The Last Line (20 page)

When the troops and police responded, they seemed unable to tell the difference between rioters and peaceful citizens, and there'd been a number of ugly incidents. The news stations were estimating a death toll of over two hundred, at least ten of those at the hands of the police. Thousands had been injured, inundating hospitals and medical services throughout the city, and thousands more were homeless.

The arrival of troops had not slowed the rioting in the least, so far as Reyshahri could tell. Guardsmen had cordoned off the downtown area and parts of Commerce and East L.A. itself, but the rioting crowds and demonstrations had spread faster than the troops could move. There was talk now of bringing in helicopter gunships and armored vehicles. The death toll was already higher than in the six days of rioting in the wake of the Rodney King jury verdict, back in 1992.

He heard a knock on the door and turned away from the window.

“Hey, Eagle,” one of the safe-house Mexicans called, using his code name. “They're here.”

Reyshahri let the curtain fall back into place and walked into the living room, where Moslehi and three of the Mexicans were standing with two newcomers. They were big, tough-looking Hispanics. Both had dark smudges on their faces, and one had gauze wrapped around his left forearm.

“Eagle,” Julio Prieto said as he walked in, “Knife, I want you to meet a couple of our Brown Berets. This is Ignacio Aceveda Juárez and Angel Lopez Villalobos. They're the men I was telling you about.”

Reyshahri shook hands with both men.
“Mucho gusto,”
he said. “It's very good to meet you both.”

“You are the Arabs we were told about?” Lopez asked. He didn't look impressed.

“That's right,” Reyshahri said. By now, he was becoming accustomed to being misidentified as an Arab. If it helped the mission—and it was absolutely vital that Iran's involvement be kept out of this affair—then so much the better.

The Brown Berets were a Chicano nationalist activist group that had been around since the 1960s. They were prominent in the fight for Hispanic civil rights, for organizing against police brutality, and for carrying on the crusade for Chicano self-determination.

Reyshahri had been directed to meet with these men before traveling east to carry out the main part of Shah Mat. It was vital to coordinate with them before things went up. Those orders had not, in fact, come from Tehran, but from the mysterious man in Washington, D.C., Reyshahri knew only as “Duke.”

He felt uncomfortably poised between his own organization and this cabal within the United States government that had put the whole thing in motion.

“So, the Duke guy,” Aceveda said. “He said you would have something for us.”

“That's right. If you can prove you're who you say you are.”

“Hey, Eagle,” Prieto said, angry. “These are
mis compadres
—”

“Está bien,”
Aceveda said, waving the man off. “He is right. The phrase you want us to say,
señor,
is ‘checkmate.'”

“Good,” Reyshahri said, and he pulled a sealed envelope from his jacket pocket. Aceveda took it, tore it open, and examined the contents.

Aceveda's eyes widened as he read.
“¡Diablo!—”

Lopez took the letter from Aceveda and read it as well. “You're not fucking serious, man.”

“On the contrary,
señor.
I am very serious.”

“¿Bombas atómicas?¿Estas loco?”

“Think about it,
señor,
” Reyshahri said. “How else is your Aztlán going to become reality?”

“But … but…” Lopez waved the letter. “This is
crazy
!”

“Duke promised you a way to declare independence.” He flicked the edge of the letter with his hand. “Without this, you declare independence, the U.S. Army moves in, and you end up either dead or in prison. If we pull this off, believe me—the Americans are going to be too busy with other problems to pay any attention to
you.
”

Reyshahri waited as the two read the letter again.

Not for the first time, he wondered how this mysterious “Duke” had gotten wind of the two tactical weapons. The man, obviously, was highly placed in American intelligence—possibly the CIA, possibly higher, perhaps even as high as the National Security Council. There were rumors among the higher ranks of VEVAK that someone within the NSC had turned.

