The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (20 page)

M
ahdavi Yazdi purchased a pack of cigarettes from the dispensary where the aspirin had been bought. He had already checked the medications, made sure that the labels were the same. There was no point interrogating the boy behind the counter. He was watching a movie on a laptop set on a stool. He wouldn’t notice anyone who came or went. It didn’t matter. The target was somewhere near.

Yazdi went out to the sunny street, a short but busy block full of small shops catering to young people. He lit a cigarette and looked around. He saw a bookstore, an emergency medical facility, a gift shop, a mosque. He would go to all of them, starting with the medical facility; that would be the ideal place to run a nuclear lab of any sort.

First, however, he had other business to attend to.

Moving purposefully toward the nearest corner, as though he knew exactly where he was going, he stopped as soon as he rounded it. The woman on the motorbike— the one who had been trailing him since he had arrived at the Professor’s home—was on foot, as expected; on a street filled with pedestrians and two-wheel bicycles, her sleek, noisy machine stood out. She was more dogged than skillful, having stuck with him at the same distance, unaware of how her motorcycle was reflecting in the sun—and apparently never thinking that he might recognize it from the shack on the beach.

She was carrying her helmet under her arm and he got a good look at her when she swung around the corner and awkwardly put on a head scarf. She looked Semitic, that was for sure; young and healthy, her step a little uncertain, and her clothes were Western.

She was not a veteran. A coworker or relative of the dead man? She didn’t seem angry enough to be on a mission of vengeance.

All of this he noticed in the moment it took for her to come toward and then past him. She did not want to seem as though she was following him, but he noticed the flicker of hesitation when she saw him waiting there, looking in her direction. He waited until she had passed before he spoke. He would try Farsi first. If she didn’t understand he would speak in Hebrew; there was always a chance she was Israeli, a field agent who happened to be converging on the same target as he was.

“What do you want?” he asked.

The woman kept walking.

Yazdi didn’t have time for this. Her hands were outside her casual clothes. If she were carrying a weapon, it was not visible in her waistband. His instincts told him she was an amateur. He walked up beside her and matched her pace.

“You’ve been following me,” he said. “Why?”

She didn’t answer. She kept walking.

Yazdi let her go. He had to get over to the medical center and find the device. The woman was not going anywhere and he would deal with her when he had to. He would start by disabling her bike.

He turned and went back around the corner. The bike was parked against the curb, nose in, between two cars. He took his keys from his pocket, pressed a button on one. A small blade snapped from the end. Yazdi dropped the cigarettes by the rear tire, bent to pick them up, went to puncture the tire.

A hand stopped him by grabbing his bicep. Before he even turned, Yazdi knew that the grip was strong, very firm, not the small fingers of the woman he had been trailing. He had made a mistake even a novice would have been smart enough not to commit. He had assumed the woman was traveling alone.

Yazdi let the keys drop to the asphalt, rose slowly, and turned. He looked into the dark, unblinking eyes of a man he did not know and who clearly did not belong here. He was a tall American who looked like a cross between a Marine and a poet. There was something powerful but not immediately threatening about him—and wise. Those eyes seemed to know more than Yazdi could or would have confessed.

The woman, the borrower of the motorbike, came hurrying around the corner. Yazdi was now doubly caught off-guard: she seemed as surprised as he had been to see the other man. She entered the space between the cars from the front end of the motorcycle.

Yazdi offered the American a cigarette. Kealey shook his head once, slowly. The Iranian lit one for himself.

“I’m going to go now,” the Iranian said in Farsi.

“Tell him we’re going together,” Kealey said to Rayhan, though his eyes were on Yazdi.

She translated and waited. Yazdi shook his head. He started to go. Kealey stopped him with a hand to his chest. “You won’t get anywhere without my help,” he said.

When Rayhan had translated, Yazdi blew smoke. “Why?”

Kealey replied, “I have a Geiger counter in my car.”

The Iranian listened to the translation, then relaxed slightly. “Who are you?”

