The Last Refuge (29 page)

“We still don’t know that he did meet him in Odessa,” said one of the agents.

Paria stared around the table. He was silent. Then, he put his fist down on the table.

“It’s time,” said Paria. “I want Qassou brought in. Make it invisible. No one can know we have him.
No one!
I want it to look like a ghost stole him. That way, if we have to dispose of him, Nava will not know it was me. Go. Get the traitor and bring him in.”

38

TEHRAN

It rained in Tehran for the first time in more than a month. Beginning at daybreak, sheets of water came down like wet nails on the dust-quilted city, washing down its buildings, streets, cars, filling drainpipes with brown-red water until, after more than an hour of downpour, the water began to run clear, if only for a little while. After the initial wave of thunderstorms, which lasted nearly two hours, the weather in Iran’s capital city settled into a steady, light rain.

In his apartment on the fourteenth floor of the Aqusah Luxury Complex in the northern part of the city, Qassou was awakened by the first clap of thunder. He rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock next to his bed: 6:00
A.M.
He closed his eyes for several minutes, then opened them again. Eventually, he threw the sheets off himself and stepped to the large window. In the distance, he watched as, within the ominous shroud of black storm clouds, a crooked white line of lightning abruptly shot down toward the highest peak in the Alborz Mountains, Mount Damavand. It was followed, just a few seconds later, by a loud thunderclap.

“Thank God for that,” Qassou said aloud to no one.

The heat and humidity had lingered over the city for weeks now; Qassou knew the rain would bring cooler temperatures, at least for a few hours. He opened the window, stuck his hand outside, and felt the water.

He made coffee, rubbing his eyes and watching as it brewed. He was hungover. He drank too much as it was, but the past weeks had exacerbated the stress. His head hurt, but at least the alcohol had enabled him to escape for a few hours.

When the coffee was finished, he poured himself a cup, walked to the laptop on the kitchen table, then checked his e-mail.

There was an e-mail from Taris.

Still no contact

That was all.

Qassou sipped his coffee, staring at her words. Even if he were to find out the location of the bomb, the fact is, without Andreas contacting Taris, there was nothing. He could pinpoint the precise location of the bomb and if Andreas hadn’t made it safely over the border, if he’d encountered problems, if he’d just plain given up, it wouldn’t matter.

Qassou clicked the icon for the
Tehran Times
:

ISRAELI KOHL MEIR FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER

Seeing the words, a sour, tight feeling came to Qassou’s stomach. Meir had been found guilty. The clock was now officially ticking. The day when the bomb would be used was coming.

Qassou couldn’t escape one awful thought. Could he have inadvertently gotten Meir killed, while at the same time
not
stopping the destruction of Tel Aviv?

If the plan ended up not working, he would have a hard time going on. Life would simply be too unbearable. It had to work. The American had to make it into the country. And today, Mahmoud Nava had to take him to the location.

He shook his head, lit a cigarette, leaned back in the wooden chair, and put his bare feet up on the kitchen table. As he did every morning, he would finish his smoke, then get ready for work.

*   *   *

In an apartment two blocks away, a large, thin man with a sliver of a mustache and no hair was lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, staring into a high-powered telescope. He watched every move of the man in the high-rise apartment building, Lon Qassou. He watched through the driving rain as Qassou lit his cigarette. It made him want one as well. Without removing his eye from the end of the telescope, Pavil reached for the cigarettes next to him, put one in his mouth, then lit it.

Pavil and another VEVAK agent, Marwan, had been watching Qassou all night. The two operatives had flown back yesterday, by chopper, from Baghdad, under orders of Abu Paria himself.

When Qassou took his feet down from the table and leaned forward to stub his cigarette out, Pavil cleared his throat.

“We’ve got activity,” Pavil said. Hearing no response, he repeated himself. “Marwan,” he whispered, this time with impatience in his tone. “He’s moving.”

The other agent suddenly sat up. He was reclined in the apartment’s only piece of furniture, a brown leather chair.

He stood up and moved quickly to Pavil, stretching as he walked, then yawning.

“Let me see,” he said.

