PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller (27 page)

And now that plan was finally in action, and the first phase had gone beautifully – horrifically, but beautifully. He had avoided looking at photographic evidence of the carnage, unable to bring himself to see the devastation he had unleashed; but the results spoke for themselves, with a memorial arranged exactly as planned.

Fifty world leaders were due to attend, and this time the US president was one of them.

His second team and everything they needed were already in place near Wembley, and now it just a waiting game.

But what was this man doing in the MOIS basement? Was it possible that his presence here indicated a threat that could derail the whole thing?

He’d received word about this unknown man through the embassy in Serbia – a relatively friendly nation to Iran, despite her ongoing flirtations with the European Union. He had apparently been arrested after a firefight in a Belgrade concentration camp, and brought to the city’s central police station.

But then he had asked for someone from the Iranian embassy to visit him, and when that person had arrived, the man had mentioned Younesi by name – and then Radomir Milanović, Benedettu Agostini, Cristofanu Ortoli and Javid Khan.

The embassy staff had contacted Younesi directly, and he had known each and every name that the man had reeled off.

It had made him scared, scared enough to call the Serbian authorities and request immediate transfer of the prisoner into Iranian custody before he revealed what he knew to anyone else.

He had basically identified the chain that linked Iran to the attacks, and which might also lead to the secondary force still waiting for action in London.

Javid Khan, he had already heard about, and the incident had disturbed him greatly. The man’s orders had been to escape as soon as the first phase was over, to leave the city and never come back. So why had he been in London, and why had he gone to visit the scene of the crime? Had he simply been crazy?

Younesi was concerned because – even though the man had mercifully been killed before he could be questioned – British investigators could still look into his past now that they had a name to work with, and who knew what they would discover?

The man in the MOIS basement had obviously discovered something, Younesi knew – the names all the way from Khan to Younesi. And if
he
knew, then who else knew?

It was a question he needed answering, which was why he’d had the man flown here to Tehran.

It wasn’t work he enjoyed, but he would get those answers one way or another.

Finishing his milkshake, visions of his innocent childhood gone for now, he rose from his chair and left the café.

It was time to visit the dungeon.

3

Cole had arrived at his final destination blindfolded and hooded, as he had been since leaving the Iranian embassy back in Belgrade.

He’d been beaten and bundled into the back of what seemed to be a van, and driven for about an half an hour before being unloaded, beaten some more, and then loaded again, this time onto an airplane.

The flight had been a little over three hours in Cole’s estimation – which could very well have put him in Tehran, though he had no real way of knowing.

He was transferred again, to a new set of people who – after the seemingly obligatory beating – threw him into the back of another van. They drove for another hour or so, mainly on a fast highway before slowing for what seemed from the sounds outside the van to be a city.

Finally he was hauled out once more, slapped around again, and dragged into a building, along a corridor, through a doorway and down a long flight of stairs.

He was getting tired of basements, he’d thought unhappily.

With the blindfold and the hood, he had no real way of knowing where he was, but sounds of the corridors back upstairs had given him some information. The people around him had been talking in Farsi, a language Cole was familiar with. It was Persian, almost identical to the Dari spoken in Afghanistan; but he recognized this as the version spoken in Iran.

Combined with the travel time from Serbia, the influence of Younesi, the speaking of Farsi, and the fact that he was in the middle of what seemed to be a huge city, Cole therefore guessed that he had been taken to MOIS headquarters in Tehran.

Despite the beatings, he was happy – his plan was working.

But with the happiness came trepidation, if not outright fear quite yet – for the basement dungeons of MOIS were hardly the nicest of places to be.

But it had really been the only option available to him.

Sitting in the Serbian jail trying to think of a way to break out, he’d finally decided not to bother. Even if he managed to escape, how was he going to get into Iran? It wasn’t the friendliest of nations to western tourists, and there wasn’t enough time to wait for Vinson or Michiko to send him some new ID, or to create a convincing cover story.

