by Davis Bunn
Marc started feeding another clip. He was mildly surprised to find everyone seemed comfortable with the guns, including Kitra and Rhana. “I think I’ll hold on to this for a little while.”
Schlomo dumped the rest of his supplies on the carpet. “We have radios, one for each team. Flash-bang grenades in case we go in loud. A satellite phone with scrambler and signal suppressor so no one can ride the call to our location. And these are stun guns, one for each team, to use instead of the pistols if you can. Less noise.” Schlomo picked up the final item, a pair of binoculars with an odd third eye set on top. “You know what this is?”
“I do,” Marc said. “Laser range finder and target identifier.”
“Perhaps you Americans not so bad with the training, huh?” Schlomo then ordered one team to go for supplies. Another was to shower and rest. The third monitored the garage through the rear window.
They sat and sweltered through the remaining afternoon. Twice Sandrine took calls on the satellite phone, which was bulked up from a scrambler and required two hands to hold. Both times she simply looked over and shook her head. Marc used the phone to call Walton, but the ambassador’s voice mail was full. He then called Ambassador Samantha Keller in Geneva on her private line. When her voice mail clicked on, Marc left a brief summary of what was happening, obscure enough that only she would know the details if someone else should happen upon the message. Then he moved to where Schlomo and Sandrine could hear clearly, and placed the third call.
Carter Dawes answered with, “E. T. phones home!”
Marc liked having a reason to grin. “Tell me you’ve had a talk with Samantha Keller.”
“Now, that is one tough lady. Wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley, not even with a Special Forces platoon as backup.”
“We’re definitely talking about the same woman.”
Carter asked, “Where are you calling from?”
“The beautiful resort city of Rafah. Five-star accommodations, world-class cuisine. You should join us.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I assume you’re phoning because you need help?”
Marc sketched out what he had in mind. Schlomo and Sandrine listened intently, but found no reason to correct him.
Carter said, “This is pretty much what I already heard. Things are moving ahead at this end.”
“How much more time do you need?”
“Couple of hours max. You phone, we deliver. Meals on wheels. Hot and now.”
Marc cut the connection and said, “We’re good to go.”
Schlomo asked, “You can trust this man?”
“He’s served as backup in the past. And saved my life.”
“I am asking only because the lives of a million Israelis hang in the balance.”
“He will do his job,” Marc assured the man.
They prepared a meal from tins cooked over a single electric burner and Schlomo’s butane stove. They first boiled the utensils, plates, and mugs that came with the place. The meal wasn’t bad—beans and canned mashed potatoes and tuna fish and crackers, and fruit cocktail for dessert. Even Rhana ate with a good appetite.
Amin smiled knowingly as Rhana scraped her spoon about the metal plate. “So I am hungry,” she said crossly. “So arrest me.”
“I mean no disrespect, madame,” Amin said.
“Famished, actually.” Rhana reached for more saltines. “I am promising myself a weekend at the Ritz when this is done.”
Kitra asked, “Can I come?”
“My dear, I would have it no other way. The question is, do we allow your young man to join us?”
Kitra looked across the circle to where Marc leaned against the side wall. “Only if he is very good.”
Rhana sniffed. “Is that even possible?”
The room’s furnishings were limited to a linoleum-topped table, two folding chairs, and a variety of musty-smelling cushions. Everyone but Rhana sat cross-legged on the floor. The second chair was stationed by the window, where Sandrine was on duty. She kept the satellite phone on the chair and ate standing up, the binoculars dangling from her neck.
Marc said to Rhana, “Tell me about the man we’re up against.”
“I have told you everything I know about Hesam al-Farouz—which is very little indeed.”
Schlomo said, “Tell us again how you met.”
She set her plate on the narrow table and replied, “Through Sylvan Gollet.”
Marc explained for Sandrine, “The Geneva dealer they murdered.”
