by Tom Avito
CHAPTER 13
Andimeshk (Iran), 01/15/2012 1.50 P.M.
-“The right time” –
He managed to call Sara almost every day, however those conversations weren’t but a feeble palliative for his insatiable homesickness, like trying to feed a lion with mints. He felt love rise inside him like a high tide, taking over the land one second after the next, oblivious to what lies ahead. Yet he knew that he was constantly at risk of having to leave the beach and finding himself drowning in the deep, dark waters of failure.
Professor Wharz only left the underground lab for lunch, his rare visits to his son could never be determined in advance. They’d reached an exhausting impasse and his perplexities were growing stronger; in that time, he’d only managed to plan the exchange of a few short messages, but still he had to stick to the instructions he’d received and ignore any instinct to act differently. Vestwood had been clear: all he had to do was act as a messenger towards Wharz.
After the first contact, he’d been studying to find a new place where to exchange the messages: continuing to take this risk under the watchful eyes of his jailers was like tickling a sleeping pitbull.
In a hyper-technological world, he was using century-old methods to communicate with a physicist and CNR scientist. Yet it was the only method that guaranteed sufficient confidentiality, no possibilities to intercept it, no possibilities to recover the information sent once it had been destroyed. In the dining hall’s restroom he found a small empty space between the toilet’s drain and the marble lining, which was ideal for hiding a small note if it was folded up and plastered with gum into the wall. It was much safer and distant from prying eyes. After all, using the restroom before lunch was a normal behavior, and something usual and believable is always the best cover.
In one of his last messages, Wharz had revealed that he was working on “germanene filters”. Nino didn’t know what they were exactly and what they could be used for, but he’d read about the revolutionary material that was germanene and its astonishing physical characteristics. As per the procedure, he’d passed the information onto the mother house and was awaiting new instructions. He guessed that the work had to do with technical details relating to the uranium 235 enrichment procedures that aimed to obtain weapon grade fissile material. His lack of even the slightest notions on the subject made him uncomfortable; he was annoyed at not being able to be more than a message bearer for the two speakers, it wasn’t in his nature. The message had to have a specific, crucial meaning and he wished he could understand it, but he surely couldn’t afford to ask or look for information, the VEVAK [10] would be knocking at his door before he’d even thought about it.
He was a messenger, just a messenger, he kept repeating to himself. As if he could have forgotten.
He’d already checked, of course, but as he walked in he instinctively looked up, towards the ceiling and the corners from which the whole restroom was visible. Nothing caught his attention, no cables or devices that could indicate the presence of a camera or another surveillance tool. The cold light of the spotlights bounced on the reflecting surfaces and on the white marble; the wide room looked even larger due to the perspective created by the mirrors. He was alone. He stepped into the central stall and locked himself in. He heard the main door open and close quickly, with a dull thud, and he froze. Slow footsteps sounded in the restroom, interrupted by two coughs, then a strong flow of water from the tap in one of the sinks. His tension rose as he waited in silence. When the door opened and closed again, he waited for a few more seconds then bent down, pretending to tie his shoe, to look as far as he could and make sure that he was alone. His right hand felt the wall for the crevice between the marble and the drain. The soft gum came off under the light pressure of his fingers. He removed it from the small crack and took out its content.
The usual tiny handwriting on a creased rectangle of white paper: “They’re taking me to see Nicholas tomorrow night. Help us! I can’t slow things down anymore.”
He realized this could mark the end of the impasse. He ripped up the message and tossed it into the toilet bowl.
“This is it!” He said to himself.
As he left the restroom he realized that he was almost running, so he took a few deep breaths and slowed down.
Once back at the residence, he repeated the procedure to send the message. It took him a while to send the information via satellite as the encrypting system was complex and his excitement didn’t make things easier. Bagheli had been by his side for the whole morning and was going to return to the office in the afternoon. He thought it over: he had more important tasks than locking himself in a room with the Minotaur talking about pipes and tanks. He instinctively grabbed his jacket and walked outside, he knew where to go, but he also realized that he was neglecting an important aspect: his own safety.
He took the path that sided the pool, zipped up his down jacket as far as it would go and adjusted his sand-colored wool cap, pulling it down to his eyebrows. It was a cold afternoon and the wind hadn’t stopped blowing strong for a few days. He crossed the last bush that delimited the garden, avoiding the reception so that the front desk staff wouldn’t see him leaving. Armed guards surveilled the outer border of the complex, patrolling every side of the perimeter. The only positive thing he’d noticed was that at every passage they left a tiny stretch unguarded. He waited behind the small building that held the electric generator and saw the trooper walk by twenty meters away. Looking around to see whether anyone had been made suspicious by his movements, he waited for the guard to be twice as far away then he quietly and slowly came out into the open, heading towards the rocky dunes that limited the sight to the west. For the first thirty meters he moved carefully behind the guard, then he leaped forward to trespass the hill and hide behind it. Based on Gordon’s directions, the archaeological site had to be just a few kilometers away. The sky was clear and the light was good, but all he could see in that direction, all the way to the horizon, was a stretch of dirt and rocks. He ran for a few hundred meters, turning back every once in a while to check whether someone was after him.
