The Last Run

by Greg Rucka

  That was then. Now Karaj was more a commuter extension of greater Tehran than a city all its own, though as a city it could boast a place as Iran’s fourth or fifth largest, depending on which census Caleb wanted to believe. Current population was estimated between 1.5 and 2.5 million, and from the traffic alone, he was inclined to believe the larger number. The forty-odd-kilometer drive from the embassy just east of central Tehran to Karaj to the west took him nearly two hours, fighting rush-hour traffic all the way. The only benefit to the frustration and duration of the drive that Caleb could see was that by the time he wedged his Citroën into a space near the corner of Nastaran and Bustan, he was as positive as he could be that he hadn’t been followed.

  It wasn’t until he was at the corner of Sonbol, perhaps two blocks from where he had been directed to establish his surveillance, that Caleb saw the police patrol, a group of four officers with their two parked cars. His first thought was that they were waiting for him, and the fear reared in his chest, growling, and for a half-second that seemed to stretch infinitely longer, he didn’t know what to do. The immediate urge was to turn off, to turn away and head in a different direction. The pedestrian traffic was enough that he thought perhaps he might go unnoticed, but just as quickly he thought that would be a bad idea, the act of a man trying to hide himself, trying not to be seen, certain to draw more attention.

  He continued forward, trying to master himself, and ten meters from the patrol one of the officers called out to him, waving him over.

  “Papers,” the officer said.

  Caleb produced his wallet, his passport and visa card, handing them over. The officer used a small flashlight to look at them, peering at each document intently before shining the light into Caleb’s face, checking him against his photograph.

  “Why are you in Karaj?”

  “Just sightseeing,” Caleb said. “Went to see the palace.”

  The officer grunted, shining his light once again at the open passport in his hand. “British.”

  “Yes.”

  “You live on Mellat.”

  “Yes. Thought I’d wait until the traffic cleared up before heading home.”

  The light snapped off, the documents were returned. “You’ll be waiting for a while. It never clears up.”

  “Lightens, then,” Caleb said. “Do you know, is there anyplace nearby I could get dinner?”

  “On Ladan, that way.” The officer used the flashlight, still in his hand, to indicate the direction, then pointed the opposite way, to the east. “Or there, on Nilufar.”

  Caleb nodded, thanked the officer, and headed onto Nilufar, tucking his papers back into his jacket. It was marginally less busy than Bustan, still with a steady flow of Tehran commuters returning to their homes, their small apartments packed into the concrete, ugly buildings on both sides of the street. The ground floors of several were occupied by shops of one sort or another, and Caleb noted two restaurants and one coffeehouse. He stayed on the north side of the street, making his way to the coffeehouse, and inside ordered a cup of ghahveh, the traditional Iranian coffee, and a piece of date-filled biscuit, called colompe. With both in hand, he wedged himself into a table near the front, by the window, but the glare from within and the rain from without made visibility through the glass near-impossible. He looked around the crowded coffeehouse instead, watched as the postwork crowd of men and women pushed past, as urgent and aggressive as anything he’d ever seen in London, thinking about what he should do next.

  Static surveillance from the street would be difficult, if not impossible, especially with the police patrol so close to hand. Never mind that there were at least a dozen apartment buildings crowded together on the south side of the street, opposite where Caleb now sat, and within those buildings God only knew how many apartments. One of them, according to London, held Falcon, but which one Caleb had no way to know. He considered trying to get a room on the north side of the street, but doing so would create a whole new set of problems, and it would limit his visibility of the buildings opposite him, to boot.

  He sipped at his coffee, tasting the thick grounds as he reached the bottom of the cup. Barnett had suggested static surveillance, but now that he was here, Caleb simply couldn’t see a way that was going to work, certainly not at night, certainly not with the police and the rain. Mobile surveillance wouldn’t do, either; there was no way he could envision to both stay in motion and keep eyes on the whole block. It just wasn’t possible. The only thing that Caleb could think to do, in fact, was to start working through the apartments one by one, knocking on each door in turn, and asking if, perhaps, anyone knew where he might find someone code-named Falcon.

  The absurdity of the idea made him smile.

  There was no way he could find Falcon, he concluded, certainly not without exposing the both of them.

  Which meant that Falcon was going to have to find him.

  There was no message from Barnett the next morning, but when Caleb stopped by the embassy before heading back to Karaj, he noted that at least two of the Security detail he was used to seeing on-site were nowhere to be found, and he concluded that Barnett must have already secured the safehouse. As part of the SIS position within the FCO, the Firm trained and provided guards for each embassy, with additional security provided by subcontracting through local agencies. The irony of hiring Iranians to guard the British Embassy in Tehran wasn’t lost on anyone on either side, and it was accepted as a given that any local thus employed was delivering daily reports to someone in the Republican Guards or VEVAK or both about all they had seen during their shift. High-security areas were, of course, restricted to U.K. personnel only, and all operations were overseen by SIS Security.

