Unforgettable - eARC (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Yelena kept a very professional silence.

“You double-crossing snake,” I said, glaring at Parham. “I should never have trusted you about the diamonds.”

I counted on him being quick enough to pick up on what I was doing, and he did not disappoint me. “Trust?” he said. “You kidnap me and threaten to kill me, and then you want trust between us? It’s not my fault you’re gullible enough to believe Jamshidi would store a fortune in diamonds in a warehouse like this.”

Parham lowered his hands and nodded at one of the guards. “Thank you for rescuing me from my kidnappers,” he said. “Take them prisoner—I am sure Jamshidi will want to question them.”

The guards obeyed him. One of them got on a phone and yammered away in Farsi. Two others bound my hands tightly behind my back with rope, while others did the same to Yelena. Surrounded by guards, we were taken to a metal platform in the middle of the warehouse. With a jolt, the platform lowered, taking us down at least twenty feet. Cement slabs formed walls on three sides, but the fourth was open into a paved rectangular room divided lengthwise by what looked to me like a three-foot-tall concrete bench.

The bench extended about thirty yards and disappeared into a dark, circular hole in the back wall. The hole was about fifteen feet in diameter. I realized the bench was actually the track for the monorail Parham had told us about.

Yelena and I stood next to each other, hands bound behind our backs, and waited for the train. After a few minutes, a yellow light began to rotate above the hole in the wall, and a buzzer sounded.

A flatbed monorail car emerged from the tunnel, followed by one with a passenger cabin. The two cars came to a halt. As some of the men loaded boxes onto the flatbed, six of them bustled me and Yelena into the passenger cabin. They tied us to a support pole, back to back in the middle of the cabin, and then they sat down, cradling their rifles and watching us with sullen eyes.

Parham climbed aboard and sat down facing me. “The tables have turned,” he said. “How do you like being my prisoner?”

“I’ve had worse accommodations,” I said.

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “I’m going to make sure Jamshidi throws you in solitary.” He gave me a quick wink.

With a jolt, the monorail started up. Fluorescent lights flickered to life in the cabin just as we entered the tunnel. The wheels of the monorail hummed a tone that got higher in pitch as we sped up, then leveled out as we hit the maximum speed.

I could feel Yelena fumbling with the ropes, and I figured she was trying to wriggle loose somehow. Then her hand found mine and gave it a squeeze. Both our palms were sweaty, but I didn’t care. Our fingers interlocked. And for the rest of the ride we stood there—tied to a pole, surrounded by enemies with guns—and held hands.

It was the most romantic moment of my life.

* * *

“Mr. Jamshidi will see you now,” said the young man in the light gray suit. He opened the double doors to let Parham in, followed by Yelena, me, and our armed escorts.

The office at Jamshidi Oil had been large and luxurious, so I expected something similar here. But this office was only about ten feet by twenty. The white walls were bare except for two flat-panel televisions and five clocks labeled Tehran, London, New York, Tokyo, and Moscow. A brushed aluminum desk with a built-in touchscreen held two phones, three computer monitors, a keyboard, and a mouse.

And the man in the high-backed black leather chair behind the desk was not the bald, obese man I’d given the cockroach package to—it was the mystery man who had chased me down the stairs.

“Parham, so glad you have returned to us safely,” he said.

Parham bobbed his head. “As am I, Mr. Jamshidi. It was touch and go for a bit, but I outsmarted them.”

This man was Jamshidi? That meant the bald man was just a figurehead, a distraction for people to focus on while the real Jamshidi could move about unsuspected.

“Yes,” Jamshidi said. “Khalid mentioned something about diamonds?”

“I convinced them that you had a large store of diamonds in the warehouse that they could steal. Of course, I knew the guards in the warehouse would rescue me.”

“A brilliant deception,” said Jamshidi. “And you have returned just in time. The Prophet is scheduled to go online within the next two hours.”

“Insha’Allah,” said Parham. “I will go see if I can help Jamal speed the process along.”

As he walked to the door, I felt relief. We had made it here before the Prophet was switched on, and now Parham would find a way to sabotage the computer.

“One thing before you go,” said Jamshidi. “How did you get these two to trust you?”

