“Henry?”
“Sir?”
“Your presentation?”
Amato had just heard from the contractor he’d hired in Iran. The man had called from a hospital — apparently someone had stabbed him in the eye as he’d tried to intercept Daria and Sava.
Amato’s hope was that in the confusion, Daria hadn’t been able to figure out where the uranium had been taken after it left Esfahan. That would be the best outcome, one that might lead to her going into hiding.
“Of course.”
He stood up and walked to the front of the room. When he spoke, it was with something less than his usual confident precision: New intelligence reports suggest regular army troops and millions of Revolutionary Guard Basij paramilitaries have been ordered to gather weapons and food supplies…two of Iran’s Kilo-class submarines have been detected by the US Navy near the Strait of Hormuz…At this time, however, Iran’s military posture appears to be a defensive one. No troops are massing on the borders. The situation is something to watch closely, for sure, but still no cause for immediate alarm.
48
Mark sat on an old truck tire in front of a boarded-up roadside store. In back of him lay a pile of empty oil drums and a bright tangle of abandoned concertina wire. He checked his watch.
“They’ll be here,” said Daria.
After what had happened in Esfahan, Mark figured the only hope he and Daria had was to move so fast that the enemy — whoever it was — couldn’t keep up. So they’d driven through the night to Kermanshah, and then instead of sleeping had pushed on to the border with Iraq — which they’d crossed in the dark where their contact Rahim had told them to. After that, it’d been hurry up and wait.
Mark checked his watch again.
They’d been lounging around by the side of the road since dawn had broken about twenty minutes ago. He was beginning to feel like a piece of bloody chum thrown out to attract sharks.
Even this early in the morning it was frighteningly hot out, just shy of a hundred degrees. Across the road, behind more swirls of abandoned concertina wire, a couple of boys were playing in what looked like an old guardhouse. The roof had caved in and there were no longer any windows.
Mark wondered how long it would take the boys to announce to the neighborhood insurgents that a couple of American tourists were waiting to be sacrificed. One of the boys was staring at him, so Mark waved and the kid waved back.
Then his phone rang.
“Hey, boss,” said Decker. “Guess where I am?”
Before Mark could answer, Decker said, “Paris, man!” and launched into a play-by-play of his daring escape, and bus trip to Baku, and—
“Well, I’m glad you made it,” said Mark. “That’s awesome, buddy. We’re on track too. Keep us posted.”
“All right. I’ve never been to France before, kind of wild, I can see the—”
“Really kind of tied up right now, Deck.”
“OK, OK. Well, we’ll talk soon.”
After Mark clicked his phone off, Daria said, “You still trust that guy?”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know. He left Yaver’s cell phone on after you told him to shut it off.”
Mark considered himself a pretty good judge of people. And all his instincts, plus the two minutes he’d spent back in Baku Googling Decker’s name, were telling him that Decker was on the level. Then again, his instincts had also told him Daria was on the level.
“People make mistakes,” he said.
Five minutes later Decker called again.
“Hey, boss, remind me again, what’s the name of Daria’s uncle?”
“Tehrani.” Mark spelled it out.
“And where was the MEK headquarters?”
“Auvers. On Saint—”
“Saint Simon Road, got it.”
A reasonably new-looking white Toyota pickup truck pulled up and skidded to a stop. The MEK contact Daria had lined up, Mark assumed.
“You good now?” Mark asked Decker. “Because I have to go.”
“I’m gonna shoot up to Auvers today.”
“Fantastic. Be careful.”
“Should I call you when I get there?”
A middle-aged woman with tobacco-stained teeth rolled down the window of the pickup truck and spoke to Daria in Farsi.
“Why don’t I call you.”
“OK, that works. When do—”
“Deck, I have to go.”
This time, after shutting off his phone, Mark switched out the SIM card.
They drove absurdly fast, first along a dirt road and then down a two-lane highway. The engine whined at a high pitch and the wind roared through the open windows, so no one talked. Mark sat in the passenger seat and Daria sat wedged between him and the driver. The land was arid and flat and there was little to see except other cars and an occasional convoy of military vehicles.
On the outskirts of Baqubah they stopped at a service station and parked behind a row of rusting gas pumps. The woman with the tobacco-stained teeth got out of the pickup and opened the back of a nearby white refrigerator truck. She removed some cartons of processed chicken parts from it, and beckoned to Mark and Daria. When they climbed up into the back, they discovered a trapdoor that lay flush to the floor. The woman pulled it open, exposing a long shallow smuggler’s compartment, and gestured for Mark and Daria to climb in.
They lay down as instructed, squeezed up next to each other. The trapdoor was lowered. When the chicken parts were stacked back on top of it, the inside of the trapdoor just touched Mark’s nose. The air was cold but he found it preferable to the heat outside. The darkness was absolute.
Daria gripped his hand. “We’re close now,” she whispered. “This is just to get us past the gates.”
They drove for maybe ten minutes before the truck came to a stop, at which point Mark heard the muffled sound of Iraqi soldiers talking outside. Which told him they’d arrived at Camp Ashraf, a plot of land Saddam Hussein had given to the MEK decades ago. More recently it had been limping along as a diplomat’s nightmare, with four thousand or so rabidly antiregime Iranians huddled inside and no country willing to take them off Iraq’s hands other than Iran — to kill them. The Iraqis had wanted to shut the place down for years but had defaulted to treating it as a refugee camp/prison until someone figured out what to do with all the MEK soldiers.
The Iraqi soldiers standing outside the truck posed a series of routine questions — what was the truck carrying, where was it coming from — and then asked for documentation. Mark heard the back door open and observed a sliver of light as it widened around the perimeter of the trapdoor. Then all was darkness and the truck started moving again.
Two minutes later, it came to a stop. This time the engine was turned off and Mark heard people pulling out the chicken cartons. When the trapdoor was finally pulled open, he saw that he was in a warehouse, surrounded by an unimpressive cadre of unarmed soldiers. They were clad in olive-green uniforms and gathered in a big clump behind the truck, frowning and looking nervous. Half were women.
A squat, ugly woman stepped forward. She wore a headscarf and prescription glasses that magnified her eyes so that they looked unnaturally big.
“Sister Daria,” she said, opening her arms. “It has been too long.”
Her expression conveyed genuine warmth but was tinged with worry. And maybe fear, thought Mark.
“Welcome to Ashraf,” she continued. “I rejoice that you reached out to us in your hour of need.” When she turned to Mark, her expression turned hard. “And who is your friend?”
49