“I’ll pull out,” she said, sliding into the driver’s seat. I watched her move with a light step and purpose. Then I searched the alley as far as my eyes would take me. I didn’t want this woman’s life in my hands. I didn’t want her anywhere near my business. I wanted her safe and sound in her run-down store with Rahim watching over her. But I also saw that there was no way to say no to her.
She inched to the center of the alley. I opened the door and settled onto the passenger seat, the backpack on the floor between my cross-trainers.
As we eased down the alley, I flashed back momentarily to the bar and the wall full of liquor that Leila called her primary source of income. Liquor was banned under Islamic law, which made it a profitable commodity. It was a numbers game. A good $750 million worth of booze was smuggled into the country every year, but the government managed to track down only a fraction of that. I had to wonder if an operation as open as Leila’s seemed to be benefiting from some type of protection. And if so, who was she beholden to?
Leila glanced over at me. She shook her head, as if she knew what I was thinking. “You’re wondering about my place, aren’t you? I’m small potatoes, Jake. Just a lady trying to stay above water. Half of my clients work for the government, so I guess they could shut me down in a heartbeat.”
“But why would they?” I said.
“They’ve got a lot bigger problems than a renegade dancehall girl with a couple of bottles of whiskey behind the bar.” She steered the car out into a steady flow of traffic. “You trust me, don’t you, Jake?”
“I don’t trust my own shadow, Leila,” I replied. “But you I trust.”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Buckle your seat belt,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I pulled out my iPhone and sent General Rutledge a quick text. Still alive and kicking. I sent the same message to DDO Wiseman. I wasn’t giving anything away. He would assume I was in Tehran, but Tehran was a very big city. I had no intention of mentioning Charlie Amadi to anyone, not even to Mr. Elliot. But then, Mr. Elliot would expect no less. “Need to know” was not just a cliché made famous by B-movies; it was a hard-and-fast rule in the world of black ops. Location was always a “need to know,” because the fewer people who knew your location, the less chance you had of getting dead.
I changed apps. I used an NSA satellite app called Eyes to zero in on the Park of the Reluctant Martyrs. I didn’t get the name. Wouldn’t all martyrs be reluctant? Well, maybe not in a land of suicide bombers.
Eyes gave me a bird’s-eye view of the park; it was real-time information, and the oblong terrain was filled with people. Too many. I don’t know what I was hoping for. Maybe Charlie and a couple of grandkids doing their thing on the swings, all alone and waiting with bated breath for Jake Conlan to make a much-anticipated appearance. It looked like Grand Central Station. How many of them were Charlie’s muscle only time would tell.
“Busy place,” I said. “Don’t people have anything better to do on a Wednesday afternoon?”
I zoomed in. Eyes allowed me to troll the park by using a series of walking paths to block out a manageable grid. It was obvious. Six guys standing like statues around the perimeter of a grassy knoll along the park’s west side, with a sizable lake protecting the knoll to the east. They were either bodyguards or trolls. I was betting on the former.
Charlie hadn’t stayed long in the United States after I’d saved his life nearly thirty years earlier. But he’d stayed long enough for the two of us to forge a working relationship. I never intended to use Charlie for anything more challenging than being the occasional bagman. Not because he wasn’t capable. He was more than capable. The bag work was more or less my way of sending up a test balloon. I’d always wondered how light the satchels of cash would be after they passed through his hands. Every shipment came out to the dollar. He’d smuggled kilos of cocaine and heroin. Each and every time, every gram was accounted for at its destination. What I wanted from Charlie was intel. You get intel in small amounts just by being in the right place at the right time, but you can pile up the intel by the bushel if you get the right people to trust you.
Charlie began to trust me. I was a good teacher. What I taught most effectively was the art of survival. He learned it quickly. He became an expert in how to watch his back and cover his tracks. For his part, Charlie was an accepted cog in the Iranian drug cartel. He knew people. He was the son of the Iranian prime minister, himself a rogue of some note, and so he’d landed in the States knowing people. No one questioned his loyalty because of his pedigree.
After two years of milking Charlie of as much intel as possible, I suggested he return home. The operation targeting his people was coming to a head. When the shit hit the fan, he didn’t want to be anywhere near New York or D.C. or any other place on the East Coast.
So he left with his very pretty wife and two beautiful kids and a serious knowledge of the streets. He used it to build a fortune in Iran. Drugs, alcohol, and arms. The big three. Then he diversified, smuggling in everything from electronics to foodstuffs. Then he learned to convert his profits into property on three continents.
Now he had grandkids and spent his afternoons in the park. Fair enough. I figured he owed me for his good life, and now it was time to cash in.
“How well do you know this Park of the Reluctant Martyrs?” I asked Leila as she steered the car into a commercial neighborhood crowded with shops, cafés, and streams of pedestrians.
“Well enough,” she said. She glanced down at my iPhone. “Have you found him?”
“West side. Near the lake.”
“Then the west side near the lake it is,” she said.
We rolled to a stop at a red light. Downtown Tehran could have been a major downtown in any metropolitan city except for the number of police. And you might have been able to overlook that had it not been for the soldiers. And if you were really willing to turn a blind eye, maybe you could even ignore the fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids armed with batons and clubs and strutting through the streets with orders to attack anyone who looked even remotely like a demonstrator.
“What the hell,” I said as a group of four of them stopped in the middle of the crosswalk and sneered at the traffic.
“Oh, yes, Ahmadinejad’s child army,” Leila replied. I had never heard her sound so dispirited. “The Guards recruit them from the countryside because they know the regular police won’t attack the demonstrators; after all, most of them have family walking side by side with neighbors. Not these boys. They’re starving when they come here, and they’re thugs when they leave. The Guards sees to that. The more brutal, the better. It’s terrible, Jake. Just terrible.”
The light changed. The traffic inched forward. But the tension over this city in chains could be felt even without the windows rolled down.
“Three blocks,” she said, nodding toward a fork in the road and a forest of trees rising before us. “The entrance to the park is straight ahead. No cars allowed.”
“I’ll walk from here, Leila. You’ve done enough,” I said. “More than enough.”
She pulled to the curb and brought the Toyota to a halt. She reached over and grabbed my wrist. “Take off your sunglasses. Please,” she asked in a low and husky voice. I did so, and she held me with her dark eyes, as calm and cool as a winter’s eve. “I haven’t done enough, Jake. That’s the whole point. Not near enough. I’ve been a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.”
“Leila, listen…”
“No, it’s true. If I can help, let me. I know you’d do anything to protect me. I know that. But I have to stop being afraid. And maybe you can help me by letting me help you.” Her fingers were pressing into my wrist, and she wasn’t even aware of it. “Please.”