“Still nothing. Damn it!”
He couldn’t have gotten the wrong direction.
Doubt washed over him, tension and growing despair overlapping in his mind. All he could hear was the whistling wind and the sound of his own quick rhythmic steps on the gravelly ground. He pushed forward, going with his instinct. All of a sudden he slowed down, somewhat reassured, when he caught sight of the old low brick building. It was built close to the valley that concealed the border of a small plain where the excavation works were taking place. He silently climbed down the steep hillside behind the old shack and peeked beyond it, catching his breath to recover from the effort of running all the way there, and to regain clarity. In that exact moment, a few blended voices rose from one of the enormous excavation sites, which were luckily far away. Realizing he could remain out of their field of vision, at the same time he knew without doubt that he was not alone.
The excavation site was delimited and crossed by a grid of colored tape on poles that created a series of giant chess boards, one next to the other. Treading lightly he turned the corner and approached the old, unhinged wooden door, trying to peek inside. A man’s silhouette quickly walked by in the darkness, he thought it might have been Gordon but he couldn’t be sure. He moved even closer to the half-open door.
A hand, swift and strong, grabbed his throat and dragged him forward. He felt as if his carotid and trachea were being pulled out of his body, so much so that he tried to give in to the movement by dropping to the ground. A knee pressed down on his spine, as one hand twisted his arm behind his back and the other grabbed his hair and pulled his head back. He’d been neutralized in less than three seconds, without even having the time to realize who or what had hit him. Then the grasp loosened and he was able to bend his head forward, resting his forehead on the dusty floor.
“Nino! One more second and I’d have twisted yo
ur head off like a lightbulb,” Gordon said, still pressing a knee on his back.
He coughed loudly and tried to breathe in, but could only manage to wheeze before he was seized by violent retching. A result not only of the strong grip on his esophagus, but of the sudden fear too.
“Calm down. Try to breathe slowly, control yourself!” The Englishman went on, kneeling by his side.
He turned on his side and curled up in fetal position; his throat was exploding in pain. He tried to control his breath and managed to speak one word:
“Wharz.”
“Wharz what?” Gordon asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He coughed again, then answered in a feeble and breaking voice: “Tomorrow night, they’re taking him to his son.”
“Have you warned the house?” Gordon asked.
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have come here. It was foolish of you!”
“Go to hell!” Nino exclaimed, bent forward, a hand on his swollen, aching throat.
“I’ve gone there. They kicked me out,” Gordon replied, putting an arm around his chest to help him stand up.
“What do we do now?”
“You go back to the residence and wait for new directions. Make sure no one sees you, they cannot know that you came here. Don’t worry about me, I’ll see you again soon.”
Following his careless initiative, he followed directions and went back home, managing to elude surveillance again. He cut through the bushes and headed towards his apartment. Inside the complex he ran into a few people who were walking around, deep in conversation: they were high officers in the oil company and important businessmen, he recognized one of the executives he’d seen in the office halls. He felt safe at last.
“It’s all normal. Now I’m just one of the guests strolling through the gardens,” he thought confidently, but was immediately proven wrong by a well-know voice.
“Where have you been, Mr. Avito? I’ve been looking for you for an hour!” The Minotaur exclaimed, alarmed, as he approached his apartment.
“Bagheli, I went out for a walk. What happened in here?” Nino asked, pointing towards the door of his apartment, which was wide open, and trying to stifle his worries.
“I thought something had happened to you and I gave the order to open your apartment. Where have you been?”
“I told you, Bagheli, I went for a walk between the pool and the gardens, enjoying your fresh wind mixed with the fumes from the refining process.”
“I’ve asked you not to move too far from your room, it could be very dangerous. The guards outside are authorized to shoot if they aren’t able to recognize someone,” Bagheli warned him.
Shivers ran down his spine upon hearing those words, because he knew that the Minotaur wasn’t bluffing at all. The sentinels wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot if they’d seen an unidentified man running away from the residence. Too late, he’d done the deed, luckily he was still in one piece and could only hope to remain so.
“I already told you that I took a walk in the gardens, I never left the residence.”
“Come, I’ll lead you to the office,” Bagheli concluded, looking suspicious.
He was concerned, afraid that they’d discovered something inside his apartment. They certainly didn’t need an excuse to search his lodging; they could access it at any time and the residence staff did so daily. They’d certainly gone through every inch of it before. However, that dramatic scene, with Bagheli waiting on the threshold and the door wide open, had had the martial taste of a final judgement.
CHAPTER 14
Al-ʿAmārah (Iraq), 01/16/2012 10:45 P.M.
