The Natanz Directive (36 page)

I heard footfalls on the other side of the door. In less than a second I judged their weight and consistency and decided they belonged to a woman. Leila. I put a hand on the grip of my Walther nonetheless.

The door opened. It was her. I tried to figure out a way not to scare her to death. “Leila. It's Jake,” I said quickly.

Her breath caught deep in her throat, and she jumped. A hand covered her mouth. Okay, so I wasn't very successful. “Jake. My God. You're all right.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't think it was wise to call. I needed a place, and…”

“It's all right.” She managed a breathless laugh, and it may have been the most magical sound I'd ever heard.

I pushed the Walther back down in its holster and came to my feet. I pointed to my drink. “I sort of helped myself.”

I came around the couch, and she fell into my arms. We stayed that way for five very satisfying seconds. Then she held me at arm's length and shook her head. “You look like hell.”

I ran a hand over my three-day-old beard and realized she was probably right. “And here I am in the company of the one woman in Tehran whose opinion I actually give a damn about. Buy you a drink?”

“You found the scotch. Good,” she said. “Make mine a rum and Coke, will you?”

Fixing a lady a drink. Now there was some normalcy that felt comforting, and I took my time doing it. We clicked our glasses.

“You're on the run,” she said. “You wouldn't be here otherwise.”

“I had a little encounter at the bazaar. You'll probably read about it in the paper tomorrow.”

“No, we won't,” she said, a harsh reminder of the censorship that ruled the media in Tehran. She set her glass on the bar.

She unzipped her abaya, shrugged it off her shoulders, and let it fall around her ankles. It was an innocent gesture so fleetingly erotic that a part of me wouldn't have minded a bit if she hadn't stopped with the abaya or the blue pantsuit she wore underneath.

Leila caught me looking and smiled. Then she picked up her glass again and shook her head. “You set the rules, Jake. Not me.”

“That was dumb, wasn't it?” I was kidding. Well, maybe only half kidding.

We carried our drinks to the love seat. Leila had the kind of discerning gaze that suggested a woman with the ability to read minds; she had always been successful in reading mine. “So, should I be packing my bags and heading as far into the mountains as my broken-down Toyota will take me?” She was dead serious. “I don't fancy being turned into a pillar of radioactive salt.”

I reached out and touched her face. Touched her hair. I said, “If Ahmadinejad pulls the trigger first, it won't matter how far up in the mountains you are, Leila. But if we shoot before he does, then Tehran will be the safest place you can be.”

“A lot of ‘ifs' and ‘buts,' Jake,” she said.

“Don't I know it. But listen, I'm…”

My iPhone chimed before I could tell her that I was doing everything in my power to make certain she was safe right where she was. It was a text-message alert from Charlie. It read:
If you're not dead, call. Priority one.

“Charlie Amadi,” I said to Leila and rang his number.

He answered after a single ring, saying, “I think we've got our addresses.” The missile sites! Excellent. General Navid had come through. “But Bluebird refuses to send them electronically.”

“Smart. If his people are monitoring him the way he thinks they are, they'd know before we did, and the addresses would be changed in a matter of minutes,” I said. “How's Bluebird communicating?”

“Memory stick. It's been picked up now. We've got a rendezvous set. Honcho is sending a couple of his guys to pick you up. Where the hell are you?”

I wanted to protest using Yousef Bagheri's men for the pickup, but I didn't have a chance. Not a second after Charlie finished his question, a voice boomed from a loudspeaker hidden behind the bar. It was Rahim, Leila's eyes and ears at the front of the shop. He was shouting in Farsi. “Leila. Police. Revolutionary Guards. Front and back.”

Leila was on her feet even before I was because I was still translating. My first reaction was to reach for my gun. “Your gun won't help. The Revolutionary Guards travel in packs. Very large packs.” She grabbed me by the arm. “This way!”

“Trouble!” I shouted into the phone. “I'll get back to you.”

