by Jay Deb
“Or else what?”
“I can’t keep the words to myself.”
“Javed!” Omar thundered. “If you tell anyone, I’ll come there and cut your throat. I have a long reach.”
“You come here and we’ll see who cuts whose throat. I warn you. I am powerful here.”
“I know you’re so powerful,” Omar mocked, “that you can’t gather three million dollars.”
Bummed out, Javed simply hung up. The Omar-Janco story was over for him now. Now, he had to work on a new plan.
He opened the door, turned the lights on, and then sat down on the chair, staring at the phone, mulling over his next step. He decided to deal with Omar later and get all the money back. He had a bigger problem to deal with right now – survival.
With Janco’s death, his hope of securing his position by installing a new chief for the nuclear operations had been dashed. But he wasn’t out; it was a setback, not a defeat, and that was nothing new to Javed. He had suffered setbacks before, and he’d recovered. He knew a successful career was defined by how well the person regained position from impediments.
He was suddenly alerted by the approaching thuds of footsteps. Within seconds, Navid, the minister, appeared at the door, accompanied by two rough-looking policemen. Navid stepped inside Javed’s office, his demeanor ominous. A cold shiver ran down Javed’s spine; the timing of the minister’s arrival cast a deep shadow in his mind.
Navid walked up to Javed’s table. The two cops stepped inside Javed’s office, and two more appeared at the door. Javed wondered if there were more policemen waiting outside.
A crooked smile showed up on Navid’s face, and he asked Javed in Farsi, “How are you?”
“Good,” Javed stood up, putting on a wry smile. “Please sit down, sit down.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Navid placed one foot on a chair, a sign of insult. “I came here to ask a question. How close are you to getting a new chief?” His words were deceivingly polite, but his demeanor was anything but.
“There has been some delay,” Javed said and sat down on his chair, sweat gathering on his forehead. “But trust me I’ll get a new chief. Soon. The interim chief is doing pretty well.”
“The interim guy is an idiot. He’s screwing up everything. His subordinates are complaining and calling my office. Our program has been delayed by at least a year. We can’t wait anymore.” Navid’s voice was rising. “Now, what happened to that American Jon Janco? Were you not going to bring him here? You said it was a done deal.”
“I think Janco might have the same problem that the interim chief is having,” Javed decided lying was the only way for now. He couldn’t tell Navid that Janco was dead because of some money issue. “I’m thinking of getting someone else.”
“But what happened to Janco?” Navid said, grinning. “Where did Janco go?”
“I don’t know,” Javed said, feigning ignorance, desperately looking for a way out, like a fish trapped in a net. “I tried to hire an able man named Omar to bring Janco here. Our talks ended. But don’t worry. I have a list of scientists here.” Javed brandished a piece of paper. “Each of them more than capable of running our operation. One of them is a Pakistani woman living in the United States.”
“You’re going to hire a woman to run our operations?” the minister asked scornfully.
“Sorry, my mistake.” With a pen, Javed struck out the woman’s name on the paper. “Someone else gave me that name. Now she’s gone.”
“Now tell me more about Janco.” Navid leaned forward. “What happened?”
That question sent a chill down Javed’s spine. How much does he know?
“I tried to hire this guy Omar to bring Janco here. But he was demanding too much money. So the talks ended.”
“Are you sure you’re telling the truth?” Navid crossed his arms over his chest, staring into Javed’s eyes.
By now Javed was sure Navid knew much more than Javed wanted him to know. Maybe Navid had been tapping his phone, listening to every conversation he had with Omar.
Javed had used some codes at times, but it wasn’t possible to use code all the time. The question was how much was Navid aware of?
Afraid and speechless, he looked at Navid and then at the policemen standing behind him.
“Janco is dead,” Navid barked, kicking the ground, “isn’t he?”
Stupified, Javed said nothing, trying hard to come up with an answer.
