The Shield of Darius (20 page)

Following her encounter with Falen at the little league park, Millie Davis, who knew when a stray cat walked through the neighborhood, assured her that she’d be a fool to let Falen escape without at least one tumble in the hay.

“And where did you find
him
?” she said, her voice dripping with “It hasn’t taken
you
long.”

“Strictly business,” Kate said flatly, never ceasing to be amazed by Millie’s shallow insensitivity.

“Oh, I’m
sure
. I wouldn’t mind doing a little business with him myself.”

“
Business
business.”

“Well, just the same. Don’t kick him out of a board meeting,” Millie said.

Aside from the irritation, she’d ignored Millie at the time but found since that when she felt the need to really vent, to unload her frustrations and let go of her ‘strong business woman’ face for a few hours, the only person who seemed at all appropriate for the release was Chris Falen.

Fortunately by two in the afternoon, forty minutes before his call, Kate had managed to convince Dave King that the buyout offer wasn’t in the best interest of the company and wasn’t something she could commit to on her own anyway. PJ had called her at the office to tell her he loved her and apologize for being a brat. She hung up knowing he wasn’t headed irretrievably toward a life of drugs and a 500 on his SAT, and was feeling very much in charge. She wanted to go home after work, order pizza, play Yahtzee with the kids, and tell her mother to take a flying leap.

As she left the office, Dave stopped her in the hall. “You did a helluva job with the CommTech people today. To be honest, without Ben here I wasn’t sure we ought to try to keep this operation going.”

“I could see you were a bit uncertain about things when we went into the session. But we’re as solid as we’ve ever been. You saw the sales reports and the P & L statements. This isn’t something that can be decided without Ben anyway, and if they want to talk purchase again, he’d say they’d better add a hundred million.” She turned and walked lightly down the stairs and through the computer room to the outside.

“Without Ben….” If he never returned, she wondered if she would ever be able to completely accept the idea.

NINETEEN

Braced against a poplar beside the Karaj well, Ben Sager was wrestling with the same thought. If he couldn’t get across the mountains to the border within another day, he knew he would be too weak to try. The griping knot in his stomach was a constant reminder that he hadn’t eaten in two days, and his drinks from the open cisterns were beginning to take their toll. He lurched more and more often down the riverbank to a stand of thick willows to relieve himself; burning watery waste that scalded his buttocks and legs. He had spent most of the night before in the dark cool of the river, keeping the bandaged wound out of the murky stream, but hoping that the rest of his body might soak up some nourishment from the brown water. The bullet wound now extended burning tendrils through his lungs and rib cage. He had been free for a week, and he was running out of time and life.

As the late afternoon sun spread the webbed shadows of the chinar trees out toward the river, he struggled to remain upright and covered against the tree; to be just one more
chador
ed figure sitting aside from the others who had come for water, squatting in flat-footed silence, paying little apparent attention to anything.

The appearance was deceiving. Since reaching the well he had watched with studied care the movements of an attendant who parked a fleet of small blue and yellow buses in a lot adjacent to the public pump. Hour by hour he counted vehicles, logging their schedules in his head, learning the routines of the little man in the dark tattered jacket and pajama-like pants. The attendant took the buses from their drivers after the last run of the day, filled them with diesel fuel from a pump beside his shed, and hung the keys on a numbered board inside the crude, brick hut.

From his vantage point beside the poplar, Ben could see the board through the door and knew that each bus had two sets of keys. There were now fifteen buses in the lot. Some he had seen off and on during the day, following short, repeated routes around the village or back and forth to Tehran. Five had come in from longer routes and came across the bridge from the north, probably from Qazvin or Tabriz, or down through the canyon past the dam from Chalus and the Caspian coast. Ben was watching the routine on one of these five. Number
yazdah
.  Eleven.  It had gone out approximately two hours after sunup in the morning and returned before noon, then left again at mid-day and was back several hours before the attendant locked up his shed for the evening. During the final two hours of the man’s workday, the keys to Bus Eleven hung unused on the board while their keeper wandered about the lot, fueling incoming buses and making tea over a cut down fifty-gallon drum filled with charcoal.

As Ben watched the man hang up the keys for Bus Eleven on the afternoon of his second day at the well, he waited until the women left with their afternoon water, then struggled to his feet and shuffled along the road to the bus lot. Number Eleven had finished its second run and sat fueled and ready for the next morning. With his
chador
showing no more than his dark eyes, Ben waited until the attendant disappeared behind his shed to prepare evening tea, then slipped quickly into the shack and lifted the front set of keys for the bus from the board. The rush to the shed drained the last of his strength and he collapsed against the outside of the building; a beggar woman too pathetic to shoo away.  At dusk the attendant closed and locked the shed, muttered something at Ben as he passed, and walked along the road toward the village.