And if he actually managed to enter Iran, how would he move about freely, without suspicion? And how would he find Mohammed Younesi?

There were just too many variables, and so Cole decided to let Younesi himself do all the work.

And so he had got word to Younesi that he was a dangerous man, that he knew all about the links between Younesi – and therefore the Iranian government – and Javid Khan.

Just as Cole suspected, Younesi had been unable to resist the urge to bring him over to Iran, presumably so that he could be interrogated properly. Younesi would want very much to find out who Cole was, who he worked for, and who else knew what he knew.

Now all that remained was to wait to meet the man himself.

Cole had no idea how long had passed since reaching the subterranean rooms, but he guessed it must have stretched into several hours.

During that time he’d not been fed, and nor had he received any water; the hood and blindfold had also stayed on since Serbia, and – even though he knew mentally that everything was designed to provide sensory deprivation so that he would be easier to interrogate – it was still hard to deal with on an emotional level.

Experts used such tactics for a reason – they had been proven to work, time after time.

But Cole had some tactics of his own, and was thus able to combat many of the debilitating effects of such treatment.

He counted in his head to try and keep track of time; he kept his ears open for the sound of shoes on the hard floor to try and guess how many people there were around him at any given time; he tried to individualize his captors from the way they smelled – garlic here, nicotine there; he tried to get a sense of his surroundings as he moved  by listening for echoes, trying to form an image in his mind like a bat, even imagined himself
as
a bat to try and keep his mind alive and working.

And that, he knew, was really the key – it wasn’t so much
what
he concentrated on, but rather the fact that he
was
concentrating, that would save him from the worst effects of the sensory deprivation.

Although hungry, he could cope without food for quite a while longer; he couldn’t, however, remember the last time he’d had anything to drink, and was worried about dehydration. It wouldn’t kill him for some considerable time yet, but it would lower his physical capacities, blunt his reflexes.

Even more reason, he knew, to keep his mind sharp.

The beatings, also, were meant to break him mentally more than physically. It wasn’t that the blows were particularly hard, when they came; it was just that with the hood on, he had no idea when or where they would come from.

Some people, he knew, would therefore keep their entire bodies in a permanent state of tension as a result, just in case. But this would only exhaust him even more quickly, and so Cole – despite the temptation to do otherwise – kept himself loose and relaxed.

It was painful but, he reminded himself, it would have been painful anyway; and at least by staying relaxed he would have more energy if he needed to act.

At first, he had been chained to the wall of a cold stone room, not unlike the concentration camp basement back in Belgrade; then he had been moved to what seemed to be an ordinary cell, putrid with the stench of human feces that was doubtless from a well-used hole in the cell floor; then he had been hauled out once more and left tied to a radiator in a tiled corridor.

He knew it was the same tactics, to keep him guessing, to mess with his mind; but he used it to his advantage, counting his paces as he moved, working out a mental picture of his environment. It might have been accurate, it might have been completely off, but it kept his mind focused and that was all that mattered.

And then, finally, he was brought into a room – brightly lit, he could see even through the blindfold and hood – and was sat down on a high-back wooden chair, secured by chains.

For a time there was silence, and then – without warning, so that he had no time to close to his eyes to protect the retinas – his hood was ripped off, the blindfold too, and the strong light blinded him after so long in the dark.

Again, he knew it was for the disorientation effect, but that didn’t stop it being terribly painful.

He closed his eyes as quickly as he could, but the damage was done, and he saw stars dancing across the inside of his eyelids, stars in a sea of fire.

But eventually, gradually, his eyes began to adjust to the light filtering through his closed lids, and he risked opening them slowly, millimeter by precious millimeter.

Still nobody had spoken, which added to the dread feeling of the unknown that – despite himself – he couldn’t help but suffer from.

His eyes finally opened fully, and they took in a blurred image ahead of him, across what looked like a table.