“The poor man actually bragged about it.” Rhana held out her mug for more tea. “How one of my countrymen had become his best client. Sylvan described how he was being paid to wash money, and was I interested. I knew I had finally found the enemy. Or rather, that the enemy had found me.”
“Sylvan Gollet might have been a counterfeiter and a gambler,” Marc said. “But he wouldn’t have told you unless Hesam had first checked you out.”
“We danced around for almost a year,” Rhana went on. “I pretended I was not especially interested. All this was by throwaway phones. I used dozens. I insisted upon the secrecy and the slowness. It drew him in. Finally we reached an agreement.”
“Doing what, exactly?” Schlomo asked.
“Trading high-end art from dealer to dealer,” Marc said. “Skimming millions from each transaction.”
“No one knows how much a particular item is worth,” Rhana said. “It was a good plan.”
“But these are small sums,” Sandrine protested. “A few million means nothing to Iran.”
“Not the country,” Amin corrected. “This was never about overcoming the embargo. They wanted a slush fund. Out of the country, hidden from almost everyone. Only a very select few would ever know it existed.”
Marc said, “Tell me something new about Hesam. Something I don’t already know. Some characteristic you recognize from other people like him.”
Rhana’s eyes flashed, and she nodded. “Hesam and his kind, they love to lie. He absolutely lives for it. Cheating and lying, these are traits to take pride in.”
“Hesam is the dark face of Persia,” Amin agreed. “He and his kind have always been there. They thrive in the shadows of my country. And these days, there are very many shadows.”
“You in the West listen to the Iranian negotiators make promises about their nuclear program,” Rhana said. “Then you are shocked when everything they say turns out to be lies. What you don’t know is how people like Hesam, they think less of you because you trusted them in the first place.”
“Even desiring the truth is a sign of weakness for such as these,” Amin put in.
“Honesty is some disease that thrives in the slums, among the peasants,” Rhana said, shaking her head. “This trust you value, to them it is a tool to use against their enemies.”
Amin and Rhana wore the same expression now, a taut mask of holding back their turmoil and rage. Amin went on, “Over the past three decades, more than six million of my countrymen have fled their homeland. Six million tragic tales. Christian believers in Iran have either left or perished. All of them. And millions more have been arrested and beaten and made to vanish. This is the price we pay for our shadow princes. This is why they must be brought down.”
As Marc listened and nodded with the others, his mind was caught by a different thought. The scene before him underwent a remarkable shift, as though he had been abruptly granted the ability to see it through a different lens. What he saw was a disparate group from supposedly warring communities. Messianic Jew and Israeli commando and two Persian refugees and an American intelligence agent. Sitting in harmony. Aimed at the same goal. And strengthened as a result.
Kitra asked, “What does Hesam personally mean to gain from this?”
“That is simple enough,” Rhana said. “Empire. He and his kind want to rule the Middle East.”
The lowering sun abruptly turned their lone window frosted and opaque. Marc was on duty and found himself blinded trying to see throu
gh the glare. “We can’t see the target until the sun goes down. I’m going to make a recce,” he told them.
He expected a dozen arguments, but all Schlomo said was, “Once around the perimeter. Then return and another will go.”
Rhana was already on her feet and moving. “I’m coming with you. Less noticeable if your woman is trailing a few steps behind.”
The stables fronted a central courtyard. Two children played by a dry water trough, watched over by a black-robed woman who ignored them entirely. They passed the main office, where a bearded manager eyed them through his cigarette smoke and grunted in response to Rhana’s salaam.
They joined the pedestrians crowding the edges of a busy road and turned right. The air was thick with odors, some of them even pleasant. At Rhana’s insistence, they moved with the flow, holding to the main road, until they reached a juncture and could swing back toward the garage.
She asked from behind him, “Why do you seem so upset?”
He waved at the sun that bladed its rays over the rooftops. “I should have thought of this.”
“What, the sunset?” She was genuinely astonished. “It is nothing.”
