Fault Line (3 page)

Each morning since they had arrived, the Iranians and their VAVAK minders had gotten into one of the hotel limousines and returned after dark. Ben figured these trips were for meetings with Vasilyev and would have liked to follow them to learn more, but the likely costs outweighed the benefits. Alone in a car or on a motor scooter, he would be relatively easy to spot. Even if he weren't spotted, catching them in a venue that enabled him to do the job and depart without trouble would require an unrealistic amount of luck. He might have tried taking them as they arrived at or departed from the hotel, but the front and interior of the Four Seasons were quietly replete with cameras, doormen, and security personnel. It just wasn't a good place for a hit, which was part of the reason they had chosen it in the first place.

It didn't matter, though. His gut told him something would open up. After all, the Iranians were in town for seven days, and what did that mean? Probably that they expected to be done with their work in four, or maybe five. Country and culture were irrelevant: when the government or the corporation or anyone else was footing the bill, bureaucrats and other worker bees could always be expected to overestimate the time they would need for meetings. Especially when the meetings required their presence in a city as enticing as Istanbul, and at a hotel as fine as the Four Seasons.

In fact, the choice of hotel increased Ben's confidence about what was coming next. Because if the Iranians could persuade the bean counters to spring for the Four Seasons, cost was obviously not a consideration. If cost wasn't a consideration, they could have stayed at any hotel in the city-the Pera Palas, the Ritz-Carlton, even the second Four Seasons, recently opened on the Bosporus. Ben had checked with all of them, and they all had rooms available. They all offered more or less the same level of luxury and security. The question, then, was, why this hotel?

The answer, Ben thought, was location. All the other luxury properties were in Beyoglu, the newer part of the city, north of the Golden Horn. Only the Sultanahmet Four Seasons was a five-minute walk from the city's most storied attractions: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar. And if Ben was right about location being the deciding factor, he was confident the Iranians would take at least a day, and probably more, to see those walking-distance sights. When they set out from the hotel on foot, Ben could get behind them. From there, an opportunity would present itself. All he had to do was wait.

Which was fine. Waiting didn't bother him. He liked to wait, in fact, liked the simplicity of it. Waiting was the least complicated part of an uncomplicated job.

Periodically, he received orders. The orders were always short and direct, and he had extremely wide latitude in determining how to carry them out. He could ask for whatever equipment he needed, and the equipment would promptly turn up in a dead drop as though by magic. There was no questioning, no red tape, no oversight.

The only real constraint this time was that Vasilyev was off-limits. During the early years of the Cold War, trying to remove the other side's pieces from the board was considered just another part of the game. Eventually, like rival mafia families, everyone had figured out the bloodshed was more expensive than it was worth, and a kind of shadowy dEtente had settled in. Now, no one wanted to be responsible for breaking the truce, for a return to those bad old bloody days.

He tried not to be irritated by the restrictions. After all, it wasn't like the Russians were matching Uncle Sam's restraint. They had killed that guy Victor Litvinenko in London with polonium. And there were all those dead journalists, too-Anna Politkovskaya, Paul Klebnikov, too many to keep up with. Ben thought he could make a pretty good argument that Ivan was getting more aggressive precisely because of Uncle Sam's overzealous devotion to the rules, but that kind of shit was above his pay grade and it wasn't as though anyone would listen to him anyway. But if he could, he would have asked someone what had happened to You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. He supposed it had been just another empty slogan from another lying politician.

They were all liars, actually. The left was naA ve, thinking you could follow the niceties and still fight effectively against the kind of fanatics America was up against. And the right was hypocritical, thinking you could take off the gloves and still occupy the moral high ground.

Yeah, the left couldn't understand the nature of the fight; the right couldn't accept its true consequences. But Ben didn't care about the niceties, he didn't care about the moral high ground, he cared about winning. And the way you won was by being the hardest, dirtiest, deadliest motherfucker the enemy could ever have imagined in his worst nightmare. Christ, what good were rules if they made you lose the fight? What all the armchair analysts couldn't get their minds around was that when your tribe is attacked, you do what you have to do to win. You win by any means necessary. Later there could be a victor's justice, fine, but first there had to be a victory.

The thing was, most Americans wanted nothing more than to be safe. Maybe it hadn't always been that way, in fact he suspected things had once been different, but these days America had become a nation of sheep. Which to him was a pretty sorry way to live, a way that represented everything he'd joined the army to get away from; but that was American culture these days, and someone had to keep the sheep safe from the wolves. He understood at some level that the bullshit restrictions and the second-guessing just came with the territory. Still, it was galling to be put in a position where he was more afraid of CNN than he was of al Qaeda.

A BMW 750L pulled up in front of the Four Seasons and a doorman with an umbrella moved forward to open the door. Ben tensed, but no, it was an Asian couple, not the Iranians. He settled back onto the chair and resumed his waiting.

No one had told him where the intel behind this op had come from, of course. But from the quality of the information on the Iranians, and its paucity regarding the Russian, Ben suspected an Iranian mole-possibly in the country's nuclear program, more probably in the security services. An asset in the nuclear program would have known the scientists' names and itineraries. He might even have known about the VAVAK minders. But only someone in charge of security would also have access to the false names and papers under which the men would be traveling, and to their passport photos. Also, understanding the likely fate to which he was condemning them, someone in the nuclear program would have found it harder to give up the scientists. After all, they would have been colleagues, men another scientist would know personally. Betraying your country is easier to rationalize than betraying a friend.

