Morshed said a few words into the phone, listened, and hung up. He checked his watch in a gesture that was equal parts impatience, discomfort, and distress.
I flexed my leg and felt the hilt of the F-S knife press against the inside of my calf.
The banker had two new items for his busy schedule.
One, he was going to lose that briefcase.
And two, he was going to die.
CHAPTER 20
NATANZ—DAY 8
The Iranian government had made Atash Morshed a wealthy man. They sold drugs in massive amounts, and he laundered their money using banking techniques that most bankers didn’t know existed. He used the Internet. He covered his tracks by creating an online bank with thousands of legitimate customers. He funneled the money from Amsterdam back into Iran via the government’s unmonitored Office of Business Development, and the OBD bankrolled nuclear energy development in places like Natanz and Qom.
It was hard to tell whether Morshed was on his way out of the hotel or waiting for someone’s arrival. He wasn’t very good at disguising his unease in any case, pacing the lobby floor with uneven strides and wandering eyes. I couldn’t blame him: this was uncharted territory for a man more accustomed to penthouse suites in places like Geneva and Paris, a man more accustomed to gracing the business pages of the Amsterdam Schuttevae than to running errands for mullahs and demagogues.
When he turned suddenly toward the entrance, I rose from my chair. I was halfway up when Morshed pivoted at the door, did a complete about-face, and lurched down the hall to the elevators.
“Going someplace?” Dr. Carlyle asked me.
“I think I need some fresh air,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Dr. Carlyle greeted this news with a hangdog expression that had far more to do with the bottle of bourbon up in my room than the sudden loss of a complete stranger’s company. One part of me wanted to toss him my room key and say, You need it a lot more than I do. Drink up. A more prudent part of me wanted to keep the man at bay, so I said, “I won’t be long. Maybe we can get a nightcap.”
“Excellent,” he said, as I lifted my hat from the back of the chair and moved away from the table, nodding with diminishing charm to the people at our table. I lengthened my stride when I reached the lobby, but by the time I got to the elevators, Morshed was already going up.
I hustled to a stairwell at the end of the hall. The black-glass ball of a security camera hung from the wall by the stairs, and I automatically pulled the brim of my cap down over my eyes. It didn’t really matter. If someone wanted to know who the man bounding up the hotel stairs was in the middle of the dinner hour, there were twenty-three very high-strung Canadians who could probably have given them a fair description.
I took the steps two at a time to the second floor and peeked out the door in the direction of the elevators. No Morshed.
I lost a second huffing up to the third floor and a number on the door that looked like a hawk in flight. I put a crack in the door and scoped the hall. I heard a bell that signaled the arrival of the elevator. I heard the doors slide open. A man stepped into the hall. It was Atash Morshed. He turned to his left and walked away from the elevators with a quick, uncertain step. I watched his back for three seconds before stepping onto the floor.
Morshed veered to the left and down a second hallway. I knew the layout: it was identical to the second floor. I peeked around the corner and watched him. He was searching his pockets for a room key using his right hand while his left hand held firm to the briefcase. He stopped in front of a door halfway down the hall. Dropped his key. I heard an agitated growl as he bent down and retrieved it. It took him two tries to get the door unlocked, and he stormed inside.
I was moving down the hall when I heard the dead bolt click. A door chain rattled into place.
I yanked on a pair of thin leather gloves. I stopped at his door and listened. He must have gone straight for the telephone, because his muffled, agitated voice filtered through the door. Not a happy man, our Mr. Morshed. Well, what in the hell did he expect? Five seconds later, the telephone rattled in its cradle. Footsteps, like a man pacing. Water splashing in a basin. Silence.
I knocked softly. My Farsi sucked, but I managed, “Sir? Sir.”
“What is it?” he replied, angry and nervous. His Farsi was worse than mine.
I thought about switching to English, but how obvious would that have been. English, in a town like Natanz, in a country that despised Americans? I wanted to say something enticing like, Your car’s downstairs, but couldn’t find the words. All I managed was, “Car. Outside.”
