by Rob Carnell
"Very good Tommy, I could not understand a word you said" said Natasha truthfully.
"Bill has briefed my about Interneta. I checked around a little and I drew a blank. Do you have any ideas?"
"We did find an address on the net. Can you take us here to take a look?" Matt passed a piece of paper over to Tommy who glanced at it and then did a u-turn.
"That’s not too far from here in the business district" announced Tommy.
A few minutes later Tommy slowed down so they could take a look at a three level building. There was a small sign indicating this was the place.
"I suggest we come back here tonight and take a look when nobody is around. I will take you to the hotel now. You will raise eyebrows if you go out too late at night. I will pick you up at 8pm and take you to dinner. You can take your time eating. Then we do the break-in at midnight."
They checked into the Laleh International Hotel without incident, it was less than two miles from Interneta.
The hotel was ok, but not exceptional. It was perfect for a company executive not wanting to clock too much on the company expense account.
Chapter 93
Kebaba Restaurant
Tehran, Iran
* * *
MATT AND Natasha were dressed casually when Tommy arrived to pick them up for dinner.
"Hello people" said Tommy when they were safely locked away in the car "do you like our local food?"
"I don’t think either of us has been here before, but let’s give it a try" said Matt.
"Excellent, I know just the place."
It took Tommy about twenty minutes to negotiate the traffic. It seemed there were no road rules and the horn was sounded constantly. Matt and Natasha were looking forward to some peace and quiet over dinner.
"Here we are" announced Tommy pulling up outside quite a shabby looking place.
"Don’t let the outside fool you, the food here is wonderful. They don’t speak a lot of English here. Just tell them to choose the food. You will not be disappointed."
"Also tell them you are not in a rush. I will meet you outside when you are finished."
True to Tommy’s promise the restaurant was maybe three stars on the outside, but the food was wonderful. It was traditional Persian cuisine. They feasted on grilled chicken, steak skewers and mashed eggplant. They seemed happy there was no hurry and brought each course slowly so they could savor the unique flavors of the delicious offerings.
When they walked outside at 11pm, Tommy was waiting for them as promised.
"How was your dinner?" asked Tommy.
"You should have told me they did not accept credit cards! Lucky for us they were happy to accept American dollars" said Matt with a chuckle.
"Actually I don’t think there is anywhere on the planet that is not happy to take U.S. dollars" suggested Natasha.
"Hop in. We are still too early, so I will give you the city tour!"
This was obviously a joke as there was very little to see as the lighting was terrible.
Chapter 94
Interneta Building
Tehran, Iran
* * *
TOMMY JUST drove around to kill some time and finally drove past their destination at 12.20.
The streets were quiet and Tommy chose a parking place a block away from the building.
Tommy passed them each a small battery powered flashlight. When they had stowed these in their pockets, Tommy passed an old .38 revolver to Natasha.
"Sorry, I only have one backup weapon, so I guess it is ladies first. I have a .45 as well, but I hope we will not need them" explained Tommy.
"That’s ok Tommy. She is a better shooter anyway."
"I will pick the lock. Then let’s get in the office and out as quickly as we can. There should be no trouble, but you never know in Iran."
Tommy produced a set of lock picks and they were inside the building in no time. He relocked the door.
Interneta was on the second level. Security was non-existent. The office was very basic. A couple of desks and chairs and a couple of filing cabinets were the only furniture.
One of the filing cabinets was different to the others. It had an expensive combination lock on the front. On closer inspection, it turned out to actually be a safe. It weighed tons and was firmly affixed to the wall.
"There is no way we can get into that" said Natasha dejectedly.
"How important is this information?" asked Tommy.
"Tommy, I am not allowed to tell you exactly, but the President sent us here. We are following the trail of Weapons of Mass Destruction" explained Matt.
"Ok, maybe there is a way to get in. Wait here, I will be back" said Tommy who rushed out the door.
He arrived back in a couple of minutes carrying a small bag.
"Maybe this will help" said Tommy with a grin as he unpacked a two pound slab of C4 and some electrical detonators.
Tommy carefully separated a handful of the plastique and molded it around the hinges of the safe. Next he pushed the detonators into the charges he had laid.
"These are twenty second fuses, please wait outside, I will join you in a few seconds. This will be noisy, cover your ears. When it is open, we must hurry, grab what you need quickly."
True to Tommy’s word, the explosion was noisy. It also seemed to shake the whole building!
They ran back into the office. The safe door was hanging down, still fastened on the lock side.
"Give me a hand" Matt said and Tommy helped pull the heavy door away from the frame.
Inside were just files. There were too many to just grab them all.
Matt picked everything that started with K and P and put them in the bag with the rest of the C4. He also grabbed one labeled Hamas, and one called Israel.
As they were heading out of the office, they heard the front door slam open and shouting in Arabic.
