The Natanz Directive (19 page)

“He lives just east of Azad University on Malek. Very private. Very tight security,” she said. Then she raised her shoulders in a reluctant shrug. “But this time of day you might just find him at the Park of the Reluctant Martyrs.”

“Why there?”

She grinned. “There's a playground there. And swing sets.”

“Charlie has grandkids!” Now I was grinning.

“I can drive you.”

This brought me back to reality in no uncertain terms. “No,” I said firmly.

She smiled at me, her head just slightly tilted to one side, like a statue filled with inspiration and sympathy. “I always liked your business, Jake. It was a business with a purpose. And I always liked the fact that you'd do whatever it took.”

“Leila…”

“I know why you're here.”

“No, you don't.” I didn't want her to know why I was here. I didn't want her to know that my mission was to secure evidence worthy of an attack on her country. But then maybe it wasn't her country anymore, not really, not the one she grew up loving.

She touched my cheek. “I'll get my wrap.”

It wasn't a wrap that she reached for but an abaya hanging behind the bar. It was black and gray and hung to the floor like a cloak. She made it look almost fashionable. It wouldn't stop people from seeing her with a man who had been banned from Iran many years ago, however.

“I have a car out back. It's not much, but it'll get us where we're going.” She pointed to a door set against the opposite wall. “This way.”

I picked up my backpack. The door led to a dimly lit hall that exited into a narrow alley. A gray Toyota Camry was crunched against the wall, leaving just enough room for another vehicle to slide by. There were five or six other cars parked exactly the same way up and down the alley. It was already hot and the air smelled of curry. I covered my head with my baseball cap and put on my sunglasses.

“I'll pull out,” she said, sliding into the driver's seat. I watched her move with a light step and purpose. Then I searched the alley as far as my eyes would take me. I didn't want this woman's life in my hands. I didn't want her anywhere near my business. I wanted her safe and sound in her run-down store with Rahim watching over her. But I also saw that there was no way to say no to her.

She inched to the center of the alley. I opened the door and settled onto the passenger seat, the backpack on the floor between my cross-trainers.

As we eased down the alley, I flashed back momentarily to the bar and the wall full of liquor that Leila called her primary source of income. Liquor was banned under Islamic law, which made it a profitable commodity. It was a numbers game. A good $750 million worth of booze was smuggled into the country every year, but the government managed to track down only a fraction of that. I had to wonder if an operation as open as Leila's seemed to be benefiting from some type of protection. And if so, who was she beholden to?

Leila glanced over at me. She shook her head, as if she knew what I was thinking. “You're wondering about my place, aren't you? I'm small potatoes, Jake. Just a lady trying to stay above water. Half of my clients work for the government, so I guess they could shut me down in a heartbeat.”

“But why would they?” I said.

“They've got a lot bigger problems than a renegade dancehall girl with a couple of bottles of whiskey behind the bar.” She steered the car out into a steady flow of traffic. “You trust me, don't you, Jake?”

“I don't trust my own shadow, Leila,” I replied. “But you I trust.”

She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Buckle your seat belt,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

I pulled out my iPhone and sent General Rutledge a quick text.
Still alive and kicking.
I sent the same message to DDO Wiseman. I wasn't giving anything away. He would assume I was in Tehran, but Tehran was a very big city. I had no intention of mentioning Charlie Amadi to anyone, not even to Mr. Elliot. But then, Mr. Elliot would expect no less. “Need to know” was not just a cliché made famous by B-movies; it was a hard-and-fast rule in the world of black ops. Location was always a “need to know,” because the fewer people who knew your location, the less chance you had of getting dead.

I changed apps. I used an NSA satellite app called Eyes to zero in on the Park of the Reluctant Martyrs. I didn't get the name. Wouldn't all martyrs be reluctant? Well, maybe not in a land of suicide bombers.

