When young Iranian women even wore the clumsy chador, that is. In a cosmopolitan city like Esfahan, Mark figured that a woman wearing pink and purple Nikes would only grudgingly wear even a light headscarf — the bare minimum allowed by law. She certainly wouldn’t wear a veil. Unless…
The young woman noticed him. “We don’t take deliveries on Fridays,” she said. “Especially not at this time.”
Unless she were grieving.
On his back, Mark carried a battered wood-frame porter’s pack laden with an enormous stack of dun-colored cotton fabric. The fabric fell down around his head as if it were a veil, obscuring most of his downward-cast face. He lowered the pack to the floor now, slowly closed the store’s front door with his foot, and began to scan the room for a weapon. The best he could come up with was the pointed end of a long paintbrush that lay on the table where the young woman was working.
“We don’t take deliveries on Friday,” the young woman repeated. “And give that back. I’m using it.”
“I apologize for the intrusion,” said Daria to the old woman, “but your husband and I worked on a design together and now I need to speak with him.”
In Farsi, the old woman whispered, “That will not be possible.”
“How many days is it?” called out Mark to the old woman. He spoke in broken Farsi.
She glared at him with undisguised hatred.
“You are in mourning.”
When Daria shot him a look, Mark gestured to the young woman. She’d just smacked her wooden stamp down hard on the fabric. Daria appeared to study the scene for a moment. The stamp smacked against the fabric again. For forty days after a death, the family members of the deceased wore black. The old woman likely wore a black chador every day anyway, so evidently Daria — whose focus had been the old woman — hadn’t noticed that anything was amiss. She did now.
“Oh…I see.”
“They found your contact and killed him,” said Mark to Daria. Remembering how Peters’s apartment had been watched, he said, “This place is compromised. We should leave.”
“Yes, yes, go,” said the old woman. But this time her voice cracked with emotion.
“What happened?” pressed Daria.
“Go!”
“Fatima, Fatima…” Daria said and tried to put her arms around her. “You are not alone.”
Mark heard footsteps just outside the shop. He positioned himself behind the door.
Daria said, “I need to know where he took the package I brought him, Fatima. They’re after me too. I need your help.”
The door cracked open. Mark saw a heavily muscled forearm on the handle. Without waiting for the door to fully open, he swung the pointed end of the paintbrush up to where he guessed an eye would be. He connected — although he had no idea whether it was with a potential killer or an unlucky customer.
He slammed the door shut as the man he’d stabbed cried out in pain.
“We’re outta here!” Mark said.
“Fatima,” said Daria. “Please. I need to know where your husband took the package.”
Mark started running. When he got to the locked door in the back of the store, he threw his shoulder into it and popped it open with one quick push. Daria took off after him.
They ran through a series of dark, mazelike back alleys, until they came to a street crowded with people eating and celebrating the end of the day’s Ramadan fast. Within seconds, a green Peugeot screeched to a stop in front of them. A strikingly attractive woman of maybe twenty sat behind the wheel, gasping for breath. She wore a flimsy blue headscarf that barely covered any of her hair, but what Mark really noticed were her slender paint-stained fingers. He glanced down at her feet and saw purple Nikes.
“How’d you find us?” he asked.
“All the alleys lead to one exit. Get in.”
Mark and Daria did so. The young woman took off without a word, cut in front of an orange bus, then sped down Ferdowsi Street. By now it was dark. The unbroken lines of tall plane trees on either side of the street made Mark feel as though he were racing through a tunnel.
“The MEK is useless!” the woman said. “Fossils! You couldn’t have sent someone to protect him, to warn him? To watch the store? You use him for twenty years and then leave him to the wolves?”
“I’m so sorry about your father,” said Daria. “If I had known—”
“Why would he become involved with you people? Why?”
“I don’t have anything to do with the MEK,” said Mark.
They came to an intersection and the car jerked to a stop. In front of them, a pedestrian bridge that looked centuries old spanned a river. Brightly colored flags, illuminated from below by spotlights, fluttered near its entrance.
“Cross that bridge,” said the young woman. “If someone has been following us, it will force them to cross too, on foot, and you will be able to see them. After that, you should be safe enough if you get off the streets.”
The bridge had two levels, each with multiple tiled alcoves. Yellow light from inside the alcoves spilled onto the river below. In the center of the bridge, a man was singing a plaintive song, his voice echoing across the water. Couples were out on the river in yellow duck-shaped paddleboats.
“When I last saw your father,” said Daria, “it was to give him a package. Do you know where—”
“Ashraf. He took your package to Ashraf, and then came back to Esfahan the next day. They didn’t kill him until a week ago.”
“Did he tell you what was in the package?”
“No. And I don’t want to know.”
“Thank you.” Daria gripped the young woman’s hand. “Please, be careful. I wouldn’t go back to your shop tonight, maybe not for a long time. If you want a place for you and your mother to stay, I can arrange it. You both may be in danger.”
“Find a way to get to Kermanshah,” said the young woman. “It’s six hundred kilometers west of here. Go to an Internet café called the Emperator and ask for Rahim. If it’s closed, ring the bell until he answers; he lives upstairs.”
“Who’s Rahim?” asked Daria.
“A friend of my father’s. He may be able to help you cross the border into Iraq. From there you’ll have to find your own way to Ashraf. Now go.”
“Are you sure we can’t help?”
“I said go.”
47
Colonel Henry Amato sat to the right of James Ellis at a long oval conference table in the newly renovated White House situation room. Mounted on the sound-dampening fabric walls were six flat-screen plasma video monitors. To the sides of two of the monitors were smaller screens that displayed the date, the time, and the words NSC/57 Top Secret.
“This meeting is called to order,” said the president.
The vice president, the director of national intelligence, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president’s own chief of staff, his national security advisor, and all the attendant advisors gave the president their attention. In the back of the room, the two watch officers responsible for running the technical show sat up a little straighter behind their computer screens.
“We’re here to discuss how to respond to reports that indicate Iran has mobilized more of their armed forces over the past twenty-four hours. James’s team…” The president gestured to his national security advisor. “…is going to bring you up to date on the latest.”
Ellis frowned and looked over his bifocals. “I’ll cede the floor to my assistant, Colonel Henry Amato.”
For the second time in as many days, Amato didn’t respond when prompted by his boss.