As night fell over Karaj, Ben pushed himself upright against the bus shed, letting the
chador
fall loosely to his shoulders. He walked with slow measured steps across the lot to Number Eleven and unlocked the bus. Its seat was soft and comfortable and he sat for a long moment, resting against the wheel, knowing that once the bus moved, he would no longer be an unnoticed beggar.  With the key in the ignition, he drew a slow breath, and turned it. The bus started immediately, its deep rumbling diesel engine throbbing loudly in the quiet night of the village. No one came. Ben painfully depressed the clutch, forced the gear stick into low, and eased the bus forward out of the lot. He turned right across the river bridge, then left onto the highway that led up into the dark mountains past the Amirkabir Dam toward Chalus. His
chador
was folded beside him on the seat, his sunken chest covered only by a single cloth strip that held his bandage in place. The lights of passing vehicles showed only a thin, bearded driver making a late run north to the Caspian.

The bus was an awkward length on the twisting road that climbed almost immediately from Karaj into the mountains, and its mechanically linked steering was stiff and exhausting. On the first sweeping bend north of the village, Ben’s left side knotted under the strain and he failed to pull the bus quickly enough into the turn. It rumbled off the hard surface, bouncing and scraping noisily through rocks and low thick brush that bordered the roadway. He leaned hard into the wheel with his right arm, gradually easing it back onto the asphalt. The infection was showing itself as almost uncontrollable shaking that increased as he strained to master the stubborn coach. As he skirted the deep reservoir that spread like black glass behind the towering concrete slope of the dam, he forced the bus against the cliff face to his right, away from the low railing that separated him from a steep plunge into water fifty feet below. God, how he wished he had something to eat, something that would calm his frazzled nerves and give him an ounce of strength.

At 8850 feet, a sign in English and Farsi marked the summit and entrance to a lighted tunnel. The bus clattered and rumbled through the raw stone passage as if about to disintegrate, adding to his general anxiety and to a fear that he had damaged the undercarriage when he left the road. The tunnel ended in a sudden rush of thick, damp air and he realized that he was on the Caspian side of the mountain. Gingerly he slid the driver’s window back, breathing the heavy air that smelled of decaying plants and distant sea. The sparse, brackish vegetation that had lined the road above Karaj gave way to thick, lush forest that arched over his path, forcing him toward its center. Forty kilometers below the summit he reached a long sweeping downgrade and saw across the dark mat of treetops, the lights of the coastal town of Chalus flickering against the black water of the Caspian Sea. Ben tried to raise his left arm to the wheel, but it refused to move. An hour of relentless strain had sucked away the last of its motion. But there was comfort in the black stretch of horizon. Only the southern tip of the Sea dipped into Iran, with most of the Caspian bordered by Russia and the former Soviet Republics. He was getting close and he could smell and feel it in the humid air. For an instant, Ben felt it again – the rush of the Damascus bazaar. He had survived the city and the flight to Karaj. He had made it through the mountains. A hundred miles north, maybe less, was the border. Ben was on his way out.

The bus accelerated down the grade and he let it climb to 100 kph on the speedometer: just over 60 miles an hour. As it edged toward 110, he tapped the brake, feeling his heart seize and body drain again into a cramping knot as the pedal sank without resistance beneath his foot. Ben stood on the brake, pumping frantically and praying for the slightest pressure, but the black pad clapped impotently against the floorboard. He knew that behind the bus a thin trail of brake fluid, dripping from a line damaged when the bus left the road, marked his descent from the summit.

Ben threw his weight to the right, flipping his limp left arm up onto the wheel to add leverage. The headlights raced like darting ghosts among the trees that lined the outside of the curve, adding to the dizzying plunge of the bus. He braced himself against the wheel, gripping until his fingers whitened and numbed against its shuddering rim.

Feeling desperately with his foot for the clutch, he gripped the wheel with his quivering left hand and mashed the peddle downward, forced the stick forward into neutral, then quickly clutched again and jammed it hard into third. As he released the pedal, the gears seized with screaming protest, throwing him forward against the steering wheel. The acrid smell of grinding steel and burning gear oil filled the bus and it rocked crazily up onto its left wheels, slammed back against the pavement and rocked right, teetered for an instant, then crashed onto its right side and slid top-first toward the tangle of trees.

TWENTY

Fisher listened impatiently and scowled into the phone. He was glad he wasn’t speaking to the Director face-to-face. In fact, they had never met and he doubted the Director knew exactly who or where he was. Of the men Fisher had worked with, this one kept the greatest distance. He was a product of the new politics.

