECEMBER 0017 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
“Vehicle incoming,” MacIntyre told Caleb Lewis. “A Samand.”
Caleb moved to the window, beside the larger man, peeked out between the curtains and the frame. How MacIntyre could tell the little car rattling down the unpaved road towards them was a Sam
and, he couldn’t guess; the glare from the headlamps told Caleb that there was a car approaching, nothing more. But if MacIntyre was correct, if it was the Samand, then it would be the Minder and Falcon.
He thought that might grant his fear a reprieve. He was disappointed to discover that, instead, it only heightened what he was feeling, what he had been feeling ever since Barnett had sent him north and told him to wait at the safehouse. It wasn’t that the house was bad, because it truly wasn’t, though it was rather small. A well-chosen little cottage near the end of a tiny dirt track, in the foothills of the northern slope of the Alborz, just outside the town of Noshahr. From where he stood now, the Noshahr airport was just under a mile to the north, the boat for Dr. Gadient moored just under two to the northeast.
MacIntyre was moving to the front door, and Caleb followed him. The man was SIS Security, and Caleb supposed he was ex-military, possibly Royal Commando, though he wasn’t sure, and even though the last two days had provided ample opportunity, he hadn’t dared to ask. Over six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, MacIntyre had been quiet much of the time they waited, making walkabout of the cottage several times a day, to assure himself that there was no one watching them from the trees. The only manifestation Caleb had seen of anything like personality had been at mealtimes, when MacIntyre had used the small kitchen to cook up their food, always Iranian dishes, and always surprisingly good.
“Keep back,” MacIntyre told Caleb, reaching out to switch off the interior lights before unlocking and opening the door.
Caleb did as instructed, trying to stay out of the way while still maintaining a view of the outside. A breeze entered the cottage, fresh and cold and sweet from the evergreens growing all around them. The Samand had stopped no more than fifteen feet away, the headlamps winking out as the engine rattled and died. For a moment there was nothing, no motion from the vehicle, just the sound of the wind and the pinging of the engine as it began to cool. Then the car creaked, and first the driver’s, then the passenger’s doors opened, and Caleb was surprised that he recognized the driver from the coffeehouse, the man he’d understood to be Falcon.
