Crossfire (Kirk McGarvey 3)

by Hagberg, David

  "You, too," Abbas said.

  Although they both considered themselves to be Americans, their upbringing still made them maintain a certain polite distance. It was extremely impolite and rude to do otherwise.

  They neither embraced nor shook hands. Instead, Shahpur lowered his eyes, turned, and left. Abbas followed him out a few minutes later, retrieving his Renault from the locked parking area behind the building, and headed across town to his apartment near the Mehrabad International Airport.

  He picked up a two-man tail almost immediately, but he did nothing to avoid them, or lead them to believe that he'd detected their presence. He was an innocent Frenchman, after all. He had no reason to suspect that he was being followed.

  He stopped at a druggist's shop near the university where he purchased several over-the-counter cold remedies, and then

  continued home. They would check out the shop, and the minor subterfuge would help maintain the fiction that he was ill.

  With any luck he would be finished with his baby-sitting business sometime on Sunday, when the gold was safely in the vaults of the Bank of Iran, and he'd be able to slip back into his apartment that night.

  It wouldn't be a restful weekend, but he'd not signed on with the Company for rest and relaxation. He'd joined the CIA for the simple reason that he believed then, and still did, that the Americans were right, while very nearly everyone else was wrong.

  His American wife, Sandra, believed the same. But she was no spy, so he had kept her at home in Alexandria with their seven-year-old son.

  Six months, he told himself as he parked behind his apartment building, and he would be back in the States. This, he'd been assured, was to be his last posting to Iran. He would be assigned to the Iranian desk at Langley. A boring job, but a safe one.

  The elevator was out of order again, as were the lights in the stairwell, so he had to trudge up to the fifth floor in the dark.

  At forty-two he was getting old for field work. At least that was what his wife said. And sometimes he felt that way himself.

  The lights in the fifth-floor corridor were off as well. He swore to himself as he fumbled his key into the lock. Inside, he shut the door and flipped on the light switch, but nothing happened. The electricity to the entire building was apparently out.

  "Goddamnit," he said out loud.

  "Not a very French thing to say," someone said in the darkness.

  Abbas reached for his pistol, but the beam of a flashlight was switched on in his face.

  "If you touch your pistol I will kill you," the man warned. He spoke English with what Abbas took to be a non-American but definitely cultured accent.

  "Who are you? What do you want?"

  "Who I am is of no matter," Arkady Kurshin said. "But what I want is your help."

  "With what?"

  "Why, with the gold, of course. What else?"

  Kurshin laughed, the sound low and menacing, and Abbas knew that he was in mortal danger.

  KURSHiN replaced the breakers in the circuit box in the front closet, and the lights came on in the apartment. The lights in the corridor would remain out.

  He'd forced Abbas to strip naked and then had tied him securely to a straight-backed chair that he tipped up on two legs against the wall. He didn't bother taping the man's mouth. The American would not call for help because of his illegal status in the country.

  Back in the living room he pulled up another chair and set it in front of Abbas. He sat down and smiled pleasantly.

  "Time for a little chat now, I should think," he said.

  "I have nothing to say to you," Abbas growled.

  "Well, we have a long night ahead of us. The gold isn't

  due at Bushehr for nearly forty-eight hours. We have lots of time."

  "You're not Iranian,'' Abbas said. "Which means time is on my side. SAVAK will nail your ass to the wall the instant you try to pull me out of this apartment. They're a nervous lot."

  "Ah, then that's who followed you here. Means you're doing a sloppy job. You know, the Iranians still don't like Americans very much. It would be a pity if something were to happen to the gold ... and then it was blamed on you."

  Kurshin got up and went to the window where he carefully parted the curtains and looked down. The same gray sedan that had followed Abbas into the parking lot was still in front.

  He'd worked with pricks like them before. Their field officers never had any imagination. If they'd been told to stake out the front of this apartment building, they would do exactly that, never thinking about the back way out. Losing them would be child's play. And that in itself would be another nail in the American's coffin.

