Pandora's Grave (27 page)

The door to the mosque was unlocked as always. Davood Sarami opened the door and slipped into the foyer, kneeling to remove his shoes. The mosque was a purpose-built structure, replacing the warehouse that had served as the local Islamic community’s house of worship when Davood had first visited two years before. He paused for a moment, taking in the beauty of the architecture. His heritage.

From within, he could hear the sound of a man sweeping and he walked forward, his bare feet padding noiselessly against the rugs. “Peace be upon you and the mercies of Allah. You have returned, my son,” the imam said, without looking up from his dustpan.

Davood just stood there, amused as always by the old man’s perception. “Yes, I have. You knew I would?”

“It is not in you, to depart from the faith of your fathers,” the imam stated, his voice calm and unequivocal.

The young agent leaned against one of the pillars, unsure of what to say.
Faithful
? He hardly felt that way. Yet perhaps the imam was right. The faith of one’s fathers…

“You are not in trouble, are you, my son?”

A shake of the head was Davood’s reply. “Why?”

The imam glanced up. “There were men here, about noon yesterday. Asking for you. They wished to ascertain what I knew of your past.”

“And you told them?”

“No, my son,” the old man replied slowly. “It is not a sin to lie to the infidel, but rather an act blessed of Allah. I told them nothing of pertinence.”

Davood stood there for a moment, seemingly rooted to the ground, his face pale in the glow of the candles. “Who were these men?”

“They did not identify themselves, my son. Their leader was of average height, dark-haired—of Italian descent, by the looks of him, swarthy, but not as dark as you or I.”

“How were they dressed?”

“Casually enough, the leader wore jeans and a light jacket.”

“A black jacket with the letters
VT
emblazoned on the back?”

The imam hesitated for a moment, looking up at the domed roof of the mosque as though he expected to find the answer written there. “Yes, I believe so. Why, do you know them?”

He turned back to find Davood gone, the sound of a door opening down the hallway the only sign of the agent’s departure. The old man sighed and went back to sweeping, checking his watch. It was almost time to broadcast the new recording of the call to prayer he had downloaded the previous day…

8:08 A.M.

The apartment

Manassas, Virginia

“Still no sign of anything missing, I guess?” Harry asked, standing outside the apartment that Hamid shared with Thomas.

Hamid shook his head. “I made a thorough inventory last night. It was a standard toss job, everything put back into place—very professional.”

“So, we’ve got no idea what they were after.”

“Or who they were,” Hamid acknowledged with a frown.

“Oh, let’s see,” Harry grinned, “who have we upset lately?”

“That’s a long list.”

“I know. You want to stop up the road and grab a cup of coffee before heading into work?”

“Sounds like a good idea. Let me lock up.”

Harry turned to walk back toward his car, aware suddenly of the TACSAT buzzing in his jacket pocket.

“Nichols here.” He was still listening three minutes later when Hamid reemerged from the apartment, his government-issued Glock riding easily on his hip.

“Yes, sir,” Harry said finally. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Yes, I understand, sir. Goodbye.”

“Who was that?” Hamid asked.

“Kranemeyer,” Harry replied. “Looks like I’m going to have to miss our coffee.”

“Oh?”

“Wants me in the office ASAP. I’d better hit the road.”

“I’ll drink a cup in your honor.”

Harry grinned. “Really appreciate that, man. I really do.”

7:45 P.M. Tehran Time

Alborz Mountains

Iran

“Provided nothing goes wrong, we should reach this village by noon time,” Azad Badir stated, swivelling his laptop around so that both Sirvan and Thomas could see the screen. The modern technology looked strangely out of place in the shepherd’s hands, but it had gotten to the point where he wasn’t surprised by anything.

“We are moving eastward?”

The rebel leader looked up from the screen and nodded. “Yes.” He stabbed at the screen with a long, bony finger. “There is an Iranian airbase here. In two days we will strike—teams with explosives through the wire after dark, the rest setting up ambush outside once the charges are blown. I will expect you and Estere to provide sniper support.”

Thomas nodded. The old man was a tactician, all right. “I would be honored to serve as your granddaughter’s spotter again.”