“We’ve lost sight of our target. That’s hardly nothing.”
“You are exhausted. You carry burdens. The wisest man in the world overlooks things.”
“It’s a mistake. If I missed this, what else have I overlooked?” Marc rubbed his eyes. He had been able to ignore his fatigue until that moment. “Those people in there rely on me to keep them safe. In the field, mistakes cost lives.”
“It is not a mistake. A mistake is a wrong move. This is . . .”
She was close enough that Marc was able to hear the swift intake of breath. He looked over his shoulder and saw the tightening of her features. “What do you see?”
She turned slightly, staring down at a child who drew with a stick in the dust. “He is here.”
Marc’s fatigue vanished in an adrenaline rush. “Hesam?”
“Do not look. Stay as you are.” She smiled at something the child said. “Give this little one a coin. There.” She spoke to the child in musical Arabic, then led Marc farther down the rutted lane. “Now lift your hand to my kerchief. Do not drape your arm upon my shoulders. Arabs do not show the opposite sex such affection in public. You are adjusting my headscarf. Yes. Now look over my shoulder.”
“You would make an excellent spy.”
“Impossible. This terrifies me. You see him?”
Marc stared into the sun’s blazing orb. “All I see is a silhouette. One of many.”
“But it is him. Come, we must walk.”
Marc tugged on her kerchief a final time. The sharp shadow of a tall man strode down a side lane toward the garage’s entrance. “You’re certain?”
“One hundred percent.” Her racing heart gave a faint drumbeat to her words. “The walk. The height. The arrogance. It is him.”
“Go get Schlomo.” Then he heard it, a faint trace of noise that rose above the surrounding din. “Wait.”
She started to speak, then heard it also. Large trucks rumbled and halted, their brakes squealing, then rumbled again. Maneuvering down tight lanes.
“Alert the others,” Marc ordered. He glanced back again, just in time to see Hesam enter the garage. “The containers have arrived.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m staying on watch,” Marc replied. “The target’s made.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Hesam al-Farouz did not stay in the garage very long. He emerged and started back down the same road Marc and Rhana had taken. Marc followed at a distance, slipping from shadow to lengthening shadow.
Hesam did not fit the town. Even in silhouette he cut an alien form. He strode too confidently. He ignored everyone with a lifetime’s ease. The only people he noticed were his guards. Two in front, three behind. The five bodyguards strutted like junkyard dogs. Their size did not matter. Their guns and their menace stretched them into giants.
This smugglers’ town knew when to go blind. The six aliens walked the rutted streets alone. Everyone else melted into the shadows.
Marc tracked them at a cautious angle. He kept his head low and his face averted. He moved one street over, cut back, angled off in the other direction. He raced ahead, then waited for them to catch up. They were not hard to monitor. They made no attempt to use cover. Here in this dusty realm they considered themselves princes.
The trucks rumbled in, four or five minutes apart. Marc scaled a wall and raced across a rooftop, creeping to the edge, studying the quarry until he understood. Hesam was a fidgeter. The man hated inaction. The wait worked on his nerves like acid. Marc recognized the type. He had known several otherwise good agents wash out because the empty hours ate at them. Just like Hesam.
Marc watched him talk on his cellphone. Hesam waved his arm in a grandiose gesture. Marc knew he was just struggling to fill the minutes. Hesam was addicted to the action.
The sun dipped below the horizon. The next truck’s headlights caught him like a spotlight. Marc drew back from the edge, crawled across the roof, and returned to the ground. He slipped down an alley, timing it so he would emerge just as the rear trio of trucks passed by. The five guards were a problem. He had to find some way to improve the odds.
Marc was still watching twenty minutes later when Hesam returned to the garage. The bodyguards were not identical in the sense of body mass, but Marc thought of them as the alien quintuplet. Two were solid six-footers with catlike grace. Another was very small, maybe five-foot-three, and carried himself like a snake with legs. Marc assumed his weapon of choice would be the narrow blade. The other two were fireplugs, low to the ground and stone-solid. He was trying to figure out how to take one when Schlomo slipped up beside him. “Where is our shadow prince?”