  In the bedroom he retrieved the long extension cord he'd found earlier, and out in the living room plugged it into a wall socket behind Abbas.

  The CIA station chief watched him through half-closed eyes. If he had any idea what was about to happen, he didn't show it. Kurshin admired him for at least that much.

  "The mains here in Iran are at two hundred twenty volts," Kurshin said. "Dangerous sometimes." He unplugged a table lamp and ripped the cord from its base. Setting the lamp aside, he used a pocket knife to strip the insulation from the first six inches of the cord.

  Abbas's eyes were wider now.

  Kurshin sat down in front of him and gently wrapped one of the bare wires around his flaccid penis.

  "Son of a bitch, don't do this," Abbas said, trying desperately to struggle away.

  Kurshin straddled the chair, holding it in place with his body weight, and managed to wrap the other bare wire around the American's testicles.

  "There's nothing I'm going to tell you," Abbas said breathlessly. He was choking on his own words, and his chest was heaving.

  Kurshin sat down again, pushing his chair back a little bit. He picked up the extension cord and brought its plug and the lamp cord plug nearly together.

  "Don't do this," Abbas pleaded, his voice rising.

  "If you make too much noise, they'll arrest you. And they will kill you."

  Abbas was breathing heavily through his mouth.

  'Tour name is Richard Abbas and you are the chief of station for Central Intelligence Agency activities here in Iran. I know this. I would simply like to hear you admit it."

  Abbas said nothing, his eyes fixed on the two plugs.

  Kurshin touched them together for just an instant. Abbas's body spasmed so violently that the chair he was tied to crashed to the floor. But he did not cry out. The only sound to escape him was a low, animal moan from the back of his throat.

  "That must hurt," Kurshin said, moving his chair over so that he could look into Abbas's eyes. Sweat had beaded on the American's forehead. Kurshin hit him again with a short jolt.

  A thin, high-pitched wail came from Abbas, his eyes screwed shut. When he finally opened them he looked up at Kurshin with a violent, nearly out-of-control hatred.

  "Fuck you, too," Kurshin said, and he joined the two plugs and left them together.

  Abbas's body spasmed again and again, the keening wail from deep in his throat like a distant air raid siren, and still Kurshin did not unplug the cords until he began to smell the odor of burning flesh. He finally disconnected them.

  The American's legs continued to jerk spasmodically and his chest rose and fell rapidly, but he appeared to be unconscious or at the very least, insensate.

  Kurshin went into the kitchen and poured a glass of cold water. He felt absolutely nothing about what he was doing to the man, although he knew that there were those who derived pleasure from such things.

  Abbas was merely a means to an end. The gold would be taken from under the Iranians' noses, and the Americans would be blamed for it. It was the price he was paying to General Didenko in exchange for a clear shot at McGarvey.

  "Listen to me, Arkasha," the general had said over the telephone. "These are merely the opening moves. There will be so

  much more for you and me to accomplish together. Ours will be the triumph of the century
."

  With the way things were going in the rodina, the nation was ripe for the emergence of a new despot: a Hitler, another Stalin. Didenko hoped to be such a force.

  Kurshin had to smile. Someday he would have to kill the general. The man was mad. But in the meantime there was work to be done.

  Abbas was just regaining consciousness when Kurshin came in and sat down in front of him.

  "Time for our little chat now, yes?" Kurshin said amiably.

  "I work for the CIA," Abbas whispered. "So what? It's common knowledge."

  "Thank you," Kurshin said. "You brought cold medicines home with you tonight, but you do not appear to be sick. Why?"

  Abbas said nothing.

  Languidly Kurshin reached down and picked up the two cords.

  "I'm not going to my office for the next few days. My excuse will be that I was ill."

  "Yes? Why is this?"

  Again Abbas hesitated. Kurshin hit him with a very brief jolt. This time no sound came from the American's throat, but for several seconds afterward he shivered violently, his eyes closed, his jaw clamped tightly shut, the veins bulging on his neck.

