The Courier: A Ryan Kealey Thriller (17 page)

Mahdavi Yazdi stood at the back of a small crowd of onlookers, most of whom were men who told each other that they were too old to be worried about the effects of a little radiation. Many of them were fishermen who had already made their morning haul and brought it to market. They were talking about the Stalk and how it had been there for decades, about how bodies were occasionally found in the river—mostly people who thought they could swim or criminals who shook down the wrong black marketer—but no one could remember an instance of someone having been buried on the beach.

Yazdi had arrived with the police lieutenant. After parking his car in the lot of a shop that rented beach umbrellas, he hung well back. From the way the lieutenant had circled the spot and then stayed away, Yazdi knew it was more highly radioactive than the other locations. He watched, from behind parked trucks, from behind a nearby shack, as a police unit arrived in a van. A man in a radiation suit emerged and dug at the sands with his hands, like a dog. He stepped in and removed only a body, which he placed in a red hazmat bag. Then he tested the hole with the Geiger counter, covered it, and placed stakes with red tape about two meters beyond, until the Geiger readings seemed to drop. Yazdi knew then that the box he sought was not there. The question was where had it been taken? The Iranian moved about as he watched to see where the police went. One of them talked with a man who had been inside the shack Yazdi had hidden behind. The officer asked him to come outside and the two men spoke for some time, the occupant of the shack shaking his head and shrugging over and over.

He didn’t know anything. He hadn’t seen anything
.
He hadn’t been here when anything happened.

He was lying. He barely looked at the spot where the body had been recovered. He showed no curiosity, asked no questions. Yazdi had seen that kind of body language in countless interrogations over too many years. He also wore his Western-style shirttails outside his waistband. He could have a weapon hidden there.

Only when the pocket of locals had gathered did Yazdi finally move closer to the crime scene. The men had been bold because they belonged here, they had alibis, they did not care who saw them.

“Did anyone see the victim?” Yazdi asked after standing among them a few minutes, becoming part of the landscape, one of the group.

“I did,” said a leathery man with white hair. “I didn’t know him.”

“What did he look like?” Yazdi asked.

“Dead,” the man chuckled.

Yazdi had been on his feet in the sun for three hours. He wanted to knife the fool. “God does not appreciate such levity.” Anywhere from Africa through western Asia, Yazdi could always count on a percentage of people in any group to be religious; he knew that would shake loose an answer from someone looking to erase that flip comment.

Another man said to no one in particular, “He was a small man. He had a square face—like that Egyptian actor, the one from the war film about Feisal and the Englishman.”

“Omar Sharif,” said another man.

“Yes, that’s the one!”

Yazdi had heard of the actor. He looked him up his phone. He did not look like Mohammed, the man he sought. He
did
look like one of the known confederates of the killer—Aden. His office had sent him the man’s photograph twenty minutes before. It had been in the dossier of Yemeni contacts collected by Qassam Pakravesh.

The operation was over by one p.m. Yazdi wasn’t happy to have spent so much time here, but this was the only place where he was likely to find clues about Mohammed’s whereabouts. And he knew where he was going to start his investigation: with the man who had seemed much too comfortable with the fact that an irradiated corpse had been found just meters from his place of business.

As soon as the police van and the coroner were gone, Yazdi went to the shack. It was a small warehouse of fishing supplies from which the young man had not left—nor had anyone come for supplies. The entire time he was there, the only soul who entered had arrived on a motorcycle, gone in with a tattered backpack, and left with it. The license plate was from Algeria. There was mud on the bike. He had come across the border off-road, probably with cash. Money laundering was one of the most profitable businesses in this region. When he went through the records of the Shah’s regime, Yazdi found a list of top-ranking generals who could be called upon to use military convoys as part of a cash-moving operation from the Middle East to Africa and into Spain and Europe.

The Iranian intelligence officer found the door slightly ajar. He noticed there were windows on all sides. The man didn’t like to be surprised. Yazdi knocked, was invited inside. The young man was seated on the corner of a rickety card table, talking on his cell phone. He held up a finger, asking Yazdi to wait.

The cell phone light wasn’t on. The man was using the delay to size the newcomer up, to see what he did. He assumed an aggressor wouldn’t act when he was on the phone with someone who could send help.

Yazdi didn’t give the charade more than the moments it took for him to recognize it. He saw something in the man’s shirt pocket that told him all else he needed to know. Yazdi jumped forward and kicked his foot hard against the wooden leg directly beneath the man. The table shuddered and went down as if there had been an earthquake. The young Moroccan didn’t fall to the floor; he fell against Yazdi. The intelligence officer stepped back, sliding one arm around his back to where he suspected a gun might be.

It was there: a baby Luger, big stock, short barrel. A skilled knife fighter, Yazdi wouldn’t have to take the switchblade from his pocket. Not yet. He would use the handgun to get the man’s attention, keep him settled.

Yazdi kneed the disoriented man in the gut to drop him to his knees. He swung behind him like he was riding the man’s back and dug the high, sharp gun sight deep into his right ear.

The Moroccan did not buck, did not try to get out from under the intruder. He was breathing heavily but seemed otherwise composed as he raised his hands from the floor.

Yazdi reached around, pulled the cash from his shirt pocket. “Where did you get these bills?”

The man replied in French.