"Quickly now, let’s move upstairs and try to get out another way. These are not Police. Follow me." whispered Tommy.
They scurried out the door and up another flight of stairs. The Arabic screaming got louder when they entered the ransacked office. Then it went quiet.
"I think they know we must still be in the building" said Matt. "Come on, let’s get moving."
They went up to the top floor, but they did hear footfalls on the concrete stairs.
Tommy found an open office door and they piled inside, hiding behind a desk.
They could hear the offices being searched.
"Don’t shoot unless we have to" warned Tommy.
Eventually they heard their office door open and someone creeping around. As a guy in traditional dress carrying an AK-47 appeared around the desk, Tommy shot him with the .45 at close range.
Natasha immediately stood up and instantly shot both the backup men in the head.
Matt grabbed the AK-47 and they slowly made their way out into the hallway. All seemed quiet.
They slowly and quietly went back down the stairs. They were nearly back at the Interneta level when a burst of machine gun fire from another AK-47 hit the cement above their heads.
"Get down" shouted Tommy.
"Any ideas?" whispered Matt.
"I think there must be only one guy left, he is in the Interneta office.
Tommy grabbed the bag back from Matt. It was hard to see in the dark, but he was working with the C4.
"This will get messy, I used all the explosive, stay down" whispered Tommy as he tossed his makeshift bomb down the stairs into the Interneta doorway.
Soon after this all hell broke loose. There was a tremendous boom and the Interneta office was obliterated. The ceiling fell in, and the stairway lurched beneath them.
They stood and ran down the stairs. Halfway down the whole staircase collapsed.
Matt was first on his feet and he managed to grab Natasha and Tommy and pull them out the door just as the remainder of the staircase fell from above.
Tommy was limping on a damaged ankle from the fall and needed help to
get back to the car.
Matt grabbed the keys and drove away.
"Do not go back to the hotel tonight, nobody gets home this late, you will be noticed" said Tommy obviously in pain from his ankle.
"Where do we go then?" asked Matt.
"Do you have your passports with you?"
"Of course" explained Natasha.
"Drive to the airport. I know some people not far away."
Tommy directed Matt to a small old hotel only a couple of miles from the flight path.
Matt helped Tommy out of the vehicle, and he pounded on a door at the rear of the hotel. Shortly a light came on then the door opened.
An old man peered out into the darkness and beckoned them in when he spotted Tommy.
"Omar, my friends here need some help. They need a shower, and somewhere to sleep tonight."
"Of course Tommy, no problem. The hotel is full but I have a spare room here in my apartment" said the old man.
Tommy pushed a roll of money to the man.
"Get them to the airport tomorrow. I need to go and get my ankle strapped."
The room was more than adequate and the shower was hot. Most of the dust from the explosion came off their clothes with a damp towel.
Matt was anxious to take a look at the documents in the bag.
He laid all the stuff out on the floor, but Natasha was not much help since she could not read anything.
The Hamas folder seemed to be the most useful. Inside were bank records showing yearly deposits of five million dollars from a bank in Switzerland.
Eventually they both needed sleep.
When they awoke the next day, waiting outside their door were all their belongings from the hotel.
Chapter 95
Mehrabad International Airport
Tehran, Iran
* * *
AT THE airport the next morning Matt was able to get slow a wireless internet connection.
He logged in to the CIA secure virtual private network, and sent a message to Bill Simpson.
Matt: We are headed home. I need you to find out everything you can on Balances Bank in Lucerne Switzerland. They have been sending money to Iran to finance Hamas insurgents in Gaza.
A few minutes later Matt received his reply.
Bill: Ok, we are on it. Hopefully we will have something for you by the time you get home. If I get anything sooner, I will send it to you.
Matt and Natasha sat in the lounge waiting for their flight which was due in four hours. They were able to get a snack of sandwiches and a coke and watch a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes in Arabic.
With only an hour before they were due to board the plane, Matt’s inbox chirped with a message.
Bill: Very little information on the financial institution is available, it is a private bank. Shareholders are Juergen Miltser, a Swiss national and Kamal Pashwari, a Saudi Arabian citizen.
Matt instantly remembered the KP notes in the transfers from the Caliph hotel in Riyadh.
Matt: Bill, I think we struck gold on this one. I think this Pashwari may be our guy. Please check him out and find out everything you can about him before we get home. We are about to board.
Bill: Have a good flight, see you soon.
Chapter 96
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
* * *
"THIS PASHWARI guy is seriously rich" said Bill Simpson reading from a printed dossier.
"Is there anything linking him to this?" asked Matt.
"Maybe, I would say him owning the Swiss bank is strike one."
"We did a complete background check on Pashwari. Pashwari studied electrical engineering in the U.S. at M.I.T. in Boston."
"Here, you take a look" said Bill passing the documents over to Matt and Natasha.
"It says he is the major shareholder in the Caliph Hotel, strike two" noted Matt.
