by Jeff Rovin
Juan Urrutia sat beside Salehi in the rear two seats of the Lancair IV-P. During the two-and-a-half-hour flight the men had not spoken very much. The Cuban had offered his companion food and drink but that was all. After the prop aircraft had plopped to a landing, the door was opened, the pilot departed—he had not spoken at all, save for communication with the towers and with a contact at Lourdes—and humid heat, sea tinged but oppressive nonetheless, poured through the open door. Salehi had removed his turban upon takeoff and used it now to dab at the perspiration around his neck. He unbuckled his belt in preparation for deplaning but Urrutia remained and requested that Salehi do the same.
“Why?” the Iranian asked, instantly suspicious and with a sudden, sickening sense that he had been told a lie.
The Cuban held up his smartphone. “I am awaiting information.”
“Why not wait inside?” Salehi asked, indicating the low, aging terminal of José Martí International Airport, which was just a short walk away. Rooftop apparatus suggested air-conditioning.
“Because this is as far as my instructions take me—take us,” Urrutia clarified.
“Then how did you know about my trip to Delhi?”
“That is information, not directions, si?” Urrutia said.
Salehi was liking this less and less. He half-expected American commandos from Guantánamo to storm the tiny aircraft. He looked across the airfield. He saw jets with a variety of international names splashed across the sides. Any one of them could be Delhi-bound. Or it could be that none of them was. He had not even been told if he was to leave today or the next day, by public or private transportation. There were a great many questions he realized he should have asked before allowing himself to be hustled from a threat he had not even verified.
The men sat for over an hour. With each minute, Salehi was more convinced that this was a trap. He had already looked out at the field and what he could see of the countryside beyond. He saw a direction in which he might be able to run if necessary. The aircraft and terminal would afford him some protection from gunfire. He had watched the pilot during the flight, had a rudimentary idea of how to work the controls—which was the only reason he had not left the aircraft despite Urrutia’s admonitions. He did not think he could take off but he had an idea about how to use the small plane on land.
The men had finished the water they had, and the Iranian’s turban was soaked along with the rest of his clothing, when the Cuban’s phone finally beeped. It was a text message.
“There is a private jet coming for you in a quarter hour,” the Cuban told him.
“I am gratified,” Salehi replied. “Who is sending it?”
“I do not have that information,” Urrutia replied. “I only know, for the purpose of identification, that it is a Falcon 8X out of Trinidad.”
Again, that could be true … or it could be a cover story. Salehi knew that the jihadists worked in this region. There was a possible Yemen connection there.
Possible. Maybe. Once he was on that jet, he was helpless.
“I do not believe I can board without more information, more proof,” Salehi said.
“I see,” Urrutia replied. “Shall I pass that along?”
“Yes,” Salehi replied, convinced that—if necessary—he could overpower the Cuban and make a break along the eastern edge of the tarmac and over a low chain-link fence. He was already imagining making his way to the port and finding passage on some freighter, paying his way with manual labor.
“The proof you request will be forthcoming,” the Cuban replied.
“How soon?” Salehi asked.
“That I do not know,” Urrutia told him, letting his hand and the phone flop on his knee. “Before, I hope, we are entirely dehydrated. And my phone battery dies.”
The expected jet landed, taxied to a spot some fifty meters from the prop plane, and sat there. The white aircraft seemed, to Salehi, like an albatross—powerful and unknowable, save as an omen.
Urrutia’s phone signaled. It was a text.
“I cannot read this,” he said, showing it to Salehi.
“It is Persian,” Salehi said, then read, “‘My war requires leaders and men of courage, not dabblers.’”
The men waited. After a few moments the video function took over the phone. The image was murky, the sound full of extraneous scrapes and bumps. It seemed to show the interior of a van. Suddenly, a man was thrust into the picture.
“Do you know him?” Urrutia asked.
Salehi said nothing; he was too experienced to answer or to incriminate himself. This might still be a ploy of some kind, something to get him to confess—though it was seeming less and less like that by the moment. The man in the picture was Dr. Hafiz Akif and he looked frightened. He was breathing quite heavily; his neat black hair was disheveled and his tie was askew. It looked as though there were cuts on his cheek, perhaps from a blow, but it was too dark to be sure. The chemist was only visible from the chest up, though it seemed as if his arms were behind him—his hands bound, it appeared.
No words were spoken until the barrel of a .45 appeared in the image. The chemist’s eyes broadened unnaturally, his mouth opened as if to speak, but he did not have time to say anything before his forehead erupted in a spray of red. What remained of his head jerked back, taking the rest of his body with him.
“Madre de dios!” Urrutia cried, swallowing hard.
Salehi had seen executions before, and he was more numb than revolted. After another moment the text function returned and a new message appeared on the screen.
“‘He will be found, with evidence, by the Canadian authorities,’” Salehi read. “‘Working backwards, you will be found. The aircraft will wait just five minutes.’”
The Cuban looked at him. “Amigo,” he said before remembering to speak Russian. “I suggest you board.” Urrutia was perspiring from more than the heat now. He nodded anxiously toward the jet. “I think some of those guns may be there, too.”
