“I don’t know.”
I return the photo to the folder and nod. “Well. It looks like I have some homework. If you don’t mind, I’m going to take you up on your offer for that room, get some rest, and then check out the container warehouse tonight.”
“Very good. I will show you to the room.”
I follow Hamadan out of the office and up a flight of stairs. It’s a small but very homey bedroom with a futon and dozens of pillows. There’s an attached bathroom as well. As far as I’m concerned, it’s pure luxury. I thank Hamadan and tell him I’ll see him at dinner. Then I settle down to relax. Before I go to sleep I check the OPSAT for messages. There’s one from Lambert that says, simply, “Talk to me.”
I press the implanted transmitter in my throat. “Colonel? Are you there?”
After a moment I hear Lambert’s voice in my ear. “Sam? Where are you?”
“In Tabriz. At Reza Hamadan’s place.”
“Good, you made it. Listen, I have some nasty news. Another one of our Splinter Cells was murdered yesterday. Marcus Blaine.”
Blaine. Again, I didn’t know him personally, but I know who he was. He was Third Echelon’s man stationed in Israel.
“How did it happen?” I ask.
“We don’t know yet. Details are very sketchy, but the preliminary report indicates that it may be the same killer or killers who got to Rick Benton and Dan Lee.”
That’s when I begin to take what Hamadan said about the Shop having a list of names a bit more seriously.
15
ANDREI
Zdrok sat in his office in the Swiss-Russian International Mercantile Bank, gazing out the window at the streets of Zurich’s financial district. This had been his home for several years and he loved it. Zurich was a very expensive place to reside, but he had the means to take advantage of everything the city had to offer. His chateau on the shore of Lake Zurich was his pride and joy, and the only time he ever left the home was to come into the bank. When he wasn’t working, he indulged himself in expensive hobbies. Zdrok owned six automobiles that were considered collector’s items, including a 1933 Rolls-Royce that Paul von Hindenberg once owned. His most prized possession, however, was the Swan 46 yacht that he had recently purchased. He liked to sail it leisurely along the length of the lake and sometimes slept on it. Zdrok considered it a small slice of heaven on earth.
The Shop had done well. The enterprise had begun modestly, operating at the beginning out of Georgia. He and Antipov had made the first arms sale, and then they recruited Prokofiev and Herzog to join the team. The Shop grew in size and influence, supplying arms of all kinds to whoever was able to pay for them. Zdrok had no political aspirations or loyalties. The almighty dollar was his only motivation.
The business really blossomed during the Bosnian conflict. Zdrok moved the base of operations to Baku, Azerbaijan, for security reasons and opened the first Swiss-Russian bank in Zurich. A second branch was built in Baku two years later. By using the front of the two banks, Zdrok was able to assemble a discreet machine that handled marketing, acquisition, delivery, and profit laundering. Finding the right employees to do the grunt work had been time-consuming—he had to be sure that his men would remain loyal. He paid them well, which went a long way toward insuring their devotion. At any rate, the common soldiers of the organization didn’t know a lot about the operation. Thankfully, to date no one with any real knowledge of the Shop had ever been caught by the law.
Andrei Zdrok felt justified in enjoying his life in Zurich.
The biggest problem they now faced was rebuilding the Far East pipelines. The business had been hurt badly but not irreparably. The Shop had intelligence of its own, and Zdrok was certain that the Americans’ National Security Agency was responsible for the damage. Operation Sweep, the initiative he created to hunt down and eliminate Western spies, was already in place and active when the events in Macau occurred. Now the operation had become a priority.
Zdrok thought about the Far East situation and how it could be repaired in a timely and efficient manner. It was possible to bring in another partner, the leader of a Chinese Triad called the Lucky Dragons with whom the Shop had done a lot of business. His name was Jon Ming and he was quite possibly the most powerful gangster in China. He resided in Hong Kong, his Triad’s home for decades. Even when the handover occurred and other Triad clans moved out of the former British colony, Ming and the Lucky Dragons stayed. He had a special relationship with the Chinese government. He had the ability to pull strings and keep lawmakers in his pocket. Yes, Ming might be the answer to the Shop’s problems, but Zdrok wasn’t sure how the other partners would feel about bringing the man aboard.
