Team Red

by David DeBatto

  Much had been made, both in Congress and in recent news stories, of failures on intelligence before the war. No one questioned whether the Hussein regime had, at one time, biological or chemical weapons. They’d already used them, during the Anfal campaign in 1988, in some of the villages DeLuca had passed through that very day. The only real question was exactly what CW and BW the Iraqis had, and how far along the research was. A number of defectors had given classified testimony in CIA briefings that Drs. Hazem Ali and Rihab Taha had been working with smallpox, probably acquired from the Russians, who were known to have produced twenty thousand tons of the stuff.

  “Kaplan also thought Hoolie’s instincts about the chickens were right on. You can only culture viruses in living organisms with circulatory systems. Chickens lay eggs, and eggs contain embryos. Kaplan said virologists use chicken embryos to culture viruses.”

  Suddenly DeLuca wasn’t as hungry as he’d been before.

  “Call Captain Martin at General LeDoux’s office and tell him what you told me,” DeLuca said. “Tell him we think we might be looking at smallpox. Keep going on the truck drivers. I’m going to be out of the office for a couple more days but we can all sit down when I get back.”

  “Omar Hadid called,” Sykes said. “He says he can put together a meeting with you and Imam Fuaad Al-Sadreddin. That’s the big Sunni kahuna, right? That could be big. By the way, where did you tell Reicken you were going?”

  “Ashur,” DeLuca said.

  “To meet with the police chief, four o’clock, right?”

  “Right.”

  “A car bomb blew up the Ashur police headquarters at five minutes after four today,” Dan said. “Did you tell anyone you were going there except Reicken?”

  “Nobody,” DeLuca said.

  “Well obviously there’s a leak somewhere, because whoever’s trying to collect the bounty knew where you were going to be.”

  When he returned to the fire, he saw that Khalil had caught a good-sized rabbit while he was out collecting firewood and had already skinned and skewered it to roast over the fire. Khalil reminded him a bit of Hoolie, both resourceful men of good cheer, both loose cannons, to a certain extent. Adnan was off to the side, staring out the cave entrance. Bassam had laid his blanket on the ground and set a half-dozen small tin pans before him, using them to prepare the rest of the dinner from stores in his pack.

  By the light of the fire, DeLuca saw markings on the wall, a bas-relief carved into the rock itself. He shone his flashlight on it. It seemed to be a picture of some sort of horned lizard or dragon.

  “Marduk,” Khalil said behind him. “Babylonian sun god. He inspired Hammurabi to give his code of justice. We had laws for how to run a just government four thousand years before United States was ever a country.”

  “Who carved this?” DeLuca asked, running his fingers over the carving. Khalil exchanged words with Bassam.

  “He says Kassitis, perhaps,” Khalil said. “Persians. But not recently. Is very old.”

  “Ask him about the carvings over there,” Adnan said with a sneer in his voice. “Then do not wonder why nobody uses this place.”

  DeLuca shone his flashlight in the direction Adnan had suggested. Across the cave, he saw a larger relief, a figure resembling some kind of cross between an angel and a peacock, a winged man with a fan of feathers rising behind him. DeLuca moved closer. He saw some sort of cuneiform below the carving of the angel-bird. He asked Khalil what it said.

  “Y-Z-D,” Khalil said. “For the Yezidis.”

  “Who were?”

  “Shitan worshipers,” Adnan said. “Followers of the devil.”

  “Direct descendants of Adam. Zerdachis,” Khalil corrected his fellow informant. “Not Shitan. Taus Manzuá. The angel Lucifer who has been restored to heaven after seven thousand years. But he is redeemed, a Christian would say. For the Yezidis, Satan himself has been forgiven.”

  “He is lying,” Adnan said. “Shitan is Shitan. The Yezidi hash?245-185??248-175?sh?245-185??248-175?yu?248-175?n assassin only say that to avoid punishment.”

  “He calls them dope-smoking assassins. A thousand years of massacres at the hands of Turks and Muslims gives them the right to fight back,” Khalil said, turning to Adnan.

  Adnan turned his back on Khalil.

  “How long ago did these Yezidis live?” DeLuca asked.

