The Natanz Directive (22 page)

Charlie's guys laid me across the backseat. I rubbed my eyes and blinked until my vision cleared. There wasn't anything I could do about the pain except put it out of my mind, so that's what I did.

Charlie leaned over me. I heard him say something so insanely out of place that I couldn't decide whether to cringe or shake his hand. “It just got personal.”

His voice echoed with the kind of distance and composure that reminded me just how much violence had been a part of Charlie's life over the years.

I felt like I'd been pummeled from head to toe with a sledgehammer, but I managed to say, “What about your guys?”

“One down, and hurt bad. My nephew Azran,” Charlie hissed. “One dead. Lukas. He's been with me forever.”

Four of Charlie's bodyguards hustled toward us. They gripped the corners of a blanket with a badly wounded man stretched across the middle. This had to be Azran. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five and reminded me of Charlie in another lifetime.

They lowered him to the ground next to the car, and I heard a painful groan. It was the kind of groan you heard when the life was draining out of a man, and I knew he needed serious attention, and needed it right now.

Two more guards approached with a second blanket, this one dripping with blood. Had to be what was left of the guy who had entered the hotel on the point and taken the brunt of the blast. It was an ugly sight, and I felt a sour mixture of remorse and anger stirring inside me. The anger was winning out. The guy was dead because of me. He was dead because Charlie was repaying a debt, and his men were on the line for it. What did they know about the bond that Charlie and I had formed thirty years ago? What did they care? Nothing.

“Charlie, you have to get him to a hospital, and fast, brother,” I said, nodding at the wounded man. He was clutching the blanket like a man dangling from a tightrope and blood foamed on his lips. I knew the signs, and it wasn't good. “The explosion tore up his lungs. I've seen it before.”

I didn't really mean a hospital. I knew a hospital was out of the question. Even a hospital in the most democratic nation on earth would raise serious questions when they saw an injury like this. Here in Tehran, with national security a phobia infecting every fabric of society, the alarm would be deafening. But a man like Charlie had to have someone on the payroll, a doctor at a walk-in clinic or rehab center. Violence was an inherent factor in his business. You had to have contingencies.

Azran coughed. Blood flowed from his mouth and ran to his neck. His eyes clenched, and a painful wheeze replaced the coughing. Charlie braced himself against the Mercedes, like he had lost the strength to stand up on his own. Protecting these men was his responsibility. For a split second, he looked old and lost, but the moment passed. He gritted his teeth, and the color returned to his cheeks. His eyes burned like gimlets. He powered up his cell phone and began to dial frantically.

“I know a place,” he snapped. He ordered Azran loaded into the backseat of one of the Mercedes. “You're going, too.”

“No way,” I said definitively. “We can't risk that. I'm fine.”

I wasn't fine. I felt a wave of nausea rolling over me. A cold sweat had broken out on my forehead and was dripping into my eyes. Earlier, I had dismissed Lady Luck as a crutch for the lazy and the wicked, but the truth was that she had been faithful to me over the last week and never more than two minutes ago. A couple more steps, and it would have been me lying under a blanket next to Lukas, making a widow of my wife and leaving three kids fatherless. Or it could just as easily have been me squirming on the ground, throat scorched, lungs shredded like popped balloons.

“Have a couple of your boys take me to the safe house,” I managed to say. “And make sure the safe house has a decent liquor cabinet and a hot shower.”

“You look like shit, my friend.” There wasn't an ounce of sympathy in his voice. The anguish and the anger had drained from his face. All that remained was a stoic mask. For a split second, our gazes met, but I didn't see even a hint of resentment in his eyes. I wouldn't have blamed him had there been.

Charlie shouted orders to three of his men as the wail of sirens harkened in the distance. Then he climbed into the Mercedes next to his nephew, and the car leaped away from the curb. We were only a matter of seconds behind him. But when Charlie's ride reached the intersection, they turned south. The Mercedes carrying me went straight for two more blocks before swinging into a neighborhood filled with brick cottages. You couldn't call the pain in my head a headache; it was more like an internal train wreck. I didn't know whether to be sick or to put a bullet in my head. Instead, I curled up on the black leather of the backseat. I faded in and out as we rolled through the city.

