She exhaled.
Cautiously, she opened the door. There might have been a bloodstain on the carpet, there might not have been. God or Allah only knew what these hotel corridors had seen.
She closed the door. Went to her suitcase. Pulled on an all-black outfit of form-hugging clothes. She was like Catwoman in the old Batman TV series, only slinkier. Grabbed a bag she had prepared. Left the room.
No one would see her. No one would hear her. Only Maryam, alone in her grave, in the bowels of the building, awaiting she knew not what, had any inkling what she was about to do.
But she, Amanda Harrington, knew. Once the darling of the City, the darling of the Street, the head of one of the most powerful charities in the world, a woman known by sight to every one of the London paparazzi, a woman whose love life had been the topic of speculation in every London tabloid, page three after every night at the old Annabel’s, every night at the Groucho Club, every night at one of the anonymous casinos at which the Sunni Arabs from Yemen and Abu Dhabi had tried their luck with the roulette wheels, the cards, the loaded dice, and the compromised women, dragged from one den of iniquity to another knocking shop, the Empire turned on its head, the maid made mistress, La serva padrona, the end of the world.
She turned on the television again. Whatever had happened to Habib and Mehrdad was no concern of hers. No doubt the hotel would report it, but Skorzeny’s money would see to a satisfactory resolution of the attempted rape of a British woman by a couple of priapic Tehranians. Such things were to be expected at the interstices of the conflict between the West and Islam. Shit happened.
Something was going on in the holy city of Qom.
The government cameras were inside the mosque at Jamkaran, homing in on the sacred well. From the outside, it was not much to look at, enclosed above ground level by some sort of structure that allowed the faithful to fold up a slip of paper and then insert it into the narrowing openings of concentric squares. It was like the Wailing Wall, only rotated ninety degrees, and just as indifferent to the prayers of the petitioners.
Nevertheless, legions of the faithful, each bearing tiny folded-up oracular origami, were shuffling toward the sacred well, bowing, mouthing prayers, and inserting the pieces of paper into the slots provided by the nonrepresentational design. On any other planet not corrupted by the absurd ghost of political correctness—which, in some perversion of Christianity, posited that the wrong were always right, and the weak were really strong—such petitioners would have been dismissed as the fools they were. But not here. Not now.
Skorzeny was right. Superstition had taken over the earth, belief had trumped science, man had defeated a pitiful, helpless God
The Great Chastisement was nigh—but whether it came from above or below was not exactly clear.
It was time to move.
She stepped out in the hall and closed the door. She had her camera killer ready, and she was ready to use it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lemoore Naval Air Station
Danny had always known it would come like this, fired on from behind, the one sound in his entire life he would not hear and never would hear. Every op in his business, no matter how high or how low, knew this for a dead-solid fact. It might come from a friend or it might come from an enemy, but come it would. The only way out of the business was feetfirst.
“Keep walking.”
Well, that was a start. At least he was hearing it. At least he was able to keep walking.
They were on the outskirts of the base. He had driven to where “Bert Harris” had told him to drive, and then walked across the Little League baseball field, across the field in front of the social center, past the boathouse for the artificial lake that the genius of the American mind had created out here in the Central Valley, a valley only in geography, unwatered and unirrigated until the Okies and Harvard boys and the Nevada silver miners and the Appalachian coal miners and the failed farmers from the Upper Midwest had all arrived and seen the possibilities and realized them. That was California in the old days, a melting pot of minds, not races, a cooperative of farmers, not ethnicities, a state that worked instead of a state that had failed.
“Don’t worry. And I won’t look back.”
“They might be gaining on you.”
“Am I talking to Bert Harris or Satchel Paige?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“At this moment, no.”
“Right answer.”
They were past the irrigated fields now, past the ball fields, past the garden plots. This may have been California, where everything grew year-round, but Danny knew that was an illusion—nothing grew here in the saline desert, so hard by the ocean, unless man made it grow. California was Schopenhauer’s world as will and idea, and after more than a century, both the will and the idea were failing.
“No roses. Have you noticed?” The voice came from behind, unfamiliar but familiar. New in intonation and yet old in rhythm.
“No roses.”
“None. The ones the housewives try to grow are shitty. Crap. Roses need rain. Why do you suppose that is?”
Danny thought. “Because roses really do need rain?”
He could feel something in the small of his back. “Precisely. Because roses really do need rain. Because man needs woman. Because the internal-combustion engine needs gasoline. Because universities need people who could never get jobs elsewhere, to teach idiots who will never get jobs elsewhere that they have no chance of ever getting a job elsewhere, which is why they need to stay in universities. You get my drift?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Good. I like that word, sir. Nobody ever calls me sir.”
“And yet you can kill just about anybody you want, whenever you want.’
“That doesn’t mean they have to call me sir or else I kill them.”
“That’s white of you.”
“Nobody says that anymore. It’s un-PC.”
“I know.”
Danny stopped and was about to turn around.
