The Washington Stratagem (28 page)

“
Shukran
,” said Yael, letting go of Najwa’s fingers.

Najwa stood close to Yael. She looked at her with a frank, appraising gaze, her fingers trailing against Yael’s palm. “
Afwan
. I never knew you were such a sexy dancer. We should hang out more often.”

“Thank you. It’s up to you,
habibti
. You choose. Stories about me or dances with me.”

“I’ll think about that,” said Najwa.

Yael glanced at Sami. He looked away but she knew he had been watching her. The hook was in.

Salim Massoud switched off the Canadian news channel on the television and picked up the black leather briefcase on his desk. He traced his fingers around the brass letters on the front flap.
H
and
S
. A gift, probably. Perhaps from a parent? He felt the familiar pang of guilt. The man’s death was regrettable. Massoud did not enjoy taking a life, and it had caused a flurry of media interest, which was never welcome. But Iran was at war. This was not a military struggle, fought on front lines or battlefields. This war was waged in secret, a struggle for the soul of the revolution, and for the souls of those newly seduced by the Great Satan. And he would do whatever was necessary to win.

Massoud put the briefcase down and walked over to the window. The house was small, but comfortable enough, a two-room summer residence that looked out onto the edge of a small lake outside Montreal. He was safe here. The nearest neighbors were a mile away. A car with two of his men inside was parked at the end of the drive. Another man patrolled behind the house, where the garden stretched away into the forest. Massoud watched the water, shimmering in the moonlight. A heron hovered above. There was a sudden flash of silver, then another a few yards away. The heron dived, but the fish were too fast.

The drive from New York had gone smoothly. He had even slept some of the way. The border post, on a little-used dirt road, was unmanned, just as promised. But there had been a leak: in Geneva, in Tehran, in New York, or somewhere along the way. The problem was that once it was out, information took on a life of its own—especially in the digital age. He had headed off the threat from Schneidermann. The papers from the briefcase had long been burnt. But that still left several loose ends, most of all Fareed Hussein himself. How did he find out about Nuristan Holdings and the payment from Omega? What else did he know? What did Schneidermann tell the journalist? And who else had a copy of the payment record?

The journalist needed to be silenced and Hussein needed to be removed from the picture. The Americans had promised to take care of the journalist, which left Hussein. Perhaps his blackouts could become worse? Even permanent? Massoud shook his head to himself. Too obvious right after the death of his spokesman. The press would be all over the story. And what about the girl?

Massoud stared at the heron, waiting, patient. Its beak was a marvel, thin, curved, perfectly engineered. The water flashed silver again. The heron dived, flew up, the fish flapping uselessly. Massoud smiled. He knew what to do.

“I’m kind of confused,” said Sami as he and Yael walked down East Ninth Street toward his apartment. It was nearly midnight and the rows of brownstones stood dark and silent. The streetlamps glowed orange and a siren howled in the distance. Joe-Don followed a few paces behind them, not quite near enough to eavesdrop.

“Why?” asked Yael, her hand on his arm.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk to me ever again. You wrecked my office.”

“You deserved it.”

Sami nodded, half to himself. “Maybe I did. Then you act all cool and businesslike in Zone. And you dance with Najwa, not with me.”

Yael squeezed Sami’s arm lightly. “She’s got great moves. She is very sexy. Why don’t you date her?”

Sami laughed. “Why don’t you? That dance was hot. She was really into it.”

“So was I. But I like men better. And me and journalists don’t seem to work.”

“Are you sure about that?” Sami tried to keep his voice light.

Yael looked sideways at Sami. “Not completely. Maybe I could be persuaded.”

Sami smiled. “I will see what I can do.”

Yael glanced around. Beneath the flirtatious banter, she was completely focused. There was a reason she had invited herself back to Sami’s apartment and it was not the one he had in mind.

They reached number 23. Sami turned to Yael. “Would you like to come in?”

“Sure. A coffee, but not for long.”

Sami looked at Joe-Don. “Fine. But what about—”

“He’ll see me safely inside. That’s all.”

Sami stepped forward and started walking down the stairs, Yael following. Sami reached the bottom and stood in front of the door of the basement-level apartment, hunting for his keys. He took them out of his trouser pocket and inserted one into the topmost of three heavy-duty locks. As soon as the key touched the lock, the door swung wide open.