Morshed cursed, no doubt concluding that the hotel had sent an illiterate bumpkin to deliver a message better suited to an eight-year-old. He stomped toward the door. I put a hand over the peephole and repeated, “Car. Outside.”
He switched to Dutch and swore. I didn’t bother trying to translate it, but suffice to say he sounded pissed. He snapped the dead bolt. Good. It was no fun dealing with a dead bolt.
I took a step back, palmed my Walther, and cocked my leg.
The door opened three inches. Morshed had stripped to a white undershirt and striped boxers. His bearded face appeared over the brass chain stretched between the door and the frame.
The instant his eyes met mine, I used the heel of my boot to kick the door inward. The brass chain snapped in two. The edge of the door caught him along the cheek and brow, driving him back into the room and drawing a painful groan from him. I stepped in, pushed the door closed, and secured the dead bolt.
Morshed lay on the floor, stunned. His stockinged feet quivered at the ends of spindly legs. Blood seeped from the vertical crease along the left side of his face. I had to search the room and couldn’t bother tying him up, so I drove a foot into his crotch. His face withered in pain. He curled into a fetal position and whimpered. Okay, so maybe I overreacted, but I didn’t have much respect for a man whose every move had dollar signs written all over it, even if it meant cashing in on weapons of mass destruction.
“Shut the hell up, Morshed,” I growled, and it sounded so much better in English.
I followed the end of my gun into the bathroom, then did a quick search of the closet. Three seconds and I was back in the bedroom. The briefcase lay on the nightstand next to the bed. The open end of a pair of handcuffs dangled from the handle.
“Open it.” I pointed to the briefcase.
He remained on the floor, twitching, breathing heavily, tears running into the wrinkles of his fat cheeks.
“Listen, Morshed. You wanted to play with the big boys and you got what you wished for,” I said calmly. “Now I’m going to give you ten seconds to have this briefcase opened, or I’ll put a bullet between your legs and you can see if that feels any better than my foot.”
Morshed rolled onto his hands and knees. He brought his rheumy eyes up to me and asked in the most cultured English, “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is what you’ve had chained to your wrist since leaving China six days ago.”
He stared at me, and the skin around his eyes and lips quivered. He managed a tiny shake of the head. “I don’t have the combination.”
“Really?” I could have pried the briefcase open, but this was one of those instances when a lesson in high-stakes espionage was in order. “How about if I break your fingers one at a time until you remember?”
Morshed propped himself against the bed and struggled to his feet. Apparently he’d found his memory and the strength to stand upright. He staggered over to the table and gripped the briefcase by the handle. He stood it on edge. This was no ordinary briefcase. It was high-strength aluminum with two draw-bolt-style latches. The lock was a four-tumbler Vaultz. I watched his fingers work: 7-8-0-3. The lock popped. The latches sprang open. He glanced up at me. The Walther’s silencer was an inch from his temple so fast that he didn’t have time to blink.
“Maybe I should do the honors; what do you think, Mr. Morshed
?” He took a step away without being told. I guess staring into the black hole of a 9 mm pistol was incentive enough.
I laid the briefcase on the bed. I lifted the lid. Packed inside were neat rows of Chinese circuit boards in clear plastic bags.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” I gestured to an armchair against the opposite wall. “Sit your ass down and put your hands on top of your head.”
Morshed backpedaled three steps, sank into the chair, and interlaced his fingers over his bald head. The color had already drained from his face, and his expression went blank. He stared empty-eyed at the wall.
I looked back at the briefcase. I had to inspect the boards. Easy enough to believe these were the ones General Rutledge was hoping to find, but I had seen so much bogus merchandise in my day that it was second nature to assume the worst. But with Morshed sitting in that chair, wondering about his fate and scheming whatever schemes his mind could conjure up given the circumstances, I couldn’t risk putting my gun down.
“Morshed,” I said. “Look over here.”
His eyes swiveled in my direction. I fixed my aim to the left edge of his sternum, directly over his heart. “You probably knew it was going to end this way, didn’t you?”