“Don’t. Keep walking. Do not look upon me.”
“You know, I’m sick of this shit. How long have we been working together?”
“Not long enough for us to meet. Keep moving.”
Danny stopped again. If Bert Harris wanted to put a bullet through his spine, now was as good a time as any. “No. You’re either going to have to shoot me or talk to me. I’m not the guy you used to know.”
“So I see.”
“Do you? My wife died at the Grove, and Jade nearly did too. Hope’s husband died at Edwardsville. Emma damn near died when that bastard kidnapped her. Everywhere you go there’s trouble. Everything you touch turns to shit for somebody else. And yet you always walk away, Casper the unfriendly ghost. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
The reply was soft. “I am the Angel of Death.”
“So you always say. In fact, I’ve heard you say it.”
“It’s the only way I can live with myself. But sometimes even the Angel of Death needs a guardian angel.”
They were on the far outskirts of the base now. “So here’s the deal,” said Bert Harris. “Do you want to die now or die later?”
Danny had no fear. He knew that the man behind him, who could end his life and who had ended the lives of many, would not now harm him. They had been together too long—not that that counted for anything but that they knew each other—and trusted each other, and with a big job ahead of them, this was the only time they were going to have to get the ground rules straight. “That’s pretty much the same choice everybody has every day, so what’s so special about it today?”
“Because we’re going to Iran and we may not come back.”
“Iran? Where?”
“How does Desert One sound? Payback time.”
“Tabas,” said Danny. “Eagle Claw.”
“Eagle Clusterfuck was more like it. Your unit was born in its wake. Interested in a little payback?”
They were near
ly at the wire now, the demarcation line that separated the base from the civilians. It looked like an innocent chain-link fence with barbed wire on the top, but Danny could tell at a glance that it was far more than that. Everything that came near the fence was photographed, recorded, monitored. If by chance some miscreant attempted to scale the wire with a cell phone on him, the SKIPJACK chip that Apple had agreed with the government to insert in every phone in order to trace its owner’s movements would give him away.
“So where are we going with this?” asked Danny. “I was going to tell you that I wanted out. I’m getting married again. To Hope. You remember Hope.”
The voice was soft. “I ought to. I saved her son.”
“And you got her husband killed. I guess I ought to thank you for that. Funny how life works out. And we both saved her daughter. My daughter now. So why should I listen to you?”
“Because you don’t have any choice. Listen up and listen good . . .”
For the next five minutes, Danny heard just about everything he had never wanted to hear in his life, his worst fears. Only a few men could prevent them from full realization, and two of them were standing out in field in the Central Valley of California, in a godforsaken part of the world, trying to decide what to do.
“That doesn’t explain what I saw in Coalinga,” said Danny.
“Or what I saw in California City,” said Devlin.
“Which was?”
“Roses. Roses and hyacinths . . . but let’s stopping worrying about what we may or may not have seen—what we think we saw—and start worrying about how we’re going to fix our problem. Because if we don’t, the whole world is going to have a problem.”
Danny started to say something and then, without warning, wheeled around. If Bert Harris or Tom Powers of any of the other names he had used in their work together over the years was going to kill him . . . well, let it happen, here, now, in front of the security cameras. Danny had so much to live for now that he almost didn’t care—if he died on the spot, he would die happy, his life once again given meaning and shape.
He was not surprised that the man he was suddenly confronting was so ordinary. It was entirely possible that he had walked past him every day for years, that he had seen on the street in L.A., or in a diner in Kansas City, or in a thousand other places both at home and abroad. His was the kind of face you saw all the time and never noticed: not handsome, not ugly, not remarkable but not plain either.
It was only when you looked into those deep blue eyes that you saw what was special about him: cold, unemotional, lethal. The perfect killing machine on behalf of president and country disguised as Everyman. No wonder he was so effective. No wonder he was so miserable.
Because Danny also was not surprised to find that, no matter how fast he had been, the man was holding a knife to his throat.
“Are you in or are you out?” was all he said.
Danny didn’t even have to think. “Payback’s going to be a real bitch. When do we leave?”
“An hour soon enough? First stop, Washington. There’s some folks you need to meet.”
“What about . . . you know?”
“They’ll be safe here. Admiral Atchison extends his hospitality. Rory will have the run of the base. Girls will be girls.”
“Deal,” said Danny.
But Devlin was already gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tehran
The lights in the stairwells were either dim or nonexistent. For a rich country, Iran was remarkably poor. Everything was just this side of shabby, even in a nice hotel, the modern carpets already threadbare. The workmanship was poor. Revolutions would do that to a country.
She moved softly, purposefully. This was the only part of her plan that she could not foresee. If she encountered anyone . . .
But she did not. She made it to the basement without incident. She might have been picked up on a camera, but she was sure the chances that the indolent public servants would have noticed on their monitors were nil. And if anyone looked at the tapes later, all they would see was darkness.
There was the room. She produced her key, unlocked it, and slipped inside.