  “How long ago?” Khalil said, not understanding the question. “They live here now. Bassam says this is a place of worship.”

  DeLuca fell asleep by the fire shortly after finishing his meal, awakened sometime later by the sound of electronic beeping. When he opened one eye, he saw that Bassam was playing with his Gameboy.

  The walled compound where Al-Tariq had sequestered his wives was in a resort district in the hills south of Sanandaj, where a dam created a large reservoir. Bassam had arranged for a cousin to meet them with a car and to serve as a local guide, leading them to a three-thousand-year-old castle built on a hilltop overlooking the lake below, affording surveillance of the front of the house, maybe half a mile off, and part of the courtyard.

  DeLuca, using a pair of 25X binoculars, was able to observe five bodyguards patrolling the grounds. He could see vehicles coming and going, though he was too far away to see license plates. When one of the wives appeared on an upstairs balcony, minus her veil and burqua, Adnan took the binoculars and was able to confirm her identity. He confirmed a second wife an hour later. The first was nearly as fat as her husband. The second had a distinctive way of smoking cigarettes, holding her cigarette in her left hand, high enough that the smoke wouldn’t get in her hair.

  DeLuca was trying to think of ways to talk to them, a task complicated by the fact that none would leave the house without her husband. Sanandaj was the Kurdish capital of Iran, and Al-Tariq had too many Kurdish enemies to openly move his family into the neighborhood. He’d most likely purchased the compound through a surrogate and/or under a false name, to use temporarily, until more permanent quarters could be found. DeLuca needed an Iranian collaborator, but finding one would take time.

  He was still watching the house when a white SUV pulled up. He recognized the man who got out of the passenger’s seat. It was Ibrahim Al-Tariq, the same man he’d chased in the hospital. He was alone. He went into the house.

  DeLuca dialed a number on his sat phone. A moment later, he was speaking with his son, explaining what had just happened.

  “You’re sure it’s him?”

  “Ninety percent. You got anything up there I can use?” DeLuca asked.

  “My bird’s busy at the moment,” Scott said. “What do you need?”

  “Closeups maybe. Wait a second.”

  As he spoke, Ibrahim left the house and returned to the SUV. He started it, then went back inside the house.

  “It looks like he’s leaving,” DeLuca said. “I can’t follow him because I’d be the only other car on the road. Can you keep an eye on him for me and tell me where he goes?”

  “The white Suburban?” Scott asked. “Got him on DSP. I can do better with a G-Hawk but it’s going to take me about fifteen minutes to get one there. I’m sure I can hold him until I make the switch.”

  Ibrahim got into the driver’s seat of the car. A bodyguard got in on the passenger’s side. DeLuca watched the gates to the compound swing open as the SUV pulled out, turning on the road to Sanandaj.

  The car Bassam’s cousin had provided was a rather beat-up Toyota Corolla with what looked like a bullet hole in the trunk (and an exiting bullet at that), but it started and it moved, and that was all DeLuca could ask for. He took Adnan and Khalil with him. In the days before the mission, he’d constructed a cover identity as a German antiquities buyer, in the market for artifacts recently “liberated” from the various shrines and museums U.S. forces had been unable to protect from looters. Dan had found him a reference book to study, and Mack had Photoshopped him a German passport (taking the name of a real German antiquities dealer who was still in Hamburg, quit
e unaware that his identity was being borrowed), along with the relevant travel papers and plane tickets, but it was only superficial cover, meant to fool a few local policemen or border patrols but not something that was going to stand up to more thorough scrutiny.

  They drove, leaving plenty of space between them and the car ahead.

  His phone rang again.

  “You might want to hold off for a second,” Scott said. “He stopped to take a leak. Maybe three klicks ahead of you. Three and a half.”

  DeLuca directed Khalil to stop the car.

  “Boxers or briefs?” DeLuca asked.

  “Looks like your man goes commando,” Scott said. “He’s moving again. G-Hawk’s in place.”

