Adan came through next, followed by Miriam, Foad, and Sediq. Lourds held the door open a moment longer, thinking the bearded man might try to follow them, but the gunfire was loud and dangerous. When bullets started whining off the open door, he realized the Revolutionary Guardsmen were shooting at them. He pushed the door closed and heard the electronic locks click back into place.
‘Come on.’ Adan grabbed Lourds and pulled him into motion.
Lourds caught up to Miriam and ran beside her, ready to help in case she tripped in the too-big boots.
Near the front of the prison, a car with one headlight roared through a downed section of the wall. It skidded to a stop on the rough terrain, drifting well past the fugitives.
Adan opened the rear passenger door. ‘Get in.’
Foad ran around to the other side and opened that door. Lourds loaded Miriam into the backseat, then slid in beside her. Shahram jumped into the front seat, joined by Adan, and Sediq tromped on the accelerator. The car hesitated just a moment, then roared forward.
Turning the wheel sharply, Sediq pointed the vehicle back toward the impromptu entrance.
‘Someone is coming!’ Adan peered behind them, his face tightened by fear.
Glancing back, Lourds spotted a military vehicle gaining quickly on them. Bright flashes came from the windows, right before the first bullets rattled the escape car’s body and shattered the back window.
In the next instant, the Revolutionary Guards’ vehicle blew up and overturned. It flipped three times, throwing flaming bodies in all directions, and finally came to a stop on its side as Sediq drove them back across the downed prison wall.
Adan looked at Lourds. ‘Who was that man that called your name?’
Lourds shook his head. ‘I don’t know. A fan? Those people turn up in the oddest places.’
A white grin split Adan’s smoke-smeared face. ‘You are crazy.’
‘After tonight, I wouldn’t doubt it.’ Lourds looked behind them to see if anyone else was pursuing them.
No one did.
‘Whoever that man is, he knows you, Professor Lourds. I do not know if he means you good or evil, but I do not think you have seen the last of him.’
Lourds assumed that as well. He’d seen the maniacal look in the man’s eyes.
Head pounding, senses swimming, Mufarrij jogged from the prison as fast as he could move. As soon as he exited the hole in the back wall, four vehicles sped in from the front of the prison. No Revolutionary Guardsmen left alive inside the prison came out to challenge them.
His men got in, carrying their dead with them. They had lost six of their brothers in arms. It was a high price to pay.
‘Where do we go now?’ Haytham sat beside Mufarrij in the rear seat of the car.
‘There is only one place the American can go if he wishes to escape Tehran and the wrath of the Ayatollah.’
‘The Kurd lands.’
‘Yes. We will follow.’ Mufarrij mopped blood from his face with his sleeve.
‘And when we find him?’
‘We keep him safe. Davari is involved in this.’
‘I know that name. He is a colonel among the Guardsmen.’
Mufarrij nodded and instantly regretted the action, as his head pounded. ‘Davari is a very dedicated warrior who serves the Ayatollah. Also a very dangerous man.’
‘So I have been told.’
‘Evidently he has been assigned to find the American and bring him before the Ayatollah. Davari will not quit until he has Lourds or he himself is dead.’
Haytham smiled coldly. ‘There is no reason we cannot arrange the latter. It will only be a matter of timing, my friend.’
48
When Miriam woke, she saw Lourds sitting at the small desk in the corner of the basement room they were hiding in. Reza and his friends were working out the details of the rescue effort to get Lourds and her out of the country. One of Reza’s people had already retrieved the book hidden in Lourds’s former hotel room.
The story about the prison break-in — touted as an attack by US- and Israeli-backed terrorists in the Iranian papers and media — was all over the news. They also declared the Revolutionary Guardsmen had provided a good accounting of themselves, killing upward of a hundred of their attackers.
The tale had been concocted to account for the damage that had been done, to make the Guardsmen look better, to refute the idea that a small force could have reduced the place to shambles, and to explain all of the bodies coming out. Whoever the other team was, they had been lethally efficient.
Fully dressed under the blanket in case she had to get up and bolt at a moment’s notice, Miriam watched Lourds working. She didn’t know if he’d slept on the thin pallet Reza had provided beside the small bed she slept in.
Fresh scrapes and bruises showed on his face and arms. Every now and again, he touched his face and jerked as pain sliced through him. It reminded her that he wasn’t a soldier — or a Mossad agent — used to hardship and injury.
He leaned back in the chair and stretched, and she wondered at how he could put in such inhuman hours. After Reza had gotten Professor Namati’s statue of al-Buraq from his office, Lourds had been extremely excited, and had even told her that he’d figured out how to break the code in the book.
But, as the hours had stretched on, he’d become more dispirited and morose. The solution hadn’t come as easily as he’d expected.
He leaned back now, putting his hands on his forehead and staring up at the featureless ceiling. He was lost, she knew, tangled somewhere in all the evaluations and permutations of his thoughts. She felt sorry for him.
She could only guess how afraid he’d been to go along with the risky plan the former Revolutionary Guardsmen had come up with to break into the prison and get her out.
But, in the end, he’d been there.
It said a lot about him.
‘Stuck?’
Startled out of his reverie, he turned and looked at her. ‘Good morning.’
‘Is it?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Morning. I’ve lost all track of time.’
‘It is.’ Lourds looked at his satphone. ‘No. I’m wrong. It’s two in the afternoon.’
‘Have you slept?’
‘Yes.’
‘Much?’
‘Not really.’ Lourds gestured at the book and the statue. ‘I don’t like being stymied. It’s always part of the process, but I’ve never gotten used to it.’
Miriam threw the blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Would you explain what you were talking about with the flying horse again? I can barely remember yesterday.’ She’d slept most of yesterday, with her pistols under her pillow and Lourds in the room with her.
‘Why don’t I go get us something to eat, and we can talk over lunch. You haven’t eaten very much, and I’m famished.’
‘You’re always famished.’
Lourds showed her a mock scowl, then headed for the corner of the room where the ladder led up to the house above them. He knocked, was allowed to exit, and went up.
Miriam lay back on the bed and stared at the winged horse.
She awoke again when Lourds sat on the bed. Her hand curled on the butt of one of the pistols almost before she realized it.
Lourds grimaced, knowing what had happened. ‘I’ve never had a graduate student quite like you.’
Feeling slightly embarrassed, not sure if Lourds’s naïveté was genuine or not, Miriam left the pistol under the pillow and sat up.
He held a plate loaded with food. ‘I thought we could share.’ He handed it to Miriam, who balanced it on her crossed legs.