The Shield of Darius

by Allen Kent

  “The wine’s very good,” he said from the doorway and she spun involuntarily, backing against the open pane.

  As he looked at her his pleasant smile slowly faded to expressionless concentration. He took a quick step back into the living room, glanced toward the front door, then came back again to bar the door to the bedroom.

  “What’s going on?” he said, looking at the unlatched window.

  “It was just getting stuffy. I needed a little fresh air.”

  “Why are we here,” he said quietly, lifting and turning his head slightly like a stag testing the breeze.

  Kate forced a smile and relaxed away from the window. “You startled me….”

  “Who did you expect...?”

  “I didn’t expect anyone. You knew I was changing and I heard you say you were in the kitchen....”

  “Hmmm,” he nodded, still alert to the rest of the cottage. “You were changing to give me a hard on.” He studied the round circles of her breasts accentuated by the tightness of her shirt and sniffed, shaking his head in disgust. “Come over here. We’re leaving and we’re going out the door with you in front of me.”

  Kate tried a confused smile. “I don’t understand what’s happening here – why you’re so upset with me all of a sudden. Have I done something?”

  Falen took a step back into the living room. “Just come. There’s something going on here that….” He paused and reached unsteadily for the door frame, looking down into the empty glass in his hand. When he looked up, the expressionless mask had broken and his eyes reflected a knowing resignation. Suddenly his knees buckled, and he sat heavily in the doorway, the glass shattering in front of him. He looked up at her, trying to focus.

  “Why?” he asked, the word stumbling out in a drunken slur.

  “Because you’re a lying, murdering bastard,” she sobbed, and Christopher Falen pitched forward into unconsciousness.

  He was lying on his stomach with his mouth gaping in long, rumbling breaths when she stepped over him with her case and checked the living room quickly for any sign of her presence. She could not see the fisherman when she left the cottage, and drove quickly through Grassington and across the River Wharf, turning south toward Skipton.

  It was Monday, wash day, and the banks and shops closed at noon. The English called it “half closing day” and the mornings were always especially hectic. She drove past the small stone castle on the north end of the village of Skipton and found the market square with its bustling train and bus stations teaming with people, all hurrying to finish their business before noon. Kate hunched forward over the wheel of the Ford, certain that each was watching her, knew where she had come from and what she had done. She wondered if she should have waited until afternoon, until the shops closed and the village slowed to the pace of a Sunday afternoon. Then she realized that Peter Koka, by a stroke of luck or extraordinary planning, had placed her on the village square at the one time no one would notice the white Ford or its attractive driver in the harried mix.

  She turned onto highway 65 toward the Ribblesdale district without anyone paying particular attention, wondering what she would do now that Ben might not want her back, and she was an accessory to murder.

  THIRTY-SIX

  In the bustling sprawl of London’s Victoria Station, Ben Sager purchased a bus ticket to Gatwick Airport and settled onto a hard plastic seat in a vacant corner to await the departure. He’d been traveling as Benjamin Koka for ten days and was tired of conversation, of struggling with questions from chatty passengers for which he had no answers. He boarded the bus early, found a window seat near the front of the coach, and leaned against the window with his eyes closed, hoping that whoever sat beside him would respect a sleeping passenger. At precisely 10:17 a.m. the bus eased out of the station. British public transit was reassuringly on time. The journey would take an hour, giving him plenty of time to think.

  It was the ‘complications’ Peter had mentioned that now troubled Ben as the Gatwick coach from Victoria Station motored smoothly across the English countryside. When Pete’s courier had delivered his documents to the brown, two-story hostel at Kouvola, they were attached to a brief note giving Ben a private emergency phone number for his uncle and suggesting that he make a circuitous ten day trip, ending up in London. “By then, we should have things in order,” the note read. In some ways, it had been the longest ten days of Ben’s life.

  He had gone by train from Helsinki to Turku, then by overnight ferry to Stockholm. His new passport and driver’s license were never challenged and over the course of a week and a half he moved slowly from Sweden to Denmark to Holland, catching another overnighter from the Hook of Holland to Harwich on the English coast. With three days still to burn he wandered north by train to Norwich, south and west to Bury St. Edmunds and Cambridge, and finally into London where, following his uncle’s directions, he checked into the Park Plaza at Lancaster Gate. It was a huge white Victorian hotel that looked out across Bayswater Road onto Kensington Gardens.

  Another letter was waiting at the desk from Peter, including Ben’s itinerary from London to Washington’s Dulles Airport. The note indicated that he would be met by a driver carrying a sign that said “Mr. Koka.” Nothing more. Ben had not spoken to his uncle since the conversations in Kouvola and it was not beyond imagination that Peter felt this new life must be completely separated from his old one, including family, and free of anyone who might be linked to the former Benjamin Sager. Maybe Jim Cannon had been the lucky one.

  The thought of Jim reminded him of his promise to the old trucker and Ben suddenly felt a deep, suffocating sadness. He folded his arms across his chest and hunched further against the window. If he no longer existed – if he had to begin a new life as Benjamin Koka – how could he contact Mary Cannon and explain what had happened to Jim? For that matter, how could he do anything to bring closure to this whole mess? He was the lone survivor of a shipwreck, washed ashore and left to wonder why only he had been spared. The face of the woman in the window of the Tehran prison crept into his thoughts, pale and frightened and surrounded by twenty-eight other featureless souls, victims of a government that saw them as expendable.

