by Marc Cameron
“Yes, Major,” the technician said.
“You say the speaker’s name is Nima?”
“Correct,” the technician said.
Sassani ended the call. He pitched the phone on the bed and rubbed his hands together, thinking. He wondered if Nima would make this easy, or difficult. Fatima had made it difficult. He sighed. Difficult was certainly much more interesting.
55
Something brushed Jack’s elbow. His back was painfully knotted and stiff. The shoulder nearest the floor, wedged against something hard, throbbed with a sickening ache, like the time he’d wrenched it out of its socket. The touch came again, accompanied by a distant voice, Ysabel’s voice. A dream, maybe? Surely he’d been asleep only a few minutes. Jack tried to open his eyes, but they were glued shut, refusing to cooperate. The pain in his injured ear came next, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He wondered if that was a good sign or bad.
Ysabel spoke again, closer now, an urgent whisper, pushing aside the fog.
“Jack. Wake up.”
Ryan sat bolt upright, searching the room to get his bearings. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Dovzhenko had heard the voice, too, and was up on one elbow, eyes flicking, listening.
“I’m sorry,” Ysabel said. She’d showered and covered her torn clothing with a borrowed smock.
Jack saw Nima standing in the kitchen—which was really just a corner of the same room. She was dressed now, in a dark skirt and a knee-length khaki top that reminded Ryan of a cotton pillowcase. Steam came from a kettle set over the blue flame of a two-burner gas stove. People didn’t make tea in the middle of an emergency. He rubbed his face, wincing at the jab of pain the movement caused his injured ear.
“Sorry for what?”
“Please don’t be mad at her, Jack,” Ysabel said. “She didn’t know.”
Jack stood on wooden legs, feeling a half-dozen more sprains than he’d felt the night before. Whatever this news was, he didn’t want to get it lying down.
His neck felt as if someone had tried to twist it off his shoulders, and he was pretty sure he’d chipped a tooth. And that didn’t even take into account the fact that his ear was hanging on by nine stitches of catgut put in by an opium smuggler. Old age was going to be a hell of a lot of fun—if he made it that far.
He looked at Ysabel and smiled in spite of the situation when he saw her. “What are you talking about?”
She nodded toward the satellite phone on the table.
A sudden chill washed over Jack. “What’s this?”
Dovzhenko saw it, too, and jumped to his feet.
Ysabel gave a sheepish grin. “Nima’s mobile phone is broken. She hadn’t talk to her mother in months.”
Jack took a couple of deep breaths, working to keep his voice calm. “Did she already make the call?”
Ysabel nodded. “She was talking when I woke up.”
Jack had to concentrate to keep his voice at a whisper. “How did she—”
“She must have taken it from the briefcase while we were asleep,” Ysabel said. “I checked the call log. It looks like she spoke for less than three minutes. She assured me she never mentioned us or said where she was.”
Nima glanced up from the kettle. “I will pay for the call,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone would mind.”
“No worries,” Ryan said, though he had plenty. He changed the subject. “Did you sleep well?”
Dovzhenko was already tying on his boots. “Nima,” he said. “You must leave at once.”
She waved off the thought. “I have many appointments today,” she said. “The call was only for a moment. I doubt even the Sepah-e Pasdaran are that all-seeing.”
“Still,” Ysabel said. “Erik is right. You should not take that chance.”
“You all worry far too much,” Nima said. “I will be fine. I promise.”
Ysabel turned to Jack. “You should let me look at that ear before we go.”
“Later,” Ryan said, turning to head for the bathroom. “We need to go. Now.”
* * *
—
Dovzhenko turned on the radio, filling the cab with techno-guitar music. Ysabel, who’d taken shotgun again, turned sideways to glare at him. He reached to turn it off, but not before a deep Persian voice came over the air, sounding somber and somewhat nasal, like a muezzin’s call to prayer.
