The impatience was not visible in March’s face or the carriage of his lean frame. He stood quietly and stared out to sea as the argument carried on behind him.
They were in the port city of Bandar Beheshti, less than a 100 miles from the Pakistani border. The men stood in the shade of one of the open warehouses. It was not a large harbor, with only four berths and four jetties, each of which held two mobile cranes. There was an electric evacuator for the discharge of grain from a container ship, and the chain-wheel cranes, of which there were two, rolled well in from the edge of the macadam. A pair of ancient forklifts also occupied the broad expanse of black asphalt.
Besides the four open warehouses, there were two sheltered structures and the harbormaster’s office, which was little more than a shed of corrugated iron. Surrounding the port, nothing but razor-sharp strands of concertina wire and empty space.
He heard voices rising, and he turned toward the group of men.
Hamza was stalking angrily in his direction, the colonel shouting at his back. The Egyptian wiped beads of sweat from his brow as he approached, his mouth curled into a snarl beneath the heavy mustache.
“Those bastards!” he hissed. “They understand nothing. In Tehran, everything is a phone call away. It is not that easy here.”
“What’s the problem?” March asked.
“There is no truck. There is no way to move the cargo, but we cannot leave it, not even in the closed warehouses. It is many miles to Arak, it is a mountain pass . . . We must have a truck.”
“Did you speak to the harbormaster?”
Hamza waved his arms in frustration. “I asked if there was a vehicle in the secure buildings. He would not say . . .”
Hamza stopped talking. The laughter of the colonel’s aides was shrill in his ears. The gleaming eyes had moved away from his face and were focused on the office that lay across the stinking heat of the asphalt.
Less than five minutes later, Jason March emerged from the dull metal structure. He was wearing a faint smile. A small silver object caught and reflected the sunlight as it dangled from the fingers of his right hand.
“A key. So there is a truck,” Hamza said as he joined March at the locked sliding door of the second warehouse.
“If there was not a truck, then that is what he would have said,”
was the flat response.
Hamza stared at the harbormaster’s building and noticed that the colonel and his aides were doing the same. The laughter had stopped, and the aides silently sulked around the Iranian officer like scolded children. The heavy door was lifted to reveal the vehicle, an International 4900 4x2. March hopped into the cab and began to dismantle the plastic housing surrounding the steering column. The engine roared to life a few minutes later.
“Unfortunately, he only had the key to the warehouse,” March explained. “It will be an inconvenience, but only a minor one.”
Hamza did not reply, only turning once more to look at the office that was like a mirage in the heat of the afternoon.
A technician had accompanied the group, a former dockworker who was skilled in the use of a mobile crane. The 20-foot container waited patiently on the second jetty, the ship having departed many hours ago. The truck was reversed onto the jetty, the container was loaded. It would be a long journey, but they were not expected for several days. They had all the time in the world.
Ryan Kealey woke to the ringing of the phone on the nightstand.
Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with one hand, he picked up and answered with the other. Looking out of the window, he could see dark clouds hanging over the bay and hear the low rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Ryan, it’s Harper. I’ll meet you and Kharmai out front at ten. Be ready for the airport—we got a hit. I think you’re going to like this.”
“Okay, I’ll be downstairs.” He hung up and went into the bathroom. He had fallen asleep almost immediately after entering his room the night before, but after showering and shaving, he was beginning to feel halfway human again. There was a tap at the door just as he finished getting dressed.
Naomi stood in the hallway. Her face was nearly contrite, but not quite. She looked almost as stunning as she had the day before, wearing a thin cashmere sweater and a pair of dress slacks to cover the bandage on her thigh. Her face was drawn, though, and her eyes shadowed as though she had slept poorly. She started to speak and then hesitated. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.”
He couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be some kind of apology, but he shrugged and followed her down to the ground floor. The restaurant seemed to be pretty decent, and he was surprised to see that it was almost completely empty. They took a seat as far away as possible from the other guests, and soon he was enjoying a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. When she ordered only a blueberry muffin, he smiled and she caught it.
“What’s that look for?” she asked. “I’m on a diet.”
He shook his head. “You know a diet is the last thing you need,”
he pointed out. “And I resent you making me say that, by the way. I’m engaged, you know.”
She grinned and pushed her plate away. Leaning forward in the chair, her long fingers moved uncomfortably close to Ryan’s as she spoke. “Listen, I apologize for last night, but only to a certain extent.
I don’t think I’m getting fair treatment here. It took quite a bit of digging for me to get up to speed on information that you and the deputy director should have been willing to give me up-front.” He didn’t answer and she went on. “The whole point of this is to track down Jason March, but you haven’t told me the first thing about him.
I know that you were a soldier, Ryan. I know what he did to you and your men.”
He closed his eyes and tried to contain his reaction. How did she find out? It was immediately clear to Ryan that he hadn’t given Naomi Kharmai enough credit. The only question was what to do about it now. He opted for conciliation.
“It seems like you know everything,” he said. It was a struggle to keep his voice light. “What else can I tell you?”
Naomi thought she was fairly adept at gauging mood, and sensed that now would not be a good time to mention Bosnia. Shrugging her shoulders, she reached over to steal his glass of orange juice.
“Well, I’d like to know what we’re trying to accomplish. Clearly, March is associated with the Iranians and Al-Qaeda, so they’re definitely working together. We know what the Iranians want. What about Al-Qaeda—do you think they’re going after the same thing?”
Ryan shook his head and took a sip of coffee. “If they use a nuclear weapon, or even manage to acquire one, then they’re finished.
They’ll lose most of their state-sponsored support due to fear of sanctions imposed by the U.N. or, even worse, American military re-taliation. I’m sure these thoughts wouldn’t readily occur to Al-Qaeda’s leadership, but that’s the reality of the situation. They’ve made a lot of contradictory statements about their attempts to purchase nuclear material.”
“What about Iran?”
“Well, if we find out that Iran has a weapon, they can just claim it’s for national defense. Then they’ll make some minor concessions to make it easier to swallow. The OSCE and the U.N. won’t like it, and neither will we, but the North Koreans have already discovered that we’re willing to let a lot slide as long as you keep it on your side of the fence. That’s why Brenneman is so intent on stopping them before they get that far. Once they have a weapon, our options obviously become more limited.”
She smiled and popped a piece of muffin into her mouth. “It’s pretty clear that you’re not an expert on foreign policy,” she said.