The Last Refuge (13 page)

“Recently, Iranian police captured Kohl Meir. I am not at liberty to describe how or where. What I can tell you is that the capture of Kohl Meir is about justice. Under Islamic and Iranian law, he will be given a fair and proper trial. He will experience the benefit of Iranian justice as we look with equilibrium and propriety on his transgressions.”

Shalit reached out and pressed a button on the television set, pausing Nava’s speech. Steadying himself, he looked back at his ministers, all of whom were equally speechless. His bloodshot eyes found Dayan, his military chief.

“What are we to do then, Menachem?” Shalit whispered. “Our boy is now beyond the gates. He cannot be saved.”

Dayan stared at the image of Nava on the television screen, then turned to Shalit, saying nothing.

“This is now beyond the scope of Mossad or the Central Intelligence Agency to deal with,” continued Shalit. “He’s gone public. They will have a public trial followed by a public execution. Nava is going to torture an entire country.”

Dayan, looking back at Shalit, showed no emotion, only calm. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number, then held the phone to his ear.

“Unleash the dogs,” said Dayan calmly.

16

RESIDENCE OF THE IRANIAN CONSULATE

RUA RODRIGO DA FONSECA

LISBON, PORTUGAL

At just before seven in the morning, Ariq el-Sadd knelt down on the kitchen floor to tie his running shoes. Behind the counter stood his wife, Ara, glasses on, reading the newspaper.

“Do you want to go to the beach today?” he asked.

She ignored him.

“Ara?” he asked.

She continued reading.

He stepped forward, ripping the paper away from her.

“Why do you not answer me?” he asked, a hint of anger in his voice.

His wife looked up, pulled her glasses calmly from her face. She looked angry.

“What?” she asked quietly.

“Can we go one day without this fight?” he asked. “One day.”

El-Sadd looked at his wife. She remained silent.

“I have no friends in Lisbon,” she said, shaking her head. “I want to go home.”

“Ara—”

“You said that after a year in Lisbon you would ask to go home. It has been four years. I have no friends.”

El-Sadd, Iran’s ambassador to Portugal, smiled at his wife.

“So go home,” said el-Sadd. “Take a trip. Go see your sister. Or better yet, make some friends. Why do I have friends and yet you cannot find it in your heart to like anyone in the entire city?”

El-Sadd turned and walked to the door at the side of the kitchen, which led to the outside. He turned at the doorway.

“I grow tired of your anger at me, Ara,” he said. “You are starting to distract me. I love you but I need your support. The complaining is getting very old.”

El-Sadd stepped outside.

The Iranian ambassador’s house was situated on a hillside, down a tree-lined street from Parque Eduardo VIII and its modern, geometric gardens. Its views, to the south and west, were stunning; the bold ocean, beneath the cliffs that ran along Lisbon’s coast.

El-Sadd stood in the driveway. He closed his eyes, trying to put the conversation with his wife out of his mind. He stepped slowly down the large granite steps at the side of his house. The early morning sun had begun to warm the air. It was el-Sadd’s favorite part of the day. He placed his left foot on the granite step to the right, leaned down to stretch. As he did so, he looked left. The black ocean shimmered in a million silver cuts that dotted the surface as far as he could see, to the horizon. A white sedan moved into the street. It slowed as it came to the end of his driveway. He finished stretching as the sedan passed the end of the driveway. The back window of the car slid down. Before he could even process what was about to occur, he had a vague premonition. He saw the black circular abyss of a weapon’s tip. He felt his feet start to move, ordered by a part of his brain he didn’t know even existed, telling him to run.

*   *   *

Inside the sedan, Ziefert, a thirty-four-year-old Mossad operative, held a suppressed Ruger 10/22 rifle with subsonic ammo. Ziefert locked the Zeiss optic scope on the man’s skull. The man stood motionless for several moments as Ziefert moved the rifle into position. Then the man started to move back up the steps. Ziefert fired, just once, as the car continued to drive slowly down the quiet residential street. The suppressed bullet ripped into the Iranian’s head just above his left eye. Blood sprayed across the stucco wall of the house behind him. The Iranian diplomat, Ariq el-Sadd, was pummeled backward as the bullet tore part of his skull off. He crumpled to the ground.