“No,” the Iranian officer replied. “If I don’t go, they will let the Americans know where I am. Death would be preferable.”
In less than a minute, Ahmed Salehi had left his traveling companion behind him and was on his way across the tarmac to the private jet. He did not know who had betrayed the chemist—but, clearly, this was no longer an operation over which any one man in Tehran had control. As he neared the jet, Salehi thought back to his last mission, the one that had gone so wrong.
There was a stray thread, he realized—one that was openly hostile to his sponsor, Prosecutor Ali Younesi of the Special Court, Sazman-E Ettela’at Va Amniyat-E Mellie, Iran.
The powerful Majlis-e Khobregān-e Rahbari in Iran—the Assembly of Experts.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Assembly of Experts, Tehran, Iran
July 23, 6:00 a.m.
Ayatollah Ali Asqar Alami, senior Iranian cleric of the Khorasan Province, First Deputy Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, completed the Fajr, the morning prayer, with a heartfelt petition that Allah grant him His forgiveness and His mercy. With a grateful heart, he stepped from the prayer rug in the corner of his office.
Dressed modestly in a clean, loose white tunic that reached below his knees, and a large white kufi, the seventy-seven-year-old cleric went to the laptop on his desk. He had arrived, as was his habit, just before sunrise to read emails from the previous evening. Today, however, he had another reason for being here: to follow the news from Montreal.
He had not expected to read anything on the website of IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency. But judging from the photographs and video he had looked at before his prayer, the death of the Pakistani chemist was all over European and North American news services.
As he clicked through the news updates on Western sites, the cleric received the personal message he had been waiting for. It was from Dawoud, in Montreal, the sleeper who had been sent to the train station to collect the Pakistani chemist and then to the Hotel rue Stanley.
Second an
d third targets silent.
The gaunt, bearded figure switched back to Canada’s CTV website to await that report and to watch for any indication that Dawoud and his young brother Fazlur had escaped identification. From all he had heard, the two émigrés who worked as food deliverymen were valuable assets in Canada.
Yet valuable, too, he reflected, are those who would die in the war against infidels.
The news site erupted with an update about the strangulation death of the Pakistani mother and daughter in their hotel room.
An unfortunate necessity, the ayatollah thought. Learning of the chemist’s death, his daughter would have sought protection for herself and her child. She would have been compelled to reveal what she knew of those who had been involved in this enterprise. His own role in transferring information from Prosecutor Younesi to Yemen might be uncovered. Despite his failure to obtain nuclear weapons from the Russians, Younesi remained a powerful and vindictive figure and a personally ambitious one. He was also the kind of moderate who, achieving even greater power, might bow to the will of the secular public and seek regime change from within. The supreme leader did not see that but Alami and other members of the Assembly did. It was necessary to stop Younesi and replace him. To do that, however, his trusted puppet, Captain Ahmed Salehi, must be persuaded to help.
Though Akif and his family were Pakistani, they were also Muslim. The cleric was permitted to offer a prayer for the dead, which he did … while also thanking Allah that they had been silenced.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fort Belvoir North, Virginia
July 22, 9:49 p.m.
Chase Williams had sent the three Black Wasps to the rooms in the Officer’s Club that had been assigned them on the second floor. Though everyone was keen to know what was next, Williams had no idea how long they would be here—or where they would be going. It was best to rest while they could.
He remained in the club’s dining area. He knew he should be resting, too, but it was his job—just as it had been at Op-Center—to keep track of incoming intelligence during a crisis. Now, as then, unless he had a team in the field, information was sporadic and fragmented; the glue was usually guesswork, provided by a team of professionals who had been in similar situations. In that respect, Williams felt uniquely helpless at this moment. Ideas sparked ideas. Thoughts took him on tangents that had nothing to do with the mission.
The Intrepid. The old team. The new team, no member of which had ever been in the field. January Dow, who was jockeying for bigger things. He had to focus on the task at hand and, to do that, he needed something to focus on. The silence from the other services was deadly.
The news was on in the corner of his screen. CNN was reporting that a dead body had just been recovered in a van by the Montreal Police Department.
“Unconfirmed reports say that he was apparently murdered execution style, while diplomatic documents found on the body indicate that he was attached to—”
The phone chimed. It was Berry from a scrambled White House line. Williams punched in a code on his Bluetooth to give him access.
“Here, Matt.”
“Someone just killed a Pakistani chemist,” the DCS said.
“The homicide in Montreal?”
“That’s the one, and it’s too damn neat,” Berry said. “The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is checking the guy’s ID and also the plane ticket he used to fly from New York. Name’s Dr. Hafiz Akif. He’s a chemist.”
“Tortured?”
“No injuries reported … other than the top half of his head being gone. Assuming the dead man was involved, who would have known about it, known where he’d fled—and why did they serve him up?”
“Either it’s a ringer so we’ll chase our tails, or someone wants us to follow this guy backwards to whoever sponsored him or to Salehi.”
“Then why not turn the guy in for interrogation?” Berry asked. “Why shut him up?”