Ryan couldn’t understand what was being said, but Ysabel sat up straighter. Dovzhenko shot her a glance, getting the gist of it. And then the traffic began to slow.
“What?” Ryan asked, leaning forward to rest on the seat.
Ysabel held up an open hand to shush him.
The speaker droned on for another fifteen seconds, and then the station returned to Persian pop.
“There are protests ahead,” Ysabel said. “We will have to go around.”
“Where ahead?” Ryan asked.
“Hard to know,” Dovzhenko said. “It is difficult for protesters to communicate with phones and social media dampened by authorities. This announcer was helping, telling people where to show up, but he was interrupted in the middle of his report. Somewhere to the west of the city. That is not enough to know.”
“The hospital is west of the city,” Ryan said.
Ysabel tuned the radio past more music stations until she found another news program.
“Here,” she said. She translated as she listened.
“This is a government radio station so the announcer is urging everyone to stay away. He assures law-abiding citizens that the authorities will be on hand to quell any violence on the part of the protesters.”
“Or bring their own violence,” Dovzhenko said.
Traffic was at a virtual standstill now.
Ryan had seen video of recent demonstrations. Tehran, Isfahan, Qom—all across Iran. With three million people, Mashhad had enough youth to pack the streets—and they often did.
The Hilux inched along, covering less than a mile in the next twenty minutes. Impatient drivers changed into and out of the lane ahead each time there was an opening. So far, there had been no place to turn off that was not also jammed.
They didn’t see the policeman until they’d crested a small hill. By then, it was too late.
A young, clean-shaven man, he was dressed in the black knee boots of a motorcycle officer. His bike, a Chinese BMW knockoff, was parked on the shoulder of the roadway. Another motor officer worked the second lane, each of them scanning the interior of each vehicle, pointing, giving directions to avoid the protests ahead.
“The guns?” Dovzhenko asked without turning around.
“They’re covered,” Ryan said. “It’s going to be tough to explain my ear.”
“You don’t speak Farsi,” Ysabel said. “Your ear is the least of our worries.”
The officer gave a friendly but official wave as he approached the driver’s-side window.
“Okay,” Dovzhenko said. “I will do the talking.” He rolled the window down, giving Ryan a blast of sulfur fumes from the dirty gasoline manufactured in Iran.
The officer leaned down to look in the window, at which point Dovzhenko showed him a credential case and barked something to him in accented Persian. He was polite but curt, as if he wanted the officer to clear away the traffic for him.
The officer took the leather case and perused it for a moment before handing it back. He whistled to his partner, shouting something Ryan couldn’t quite hear, let alone understand, before pointing to the shoulder of the road in front of the two bikes.
Ryan’s stomach fell when he thought they were ordering the truck to pull over. But the officer held traffic long enough for Dovzhenko to inch over and speed along to the next exit, where he passed under the highway, to loop well south of downtown.
“What was that all about?” Ryan asked.
Dovzhenko released a long-captive sigh. “I showed him my embassy credentials and asked where the counterprotest was.”
“Counterprotest?”
“Mullahs and other community leaders,” Ysabel said. “They are paid by the government to march in counterpoint to these student-led demonstrations. A bunch of old men in white turbans as opposed to a bunch of youth in all manner of clothing. The Basij militia volunteers who aren’t busy cracking the heads Nima mentioned will march with them.”
“How did you know there would be a counterprotest?” Ryan asked. “Did the radio mention that, too?”
Ysabel shook her head. “There is always a counterprotest. The government makes certain of that.” She covered a yawn, then pointed at the sign alongside the road. “The hospital is three kilometers away. Tell me again all that you know about this man Yazdani.”
* * *
—
Ryan got in the front passenger seat while they waited for Ysabel to finish her work inside Akbar Children’s Hospital. They parked the truck inconspicuously among the buildings of the nearby university. It was the first chance he and Dovzhenko had had to talk out of her presence when they weren’t busy in hot pursuit.