There was also an American he knew in the Far East who might be able to help. Zdrok’s partners would most certainly be opposed to working with
him
, but Zdrok thought it might be advantageous. After all, the man was known to and trusted by the U.S. intelligence agencies. Zdrok decided to put that thought on hold and wrestle with it later. There was time.
The phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Zdrok.” He listened to the short message from the caller and replied, “Thank you.” He hung up the phone, swiveled his chair to face the computer, and logged on.
His technical director had assured him that sensitive Shop files used a complex encryption that could never be hacked into. Even if auditors came to the bank and insisted on confiscating the hard drive, they would never be able to access the information. Therefore, Zdrok kept all of the Shop’s records, plans, and operations on his office computer.
He brought up the file marked Sweep, short for Operation Sweep, the campaign to eliminate those who wished to harm the Shop. They were the enemy, these intelligence agents from foreign powers who insisted on disrupting Zdrok’s business of making money. Didn’t he have a right to pursue the vocation of his choice? Who were they to tell him that he couldn’t sell his goods? Makers and sellers of guns do not kill people. What his clients did with the products was not his concern.
A list of names, some in black font and some in red, appeared on the screen. Zdrok highlighted the first name that was still black—Marcus Blaine—and changed the color to red. Like the two other red names, Dan Lee and Rick Benton, Blaine was now considered “Deleted.”
Two more entries remained in black. Zdrok clicked on the first one, the man whose name they believed to be Sam Fisher. Zdrok quickly reread the details that had been gathered on Fisher—that he was supposedly a CIA agent in the 1980s and was married to an NSA agent named Regan, that he worked out of the Washington/Baltimore area, and that he was the oldest Third Echelon Splinter Cell. Most significantly, he may or may not have a daughter in her late teens or early twenties. No one knew what Fisher looked like, but the information they possessed was good enough to track down a possible suspect. The Shop’s man in Israel had done well.
Zdrok picked up the phone and dialed a number. When the call was answered, Zdrok said, “All right, I’m convinced. It’s time to act with regard to Fisher. Find out where he is. Don’t use force yet—that will be a last resort. Psychological pressure will probably work. After all, she’s young.”
16
AFTER
a good night’s sleep on a real futon mattress, I wake refreshed and spend more time going through the material in Rick Benton’s file. There really isn’t a lot there. He must have kept most of his records on a personal computer, which I understand was never recovered, or in his home, which was thoroughly scoured by NSA personnel. Nevertheless, there are a few items worth deciphering.
The first of these is a page of doodles. Benton had written several words on the page and had drawn arrows between the names, apparently attempting to connect them or show their relationships. The words are:
Shop, Shadows, Tarighian, A. Mohammed, Zdrok,
and
Mertens.
The first two labels I know, of course, and the third one has become a name I want to investigate. “A. Mohammed” I just learned about from Hamadan. The other two are mysteries to me. The Shop seems to be the dominant name on this makeshift chart. An arrow points from the Shop to the Shadows. Another arrow goes from the Shadows to A. Mohammed, but a dotted arrow points to Tarighian. There’s also a big, underlined question mark next to the name. Mertens also has a question mark beside it, and a two-way arrow connects it to the Shadows. The only free-floating word is Zdrok, and there’s a circle around it.
I have no clue what it all means, so I type a text message on the OPSAT, photograph the chart with the built-in camera, and transmit the files to Lambert. Maybe he and his team can make sense of it. Why didn’t Benton communicate all this stuff to Washington as soon as he got it? Lambert is right—Benton
was
reckless. Maybe he got too cocky for his own good, which sometimes happens in this business.
I also copy the photograph of Namik Basaran and send it to Washington with instructions to identify the other man in the picture.
Whatever Benton discovered about the Shop and the Shadows, it was enough to get him killed. I feel as if I’m stepping into a pool of murk that has remnants of his blood in it. I just hope I can solve the puzzle before the same forces that caught up with him happen to cross my path.