Eyes gave me a bird's-eye view of the park; it was real-time information, and the oblong terrain was filled with people. Too many. I don't know what I was hoping for. Maybe Charlie and a couple of grandkids doing their thing on the swings, all alone and waiting with bated breath for Jake Conlan to make a much-anticipated appearance. It looked like Grand Central Station. How many of them were Charlie's muscle only time would tell.

“Busy place,” I said. “Don't people have anything better to do on a Wednesday afternoon?”

I zoomed in. Eyes allowed me to troll the park by using a series of walking paths to block out a manageable grid. It was obvious. Six guys standing like statues around the perimeter of a grassy knoll along the park's west side, with a sizable lake protecting the knoll to the east. They were either bodyguards or trolls. I was betting on the former.

Charlie hadn't stayed long in the United States after I'd saved his life nearly thirty years earlier. But he'd stayed long enough for the two of us to forge a working relationship. I never intended to use Charlie for anything more challenging than being the occasional bagman. Not because he wasn't capable. He was more than capable. The bag work was more or less my way of sending up a test balloon. I'd always wondered how light the satchels of cash would be after they passed through his hands. Every shipment came out to the dollar. He'd smuggled kilos of cocaine and heroin. Each and every time, every gram was accounted for at its destination. What I wanted from Charlie was intel. You get intel in small amounts just by being in the right place at the right time, but you can pile up the intel by the bushel if you get the right people to trust you.

Charlie began to trust me. I was a good teacher. What I taught most effectively was the art of survival. He learned it quickly. He became an expert in how to watch his back and cover his tracks. For his part, Charlie was an accepted cog in the Iranian drug cartel. He knew people. He was the son of the Iranian prime minister, himself a rogue of some note, and so he'd landed in the States knowing people. No one questioned his loyalty because of his pedigree.

After two years of milking Charlie of as much intel as possible, I suggested he return home. The operation targeting his people was coming to a head. When the shit hit the fan, he didn't want to be anywhere near New York or D.C. or any other place on the East Coast.

So he left with his very pretty wife and two beautiful kids and a serious knowledge of the streets. He used it to build a fortune in Iran. Drugs, alcohol, and arms. The big three. Then he diversified, smuggling in everything from electronics to foodstuffs. Then he learned to convert his profits into property on three continents.

Now he had grandkids and spent his afternoons in the park. Fair enough. I figured he owed me for his good life, and now it was time to cash in.

“How well do you know this Park of the Reluctant Martyrs?” I asked Leila as she steered the car into a commercial neighborhood crowded with shops, cafés, and streams of pedestrians.

“Well enough,” she said. She glanced down at my iPhone. “Have you found him?”

“West side. Near the lake.”

“Then the west side near the lake it is,” she said.

We rolled to a stop at a red light. Downtown Tehran could have been a major downtown in any metropolitan city except for the number of police. And you might have been able to overlook that had it not been for the soldiers. And if you were really willing to turn a blind eye, maybe you could even ignore the fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids armed with batons and clubs and strutting through the streets with orders to attack anyone who looked even remotely like a demonstrator.

“What the hell,” I said as a group of four of them stopped in the middle of the crosswalk and sneered at the traffic.

“Oh, yes, Ahmadinejad's child army,” Leila replied. I had never heard her sound so dispirited. “The Guards recruit them from the countryside because they know the regular police won't attack the demonstrators; after all, most of them have family walking side by side with neighbors. Not these boys. They're starving when they come here, and they're thugs when they leave. The Guards sees to that. The more brutal, the better. It's terrible, Jake. Just terrible.”

The light changed. The traffic inched forward. But the tension over this city in chains could be felt even without the windows rolled down.

“Three blocks,” she said, nodding toward a fork in the road and a forest of trees rising before us. “The entrance to the park is straight ahead. No cars allowed.”

“I'll walk from here, Leila. You've done enough,” I said. “More than enough.”

She pulled to the curb and brought the Toyota to a halt. She reached over and grabbed my wrist. “Take off your sunglasses. Please,” she asked in a low and husky voice. I did so, and she held me with her dark eyes, as calm and cool as a winter's eve. “I haven't done enough, Jake. That's the whole point. Not near enough. I've been a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.”