Marwan got down on his stomach next to Pavil and looked through the end of the telescope.

“What’s he doing?” he asked as he watched Qassou place a coffee cup in the sink and walk out of the kitchen.

“He’s climbing into the shower,” said Marwan. “Should I send him?”

“Yes.”

Marwan pulled a small mic that was clipped to his neck and pressed it.

“You can move now,” said Marwan, into the mic.

“Yes, sir,” said the voice over Marwan’s earbud.

“Come in through the kitchen window,” said Marwan. “He opened it. And be careful; it’ll be slippery.”

“Got it.”

“Don’t kill him. Remember, we need information.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“Good luck.”

*   *   *

A minute later, through the telescope, Marwan stared as a black figure emerged, like a large insect, from a window one story above Qassou’s apartment on the fourteenth floor.

The rain was pouring down. It made the image of the man look blurry and slightly misshapen. Like a snail, the figure moved slowly. He climbed out of a window near the corner of the building. Gripping the stonework next to the window, he placed both feet on a small ledge. The man inched slowly down the face of the concrete toward the fourteenth floor and the window to Qassou’s kitchen. Marwan watched as his foot seemed to tap against the window. Was it not open after all?

“I thought the window was open,” said Marwan.

“It was. He opened it. Why?”

“He’s having trouble.”

“Let me see.”

A lightning strike hit in the sightline just above Qassou’s apartment building, which rattled the sky. A moment later came a low growl of thunder.

Pavil pulled the end of the telescope to his eye.

“He’s at the wrong window,” said Pavil. “The one next to it. The room next to it.”

Pavil watched as the dark figure struggled to open the window. Through the telescope, he watched as the figure punched at the window. He looked as if he could lose his grip. Finally, his arm went through the window, shattering the glass. A moment later, he opened the window and climbed in through the opening.

“He’s in,” said Pavil.

“I can see that,” said Marwan. “How did he get in?”

“He punched in the glass,” said Pavil.

“Well, let’s hope he didn’t hear.”

“What’s Qassou going to do?” asked Pavil, looking at Marwan and smiling. “Beat him up with his typewriter?”

“Good point,” said Marwan. He got on his knees, then stood. “Let’s move. We need to deliver him to the general.”

Pavil got to his knees, reached for the telescope to put it back in the long case lying next to it.

*   *   *

Qassou was rinsing shampoo from his hair when he heard the noise. It was faint, and because of the storm and the sound of the shower, he couldn’t be sure if it was anything, but it did make him stand still for a brief moment. It was the high pitch of the noise that made him stop moving. And then he realized what it was: the sound of glass breaking.

Why should that alarm him? He was, after all, on the fourteenth floor of a highly secure building.

Nevertheless, he felt a sudden wave of coldness; a feeling of fear.

He started to turn the shower off, then decided against it. He climbed out, then stood on the shower mat, dripping wet. He looked at the white door, which was slightly ajar. He stared into the dimly lit apartment through the crack, dripping wet, naked. He stared down the carpeted hallway for more than a minute, unsure of what he was looking for, but seeing nothing except the daylight coming in from his bedroom.

And then he saw the light coming in from the bedroom suddenly darken, then lighten again, as if something or someone had crossed in front of the bedroom window. It was just a shadow, but Qassou realized someone was in the apartment.

Qassou looked around the small bathroom for something to defend himself with. There were various items—soap, deodorant, toothpaste—but nothing he was looking for. Nothing sharp. He saw a toothbrush, a hairbrush, his electric razor. He picked up the razor. Then, he put it back down.

He reached for his toothbrush, picking it up from the side of the sink. Then he stepped back, behind the door, as the water continued to pour down in the shower.

The bathroom became thick with steam.

For several minutes, Qassou waited behind the door, until he was no longer wet.

He could feel his heart racing as he stared at the door. A minute became two minutes, then five. He clutched the toothbrush in his right hand, raised next to his head.

The black forehead of a figure slowly moved past the edge of the door, emerging just in front of where Qassou stood. He had a ski mask on. Lower, Qassou saw something that was colored red; metallic. Was it a gun?