He remained stone faced, hands on his head, the international criminal financier in his undershirt and boxers. Killing a man in cold blood was part of my job. I had no remorse. Sacrifice him and maybe I prevent a war that could kill millions, including his own countrymen. At least Morshed would die quickly and knowing why.
I fired once. The silencer coughed no louder than a baby. The bullet punched a neat hole in Morshed’s chest. His jaw clenched, like something deep inside him had jerked tight. Whatever that something was crumpled an instant later and went slack. His mouth drooped. His fingers opened like a dying flower, his arms fell, and his hands slapped against the armrests. His head sagged forward until his chin rested on his chest. The crimson circle staining his undershirt stretched into an oval blossom crowning his belly. I didn’t wait for it to stop.
I drew the F-S knife from the sheath around my ankle and sliced open one of the circuit boards. I withdrew a collection of wafer circuits and shiny metallic nodules glued and soldered to a green plastic card with gold connectors along the edges. The board had an aesthetic symmetry to it, a real object d’art. I flipped it over and read the model number on the product label: 378-98NB574. Bingo.
I counted twenty-four circuit boards, enough for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s nuclear missile arsenal, plus three extra. I got out my iPhone and snapped photos of the open briefcase and circuit boards. I captioned the pictures: Verified, and texted them to General Rutledge and Mr. Elliot.
Neither had mentioned disposing of the circuit boards, but then we hadn’t exactly anticipated events leading to a face-to-face meeting with the courier. I wasn’t in a position to get them to Charlie, and I wasn’t about to haul them around with me. Couldn’t leave them for the Iranians. Okay, Jake, so destroying the boards is on the house.
First things first. Morshed’s body. I had no way of knowing who he was supposed to be delivering the circuit boards to or when he was supposed to be meeting them, but at best it was a matter of hours, not days.
At the most, I’d have until tomorrow when housekeeping checked the room. The hotel would call the police, and the police would call Iranian security. Say fifteen hours max. Enough, unless someone stormed his room in the meantime.
I wrapped a bath towel around Morshed’s torso to contain the blood and set him on the floor. I lifted the bed, dragged him under the mattress, and lowered the bed over him. I balled his shirt and jacket around his shoes and stuffed those under the bed as well. I studied my handiwork. Worthy of a casual inspection, but not much more. And if they didn’t see him, they’d probably smell him.
I collected the personal items Morshed had dumped on the dresser: watch, cell phone, lighter, room key, bills, and coins. I dropped those into my jacket pocket.
I closed up the briefcase and tucked it under my arm. I spent three seconds with my ear against the door, listening. No footfalls, no voices.
I stepped into the hall, pulled the locked door closed behind me, and jogged to the staircase. I made a quick stop at my room to retrieve my backpack; I wasn’t going anywhere without that. Then I took the stairs two at time to the ground floor. I turned away from the lobby, shortened my stride as I moved down the hall, and emerged out a side exit onto a small parking lot. Lampposts on either corner of the block spilled soft beams across the lot’s broken asphalt. I counted six cars.
I crushed Morshed’s cell phone under my heel and kicked it under a gray Toyota sedan. I tossed his watch, room key, and money into a Dumpster half filled with food wrappers, newspapers, cardboard boxes, and bundled trash from the hotel. I crumpled the better part of two newspapers into a small pyre. I opened the briefcase and laid it on the ground. I sliced open each plastic bag and tossed the circuit boards onto the crumpled newspaper. The briefcase wouldn’t burn, but I threw it in anyway.
I took Morshed’s lighter, reached into the bin, and set fire to the newspaper and several pieces of cardboard. Nothing fancy, but the orange flames skipped across the pyre and braided into a pillar of fire. I didn’t expect much damage, but I did expect a nice mess that would go straight into the back of a trash truck and then into a compacter.
I hurried down the alley and found a secluded spot between a brick tenement house and what looked like the rear entrance to a bakery. There was a light burning inside the bakery, but I didn’t see anyone inside. The air smelled of mildew and rain. It was chillier than I expected.