  The road leveled off as they approached Sanandaj, passing fields and farms, and then a tent city that had sprung up on the outskirts of town to house war refugees. Since the invasions of Afghanistan to the east and Iraq to the west, Iran had been flooded with displaced people, two and a half million Afghanis and nearly half a million Iraqis. The refugee camps sprawled to either side of the road, the Toyota’s progress impeded by children playing and women pushing wheelbarrows and carts or carrying packages of bread or bags of rice in their arms, bundles marked with red crescents and red crosses. Soon, the white SUV was only fifty yards in front of them, slowly winding its way toward the center of town.

  DeLuca’s cell phone rang again.

  “You got a visual?” Scott asked.

  “Roger that,” DeLuca said. “We can take it from here, but keep an eye on him in case we lose him.”

  “My buddy here tells me there’s a nice teahouse on Ferdosi Street and a kilim dealer next to it where you can get really good deals. Mom might like one for the den.”

  “This isn’t a shopping trip,” DeLuca said.

  “Just a thought,” Scott said. “Nice car, by the way.”

  The white SUV parked on a side street adjacent to Enqela?248-175?b Square and the Hedayat Hotel, which had an outdoor patio facing the plaza, which abutted a large wall forming the northern side of the square. DeLuca watched as Ibrahim and his bodyguard sat themselves at a table on the patio. Ibrahim looked at his watch, as if he were meeting somebody, then instructed his bodyguard to wait by the car. Adnan got a good look at him and was able to make positive identification.

  “You’re sure he’s not going to recognize you?”

  “I was not around the family that much,” Adnan said, referring to his bodyguarding days.

  DeLuca, Khalil, and Adnan took seats at a table across the patio, where they could watch both Ibrahim Al-Tariq and the street. There was a large water fountain at the southern end of the square and in the center of the fountain, a statue of a human figure with his arm thrown up in the air in a victorious gesture. In the center of the square, there was some kind of commotion. DeLuca heard a kind of rhythmic chanting, accompanied by tambourines.

  “Sufis,” Adnan said.

  “What are they saying?” DeLuca asked, keeping an eye on Ibrahim.

  “The ninety-nine names of Allah,” Adnan said.

  “It puts them in a trance,” Khalil said. “They sway back and forth and spin, and at the end, they eat razor blades and put needles into their eyes and livers and stab their heads with daggers.”

  “Is not for everyone,” Adnan said. It was the first joke DeLuca had heard him make.

  When the waiter came, Khalil ordered food for them in Kurdish. DeLuca saw a man approach Ibrahim’s table. Ibrahim stood when the stranger approached, and then the two men sat down. The new arrival was Caucasian, about thirty-five years old, with thick glasses and a Western suit, cut poorly, or else the guy had recently lost a lot of weight. DeLuca would have given anything to know what they were talking about, but for the time being, he’d settle for knowing the name of the man Ibrahim was meeting with.

  He found his phone and pressed the Select button for the Accessories menu. His battery was only half-charged. He hoped he had enough juice left. He thought he found what he was looking for on the menu, but then he lost it and couldn’t figure out how to get back to it. He tried again and failed a second time.

  “What is it you are doing?” Khalil asked him.

  “This thing is supposed to be able to take pictures, but I can’t get it to work . . .”

  He fumbled with the phone another minute.

  “Please,” Khalil said. “Perhaps I could help you.”

  DeLuca handed his Kurdish friend the sat phone. After a few seconds and a beep or two, Khalil raised the phone in front of his face, pressed a button, then showed DeLuca the picture he’d taken of him.

  DeLuca took a test picture of Khalil and a second one of Adnan, until he felt like he knew how the picture function worked, and then he stood and walked to a spot halfway between his table and Ibrahim’s.

  “Noch einmal,” he called out in German. He gestured with his hands, arms extended as if he were squeezing a balloon. “Dicht zusammen und lächeln Sie bitte. Arm in Arm.” He’d asked for one more picture, closer together and smiling, arm in arm. Adnan had evidently never put his arm around a Kurd before and wasn’t keen on starting now. When they were posed, DeLuca reversed the camera and pointed it over his shoulder at the table where Ibrahim and his guest were sitting. He checked the image, then took a second picture. The second attempt produced a good three-quarter view of Ibrahim Al-Tariq’s lunch guest.