I sensed the Mercedes slowing. I opened my eyes as it turned and plunged into a garage beneath a three-story building. Might have been an apartment house. Maybe a small hotel. The door scrolled closed, entombing us in darkness before a weak fluorescent light flickered from the ceiling. The guards hustled out. One opened my door and helped me up a short flight of stairs, across a carpeted foyer, and up a second flight of stairs, which seemed to go on forever. My knees felt weak. My eyes blurred.

I sensed a door being opened, but that was the last I remembered.

I came to on a surprisingly comfortable bed. I don't know what I'd been expecting; maybe a broken-down couch in a flophouse. I was light-headed, but I could feel the crisp white sheets and smell the fabric softener. Odd, what hits you first. What hit me second was that the nausea was gone. Okay, good start.

The room was dark, but the air, like the sheets, was remarkably clean. Something pressed across my face. I jerked my hand toward it. Then relaxed. There was a plastic tube lying across my upper lip. My fingers traced the shape of a cannula clipped under my nostrils. I followed the tubing to a green oxygen bottle on the nightstand. Night's purple glow outlined the dark curtains over the windows. And then the question: how long had I been here? I calculated. The bombing has occurred in midafternoon, around 1:30
P.M.
I couldn't see a clock, but it had to be late evening, given the light.

In a span of two seconds, I self-diagnosed. Heart rate: fifty-eight. Decent. Lungs: not great; in fact, they hurt like hell. Obviously, the bomb blast had caused some damage. Flex index: 82 percent. Better than expected. Headache: throbbing, but better.

I groped the bedsheets and found my pistol tucked under the covers by my right side. I felt the pockets of my trousers. Thankfully, my iPhone was still there. Then a moment of panic: my coat, my passports, my money, and my backpack. Where were they?

I tried to sit up. A nightlight along the baseboard silhouetted a man slouching in a chair beside me. Charlie Amadi.

“It's all right here,” Charlie said. He had read my reaction and hit it dead on. “The whole works. And I have to say, you've got a few toys in your pack that could make me a serious fortune.”

“I thought you'd already made a serious fortune,” I managed to say.

“Well, true. But a man can always find room for another serious fortune,” he admitted. “How you doing?”

“Better. And yourself?”

Charlie kept quiet for a moment, as if an avalanche of emotion lay a little too close to the surface. Charlie was not the kind of man who benefited from a show of emotion. Or at least that was the prevailing thinking. Finally, he said, “Azran will make it. Just barely. Lukas had a wife and four kids. How fucked is that?”

“You'll take care of them.” The words just came out, just one of those statements that really had no place in the room at that moment.

Charlie could have said,
How obvious is that, you stupid son of a bitch.
I would have understood. He didn't. Instead, he said, “I'll miss him,” and bit down on the words.

“Yeah.” Obviously my empathetic skills were not as highly tuned as they might have been. I changed the subject. “What time is it?”

Charlie raised his left arm. The gold band of his Rolex glittered on his wrist. “Eleven twenty-six.” He lowered his arm. “I had a doctor check you out. You suffered a concussion. Maybe some lung damage.”

“Tell the doc thanks.” I took a long whiff of the oxygen. It was soothing and cool. I sat up, stripped off the oxygen tube, and detached the pulse monitor. I swung my legs off the bed. Back to business. “Listen, I know you lost a good man today. And I know you nearly lost your nephew. I feel responsible. Hell, I am responsible. But the only way we can make it even a little bit right is by finding out who planted that bomb, Charlie? Someone knew we were headed there. They had time to plan. Hate to even think it, my good friend, but it had to be an inside job.”

“Thought of that already.”

“Who picked the hotel?”

“I picked the hotel, Jake. Who the hell you think picked the hotel?” Charlie snapped. He squeezed off a quick breath, looking for a semblance of control. “I want the rat who planted the bomb as bad as you. Worse.”

“Problem is,” I replied, my voice measured and low, “we can't run out the clock playing cat and mouse with this guy. We don't have time.”

“I'm not arguing,” Charlie said. “What's the plan?”

“The plan is that I go forward with the mission. Get to Qom and uncover whatever the hell is going on there. Have your guys made the pickup at the border?”

“All secured. We choppered it back,” Charlie said. “Now what?”

“We keep the counterop up and running while I'm making a target of myself. If our guy wants to stop me, the maggot will have to crawl out from under his rock. He does that, well…”

“You squash the shit out of him. Unless I get to him first.”

“On the same page with that,” I said.

“Good.” Charlie's shoulders might have been sagging, and the weariness on his face was visible even in the dim gloom of the room, but he wasn't defeated. He might have taken a hit today, but someone was going to pay. If I didn't see to it, he would. Charlie stood up and made for the door. He paused, with his hand on the knob. “Put the oxygen back on, Jake. Get some rest. I got men all around this place. We start first light.”

“First light,” I said.

After he left, I shook out four Tylenol from a small jar on the nightstand and washed them down with water from a plastic pitcher. I replaced the cannula in my nose, laid my head back on the pillow, and savored the cool stream of pure oxygen. I still had a throbbing headache, but I was too exhausted to worry about it. I closed my eyes.

Two hours later, I woke up again when I felt my iPhone vibrating in my pocket. I dug it out and checked the time: 0218 local. There was a message alert from General Tom Rutledge:
Call ASAP.

I sat up, removed the cannula, and shut off the oxygen. I poured myself a glass of ice water from a carafe on the nightstand. I took the glass, got out of bed, and padded across the darkened room to the window. I peeked through the curtain. My room was on the second floor. The building sat on a hill overlooking a sprawling carpet of city lights. I had no idea where I was, but I calculated a ten- or twelve-minute drive from the scene of the hotel explosion. Meaningless at the moment. I studied the street. Seven cars. No people.

I stood there for three minutes, sipping the water and trying to ease the tension in my shoulders and back.

My thoughts drifted. For ten seconds I was back home with Cathy. We were in the backyard. I could almost smell the barbecue. I blinked and saw Leila's face. Blinked again and steered my thoughts back to the most important thing in my world at the moment: the mission.
Stay focused on the mission or you'll never barbecue another steak as long as you live, Jake.

I clicked on the iPhone to call Rutledge. The time in Washington, D.C. was 1724 hours. Knowing Rutledge, he was probably having the same fantasy as I was about a steak on the grill, while another fifteen-hour-day kept him locked away in a sterile office inside the Pentagon.

I speed dialed his number. He answered on the second ring.

“Damn, man,” Tom said. “Your communication skills could give a man an ulcer if he gave it half a chance. I was getting worried.”

“You had every right to be.” I told him about the hotel bomb and kept it very short.

“Where are you now?” His voice had that even, almost indifferent tone that came with a full résumé in dealing with catastrophes.

I massaged an ache in my neck. I wasn't giving out that kind of information to anyone. Trace the call if you like, but don't expect any favors, even from a friend. “Out of harms' way.”

“I need you at a hundred percent, and you don't sound like a hundred percent to me,” he said in the same annoyingly unsympathetic voice.

Truthfully, I didn't care much for the comment, but I was also too numb to put up much of a fight. “Personally, I like being all beat to shit.”

“Okay. Okay. I guess I deserve that.” I could almost see Tom shaking his head. “You're the one dodging bullets, and I'm the one feeling the heat.”

“Heat from where?”

“Our friend in Virginia thinks you're freezing him out,” the general admitted.

“Hell yes I'm freezing him out,” I said directly. “If you have a better handle on the trust level at this point, let me know.”

“I don't imagine you're trusting anyone right about now.”

I ignored this. “What do you have for me?”

General Rutledge grunted. Well, at least he didn't say,
Same old Jake.
I was getting pretty tired of that one. Instead, he said, “First of all, we've been tailing Sami Karimi, Kouros Moradi, and Ora Drago. That much you know. What you don't know is that all three of them disappeared twenty-four hours ago.”

“Disappeared?” Karimi had been my MEK contact in Paris, Moradi and Drago in Amsterdam. “What the hell?”