“Sir, it was only a week ago that we became completely aware of the situation. We’re moving as quickly as we can without making things worse. If I could tell you all we’ve learned about this operation and the location, you’d understand why this has to be done carefully. Just do what’s necessary to keep our people from taking any aggressive action toward Iran until we have this wrapped up.”

He listened again, started to interrupt, then let the Director finish. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its aged roughness and was razor-sharp.

“The reason we’re here, and that you can’t know more, is to keep you – and everybody else – distanced from this. If you want control of it, just say the word and it’s yours.”

The Director’s reply was brief and Fisher tried to hide the disgust in his voice. “Then go into that meeting and keep people from screwing this up,” he said.

.  .  .

On the beach at Assateague, Chris Falen had decided that the solution to the DWAT problem lay in the able hands of David Ishmael and in the volatile political and religious passions of the Middle East.  David’s personal passion, if it was fair to legitimize his obsessive loathing by labeling it a passion, was
Shi’a
Islam. The Mossad agent was a Jew by nationalism and heritage, if not by orthodoxy, and though he believed the great God of Israel to be no more than an amorphous expression of that nationalism, he had unwavering conviction that there was a Satan. David’s devil was the embodiment of the collective fanaticism of those who guided the
jihad
of the
Shi’ites –
the people who had murdered his family.

Of the world’s largest religions Islam is the youngest, finding its origins in the life and teachings of its prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. The
Hijrah,
Muhammad’s flight in 622 AD from his ancestral home in Mecca to what is now the city of Medina, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar and in the mind of David Ishmael, quite appropriately placed life in the Muslim world six centuries behind the rest of humanity. Islam is a religion of relative simplicity, asking that its adherents express their devotion through five principle observances or “pillars.” The vast majority of Muslims adhere to the pillars with unwavering conviction.

Like all of the major religions, Islam has had its share of internal discord and division. Chief among these factions are the
Sunni
and the
Shi’ites
, sisters of a major schism that divided the Islamic community during its first century of existence. Following the death of the prophet in 632 AD, the followers of the
Sunnah
or “traditions” declared that Muhammad had named no successor and elected Abu Bakr, father of the prophet’s wife A’isha, first
Caliph
or successor.

For some who had been closest to the prophet, the election of Abu Bakr was a compromise, a means of providing leadership until Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali was old enough to assume his rightful place as Caliph. These were the
Shi’a
or “partisans” who believed that the prophet had declared Ali successor before his death, and that the Caliphate was to remain within the holy family.

The
Sunni
have since evolved as the larger and more pragmatic of the sects, accepting the
ijma
or “consensus” of the community, the
hadith
or traditions about the Prophet’s life and actions, along with the Koran as the source of enlightenment for decision making. To the majority of
Shi’a
, Ali become the first of twelve
Imams
, “the one who stands in front,” whose utterances provide sole access to the hidden and true meaning of the Muslim holy book. This fundamentalist idealism occasionally surfaces as fanatic passion, becoming the wailing and self-flagellation of
Ashura,
tenth day of the month of
Muharram,
which commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn, third
Imam
and grandson of the Prophet.

In the sixteenth century
Shi’a
Islam became the sanctioned religion of the Persian kings, and the majority of the world’s forty million
Shi’ites
still inhabit the high Iranian plateau and Iraq’s southern Fertile Crescent. Their passion has become the most militaristic expression of
Jihad
, the Muslim “struggle.” Led by the driving religious conservatism of their spiritual guides, the Ayatollahs, the
Shi’a
of Iran gather support for their terrorist activities from pockets of
Shi’ite
fundamentalists scattered throughout the Muslim world. One such group is
Hizballah
operating out of southern Lebanon – the same
Hizballah
that had once blown up a bus on the coastal road between Tyre and Nahariyya. The bus had carried the wife and youngest son of David Ishmael.

Falen met with Ishmael in the boisterous restaurant of
Die Port Van Cleve
on Amsterdam’s
Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal
. He had checked with the hotel in advance this time. No touring cattlemen were booked and he found the restaurant bustling with its usual lunch crowd of businessmen and well directed tourists. David sat in a corner sipping gin and tonic and seemed pleased to see him.

“Haven’t heard from you lately,” he said, smiling and extending a strong calloused hand. “Thought you might have given up the business.”

“Temporary diversion,” Falen laughed. “But I’m back and I think you’ll like what I have. By the way, how do those hands get so rough in your line of work?”