Sami stepped inside. “
Shit
,” he said, looking around. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Joe-Don swiftly jumped in front of Yael, pushed her behind him, reached inside his jacket, and drew his gun, a nine-millimeter Glock. He stepped inside, his left arm up behind him, signaling that Sami and Yael should wait. Joe-Don walked through the apartment, checking the main room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. All were empty.

He came out and stood by the front door. “It’s clear. You can go in.”

Yael entered total chaos. The boxes of papers, files, and old stories that Sami kept in the corner had been upended and spread all over the room, carpeting the floor in a sea of white paper. The furniture had been tipped upside down, the slashed cushions spilling dry crumbs of foam rubber. The coffee table had been turned over.

Sami was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the papers, trying to gather them up. Yael crouched down beside him and started to help. “Check your bedside cabinet, wherever you keep your valuables.”

He got up and walked over to the corner. There was no bedside cabinet. But there was a cardboard box where he kept his passport, credit cards, and a couple hundred dollars in emergency cash. The box had been tipped over. He lifted it up. The passport, credit cards, and cash were all on the floor.

As soon as Sami was on the other side of the room, Yael quickly scanned the area around her until she saw Sami’s shoulder bag that he used for work. It too had been shaken out, its contents half out on the brown nylon carpet.

“How about if I make us some coffee?” she said. “It looks like we will be here a while.”

Salim Massoud sat down at the table and looked through the Canadian passport. It was two years old, used enough to lose its sheen but not so worn as to bring attention. Parvez Marwan was born in Toronto in 1968. There were entry stamps for Germany, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, all countries Massoud had visited, in case he was ever questioned. Parvez Marwan was black haired and clean shaven, with brown eyes. Massoud touched the wig, then his chin. The fake hair felt strange, his now smooth, clean skin even more so, as though it belonged to someone else. He blinked slowly, several times, to settle his tinted contact lenses. The prospect of the flight home did not bother him. The passport was genuine, inasmuch as Parvez Marwan had once existed and lived in Toronto. The Canadian authorities were worried about Iranians coming in, not going out.

The real danger lay at home, in Tehran. The city was a snake pit. The nuclear deal and consequent easing of sanctions had turned the world upside down. Western companies were rushing into Iran, eager to get a foothold in a market of seventy-six million, more than half of whom were under thirty-five and connected to the Internet. Money was pouring in, loosening morals and tongues. Students were protesting daily, calling for freedom, democracy, the abolition of Sharia law. Facebook, Twitter, Western news websites were uncensored. A leader of the Revolutionary Guard had been arrested and more would soon follow him to Evin Prison. The Basij, the motorbike militia that crushed the protests of 2009, had been disbanded by the new government. Everyone was calculating, calibrating, trying to work out how to benefit from the sea change. Would the regime crack and collapse, or adapt and strengthen? Some former loyalists were now calling for faster change. Reformers, scared by what they had unleashed, were demanding a new crackdown.

Once forbidden questions were now asked openly. Why were they spending tens of millions of dollars supporting Hezbollah in Syria, when their own country needed roads, schools, hospitals? Some in Tehran even whispered—only to the most trusted of confidants—that they should consider making peace with Israel. The “Persians,” an old word, once frowned on, which was now making a return, were not Arabs, they said. The Palestinian cause was not their cause. Everyone knew that Israel was secretly working with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies against Iran. Why let the Jews unite with the Sunni enemies, asked the heretics, when they could be on our side, as they used to be under the shah? We should explain to the Jews that the Wahhabi kingdoms were terminal cases. Be friends with the Jews, and America will ease sanctions even more. Then everyone can be rich. It was only a question of time.

It made Massoud sick, made him long for the return of President Ahmadinejad. Then, such talk would have brought the traitor a rope around his neck, dangling him from the end of a crane in a public square watched by thousands, his feet kicking against nothing. That was how things should be. How they will be again. Soon, very soon. He only needed to wait a little longer.