“Was he headed to see someone there?”
“We don’t know. And he was traveling with a young woman and a child, though they haven’t been found yet.”
“You don’t think we should go to Montreal, do you?”
“No,” Berry told him. “We’ve got an army of investigators already en route. And that’s not what the president wants you for, which brings me to another thing. Salehi didn’t travel with this guy.”
“That’s standard operating procedure, Matt.”
“Yeah, but we’re checking to see if they might have left from the same airport. You know, watch-your-back scenario.”
“Right. Assuming the plane ticket is legit and the dead man was involved in the attack.”
“Yeah. Dammit, this is all balled up.”
Berry covered the phone and talked to someone—Harward, it sounded like. Williams took a moment to step back and let everything percolate. Nothing obvious jumped out, nothing that suggested a motive. If this was legitimate, someone knew where the chemist was headed and met him there.
Berry got back on. “The van was leased just three hours ago to someone from Tobago. Security camera shows a young black man, clerk said he had a Jamaican-like accent—but the ID was false.”
“So there’s another player,” Williams said. “Someone who knew—or just found out—where this Akif was going.”
“I’d bet on the latter,” Berry said. “He had to hustle to get that van and pick Akif off—outside the Montréal Central train station, I’ve just been informed.”
“Headed where?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“You know what this feels like?” Williams said. “The same thing we had in Ukraine, with government forces versus rogue operators versus Russians.”
“Factions who were not on the same page.”
“Right,” Williams said. “Salehi had a reason for going after us. That’s why he posed for a picture with his handiwork, debt paid. But we don’t know that Iran sent him. Hell, we don’t know who there actually sponsored his nuke operation and whether that was a deep-cover mission.”
“Could be a pro- or antigovernment element,” Berry said. “Someone wants the theocracy hit, by us, so they sponsor Salehi in order to pin this on the ayatollahs. Could be.”
“Exactly.”
Berry laughed humorously. “We had that debate two hours ago.”
“And?”
“President’s leaning toward a wrist slap within their borders,” Berry said.
“You know,” Williams went on, “we also don’t know if Pakistan simply harbored Salehi or had an active hand—sanctuary at the embassy, a chemist, a lab.”
“Risky,” Berry said. “Especially if the hit on this guy proves that.”
“Risky, yes, but Islamabad’s in a corner,” Williams said. “Since we cut back our financial aid to Islamabad—you read the report from our consul general in Karachi? About how they were intercepting transfers from Tehran.”
“Honestly, no.”
“We’re talking so-called loans worth billions of rupees,” Williams said. “Tehran has to be getting more than embassy space for that. And there’s something else. Even if Iran and Pakistan did everything we said, none of them may have been involved in killing the chemist.”
“Because it was an execution,” Berry said.
“Yes.”
“Harward and I had the same reaction,” Berry said. “Over the top for anyone you mentioned. I suggested we look for someone who’s gonna be deaf for a few days, pulling the trigger in a closed van.”
Williams shook his head. “We’re not seeing something, Matt.”
“Something hiding in plain sight or something we haven’t found yet?”
Williams replied, “Neither. Give me a half hour. There’s a file I want to read.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fort Belvoir North, Virginia
July 22, 10:06 p.m.
No sooner had Williams hung up with Matt Berry than CNN reported on the discovery of two more bodies in a hotel.
&
nbsp; “They were found strangled in the hallway outside their room,” the reporter said. “Access is believed to have been through a stairwell, but that report is unconfirmed and now security footage has been released.”
The sense of something unfolding with many moving parts was now stronger than ever. It reminded Williams of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, when Lee Harvey Oswald was in the book depository shooting a president, then in a theater shooting a police officer, then being shot himself by Jack Ruby—
“But we don’t have decades to puzzle over this one,” he thought aloud.
What he was thinking earlier, about using outside experience to help map a current situation, was also stronger. He typed in a code to access a particular transcript.
“This whole thing is related to the sinking of the Nardis, which attaches it to everything around that operation in Anadyr, Russia,” he murmured. That left one avenue still unexplored.
He clicked on the file labeled Brigadier General Amir Ghasemi: Interview.
“Of course it says ‘Interview,’ not ‘interrogation,’” he said unhappily. The file belonged to January Dow and everything his self-appointed nemesis did had to skew toward nonaggressive language.
Williams had been present for the questioning, and he remembered the Iranian asylum-seeker ranging all over the geopolitical map. After the session had ended, no one in the room—which included January and Allen Kim, whose FBI facility was holding Ghasemi—could agree whether their guest was simply frightened and unfocused or whether he was being intentionally imprecise. A consensus still had not been reached.
January had moved Ghasemi to a safe residence somewhere in Virginia while the question of sanctuary was decided. There was no point interviewing him again, since these latest events had occurred after his defection. But often, during these sessions, people dropped truth among the lies to create a sense of verisimilitude; he knew he was not dealing with amateurs and that his every statement would be thoroughly investigated.
Scrolling through the transcript, looking for names and factions, Williams came to an exchange between himself and the Iranian officer: