The White House: A Flynn Carroll Thriller (15 page)

“Get the hell out of here,” the pilot shouted. “And next time, will you please knock before you come bursting through our front door?”

“Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, well. Now sit back and relax. You're about to see an Academy Award performance.”

The pilot ran into the pool of burning gas, then came out rolling, his legs and back on fire. “Don't just stand there, move your asses, I'm burnin' up!”

Flynn and the others put him out. He lay there, his clothes smoking, laughing and grimacing in pain at the same time. “My story will be that I nearly got burned alive trying to save my helicopter. And you got away, and why? Because your friend the spy made sure of it.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will. We gotta go back to Tehran and keep playing like Rev Guards. Wish us luck.”

Flynn saluted. He knew of no greater honor that one soldier could offer another. The pilot got to his feet. The three of them returned the salute, and Flynn headed for the Corolla.

He moved quickly, but not at a dead run; though it was dark, there could be eyes on him. The car was dark, too, seemingly abandoned. But as he approached, he could see a thickening of shadow on the driver's side.

He opened the passenger-side door. No interior light came on. When he slid in and sat down, the driver turned to him. It was Davood Ghorbani. “Let's roll, buddy,” he said. “I'm coming out with you.”

Flynn still had the pistol he'd taken from the guard. It felt very good to be armed again, especially in view of what he still feared was really happening here, which was that he was being played by the Revolutionary Guard in the same way an expert fisherman plays something big and powerful like a swordfish. Give it line, let it run, pull against it, tire it out.

Ghorbani started the engine and began driving fast down a dark, two-lane blacktop, lights out. “I hope I didn't fry your balls off, Flynn.”

The comment was an invitation to engage, but Flynn didn't care to do that just yet. He was thinking this thing out, and it was complicated. The guard who'd been killed could have been a prisoner slated for execution. There were a few Iranian Americans who had returned after the revolution, so the other three could have actually been more Revolutionary Guards, and Davood Ghorbani could be a clever actor. All good interrogators had an element of the actor in their personalities.

He decided to let things continue to play out.

“I'm MI6,” Ghorbani said.

“Special Forces, MI6? Who else is out here?”

“Tehran is spy heaven. The locals all hate the ayatollahs. People will practically pay for the right to help the West.”

He decided to turn the conversation in a direction that might cause Ghorbani to reveal a little more of himself. “Do all those agencies know about Aeon?”

“We do.”

“Obviously, given that you questioned me about it.”

“I was asking prepared questions, remember that. Prepared by MISIRI.”

“What do you think Aeon is, then? Personal thought.”

“It's some sort of ultra-high-tech project. Biorobots, maybe. Stronger and faster than us. Maybe smarter, too. We want to know more.”

He was a fine liar, very impressive.

“You told me during torture that Iran was allied with Aeon. How could it be allied with a biorobot project?”

“No, sir, that's what you told me, and I'm still wondering what you were getting at. I'd love to know.”

Flynn caught his breath as he forced himself not to pull out the Webley and blow this brilliant bastard's head off. But Ghorbani had just slipped. Flynn had
not
brought up Aeon first, but Ghorbani was assuming that he wouldn't have clear recall. A mistake. Useful, too. Revealing.

Ghorbani was, in fact, so brilliant at his profession that it now came to mind that he might be like Louis Charlton Morris, a humanoid biorobot. Morris had been a criminal both here and on Aeon, but that was under the old regime. His side had won. If he had still been alive, he would probably be a member of their government.

Flynn had destroyed him, but he did not think that blowing another one to pieces would be the best move, not until he was certain about what he was dealing with.

He would play it out a bit more, see if he asked more of the wrong sort of questions. Human or not—that would decide the matter. He said, “What do you know about me?”

Ghorbani chuckled. “Enough to understand that you'll blow my brains out if I ask a question that makes you decide this is all another interrogators' trick.”