“Well,” said Parham, turning back to face Jamshidi. “I told them about a billion dollars in uncut diamonds, and you should have seen the greed in their eyes. Men often believe what they want to believe.”

“True,” said Jamshidi. “Very true. But I meant about the weapon. Why did they arm you with a Taser? It would risk you trying to escape.”

“Yes, that,” said Parham. “Of course.”

I could tell he was stalling, so I said, “He double-crossed us. He told us he would show us where the diamonds were in exchange for a share. We gave him a Taser because we thought we were all in it together.”

“Precisely,” said Parham.

“All in it together?” said Jamshidi. “Including the lovely Miss Semyonova?”

“Yes,” Yelena said, holding her head high. “He fool me as well.”

Jamshidi raised his index finger, then pointed at her. “You see, that is what does not make sense. Tell me, Miss Semyonova, what was the price for which you were willing to sell out your sisters?”

“I would never,” she said.

“That’s what I thought,” Jamshidi said. “And yet, instead of trading Dr. Rezaei for your sisters, you decide to steal diamonds?”

I was an idiot for not anticipating that flaw when making up our cover story on the spur of the moment. When it was just me, I could try out different stories until I found one that worked, but Yelena and Parham were locked into the one I had chosen.

Yelena whirled toward the closest guard. Somehow she had freed her hands, though loops of rope still hung from her left wrist. She kicked the guard in the groin and pulled his rifle from his hands.

My hands were still tied, but I rammed my shoulder into the guard next to me and he went down. Unfortunately, there were still four guards untouched, and they raised their weapons.

Yelena swung her rifle and aimed at Jamshidi. “Call them off.”

Jamshidi raised his palms. “Nobody shoot.”

“Tell them lower their guns or I kill you,” she said.

With a smile that showed straight white teeth, Jamshidi said, “I’m afraid that won’t be necessary. You will drop your gun and go quietly with my men.”

“No, you bring my sisters here and arrange for us to leave,” said Yelena.

“Pull the trigger,” he said.

“Do not doubt I will kill you,” she said.

“I doubt it very much,” he said. He walked around the desk to the middle of the room as Yelena tracked him with the rifle. He opened his arms wide. “Go ahead, shoot me.”

“Bring my sisters,” Yelena said, her voice more insistent.

“I will not,” he said. “But if you can kill me, my guards will not stop you from getting them.”

Yelena pulled the trigger, and the sound of the shot exploded inside the room.

Jamshidi did not even flinch. About a foot in front of him, a light gray smear seemed to float in midair.

“Bulletproof glass,” he said. “It has a special nonreflective coating. I was never in any danger from you. But I admire you, Miss Semyonova, so I have decided to reunite you with your sisters.”

Yelena’s gun wavered. “Really?”

“I give you my word,” said Jamshidi.

“It’s a trap,” I said. “He hasn’t said he’ll let you go.”

Jamshidi nodded. “Of course not. But considering that my guards could kill you right now, I feel my offer is very generous.”

Yelena lowered the rifle, took her finger off the trigger, and handed it to the nearest guard. “Take me to them,” she said.

“Yelena,” I said, then stopped. I wanted to tell her that I would come for her, assuming I managed to escape. But that wasn’t really the kind of thing to say in front of Jamshidi, as he might just have me killed on the spot. And it would be such a cliché to say that I loved her. “Take care of yourself,” I said.

“I’ll always remember you,” she said over her shoulder as two of the guards escorted her through the door.

“Take Dr. Rezaei to his quarters and lock him in,” said Jamshidi. “I will deal with his treachery later.”

Parham bowed his head and let himself be led out of the room. Two guards remained with me.

Jamshidi tapped his lips with his index finger and stared at me. “You, I did not anticipate. They didn’t tell me they had captured an American along with the other two.”

I shrugged. “I’m just the hired help. And now that Yelena’s not paying, I’ll need another job. You’re not hiring, are you?”

He barked a laugh. “Even if you were not besotted by Yelena, I would be a fool to take you up on that offer.” He walked back behind his desk and sat in his chair.

“Besotted?” I said. “You think I’m in love with Yelena?”

“Aren’t you?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But I didn’t think it was obvious to everyone else.” Was it obvious to Yelena? I thought back to how she had held my hand on the monorail, and decided she knew.

“And how does an American get mixed up with a thief for the Russian mob?” Jamshidi asked.

