by Greg Rucka
Crocker finished the coffee, set the cup in its saucer gently on the coffee table, then leaned forward, towards Seccombe in his chair. “Chace called into the Ops Room just after seven this morning. She’s alive—wounded, but alive—and mobile.”
“How badly is she wounded?”
“Badly enough that she’ll need medical attention before we can fly her out of the country.”
Seccombe sucked air through his teeth, clearly not pleased. “She goes into a hospital, she won’t come out except in Sepah custody.”
“I’m not sending her to the hospital,” Crocker said. “I want your permission to bring her to the embassy.”
The displeasure deepened, then dissipated, Seccombe’s expression becoming curious. “Paul?”
“They’ve set up roadblocks, checkpoints, they are actively searching for her. Her last coordinates put her just under ninety kilometers from Tehran, but she’s in the Alborz, and she’s had to veer far to the west to avoid the major highways. There’s a village, Nowjan, roughly at the midway point. I’ve ordered her to head there.”
“To what end?”
“Ideally, to have the Station Number Two rendezvous with her there. He can put her in his car, drive her straight to the embassy. We can bring a doctor in to see her, to stabilize her enough for transport, and then get her the hell out of the country. With your word, she could be on a flight home by tonight.”
The sucking noise again, air drawing through his teeth, as Seccombe considered, looking away from Crocker as he did so. “They’ll be stopped. Once the Number Two heads back into Tehran, they’re sure to be stopped.”
“It’s almost guaranteed,” Crocker agreed. “But the Number Two has diplomatic credentials, and the vehicle will be from the embassy, as well.”
“Meaning Chace will have diplomatic immunity.”
“It’s the only way I can think to bring her in, sir.”
“The Foreign Secretary won’t like it.”
“I suspect he’ll like seeing footage of her trial rebroadcast on the BBC even less.”
“Indeed.” Seccombe, still looking away, smiled, then returned his attention to Crocker. “She’s on the way to Nowjan, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning you’ve already committed to the course of action. I daresay you’ve informed Tehran Station of what you wanted them to do, as well. Still seeking permissions after the fact, Paul.”
“I’m not going to leave one of my agents to die in Iran.”
Seccombe shook his head, dismissive. “Hardly the point. Even at this late stage of the game, you still insist on playing by your rules.”
That made Crocker pause. “What do you mean?”
“Someone was going to end up on the chop for Coldwitch, Paul. Even if Chace gets out of Iran, someone might still. Could be you. The Americans were extremely eager at the thought of bringing Khamenei’s nephew in for a few questions, never mind what we could’ve wrung out of him. Chace makes it home, very good for her, but the operation is still a disaster.”
“I was against the operation from the start,” Crocker said.
“I’m sure you were. But C certainly won’t take responsibility for its failure any more than she already has, nor will the Deputy Chief. Unless you’re willing to lay the blame on Minder One, it will have to come to rest somewhere. My understanding is that she is retiring from the Special Section anyway, yes?”
Crocker started to respond, could feel the argument forming on his lips. He felt very, very tired suddenly, as old as the room, and nowhere as well preserved. Seccombe was watching him, an eyebrow gently arched, curious.
“It’s not the first time,” Crocker said finally.
“No.” Seccombe considered him a moment longer. “But it may be the last.”
“So you believe I’ve stayed too long, as well?”
“I didn’t say that, Paul. You clearly still have a contribution to make. But you have also made it clear that, when the time comes, you’ve no intention of going gracefully.”
“I could say the same about you, sir. Twenty years as PUS now?”
“It’ll be thirty in January. I’m still in the process of grooming my replacement, you see.”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Something for you to consider, at any rate.” Seccombe nodded, rose fluidly from his chair, scooping up Crocker’s empty cup. “Go ahead and inform Tehran Station to proceed, if you haven’t done so already, Paul. I’ll expect the good news from you before close of play today.”
Unlike C, Crocker had no Bentley at his beck and call, in fact no official vehicle of any sort, and while he could have justified a taxi fare that morning, he needed time to think, time to clear his head, and the walk back to Vauxhall Cross could provide him that. He set out, walking south, passing Downing Street and then the Treasury, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his overcoat, eyes ever wandering over the faces making their way along the street. It was early yet, but not so early that the work of Government wasn’t already in full swing, and he saw faces he recognized, this one from the Admiralty, that one from the JIC. Some nodded in recognition when they met his eyes, others looked quickly away.
Seccombe had been correct on almost every account. In the handful of minutes between the red phone ringing in his office, where he and Poole had been sitting in silent commiseration, pretending to go through the morning’s paperwork, and Crocker’s reaching the Ops Room to make contact with Chace, he had already constructed the frame of what would become the new exfil plan. He’d ordered Mission Planning to bring up the map of Iran, working from the coordinates Chace had already relayed, and God bless them one and all, they were ahead of him, had already picked out Nowjan as the best location for a pickup. It was Chace’s wound that had made any further considerations moot; the embassy route was the only possible way to save her.