“Isn’t he?” Navid shouted. “You hired Omar to do the job and bypassed our own force.”
Javed didn’t even know what bypass and force meant. There was no way his country’s military could be used to bring Janco from Switzerland or any other foreign country. And if Navid was referring to the country’s intelligence agency, they just didn’t have enough men or resources to conduct a covert operation in Europe. “Omar was the best choice. Believe me,” Javed said. “He can operate anywhere. He had an Iran connection. I thought I could control him. He never failed his mission.”
“But he failed this mission,” Navid said, shifting his weight from one leg to another. “He failed your mission. He failed our mission. You failed our mission.”
“No, I’m on it. I am trying to defend my country and protect our interests and ambitions. I love my country.”
“Talk is cheap, Javed.” Navid made a dismissive action with his hand. “The time has come for you to be held responsible. You failed to protect Golshan. You failed to protect Golshan’s replacement. You have committed treason, Javed. Treason!”
Javed’s hands started shaking. Treason? He glanced at the four policemen standing right behind Navid, their eyes fixed on Javed.
“I’ve done everything in my life,” Javed said desperately, “for one reason only – to make my country better.” Javed recognized the danger he was in, accused of treason in front of a battery of policemen. Somehow emboldened, Navid had come here with a plan.
Given the situation, mollifying Navid was the best way out, Javed decided. “You’re a good son of a great country. If I’ve made a mistake, I can rectify it.” Javed looked at Navid, hoping to see some softening in his mood. But Javed saw only fire in his eyes. So he made one last-ditch effort. “From now onward I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll come to your office whenever you want me to. You can give me an order verbally or in writing or howsoever you want to give it.”
Javed thought he saw a ray of a smile on Navid’s lips, but soon, it turned into disdain.
“There is no mercy for a traitor,” Navid thundered. “Treason isn’t forgivable.” Turning to the policemen, Navid said, “Take him away!”
The cops walked around Javed’s table to apprehend him. Two policemen grabbed Javed’s shoulders and pulled him toward the door.
Javed struggled and tried to push away the cops, who were too strong for the fifty-year-old man. As the policemen dragged him, Javed felt pain in his back and shoulders. All the work and manipulations he’d done over decades were going down the drain. The policemen lugged him, and he lost his shoes, and his white tunic got ripped.
Never in his life had he been treated like this. Never in his life had he been dragged by his shoulders, not even in school.
Blood rushed to his brain, and Javed shook himself free and turned to Navid, fury all over his face. “You will not get away with this. I tell you. I have connections.”
“Yeah?” Navid said dismissively. “Who do you know?”
“I know men at the very top. You will be in trouble, Navid. Don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”
“I regret not putting you in jail sooner. Now,” Navid said to the policemen, “take him away.”
“Don’t touch me,” Javed said to the policemen, his finger raised. Turning back to Navid, he said, “I’ll have you arrested.” When appeasement didn’t work, Javed tried to use a threat. Maybe that would work. “Think about it. Think about what will happen to your family. You will go down!”
“You are the one going down,”
Navid said and screamed to the policemen. “Take him away. What are you doing?”
Now all four policemen grabbed Javed by his shoulders, this time harder, putting all the strength of their muscles on Javed’s body. Javed tried to free himself again. Applying brute force, the policemen didn’t let him go.
The blood in Javed’s brain was boiling and the cops held tight but couldn’t stop him from yelling. “You kafir,” he yelled at Navid. “You drink alcohol. Islam forbids it. I know about your foreign bank accounts. Your days will come to an end.”
Navid stood like a statue for a few seconds and then motioned to the policemen to release Javed. “Close the door.”
One of the policemen shut the door. Now Javed, Navid, and the policemen stood inside Javed’s office room, looking at each other.
Navid took a gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Javed’s forehead. “Say that again.”
Javed swallowed. Obviously, the word kafir was too much for Navid.
“Don’t kill me,” Javed pleaded.