  It was three minutes to nine when he reached Karaj, the Nikon slung over his shoulder and a guidebook in his hand. This time Caleb approached Nilufar from the south, starting at Sepah Square. The square really wasn’t, instead a large, finely tended grass roundabout where Aras Avenue converged with the multilane east-west highway that ran all the way back to Tehran. At the center of the roundabout stood a monument to the Sepah, four fine-featured soldiers facing in every cardinal direction, holding flags or rifles, all of them leaping skyward, as if ascending to heaven.

  Caleb stopped and took several pictures of the monument, mostly to get the feel for the camera. He was careful to only shoot facing north; southeast of where he stood, fenced, patrolled, and guarded, was the Basij-e Sepah base. It took four and a half minutes before the traffic cleared enough that he could sprint across the road, north, to the next median, and from there it was only a short walk and a relatively shorter delay before he was able to cross west onto Nilufar.

  There was a slight rise here to the road, another grass-covered slope dotted with trees, with a small gazebo set upon it. Caleb took a seat on one of the benches inside, checked the camera, and now looking down Nilufar to the west, took several shots in succession of the street. Shops were opening, first customers beginning to trickle into the coffeehouse he had visited the night before, as well as to the bank just south of where he was now sitting.

  He watched the street for the next several minutes, pretending to alternately check his guidebook and his camera. The night before, he had arrived believing he would have to watch the apartment buildings, but today he gave them only a cursory glance. If Falcon was flying a flag from one of the windows, Caleb couldn’t see it, and he was now increasingly certain that was because it wasn’t there. Each apartment had an identity, a corresponding tenant or owner, and anything that drew attention to the location would logically draw attention to its occupant. Better to set the flag someplace more anonymous, somewhere Falcon could be just one of many, in one of the restaurants or shops along the street.

  So Caleb watched the street—the bank and the restaurants and the coffeehouse—and while he did that he tried to keep an eye out for the police, and he tried to determine if he, himself, was under surveillance, and when it all became too much he rose and walked down Nilufar
to buy himself another cup of ghahveh. He drank it at a table, was rising to leave when he looked back and saw, seated alone near the back of the room, a man in his late middle-age, graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard, sitting by himself, a book closed on the table in front of him. Caleb couldn’t make out the Farsi from the distance, but he could see the illustration, the different birds taking flight on the cover, and the aftertaste of the too-sweet coffee turned sour in his mouth.

  If there was a falcon in the flock on the cover, he couldn’t see it.

  He took his empty cup back to the counter, using the opportunity to take another survey of the room. The man had been seated when Caleb had entered, he was sure of it, and he was just as sure that the book hadn’t been out at that time.

  “Agha,” Caleb said. “Salam aleykum.”

  The man smiled up at him. “Salam aleykum. Your Farsi is very good for a tourist.”

  “Thank you. You’re interested in birds?”

  “Yes, all sorts.” The man picked up the book, turning it in his hand. “Though we don’t see many here during the winter.”

  “I’d think you’d see some around here.”

  “A few. I don’t get out often to look. You like birds?”

  “Some more than others. I’m partial to birds of prey. Falcons, hawks, birds like that.”

  “Those are all good birds. There are, of course, many others.” The man seemed to consider, looking at the book in his hand, then offered it to Caleb. “I’ve read it several times. Perhaps you’ll have more use for it than I.”

  “That’s very generous of you,” Caleb said, taking the book in hand. He freed the camera from his shoulder, turning to a nearby waiter. “Excuse me, could you take a picture for me? Of me and my friend here?”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Just point and shoot. It’s okay if you take a couple of them.” Caleb moved beside the man, still seated at the table, held up the book with a grin. The waiter pointed the camera, and he heard the shutter click repeatedly before it was handed back. “Thank you.”

  The waiter moved off, smiling, perhaps amused, and Caleb turned again to the man at the table, who was now looking at him much more soberly.

  “I hope you enjoy the book,” the man said. “You should read it soon.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LONDON—VAUXHALL CROSS, OFFICE OF D-OPS

  8 DECEMBER 2037 HOURS (GMT)

  Paul Crocker sat on the edge of his desk, eating his dinner of takeaway salad from the commissary, and contemplated who he would most like to stab first with his plastic fork. On any given day, he would readily admit, the list would be a long one, populated by anyone from the file runner who didn’t seem to understand that now meant now-god-dammit and not now-but-after-you’ve-had-a-nice-chat-with-my-PA, to the Head of Station in, say, Sucre, who couldn’t mount an operation on his own without a coloring book and large-type instructions relayed in triplicate and signed by everyone from the PUS at the FCO to C to the Head of the Janitorial Staff.

  And that was the list without the addition of politicians.

  “I know that look,” Julian Seale said. “Just tell me it’s not me you’re planning to murder.”

  Crocker shook his head, forcing down a particularly limp piece of cucumber. “You can relax. You’re so low on the list they’ll have caught and killed me long before I reach you.”

  Seale leaned forward in his seat, swiping a broad palm across his thigh to clear it of crumbs from his sandwich, before taking hold of the edge of the map laid out on Crocker’s desk. He was a tall man, like Crocker, but broader, the body of an American footballer, as opposed to a British one. One of the few African Americans holding senior posts with the CIA, he’d held the Chief of Station office at the embassy in Grosvenor Square for just under five years now, an exceptionally long time for such a tour, and one that was due to end at the turning of the year. If Operation: Coldwitch resolved as everyone from Downing Street to the White House hoped it would, Seale would be leaving London on a high note, indeed.