There were no lights in the little storage room, because neither luggage nor the dead needed lights. She would have to work by the light of her phone.
She unfastened the top of the coffin. Even before she got it off she could hear the sound of Maryam’s breathing, strong and regular. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Maryam sat up. There was a puddle at the bottom of the box, but that was a good sign. It meant she had been drinking the water, and flushing the poison from her internal organs.
“Yes. Now let’s get out of here.”
This was the worst part of the plan. Now that she was faced with the moment, Amanda Harrington wasn’t sure she could go through with it. But she had to go through with it. The Black Widow would have her revenge, at whatever personal cost to herself.
She gave Maryam the bag. “Clothes and some other things. I think they’ll fit you.”
“Where are we?”
“The Azadi Grand. You know it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because this is where we must part.”
“What?” Maryam’s head was clearing, her limbs moving again. She could feel her strength coming back. She still had little memory of what had happened that night in Hungary, but she remembered Amanda, and she trusted her. She had to. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Amanda threw a blanket down on the bottom of the coffin. She was a little taller than Maryam, but she would fit. “You’re leaving, to do whatever you have to do. I’m staying.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Listen to me,” said Amanda urgently. “We don’t have much time. Skorzeny has sent someone to pick up the coffin. He expects someone to be in it. I don’t know who’s supposed to pick you up, but I can only imagine what your fate was going to be. That’s why I’m taking your place.”
“I can’t let you.”
“You have to let me. You have to get away and stop this monster. He’s got something going with the mullahs. He didn’t tell me because he doesn’t trust me the way he used to, but it has something to do with lasers. He’s going to attack the West again, but this time he’ll have the force of a nuclear state behind him. And the West will be too weak to try and stop him. So we’re going to have to.”
Amanda clambered inside the coffin. There was still plenty of water, and the tank still held oxygen. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she was sleeping peacefully in her lover’s arms, instead of the arms of Morpheus.
“They’re in Baku,” she continued. “He still has your computer, but he hasn’t touched it yet. He knows it’s rigged or that it will give away its position the minute he turns it on. He wants to use it as a bargaining chip or, rather, a homing device, to bring . . . to bring . . .”
“Frank Ross. That’s the name I call him. Frank Ross.”
“To bring ‘Frank Ross’ into his orbit. So he can finally kill him.”
Maryam hardly dared ask, but she did. “What news of him? Of Frank?”
“Gone to ground. We think he was cashiered after they got word of your defection. You probably don’t remember signing the postcard. Just before Skorzeny drugged you into insensibility, he had you send a message from the laptop, which he redirected through an IP address in Tehran. So ‘Frank Ross’ thinks you’re here, in Iran. And now you are.” Amanda smiled, her teeth white in the faint light of the PDA. “So maybe it will all work out somehow.”
“Maybe.” Mixed news indeed. Frank might be on his way here—but to rescue her or to kill her? She had to get a message to him somehow.
“There’s a plane ticket waiting for you at the airport under my name,” continued Amanda. “My identity documents are in that bag. We look enough alike that you can pass for me in a pinch. I figure we have maybe to the end of the day before he begins to suspect something is amiss. .
. .”
“And by that time, he may have a nasty surprise coming to him,” finished Maryam.
“Who do you suppose they’re sending for you?”
“I don’t know. Some goons. But I think I know where they’re taking me—taking you. Evin University. That’s what we call it, anyway. It’s really Evin prison. It’s where they hold the political prisoners. Where they execute them.”
Evin prison was the most notorious in Iran. Built on the site of the home of a former prime minister, it sat at the foot of Alborz Mountains in northwestern Tehran, the natural beauty of the setting contrasting vilely with the horrors within.
Amanda was still sitting up. She stuck out her hand. “Sorry, forgot my manners. I’m Amanda Harrington,” she said.
“Maryam.”
“That’s all? Just Maryam?”
“That’s all.”
“Good luck, Maryam-that’s-all.”
“I’ll come back for you. As soon as they see you’re not me, they won’t hurt you.” She wasn’t exactly certain that was true, but that was about the only reassurance she had on offer at the moment.
“I know you will,” said Amanda. “One more thing. Something’s happening in Qom, in the mosque.”
“The well at Jamkaran, where Ali, the Mahdi, lies occluded and dreaming.”
“Yes. Whatever Skorzeny is up to, I think it has something to do with that.” She paused and collected herself. “Now, fasten the top down and get out of here.”
Amanda lay back. There was nothing more to say.
Maryam fastened the top down. Then she picked up the bag and left the room, locking the door behind her.
She exited the hotel by a side door and glanced in the bag. Amanda had thought of everything: clothes, documents, money in various currencies. Best of all—her secure PDA. How Amanda had sneaked that out, past Skorzeny, Maryam would never know. But Amanda didn’t have to worry about his finding out, because she wasn’t planning to return anyway.
She could handle this.
The sun was coming up as she stepped into the street and breathed in the familiar smells.
Michael Walsh Bundle Page 82