Was it a person?

His eyes continued to focus more clearly, and he was finally able to make out a face – thick and hard, with eyes that Cole knew were used to ordering death and pain. And yet the mouth beneath the man’s bushy moustache was formed into something of a smile.

Was this Mohammed Younesi?

The man spoke in Farsi, and Cole noted that two men – who must have been stood behind him, to either side – immediately came to attention and left the room.

This was surely a good sign, Cole thought; this introductory interview wasn’t going to get physical. Not at first anyway; the guards could always be summoned back inside though.

It was also comforting that they were not in one of the cells, but instead – Cole could see now that his eyes had adjusted to the light – a rather neutral and unthreatening interview room, not too far removed from what one would find in any American police department.

Cole thought he knew why, too – Younesi had no idea what his prisoner knew, and wanted to be alone in case he said something incriminating. That in itself was interesting, Cole thought; what did Younesi have to hide?

He also figured that Younesi would be confused by Cole’s actions back in Belgrade. Why had he surrendered himself to the Iranian authorities? The question of what he wanted must have been a troubling one for the Iranian spymaster, and Younesi must have wanted some privacy until he could work out the answer.

After the guards had left them alone, Younesi’s dark eyes met Cole’s.

‘Hello,’ the man said clearly, in English.

Not
good morning, good afternoon
or
good evening
, Cole noted, and he was impressed by the professionalism of these little details – the man obviously still wanted to  keep him as disoriented as possible.

Cole didn’t respond, but that didn’t seem to faze the man in the slightest. ‘I am Mohammed Younesi,’ he continued, confirming Cole’s suspicions, ‘and I believe you know something about me, am I right?’

Still Cole didn’t answer; for now, he thought, he’d let Younesi do all the talking.

Younesi chuckled. ‘Yes, you know something about me, and yet I know nothing about you. Now, I am a reasonable man, but that doesn’t seem very fair, does it? And so I would like to find out about you, my friend.
Everything
about you.’

The man’s tones were friendly, but Cole wasn’t fooled for an instant. Mohammed Younesi was, after all, the man who had orchestrated an attack on an elementary school that left over seventy children dead.

And so despite the smiles, Cole knew that this interview was going to be far from easy.

4

‘So,’ Younesi began in his friendly tones, ‘do you want to tell me who you are, and who you work for? It will save you a lot of pain and unpleasantness if you just tell me now, you must believe me.’

Cole paused. He’d already decided he was going to go with the Mark White identity, it could be checked back to the UK by Younesi’s staff and would explain his involvement with Javid Khan. But he didn’t want to reveal too much, too soon; if he just gave up his identity immediately, Younesi would sense that something was amiss.

‘Can we start with Javid Khan?’ Cole asked, opening up the dialogue. He wanted this interrogation to be a two-way affair, and in order to get Younesi to tell him anything, he was going to have to be open from the start. Just as Younesi undoubtedly was, Cole was an expert in interrogation and tactical questioning. It would be harder from this side of the table, and Cole would have to rely on psychological tricks rather than physical coercion, but it was still possible.

For instance, Cole knew that – with the subject offering information – Younesi wasn’t going to refuse it, and would therefore leave the question of his prisoner’s identity until later. ‘And what,’ Younesi asked, ‘did you find out about Mr. Khan?’

‘After he ran from the scene in Wembley, and his subsequent death, Khan was investigated. We found out that he paid sums of money to a mob fixer in Marseilles called Cristofanu Ortoli.’

‘Who is this ‘we’ you mention?’ Younesi persisted.

Cole ignored the question and – while his target was still willing to speak – Younesi let it go.

‘I followed up with Ortoli in Marseille,’ Cole said. ‘You might have heard that he was shot dead at his home.’

‘I had heard that,’ Younesi said, eyebrow raised. ‘That was you?’