AFTER
nightfall I drive Reza’s two-door Pazhan, a jeep-like vehicle made in Iran, out of Tabriz toward the container company’s warehouse. It’s located just west of the city limits in a nonresidential, industrial zone. The Pazhan is a funky old thing, probably twelve years old. The Iran government doesn’t allow many foreign-made cars into the country. You’ll find Japanese brands but certainly no American ones. Iranian automobiles are notorious for being bad for the environment, but they have a substantial monopoly on the market.
The Tabriz Container Company’s warehouse is a large building that appears to be thirty or forty years old. There isn’t much in the way of lighting around the building at this time of night, probably because there isn’t a lot to steal.
I park the Pazhan a quarter of a mile away, off the main road. Wearing my uniform and headset, I walk to the building, traverse the empty parking lot, and stand for a moment with my back to the wall, near the employees’ entrance. There’s a lone bright bulb over the door. I load the SC-20K with a ring airfoil projectile and aim at the light. Got it—the front of the warehouse is plunged in darkness. I hope the sound of the bulb breaking doesn’t attract any security guards.
I stand in front of the door and peer through the square window in the center. There are a few lights on, but it’s difficult to discern the geography of the place from here. I use the lock picks to open the door and slip inside.
It’s an empty reception office. A door with keycard access leads to the rest of the warehouse. I drop the goggles over my eyes and activate the thermal-vision mode. I’m in luck—someone very recently went through the door. The keys most often punched show traces of residual heat as long as not much time has elapsed. The trick is to press them in the correct order. Logically the key that’s the faintest would be the first one and the brightest key would be the last. Distinguishing the differences of luminescence on the three keys in-between is the hard part.
On this particular pad only four keys show heat. That means there are only four numbers in the code or one of five numbers is used twice. I’ll need a little help with this one, so I aim my OPSAT screen at the keypad and snap a shot. I then use the controls on the OPSAT to play with the contrasts in the image. This gives me a digital readout of the amount of luminescence it’s picking up. The 2 key is the brightest, so it’s either pressed twice or it’s the last of four numbers. The 4 is the next brightest, followed by 8 and 3.
I try 3, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.
I try 2, 3, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.
I press 3, 2, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.
I punch 3, 8, 2, 4, and 2. Green light. The door unlocks. I’m lucky the system doesn’t set off an alarm after three unsuccessful tries, which many do.
I’m in the warehouse. The only illumination is up here at the front. There’s a desk by the door, presumably used by a foreman or some such employee. A book lies open, facedown, on the desk. I know I’m not alone here because of the heat signatures on the keypad.
The rest of the place is full of, well, containers. Boxes, crates, barrels, cans, stacks of flat cardboard that will eventually be folded into boxes, and even plastic kitchen containers along the lines of Tupperware. Amazing.
I move in and start down an aisle of crates. They’re all marked with the same Tabriz Container Company stamp I saw in Arbil. I tap on one of the crates and hear a hollow echo—it’s empty. Just in case, though, I reach into the Osprey and pull out a metal detection wand. It’s like the thing they use at airports to wave around your armpits and between your legs if you happen to beep when you walk through the metal detector.
As I continue down the aisle, I wave the detector across every other crate. They’re all turning up empty until I cross an aisle to go to another section. This time, the wand buzzes over some crates, and a little too loudly for my comfort. I use my combat knife to pry off the top slat and peer inside. Engine parts—big deal.
“Salaam?”
I freeze. There’s my missing individual who leaves heat signatures on keypads. The voice comes from the other side of the warehouse. Shit. He must have heard the detector buzz.
“Salaam?”
It’s closer. He’s coming this way. I quickly move back the way I came, treading lightly, hoping he’s not sure exactly where the sound came from. I keep moving until I reach a darker aisle. I quickly negotiate the shelving here, climb on top of a crate, and pull myself to the top shelf. They’d need forklifts to place and remove objects from this height. I lie facedown and wait.