“I thought I’d put you in jail for a few days then let you go. But–” Navid took aim at Javed’s head and squeezed the trigger. The bullet exited the barrel with a blasting noise and entered Javed’s skull. Javed saw a flash and everything went dark.
Javed’s body dropped to the floor. Everyone’s eyes were on the ground where the blood was slowly flowing out of Javed’s crumpled body.
“Clean this up,” the minister said to the policemen. “Javed was trying to flee, so we had to shoot him.” He gave the gun to a policeman, who took it and started wiping off the fingerprints with a handkerchief.
Chapter 44 London
The lights were out, the drapes down, and the TV turned off. The hotel room was dark and soundless. Doerr was sitting in a chair, thinking hard about what he would do next. Killing Omar was a personal agenda, so he wouldn’t take any assistance from the agency. He’d cut all communications with the CIA, deciding to stay incognito and out of America.
Over the years, Doerr had worked with many companies, some legal but mostly illegal, to locate and terminate the bad guys who intended to harm America. These companies worked across international borders and provided services to wealthy businessmen and isolated countries. Calling them contractors, the CIA had paid large sums to many such companies and used them as sources, and Doerr had to work with many of them. Some of those organizations had offered large amounts to Doerr to perform jobs, some illegal but most of them legal. He’d rejected them all in the past and referred some of them to Langley.
Now, Doerr stood up, pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket that had a list of numbers, and started calling them one by one.
Chapter 45 Dubai
Omar sipped white wine from a glass and smoked a Marlboro, his body immersed in an indoor swimming pool in his mansion in Dubai, his thirty-two-year-old Italian girlfriend pressing her naked body against his. She was a brunette, and at five foot eight, she was taller than him. He glanced at the immaculate steel-framed glass door that separated the pool from the rest of the house, and then he looked at the afternoon sky through the glass roof and gently pulled his girlfriend’s head and pressed it to his chest. “I think a sandstorm is coming,” he said in Italian. “I told you we should not go out today.”
“But you told me not to go out because of the killer that Iranian guy sent. What’s his name?”
“Javed. But honey, I said the killer might be lurking or a sandstorm might hit us.” Omar had tried to ignore the threats Javed had lobbed. But he knew as a powerful official, Javed could simply direct a Hamas soldier to take Omar out and no one would even notice. His calls to Javed weren’t answered, and he thought lying low for a while wasn’t a bad idea.
“No.” She pulled away from his arms. “You never said sandstorm.”
Omar had said sandstorm, and he knew that she was the type of person who never admits a mistake. Her stubbornness was the second best thing he liked about her, the first – her curvy body.
“You’re right,” Omar said, “I remember now. I never said sandstorm. Let’s have some fun.” Omar extended his hands to clutch her playfully, but she swam away. He pursued her around the fifty-meter-long pool and eventually grabbed her again as she giggled. He put his arms around her waist, lifted her body out of the water, and then threw her back into the pool, and then he playfully jumped on her. They frolicked with each other for another half hour. Omar thought he needed this relaxation to recharge before his next project. During the fighting and the running through the tunnel in Ankara, he’d thought he might die.
“I think the sandstorm isn’t going to come,” said Omar and took a deep breath. “Want to go out to eat?”
She shook her head. “Let’s go back to Italy. In this city, I feel unsafe. Uncomfortable.”
“We will go to Italy. But not out of fear, darling. If you’re really scared, I’ll send someone to whack Javed. Now, let’s go out and eat. I know a great place where they make pizza with goat meat topping.” Omar started climbing up the stairs of the swimming pool. “Come on.”
“Okay,” she said grudgingly and followed Omar.
THE GLASS WAS shattered. Omar squinted at the door, now reduced to a frame and shards of glass. Doerr appeared, a Glock in his hand, the last step in the elimination of his wife’s murderer.
Omar took a peek behind him at his girlfriend standing in knee-deep water, looking appalled.