‘Perhaps,’ Cole said. ‘It turned out that Ortoli was just a money-man though, the real deal-maker had been the number two in the Agostini crime family, Benedettu. He’d been the one who’d spoken to Khan. I bumped into him in a restaurant later the same day.’

‘What a coincidence,’ Younesi said with a half-smile.

‘Indeed,’ Cole agreed. ‘He tried to run, but eventually we managed to have a little chat.’

‘Was that just before he was thrown off the top of a Ferris wheel?’

Cole shrugged. ‘Maybe. But anyway, he had a few interesting things to say before he died. Admitted that it was his organization who shipped the weapons used by the three killers in London, at Khan’s request.’

Younesi nodded his head in interest. ‘Anything else?’

‘He also said that he hadn’t sourced the weapons, that an arms broker in Belgrade called Radomir Milanović had received an order from another party. He organized the guns, the grenades, the rocket launcher, and just needed Agostini to ship them into the UK.’

‘So you went to visit this arms broker?’

‘Yes,’ Cole admitted. ‘We had a nice little chat too. Turns out that the man who’d asked him to provide the weapons was an old colleague of his. Someone who’d apparently used him many times before, to ship arms supplies to Hezbollah units.’

‘Did he give you a name?’ Younesi asked innocently.

‘He did,’ Cole said. ‘It was you.’

Younesi bobbed his head in thought, mouth pursed. ‘Interesting,’ he said at last. ‘And what are your conclusions?’

‘Well, I would say it looks very much like you – and therefore the Iranian government – orchestrated the attack on London. You supplied the arms, Khan recruited and helped train the three supposed lone-wolf attackers.’

‘And why would we do this? Our relations with the United Kingdom are at an all-time high, is this not so?’

‘Perhaps it is,’ Cole said. ‘But I don’t think that really matters to the Ayatollah, who you take your orders from. He wants to end Western capitalist dominance, and it seems that the attack on London is only half the story.’

‘And what do you mean by this?’

Cole could see that Younesi was trying to appear innocently curious, but his eyes betrayed his anxiety.

‘I mean that the attack on the school was merely a precursor, something to create a secondary event which could then also be attacked. The real target.’

‘Tell me more,’ Younesi said, eyebrows furrowed with concern.

‘The memorial event at Wembley Stadium, this coming Sunday. Ninety thousand people in an enclosed site, fifty world leaders among them, including the president of the United States. A perfect target. A perfectly
engineered
target.’

Younesi looked at him with interest, as if he was reevaluating his prisoner. He was silent for a moment, then hit a button on the intercom on the table which sat between them, let out a burst of rapid Farsi, then sat back in his chair and continued to stare at Cole without speaking.

A minute or so later, the door to the interview room opened and a guard came in with a large glass of water, which he placed on the table in front of Cole.

Younesi thanked him and the guard retreated, leaving them alone again.

Cole took the glass, desperate for the water but knowing that it wouldn’t be good for Younesi to see that desperation. And so he slowed himself down, looked across at Younesi and toasted him with the glass. ‘Thank you,’ he said, before finally allowing himself to take a sip.

The cool liquid hit his parched lips, and Cole hoped that Younesi couldn’t see the pleasure, the relief, on his face; he didn’t want to present any kind of weakness to this man.

And so – even though it pained him to do so – he took just one more sip and replaced the glass on the table in front of him.

‘Not thirsty?’ Younesi asked in surprise. ‘Please don’t be shy on my behalf, drink as much as you want. I know you have not had water since Belgrade.’

Cole understood what Younesi was doing, reminding him of who was in charge – Younesi could give him water, or Younesi could take it away. The hidden message was that Younesi had direct control over his prisoner’s life or death.

But Cole refused to play the game, and left the glass where it was. ‘Thank you for your concern,’ Cole said, ‘but I’m fine.’

Younesi regarded him with interest. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘And now that you’ve told me your little story, perhaps you would do me the favor of answering my initial questions? Who are you, and who do you work for?’