“You did well back there,” Jack said, his forebrain telling him he should try and break the ice. He was exhausted to the point where his skin hurt, irritable, and in no mood to be social. Still, whatever his credentials, this Russian spy had helped save Ysabel, and for that, Ryan owed him.
“As did you,” Dovzhenko said. “You do not appear to be a . . . How should I say this? A garden-variety case officer for CIA.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said. “I guess. Look, you’re eventually going to be debriefed by people well above my pay grade, but just so we’re clear, you only know Ysabel because of a mutual friend.”
Dovzhenko nodded. “There is no need to worry about my intentions toward Ms. Kashani. I was friends with a friend of hers. Our relationship goes no further than that.”
Jack looked at him, thinking. He didn’t say it, but those were the exact circumstances under which he and Ysabel had met—and become lovers. He hated to admit it, but the easy way she and Dovzhenko communicated with each other—absent screwed-up more recent events—seriously bugged him. Knock it off, Jack, he said to himself. You stopped pursuing her. Let her do her thing now, whatever it is, and with whoever she wants to.
“I’m not worried,” Jack said. Then, for some inexplicable reason, he shot any possibility he had with Ysabel in the foot. “Dude, you’re the one who should worry. You’ve as much as said you were in love with her best friend, and then, when she was killed, you tossed your own safety to the wind, and went out of your way to save Ysabel’s life.”
Dovzhenko closed his eyes, swallowing hard. “But you, you came without question when she called for help. Your ear was nearly torn off. Do not forget, you saved her from a kidnapping . . . two kidnappings.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Forgive me for saying it this way, but you’re heartbroken. I can’t compete with that.”
“Be honest,” Dovzhenko said. “Are you really trying to?”
Ryan surprised himself with the answer—and how quickly he gave it. “No,” he said. “No, I guess I’m not.” He could almost hear John Clark’s baritone voice. You’re finally growing up, kid. Ryan banged his head softly against the side window, suddenly feeling like he’d shucked a tremendous load, despite the rest of the situation. “I just want her to be happy. Happy and safe.”
“Happiness does not come from safety,” Dovzhenko said.
“You got that right,” Jack said, nearly jumping out of his skin when Ysabel knocked on the window.
“I got the address,” she said, when he opened the door. She hooked a thumb over her shoulder so Jack would give back her seat. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” they said in unison.
* * *
—
The New York Times had once described the White House Situation Room as a low-tech dungeon. The five-thousand-square-foot complex across from the Navy mess had seen considerable renovation since then. Coaxial cables and cathode ray tubes were replaced with Ethernet, secure routers, and flat-screen monitors, bringing it well into the twenty-first century, but it was still a dungeon as far as Jack Ryan was concerned. It was too maudlin to say aloud, but the decisions made over this conference table were rarely good ones. More often than not, people died—sometimes a lot of people.
The mood today mirrored his own—tense, agitated, spoiling for a fight—and no matter how hard Ryan tried, he couldn’t seem to tamp it back. Most of the NSC assumed he was on edge because of the immediate danger of Iran having nuclear weapons. That was certainly a large part of it. They were aware American operatives inside Iran were about to try and turn an agent, but only Mary Pat knew of Jack Junior’s involvement.
Ryan studied the flat-screen that took up much of the wall at the end of the table. It displayed a large topographic map of Iran. Major Poteet’s tablet computer ran Pentagon encryption and, after some tweaking by the Air Force major serving as the IT specialist on watch, it was connected to the Situation Room system. Poteet used a stylus on the tablet to draw a white circle on the big screen around Mashhad and a smaller red circle around the 14th Tactical Air Base south of the city.
“We believe their radar defense systems reach out at least five hundred kilometers,” Poteet said. “Satellite surveillance shows Mirage F-1EQ fighters as well as Shahab-3 and several advanced antiaircraft missile systems are based at this location.” It wasn’t Poteet’s job to say whether or not an air incursion by the United States was feasible at this point, not with at least a dozen people who outranked him in the room. He gave the facts and let them ask questions, which they did. A lot.
