Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  “I’ve got wounded men in bush clinics all over this goddam country. I can’t leave them.”

  “You’ve got two weeks. Use your helo. I’ll lend you mine for a day or two if you need it.” Jackie dropped the cigarette on the sopping ground, stared at it, at last put a toe of one boot on it. “Well?”

  Zulu stared at him. “You know the FAZ shelled us? Us? Because they hadn’t got paid, they said, and we’re millionaires! Eh? I lost three guys. Christ!” He wiped his face. “What’s the job in Libya?”

  “Board an unarmed merchant ship and kill the crew, bring the ship into Tripoli harbor. That’s it. The ship will be hit by a limpet mine; you pull up in speedboats, board, it’s yours. I’ll have the plans of the ship waiting for you in Gbadolite; that’s what you’ll need ten days or so to train on—we’ll lay out a mockup on the ground, you get to know it like your own flat. Then the day comes, it’s a walk.”

  “It can’t be that easy.”

  Jackie shrugged. “It’s a US ship. Civilian, but Navy control. Part of an exercise.”

  “Shit! No! Do you know what the—?” He stamped several steps, splashing mud and water. “Aw, shit! I can’t think.” He spun around. “Jackie, for God’s sake, let us go! We’re running on empty.”

  “There will be a missile on the ship. That’s what you’re after. A quarter of a million extra, dollars, when you get it into Tripoli harbor.”

  The FAZ soldiers began to stir a little. Two small black men had appeared among them, two men in ragged civilian clothes but carrying AKs. One talked animatedly to the FAZ captain, and then a sergeant started across the wet earth toward Zulu.

  “This ship is unarmed?” Zulu said.

  “I assure you.”

  “What’s to keep the US Navy from towing it away?”

  “It will be inside the twelve-mile line. The Libyans will have warships out, aircraft aloft. Much uproar in the press—US intervention in the Mediterranean, violation of Libya’s territorial waters—It will work, Zulu.”

  “But—a missile?”

  “Some sort of test. And how hard can it be? A small crew, some scientists. Your men will knock them over like birds.”

  The black sergeant stood near them. Neither man paid any attention. Zulu shivered. “I can’t think,” he muttered. “All right. But we’re out of this shithole as of now—we’re through.”

  Jackie turned on the sergeant. “Well?”

  The sergeant saluted, even though the message was for Zulu. “They find the track of the three white men, Colonel. The shenzi say they are twelve kilometers away, going west.”

  Zulu straightened. “Can we hunt them with the helo?”

  “Shenzi say no, Colonel. They going deeper into forest, keeping on small trails. Soon, gone altogether.”

  Zulu waved at his own men, only a handful, weary, dispirited. They began to gather up weapons and buckle equipment.

  “I have to get these American bastards,” Zulu said. “I have to go.”

  Jackie gave a half-salute. “See you in Gbadolite, then.” He gripped Zulu’s arm. “Two weeks, and you’ll be out of it.”

  Zulu stared at his tired men, at the reluctant FAZ. “If you dick me, Jackie, I’ll kill you.”

  Jackie seemed to find this charming and funny. He ran for his helo.

  Tehran, Iran.

  Yuri Efremov structured his day like a businessman’s, going each morning to an office in a pre-revolutionary building on Dedication Square. It gave him a feeling of normality to put on a Western suit and a white shirt and a really good tie, one of those he had bought in London or Rome when he was still based in Moscow. Then he would have his car brought around, and he and a bodyguard would be driven down to somewhere near the square, and he and the bodyguard would get out and walk the rest of the way to the office through crowds of men in less elegant suits and, often, no ties at all, and women in whatever politically correct covering the regime was enforcing just then. Efremov liked jostling through crowds and flower sellers and street vendors in the streets of Tehran, crossing the parks and construction sites and evidence of fifteen hundred years of imperial culture and fifteen years of religious attempts to redefine it.

  Various groups followed him, and he once wondered with a detached amusement if the sales of coffee and orange juice along certain streets actually improved when he chose to walk them. The agents of the Revolutionary Guard followed him; the agents of rival agencies stalked him; behind them were his own agents. And behind them? Americans, Russians, Israelis, Chinese?