“Let’s go,” said Ziefert.

17

IQASS AVENUE

TEHRAN

The shiny black Range Rover stopped in front of the imposing, sterile, square concrete headquarters of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Abu Paria climbed out and walked quickly up the front steps of the building.

When he arrived at his suite of offices on the third floor, Paria swept past his three assistants. Inside his office, two men were seated.

“What the
fuck
is going on?” asked Paria as he crossed the room.

“What do you think is going on, General?” replied one of the men, a short, fat bald man with a mustache and glasses, who sat at the conference table. It was Paria’s number two, Qasim Atta. “Israel is taking its revenge.”

“Where was the ambassador killed?” asked Paria. He reached out, took Atta’s cigarette from his deputy’s mouth, and stubbed it out in the half-filled coffee cup in front of Atta.

“I was still drinking that.”

“Where was el-Sadd killed?” repeated Paria, moving behind his desk, ignoring Atta’s complaints about the destruction of both his cigarette and cup of coffee.

“Outside the residence in Lisbon,” said Sasan Shahin, the other man seated at the table.

“Did President Nava really need to go on national television and rub Israel’s nose in it?” asked Paria rhetorically, shaking his head in anger as he stared down at photos of the blood-covered corpse of the Iranian ambassador to Portugal. “Send out a black flag immediately to all embassies and consulates. Mossad will be looking for revenge, everywhere.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shahin.

Paria threw the photos down onto his desk.

“What’s the report on Qassou?” asked Paria.

There was a long moment of silence as Atta and Shahin exchanged glances across the conference table.

“We’ve been unable to reach any of the agents we sent to track him,” said Atta.

“What do you mean, ‘unable to reach them’? Pick up the fucking phone.”

“We’ve tried.”

“Who did you send?” demanded Paria angrily. “A bunch of girls? I told you to track him full black; a kill team. ”

“We dispatched an S7 and two QUDS commanders,” said Atta, barking back at Paria. “Three highly trained operatives.”

“So where are they?” yelled Paria.

Again, Atta and Shahin exchanged nervous glances across the conference table.

“I spoke to Odessa police,” said Shahin quietly. “Three men were killed. They match the descriptions of our men.”

Paria stared at Shahin, incredulous.

“Two were shot. The S7 had his neck broken.”

Paria was silent. He looked surprised, shocked even.

Paria knew Qassou. Everyone knew Nava’s young minister of information; his propaganda chief. It was said Qassou alone had the president’s ear. Paria knew that with Qassou, he needed to tread carefully. Of course, Paria knew that if Qassou had Nava’s ear, it was he, Paria, who had the president’s balls. So he didn’t worry about Qassou. At least not until now.

“Qassou is a small man. He went to Oxford. I would be frankly surprised if he knew how to shoot a pistol.”

“Mossad?” asked Shahin.

Paria shrugged. “Perhaps. Who the fuck knows. Who was the S7?” asked Paria, looking at Atta.

“Azur. Kiev chief of station.”

“Did he send reports?”

“Yes,” said Atta.

He leaned forward and pulled photos out of an envelope. He stood and placed them on Paria’s desk. Paria picked them up.

“He tracked Qassou from the moment he landed. Qassou and the woman had been out at dinner. That was the last we heard from him.”

Paria flipped through the photos, which showed the couple in various settings, taken from a distance. He took one photo and tossed it down onto the desk. It showed the pretty face of an Iranian woman, long black hair, dark sunglasses.

“Who is she?”

“Sara Massood,” said Salim. “Just a woman. She works for a member of Parliament.”

“Bring her in,” said Paria. “This afternoon. I will handle the interrogation myself.”

“She’s already here,” said Shahin. “She’s waiting downstairs.”

“Should we bring Qassou in?” asked Atta.

Paria paused, thinking for a moment. He reached for his pocket and removed the Porsche key that he’d taken from the Ziploc bag, the key belonging to Meir. He palmed it absentmindedly. Then, he started to shake his head.

