Authors: Tom Cain
Revenger
About the Book
Revenger
is a classic Tom Cain thriller that rips its story from the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers. Iran’s nuclear facilities are radioactive rubble. The Euro has fallen apart. Amidst the ruins of a wrecked economy, riots are an everyday occurrence. A populist, far-right leader is out to topple the political establishment.
Sam Carver just wants a quiet drink with an old friend. But there’s no such thing as peace and quiet any more. When a riot breaks out in south London, Carver is caught in an urban battlefield. He fights for his life. He defends the innocent. But when the smoke clears and the bodies are counted he’s the one the media blame for the bloodshed.
The police want him in jail. An old enemy, bent on revenge, wants him dead. And Sam Carver is in for the fight of his life.
Contents
Revenger
TOM CAIN
To Clare
Author’s Note
I am greatly indebted to William Hunt for his expert advice on this book and
Carver
before it. Likewise, my thanks go to John Duffy. As with
Carver
, much of the action involves the use of everyday objects in unusual, not to say lethal, situations. Two things should be noted. First: the ‘recipes’ for explosive devices in both books contain deliberate errors, so there is no point in trying to replicate them. Second: this is fiction. It is intended to entertain, but it is absolutely not, under any circumstances, intended as any kind of do-it-yourself guide. Or to put it another way: don’t try this at home.
Prologue
It started with a kiss.
Abou-Ali Bakhtiar had always been a quiet, well-behaved schoolboy, much liked by his teachers and never any trouble in class. As a student at the University of Tehran’s faculty of literature and humanities he continued to be a credit to his family, and his grades were consistently excellent. Sex outside marriage is strictly forbidden in Iran, as it is in most Islamic societies, so the fact that Bakhtiar was untroubled by the desperate, frustrated urge for women that plagued his male friends was in many ways a blessing. And then, in his penultimate year at university, that blessing became a curse.
A friendship with another young man called Mehdi deepened over the course of several months and, like a plant that blossoms from a seed into a flower, turned into something new. First came the realization of a love that went beyond mere affection. It was swiftly followed by the exchange of a hesitant kiss that deepened, intensified, set light to Bakhtiar’s heart, sent the blood pulsing through his body and filled him with an exultant joy unlike any he
had
ever known. The two young men spent a night together. They were the most wonderful hours of Bakhtiar’s life, only to be followed in the morning by a crashing hangover of shame and fear.
Here he was, a law-abiding model of propriety, engaged in an activity that was both a sin against God and a crime punishable by death. But why was it a sin to love like this? And how could one do wrong when one did not have the choice of doing right? From the moment that Bakhtiar discovered his homosexuality, he saw the whole of his life up to that point from an entirely different perspective. So much that he had not understood before was now explained. He had, he was quite certain, been like this all his life. He could no more become a ‘normal’ man now than he could suddenly turn his eyes blue. And if he had been made this way, then that must have been God’s will. In which case, how could it possibly be criminal?
For both their sakes, Bakhtiar ended the relationship with Mehdi and begged him not to find another lover; the risk was just too great. In public Bakhtiar remained the same friendly, popular, studious figure he had always been. But the endless hours he spent in the university library were not all occupied working on his final dissertation. Instead he pored over the theological debates that had taken place on homosexuality over the centuries, concluding that neither the precise degree of its sinfulness nor the rightful severity of its punishment appeared to have been definitively established. There was, he discovered, a long tradition of homoerotic love poetry in both Arabic and Persian literature, and some of the greatest rulers of the Islamic world had displayed homosexual proclivities. Even Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was said to have taken beautiful young men to his bed along with his many wives and concubines.
Bakhtiar entered into these researches as a private exercise, an attempt to reconcile his sexuality with his faith and thus soothe his mind and his soul. It never even occurred to him to participate in any protest against the authorities that had demonized him. But then Mehdi, the lover he had cast aside, was
caught
in bed with a boy of seventeen. Both were arrested. The boy’s father, a senior army officer, insisted that his son had been forced to have sex against his will. The court chose to believe this claim, saving the boy but condemning Mehdi to death.
Two days later, Mehdi was hanged without the knowledge of his lawyer or his family. The first that anyone knew of the execution was when it was announced on the evening news. Bakhtiar sat and watched in anguished despair as pictures were shown on screen of Mehdi blindfold on the gallows, and hanging in mid-air next to thieves and drug-dealers.