Kealey lowered his hand. “Tell him I’m the only guy in American intelligence who would rather work with him than stab him with my much larger knife.”

When Rayhan had translated Yazdi looked down at the American’s hand. Low, where he hadn’t noticed it, Kealey was holding a switchblade. It wasn’t pointed at the Iranian. Yazdi appreciated that. In the language of spies that was known as a “give.” The American could have coerced him but didn’t.

Yazdi didn’t have time to analyze or debate. He nodded and asked Rayhan if he could pick up his keys. She did it for him and put them in her pocket.

“Do you think I’m going to run?” he asked. “At the very least I’d follow
you
now.”

She made no response other than to motion him along.

“We’ll go to my car, right over there,” Kealey said, leading the way. “What should we call you?”

As Rayhan translated Yazdi was inwardly amused by the wording of the question. It didn’t matter because the American assumed he wouldn’t tell the truth. Should he answer honestly? It could provide an enemy with a priceless hostage, a source of information—though the American was the outsider here, not him. Yet it would also establish a hierarchy. The American was simply a functionary. He was a subordinate in status, knowledge, and access. There was also a question of credibility. How much more influence would he have as Mahdavi Yazdi than pretending to be Qassam Pakravesh or someone else? These were typically the life-or-death questions he decided, without emotion, for others.

As they crossed the street to the front of a bakery, Yazdi said, “I am Mahdavi Yazdi, Director of Vezarat-e Ettela’at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran.”

Kealey reacted by looking back. “The director? What’s your annual budget?”

Rayhan translated and he replied at once. “Nine hundred billion rial.”

“What’s the name of the frigate you lost yesterday?”

The man did not answer as quickly—or as unemotionally. His jaw shifted unhappily as he said, “
Jamaran.
”

Kealey didn’t know if the Iranian was right about the funding—there were about twelve thousand rial to the dollar, making it about seventy-five million dollars, which seemed a little low—but he answered quickly and confidently. And he didn’t like being asked about the ship, but he knew about it. That kind of news would not have been publicized in Iran. Kealey was inclined to believe the man.

“Who are you?” Yazdi asked again, through Rayhan.

“We’re United States government agents,” was all Kealey replied.

“That is hardly an equal trade.”

“No, but this isn’t a prisoner swap and I’m not interested in what’s fair,” Kealey said, Rayhan translating as he spoke. “I will tell you this, however. My uncle’s the man who sent your treasure to the bottom of the ocean. I know exactly what it is. So do you, more or less, or you wouldn’t care that I have a Geiger counter.” They reached the unmarked police car Kealey had borrowed. He waited for Rayhan to catch up with the interpretation, then said, “So here’s the deal. You can go—I won’t try and stop you. You’ve led us to where you think the device is and I’ll probably find it before you do. Or you can help us. We don’t want the thing floating around, and I don’t think you want it out there with your nation’s fingerprints on it.”

Yazdi considered all this as Kealey opened the front passenger door. He retrieved a leather case from the passenger’s seat. It was black, with an extensible sensor built into the side in the event the user needed to check a specific spot. There was an audio bud, which Kealey placed in his ear. The newest field models were designed to keep from alarming anyone who might hear the familiar clicking. Only the user could see the gauge in the top of the unit, an old-fashioned needle mechanism: radiation could affect and skew the readings if the counters themselves were digital.

Kealey held it low along his side. He regarded Yazdi. “Are we working together?”

Yazdi took a long look up the street as he waited for the woman to translate. “You already know the answer to that.”

The American opened the glove compartment, which was where he had retrieved the knife and also the derringer that was tucked in his pants pocket. The lieutenant was well prepared: the .22 caliber pistol, whose serial number had been scratched off, was a “throwaway,” something to plant on anyone he shot by accident or accidentally on purpose.

“I’ll have your phone, please,” Kealey said.

After Rayhan had translated, Yazdi’s reply was firm: “No.”