Massoud thought for a moment of his son, Farzad. Naive, innocent Farzad, completely uninterested in politics, who just wanted to do good. Who had disobeyed his father and had traveled to Afghanistan to teach mathematics in Kandahar five years ago. Now they were both paying the price. Farzad, only nineteen years old, had been picked up at a checkpoint one night by the Americans and never seen again. He was a prisoner of no value whatsoever—apart from his father. Massoud had traced his son’s journey: Kandahar, Kabul, a week in a black prison in Romania, a plane to Warsaw, then… nothing.

Except the cards each year on August 21, on Massoud’s birthday. “Happy Birthday, Dad,” they said in English, with a picture of his son, thin, scared, holding that day’s edition of the
New York Times
. Massoud had sent out feelers, of course, through the Germans, the Swiss; even his new friends in Washington, DC, had tried without success to get news, an offer, a demand, anything. What did the CIA want? What did he have to do? Nothing.
We are taunting you because we can
: the message unsaid, but clear enough. And then we will come for you.

Except Massoud had his own plan for his country and for the Middle East, one now shared by his new friends in the United States. A plan too, to get his son released. He leafed through the photographs in the folder. A young woman running along Riverside Park, her auburn hair blowing in the wind; entering her apartment building; walking through Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza with a tall Englishman. He closed the folder and tapped the cover, deep in thought.

She points the gun at Jean-Pierre Hakizimani. He laughs, his eyes locked on hers like blue lasers
.

She looks down at her hand
.

The .22 Beretta is now a photograph of three smiling African girls. The picture is covered with cellophane and is singed in one corner
.

She tries to give Hakizimani the photograph but he is no longer there
.

Her hands are wet. She looks down again
.

The photograph is covered in blood
.

She wipes it on her clothes, frantically trying to clean it, but there is only more and more, a crimson tide pouring through her fingers
….

Yael jerked awake at the touch on her shoulder, her eyes wide, her body tense as she strained against her seat belt, instantly sweeping her surroundings. The stewardess, a matronly woman in her late forties, looked at her in alarm. “Madam, are you all right? We are landing soon. Please fold away your table and straighten your seat-back.”

Yael nodded, slowing down her breathing. She pressed the button on the side of her seat. The back sprung forward and she slid the tray table into place. The stewardess glanced at her again, not quite reassured, and moved on down the aisle.

Yael briefly closed her eyes and rested the side of her head against the cabin, feeling the steady vibration of the engines. Hakizimani was dead. She knew that, because she had killed him. His militiamen had killed David and, eventually, she had taken her revenge. Accidentally, or on purpose; the result was the same.

Still, Yael sensed the warlord’s presence as though he were on board. Her nostrils filled with his scent: of sweat and tobacco, of blood and whisky. She shivered suddenly. She felt clammy: hot and sticky, then chilled and damp with sweat. She reached for the bottle of mineral water in the seat-back pocket and took a long drink. She looked up. The seat-belt light was already on. It was too late to go to the bathroom. She cupped her right hand, tipped some water into it, and splashed her face. She breathed slowly through her nose until her respiration fell into a natural rhythm and she felt centered again. This was reality, here and now. The water, cool and refreshing on her skin. The Mediterranean sunlight filling the cabin. Istanbul spread out below her like a tray of meze.

The Turkish Airlines jet banked leftward, its engines humming, flying low over the city. The Bosphorus shimmered in the spring sunshine, a sheet of azure dotted with turquoise and jade. Istanbul was built on three long fingers of land: two in Europe, divided by a narrow channel of sea known as the Golden Horn, and one in Asia. Ferries crossed back and forth, tiny dots leaving long white trails on the water. Two thin gray ribbons, the Galata and Atatürk Bridges, spanned the Golden Horn. All the coastlines were studded with cranes and building sites, the narrow, twisting alleys behind them dense warrens of houses topped with red tiles. Minarets of centuries-old Ottoman mosques pointed skyward, their tips needle sharp. Istanbul was booming, profiting handsomely from its newest incarnation as the crossing point between East and West. Money was pouring in: from Western companies scrabbling for a foothold in a thriving economy, and from Turkey’s Arab neighbors, seeking a safe haven from jihadis and governments toppling from North Africa to the Gulf. A giant white roof emblazoned with a red crescent marked the new Osman Convention Center, on the edge of the historic Sultanahmet quarter by the Grand Bazaar, where the Istanbul Summit was scheduled to take place.