Walt Korzen believed a nuclear-armed Iran would force the kids to stand up for themselves. Maybe then America could disengage from the area on its own terms and re-establish its proper role as the world’s only superpower, which was not the same thing as being the world’s policeman. American armed forces did not need to fight everyone else’s fights, particularly when the beneficiaries were ungrateful brats. Let them get bloody and work through their own problems. Then they would beg for America’s help, and the U.S. could dictate the terms of any defense agreements. The U.S. government had walked on egg shells around the Middle East’s leaders for too long, and Korzen saw a shuffling of the deck as necessary for America to regain the respect it deserved.
The day Raad recruited him to spy on The Council for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Korzen saw an opportunity to personally boost America’s prominence on the world stage. He wasn’t helping Iran, he was helping the United States of America. He was a patriot, not a traitor. And he was willing to give his life to that end. He would take a bullet from a Mossad assassin if that’s what it took. Raad apparently wouldn’t. Pussy.
Korzen put his briefcase in the backseat of his car and got in the driver’s seat. He put the key in the ignition. As soon as he started the engine, two doors opened and slammed shut in the space of two seconds.
“Morning, Walt.”
Korzen froze.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Scott Parker. Another man he had never seen before was in the backseat behind Korzen with the barrel of a .45 caliber pistol pointed at the back of Walt’s head.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Put your seat belt on so that fucking noise stops.”
Korzen reached for the key. “I’ll just...”
“Leave it on. We’re going for a little ride.”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Walter...seat belt,” Parker said.
Korzen did as he was told.
“Good,” Parker said, buckling his own seat belt. “Wanna get some coffee? I can’t think clearly without my morning coffee. You know where Caboose Cafe is?”
“Yes,” Korzen said softly. Sweat beads popped from the top of his balding scalp.
“Great. Caboose it is. I’m buying.”
Click.
Korzen jumped. When he realized he wasn’t dead, he turned his head slowly and saw the man behind him smiling behind the pistol still pointed at him.
“Everyone’s buckled in,” Parker said. “Let’s go.”
They drove for ten minutes in silence. They only traveled two miles, but for morning rush hour in D.C., they were making good time. Parker figured it would only take them about fifteen minutes to reach the cafe, which is why he chose it as their destination.
“So, how’s work, Walt?” Parker asked.
“Okay, I guess.” Korzen didn’t take his eyes off the road, partly for safety reasons in all of the traffic, but mostly because he was afraid to look at Parker directly. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Parker, but every glance in the rearview mirror reminded him that one wrong move could mean a bullet in his skull.
“Just okay? I would think it was better than ‘okay.’ First line of defense at State, a seat on The Council. You’re making a difference, Walt. There are thousands of govies in this town who just punch a clock and collect a paycheck. They might tell themselves what they do is important, but even they know that’s bullshit. But not you. You’ve got access and opportunity. Yes, sir. That’s real power.”
Korzen turned the car into the parking lot behind Caboose Cafe. Parker directed him toward the back of the lot.
“Leave the car on,” Parker said. He unbuckled his seat belt and turned to Korzen. “Tell me something, Walt. What business do you have with Davood Raad?”
“What? The writer?” This time Korzen faced Parker. He saw the gun with his peripheral vision. It was still pointed at him. “I don’t have any business with him. I met him after one of his lectures once, but that was months ago.” He looked at both of his “guests” in turn. “I haven’t even seen the guy except that one time.”
“Walt,” Parker started, shaking his head. “Don’t lie to me, Walt. We know you’ve been talking to him. I just want to know what you two discuss when you get together.”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t talk about anything?”
“No, I mean I’ve never talked to him except that one time after the lecture.”
“You’re doing it again, Walt. You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not lying. I...”
Pop!
“Oww! Fuck!” Korzen exclaimed after the man in the back seat slapped his bald head.
“We have pictures of one of Raad’s goons handing you an envelope yesterday, Walt. What was in it? Was it a message? Money? Both? What did the message say?”
“I didn’t get any...”
Pop!
“Shit! Stop it!” Korzen was breathing heavy.
“We have pictures, Walt.” Parker sighed. “Davood Raad is an Iranian spy. The man who gave you an envelope outside Horus Rhind yesterday was working for Raad. How do you think that looks? I’ll tell you. Not good, Walt. Not good at all.”