Crocker had no sooner cut the connection with Minder One than he’d picked up the still-open line to Barnett in Tehran and told him what he wanted, how they would make it happen. Barnett, in turn, had reported that Lewis and MacIntyre were on their way back from Noshahr, that they would make the pickup on the way into Tehran. He’d have a doctor waiting for Chace at the embassy, he promised. They’d get his girl back to him in one piece.
There had been one other option, of course, the one that C had almost, but not quite, been willing to put voice to as she was leaving her office to brief the Prime Minister. Crocker could have told Chace that there was no way home, that there was no help coming, that she was on her own. He could have told her how dire the situation looked. He could have concluded by saying, simply, that she could not let herself be taken alive. And if that hadn’t made the point painfully clear, he could have asked, finally, if she had managed to arm herself. The instruction would have been implicit. She would have understood.
Whether or not Chace would have put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, Crocker didn’t know. He was profoundly grateful that he hadn’t been forced to find out.
C hadn’t been entirely callous when she’d said that things would’ve been infinitely easier if Chace had died. At that moment, with the little knowledge available to them, capture had seemed imminent. Objectively, then, the death of Minder One would have spared them the political shitstorm that would’ve come with her arrest.
As soon as Chace had made contact, however, everything had changed. She was mobile, and she was still at liberty, and that meant there was the possibility—the very strong possibility—that they could get her out of Iran before Shirazi managed to lay hands on her. If they could do that, the political fallout of Coldwitch’s failure, at least in the public eye, would be minimized. The Iranians could scream and shout to their heart’s content, could blame SIS and HMG and the CIA and the Mossad, too, for the death of Hossein Khamenei, but there would be no proof, and in the end, then, it would be only what it so often was out of Tehran: noise, loud and incomprehensible, designed to mask their true intentions.
&n
bsp; He was passing the House of Commons now, Big Ben just beginning to strike the hour, walking along Millbank. Ahead of him, still on this side of the river, just past Lambeth Bridge, stood the headquarters of Box, the Security Services. He turned before reaching it, started across the Thames on the bridge.
Doubt was nagging him, and he tried to isolate it, identify it. He’d been correct about Coldwitch, but he knew, as well, that he was wrong, that he was missing something, but he was damned if he could see what it was. If Falcon had only ever been bait, why had Shirazi waited so long to close the trap? Even after missing Chace, why hadn’t he taken Lewis and MacIntyre, diplomatic immunity notwithstanding? The rental in Noshahr wasn’t the embassy; that far from Tehran, Shirazi could have easily brought both men in for questioning, made his apologies later.
He stepped off the bridge, turning south once more, now walking along the Albert Embankment. He could see the SIS Head-quarters in the distance, the absurd cubic pyramid of tinted and mirrored glass, as distinctively unsubtle a work of modern architecture as ever beheld. From this angle, at this distance, its nickname of Legoland had never seemed more appropriate.
Seccombe had been trying to tell him something at the end, Crocker realized, had been trying to warn him, perhaps, that this was the last favor, the last back-channel chat they would be having. Another person ringing the death knell for Paul Crocker’s career.
Crocker shook it off, producing his pass as he approached the gate. The watch logged him back in, and he crossed the enclosed courtyard to the entrance, showed his pass a second time, then, inside, swiped it through the reader as he passed through the metal detectors. He couldn’t count the number of times his career had been threatened. Frances Barclay, Gordon-Palmer’s immediate predecessor as C, had practically made a sport of it, in fact. Yet Barclay was gone and Crocker was riding the lift back up to his office as he had done hundreds, even thousands of times before.
There would be fallout from Coldwitch, Crocker had no doubt. But he couldn’t worry about that now, wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted. For C, for Seccombe, for Seale and the CIA, Coldwitch was over, was bust.
But not for Crocker.
Not until he could bring Tara Chace home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IRAN—SHEMIRANAT COUNTY, TEHRAN PROVINCE, NOWJAN
11 DECEMBER 1639 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
The news came over the radio between the second and third roadblocks on the Karaj-Chalus highway, leading at the top of the hour. Caleb, riding in the passenger seat while MacIntyre held the wheel, reached out and turned up the volume, listening closely to the rapid-fire Farsi now coming from the speakers. The report concluded, Iran pop music returning, and Caleb rolled the knob until the radio clicked off.
“They’re reporting the death of the Supreme Leader’s nephew,” he told MacIntyre. “Hossein Khamenei, shot dead by foreign agents in Noshahr during an abortive abduction attempt early this morning.”
MacIntyre glanced to him, his expression flat, then put his attention back to the road.
“Falcon,” Caleb said. “Jesus Christ. That’s what she meant when she said he came from the right family.”
MacIntyre shrugged, disinterested, slowing, and Caleb saw out the windshield yet another line of cars and vans all at a standstill, turning the two-lane road through the Alborz, yet again, into a single-file car park. They came to a stop, and Caleb rolled down his window, pulled himself half out, to get a better look. A switchback ahead of them reversed the road one hundred and eighty degrees, turning it north again, and perhaps thirty meters below them he could see the actual roadblock itself, the police cars and officers. He slid back into the car.