Doerr took a few steps toward Omar, who was standing still just a few feet away from the edge of the swimming pool. He raised his gun and pointed at Omar and said to Omar’s girlfriend, “Turn around. Fast.”
“Are you from Iran?” she asked.
“No. Turn around. Fast!” Doerr’s gun was still pointed at Omar’s head.
She complied immediately and Doerr turned toward Omar.
“You won’t get away with this,” Omar barked. “Everything is being recorded. Guards will drop in anytime. It’d be best if you leave now. I won’t report it.”
“It’d be best if you shut up,” Doerr said. “Keep those hands up.”
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
“Let’s not talk about that. Tell me what’s your last wish? Before you die.”
“I want to kill you.”
“Other than that.”
“You can kill me, but you can’t get out of here. The security system will lock down all the doors and each and every window.”
“Yes, and that’s why I disabled the system.” Doerr maintained a distance of twenty feet from Omar, the gun still raised.
“You are bluffing.” Omar took two steps toward Doerr.
“Your security system password is mybaby661. Now believe me?”
“How did you get it?” Omar looked incredulous. “Only I and the security man know it.”
“There’re ways to find things. What’s your last wish?”
“What did you do to my guard?” Omar took two more steps.
Doerr cocked the gun. “He is alive. He’ll live, unlike you.”
Omar charged at Doerr.
Doerr squeezed the trigger, and three bullets hit Omar’s head. His knees hit the ground first, followed by his arms, and then his head, splattering blood on the ground. As Doerr glanced at Omar’s body lying like a dead fox, he felt relieved; finally a heavy stone lifted from his chest – he’d eliminated his wife’s murderer from the face of the earth.
Doerr moved to Omar’s body and looked at his girlfriend, who was standing in waist-deep water, face turned away.
Was she crying? Doerr couldn’t tell. Doerr shot at Omar’s head two more times, making sure he was really dead, and then he left Omar’s house.
EPILOGUE New York
Doerr formally quit the agency and started teaching small kids at a piano school and joined a New York-based music band as an unpaid piano player.
It was three p.m. and Christmas was just a few days away. He looked down at the road from his apartment’s balcony. He watched a young couple, both we
aring black jackets, holding each other’s hands, walking leisurely. He felt happy for them. He came back to the room and sat on the piano chair, practicing some music he was going to play in an upcoming concert for the music band.
His phone rang. The caller ID showed an international number from Israel. He picked up the phone on the third ring, wondering who it could be.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hi.” The voice at the other end was sweet, almost soothing. And he knew who it was, Dinah Ariella, the Mossad girl.
He said, “How are you?”
“I’m good. I think you’re surprised to receive my call.”
“Yes, I am. A little. It’s a pleasant surprise. But how did you get my number?”
“Got it from a source. I have my ways.” She laughed. “Can’t disclose the source.”
“That’s okay. It’s fine.”
“Tell me. How’s everything?”
“Things are good. Or bad, depending on your perspective.”
“Care to explain?”
“I’ve left the agency. Many at Langley weren’t happy about it. Stonewall included. And I’m sure many more rejoiced at it.”
“I heard that CIA blamed you for Janco’s death. Was that the main reason why you left or something else?”
“The blame game was part of it. But I was kind of used to that sort of reaction from the agency. No big deal.”
“Did you leave because of the way Director Stonewall treated you. All those lies she threw at you.”
“No. She’s basically a good director. A good person. She did give me some misinformation and kept me in the dark about certain things. But she has a lot of responsibilities. And keeping things secret is part of her job.”
“Then what was the reason for your departure?”
“It was mainly because I didn’t see any reason for me to run around. I feel my life has come to a dead end. My wife is gone. My only son was murdered a few years back. You know all that. This is it for me. I sometimes wish I could go away somewhere.”
“Don’t talk like that, Max. I know it’s easy for me to say. But with time, people do move on. It’s one of the laws of life.”