Kazem tamped back his excitement. Slowly but surely, this was all working out. He wished Ghorbani would have waited another day. But one did not argue with the likes of Ayatollah Ghorbani. Second only to the Grand Ayatollah himself, Ghorbani acted as his eyes and ears — and his contact with Reza Kazem. After all, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran could not be seen with the man the entire world thought wanted to bring it down.
The harsh chime of Sassani’s mobile phone wormed its way into his dreamless sleep. The mattress in his Herat hotel room was too soft, but it was more comfortable than the couch in his office.
“It is up and running, Major,” the voice said when he answered. “I apologize for waking you, but I thought you would want to know at once.”
Sassani sniffed and then looked around the room, blinking away the memories of the day before. “What is up and running?”
“The satellite phone you ordered me to monitor.”
Sassani sat up a little straighter at that. “At this very moment?”
“Yes,” the technician said. “And we have audio. The caller is an Azeri woman, speaking to, we believe, her mother. The caller’s name is Nima.”
“Origination?” Sassani snapped. He was on his feet now, pacing at the foot of his hotel bed.
“She is calling from Mashhad, Major.”
“Mashhad?” Sassani stopped in his tracks. “She is calling from inside Iran?”
“Yes, Major. It is difficult to pinpoint an exact address, but we are reasonably certain the phone is being used not far from the Shrine of the Imam at this very moment.”
“Bracket in,” Sassani said. “I want as close a location as you are able to give me.”
“Yes, Major,” the technician said.
“You say the speaker’s name is Nima?”
“Correct,” the technician said.
Sassani ended the call. He pitched the phone on the bed and rubbed his hands together, thinking. He wondered if Nima would make this easy, or difficult. Fatima had made it difficult. He sighed. Difficult was certainly much more interesting.
55
Something brushed Jack’s elbow. His back was painfully knotted and stiff. The shoulder nearest the floor, wedged against something hard, throbbed with a sickening ache, like the time he’d wrenched it out of its socket. The touch came again, accompanied by a distant voice, Ysabel’s voice. A dream, maybe? Surely he’d been asleep only a few minutes. Jack tried to open his eyes, but they were glued shut, refusing to cooperate. The pain in his injured ear came next, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He wondered if that was a good sign or bad.
Ysabel spoke again, closer now, an urgent whisper, pushing aside the fog.
“Jack. Wake up.”
Ryan sat bolt upright, searching the room to get his bearings. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Dovzhenko had heard the voice, too, and was up on one elbow, eyes flicking, listening.
“I’m sorry,” Ysabel said. She’d showered and covered her torn clothing with a borrowed smock.
Jack saw Nima standing in the kitchen — which was really just a corner of the same room. She was dressed now, in a dark skirt and a knee-length khaki top that reminded Ryan of a cotton pillowcase. Steam came from a kettle set over the blue flame of a two-burner gas stove. People didn’t make tea in the middle of an emergency. He rubbed his face, wincing at the jab of pain the movement caused his injured ear.
“Sorry for what?”
“Please don’t be mad at her, Jack,” Ysabel said. “She didn’t know.”
Jack stood on wooden legs, feeling a half-dozen more sprains than he’d felt the night before. Whatever this news was, he didn’t want to get it lying down.
His neck felt as if someone had tried to twist it off his shoulders, and he was pretty sure he’d chipped a tooth. And that didn’t even take into account the fact that his ear was hanging on by nine stitches of catgut put in by an opium smuggler. Old age was going to be a hell of a lot of fun — if he made it that far.
He looked at Ysabel and smiled in spite of the situation when he saw her. “What are you talking about?”
She nodded toward the satellite phone on the table.
A sudden chill washed over Jack. “What’s this?”
Dovzhenko saw it, too, and jumped to his feet.
Ysabel gave a sheepish grin. “Nima’s mobile phone is broken. She hadn’t talk to her mother in months.”
Jack took a couple of deep breaths, working to keep his voice calm. “Did she already make the call?”
Ysabel nodded. “She was talking when I woke up.”
Jack had to concentrate to keep his voice at a whisper. “How did she—”
“She must have taken it from the briefcase while we were asleep,” Ysabel said. “I checked the call log. It looks like she spoke for less than three minutes. She assured me she never mentioned us or said where she was.”
Nima glanced up from the kettle. “I will pay for the call,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone would mind.”
“No worries,” Ryan said, though he had plenty. He changed the subject. “Did you sleep well?”
Dovzhenko was already tying on his boots. “Nima,” he said. “You must leave at once.”
She waved off the thought. “I have many appointments today,” she said. “The call was only for a moment. I doubt even the Sepah-e Pasdaran are that all-seeing.”
“Still,” Ysabel said. “Erik is right. You should not take that chance.”
“You all worry far too much,” Nima said. “I will be fine. I promise.”
Ysabel turned to Jack. “You should let me look at that ear before we go.”
“Later,” Ryan said, turning to head for the bathroom. “We need to go. Now.”
Dovzhenko turned on the radio, filling the cab with techno-guitar music. Ysabel, who’d taken shotgun again, turned sideways to glare at him. He reached to turn it off, but not before a deep Persian voice came over the air, sounding somber and somewhat nasal, like a muezzin’s call to prayer.
Ryan couldn’t understand what was being said, but Ysabel sat up straighter. Dovzhenko shot her a glance, getting the gist of it. And then the traffic began to slow.
“What?” Ryan asked, leaning forward to rest on the seat.
Ysabel held up an open hand to shush him.
The speaker droned on for another fifteen seconds, and then the station returned to Persian pop.
“There are protests ahead,” Ysabel said. “We will have to go around.”
“Where ahead?” Ryan asked.
“Hard to know,” Dovzhenko said. “It is difficult for protesters to communicate with phones and social media dampened by authorities. This announcer was helping, telling people where to show up, but he was interrupted in the middle of his report. Somewhere to the west of the city. That is not enough to know.”
“The hospital is west of the city,” Ryan said.
Ysabel tuned the radio past more music stations until she found another news program.
“Here,” she said. She translated as she listened.
“This is a government radio station so the announcer is urging everyone to stay away. He assures law-abiding citizens that the authorities will be on hand to quell any violence on the part of the protesters.”
“Or bring their own violence,” Dovzhenko said.
Traffic was at a virtual standstill now.
Ryan had seen video of recent demonstrations. Tehran, Isfahan, Qom — all across Iran. With three million people, Mashhad had enough youth to pack the streets — and they often did.
The Hilux inched along, covering less than a mile in the next twenty minutes. Impatient drivers changed into and out of the lane ahead each time there was an opening. So far, there had been no place to turn off that was not also jammed.