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“If you tell me the truth, I will not kill you,” he said. “I may even let you go, if you are not a threat. At the very least, I can offer you a comfortable imprisonment. You may even see Yelena again—if I grant you brothel privileges.” He leaned forward, his gaze firmly fixed on my eyes. “But if you lie to me, your death will be long and painful.”

Considering that Jamshidi had detected that Parham was lying to him, I decided I would need to be very careful. I needed him to let me live long enough that I could be forgotten and escape.

The best way to not get caught lying was to tell the truth. He wouldn’t remember it anyway. “I’m a CIA officer,” I said. “I recruited Yelena to help me locate your laboratory. She cooperated because you had her sisters.”

He nodded slowly. “What were you doing in the warehouse?”

I couldn’t tell him I had come to destroy the core, or else he might increase security on it. “Parham was going to show us the entrance to the tunnel so I could report back.”

“I cannot let you reveal the location,” he said. “So I cannot release you. But I am inclined to believe because you did not try to pass yourself off as harmless.”

“Eventually the CIA will locate you,” I said. “And at that point, I won’t be any further danger to you, and you can release me.” I didn’t plan to hang around that long, but I didn’t want him to know that.

“Not quite,” he said. “I have gone to great lengths to ensure that the CIA has the wrong idea about my appearance, and now you have seen me.”

“Weight Watchers and Hair Club for Men?” I said.

“You may think it is funny, but it has worked well for me. My reputation as a fat, bald, billionaire recluse means I may travel without being recognized. So you will remain my prisoner. But I am not a cruel man, so you will live in comfort.”

In my opinion, a man who kidnapped underage girls to work in a brothel was cruel by definition, but I decided it would not be wise to share that sentiment.

One of the phones on his desk rang. He picked it up and carried on a short conversation in Farsi. After he hung up, he looked at me and said, “How would you like to be a witness to history?”

“Depends. If it’s the Cowboys winning another Super Bowl, I’m in.”

“I’m sure Dr. Rezaei told you about the Prophet,” said Jamshidi. “Well, it’s ready to be turned on.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Already?” I said. “I thought it was supposed to take a couple more hours.”

“Jamal finished his work ahead of schedule.” Jamshidi rose from his chair. “So now you will get to see the greatest computer ever built get turned on.”

If I went with him, I might be able surprise the guards and do something to damage the computer before it was turned on. But probably not—after Yelena’s little stunt, they would be watching me very carefully. I needed to get myself forgotten so I could move more freely. My best chance to at least delay the activation was to take out the power generator, and I couldn’t do that if I was tagging along with Jamshidi for show-and-tell.

So I laughed.

“What is so funny?” Jamshidi asked.

“My CIA recruiter told me I wanted to be a spy because I watched too many James Bond movies as a kid,” I said. “He was wrong, but I did watch them. And you’re about to make one of the classic villain blunders by trying to show off, thus giving me the chance to throw a monkey wrench into the works.”

“You are no James Bond,” he said. “But why warn me?”

“Because you’re right: I’m not James Bond,” I said. “I have no desire to get myself killed by your guards trying to stop your silly supercomputer. You promised me a comfy life as a prisoner, and frankly, that sounds pretty good, since I haven’t gotten much sleep the past few nights.” I yawned and stretched as much as I could with my hands tied behind my back.

Lips pressed together, he looked at me.

“And yes, I’d rather not stick around to see you gloat,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

He nodded at one of my guards. “Take him to the guest quarters. See that he stays there.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I let the guards take me away through the corridors of the complex. Now all I had to do was get away from them, and the sooner the better. I had to find the generator room and sabotage the generator before the Prophet got turned on. Then I had to rescue Yelena and her sisters and Parham and find a way to escape. And probably the generator thing would not be enough to permanently put the Prophet out of commission, so I’d have to find a way to do that, too. After listing it all out, I felt a little overwhelmed, so I focused on step one: getting away from the guards.

“Hey, is there a restroom I could use?” I said, getting impatient.

“There will be one in your quarters,” said the guard on my left.

“Are we almost there? ’Cause I need to go,” I said.