I hung up, and Leila grasped my hand. She pulled me to the door at the front of the lounge. The door led to the same hall I had come down the first day I'd been here. This time, we scurried in the opposite direction. A door halfway along the hall opened onto a large storage closet. Leila flung it open, crouched down, and started pushing aside crates filled with canned fruit. I knelt down next to her and helped. When the crates were out of the way, Leila peeled a square section of linoleum off the floor. Below was a square section of hinged wood with a handle embedded in the surface. A trapdoor.

Leila grabbed the handle and raised the door, her face glistening with perspiration. There was a meter-wide hole in the concrete beneath the door. The hole dropped to a tunnel three meters below. Handholds had been molded into the concrete.

We heard banging at the other end of the hall and shouting.

“Quickly, Jake,” Leila said. She pointed to the tunnel. “It leads to a storage room at the end of the alley.”

I lowered myself into the hole. I reached up and kissed her lips. “I won't forget this.”

I dropped into the tunnel and heard the trapdoor close above me.

 

CHAPTER 26

TEHRAN—DAY 11

Darkness swallowed me.

I reached into my pocket for my iPhone. In the pitch black, the screen's light had the power of a single candle. The tunnel ran straight out in front of me, rough concrete that looked as if it had been poured in haste many years ago. Condensation dripped from the ceiling. A dank, musty smell weighted the air.

I didn't wait for my eyes to adjust. I fell into a low crouch and followed the light. My feet scraped along the floor, and my lower back took the brunt of the punishment. I tried to envision the distance from the market to the alley.

Lengths of rebar curled along the walls and ceiling, like the exhumed bones of corpses buried long ago. A fine glaze of dust ran out ahead of me. I saw no sign of footprints or any other evidence that the tunnel had been used recently.

I counted my steps, as abbreviated as my stride might have been. My vision improved.

At thirty paces, the passage made a right turn. I stopped and listened for five seconds, but the only sound was the drumming of my heart. Seventy-two beats per minute. A little high, but not bad.

I peeked around the corner and gazed into total darkness; a buried coffin didn't have a thing on this tunnel. I switched on my iPhone and pressed ahead. Another thirty-five paces, and I felt a slight incline beneath my feet.

I switched off the iPhone and listened. This time I heard the murmur of conversation wafting from somewhere above. I felt my way to the top of the incline. The murmur grew in volume. I could just make out the distant chatter of men and women speaking Farsi. It sounded like the casual talk you'd hear in a shop or a café.

I felt along the wall and crept forward. I took my Walther in hand and clicked off the safety. The incline emptied into a crawl space six feet long, twenty feet wide and not quite three feet high by my estimation. Light trickled in from a small ventilation grate on the right and two thumb-size holes at the far left of the crawl space. I smelled coffee and sweet spices. Shadows flickered across the grate and I heard the rattle of plates, the splashing of liquid, rapid conversation, and laughter. Definitely an outside café.

I holstered the pistol, crawled in complete silence toward the grate, and peered out. Strange, seeing the bottoms of shoes, the occasional bare ankle, and trouser cuffs. I heard the scraping of a chair as someone sat down, the click of a glass, laughter. All routine activities for a café doing a fair run of business for a Thursday night. Or was it Wednesday? It didn't matter. What mattered was the normalcy. You wouldn't hear laughter if the Revolutionary Guards were parading about.

I moved away from the grate and crawled toward the holes on the left. I put my eye up to one of them and saw cardboard cartons. More cartons sat on shelves along the wall at the opposite side of a narrow floor. There was a door to the right, which was closed. This had to be the storage room Leila had mentioned.

I used the light of my iPhone to get a better view. The holes ran along the top of a shoulder-wide board. I stuck my fingers into the holes, gave a gentle tug, and realized the board was loose by design.

I gave it another tug. If there was anyone in the stockroom, I thought, it would make for an interesting encounter, but I didn't have the luxury of waiting. Dust sifted from the edges. This time I put a little more weight behind it. The board pulled free, but not without a painfully loud squeak.

I froze. I counted to five. Nothing.

I gave a last tug and the board gave way. I pushed aside the cartons concealing the entrance and snaked out of the crawl space. I replaced the board and yanked it firmly into place. I returned the cartons and felt the strain in my knees as I struggled to my feet.