It was then that Bakhtiar changed. He saw that it was not enough to hide away. He had to do something to change the society in which he lived. And so the process of radicalization started, as he joined a students’ group involved in pro-democracy campaigns and demonstrations. Shortly after his graduation from the university, he graduated as an activist, too, making contact with emissaries from Mujahedin-e Khalq, or the MEK: an exiled dissident group, denounced by some as terrorists, but lionized by others as courageous freedom fighters against the Iranian regime.
For years there had been rumours that the Israelis used members of the MEK as hitmen to carry out their assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Now the group were planning to escalate their anti-government actions to an entirely new level. The search went out for martyrs willing to take part in suicide bombings.
Bakhtiar was a man in despair. He saw no future for himself. The only man he would ever love was dead. His only hope of joining him was to die himself and pray for a meeting in paradise. He put himself forward for martyrdom, and his application was gratefully accepted. On a balmy evening in late April, with the city still fresh and green from the spring rains, Bakhtiar was ordered to make his way to a nondescript workshop on the outskirts of Tehran to meet with a senior MEK officer.
The man introduced himself as Firouz, and showed Bakhtiar a laptop on whose screen was a satellite picture of an apparently unexceptional patch of landscape. A road ran diagonally across the
screen
from top left to bottom right. In the middle of the picture, next to the road, an area of ground had been outlined.
‘This is the highway between Gazran and Khandab,’ said Firouz, pointing at the road. His finger tapped on the outline. ‘And this is the IR-40 nuclear complex. See, it looks like a pig’s head!’
Bakhtiar smiled. He was right. The likeness was uncanny.
‘Here is the pig’s snout, up against the highway,’ Firouz continued. ‘And this is the line of its mouth, which is the road from the highway into the heart of the complex. Now . . . there is one barrier here, by the highway, and another at the other end of the road, where all the really important buildings are located. That road is approximately one kilometre long. It is absolutely vital for you to get as far up it as you possibly can before you detonate your bomb. The closer you are, the more damage you will do. It is a very powerful device. But it cannot work miracles.
‘So, here are your targets. On the right, in the pig’s cheek, you have a heavy-water production plant. That’s water enriched in a deuterium isotope, often referred to as deuterium oxide . . .’
Firouz caught Bakhtiar’s look of blank incomprehension.
‘Not a scientist, huh? OK . . . Heavy water helps them create plutonium-239, the radioactive material at the heart of a nuclear weapon. Now, observe this structure here, above the heavy-water plant. It looks like the eye of the pig, does it not? Well, this is a nuclear reactor. Here is another picture of the reactor, from the side. See how it has a great round dome, and beside it a thin concrete tower?’
‘Almost like a mosque and minaret,’ Bakhtiar suggested.
‘Yes . . . although here it is not God, the most merciful and compassionate, to whom they pray, but the devil. For this reactor is where the heavy water will be used to create the plutonium. That plutonium will go in an atomic bomb, and then the ayatollahs will stay in power for ever, because no one, anywhere, will dare challenge them.’
‘You say the heavy water
will
be used. You mean it isn’t yet?’
‘No, the plant is not operational. There have been many, many
delays
. Some of these, I am proud to say, were due to us. Let’s just say, they had a problem retaining staff.’ Firouz smiled at his witticism and Bakhtiar joined him, though it seemed strange to regard death as a laughing matter.
‘However, it’s finally due to start the process of going operational within weeks – two or three months at the very most,’ Firouz went on. ‘That’s why we have to strike now. But I must ask: are you still with us? Are you willing to sacrifice your life as a martyr for our cause?’
Bakhtiar felt almost physically sick. He thought of his family, whom he loved, and of all the years that still lay before him. And then he thought of the sorrow and deceit that would fill those years and, in little more than a hoarse, dry whisper answered, ‘Yes, I am.’
The following morning, well before dawn, Bakhtiar set off on the five-and-a-half-hour drive from Tehran, south-west along the Saveh Freeway to Arak, the capital of Markazi Province, and then north towards the IR-40 complex. He travelled in an old Toyota Hilux truck. The cargo area of the truck was covered with a tarpaulin, beneath which were some sacks of cement, a bundle of wooden joists and an oil barrel. Within that barrel there was a bomb.
For most of the journey Bakhtiar was a passenger. The target was almost four hundred kilometres away, and the leaders of the MEK felt it was too great a risk to expect anyone to drive that far, with nothing but their own thoughts and fears for company, and then have the energy, or the will, to mount a desperate suicide attack against an armed target. So Bakhtiar sat in the passenger seat while an older, more experienced MEK fighter drove, talked to him when he considered it right, or at other times let him alone with his thoughts.