  The office was a cross between a command center and a front company. The sign on the door said “Executive Security Services” in English and Arabic. His employees were rigorously screened. In Iran, rigorous screening usually meant qualifying for a certificate of religious devotion, but, to Efremov, it meant a deep background check and several interrogations. Americans still used the polygraph. Efremov had been interrogating men and women for thirty years. He didn’t need a machine. Anyway, if he had had one in Tehran, it wouldn’t work or the operator wouldn’t really know how to use it, or somebody on the Council of Fidelity and Truth would take it from him.

  Efremov had been a colonel in the old KGB. He had been good. But his loyalties hadn’t survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sometimes, now, he wondered why; it was possible, obviously, for somebody like him to make a lot of money in Moscow nowadays. Maybe he should have stayed. Except that money hadn’t been all of it. “Power” was the buzzword now; well, he had had power, but perhaps not as much as he had wanted. But that hadn’t been all of it, either. Some sense of betrayal. The title of an old book about communism—the god that failed. Well, yes. Except he hadn’t believed in God and he thought he hadn’t believed in communism, but how what people called capitalism revolted him! What slaves to moneymaking Americans were! He’d have done anything to avoid that. He’d seen it coming to Russia. A vision of the state where everything was for sale, as in fact somebody had written about ancient Rome. So he had defected to the Islamic state, where only some things were for sale and the rest were narrow-minded and rigid. Oddly, the Islamic state suited him, or suited him in his privileged position as a foreigner who could have a mistress and a private compound and a credit line at the Swiss embassy shop, so long as he kept bringing in better intelligence than the regular state agencies.

  Today, the sun was pale, as if the light were coming through a rainy window, and a haze of dust hung in the air. Downtown Tehran bustled, in that way that third-world cities do—incredible noise, stink, movement, but a lot of sense of waste motion. He supposed it was no worse than Moscow now, perhaps better, in fact—maintenance of buildings, for example, was actually quite good. He looked to the side, saw his car moving slowly along, the driver waving other cars and people out of the way. And everybody got out of the way, despite the hectic traffic.

  What I do not have, Efremov thought to himself, is the privilege of anonymity. It was a paradox: in his KGB days, he had had multiple identities, lived in the shadows, spent a large part of his life under cover. Here, he might as well have been a film star. One day, he knew, he would get sick of it and go underground again and surface somewhere completely different. Not yet, however. Just now, there was Anna. Anna the Complication, because she had been furnished as a perk, and he had fallen in love with her.

  Miss Rezai was waiting with her appointment book, as always. She was single and anxious to stay that way. Having a job that paid well was her security against a domination far more severe than that of theocratic Iran. Dark, plump, with heavy circles under her eyes, she was not attractive to him, but she was good at her job and she amused him with her strategies for escaping the sumptuary laws, above all a collection of silk scarves that went up, down, on the head, over the shoulders; now across the face, now over the hair, now on one arm—Miss Rezai’s scarves were like semaphores that signaled the religiosity of the atmosphere. They also told him at a glance what strangers might be in the office at any moment.

  “The
naval interview is due in twenty-five minutes,” she said. Not a religious zealot, he could tell; her Hermès knock-off was knotted over her left breast and worn like a shawl. She carried a tray of coffee into his office ahead of him, like a priestess carrying the censing tools of her trade. He sipped café nero while he went through the internet editions of the London Times and the Guardian. He had lived in England as a case officer for a while, had never got over the habit of English newspapers. Then he went to the briefing room and prepared it himself, setting out more coffee, several packs of good Western cigarettes, and replacing the Impressionist prints he preferred with scenes of naval battles. He had the conference table removed and replaced by two wingback armchairs facing each other at a slight, non-confrontational angle, with a low table between that did not intrude or block gestures between the two seats. Miss Rezai brought flowers with the same faintly gloomy enthusiasm that she brought to the rest of her job, implying that nothing this nice could last.