“No, no,” Badir interrupted him. “You will have your own rifle, to be sure. We can do all the better with two teams.”

Thomas accepted the news in respectful silence, knowing no answer was expected. The orders had been given. And they surprised him to an extent. In days he had gone from being a virtual prisoner to an integral part of the fighters’ battle plans. Although grateful for their confidence, he found their latest move unsettling. They were moving east, farther into Iran, farther from the safety of the Iraqi border.

He stood, his part of the conference over, and walked away, leaving Badir to instruct his grandson on their strategy for attacking the camp.

Sentries had already been posted for the night, the group’s pack animals securely hobbled. Thomas sat down by the fire, leaning against a boulder as he gazed up at the sky. The flames flickered and leapt into the sky, casting bizarre shadows against the cliff behind him. The view was mesmerizing.

“Tired?” A voice asked.

He jumped, turning to find Estere standing there watching him. How long she had been there, he had no idea.

“Yeah,” he replied sheepishly. “They ought to hold SERE classes in these mountains.”

“SERE?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face as she took a seat beside him.

“Survive, Escape, Resist, Evade,” Thomas explained. “It’s one of the training courses we go through.”

She nodded her understanding, taking another sip from the cup of tea nestled in her hands. “I’ve always wanted to go to America.”

He looked at her there in the firelight and it seemed as though he was seeing her for the first time, her hair undone and flowing in dark waves around her face. He started to speak, then thought better of it, his legendary eloquence deserting him.

The thousand pick-up lines that had worked so well for him in the nightclubs and dinner parties of Manhattan seemed strangely empty now. There was something different about her—something he had never seen in a woman.

“Have you?” he asked in an attempt to keep the conversation flowing.
Lame, Thomas, lame
.

Fortunately, she seemed not to notice. “Oh, yes. Ever since I was a little girl,” she continued, her dark eyes shining in the firelight. “American movies, American music, anything American. Freedom, mostly, I think. To be able to live free, without fighting every step of the way.”

He smiled, his powers of speech returning into what seemed like the perfect comeback. “Where do you suppose I come in?”

It took Estere a moment to discern his meaning, and then she frowned. “You know what I mean. You fight so that your people do not have to. We have no one to do our fighting for us. Which is as it should be,” she went on after a reflective pause. “America has grown soft.”

Thomas could think of no suitable reply to that, and changed the subject. “So, what type of American music do you like?”

“Country, mostly. Keith Urban, Toby Keith—”

“You just have a thing for guys named Keith,” he chuckled. She reached over and punched him playfully in the ribs, laughing with him. “Oh, be quiet!”

“You like country?” she asked a moment later.

“Not particularly,” Thomas replied honestly, watching for her reaction. “I’m more of an oldies fan myself. Ames, Sinatra, the Rat Pack, all that jazz.”

“A romantic.” Estere stated, a speculative glint in her dark eyes.

A crooked grin tugged at the corners of Thomas’s mouth. “Feeling that way tonight, yes.”

Something in her eyes changed and she looked away from him, into the dancing flames of the campfire. An awkward silence.
What did I say?
Thomas thought, baffled by her reaction.

She turned toward him after a long moment. “Thomas, I know that—”

Whatever she knew was destined to remain a mystery, for at that moment a shout from one of the sentries brought both of them to their feet, Thomas’s hand reaching out for his AK-47. “What’s going on?”

11:04 A.M. Eastern Time

NCS Operations Center

Langley, Virginia

“Here’s the meeting place,” Kranemeyer stated, pressing the screen with one finger. The satellite image expanded, zooming in on the resort city of Eilat, Israel.

“We have 3-D imaging?” Harry asked, gazing thoughtfully at the image.

The DCS pushed a couple more buttons and the image on-screen was replaced by a three-dimensional landscape.

“They’ll have surveillance here—and here, at the very least,” Tex observed, indicating a couple of the taller buildings with a long finger.

Harry nodded in agreement. “Probably a back-up team along the marina here—that’s the way I would do it if I were them. Maybe laser mic the area if it’s feasible. I doubt they’ll send Laner in with a wire, that’s too obvious.”