  As he left the coach at Gatwick he found a restroom and washed his face, examining himself in the mirror and trying to restore some look of confidence and calm. He was allowing himself to assume the worst – something the old Ben Sager would never have done. Though traveling under a different name, he needed to find that old spirit and take it with him onto the plane. He stared into the mirror until the man looking back at him from the glass, though thinner and harder looking, was the Ben Sager who had flown into Gatwick five months earlier. Drawing a deep breath, he entered the main concourse of the North Terminal and headed toward his gate.

  Ben cleared security without so much as a second glance from airport officials and turned down the broad corridor toward Gate 51, stopping briefly at a newsstand to find some in-flight reading. The front page headline of the Times of London assailed him like a blow to the chest.

  “Dales Suicide Linked to Iran, Missing Tourists.”

  Ben dropped a pound coin beside the register and without waiting for change, hurried to an empty seat at the nearest gate area, quickly scanning the article.

  A cleaning woman, arriving for work at a small rented cottage along the picturesque River Wharf in the Yorkshire Dales, had found the naked body of a man lying in one of the cottage’s bedrooms. British authorities were staying mum about the affair and seemed to want to keep it hushed. But an unidentified local police officer connected with the investigation had been willing to talk. He claimed that the man’s cycling clothes were folded neatly on a chair beside the bed where the body was found, and a bicycle with a tag from Paul Hewitt Cycle Shop in Leyland, Lancashire, was propped against an outside wall of the cottage. On a night table beside the bed authorities found drug paraphernalia and over 1000 mg of heroin. The officer also claimed to have seen a handwritten note left on the table “by
the bloke before he did himself in.” The letter, the officer said, described an elaborate plot to abduct American tourists throughout Europe and sell them to agents of the Iranian government to be used as hostages. The writer of the note claimed to have taken over thirty tourists from various cities around Europe and to have received hundreds of thousands of pounds for delivering the captives to port cities in France, England and Spain.

  “I am not a man of conscience,” the officer quoted the note as saying, “But I can no longer live with what I have done. May God, these victims, and their families forgive me.” Scotland Yard had refused to comment on the policeman’s story, or even to acknowledge that there was a note. But the Times had opened its own investigation to try to identify the man and determine if Americans had gone missing in recent months.

  Ben re-read the article, then folded the paper and slumped back into the seat. Good God! Could a broker of this kind have been involved? There certainly was no intermediary in his case – or in Jim’s, as far as he could tell. But the numbers were too close. Then again.... Ben slowly straightened in the chair and re-opened the paper to study the article. The man was described as being in his late-fifties. Caucasian, but nationality unknown. Athletic build with light brown hair.... Ben looked absently across the gate area at a digital sign announcing a departure for Ontario, Canada. Someone, he guessed, had gotten to Christopher Falen.

  . . .

  At the home near Ashburn, Virginia, Fisher touched a button on his chair console to direct the call through a speaker phone, allowing Anita to hear the Director’s half of the conversation.

  “The man confessed to being complicit in kidnapping thirty American citizens!,” the Director shouted through the speaker. “I suspect this was the Iranian situation you needed to clean up, and this doesn’t look very clean! I thought we weren’t going to have any loose ends in this little affair.”

  Fisher scowled toward Anita. “Let me remind you that there hasn’t been any we in all of this. It has been ours from the start and we have been working very hard to put you in a position of complete deniability.”

  “It doesn’t help us much when the Brits start asking why we don’t know what has happened to thirty of our own people.”

  “Have they identified this suicide?” Fisher growled. “Have they located any of these missing people? Tell Scotland Yard you’re grateful to know what the note said, but that you suspect this man was just some nut with an over-sized imagination, wanting to grab some headlines on his way out.”

  “Nuts don’t know how many tourists we have lost,” the Director said icily. “Scotland Yard wants a list of Americans who have vanished over the past year. They seem to be taking this seriously.”

  “Give it to them. Iran is denying the claim, so let Scotland Yard try to find the people. They won’t.”

  “I hope you’re right. And whatever happened to your man Sager that the Russians contacted us about? When this gets to them, we’re going to look pretty incompetent.”

  Fisher began to redden and turned away from his partner to hide the irritation.

  “I’m sure the Russians know all about this already, and perhaps this is our man Sager. He hasn’t surfaced and I suspect we look pretty damned good to the Russians – and they won’t care anyway. We’ve saved them as much trouble as we did ourselves.”

  “I just hope you’re right,” the Director muttered again, and hung up.

  “What do you think?” Fisher asked, turning his chair toward Nita.

  She frowned. “I think we’d better find someone to finish Falen’s assignment.”

  Fisher nodded. “It can’t be anyone else. He’s the only person who knows about the thirty. I wonder who got to him?”

  “Someone in the call girl thing?” Nita suggested. “Lots of important people involved….”