“At least an hour,” Caleb said. MacIntyre shrugged again, then switched off the ignition. The drive from Noshahr down to Tehran would’ve normally taken no more than four, perhaps five hours with the winter weather in the high pass and the planned detour in Nowjan, but, by Caleb’s watch, they were now into the seventh hour of their journey.
“Stop looking at your watch.”
Caleb dropped his wrist. “We’re going to be late.”
MacIntyre chuckled.
“It’s not like she’s got somewhere else to be, Mr. Lewis,” he said.
They cleared the third roadblock at seven minutes to six in the evening, with night falling. Just as with the prior two checkpoints, both MacIntyre and Caleb were required to produce their documents, and just as before, the officer who took them immediately summoned his supervisor as soon as he realized their nationality. Caleb did the talking all three times, the conversations in Farsi all remarkably similar.
“British?”
“With the embassy in Tehran, yes.”
“Where were you in the north?”
“Chalus and Noshahr.”
A frown or a scowl, and then, “Just a moment,” and the supervising officer would step away, speaking into his radio, and for three or four minutes Caleb and MacIntyre would wait. Then the supervisor would return, peering past them, trying to see if anything was hidden in the car. Sometimes there would be more questions, had they seen anything unusual, had they been approached by anyone, were they carrying anything, and in all cases Caleb’s answers were the same, no, no, no, until ultimately they would be waved through.
This third time, though, Caleb thought they had been detained longer than before, and he wondered if it had been deliberate, if they were being intentionally delayed. When Barnett had reached him late that morning, directing him to stop in Nowjan before returning to Tehran, the call had come over Caleb’s cell phone. Barnett had used open code, never mentioning Minder One nor anything directly incriminating at all, and the whole of the conversation couldn’t have lasted more than thirty, perhaps forty seconds at the most. But that could have been long enough for VEVAK to have overheard what was said, and it wouldn’t take a genius to understand their meaning.
Seven kilometers past the roadblock, MacIntyre turned them off the highway, west, down a narrow unpaved road into a valley between the mountains. Full dark had descended, and within the car, the only view of the world was via the headlamps, and one of them, it turned out, was broken. The car was an older Benz, a four-door, and Caleb thought that once in its life it had quite possibly been grand, perhaps even used by the Ambassador himself, but that would have been twenty years ago now, at least, and every rock and dip in the uneven ground translated clearly through the chassis, into his spine.
By the map, it was only three and a half kilometers from the highway to Nowjan, but that implied a straight line. The truth was over three times the distance, the road—if it could be called that—twisting north, then south, then west, then east, then west again, repeated curves and turns through the valley. The Alborz rose on both sides of the car, steep, showing the pale glint of snow high along the slopes.
They hit pavement abruptly, the ride smoothing as the road straightened, descending further, and ahead of them, Caleb could now see Nowjan, a handful of lights burning in homes that clung to the hillside. They passed an orchard, trees bare from winter, another house, and then they were rolling into the tiny town square, the mosque on their left, a squat building ahead of them. MacIntyre turned the car about slowly, and their single headlight revealed a faded portrait of Khomeini painted on one nearby wall.
There was absolutely no one about, absolutely no movement that Caleb could see at all. He turned in his seat, looking to one of the houses, saw its lights wink out, go dark. The thought that they had just driven into a trap asserted itself, called his fear up to duty once again. They were too late, the delays had cost them. Minder One had come and instead of Caleb and MacIntyre and their old Benz she had been met by Shirazi and the Sepah, they had already taken her away. Or they were holding her now, watching as the Benz made a second turn around the square, as it came to a stop, waiting to spring upon them when the moment was right.
MacIntyre reached out, touching his elbow, not speaking, and Caleb turned to see that he was indicatin
g something ahead of them, to the right. A shadow moved, indistinct, began shambling towards them in the darkness. Caleb saw the pistol in its hand, felt the fear surge, trying to become panic, and then he saw the pale face, realized it was Minder One, and he was out of the car before he could think about it, moving towards her even as she brought the pistol up in both hands and pointed it at his head.
“It’s all right,” Caleb said. “It’s all right.”
She wobbled, the pistol remaining trained on him for an instant longer before she brought it down, as if the effort of leveling the gun had taken all the strength in her arms.
“Late,” Chace mumbled. “Thought they’d got you.”
Caleb moved in, taking the pistol from her hand, laying his other arm across her shoulders, trying to support her. She made a noise of pain as his arm came down, her elbow shooting out, catching his ribs, and he released her, more surprised than hurt. She was bent at the waist, hands on her thighs, stray hair dangling from beneath her makeshift maqna’e.
“Back,” Chace managed. “Hit me in the back.”
Feeling like a fool, Caleb reached out for her again, this time taking her arm. “Let’s get you in the car. Get you out of here.”
She nodded weakly, straightening with obvious pain as he took hold of her. MacIntyre had emerged from the Benz, had the rear door open, looking around at everything but the two of them. With care, Caleb led her to the back of the vehicle, helped her climb inside. He closed the door, moving around to join her in the backseat.