“Leila, listen…”

“No, it's true. If I can help, let me. I know you'd do anything to protect me. I know that. But I have to stop being afraid. And maybe you can help me by letting me help you.” Her fingers were pressing into my wrist, and she wasn't even aware of it. “Please.”

I nodded. “Okay.” How could I hear those words and say anything else? I hoped it didn't come down to needing her help, but I didn't say that, either.

She opened my fingers and pressed a key into my hand. “If you run out of places to hide or just need a cold beer and someone to confide in, this opens the back door to my place. I want to do this.”

I leaned over and kissed her cheek. I grabbed my pack, opened the door, and climbed out.

I waited until she was safely away and then lost myself in the crowd. I saw a T-shirt shop with baseball caps in the window and ducked inside. I bought a gray one with a blue Nike swoosh on the crown and tossed the old one into the trash. I stepped back outside and into the shadows of the shop's awning. I surveyed the street. I was out of place, but at least the beard I had started back in the States was coming in.

The strip of commerce gave way to an upscale neighborhood, and a block farther on the entrance to the Park of the Reluctant Martyrs came into view. I stopped under a shaggy, plain tree. The park was not as big as I had expected, given the satellite view from the Eyes app, but it was the size of three or four football fields, anyway.

Past the entrance, a concrete sidewalk ran along the perimeter of the park's west side. There was also a walkway that bisected the park from east to west. Knots of men looked to be loitering on all four street corners, but you could see the tension in their movements. Others paced along the sidewalk under the outstretched branches of elms and maples, and still others patrolled farther into the park. A pair of black Mercedes sedans were parked along the curb, and the men standing next to them didn't look like they'd come to the park for a game of boccie. They were Charlie's men. All twenty-one of them, by my count. That was a lot of sentries. Which meant that Charlie had extremely deep pockets and a reason to be paranoid.

Scattered trees provided shade over the grassy lawn. The lake formed a natural barrier to the south and east. To the north, low hedges and gardens spilling over with perennials, surrounded by a decorative fountain. Sunlight refracted through the water in a spray of rainbow colors. There was a playground and common area across from the fountain. There were three picnic tables, and I could almost hear the laughter coming from the family gathering there. I was most interested in the man sitting with his back to one of the tables, watching a half-dozen young children scurry through the playground.

I slid my backpack off my shoulder. I opened it and fished out the Zeiss digital telescope. I connected it to the iPhone and scanned the park in high magnification.

I studied Charlie's bodyguards. They all appeared to be cut from the same rough cloth. A couple wore thigh-length coats, unusual for such a warm day, a telltale sign that they packed Uzis, AK-47s, or M4 carbines. Heavy artillery for the man they protected.

I panned to the man on the bench. There he was. Charlie Amadi. He wore a sweater and khaki pants. The years had added a few pounds to his frame and rounded out his face, but he looked healthy and energetic. He was fully engrossed in the activity on the playground, the kids darting from the slides and the swings to the carousel and a sandbox. Two more bodyguards: probably Charlie's lieutenants.

Time for our reunion.

I put the Zeiss away and sent Rutledge and Mr. Elliot the same update:
About to meet the hometown boy.

I could feel the Walther in the harness beneath my jacket. I had no intention of hiding the fact that I was armed from Charlie's army. Pure stupid. I crossed the street and walked straight for the entrance, which was really nothing more than two stone pillars capped with statuesque eagles. I didn't see the significance.

I walked with an easy step. My arms hung loosely at my side. I was ten steps from the entrance when four of Charlie's men blocked my way.

“Sorry, private party,” one of them said in Farsi. He was the tallest of the group and built like a linebacker. When I didn't respond, he was smart enough to switch to English. “Private party.”

I stopped. I held my hands out in front of me. “No problem. I'm here to see Charlie. Charlie Amadi.”