  At the table, Khalil showed DeLuca how to transmit the pictures he’d just taken. He sent what he had to his brother-in-law, Tom. He sent them again, just in case something went wrong with the first transmission, along with a voice tag, saying, “Tommy—it’s David. Can you help me ID this guy? I’ll explain later.”

  When the kabobs came, Khalil and Adnan dug in. DeLuca watched Ibrahim as he ate, but only glancing his way occasionally to avoid arousing suspicion. He was drinking some sort of lemon-flavored drink when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Now this is a surprise,” a woman’s voice said. “I didn’t expect to see you here—how are you, darling?” the woman said, sitting down in the empty chair. She wore sunglasses, and a scarf covered her head, but DeLuca recognized her immediately and was glad to see her.

  “Hello, Evelyn,” he said.

  “This is where you say, ‘Of all the gin joints in the world, why’d she have to walk into mine?’” Evelyn Warner said. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  DeLuca obliged. She greeted each of them in their native tongues.

  “You must forgive me,” she said, “I feel so very foolish, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name as well?”

  “Jan Tischler,” DeLuca said after blanking for a second on his cover name. “From Hamburg.”

  “Ah yes, of course, I’m so sorry, Mr. Tischler, so good to see you again,” she said, loud enough for anyone at a nearby table to hear. “How are you? Sightseeing?”

  “Business,” DeLuca said. “And you?”

  “Well, I’m here doing a story about the refugees, but this is my hotel,” she said. “Are you staying here? It’s the only one in town that takes Westerners, you know—you don’t have much choice. But perhaps you’re just passing through?”

  “I have a couple of appointments in Kermanshah,” he said.

  “Kermanshah!” she exclaimed. “Lovely place. You must see the reliefs at Ta?248-175?q-é Bosta?248-175?n. If you like hunting. Lots of naked men spearing elephants and lions and that sort of thing. Do you hunt, Mr. Tischler?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “But rarely naked. I’m here currently only as a dealer of antiquities.”

  “Yes, that’s right, we spoke of it at the party,” she said, playing along. “Finding anything? Nothing without a well-documented provenance, I trust?”

  “Of course not,” DeLuca said. “That would be illegal.”

  “I was also hoping to run into an old friend of mine,” she said, smiling and shaking her head when the waiter approached to ask her if she wanted anything. “Any idea where I might fin
d the Al-Tariq estate? I heard it’s around here somewhere.”

  DeLuca put a finger to his lips and motioned with his eyes toward the two men at the table across the patio.

  “You never know,” he said.

  “Perhaps we could have dinner before you go,” she said. “To Kermanshah. You and your friends. Somewhere where we could talk.”

  A roar went up from the square, where the Sufi mystics had commenced their bloodletting. A family of refugees passed in the street, all their belongings webbed to a cart pulled by a donkey.

  “Self-flagellation,” the Englishwoman said. “Ever a crowd pleaser.”

  Ibrahim and his guest shook hands as they rose from their chairs. The parting seemed amicable. The stranger walked Ibrahim to his car, then continued down the street alone, apparently without escort.

  DeLuca speed-dialed his son.

  “Still there?” DeLuca asked.

  “You bet,” Scott said.

  “Follow the white SUV. I’ve got a new target. See you around.”

  He followed the stranger down Eman Khomeini Street, past a row of travel agencies, a bus company, past the Sanandaj Museum, and then around a corner toward a domed mosque with twin minarets, dodging beggars and refugees and street vendors as they went. The sound of tambourines and chanting faded behind them. He tried to fill Evelyn in as they walked.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to keep this all a secret,” he said. “Not for publication. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  “Are you here alone?”

  “My cameraman is with me,” she said. “He’s getting footage in the camp south of town. Had to register as man and wife, I’m afraid, but he’s gay, so it’s safer for him, too. Bit hard still for a single woman to stay alone in a hotel.”

  They’d turned down a small bazaar, with the sound of rap music in Arabic blasting from a boombox somewhere, when DeLuca heard tires screeching behind him. He turned quickly to see a green pickup truck approaching at high speed. He looked up the street and saw a black SUV blocking the way before them. He’d left the Kalashnikov in the trunk of the Corolla. He bent to get the Beretta from his leg rig when someone bowled him over from the side, knocking him to the ground.