Ryan waited for a lull and then looked at Mary Pat, who was seated halfway down the table next to the chairman of the joint chiefs.
“Remind me what NRO has flying over that part of the world.”
Foley answered without referring to her notes. “USA161 will pass over again in seven hours. Mentor 6, an Advanced Orion bird, covers that area as far as SIGINT goes.”
Advanced Orion, or Mentor, was a class of spy satellite run by the National Reconnaissance Office. Unlike the Keyhole satellites in low earth orbit, which overflew a given location twice a day, Mentors were parked at various spots approximately twenty-two thousand miles above the earth’s surface in geostationary orbit, gleaning signals intelligence such as telephone, radio, and television from an assigned location.
“We’re working on the feed from the last USA161 pass so we’re ready to do comparisons immediately.”
Ryan made a note in his folder. “Let’s get a couple more Sentinels overflying Mashhad.” He turned his gaze to Air Force Lieutenant General Jason Paul, chairman of the joint chiefs. His background was in intelligence. He was a steady man who thought more than he spoke, and Ryan greatly respected his opinion. “Any new glitches in command and control?”
“No, Mr. President,” General Paul said. “The Agency has logged several thousand hours in Iranian airspace. They suspect, but do not appear to know, the birds are up there.”
In 2011, Iran claimed to have wrested control of an RQ-170 Sentinel that had violated its airspace. In truth, there had been a glitch on the U.S. end. The stealth technology rendered the bird invisible to Iranian radar, and they’d been unaware of its presence until the computer glitch. Unfortunately, they had been prepared to exploit it once they were. They also claimed to have reverse-engineered an RQ-170 of their own called the Saegheh, or Thunderbolt, but had yet to demonstrate they could utilize their clone to any effect.
“Very well,” Ryan said. “I’d like pros and cons of both missile strikes and aircraft sorties within the hour. Let’s be ready to act when the KH 161 or one of the Sentinels gives us actionable pictures.” Ryan pushed away from the table. “Mary Pat, I’
d like to see you in the office.”
* * *
—
“How about the medication for the Iranian boy if his father flips?” Ryan asked, once they’d returned to the Oval. Both carried cups of coffee from the Navy mess.
Foley sat down in her customary spot on the couch. “From the sound of things, he’s suffering from cystic fibrosis, specifically, the F508del mutation. The illness is controllable with new drugs, but they are extremely expensive—to the tune of two hundred ninety thousand dollars a year here in the States. We’ll use PL110 to get the family in the country and to pay for the medication.”
Among other things, Public Law 110 was used to fund what was essentially the CIA’s version of the witness protection program. High-value assets could be given new identities, backgrounds, and, in the case of Ibrahim Yazdani, necessary medical treatment.
Ryan gave a low groan. Helping a gravely ill child was a laudable thing. The chance that he might have to withhold that help if the father didn’t play ball made his bones hurt.
“It’s up to them now,” he said. “So you’ve had a little time to mull. I want to hear a pro’s thoughts on Erik Dovzhenko.”
“Mommy dearest, Zahra Dovzhenko, was a KGB counterintelligence officer until the collapse of the USSR.”
“You ever go up against her?” Ryan asked. “Back in the day when you were in Moscow?”
Foley shook her head. “I heard plenty about her, though. She was a savvy operative. Azeri by birth. Had a bit of a reputation as a vindictive drunk. Her jacket says she was pretty eaten up with the job. Drank, fought, and screwed a lot when she was younger. Reputation of a cowboy. Volunteered for all sorts of dangerous stuff.”
Ryan chuckled. “Sounds like somebody else I know.”
“Hey,” Foley said, acting incredulous. “I was a nice drunk. And except for interludes with Ed, my knees could have held an aspirin in place, they were so firmly closed during that portion of my career.”