-“Black Scorpion” –
The captain ordered them to climb in and the Special Air Service men took their places inside the two Blackhawk stealth helicopters that had been waiting in the makeshift helipads close by. The engines were running and the long blades cut through the night air. The full moon lit up the darkness, spreading a thick blue shroud over everything and everyone. Captain Chris Shephard’s face was tense: he’d rather had waited for the new moon, when darkness would have been their accomplice and helped their mission, instead he had to settle for that single shot.
They were all anxious to take action, they’d been preparing and training for exactly this moment for days. Every one of them had practiced the part over and over again, hundreds of times, until every movement, every gesture had become instinctive and natural, each man blending in with the rest of the platoon. The fifteen men of the Blue Troop were divided into two squads, all of them were under his command; he was only 34 years old but he was the oldest and most experienced, he felt the weight of his young soldiers’ lives on his shoulders. The military base was northeast of the town of Al-ʿAmārah, in Southern Iraq, fifty kilometers from the Iranian border. Units from the special forces of several NATO countries were cohabiting there, taking turns in specific short missions. The aircrafts lifted twenty meters into the air. The wind created by the powerful rotors whipped the ground, lifting a big cloud of dust that looked charcoal-black in the darkness. In formation they headed east and disappeared silently like bats in the night sky.
****
Nino was in his apartment, unable to stand still. Tension was eating at him, his thoughts fixed on the last message he’d received from the house. His day had been endless and exhausting. Every afternoon he’d hurried back to his apartment, plugged the earphones into the radio, tuned to the usual frequency. After the three repetitions of the word Ermes, he kept hearing the same numbers. His extraordinary memory had allowed him to learn the string of numbers by heart since looking it up for the first time, he knew the meaning. Since the day before they’d been telling him: “Operation over, return.”
He should have felt gratified, relieved - he’d fulfilled his task, it was over. He could go back to Sara and devote his time to preparing for fatherhood. He had nothing to blame himself for, he had done all he’d been asked to, working to the best of his abilities. He could ease his conscience. Yet, the uncertainty about Alexander’s and young Nicholas’s fate anguished him. In all likelihood, at that time, they were being held captive inside the walls of the villa that was just a few hundred meters away, scared and doubtful about their future.
Why did the CIIS command keep repeating that it was over and that he had to return home?
****
Captain Shephard realized that they were trespassing the border with Iran when the helicopter began flying slower and at a lower height, achieving the optimal speed for silenced flight. Shortly after, the pilot’s clear voice boomed inside the headphones worn by every member of the team:
“Black Scorpion ONE - 20 minutes to target”.
The men’s eyes remained fixed and focused, barely acknowledging the message with a blink. Not a word nor a sign, they breathed and thought as a single organism. The captain looked at his watch and saw that they were perfectly on schedule, he hoped he’d be able to say the same at the end of the operation too.
The Blue platoon was specialized in CQB operations [11] and indoor selective shooting, it was the team of the 22nd SAS Regiment that dealt with anti-terrorist actions and hostage rescue. They were professionals, among the most prepared and prized in the world.
The voice boomed in the headphones again:
“Black Scorpion ONE - prepare, 15 minutes to target.”
The air became dense, the silenced engines sounded grave and thick inside the nacelle. The seven men in black tactical gear checked their guns, turned on their state-of-the-art night vision devices, preparing their operation for the last time, and got ready. Four of them plus the captain were equipped with M4 submachine guns, while a sniper with a silenced L96A1 high-powered rifle had the duty to cover for his mates in the open. They’d be the first to touch land and take action. Captain Shephard, the eighth man in the platoon, checked his equipment. He verified the radio’s operation, requesting confirmations from his men who replied, one by one, with a simple “Affirmative”.
Black Scorpion TWO was right behind them, fifty meters away, and it was going to land as soon as the men in team ONE had taken position. The last seven men would split up, three with the team that would raid the building, and four with the cover team.
The pilot’s altered voice unexpectedly broke the silence and caught the attention of every man on board. It was too soon for an update on their timeframe.
“Black Scorpion TWO forced to land in hostile territory! Mechanical failure.”
Unexpected difficulties were always around the corner, the trap set up by fate had been most unfortunate, its consequences disastrous.
“Put me in contact with the command, immediately!” Captain Shephard said to the pilot through the internal radio connection.
“Black Scorpion ONE to Snow White. Roger.”
“Snow White here, it didn’t work out, Black Scorpion ONE. Head back. Roger.”
The peremptory voice coming from the command concealed disappointment for their failure.
The captain examined his boys’ faces for a few moments. He saw in their eyes the validation he needed. Decisively and tartly, he opened the communication again:
“Black Scorpion ONE to Snow White. We request authorization to proceed, it’s our only chance. We are able to complete the journey. Roger.”
A few seconds went by without an answer.
“Snow White, do you receive? Roger,” the captain asked.