The objective of this sort of interrogation is to go beyond the uncertainties of torture so that the responses are more likely to be truthful. You gain the subject's confidence. You become his friend—in this case, his rescuer. Then he opens up to you.

The firmament swept down to the horizon. Somewhere out there was Aeon, hell in the glory. He kept an eye out, as always, for wandering stars.

They drove on for hours, crossing the ancient vastness of Persia, going higher and higher into the central massif that defined the country's geography. The villages were barely lit, the small cities were silent and looked very poor, and yet it was all touched by a mysterious beauty.

Finally, they were through the mountains and driving steadily across the coastal plain. Morning was coming soon, suggested by the rosy glow that hugged the eastern horizon. The morning star hanging in it was so vivid that it seemed as if it would be possible to touch it.

As a boy, he'd loved the sky. He'd spent time at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis with Abby and his old gang from Menard, looking up in wonder. When would it seem wonderful again? Ever?

Four
A.M.
came and went. Ramshackle trucks kept appearing on the road, and there were soon enough of them to slow progress. But there was no police presence, not a single official vehicle, checkpoint, anything like that. Also, not a further word had been said.

Ghorbani, as a consummate professional, knew that Flynn would be most off his guard if he started the conversation himself. “What's the plan?” Flynn finally asked.

“The plan is that we get to the sub, I get taken back to Qatar and reassigned. What happens to you, I don't know.”

“No cops on this road.”

“Once you leave the big cities, resistance to the regime fades. Thus no reason to police the area. This is ayatollah country, not like Tehran. They hate the regime with a passion up there.”

“You're a good torturer.”

“Learned my trade in Belfast, boyo. You're the toughest bloke I ever did, I'll tell you that. Damned eerie. Could've sold me on the idea you're a robot, tell the truth.”

He thought about that, all that it might mean—all kinds of impossible, unbelievable things. He was human, had grown up human. There were no implants in his body. But he was no longer a normal man—that he could not deny. He turned in his seat, faced Ghorbani. “I sure as hell felt it.”

Ghorbani was unbothered. “They have no rules in this country. No limits. And to think that they want the bomb.”

“They gonna get it?”

“Not for me to say. I just follow orders and hope what I do matters.”

Ghorbani abruptly turned onto a desert track. A moment later there was a burst of sound on the car radio, not quite static, but in that direction. “A signal from above. The good old U.S. of A. has eyes on us.”

“What's our threat level?”

“Hard to say. None to total. Depends on how long it takes the Guard to figure this little escapade out.”

“What was your position in the Guard?”

“Me? Sub-assistant flaymaster. Electrocutionist.”

“You did that for them?”

“I did it for the West, my boy. For information. Knowledge. Guys in my line are respected in Iran. Trusted. Trusted with secrets. It'll probably take London a year to completely debrief me. I've been on station for four years. I know a lot.”

Another major slip. A sophisticated Western intelligence operation would be debriefing an operative like him as often as it could.

“Aeon?” Flynn asked.

“They talk about it like it was a country. Russia. China. Aeon. What do you know?”

“That any country who makes an alliance with it is going to get damn well raped.”

“Oh?”

“A deal with the devil. You can't win.”

“Personal experience? The U.S. made an alliance with this entity? Is it another planet? What are you saying?”

He was so very good, it was too bad he worked for the other side. This man could think, and think well. He was playing his cards like a true master.

Flynn replied, “It's out for itself, Aeon. It's a taker, not a giver.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“Just that it's very dangerous, whatever it is, and that we do not know.”

“But a good ally, yes?”

A very revealing question. It meant that they were having trouble dealing with Aeon just like we'd had. They were looking for pointers; that was why he had been lured here. The alliance was established, though. He knew this because they had a Wire. It was where they had gotten their instructions about how to handle him.

The track petered out. A short time later, Ghorbani brought the car to a stop. “Far as she goes,” he said. “There's coastal radars the other side of that ridge. They aren't gonna track on two guys, but they might see a car.”