It took a couple more minutes before they delivered me to my room. It was furnished like a four-star hotel room, with a king bed and a large flat-screen TV. Unlike most hotel rooms, though, this room had no windows. While one guard untied my hands, the other kept his gun trained on me.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “I’ll hit the restroom then get a little shuteye.”

“Use the phone if you need anything,” one of them said. They walked out and locked the door from outside.

I couldn’t believe they would put me in a room with a working phone, so I went straight to the desk and checked. The phone lacked number keys—if I picked up the handset, it would obviously go to an operator, and I couldn’t just ask to be connected to Langley.

The lockpicks in my waistband took a minute to remove, after which I set to work on the door. I cracked it open and peeked out. My guards were gone.

Hoping I remembered the layout from Parham’s map correctly, I set off in search of the generator room.

It took me almost ten minutes to get there, because I was spotted three times and had to duck into a room and lock myself in until I was forgotten.

I picked the lock on the generator room and slipped inside. To my surprise, there were no generators in the generator room. There were power conduits stretching off in various directions, but no generators. Of course, Parham probably had just seen the sign on the door, and had no idea what was behind it.

After staring at the conduits for a few moments, I realized they all came together in one place: a vertical shaft heading upward. Steel rungs embedded in the wall formed a ladder alongside the conduits.

Since I had nothing I could use to cut the conduits, I had no choice but to start climbing and see where the power came from.

I climbed about forty feet up before the shaft ended in a metal grate. The conduits passed through holes in the grate and entered a metal box the size of an SUV. Insulated cables spread out on the floor in various directions from the box, exiting the room through holes at the base of the walls.

I picked the lock on a hatch in the grate, and climbed into the room.

The box emitted a throbbing hum, so I guessed it might be a transformer. Whatever it was, it looked like the center of the power system, so it was my target. I looked for controls—or even something as basic as an off switch—but all I could find were some sealed access panels. It must be controlled from elsewhere.

A door with a little glass window led off to my right, so I took a peek. Beyond the door was a brightly lit room. I counted five people sitting at computer monitors. None of them seemed to be armed, which was a plus. On the minus side, I wasn’t armed, either.

I opened the door and stepped through.

A couple of the people looked up from their monitors. A blonde woman in her forties said, “Can I help you?” in an English accent.

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just checking on something.” I walked right past them and out the door on the other side of the room.

I found myself near one end of a corridor. I checked the short end first, then strode in the longer direction, hoping to find a janitorial closet.

Instead, I found an exit. A guard sat facing away from me. Beyond him was a glass door that looked out onto a parking lot with several cars. A drizzle fell from grey clouds. So there was an above-ground facility after all. Because I was reading them from behind, it took me a moment to read the letters etched into the glass: Grants End Power Station.

For all I knew, the people working here were completely innocent and had no idea they were powering a secret lab underneath them.

I continued my search for the janitorial closet, hoping I still had time before Jamshidi switched the Prophet on. I found the closet at the far end of the corridor and ducked inside.

I turned on the sink faucet and put a bucket under it. As it filled, I opened a toolbox. I took out a hammer and searched for a chisel, but had to settle for a large flathead screwdriver.

When the bucket was full, I lugged it back down the corridor to the control room. The same two people looked up as I entered.

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just checking on something.” No one had raised an alarm the last time, so I didn’t see the need to vary my phrasing. As I got to the door to the transformer room, one of the men said, “What are you doing?”

“Just cleaning up a bit of a mess,” I said, opening the door.

“Water can be dangerous in there,” he said.

“I know what I’m doing,” I replied. I stepped through the door, put down the bucket, and locked the door behind me.

I walked to the box, jammed the head of the screwdriver under the top edge of an access panel, and began pounding the handle of the screwdriver with the hammer.

Someone in the control room rattled the door handle.

I pried the panel open about an inch, then moved the screwdriver to one side and began pounding again. My pounding was matched by someone banging on the door.

“You, what are you doing in there?” someone shouted.

A klaxon sounded. I didn’t have much more time, so I dropped the hammer, tucked the screwdriver into my pocket as best I could, and picked up the bucket.

The shouting grew louder as I lifted the bucket next to the hole I had made.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to steel myself. What I was about to do might start a fire, so I had to be ready to face that consequence. Back in Barcelona, Yelena had used a fire to help us escape. She wouldn’t hesitate.