Cole sighed, and slowly – sadly – nodded his head, as if resigned to his fate. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m an international liaison officer with the American FBI, seconded to London to help with the investigation into the recent attacks.’

‘FBI?’ Younesi asked with surprise. ‘But you are domestic security only, yes?’

‘We have close links to the UK, we often supply agents to help with terrorist investigations in friendly nations, especially if we feel that it might be a danger we can one day expect to face at home.’

Younesi nodded his head in understanding. ‘But combat missions to France and Serbia are hardly under your remit,’ he persisted.

Cole smiled. ‘You’re right, of course. But – after London – I’ve not exactly been operating on official business.’

Younesi looked at him across the table for several moments, eyes narrowed. ‘We will come back to that in a moment,’ he said. ‘But I am still waiting for your name?’ he asked again.

‘Mark White,’ Cole answered at last.

‘Date of birth?’

‘October twelfth, nineteen seventy-eight.’

Smiling, Younesi picked up a telephone that sat on the table next to the intercom, dialed an internal number and again rattled off some rapid-fire Farsi. Cole, translating quickly in his head, understood that Younesi was asking for a background check to be run on him immediately.

‘Okay,’ Younesi said, watching as Cole casually sipped from his glass of water, ‘while we wait for confirmation of your identity, let us get back to this ‘unofficial’ story you were giving me. Perhaps it can help with another issue that has been puzzling me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why did you contact my men in Belgrade? Why did you mention my name to them? What I would most like to know, Mr. White, is – officially or unofficially – what it is that you want?’

This is it
, Cole thought; time to see if his plan would work.

It wasn’t a great plan, Cole knew; but it was better than nothing, and it was all he had.

‘When your colleagues check my ID,’ he said, ‘they’ll find out that I’ve been disavowed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Younesi asked, eyes narrowing.

‘I mean that – since the Javid Khan incident back in London – the FBI is saying I’ve gone rogue, I can’t be trusted. That’s why I didn’t have back-up in Europe,’ Cole explained.

‘Then why have you been doing what you’ve been doing?’

Cole sighed. ‘I’ve been cleaning up after
you
,’ he said.

‘What?’ Younesi said in surprise, bordering on anger. ‘What do you mean? Explain yourself!’

‘With the information from Khan, MI5 have been all over you. They sent an agent across to France to investigate, I managed to sneak over alongside her; and every time she found a link in the chain, I eliminated it. No witnesses, no evidence. I’ve been hiding your tracks all over Europe.’

‘Impossible,’ Younesi spat.

‘Is it?’ Cole asked. ‘Look at the evidence. Whenever MI5 found someone, they ended up dead. And I killed them.’

Younesi looked unconvinced. ‘Let us say that you did,’ he allowed. ‘Why on earth would you do this?’

‘After all my years in the Bureau, all my sacrifices, all the time spent working my ass off all over the world – after all that, when I made a mistake, they crucified me, just wanted to wash their hands of me, just like that,’ Cole said in disgust. ‘And so I decided that I didn’t
want
MI5, the FBI, or anyone else to solve this thing. Sonsofbitches, who do they think they are? They rely on people like me, without us they’d have nothing at all. And that’s what I want to give them.
Nothing at all
.’

Younesi laughed. ‘So you are protecting me?’

Cole nodded, in spite of the laughter. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And if you want your second attack to go ahead, you should listen very carefully to what I have to say.’

‘And what is that?’

Cole opened his mouth to respond, but the telephone rang at the same time and Younesi answered it.

The spy chief listened for several minutes to the person on the other end of the line, grunting on occasion, asking for confirmation on others. In the end, he thanked the caller and put the phone down, eyes locked onto Cole’s.

‘Okay Mr. White,’ he said, ‘it looks like you check out. So I’m listening carefully to what you have to say. And, for your sake, it had better be good.’