The iPhone’s screen told me it was 9:23 P.M.
I opened the GPS app, tapped in to coordinates 33° 31' 47" North, 51° 54' 14" East, and mapped out my route. The nuclear facility lay just short of twenty miles north-by-northwest of town at the foot of the mountains. My first task was to locate the truck Jeri had left for me near the train depot.
I thought about jogging, but a Canadian archaeologist jogging through a Natanz residential area didn’t sound like a wise idea. Especially one with a 9 mm pistol under his arm and a knife strapped to his leg.
So I started walking and thought about my target. This was what I knew about the Natanz plant: it was a hardened fuel enrichment facility. It covered one hundred thousand square yards. In other words, it was damn big. It was built twenty-five feet underground and protected by a concrete wall eight feet thick, which was protected by a second concrete wall. Serious business. The roof was built from reinforced concrete and covered with sixty feet of dirt. Overkill? Hell, they were building nuclear weapons. A little paranoia was in order.
The real work was done in two 75,000 square feet halls, and that’s where I was headed.
The Natanz warehouse district was really nothing more than fifteen or twenty brick buildings huddled around a railroad depot, just as Jeri had said. I found the small Daihatsu pickup truck parked behind a stout two-story building with four very impressive chimneys. The bed of the truck was stacked with asphalt roofing tiles. I found the key inside the back wheel well, resting on top of the tire. I unlocked the door and peeked in. The suitcase, identical to the one I had transported into Qom, was tucked neatly behind the passenger-side seat. I hauled it out and spent just under two minutes entering the codes that opened the case and the sequencing that armed it. I tied the triggers into my phone and replaced it behind the seat.
I slid into the driver’s seat. The truck started on the first try, and the engine sounded as if it had been tuned the day before. Thank you, Jeri.
Lights off, I eased down the street.
I decided not to risk the main highway. The back roads were dirt, but then desert sand was all you could see for miles. The road circled a hill and headed in the direction of mountains as black and ominous as a deep well. The sky was festooned with a million jeweled stars. The moon, shrouded in clouds, sprinkled tawny light over terrain that made Utah look like a tropical paradise, but it was
just enough illumination to make navigating the dirt road manageable.
At the turnoff to the ruins, I continued north.
The truck crested one hill, then a tall ridge. On the other side, a smattering of lights sprinkled across a broad plateau. I eased the truck into a dry wash and kept the engine running. I climbed out. I found a vantage point that allowed me to peek over the bank of the wash. The facility was a half mile ahead and huge, but mostly what the eye saw was sand and dirt. I attached my Zeiss digital scope to the iPhone and did a preliminary scan. It was obvious the lights were coming from a cluster of administration buildings. Two ominous-looking concrete walls ran beyond my sight in two directions. A chain-link fence topped by razor wire surrounded the entire complex. Yellow lamps placed every one hundred fifty feet marked the perimeter.
More lights outlined a confusion of squat buildings that were part army barracks and part warehouses in appearance. Another building looked like a hospital or a prison, but maybe that was just the muddy, lackluster color. Another could have been a small factory by the look of the chimneys. Beads of reflected light followed shiny pipes clustered between a number of buildings, but I didn’t get too excited by this. Machinery groaned in the darkness. Guard towers rose up against the horizon like floating apparitions. I couldn’t see guards; that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
It was 11:17 P.M.
I turned the scope in the direction of the facility’s main entrance. It dead-ended with the two-lane highway that ran north from the city of Natanz. I was hoping for evidence that deliveries were made at this late hour. If they weren’t, all the paperwork in the world wouldn’t help me.
I watched for nearly thirty minutes, and my patience was rewarded. Two vehicles used the main entrance during this time. Both were allowed in after what looked like a less-than-diligent inspection at the hands of the guards at the gate. Several other cars veered away from the main entrance, turning in my direction, and skirted the complex to the east. These didn’t look like delivery vehicles. More likely they carried members of the night staff or workers returning from a night on the town in Natanz.
The Natanz Directive Page 22