Korzed stared blankly at Parker.
“It’s not just the pictures, either, Walt. Raad’s messenger...he was killed last night, along with one of his friends when they were meeting with Raad. Now Raad hasn’t admitted that you’re his agent, but he will,” Parker said. A white lie in the guise of certainty. Korzen didn’t need to know that Raad was not apprehended yet.
Korzen ran his hand over his stinging skull and wiped the sweat on his pants as he faced forward again. Raad will give me up, he thought. He’ll be extradited to Iran. Maybe traded for that Marine of ours they’re still holding. And I’ll be executed. He took a deep breath. Or maybe I’ll just be locked up for life.
A sudden thought occurred to him, and he almost gasped. Or maybe nothing will happen to me! They can’t let this get out. A public trial will expose The Council and America’s part in Israel’s assassination games. If the trial is classified, that will attract the press like moths to a flame. And the government can’t stonewall them forever. Too many bloggers and conspiracy nuts will catch wind of it and turn up the heat. They can’t afford that either.
“Okay,” Korzen finally said. “I was working with Raad. But when you hear why, you’ll understand.”
“I’m all ears.”
After ten minutes, four muffled bangs rang inside the car. But no one was in the near-empty parking lot to hear them. Two men exited. When parker’s companion confirmed there was no visible evidence on the fogged glass of the four slugs that entered Korzen’s torso from behind through the driver’s seat, he gave Parker the thumbs up. Parker locked the car and shut the door with the engine still running.
“Wanna get some coffee.”
Chapter 44
Dasht-e Kavir, Semnan Province, Iran
A solitary bird darted among the wilting shrubs, its nimble legs a blur as it navigated the arid terrain. It was early March, and it would be another four months before the dark-stemmed mugwort that pocked this portion of the Great Salt Desert bloomed, providing some cover to mask the bird’s movements. Despite the ground jay’s nervous flitting, it was anything but nervous. The only living things around bigger than the bird were two stationary figures five hundred meters from the lone dirt road that dissected the north and south horizons, but the bird discounted them as predators. They had been there for two days, and the bird was still alive.
“Two uniforms. One suit.”
“Got ‘em.”
“Thick dark-rimmed glasses. Salt-and-pepper beard. Burn scars on right cheek.”
“That’s him.” Adam Miller turned the windage adjustment one click and moved his left hand to the rifle butt tucked into his shoulder.
“Meters, six-seven-three.”
“Six-seven-three,” Miller repeated.
Nouri Behzadi raised a hand to his forehead and peered
west down the long dirt road. A rising cloud of dust preceded the intermittent flashes of sun reflecting off the truck’s windshield. “Here it comes,” he announced to the two soldiers who accompanied him outside the underground facility. The two armed men turned in the direction the scientist was facing.
Behzadi was awaiting delivery of a replacement part for the explosive yield measuring system before Tuesday’s scheduled test. If everything went as planned, he would be back in Tehran in time for his youngest son’s sixth birthday. He’d been away from his family for much of the previous year, and he felt he was missing his children grow up. His wife was doing an excellent job keeping house and raising the kids, but Behzadi knew from his own experience that children, especially boys, needed their father at home.
The truck was now clearly visible. Behzadi could make out the color of the vehicle—tan, faded to a dirty white. The sound of its rumbling, jolting approach echoed off the craggy outcroppings on either side of the road and shattered the desert silence, drowning out even the chatter from the two soldiers talking just ten feet away.
Behzadi took a handkerchief from his pocket and removed his glasses to wipe the sweat off his face. He never felt the bullet enter his skull just above the left ear. He certainly never felt it exit, taking most of the right side of his head with it. And no one heard the shot. Behzadi’s lifeless body crumpled to the ground.
He was not going to make it to his son’s birthday party.
“Target down,” Cohen confirmed and lowered his spotting scope.
Chapter 45
Savannah, Georgia
The squeaking hinges of the Sunset Tavern’s front door announced Casey’s arrival.
“Hi, Casey,” the co-owner of the establishment called from behind the bar where she was drying glasses before Happy Hour.
“Hey, Maude.”
Casey left the Intelligence Watch Group four weeks after he returned to New York. A four-hour car ride and an entire weekend gave him time to think. Time to unwind from the events of the past week. And time to contemplate what was in store for him next. He expected to be dressed down by Jim Shelton, and even Susan, but he wasn’t fired. Which surprised him.