“Ah….” David held his hands palms up against the wooden tabletop. “For Israelis, what I do is not work. Physical work is our life blood. You either find a way to work with your hands, or die. Me? I keep a small farm just outside of Ma’barot south of Hadera. That’s where I do my real work. When I’m home I go there and dig post holes and build sheds for my animals. It does wonders for the stress that goes with the job.”

“Whatever works,” Falen said lightly. “Frankly, I find the job relaxing. It’s when I’m away from it that I get stressed.”

Ishmael shrugged. “That’s because you have no soul.” The two men exchanged cynical smiles.

Falen nodded toward the door. “There’s a park behind the Rijksmuseum. Let’s walk.”

They left the hotel and walked south to Leidse Street, talking of growing oranges and building sheds. At the Square they turned left on Stadouders Quay to the imposing stone front of the Rijksmuseum. An arched tunnel passed beneath the famous gallery, leading to a long narrow greenway on its southwest side. The park was bordered on both sides by rows of stately Dutch homes and office buildings, the KLM Offices and the Van Gogh Museum. Men in business suits and women pushing round faced babies in dark-colored carriages strolled along the shady walks, enjoying the noon break. As the two settled into a comfortable pace a cautious distance from others in the park, Falen spoke without looking over at the Mossad agent.

“You’ve been looking for an al-Qaeda training center in Tehran for some time, I think. I believe we have found something that might interest you more.

Ishmael walked for a moment in silence.

“We think we found the training center,” he said finally. “North of downtown in the Abbasabad District. Up near the police academy and army headquarters.”

“This isn’t a training center,” Falen said. “It’s a hostage storage facility where the Iranians are warehousing American hostages.”

David Ishmael stopped in mid-stride and turned to face his American colleague.

“I haven’t heard about any hostage situation, “he said.

“It’s been done very cleverly. Tourists suddenly missing, and presumed runaways. They disappear without a trace and after a few months, our State Department gives up on them.”

“How many?”

“Thirty.”

“
Thirty
!?” Ishmael’s expression was a combination of surprise and amusement. “Hard to imagine that this would go unnoticed.”

“It’s been going on for over two years and apparently has been noticed by State,” Falen explained. “They don’t know what to do about it and don’t know where they are. But you’re right. It is a bit surprising that no one else has put two and two together.”

“How did you become aware of it…if you can tell me?”

“By accident. We got suspicious of a carpet importer in Philadelphia who was passing himself off as Egyptian. Turned out to be Irani. He was getting travel information from a contact in our central passport office and having travelers abducted while they were abroad. We tailed one of his deliveries to Tehran and to an old hotel on Rasht Street. You know the city at all?”

“I haven’t been there, as you can imagine. But I’ve been over the street maps enough times. Rasht is down by the Danish Embassy off Laleh-Zar.”

Falen nodded. “The building’s the old Rubaiyat Hotel and sits next to another called the Caravan. From what we can tell, they may be using both. The windows are painted over and security’s pretty intense.”

“How are they getting people in? We watch the city like hawks.”

“By ship to Bandar Abbas, then flying ‘em into Meherabad. They take them into the city in plain black vans a few at a time.”

Again David walked beside him for a moment without speaking. “We’re tracking shipments through the Gulf and try to watch all traffic at the major airports. But all of our information so far hasn’t uncovered this. It does help explain something though.”

Falen looked over at his Israeli colleague, “And what is that?”

“The Shield of Darius.”

“Shield of Darius?”

“Yes. We’ve been picking up a lot of chatter recently from Iranian intelligence that talks about the Shield of Darius. It didn’t fit into anything we knew about until now.”

“Interesting. I heard that expression just last week. It looks like we’re talking about a human shield – for high vulnerability sites around the country.”

“Makes sense.”

“Why Darius, do you think?”

“Darius the Great was king at the height of the Persian Empire. We think the leadership in Tehran has grandiose ideas about trying to return Iran to some semblance of its past glories.”

“Hope the Greeks are aware of this,” Falen chuckled, and they walked for another moment in silence.    

“Who knows about this?” Ishmael asked thoughtfully.

“Only two people,” Falen said. “Me and the person I report to. But we’ve got a high level of confidence in our location. You might want to confirm it.”

Ishmael nodded. “We’ll try to take a look at it. But we don’t have the resources in the city you people have.”

“We’re running short on time. Our intel tells us they may be moving the people to sensitive sites around the country in about a week.”

“And you’re telling me this because...?”

“Some of our other intel also tells us you may be planning to hit reactor sites in-country in the near future. I thought you might not want to find out you had killed a dozen prominent Americans after the fact.”

“And if this problem were to go away?”

“No one knows that there is a problem,” Falen said.

“We’ll look into it,” said Ishmael.