  "I was to drive south ... to Bushehr ... to meet the gold," he said after a long time.

  "For what purpose?"

  "We believe there is a possibility that an Iranian army unit plans on hijacking the shipment."

  "How were you to prevent this if it began to develop?"

  "I wasn't supposed to prevent it. My orders were to observe the convoy. If something started to go down, I was to report what I saw."

  "To whom? And how?"

  "To Langley by radio."

  "Radio? What radio? I found nothing in this apartment."

  "It's a handie-talkie. In my car. Hidden."

  "Not enough power."

  "It's set to the up-and-down-link frequencies of one of our

  satellites. Virtually undetectable by anything other than another handie-talkie."

  'Tes, I see," Kurshin said. It would be perfect for his plans. "Why were you ordered to baby-sit the shipment? Once the gold arrived on Iranian soil it is no longer the problem of the United States."

  "It was thought that if the gold were to be hijacked here in Iran, no matter by whom, the Iranian government would blame America. We need a friend here. Especially now. We were willing to do whatever it takes to insure they got their gold. To Tehran. No one wants another Iraq-Kuwait incident. Iran will be the watchdog once again."

  Kurshin looked at Abbas. The man was pitiful. "No more torture tonight. Nor will there be any further need of such things if you continue to cooperate with me."

  "Who are you?" Abbas croaked.

  "It doesn't matter," Kurshin said. "Believe me in this."

  It was dawn by the time Kurshin was finished. Abbas had been good to his word and had cooperated with everything that had been done to him. In fact at one point he had even smiled slightly, a gesture Kurshin missed.

  "Hold very still now," Kurshin said.

  Abbas, still strapped to the chair, held his head up and didn't move as Kurshin cut the latex rubber in a long seam up from the back of his neck to the top of his head.

  Very carefully the Russian peeled the entire mask from Abbas's face, and then stepped back. For just a moment or two Abbas was confused, until suddenly everything that had been done to him this night, everything that Kurshin had said, and this now, made a terrible sense to him, and he shivered.

  Kurshin had pushed the latex mask inside out so that Abbas was looking up at his own image. It was a life mask. Kurshin was his same general build. His English was good.

  If he'd had any doubts before, Abbas had none now. He knew for a fact that he was a dead man.

  at 9:00 a.m., Shahpur Naisir dialed Abbas's apartment. The telephone rang three times, but instead of the expected recording with which he would have a prearranged conversation, the telephone rang a fourth time, and then a fifth, and kept ringing.

  After fifteen rings, Shahpur hung up and dialed again. It was possible, he told himself, that he had misdialed. The connection was made, with the same results.

  No one else in the office knew about the operation. An espionage team working in a country like Iran, with which there was no diplomatic relationship, had to compartmentalize so that no matter who might be arrested, they could not compromise the entire station.

  No matter who, that is, except for himself and Richard Abbas.

  Shahpur got up from his desk and went into Abbas's office, closing and locking the door behind him. The shutters were closed against the glare of the early-morning sun, and the room was cool, the way Abbas liked it.

  With shaking hands he opened the safe, having to make two tries at the combination before he got it right. He took out a .380-caliber Beretta automatic, a clip of ammunition, which he loaded into the butt of the gun, and a silencer tube that he screwed onto the end of the barrel. He levered a round into the firing chamber, eased the hammer down, and stuffed the weapon into his belt beneath his jacket.

  Next he took out one of the satellite-frequency handie-talkies and put it in his jacket pocket. Abbas had one just like it.

  To be caught in Iran with the communications device, and especially with the pistol, meant death. There would be no appeal. No chances for a reprieve. No possibility of an exchange of spies.

  Locking the safe, he let himself out of Abbas's office and told the receptionist that he would be out of the office for most of the morning.

  'Tes, sir," the young man said. "But I've not seen Monsieur Abbas yet this morning."