I tipped the bucket. Water spilled out into the hole. Blue-white light flickered inside and a sharp buzz cut through the noise surrounding me.

I upended the bucket, dumping the rest of the water in, then let go.

As the electrical buzz grew louder, I descended the ladder back toward the underground lab. I hadn’t reached the bottom when an explosion in the room above sent a shock wave down the shaft. Though the sound was deafeningly loud, I managed to cling to the rungs and keep myself from falling.

The lights flickered and died.

Flames in the room above illuminated the shaft with a dim orange glow. I tried to shut out memory of the fire that had taken my mother by imagining Yelena’s face.

After I recovered my wits, I realized I was hyperventilating. I forced myself to take slow breaths, then started climbing down again. To my surprise, it was only two more rungs before I reached the floor. My desperate clinging had saved me from falling all of three feet.

I heard the hissing of gas being released. For an electrical room like this, the fire suppression system couldn’t be water. So I quickly exited the room before the gas could suffocate me.

Emergency strobe lights flashed in the hallway, and a different alarm had joined the original klaxon. A couple of people had poked their heads out of doors, probably to check if power was out in the whole complex or just their rooms.

One of them yelled something in Farsi at me.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked, using my most-practiced Farsi phrase.

He said something in Farsi that I didn’t understand, so I just walked quickly past him and continued down the corridor toward the stairways. According to the map of the facility that Parham had drawn, I would need to go down six levels to get to the brothel.

Stirred by the fire alarm, more people came out into the hallway. Not only did that make me less noticeable, but it also relieved me a bit, because I assumed they would make their way to the fire escapes. I might have started the fire, but I didn’t want it to kill anyone.

By the time I got to the stairway at the end of the corridor, I was part of a crowd of people evacuating. To my surprise, the stairs only led down from this floor, not up. Jamshidi obviously didn’t want people from this lab showing up there.

At the third floor down, we met people coming up from the lower floors. This was the floor that joined up with the access monorails, so that must be how evacuation was handled. But I didn’t want to evacuate, so I pushed my way against the flow of people coming from the lower levels.

I kept hoping I might run into Yelena getting evacuated, but by the time I got to the sixth floor down, that hope was gone. Evacuating enslaved prostitutes was probably not high on Jamshidi’s priority list.

I reached the corridor Parham had indicated on his map. It was a long one, with no doors on either side, just one at the end. According to Parham, there were supposed to be two guards outside that door, but they had obviously fled due to the fire alarm.

The door to the brothel had been built of reinforced steel. There was a palm scanner next to the door, but its screen was blank due to the power failure. However, the door handle had a keyhole, presumably in case of power failure.

I tried the handle, but it was locked. It took only a few moments for me to get the lockpicks out of my waistband. As I worked on the lock, I tried to calm the rising fury I felt at people who would lock up helpless women during a fire.

The lock finally opened, and I pulled the door open and rushed inside, calling Yelena’s name.

No one was in the small, bare room beyond the door, which should not have surprised me. If people had been trapped there, they would probably have been banging on the door as I was picking the lock.

But I could hear banging on the door at the far side of the room, along with faint voices yelling. I strode over, ready to pick the lock, but then realized this door merely had a handle on this side.

“I’m opening the door,” I shouted. Turning the handle, I pulled it open slowly, so nobody on the other side pushing would overbalance and fall.

After the door swung in a bit, it burst inward, almost knocking me over. Four scantily clad women scrambled past me into the small room. In the flickering strobe of the emergency lighting, they looked like they were moving in slow motion.

Then Yelena entered. She was wearing a silk robe, and had her arms around two blonde teens—she had found her sisters. In the flashes of light, I could see the girls’ eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

“Nat,” she said. “You came.”

“Of course,” I said. “Couldn’t leave you down here.”

More women and girls—some of whom seemed to be barely in their teens—rushed past Yelena and her sisters.

I eyed her robe, realizing suddenly that it meant Jamshidi’s men had taken her clothes, and possibly done more to her. “Those men didn’t…”

She shook her head. “They take my clothes, that is all.”

One of the women who had passed by me wailed in frustration and pounded on the other door.

Turning, I saw it had closed behind me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll unlock it again.”

I pushed through to the door and stopped, staring.

The face of the door was blank: no lock, no handle.