Instead, Casey’s penance was unpaid overtime with Jim. News broke early Sunday morning of Dr. Davood Raad’s apprehension at Dulles International Airport. Clean-shaven and wearing platform shoes that made him two inches taller, Raad was attempting to leave the country on a fake British passport—the reason the news report gave for his arrest. Casey knew better, and Jim wanted to hear all about it. So for a week, Casey sat in Jim’s office after working hours and recounted his entire trip to the nation’s capital. In painstaking detail. And Casey left nothing out.
The information sessions with Jim were almost like a form of therapy. When Casey answered one question, Jim asked another. Hearing himself narrate the events of the last five years, from Mike Tunney’s death and his introduction to Lev Cohen, to the bombing at Soren’s Deli, to his interrogation in D.C. and close call with a Qods assassin wielding a poison pen knife, made Casey seriously reconsider his own view of himself and the life he was living.
He wasn’t invincible. He knew that before any of this happened, but you’d never guess it by some of the bonehead decisions he made. He was lucky. But someday—probably soon—that luck would run out. He remembered Scott Parker’s assessment of Walter Korzen. “He may want to be James Bond, but he’s not.” And neither was Casey.
Maude popped the cap off a Rolling Rock and set it down as Casey took a seat at the bar.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Casey pushed the sweat-stained Braves cap back on his head and looked at the old man three stools to his right. “Anything new, Jas?”
“Not since 9:42 this morning.” Jas Filmore didn’t look away from the television monitor behind the bar. He sipped his Scotch and kept his eyes on the ticker at the bottom of the screen. That was where the breaking news was posted first, and Jas didn’t feel the need to wait for some talking head to tell him with pictures what he could just as easily read for himself. The fact that he was still “watching” the news didn’t seem to bother him.
Casey had only been back in Savannah for just over a week, but it was almost as if he’d never left. He thought of Susan, Jim, George Smithfield, Paul Giordano, Lev Cohen, Andie Jackson, and even Oscar Horstein as he took a long pull of his beer. He would miss them. They had each touched his life in one way or another. And Casey knew that their inclusion in his life, if only briefly, had made him a better person. He hoped. But it had been time for him to leave.
You can only cheat death for so long, and Casey had done his share of dodging the grim reaper over the past half-decade. Next time he might not be so lucky. And that’s what it was. Luck. Sort of. It damn sure wasn’t his physical prowess or superior intellect and cunning that got him out of those tight spots and near misses. Hell, that’s what usually got him into trouble in the first place. No, it was almost always someone else who possessed the qualities he didn’t have that pulled his feet from the fire just in the nick of time. And he knew that.
Despite the protests of some, particularly Susan Williams, Casey put in his two weeks notice at IWG and was gone by the end of February. With the ides of March just three days gone, Casey was home. Having a beer in his favorite bar on the Wilmington River in Thunderbolt, the smell of Naugahyde and old lacquer on the furnishings filling his nostrils and flooding his mind with memories. Good and bad.
He was working as a deckhand for a small tugboat company on Hutchinson Island in the Savannah River, just across from the famed River Street. Pushing construction barges up and down the river, occasionally bringing water to the dredges constantly fighting to keep the waterway navigable, was certainly more demanding than filling breakroom vending machines along Abercorn, but it was also more rewarding.
Casey left Georgia out of necessity, or what seemed necessary at the time, and he returned for essentially the same reason. He was through with international conspiracies. Finished with political intrigue. He was done putting his life in danger chasing the truth behind the news. He was back to being a regular guy, with a regular job, living a regular life. And that was just fine with him. Casey even stopped posting to his Middle-Truths blog. He just wasn’t interested anymore.
He finished his beer and asked Maude for another.
“Bodies of three Ukraine businessmen were found dead in a shipping container at Gwadar Port in Pakistan,” Jas reported.
Casey looked up at the TV and took a drink.
Well...maybe one more blog post.
About the Author
Matthew M. Frick is a retired naval officer who has lived overseas and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Europe. His writings have been referenced in journals, theses, and other media in over five different countries, including India, Russia, and Iran (translated into Farsi and located on the official Majlis website). A native of Stone Mountain, Georgia, he currently lives in St. Johns, Florida, with his wife, two children, and a bluetick coonhound.
Truth in Hiding Page 22