  Efremov’s guest arrived precisely on time. He was not in uniform, but his tailored blue blazer and khaki trousers spoke not only of his rank, but also of his foreign training. They shook hands like old friends.

  “Commander, may I record our meeting?”

  “Absolutely.” His confidence was surprising. Few men met Efremov with confidence.

  “I did not get much from our phone conversation beyond that you wanted to speak to me.”

  “Yes.” They spoke English, Efremov with a Russian accent, the commander with a distinct American one overlaid with Iranian. “It seemed best that nothing go by telephone. I have no idea if it was important, or even if it was a test. I waited, but no one said anything. I didn’t want to report it to our people. I’m with the Revolutionary Guard, now, and they do not trust any of us who went to school in America. And then, my wife had seen your, mm, companion at the Golestan mall—”

  Efremov had ceased to wonder how well known Anna had become. She did not hide, and he did not hide her. Anna was liberating and dangerous—perhaps the reason he had fallen in love.

  “I have the utmost respect for your counter-intelligence in the Guard,” Efremov said. It was unlikely that this polished man was some IRG provocateur, but anything was possible. Their CI branch was in fact a haven for brutish fanatics, and Efremov had no respect for them whatsoever.

  “Yes, well. Mmm.” His guest was looking above Efremov’s head, perhaps working too hard at looking above Efremov’s head. “Are you a devotee of naval history?” He was staring at a print showing the USS Constitution engaging HMS Guerrière.

  “In a small way. Indeed, I started my career in Russia as a naval officer, although I don’t spread that too widely.”

  “At sea?”

  “I was, and in fact I made a cruise in the 1970s that brought me quite close to here. We visited Bandar Abbas. Iran was so different then.” That was the line that Efremov had wanted to deliver. The bait is out.

  “It was, yes, it was. You know that I joined the Navy under the Shah.”

  “I assumed so. Though to end up a commander in the Revolutionary Guard—”

  “They need me—to drive their mini-subs. And keep them repaired. Otherwise they spit on me. And I on them, you understand. A few are sailors, the rest useless. Half of them want to die gloriously but can’t perform simple maintenance. The other half, well—”

  “I see, yes—” Efremov had his man. “More coffee?” Old school. Loyal enough, but nostalgic for the old days when women wore short skirts in the streets and scotch could be purchased in the stores. He had a very good record since the revolution, nonetheless. With his American education and Russian submarine school, he should have been unpromotable in the Guard. Clearly an exceptional fellow.

  “Are those really Dunhills?”

  “Do help yourself.”

  “As I was saying—I don’t know if what happened—what I am going to tell you about—was a test, because of my background, or a genuine offer. Anyway, almost two weeks ago now, a foreigner approached me in Bandar Abbas. He said he had taken the hydrofoil across from Dubai just to meet me. I thought he was Egyptian. Maybe he wasn’t. He charmed my wife, certainly; Egyptians have that rather—oily attack, you know? He brought me a bottle of scotch, which I have finished, and my wife a bottle of scent, which may last the rest of our lives. Allah be praised.” The last was delivered in a manner so devoid of humor it must have been meant as humor. The local sense of a joke still baffled Efremov. He smiled. The commander smiled back.

  “Should I have turned the gifts in?”

  “What do you want me to say? You know the law. On the other hand, are you asking if I care? I don’t.”

  “At any rate, he represented himself as the owner of a marine salvage operation. The Mediterranean, although maybe I assumed that; I don’t remember. He explained that he was expanding operations and meant to purchase several small submersibles and was looking to hire experienced men to maintain and pilot them.”

  Efremov sipped his coffee. Some of the confidence was bleeding out of the commander as he told the story.

  “I told him that I did not think I could get an exit visa. He brushed that off. He wanted to talk price. I told him that I was not available. He knew a fair amount about my situation—that was why I thought it might be a test, he seemed to have so much information about me. At first, he offered me a thousand dollars a week plus expenses, and a bonus when the first operation was completed.” He blushed. “You know what kind of money that represents in Iran! It was already too much—you understand? Then he volunteered that the first operation would be near Libya and asked if that would make it easier for me to get an exit visa.”