“He just went back inside.”
They were positioned a block away, hidden by the dusk and the absence of streetlights. The surrounding businesses were shutting down. The streets emptied at a rapid pace, as though the daytime dwellers were racing the night. The traffic diminished. Car windows rolled down as the day cooled. The vehicles were slowed by the street traders, who wearily pushed their handcarts home, and by the massive truck that blocked the T-junction at the end of the road. Marc sat on an empty fruit crate, hiding in plain sight. His face was partly masked by sunglasses and a shapeless hat. Schlomo slouched by a rubbish dump that stank of rotten vegetables. “Who are the ones that do not off-load?”
“Hesam’s bodyguards. Five in all. Two are inside with the man himself.”
“We should take one.”
“I’ve been watching for that. I haven’t seen an opening. They’re pros.”
Schlomo huffed his unconcern. “Here comes another truck.”
The trucks were timed so only one at a time was stationed in front of the garage. The narrow lanes held no room for the others. “They must be holding the others outside the city.” Another thing Marc had failed to consider. “We could have taken them out there.”
“And find them how, precisely? We cannot do regular flyovers, remember?”
Marc watched the stationary truck leave and the next roll in. “I should have thought of this.”
“Now you are being a general.” Schlomo did not mean it as a compliment. “We would have no guarantee of hitting the right trucks. We could miss part of the shipment entirely. Our plan is a good one. So long as your friend does his job.”
“Carter Dawes will deliver.” Marc rose from his studied nonchalance and scanned the streets. The building between them contained an electronics shop and a café. Through the café’s front window Marc saw a wall-mounted television blaring some Arabic news channel. A wizened man exited the business next door, locked the entry, and drew metal security blinds down with a loud clatter. The café was now the only business open on the street.
Schlomo saw his expression in the passing headlights. “What is it now?”
“I am worried about collater
al damage.”
“It should be minimum. That is the beauty of your plan.”
Marc knew there was no good in fretting. Nor anything to be gained by arguing with Schlomo.
The idea hit him just as lights came on around the garage’s perimeter. Both loading bays were open, and the street around the parked truck was a hive of activity. Two men operated forklifts. Another half dozen scurried back and forth with hand dollies. Four others used rusted wheelbarrows, carting one canister inside at a time.
“So many canisters,” Schlomo growled.
Marc didn’t respond. He watched the truck off-load while wrestling with his idea. Each truck held a pair of blowers the size of three washing machines, with an ugly snout at one end and a wide, fan-driven aperture at the other. The canisters were lashed to the truck’s walls with canvas belts. Each was about four feet tall and eighteen inches wide, capped with expandable nozzles.
Marc decided he had taken the plan as far as he could. He turned to Schlomo and outlined what he had in mind. The Israeli soldier was so worried over the sight of the canisters glinting in the garage’s security lights that it took a few moments for Marc’s words to register. Finally it dawned on him what he was hearing. He turned to Marc and said, “Go through this again.”
Marc did so, not minding in the least the need to repeat things. It helped solidify the plan in his own head.
Schlomo pursed his lips. “You come up with this when?”
“Right here, right now. What do you think?”
The soldier allowed his grin to surface. “I am thinking you will make a very good general. A general to command the generals.” He clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Come. It is time to make the world go bang.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Back in the stables, Marc repeated to the team his idea, refining the plan as he did so, with Schlomo inserting details of his own as appropriate. Then they waited while Sandrine called their headquarters and described it. He liked how her voice remained calm and flat, keeping her emotions and any possible distractions hidden down deep, even a broken heart. He felt Kitra’s gaze on him, and knew she was thinking the same thing. It was good to feel this connection, operating far below the level of thought.