  "He's been delayed," Shahpur said. "In fact, I'm on my way over to see him now. Is there anything pressing?" "No, sir."

  "Very well," Shahpur said. "I should be back by noon. If something comes up in the meantime, it'll hold."

  Shahpur got his car from the back and made two circuits of the office building, coming in from the east the first time and from the west the second. He picked up no tail on either pass. This was his home ... or it had been. He'd understood these people, their customs, their desires, their fears. He'd even understood why they hated America and Americans so vehemently, and it had nothing to do with what the mullahs told them. It had to do with the envy and raw hate that someone extremely poor had for someone extremely rich. The two came from different universes. There was no common language.

  But now he felt out of place. He felt as if he were in a foreign land. He no longer understood.

  He headed out past the university, traffic fairly light at this hour, so that it was easy for him to watch his back. Still no tail.

  No one was interested in him this morning. That in itself deepened his apprehension.

  There were drills for this sort of thing. They all knew that sooner or later their luck might run out. It would be one thing to be arrested as native-born Americans. But to be in the hands of SAVAK as Iranians who'd gone over to the infidel meant more than a simple firing squad. They would be held up as public examples, their deaths particularly long and painful as a warning to other would-be traitors.

  Rely on the three Cs, he'd been taught at the Farm. Remain Calm. Maintain a Clear head. And most important, stay within your established Cover identity.

  He worked for Richard Abbas at the offices of the Compagnie General de Picarde. His boss had not shown up for work, nor had he answered his telephone. As a concerned employee, Shah-pur would naturally investigate.

  Such a fiction would immediately break down if the Iranian authorities decided to detain him and he was searched, or if Abbas himself had been arrested. But the entire station was in serious jeopardy at this point. Something had to be done. And he was the only one for the job.

  Passing the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare building, he turned left down a dusty dirt road that led to a complex of tall apartment buildings housing mostly foreigners. Depending upon the type of demonstration, the police would either lead the mobs down this road, or block their access to the area.

  This morning nothing m
oved, except for a jet taking off from the airport to the southwest. At that instant Shahpur sincerely wished he were aboard the airliner, no matter what its destination might be. Anywhere, he thought, would be preferable to here and now.

  He didn't spot the Iranian surveillance team until he was practically on top of their gray Morris. They looked over at him as he passed, one of them recognizing him for sure. He parked about thirty feet away, and trying to act as nonchalant as possible, he went up the walk and entered the building. He half expected them to come after him, but they did not.

  An old woman wearing a chador came out of the stairwell as he approached the elevators. "Pardon, sir, but the machine is not working this morning," she said in Farsi.

  "Thank you, mother," Shahpur replied pleasantly. Farsi was a

  much prettier, much gentler language than English. Too bad, he thought, that it had been used to gloss over heinous crimes committed in the name of Islam.

  She left the building. Shahpur went back to the door and watched as she went down the walk. She headed past the two men in the gray Morris. They hadn't moved, nor would they, he suspected, until Abbas left.

  Shahpur turned and looked at the stairwell door. Which meant Abbas was still here for some reason. Immediately he thought about the threat on the station chiefs life.

  Was it possible, he asked himself, that someone had come here last night and killed Abbas? This was Iran, and any act of violence was possible. Especially against Westerners and Western interests. He thanked heaven that his family had left Iran when he had. It was one lever that SAVAK would never be able to use against him.

  Entering the stairwell, he listened for a full minute before starting up. There wasn't a sound. The lights were out, but someone had propped open the doors on each floor so that the corridor windows could provide some illumination.

  He had a very ominous feeling about this.

  He took out the pistol, cocked the hammer, and went the rest of the way up to the fifth floor, gingerly stepping through the doorway into the corridor.

  Again he stopped to listen, but there was absolutely no noise of any kind. The building could have been deserted. Or evacuated, the thought suddenly struck him. He looked back the way he had come. This could be an elaborate SAVAK trap to lure him and Abbas into some kind of a compromising situation.