Reyshahri didn't trust the man, whoever he was. It was quite possible that this whole drama was an elaborate sting operation—like the one precipitating the diplomatic clash a few years ago, when the Americans had accused Iran of fomenting a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. Two Iranian Quds Force agents had been arrested, supposedly for trying to hire an assassin from a Mexican cartel who'd turned out to be a U.S. informant. Nonsense, of course. If Tehran had wanted the Saudi pig dead, he would now be dead, and without the use of Mexican thugs to do it. Either the whole affair had been a clumsy attempt by the CIA to discredit Iran on the international front, or MEK—an Iranian dissident group—had tried to embarrass the Tehran government.

Either way, VEVAK was playing it
very
cautiously. Tehran could not afford to be linked to those two weapons.

Even so … the opportunity was simply too good to pass up. Reyshahri's superiors had tested Duke for the past six months, using channels through the Iranian Embassy in Mexico City. The CIA's deputy chief of station there, a man named Nicholas, had been the conduit. The answers Duke had sent back—hard intel about U.S. foreign policy, about American military strength and deployments in the Middle East, about their cyberwar attacks against Iran's nuclear program, about American agents in Iran, Iraq, and Syria—
everything
so far had checked out.

If the Americans were trying to entrap Iran, would they have used the deputy chief of station? No. No, unthinkable.

So Saeed Reyshahri found himself in California, telling two leaders of the Aztlanista movement that Washington and New York were about to be destroyed, and that in the chaotic aftermath, they would have their chance to create their new country.

“That letter gives you the timetable,” he told them. “The weapons by now are already on their way to their targets. You have until the twenty-second.”

“Four days,” Aceveda said, shaking his head. “It is not enough time!”

“It is the time you have,
señor.
I am told you will have … help. Duke's people have planned this out carefully. There is a U.S. congressman, Gonzales.”

“We know him. He has been active with our movement, supporting it, for a long time.”

“He will step into temporary leadership of the area, when government control breaks down. You and your people will rally behind him, declare him to be
el presidente
of your new republic.” He pointed at the letter. “It's all in there.”

“I see it,” Lopez said, still reading.
“¡Jesús, María, y José!”

“The lands stolen from us!” Aceveda said, almost reverently. “They will be ours again! This makes it possible, Angel!”

Aceveda folded the letter and began to put it in a pocket.

“No,” Reyshahri said, holding out his hand. “That gets burned here, in my presence.”

“Huh? Why?”

“To make absolutely sure it doesn't find its way to American intelligence.”

“You don't trust us, Arab?” Lopez demanded. “We're trusting
you
not to inform on us! Seems to me the trust ought to go both ways,
verdad
?”

“We don't trust
anybody,
” Reyshahri said, taking back the document. “It's not about trust. It's about survival.”

“But we need to show this to our people.”

“Why? Are you saying they don't trust
you
?”

“They trust us with their lives!”

“Good. Then tell them what you saw here. Tell them that in four days, the United States government is going to be in utter and complete turmoil, and that that is when you must strike. Understand?”

“Sí,”
Aceveda replied, nodding slowly.
“Comprendemos perfectamente.”

“Very good.”

Later, after the two men had left, Reyshahri stood again at the window, watching the smoke from the burning sections of the city.

He'd not told the two Aztlanista leaders what was in store for them, of course. He knew the type. They were so … idealistic. So fervent. They
believed.

As it had been explained to Reyshahri by his superiors in Tehran, the Aztlán independence movement was doomed. They would declare their new state when Washington was in flames—but sooner or later the flames would be extinguished, and the American army would move in.

From Tehran's perspective, that was acceptable. Sacrifices must be made in every daring venture—especially
other
people's sacrifices.

Aztlán would provide some months of diversion, time in which Iran would put its military plans into operation. By the time the U.S. flag again flew over Los Angeles, Iran would have consolidated its position, would be dug in from Baluchistan to Lebanon—a new Persian Empire that no one, not the Israelis, not the Americans, could ever challenge again.

He produced a cigarette lighter and carefully burned the document he'd shown the two Aztlanistas to ash.

“Moslehi!” he called as he whisked the last of the ash from his fingertips.