“No,” Paria said, calmly. “No, not Qassou. But I want to see a complete dossier on him. Get access to his spending habits. Phone logs. Internet.
Everything
. Make sure the men tailing him are good. Our best.”

“Yes, sir,” said Shahin.

“And get the black flag out, immediately.”

Paria walked out of the office, walked down the corridor, then took an elevator to a floor two levels beneath the ground floor.

He stepped out of the elevator and moved past a pair of guards. He saw Salim, VEVAK’s chief of staff, standing next to a steel door.

“Did she come easily?” asked Paria.

“Yes, General,” said Salim. “She was in her apartment, preparing to leave for work.”

“Who is the member of parliament she works for?”

“Khosla.”

Paria entered the room.

Inside, a pair of bright halogen lights shone down, making the room feel like a sauna.

Seated in a wooden chair was the woman from the photos, now wearing a stylish red hijab that covered her hair. She wore a long yellow dress.

Paria had long ago given up the pretense of treating certain individuals with deference. He knew, as he entered the hot interrogation room, that the polite thing to do would have been to arrange for a meeting so that Massood wasn’t embarrassed by the sudden intrusion. He also knew he should have conducted the questioning in his office or at least in a place that wasn’t so unpleasant.

But he quickly brushed the thought from his mind. After all, Paria didn’t care. It wasn’t that he was within his rights; it was the fact that rights no longer mattered. The law was irrelevant; he
was
the law. She would undoubtedly walk out of the ministry a changed creature, every step filled with a sense of fear for the rest of her life.

He shut the door. Stepping to the table, he flipped a switch on an electronic panel that had been on, turning off a device that automatically recorded the audio of the interrogations.

“Miss Massood,” said Paria. “I am Abu Paria.”

The woman was expressionless. Her face and forehead had a sheen of perspiration on them. Paria noticed that her upper lip quivered slightly.

“You have nothing to worry about, if you tell me the truth,” continued Paria. “I have a few questions for you. If you lie to me, on the other hand, I cannot protect you.”

Slowly, Massood nodded her head in acknowledgment.

Paria remained standing.

“Where were you this past weekend?” asked Paria.

“Odessa,” said the woman.

“With who?”

“You know with who,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Lon Qassou.”

“What were you doing in Odessa?”

“Visiting,” said Massood. “A long weekend. We’ve been there before. We went to the beach. Restaurants. Shopping.”

“How many nights were you there?”

“Two.”

“Tell me, how long have you been dating Qassou?”

“Why do you ask?”

Paria paused, then leaned over. A maniacal smile crossed his face.

“I will do the asking here,” he whispered, then slapped his hand hard on the table. Instinctively, she lurched back.

“A year,” she said. “Maybe a little longer.”

“Will you marry him?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know if he wants to get married.”

“Why not? Why do you think this? Tell me!”

“I just don’t know if Lon is the type who wants to get married. He likes his freedom. I’m not … I’m not the only one he dates.”

“A woman as beautiful as you?” Paria asked, smiling. “Come now. He would be crazy to let you go.”

The woman frowned, and a look of fear came into her eyes.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” she said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Paria.

“When I tell Representative Khosla—” she said.

“He will tell you to keep your mouth shut,” said Paria, who moved now around the table and placed his thick fingers around her small neck. Paria squeezed his hand around her neck, choking off air. “Nor should you tell Qassou, do you understand?”

She struggled, nodding her head, but Paria maintained his steely grip.

“Were you ever apart?” asked Paria, taking a step back, but still gripping her neck with his meaty paws.

She shook her head back and forth, indicating no.

She reached her hands up, trying to pry Paria’s fingers from her neck.

“Not even once?” he whispered.

She struggled to breathe. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Saturday,” she coughed.

“What about Saturday?” Paria asked, menace in his voice. “He went out?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” she pleaded. “He left the hotel room. He thought I was asleep.”

Paria let go of her neck. He stood back. Her eyes were bloodshot. Then, he swung his right hand through the air, slapping her hard across the cheek. She screamed.

“You lied to me,” he said. “How long was he out?”

“Two hours,” she cried. “Maybe longer.”

“Did you see him when he returned?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Was he bleeding?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.