“You may not be here alone,” Kealey said. “Or you may take our pictures and keep them in your files.”

“Those are both true,” Yazdi agreed. “But I am expecting information on our quarry. I don’t want to miss that. You can have the switchblade in my pocket as a sign of trust, but I will keep the phone.”

Kealey thought for a moment. “Give both to her.”

Yazdi was obviously dealing with just one novice, the woman, who was probably along to translate. She had that aura of Westernization, of independence, of time spent at university, a radicalization that plagued too many Arab women. This man—he was a veteran. If the American hadn’t thought this through he was improvising wisely.

I wonder if our inside source can provide information on this man
, Yazdi thought.

With a short, unhappy exhale of breath, Yazdi turned and handed the phone and switchblade to Rayhan. She pocketed the phone and gave the blade to Kealey, who tossed it in the glove compartment.

“Who are we looking for?” Kealey asked.

“A professor of physics.”

“Name?”

Yazdi said, “This is not a swap.”

“All right, keep that,” Kealey told him. “You have solid intelligence that he’s in this region?”

Yazdi nodded.

“I noticed a medical center down the street,” Kealey said. “That would be the obvious place to hide or work with radioactive material. It has to be checked out. You can do that. I’m going to sweep the street, see if it might be somewhere else.”

“If it is, how do I know you’ll inform me?” Yazdi asked. “It may be just a few steps from here.”

Kealey thumbed on the Geiger counter. The needle didn’t move. “We’re wasting time. You and I and the nations we represent do not want Armageddon. We gain by détente. You have my word. I will involve you.”

It was concise and he seemed sincere. Yazdi wondered for the first time if years at a desk had mellowed him: he agreed to the American’s terms.

“She’ll go with you,” Kealey added.

Rayhan seemed surprised. From her expression, Kealey couldn’t tell whether she felt like a ballplayer being benched or a third-stringer being given a shot at the majors. She would have to wonder a few minutes more. It was not a problem as far as Yazdi was concerned. It was better to have two sets of eyes and to be a couple. A man and woman together were rarely suspected of espionage.

Kealey did not know if Yazdi was merely pretending not to speak English. So he said to Rayhan, “Work with him. Stay in touch by text.” The Iranian wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on text communications.

Rayhan agreed and they turned to the right, walking along the modern sidewalk which sat beside a road that had been established before the last millennium, when the greatest dangers facing civilization were disease, natural disasters, and the bow.

Yazdi was not afraid of the power of the device, which was far less than God could—and had—visited upon His children. What he feared was the erasure of the boundary that divided man from God in the mind of man. The power to spread radiation and blind destruction did not seem to fit with spreading of the word of the Prophet. The people who had the bomb were as bad in their way as infidels were in theirs.

Despite the millions of adherents at home and abroad, for the first time in his life Yazdi felt more like a buffer between opposing forces than a force himself. He felt like a caged animal, and that did not sit well with his temperament.

Or his mission.

 

 

Before he had gone more than a few steps, Kealey had already picked up a faint ticking on the Geiger counter. It could have been from any number of sources. Everything from radon to fallout from old atmospheric bomb tests produced background radiation. But those levels tended to remain relatively consistent in an area. This was getting stronger the farther east he went. Not significantly stronger but measurably.

He did not immediately notify Rayhan. She was still green, and she needed time to get her feet under her. Kealey also needed time to think. He trusted Yazdi only as long as he didn’t have the device. If Kealey found it first, he had no intention of folding the enemy into the process—not if he could help it. Whatever Yazdi said, whatever he believed, he would do as instructed by his masters, from the Ayatollah to the Experts to the President. If that meant sending a young mother or student with the bomb into Tel Aviv or an oil field in Saudi Arabia, he would do it. Kealey would not hesitate to perform a surgical assassination to prevent that. On top of which, the man had a wealth of information that could be of enormous use. He might not know the names of cells or sleepers in other countries—to prevent exactly this kind of compromise—but he would know how to get in touch with them. That could be enormously useful to Clarke.