It was interesting. At one point, Uncle Sam had been more inclined to render the Jafaris and Kazemis of the world to friendly governments like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they could be interrogated with proper rigor. But then the CIA had screwed up the rendition of Abu Omar from Milan, leaving a paper trail so egregious an Italian magistrate had issued arrest warrants for the thirteen CIA operatives behind it, and then plane spotters had started to unravel the whole secret rendition network. The Pentagon had decided it was better to act more discreetly, and more directly. No one took the CIA seriously anymore anyway, not since the DCI had been made subordinate to the new director of national intelligence and the agency had been saddled with the problem of those nonexistent Iraqi WMDs. If you wanted actionable intelligence now, and if you wanted the intelligence acted upon, the Pentagon was the only real player in town.

Ben knew all this, but he didn't really care. He wanted nothing to do with politics, national or organizational. Hell, the politicians didn't even know men like him existed, and if they suspected, they knew better than to inquire. The military didn't invent Don't ask, don't tell. It learned it from Congress.

So basically, things were copacetic. There was a lot of work, and he was good at it. It all involved a simple understanding. If he fucked up, he would be denied, disowned, and hung out to dry. If he continued to achieve results, he would be left alone. It was the kind of deal he could live with. One where you knew the rules, and the consequences, up front. Not like what his family had pulled on him after Katie. Not that any of that mattered at this point anyway. They were all gone now, except for Alex, who might as well be gone, and good riddance, too.

Another BMW pulled up. Ben leaned forward so he could see more clearly through the curtains, and bingo, it was the Iranians, their first time back to the hotel before dark. This was it, he was sure of it, the chance he d been waiting for. He felt a hot flush of adrenaline-a familiar, pleasant sensation in his neck and gut-and his heart began to thud a little harder.

The Iranians headed into the hotel, one VAVAK guy forward, the other aft. Ten to one they'd be on their way out within an hour, two at the most.

He stood and cracked his neck, then started doing some stretches and light calisthenics. He'd been sitting a long time with nothing but quick bathroom breaks. That was fine while he was waiting. But the time for waiting was done.

Chapter 4 WAITING ROOM DOORS

Alex's mobile phone buzzed. He checked the display-Alisa-and opened it.

You find him? he asked.

No. I'm in front of his apartment, though, and there are police cars everywhere. There are a lot of people standing around. They're saying someone was murdered.

Alex felt an odd numbness take hold behind his ears. He could hear a faint buzzing, like the sound of a fluorescent light. Oh, shit. Is it-

I don't know. I tried talking to one of the officers, but he'd only say it's a crime scene, which anyway I can tell because there's orange tape all around the building. But they're not letting anyone inside and I can't see anything from where I'm standing.

Who's saying someone was murdered?

Some of the people standing around watching. Maybe they're wrong, though. Maybe it's just a rumor.

The numbness was spreading now. His breathing seemed very loud.

He wanted to drive down there himself, but knew that was irrational. It wasn't likely he could see or learn anything Alisa couldn't. And what if this whole thing were a gigantic coincidence? What if Hilzoy called or showed up right now-Sorry, caught a flat, and can you believe it, right in a dead zone where I had no cell reception! Of all the crappy luck-and Alex wasn't here? He would have turned a potential no-harm, no-foul situation into a catastrophe, all through his own bad judgment.

No, he couldn't let that happen.

He took a deep breath and slowly forced it out. Concentrating on his breathing settled him, a little.

Stay there, he said. See if you can learn anything else, and call me right away if you do.

He clicked off and checked his watch. Twenty minutes. In his M3, with the right luck on traffic lights and traffic cops, Alex could get to Kleiner's offices at the top of Sand Hill Road in six minutes. So fourteen minutes before he had to pull the plug. He'd still look stupid, canceling at the last minute, but better than not showing up at all. Would he ever be able to get another meeting with these guys after screwing up the first? Probably not, at least not without using Osborne's or some other partner's connections. And Osborne would know what had happened, would know how much Alex needed him. He would charge for the favor accordingly.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

His office felt suddenly confining. He needed to move, to think. He walked out into the corridor, where he could increase the ambit of his pacing. He turned the corner, and-

There was Sarah, heading in his direction. Shit.

He didn't want to talk to her right then, didn't want to have to explain. He hadn't invited her to the meeting. She was too outspoken at times, and while he respected her gumption in private, he didn't trust her to know her place in front of a roomful of VCs. Hilzoy was his show, and he didn't want anyone else in the limelight.

Anyway, even if Sarah were as prim and proper as a first-year should be, she was still bound to be a distraction. Everyone would get one look at her lustrous black hair, caramel skin, and ripe lips and wonder why Alex had brought her to the meeting. Were they involved? Was he hoping for something?

Well, yeah, of course he was hoping for something. And it wasn't just that she was gorgeous. Part of what made him crazy was that she did nothing to flaunt it. She used hardly any makeup, kept her hair tied back, and favored skirts hemmed below the knee. But Alex saw her several evenings a week in the firm's gym, where she typically wore some kind of yoga outfit, and her body was so lusciously long and curvy that Alex had to look away for fear his own body would betray his thoughts. Sometimes, late at night, in the bedroom of the house he had inherited from his parents and lived in still, he would close his eyes and take himself in hand and imagine himself with her, imagine what he wanted her to do, how she would do it, and even more than her beauty it was the existence of those fantasies, and the way their presence in his mind would linger into the next day, that made him awkward with her, made him err in the direction of feigned disinterest and even disdain lest she suspect his secret.

But she didn't seem the least bit interested. And even if she were, what would people say if a senior associate, someone who God willing would be up for partner soon, were dating a first-year ten years his junior? And what would happen if he made partner? What would he do then? A partner couldn't be involved with an associate, at least not publicly. There were trysts at Sullivan, Greenwald, of course, enough to keep the rumor mill spinning full-time, but those people were already partners, they could afford to be known as pigs. Maybe when Alex had made it to the top of the heap he'd hit on hot associates, too, maybe even summer associates, for Christ's sake, but not now. He didn't need complications like that. He had to stay focused.