  Fisher shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. Falen wouldn’t have written that note, and no one but the Russians who picked Sager up knew those details. My guess is that they got him.”

  “The Russians? Why? They gave Sager up when they could have made this public themselves.”

  “Exactly,” Fisher said. “They wanted Sager to make it public. The ultimate American embarrassment. They must have known Falen eliminated Sager, and decided they needed to find another way to create some public interest in Iran and these disappearing tourists.”

  “Will this mean trouble for us?” she asked.

  “I doubt it.” Fisher wheeled his chair toward the French doors that opened into the fenced garden at the rear of the house. “I’m not positive who got to Falen, but my guess is that he didn’t talk – or wasn’t encouraged to. Someone may know enough about this to rattle the cages in Washington, but they won’t do anything about us. As our esteemed former Secretary used to say, there will always be enough ‘unknown unknowns’ to make us a necessity.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  A man in a black chauffeur’s outfit with a “Mr. Koka” sign greeted Ben with a pleasant “Welcome back, Mr. Koka,” as Ben cleared customs and led him to a steel gray Lincoln Town Car that stood along the curb in Dulles International’s Ground Transportation area. They left the airport on the 267 Greenway toward Leesburg, joining US-15 as it headed north into Maryland. As Highway 15 merged into US 340, Ben smiled to himself. They were headed to Frederick, and Peter was bringing him to the farm.

  They heard the Town Car coming up the drive and rushed onto the porch; P.J and Jenn leaping down the steps and rushing the car while Kate Sager stood beautifully alone on the top step, hand over her mouth and black hair gently touching the white frilled collar of her summer dress. She looked better than Ben could ever remember.

  The children caught him around the waist as he stepped from the car and she rushed to him, almost knocking them all onto the drive with her charging embrace.

  “Where have you been!?” she laughed and sobbed into his shoulder.

  “It’s going to take a long time to explain,” he said. “But we’ll have plenty of time. I promise you I’m never leaving you again.”

  “You’d better not,” she sniffled, kissing his neck.

  He held her close for a long time, smelling her hair and feeling the softness of her cheek, afraid to look at her, knowing he would sob with her. The children clung quietly to them both, sensing that this was a moment that shouldn’t be disturbed. Finally he turned her toward the house.

  “Is anyone else here?”

  “Just Uncle Peter. He said we needed to keep the reunion small for now. He wants us here for a few weeks until he can finish some arrangement he’s making. He won’t tell me anything about it and didn’t even let me tell anyone we were coming out here. I just told Dave King I needed to be away for a few weeks.”

  Ben laughed. “Peter, that old gypsy! He saved my neck.” He stooped and hugged each of the children again. “Why don’t you kids run in and tell him we’re coming.”

  As the children scrambled back into the house, Kate backed him against the doorframe and held him at arm’s length.

  “Speaking of Peter, how did you know he was tied up with…?”

  Ben pressed a finger across her lips. “There are some things about Peter’s role in this we won’t talk about. Either of us. Agreed?”

  She looked deep into his shining eyes, wondering what he knew – about Peter’s role, and about her own. “Agreed,” she said finally. “Just don’t ever take off on me like that again.”

  “Promise,” he said and pulled her to him, kissing her as if they were secret lovers, finally left alone for the first time.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In Committee Room 419 of the U.S. Senate’s Dirksen Office Building the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee gaveled the hearing to order, quieting the expectant murmuring of the packed chamber. He was a tall, angular man with a long face, intelligent eyes and thick gray hair that brushed his collar. In addition to this coveted chairmanship, the Senator sat on the National Security Council and was one of Washington’s
most respected experts on security and intelligence work. At his discretion, television crews representing C-SPAN, the major networks, and cable news channels were being allowed to broadcast the hearing live. Though it appeared on the Senate calendar only as “Iran: The Growing Nuclear Crisis,” the media had been enticed by a committee press release promising testimony that would jar the nation’s sensibilities and raise deep questions about national security policy.

  Though witnesses at Foreign Relations Committee hearings were generally surrounded by an array of attorneys and special advisors, on this Tuesday afternoon a single man sat before the half-circle of Senators, his hands folded calmly across a white legal pad that displayed a page of hand-written notes. His thin face and dark eyes scanned the row of elected officials in front of him with a trace of skepticism as the Chairman announced that the hearing had been called on relatively short notice and as a result, the customary requirement for advanced written testimony had been waived. The hearing would, however, bring to light information critical to future relationships between the United States and Iran.

  The Chairman also dispensed with customary opening comments by committee members and immediately swore in the witness, nodding to the man who faced the Senate panel and inviting him to begin.

  “Now, if you would introduce yourself for the record, you can proceed.”

  The witness looked down briefly at his notes, then straightened himself in the chair and spoke directly to the Chairman.

  “My name is Benjamin Sager,” he said, “and I must preface my remarks by saying that I am a third generation Roma immigrant from Yugoslavia whose ancestors fled their homeland to come to America to escape the tyranny of a state that placed its own corrupt political interests above those of its people. I mention this because I am testifying today not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of twenty-nine other Americans whose lives were taken last month by the Government of the United States or by its allies while being held prisoner in Iran.”