“Shore patrols?”

“Now and again. Down here, though, there's not a lot going on. They won't have detected the sub. FYI, we're about twelve klicks south of Bushehr. Qatar's a couple hundred klicks across the gulf.”

They left the car and climbed the rise to see spreading before them, like a great shadow in the land, the Persian Gulf. It was still enveloped in the night. Here and there on its vast waters a fisherman's lamp shone, reflecting a fragment of gold on the glassy surface.

Flynn stopped.

“Hello?”

“We're under observation. Glint of light on a binocular a klick up the ridge.” The gun appeared in his hand and Ghorbani blinked, then stared at it.

“How did you do that?”

“The binocular is still on us, moving slowly. Somebody on foot.”

“I can't see a thing.”

“You're lying,” Flynn thought. “They're your people. They're here to pull me back.” He said aloud, “It's two guys. One of them has a rifle ported.”

“How can you think about a pistol shot at all? That thing won't be accurate past fifty feet, if that.”

“Two hundred feet.”

“Where in hell did you train, because I want on that program.”

Flynn didn't even try to answer.

“Classified, eh? Not surprised.”

“I'm human, that's for damn sure. You really beat me up and I really feel it. A lot.” Flynn looked out across the water, which was gaining definition as dawn spread. The tide was out, leaving about a quarter-mile expanse of flats exposed.

“Do you clam?” Ghorbani asked.

“Clam?”

“Tide's out. We're going clamming. Throw the spotters a bit of a curve. If that's what they are.”

They rolled up their pants, left their shoes on the shore, and went out onto the flats. “Got any idea how to do this?” Flynn asked.

“You don't know?”

“No clamming in West Texas.”

Just then, another figure appeared on the flats, about a quarter mile to the north. It was a woman shrouded in black and carrying a basket. She began to clam.

It went on like that, with more women coming onto the flats.

The two shore patrols came along the ridge, still watching them with the binoculars.

“How long does the sub wait?” Flynn asked.

“Remember, the U.S. has eyes on us. The sub will wait until and if Langley is certain that we can't make it. So we hang out here until nightfall.”

“Do we have that long? Shouldn't we swim for it?”

“
Swim?
It's a good two miles.”

Flynn could handle that. “Do it slow. If you give out, I'll take you on my back.”

“We'd never make it. Anyway, there are sharks. Lots of sharks.”

Clearly, Ghorbani did not want him to enter that water. This meant only one thing: Escape in that direction—the real thing—was possible.

“I think we should swim.”

“The shore patrol's gone. Let's find someplace to lie low.”

“It's not gone. They're behind the ridge, popping up from time to time to have a looksee.”

“Bollocks!”

“You're a native speaker—maybe you should approach them.”

“And say we're down from the north clamming with the women? I doubt that'll work.”

“They take bribes, I presume.”

“Possibly, though down here they might be too loyal.”

“Soon as they realize you're Revolutionary Guard and you've got an open wallet, they'll carry out your orders.”

“You stay well hidden.”

“You got that right.”

“How could you ever come in here without even any Farsi?”

“Swiss arms dealers don't speak the local lingo.”

The tide was coming in, so they headed back from the clamming flats to the beach. Flynn took the bag, sat down in the shadow of a dune, and began taking clams out, examining them, and returning them to the bag, pretending he knew what he was doing. Meanwhile, Ghorbani went across the dunes, then up along the ridge.

Flynn waited, listening to every sound he could detect over the hiss of the low surf. Each moment that passed, he was feeling less secure. There was something he wasn't seeing, he was certain of it. But what?

The crack of a shot echoed among the dunes, and Flynn instantly knew what the plan was. They would recapture him, and he'd end up in a cell with his so-called fellow Western agent Ghorbani. As they took their turns in the torture chamber, the real interrogation would be going on in the cell, as Flynn opened up to his fellow sufferer.