  “Sounds like a perfectly genuine offer.” Actually, it did not, but Efremov saw no reason to show interest. He thought he knew what was happening, now.

  “Wait, wait, you haven’t heard the rest. I refused. I claimed age. He pressed me hard and finally admitted that he needed me for just that one operation. Then my alarms went off, I can tell you! I said that I was not a mercenary. He began to offer more money. I sent him away. It got crazy—he was offering me one million dollars on completion! He got really angry when I asked him to leave. He suggested that someone had promised him that I would agree.” He bent forward toward Efremov. “Who? Who?” As if he were saying, You? You?

  Efremov shook his head. Someone close to this patriotic commander was an agent of another government—not Egypt, was his guess. That person had volunteered his name and had been wrong. Later, Efremov would enjoy ferreting out the traitor in the ranks of the fanatic Guard and holding him up to ridicule. No; forget the minor pleasure; turn him and have another agent inside the Guard.

  With a little luck, he could make this old-fashioned sailor a hero, get him promoted, and gain another ally in the supposedly impenetrable Guard at the same time. What was it the British called it? Shooting a left and a right.

  “You will excuse me for one minute, please.”

  “Of course.” The commander lit another Dunhill and poured more coffee. Efremov watched him for a moment from the next room. He didn’t fidget or look at his watch. He looked at the naval prints with evident interest. Efremov had seen his type before, in the Spetznaz, in the submarine fleet, in the American Navy. All too rare here.

  He returned with a black three-ring binder. The commander had no way of knowing that it had come with Efremov when he had fled Russia. He opened to a tab and began to turn pages of photographs for the commander. After half a dozen pages, his bushy brows went up theatrically and his finger descended like a falcon on one picture.

  “Sure?”

  “Yes, yes—he is younger here, but he is unmistakable. That smug look. He’s even fatter now.”

  Not Egyptian at all, but French, with an Algerian grandmother: André Malmaison, born in Algiers, moved to Nice with his parents when De Gaulle gave up Algeria. A teenage pied noir who had got involved early on with the diehards who had tried to assassinate De Gaulle but had never been prosecuted, bec
ause either he had given secret testimony against them or he had been a plant all along. At any rate, from age seventeen an agent of the old guard in the Deuxième Bureau, and tossed out on his ear when they were in the 1980s.

  And still, Efremov thought, working for one of them.

  Lascelles, he thought. He must be eighty now, and nuts. What the hell is he up to, wanting an expert on mini-submersibles in Libya?

  It might be a fine item to pass along to the friends in Libya.

  Zaire.

  He had lost the cell-phone signal. He thought the battery was gone, but they were out of range of a tower, anyway: the last message had told them to move to a location farther west and wait for an airdrop. No explanation. Airdrop, not extraction. He thought he knew what that meant.

  Alan had built a fire in the night and stood watch. Despite lack of food, Harry seemed better again this morning, although he was still in pain. Djalik said he was sure the lidless eye was blind, but he was pumping antibiotics into Harry to try to fight the infection that raged there.

  They heard the small aircraft engine vibrating against the trees, coming and going for some time. Alan built up the fire with everything he could find and threw damp grass and ferns on it to make smoke. They never saw the plane itself; the forest canopy was too thick. But something crashed through the canopy within yards of their position and dangled, far above them, from parachute cords. The aircraft noise receded. Each sway of the cords caused the package to dangle a little closer. Alan went up the tree, dizzyingly high, even though he wasn’t at the top, and cut it loose.

  It was better than Christmas, with food and medicine and weapons and maps and two radios. Two Berettas and a .22/20 gauge survival gun. A thousand dollars in South African gold coins. Batteries and a solar charger.

  They looked at the maps as they consumed an MRE to its last plastic pouch.

  The best map of the area, a TPC, had three small airfields marked on it. The first was twenty miles to the west, with the others spaced roughly thirty miles apart beyond it. They were, he assumed, potential pick-up points, but there was no message; that would come via radio.