He lurched at the figure’s head, swinging the end of the toothbrush as hard as he could toward the intruder’s skull. He struck the man’s skull, and where he expected it to bounce off hard bone, he felt instead some give, and an instant later heard the man scream out as blood suddenly spurted forward. The man fell to the ground, screaming and clutching his eye.

Yanking the door open, Qassou fell atop the man and started stabbing wildly with the toothbrush, aiming at the man’s other eye as blood coursed onto the white bath mat. The man kicked out and sent Qassou flying through the air, striking against the shower curtain and falling into the shower.

Qassou clawed his way up. He climbed out of the shower as the man moaned and clutched at his eyes, trying to remove the ski mask.

On the floor, beneath the intruder’s leg, he saw the red weapon. He leapt for the red object, which looked like a gun, and grabbed it before the man could find it; he was clutching his eye and moaning.

Qassou picked up the weapon and aimed it, then fired. A small dart shot out and punctured his neck just to the left of the nape. He went limp.

Qassou reached down and pulled away the man’s ski mask. Beneath, his face was covered in blood. His right eye was gone. The socket was a pool of dark red. Long tendrils of veins hung to the side, down his cheek.

Qassou turned off the shower. He rinsed his hands and face in the sink.

What just happened? he asked himself as his hands shook like leaves and he threw water onto his face, which was now covered in perspiration.

He ran to the bedroom and quickly got dressed. He went back to the unconscious intruder. Kneeling, he removed the dart from his neck. He inspected it, even smelling the small object, but it was no use. He felt the man’s neck for a pulse—he was still alive, the dart was some sort of tranquilizer.

Qassou tried to organize his thoughts, but they were frazzled.

Someone knew something. Someone suspected something. It was Abu Paria. It had to be. He knew enough to stage an abduction, but not enough to kill him or arrest him. Which meant that Paria was working without Nava’s knowledge. If Nava was in on it, the VEVAK agents would simply have walked in and taken him into custody. No, this was to be a VEVAK special. Abduction, a long drive to a house in the suburbs, a dirty basement, torture, then his body would be deposited in a landfill somewhere.

But he wasn’t dead yet. Which meant Paria suspected him and now needed information. Paria was searching for answers; he didn’t have them yet.

He searched the intruder, looking for identification, but found nothing.

Qassou picked up the dart gun and fired another one into the man’s neck.

He went to his bedroom and packed his leather weekend bag; a change of clothing, money, his passport, a photograph of him and his brother, a leather-bound Koran. Glancing about the apartment, he realized it was the last time he would ever step foot in the place.

Qassou picked up the tranquilizer gun, then walked to the door of his apartment. He looked through the peephole into the hallway, seeing nothing. He opened the door. He walked past the elevators, to the fire stairs, and began his descent.

39

MADRID AIRPORT BARAJAS

MADRID, SPAIN

Jessica stood in the galley kitchen in the midsection of the plane, watching as the Keurig coffeemaker pushed out black liquid into a Styrofoam cup beneath.

The idling supersonic jet hummed low in the background. Through the galley window, black tarmac stretched for a mile or so, then the main terminal buildings.

Jessica glanced at the silver Cartier watch on her wrist. It read 7:00
P.M.
, but she was in Spain now, so technically it was one in the morning. It felt like one in the morning. The hours were beginning to meld into a haze.

She picked up the cup of coffee and walked to the front of the heavily customized CIA-owned and -operated Gulfstream G150. She flopped into one of the big leather seats in the middle of the cabin. She rubbed her eyes, then looked across the aisle at Hector Calibrisi. The CIA director was reading something on his thin silver laptop, running his right hand back through his thick, unruly hair.

On the flight over, Calibrisi had briefed Jessica on everything; the nuclear bomb, Qassou, the mole inside Mossad, Bhutta, everything. To say she was shocked was an understatement. But at some point, she realized that she had no choice other than to help Calibrisi help Dewey. Even if it meant losing her job and being hauled in front of Congress.

“How long, Hector?” Jessica asked wearily.

“He should be here in a few minutes,” said Calibrisi, not looking up from his laptop.