“You’ve worked with the lieutenant in the past, Harry,” Kranemeyer began. “What is your assessment? Is the guy an honest broker?”

Harry gave him an
Are you serious?
look. “Are any of us?” he asked. “Gideon’s a good guy, a decorated veteran operator—the son of a rabbi. He’s Blue Team as far as it goes. But he’s going to follow his orders, no matter what.”

“And we don’t know what those orders are,” the DCS observed, stating the obvious. “Today’s Saturday. We’ve set up the meeting for Monday at noon. Don’t want to appear too accommodating. Harry, you’ll fly to Israel under a diplomatic visa. It’s an official visit, low-key, but hardly clandestine. Your flight leaves Dulles at seventeen hundred tomorrow. Tex, you’ll be leaving for Jerusalem tonight.”

Richards nodded his understanding, his natural economy with words once again asserting itself. Kranemeyer continued, “Marcus is working up your papers as we speak. Ever had the ambition to go into aid work?”

8:05 P.M. Tehran Time

The Alborz Mountains

Iran

“Do you understand him?” Thomas asked, down on one knee at Estere’s side. The intruder was a Kurdish boy of fifteen or sixteen, dressed in the rude clothing of a villager. He hadn’t spoken a coherent word in the ten minutes since he had been grabbed by the sentries, his breath still coming in ragged sobs.

She shook her head, putting a comforting hand against the boy’s tear-stained cheek. “
Shhh
,” she whispered, speaking to him in their native tongue.

In that moment, Thomas was struck by the tenderness of her touch, the almost maternal compassion in her eyes as she gazed down into the boy’s face. The boy seemed to relax under her hands, his breathing gradually slowing into normality.

She spoke to him once again, still in the same gentle tones. He shook his head and the words seemed to pour forth.

Thomas sat there, unable to understand the words being spoken, his only intimation of their content coming from the expression on the faces of the Kurds gathered round.

Something had happened. That much he knew. And it wasn’t good.

Azad Badir spoke rapidly to his grandson and Sirvan rose, disappearing into the darkness. After a moment, Estere stood as well and strode back toward the campfire where the two of them had talked.

“What’s going on?” Thomas demanded, hurrying to catch up to her. She slung the M-85 over her shoulder as she turned to face him.

“Another Iranian attack,” she replied, her face an emotionless blank. “The village we were to arrive at tomorrow. Everyone there is dying.”

There was something about her words that gave Thomas pause. “Dying?”

“Of disease, Thomas,” she responded flatly. “It’s not the first time we Kurds have been the victims of an experiment.”

She knelt down to retrieve her pack. “We have to see what we can do for them.”

Thomas stood there, his mind racing back to the briefings he and the team had gone through before launching TALON. Specifically, the Russian-made laboratory trailers that had dotted the Iranian base camp.
An experiment
?

9:06 P.M.

A compound

Isfahan, Iran

The two-and-a-half-ton truck rolled to a gentle halt in front of a chain-link and barbed-wire fence, the driver handing his papers to an armed sentry who materialized out of the small guard shack. Smoke rose idly from the guard’s glowing cigarette as he looked through the papers, then handed them back. He turned and began barking orders.

The driver glanced over as the gate swung open. “We’re here, Major.”

Hossein nodded tensely. The drive from Qom had been nerve-wracking, security forces a larger presence than normal on the roads. Almost as though they were preparing for something. And the smell of the guard’s cigarette had done nothing to ease his nicotine craving.

He thought of the nearly-full carton of Marlboros back in his quarters at the base camp and nearly groaned aloud—no doubt that stupid Larijani had helped himself to them by now. He found the thought sickening.

Houses lined both sides of the dusty street they drove down. The buildings were similar if not uniform, reminding him of barracks. The street broadened into a plaza, flanked on one side by the imposing structure of a mosque. Men were drawn up before the mosque, standing like soldiers at attention.

He exited the truck and walked toward them, casting a critical glance at their ranks as he approached. Fifty men in all, the chosen of the Ayatollah.