"I agree" said Bill "we have searched everywhere in the world. Kamal Pashwari has vanished. He flew to Russia nearly three months ago on his private aircraft. He has not been seen anywhere since. His passport has not been scanned in any country since then. That might be strike three."
Inside was an old picture of Pashwari taken at the opening of the Caliph Hotel.
Natasha fired up her computer and brought up the picture sent from the boatyard in Russia. It appeared to be the same man.
"I have had people working his background since I got your message, but he seems to keep a low profile. As I said, we can’t find him. But I did get something on his son Muhommad. There was a charge to his Visa card on the day before the attack on the Ronald Reagan. It was to a flying school."
"Looks like we got that part right, he was the Cessna pilot. What about his business empire?" asked Natasha.
"That is the strange part. It seems that just before he flew to Russia, he stepped down as CEO of his business empire and appointed his brother to run things. The brother is no Rhodes Scholar. Seems he has already lost a fortune doing some speculation in the markets. Our best guess is that he does not plan on coming back to his business."
"Bill, is there anything else we can look for?" asked Matt.
"Here is a copy of the psychological profile our shrink ran on him. It says that basically he is a candidate for Mensa, a super high achiever, but he is extremely emotional."
"I gave the psychologist the background of his son being killed by one of our missiles and I asked what he was capable of in retaliation. " God help us" was his reply".
"Let’s run through what we have" suggested Matt.
"We know some whacko has a bomb on a boat. Pashwari is candidate #1 for the guy on the tiller. With our navy on high alert, there is no way he is going to get close enough to a ship to do any real damage even with a nuke. He must have another plan."
"Absolutely" said Bill. "I also asked the shrink for an idea of the targets Pashwari might go for. He told me it would be something very big. My best guess is that there are three possible targets."
"The first and easiest is a U.S. cruise ship, thousands of people and unprotected. They are sitting ducks, but you would not need a nuke to sink one. Sabotage would be much easier, no need for the mushroom cloud."
"Second would be a major icon, something near the water like the Statue of Liberty. It’s pretty well protected, but an outside chance, so I have alerted the New York authorities to a potential threat."
"The third scenario is the hardest to cover. That is a high value personal target. The ultimate prize is President Connolly, and my money is on Pashwari going after him. Second pick is the British Prime Minister."
"Sounds right to me, have you advised the President and the Secret Service?" asked Matt.
"Not yet, someone else will be doing that later this afternoon."
"Who gets the booby prize?" asked Matt.
When Bill didn’t answer, Matt wished he hadn’t asked the question.
Chapter 97
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
* * *
IT WAS too early for the Presidential briefing, so Matt was sitting at his computer still checking out Kamal Pashwari.
In desperation he decided to do a routine police check. He was surprised when he got a hit. Pashwari was noted as a "person of interest" in a missing person case years before.
It took Matt nearly an hour of phone calls to finally track down the detective that made the report. He had been promoted since then.
"Homicide. Lieutenant O’Brien."
"Lieutenant, this is Matt Peterson with the CIA. I need to ask you a couple of questions."
"I will call you back" said O’Brien as he hung up.
A couple of minutes later Matt’s phone rang.
"This is Greg O’Brien. Sorry about that, you can’t be too careful" said O’Brien honestly.
"I understand. No problem. I am trying to find a guy that you noted as a person of interest in a case about ten years ago."
"That’s a long time ago. What case was it?" asked O’Br
ien.
"It was a missing person case of a girl called Geraldine Flynn from M.I.T." explained Matt.
"Wow! That was a long time ago. My partner back then was buried just last week. Yeah, I remember that, we had to drop the case after a couple of days. There was not enough evidence to continue the investigation" explained O’Brien.
"The guy I need to know about is Kamal Pashwari, a Saudi Arabian national. He was noted in your report" said Matt.
"There was a guy we interviewed, but I just don’t remember the details. Sorry, but the name doesn’t ring a bell. It was so long ago."
"Please try to remember, this is very important" implored Matt.
"Ok, it was a weird case. This girl college girl just vanished. There one day, gone the next. We spent a couple of days asking around, but we never found her. I am not sure if she ever turned up. We had to drop the case after a couple of days. Too much to do, and too little evidence."
"How was Pashwari involved?" asked Matt.
"I’m sorry, but it was just so long ago, I just don’t remember much about the case" explained Detective O’Brien.
"This is really important, I need anything at all that you know about this guy" pleaded Matt.
"I tell you what. My notebook from back then will be filed here in the station somewhere. Give me a couple of hours and I will try and find it. Maybe I can get something for you."
"Thanks Detective, I can’t stress how important this is. If I’m not in the office, press 1 and it will divert to my cell phone."
"Ok, what was the case file number?"
"LM89714"
"I will get back to you. Hopefully I can find something."
Chapter 98
Shanghai Nights Restaurant
Washington D.C.