“I guess we can take some solace in that,” I said, without expecting anyone to appreciate my sarcasm.
“What do you think? Do we put the word out to the friendlies?” Charlie said to me.
“Damn right. We’re looking for intel. Let’s see what these guys know,” I said. Then I looked at the men manning the computers. They were all watching me. “But it’s got to be done quietly, gentlemen. Secure channels. Untraceable e-mails. The works.”
I plugged the iPhone into the computer aligning the satellite cable and tapped in to my NSA source.
Once we had the connection, I downloaded the NSA’s files that we already had in the pipeline, then uploaded what Charlie’s men had gleaned overnight. My priority was getting counterintel on Karimi, Moradi, and Drago. One of them might be the traitor. I hated to think so, but you never knew. And if they weren’t, fine. At least I could cross them off my shit list.
I went straight for the coffee. There was a huge pot sitting on a side table alongside a half-empty box of baklava and date-filled maamoul. I ate four more Tylenol and washed it down with black coffee. My ears had finally stopped ringing. My headache had quieted to a near-tolerable throbbing.
I followed the proceedings, reading every piece of information and siphoning off what I deemed important. It was midmorning when Charlie pulled me aside. I followed him into the alley out back of the mall. He lit a black cigarette, offered me the pack, and wasn’t offended when I refused.
I knew Charlie had news and said, “You talked with Bagheri, didn’t you?”
“He wants you to meet someone,” Charlie said without preamble. “You’ve heard of Professor James Fouraz.”
My eyes nearly closed in concentration. I could feel my jaw jutting forward. “Fouraz? Guy died in prison, didn’t he?”
James Fouraz was a nuclear physicist and former professor of quantum mechanics at Tehran University. Until a couple of years earlier, he had been one of the country’s loudest critics of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear program. Then he’d dropped out of sight. Dropping out of sight in Iran usually meant dead.
“Not quite,” Charlie said. “They slapped him in jail for nearly a year.”
“Evin?”
“Where else?” Evin Prison was the kind of place where women went for exposing their heads in public and men went for talking politics over coffee. It was world famous for torture at the highest level. “Apparently they released him after he signed some papers promising to behave himself, but he’s been collecting information on their nuclear weapons program ever since.”
My ears perked up like a dog’s. “And Bagheri wants me to meet him. Huh!” Something this juicy drops in your lap, your first instinct is to give it the sniff test. I said, “Could be a setup,” but I wasn’t looking at Charlie when I said it.
He answered anyway. “You think?”
“How would you feel if you’d spent a year in Evin Prison with a broomstick up your ass? Would you come out of there swearing revenge, or would you come out of there praying for a way to get the government off your back? Make a trade? Me for him.”
Charlie shrugged. “You know more about Fouraz than I do. What do you think?”
“I think the guy probably knows things about The Twelver’s nuclear weapons program that even the mullahs don’t know,” I said without hesitation. “Set it up, Charlie. Just us and them.”
Charlie nodded. He got out his cell phone and sent a text. I waited a few minutes, and when we didn’t get a reply right away, I sent a coded message to Mr. Elliot. I asked him for a secure read on one Professor James Fouraz and tagged him with the code name The Wizard.
Mr. Elliot came back to me exactly seventeen minutes later and didn’t mince words. His message read: The Wizard checks out. Work him to the max.
Oh, that’s the plan, Mr. E. That’s very definitely the plan.
I worked our surveillance until midafternoon. A little after two, Charlie tapped my arm. “Bagheri’s in.”
“When?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Good. But we name the place, Charlie, not them.”
“Already done.” Charlie nodded. “Kheyrabad. It’s a little village south of the city. My men are already on the way.”
After I unplugged my iPhone from the satellite cable, I sent another message to Mr. Elliot: Off to see The Wizard.
The surveillance op at the back of the electronics store broke down in ten minutes flat. It was once again just an ordinary stockroom for a place selling digital cameras and dishwashers.
“The place is called Mad Khan’s Coffee House. One of my less successful investments,” Charlie said as we drove south on the Saidi Highway in a loose convoy of three vehicles, a mint-condition Chevy SUV leading, a less conspicuous Toyota hatchback in the rear, and our Honda keeping pace in the middle. Every vehicle carried at least two automatic weapons. Every man had a sidearm. Charlie didn’t mess around.
As for me, my Walther remained tucked in my shoulder harness. Charlie carried a Beretta .380 holstered inside his jacket. The rolling armament might have saved us from an ambush like the one I’d survived in Amsterdam, but I knew damn well that we were dead meat if the ball breakers from Iran’s National Security forces were waiting for us around the next corner. Worse yet if it was the black beards from the Revolutionary Guards.
The late-afternoon sun shrouded the hills of Tehran to our north. We entered a flat, desolate landscape that reminded me of the American Southwest. We passed a wrecking yard filled with rusted cars and entered a forlorn neighborhood of squat, dust-colored buildings. I couldn’t see Charlie’s men anywhere, and I was glad. No use making a show of things. And in all likelihood, Yousef Bagheri had his own eyes and ears in the neighborhood. He was, after all, the head of the MEK, and he had survived as an enemy of the state for nearly thirty years.
Our driver parked the Honda in a small lot next to the coffee shop, while the SUV and the Toyota went in opposite directions. Five other cars were parked in the lot, and I used three seconds to study them. Dim light spilled from the windows, and the marquee above the door read MAD KHAN’S COFFEE HOUSE.
Charlie’s cell phone chimed, and he looked at the message appearing on the screen. “We’re good,” he said.
He and I went inside. The air was warm and smelled of strong coffee and scented tobacco.
To the right, five men sat around a hookah, sucking on the mouthpieces, blowing smoke, gossiping in low voices. Two were dressed in long robes. The other three wore Western clothes. When they weren’t talking, they were texting. What the hell had the world come to? Two couples, both middle-aged, and drinking from stubby, widemouthed coffee mugs, sat at tables near the window. On the left, a pair of men in dark sport coats sat opposite each other in a booth.
One faced the door. Round face. Dark complexion. Thick mustache. Heavy gold chain peeking from the open collar of a striped shirt. Eyes that took in everything. Fiftyish.
“Yousef Bagheri,” Charlie whispered.
Bagheri saw us, gave a nod, and mumbled to his table companion. The other man turned toward us. He was older — in his earlier sixties if not more — grayer, and far more weather-beaten. Clean-shaven. Deep creases alongside his mouth and down the center of his brow. It wasn’t hard to guess that this was Professor James Fouraz.
Charlie exchanged a brief nod with the MEK man as we approached. We stopped in front of the table, and introductions were made in low, cautious voices. Charlie used the name on my French passport, calling me Richard Moreau.
Persians are big on shaking hands, and I obliged both men. I kept it formal. “Professor Fouraz. Mr. Bagheri. Good to meet you both.”
“Are you armed, Mr. Moreau?” Bagheri asked.