“Saeed?” Moslehi said, coming into the room at his back. “Is there a problem?”

“Not at all, Fereidun,” he replied, “but we've done all that we can do here. Call and put us on a flight to Washington. It's time for the next phase of the operation.”

Moslehi's eyes widened. “Thanks be to God” was all he said.

CHETUMAL

YUCATÁN, MEXICO

1715 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

The ancient Beechcraft B200 Super King Air, a twin-turboprop commuter plane flying for Aerolíneas Ejecutivas, dropped toward the runway with queasy suddenness. The aircraft, with seating for thirteen, was cramped, noisy, and prone to midair bumps. As the landing gear came down, it sounded to Teller as though something important had just dropped off.

“I don't know, Frank,” he told Procario, strapped into the seat beside him. “I keep expecting to see the pilot walk back here any moment, wearing goggles, a white scarf, and a leather aviator's jacket.”

“Nah,” Procario said, “he won't come back here. He's too busy up front flapping his arms.”

The Beechcraft cabin seated thirteen, but only five of the other seats were taken on the seven-hundred-mile flight to Chetumal—one by a passenger with the bored look of a frequently flying businessman, the others by tourists in sunglasses and bright-colored shirts, with cameras and straw hats. They'd talked among themselves nonstop throughout the flight. Mexican tourism, apparently, hadn't yet been affected much by the narco-trafficking violence, but that, Teller reflected, was only a matter of time.

Ignoring the chatter from the front of the cabin—something about camera prices at duty-free ports—Teller looked down out of the window to his right. They'd made their descent from 27,000 feet over mile upon verdant mile of unending jungle, a thick and tangled sea of green interrupted now and again by patches of cleared farmland, isolated puffs of cloud riding above their shadows, or the startlingly white exclamation of an ancient Mayan ruin rising above the surrounding forest canopy. Now the canopy was flashing past almost close enough to touch … and then the end of the runway appeared out of the jungle, rising to meet them, and the Beechcraft touched down seconds later with a solid thump. Minutes later, they were stepping off the boarding ladder and onto the tarmac.

Chetumal International Airport was located just to the west of the city center. The waterfront was perhaps two miles from the tiny airport terminal; they phoned for a licensed taxi to pick them up; the local
públicos
were far too risky. Too often, wealthy tourists and businessmen were kidnapped off the street and held for ransom by gangs using private taxis. The vehicle took them to the Holiday Inn downtown. They checked in, swept their room for bugs, put together the special gear they would need for some low-tech surveillance, and decided to walk the ten blocks down to the wharf on foot.

Teller and Procario were dressed as tourists, wearing the stereotypical bright floral shirts and with digital cameras slung around their necks. They still carried papers indicating that they were journalists with the
Washington Post,
but tourists would stand out a bit less in this part of the world. Neither man was armed for what they expected to be an initial look-see at the target. Too many complications could ensue if the local constabulary stopped them for one reason or another and found out they were carrying.

“I wasn't expecting a city quite this big,” Teller admitted as they stepped out onto the street named Héroes de Chapultepec and began their stroll down to the docks. “Or this clean.”

“Population of a hundred thirty thousand and some,” Procario told him. “Capital of the state of Quintana Roo. Not your typical third-world border town, no. As for being clean … well, they have to keep it pretty for the gringo tourists, right?”

“Well, tourism hasn't let them forget about the Mexican-American War down here. ‘Heroes of Chapultepec?'”

Procario chuckled. “Not by a long shot. These folks have
long
memories.”

The street name was a reference to an incident in the U.S. invasion of Mexico back in 1847.
Los Niños Héroes,
the Boy Heroes, were six cadets of the Mexican Military Academy, aged between thirteen and nineteen. During the U.S. assault on Chapultepec Castle at the gates of Mexico City, they chose to die at their posts rather than surrender to the invaders. One, Juan Escutia, had wrapped the castle's flag around himself and jumped from a parapet rather than let it fall into American hands. Mexico still celebrated the last stand of
Los Niños
with a national holiday in September.