I was brushing dust from my clothes when the door opened. A man wearing a white apron stepped in. He did a double take. There were about two seconds during which his brain tried to decide whether this guy in the rumpled coat, cross-trainers, and baseball cap really belonged in his storeroom. I used the first of the two seconds to grab a large burlap bag filled with coffee beans. I used the next second to thrust the bag into the man's hand. This created an extra moment of confusion, enough time to put my hand on his neck and pinch the pressure point at the side of his throat. He gasped; this was normal. His eyes bugged out, which was also normal. He crumpled to the floor, the bag split apart, and beans spilled out all around him. He wouldn't be out long.

I walked out the door, closed it behind me as if I'd done so a thousand times, and entered the open-air café. No one noticed. I wove in and among a dozen tables until I was outside on the walk.

I put my sunglasses on and spent five seconds studying the street. I glanced in the direction of Leila's market. Two white Toyota HiLux vans marked with the words
SPECIAL POLISE
on the side were driving away. I saw Leila standing on the curb with her arms crossed. They must've searched her place from top to bottom and come up empty. Otherwise they sure as hell would've taken her away, and who knows what would have become of her.

How do you say thank you from a hundred yards away, knowing someone just put her life on the line for you? How do you say thank you to someone you'll probably never see again, never hear her voice again, never know her fate? I guess you don't. Which made that last kiss that much more special. I kind of hoped she felt the same.

I hoisted my backpack and headed in the opposite direction. I walked two blocks east and then a block north, just to get off the beaten track. I ducked into a crowded bistro. I took a corner table with a view of the street and quick access to the kitchen, worst-case scenario.

I sent a text to Charlie with my location at the corner of Jomhouri Eslami and Felestin.

He replied,
Honcho's men are on the way. White Nissan van. Two of them. One dressed in black. Will ask if you want a ride to the airport. Say that you can only pay in rials.

I should have ordered something to eat, but I didn't. I drank coffee with cream and sipped a bottle of mineral water.
Real healthy, Jake. Real healthy
. Not to worry; I'd put a steak on the grill the day I got home, and Cathy could whip up one of her world-class tomato salads.

I paid my bill and crossed the street to a newsstand. I stood off to the side, pretended to browse, and texted General Rutledge a short update. It didn't say much, only that things were “progressing.”

I knew that wouldn't satisfy Tom, but I had learned something about intel over the years. Don't anticipate. Don't hope for the best. When you have the intel in hand, say you have it in hand. Otherwise, just keep digging.

I knew Mr. Elliot would understand this, so I sent him the same message. Maybe he'd give the general a call and tell him to sit tight.

With any luck, I'd have the launch sites in hand by nightfall, and then the air force could do their thing. I didn't often feel nervous about an op. Anxiety was a red flag when you were dealing with the scumbags of the world. But so many things hung in the balance on this mission. I'd been dodging bullets—literally, in some cases—since the beginning. I didn't believe much in luck, but I had a bad feeling that what luck I had I'd used up. And now I was waiting on two guys I'd never met before, two guys who worked for an organization with a traitor in their midst.

Tehran was lousy with white vans—at least that's the way it seemed as I thumbed through a magazine dedicated to Iranian soccer—and they paraded north and south on Felestin Street along with a scattering of taxis and buses and cars manufactured in places as far away as Korea and Sweden. After a good forty minutes, one rusted junker with
TAXI
printed on the sides slowed in front of the bistro and halted. A man wearing a black coat over blue jeans dismounted from the front passenger's side. Thick mustache. Twentysomething. He had a definite edge to him. He waited as the van sputtered away, then glanced into the bistro.

This had to be the one Charlie had referred to as the man in black. I went to the next corner and crossed with a half-dozen other people when the light changed.

I watched as he drew out his cell phone and made a call. Ten seconds later, the van returned from an apparent trip around the block. The man in black had his hand on the passenger-side door when he saw me coming. He didn't wave, and he didn't stare. Good. What he did was smile at several other people coming his way, gestured toward the van as if it were the best taxi in Tehran, and apparently offered them transportation, which none of them seemed inclined to accept.