  “I like the placement of the safehouse,” Seale said, after a moment. “That’s, what, five klicks from the airport in Noshahr?”

  “Just over four, yes.”

  Seale gulped the rest of his coffee, then got to his feet, craning his head for a better look at the map. “It’s a sweet-looking operation, Paul. Your boys and girls really outdid themselves on this one.”

  “They damn well better have. Coast Guard is aboard?”

  “Langley cleared it with the White House earlier today. Orders forthcoming.”

  Crocker made a last, halfhearted attempt to stab at an asparagus spear, just as limp as the cucumber, then gave up and dumped the remains of his dinner into the trashcan beside his desk. “I’ll want confirmation.”

  “Obviously.” Seale checked his watch. “When’s Chace due to brief?”

  “She’s not.” Crocker slid off the desk and began folding up the map. “The job belongs to Poole. He briefed this evening, will be on his way to Tehran at dawn.”

  Seale put a hand down on the desk, trapping the map, and Crocker was forced to look at him. “You can’t do that. Paul, you can’t do that, the terms of our involvement are that you send Chace. That’s direct from Langley, this has to be handled by your most senior operations officer.”

  “You’re moving up my list, Julian.”

  “This isn’t a joke. The job has to go to Chace.”

  “Poole can do it just as well as she can.”

  “That may be, but those aren’t the goddamn terms, Paul! Jesus, are you trying to kill the operation? It’s Hossein Khamenei, it’s not some fucking clerk in the post office, it’s a high-value target of incredible intelligence value. You have to send your senior operations officer, you have to send Minder One.”

  “She’s put in her resignation from the Section. I’ve accepted it. She is not, therefore, the senior Minder. And get your fucking hand off my fucking desk, Julian.”

  Seale stepped back, glaring at him, and Crocker fought the map closed, fuming. The demand that Chace be the agent of record for Coldwitch was yet another of the many things he didn’t like about the Tehran job.

  “Why the hell weren’t we told about this?” Seale asked.

  “Because no one fucking asked me!” Crocker roared. “Because no one has listened to a word I’ve said for the last twenty-four hours! Ever since Chace made her report I’ve been fighting against this operation, and at every turn I’ve been either ignored or overruled.”

  “If I have to go back to Langley and tell them that she’s not doing the job, that it’s going to Poole, it’ll scuttle the whole damn operation.”

  “Good.”

  Seale stared at him. “Is this about Chace or you?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Are you trying to end your career? Or protect hers?”

  “I’m trying to protect my agents.”

  “So you’re saying that even if Langley does approve Poole, you’ll find a way to scuttle that, as well? And again if they agree on Lankford?”

  “Too right I will.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Seale asked after a moment, and Crocker thought he was genuinely curious. “They’ll fire you, you realize that? They’ll fire you and they’ll fill that Desk with someone who, I don’t know, believes in the radical notion of following their fucking orders!”

  Crocker took his seat, looked up at Seale, now glowering down at him. “Hossein Khamenei is bait. That’s all he is. You’ve got to see that.”

  Seale rubbed his eyes, and seeing that Crocker was still at his desk, that this wasn’t a bad dream, turned his attention to the bust of Winston Churchill in the corner. It was a small bronze, capturing the former Prime Minister during the height of World War Two, one of only two decorations that Crocker kept in his office. The other was a black-and-white silkscreen print of a Chinese dragon, which hung on the wall opposite the door.

  “Of course he’s bait,” Seale said, fi
nally. “But he’s a hell of a piece of bait, Paul. He’s an irresistible piece of bait. And if we can pull him, it’ll be worth the price.”

  “Not to me.”

  For several seconds the two men stared at each other. They’d never managed to become friends, but for the past several years had managed the pretense of professional courtesy, if not camaraderie. Crocker found himself again wishing for Seale’s predecessor, Angela Cheng. It wasn’t that Cheng had been more capable than Seale, but with her, Crocker had shared a fundamental understanding, that politicians were not to be trusted, that it was their duty to protect their respective services, the CIA and SIS, and their agents. Even when they argued—and they had argued often—they had stood on the same side.

  From Seale’s expression now, Crocker knew that wasn’t the case.

  “Get me an escort out,” Seale said.

  Crocker stabbed his intercom, Kate answering immediately. “Mr. Seale needs an escort out of the building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’ll make you send Chace.” Seale reached the door to the outer office. “And if you don’t do it, they’ll fire you and then they’ll replace you with someone who will.”

  He stepped out, and Crocker waited until he heard the escort arrive and then depart again with Seale before getting to his feet. Kate was still at her desk, a paperback novel open in one hand, chewing on the end of a pen.

  “She is technically still Minder One,” Kate said, not looking up.

  “Did you press a drinking glass against the door?”

  “Didn’t need one. You two were loud enough, the whole floor heard it.”

  “Go home, Kate. It’s almost nine.”

  “You’re done for the day?”