I activated the GPS-drone app on my phone and answered after the fifth ring. The voice-recognition app was already up and running, so I said, “ID?”
“It’s Fouraz.”
I didn’t need the voice-recognition app. I knew his voice. Too bad he’d used his real name. Damn! “No more names. Do you hear?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“And your phone?”
“Prepaid. It goes in the trash after this call.” he said. The stress level in his voice was like a 7.0 on the Richter scale. I heard a slow, deep breath and realized he was thinking about how to convey his message. “The dance has started. Three days ago. I just heard.”
I got it. He was telling me that Ahmadinejad had started to deploy the Sejil-2 missiles from Natanz. That explained the seven missiles I couldn’t account for during my unauthorized tour inside the facility. “How?”
“Wearing the most beautiful gowns you’ve ever seen.” So they’d camouflaged the missile transporters and slipped them in with routine truck convoys; this was a guess, but an educated one. Did that also mean that the launch locations had been surveyed and prepped? I had to find out, so I said, “Does that mean the ballroom locations have been chosen.”
“Not necessarily,” Fouraz said. “They’ll make that decision as late in the day as possible.”
He was right about that. All we could do was to get a full satellite scan up and running, and I knew that had already been done. “Do what you can to get me that list, will you?”
“I’m using every resource I have,” he said.
He severed the connection. I stared down at the phone for a good five seconds before putting in a videoconference call to General Rutledge. The local time was 8:42 P.M.; it was seven hours earlier in D.C.
From the shoulders up, it looked like the general had donned his dress uniform. I could see three silver stars glittering on each shoulder. He said, “Got your latest. Nasty. I’m on my way for a sit-down with Socrates.” He meant White House Chief of Staff Fry.
“Good. Because I’ve got more. It’s gotten worse.” I told Rutledge in the most cryptic way about the deployment of the Sejil-2 missiles.
Rutledge’s eyes shifted like the news had pushed him off-balance. “You sure? No one has seen a thing on our end. There’s been no suspicious movement. Nada.”
“Then I suggest they go back and review the history books.” I hoped that he understood that I meant every standard truck convoy that had gone out of Natanz in the last three days. I could hear the agitation in my voice and decided this was a pretty damn good time for it. “Not the best time in the world to start underestimating a bunch of lowlifes who have been pulling our chain for three decades.”
“Agree,” he said. “On it.”
I guess that was Tom’s way of saying, I’ll take boots-on-the-ground intel over eyes-in-the-sky any day, but I just need a reminder every once in a while. Fine. I’m your guy, Tom.
I saved him the trouble of asking about the launch sites by saying, “No word from Bluebird yet, but I didn’t expect it.”
“No, it’ll be a game-time decision.” My old friend glanced off camera. I could see the set of his jaw and the tension stretching the worry lines around his eyes. He looked back at me. “Any news on your subterranean friend?” He was talking about our traitor.
“Yeah. He’s close.” I didn’t tell him about the incident at the Grand Bazaar. The guy had enough on his mind. “But we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve on this end, too.”
“Stay frosty, my friend.”
“Roger that.”
He closed the connection. I stared at the iPhone screen. I had heard the frustration in Tom’s voice. Nervous. That wasn’t like him, but then he’d put all his eggs in one basket, and I just happened to be that basket. I knew one thing: black ops was an inexact science. You could plan, but the only thing you could count on was the plan’s changing. You could force intel only so far. If you pushed too hard, the whole operation could go south in the blink of an eye. The mission was 90 percent in the bag. But it was the last 10 percent that could spell the difference between life and death for some kid in Tel Aviv.
I heard footfalls on the other side of the door. In less than a second I judged their weight and consistency and decided they belonged to a woman. Leila. I put a hand on the grip of my Walther nonetheless.
The door opened. It was her. I tried to figure out a way not to scare her to death. “Leila. It’s Jake,” I said quickly.
Her breath caught deep in her throat, and she jumped. A hand covered her mouth. Okay, so I wasn’t very successful. “Jake. My God. You’re all right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was wise to call. I needed a place, and…”
“It’s all right.” She managed a breathless laugh, and it may have been the most magical sound I’d ever heard.
I pushed the Walther back down in its holster and came to my feet. I pointed to my drink. “I sort of helped myself.”
I came around the couch, and she fell into my arms. We stayed that way for five very satisfying seconds. Then she held me at arm’s length and shook her head. “You look like hell.”
I ran a hand over my three-day-old beard and realized she was probably right. “And here I am in the company of the one woman in Tehran whose opinion I actually give a damn about. Buy you a drink?”
“You found the scotch. Good,” she said. “Make mine a rum and Coke, will you?”
Fixing a lady a drink. Now there was some normalcy that felt comforting, and I took my time doing it. We clicked our glasses.
“You’re on the run,” she said. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“I had a little encounter at the bazaar. You’ll probably read about it in the paper tomorrow.”
“No, we won’t,” she said, a harsh reminder of the censorship that ruled the media in Tehran. She set her glass on the bar.
She unzipped her abaya, shrugged it off her shoulders, and let it fall around her ankles. It was an innocent gesture so fleetingly erotic that a part of me wouldn’t have minded a bit if she hadn’t stopped with the abaya or the blue pantsuit she wore underneath.
Leila caught me looking and smiled. Then she picked up her glass again and shook her head. “You set the rules, Jake. Not me.”
“That was dumb, wasn’t it?” I was kidding. Well, maybe only half kidding.
We carried our drinks to the love seat. Leila had the kind of discerning gaze that suggested a woman with the ability to read minds; she had always been successful in reading mine. “So, should I be packing my bags and heading as far into the mountains as my broken-down Toyota will take me?” She was dead serious. “I don’t fancy being turned into a pillar of radioactive salt.”
I reached out and touched her face. Touched her hair. I said, “If Ahmadinejad pulls the trigger first, it won’t matter how far up in the mountains you are, Leila. But if we shoot before he does, then Tehran will be the safest place you can be.”
“A lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts,’ Jake,” she said.
“Don’t I know it. But listen, I’m…”
My iPhone chimed before I could tell her that I was doing everything in my power to make certain she was safe right where she was. It was a text-message alert from Charlie. It read: If you’re not dead, call. Priority one.
“Charlie Amadi,” I said to Leila and rang his number.
He answered after a single ring, saying, “I think we’ve got our addresses.” The missile sites! Excellent. General Navid had come through. “But Bluebird refuses to send them electronically.”