Yazdi reached into his pocket and snapped out his switchblade. He held it in his fist, pressed it point-down in the back of the man’s neck. He said in Arabic, “I am going to press this down until you answer the question.”

He started to push down, twisting the point of the blade as he went. The man shrieked deep down in his throat, winced, then asked the assailant to stop—in Arabic. Yazdi halted, though he did not remove the blade.

“A man brought the money this morning,” Hassan said.

“Why?”

“It was a bribe. He did not want me to tell what I saw.”

“Which was?”

“He buried a body out there, in the sand,” Hassan told him. “The body that was just removed.”

“Where did the man go?”

“I don’t know.”

“A man like you did not inquire?” Yazdi said. “You tried to lie to me about speaking Arabic, so I assume you’re concealing more. He had more money than this.”

“I did not know—”

“I do. He took it from someone he murdered.” Blood was trickling from the wound, running along the man’s spine. “You would have taken everything unless he convinced you that he needed it.” Yazdi gave the blade another push. The man yelped and squirmed. Yazdi dug the pistol in harder and Hassan settled uneasily. The Iranian rotated the blade around its point. Hassan bit his lower lip hard. “That is bone,” Yazdi said. “The next thrust will begin to penetrate cartilage. Tell me everything about this man and his cargo and his destination or the next stop will be your spinal cord.”

“He was Yemeni . . . he buried the body—”

“Did you know who the dead man was?”

“Yes! I mean—it was his friend. They had done something and he was killed.”

“How did he leave?”

“He was driving a white van. He wanted to know how to get out of Morocco.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I sent him to the Maghreb Highway.”

“How long ago?”

“Three hours . . . maybe four.”

“Why? What was he carrying?”

“I don’t know! I swear it!” Hassan sunk to the floor, to his forearms. Yazdi remained on top of him, sitting on his shoulders. Blood flowed down the man’s back and over the sides of his neck.

“Either you are lying or you showed an uncommon lack of curiosity.” The knife began to turn downward. “What was in the van?”

“God . . .
God!
No . . .
please!
”

“What was in the van?”

“
I don’t
—” the words were lost in a scream as the blade slipped between vertebrae and hit soft tissue. The man howled into his closed mouth, tried to wriggle away, then began to tremble violently.

“Talk,” Yazdi said. “I know what was there. He stole it. I want it back. I want you to confirm it.” He stopped moving the knife. “Last chance.”

“It was a box!” Hassan gasped. “A metal box! I sent him to someone who could . . . please
stop!
I’ll tell you!”

Yazdi relaxed his fist. His victim was panting, shaking. The Iranian gave him a few seconds to compose himself.

“I’m waiting,” Yazdi said.

“I sent him to the University of Al-Qarawiyyin in Fès,” Hassan told him.

“To see whom?”

“Professor Boulif.”

Yazdi had been leaning forward, over his victim. Upon hearing the name, he pushed the gun deeper into the man’s ear. Hassan tried to turn his head away but Yazdi forced the gun to follow him. Blood dripped thickly to the floor. Yazdi leaned over and said into the other ear, “
Faroonee
Mustapha?

“Yes!”

Though the epithet technically meant “pharaonic”—and referred to the fact that Boulif had been born and raised in Cairo—it was intended to mean that his will was law. The physicist was reputed to be among the top nuclear researchers in all of the jihadist world. He was one of the scientists Tehran had tried to recruit in the early twenty-first century; he had turned them down because he professed that their goals were too modest.

Yazdi sat back on his victim’s shoulders. His full weight was resting on the man’s spine. He lay the gun down, confident Hassan would not be going anywhere. Wrapping both hands around the hilt of the blade, he jammed it down hard. The thrust severed the man’s spinal cord and he went lifeless, splayed like a bow-shot stag.

Yazdi withdrew the knife, picked up the gun, and stood. He was careful not to step in the blood that was pooling around the dead man. He wiped his fingerprints off the dead man’s gun and dropped it on the floor. He looked down. The Muslim world was better off without this human scum. Yazdi then wiped his switchblade on the man’s shirt—it would be going with him.

Moving to the door, Yazdi opened it by laying his elbow on the latch. It closed behind him on its own. He squinted in the sunlight as he headed for his car. There was only one reason to take the device to the Pharaoh, and that was to arm it. Once that happened, finding it would be even more difficult: it could be detonated at will by a man who was already anxious, probably tired, definitely a jihadist, and no doubt willing to die. The West would blame Iran. Iran would have no way of defending itself against complicity in such an event.

With increasing urgency, Yazdi hurried to his rental car. He knew the Pharaoh’s modus operandi—and he also knew that, unlike the crushed little man he left behind him, Mustapha Boulif would not be so easy to break . . . if he could get to him at all.

 

 

Rayhan arrived as the body was being taken away. Though she could have used the name of their INTERPOL liaison to get information, she felt it would be better to look at the faces around the perimeter, see who didn’t belong.

That was easy. The Arab who was standing among the fisherman: he was not leathery from exposure but smooth from sitting behind a desk. He was not burned by the sun but swarthy by birth. His clothes were not Western despite his efforts to make himself look like a tourist. There were no brand names, not even on his cap.

And he was not just looking at the pit on the beach but at the shack to his right, along the access road, behind him at the narrower section of beach. When he left the group and went to the shack, Rayhan moved closer. She could not see what was going on behind the curtains but she could hear. There were cries.

Rayhan withdrew until she saw the visitor leave. He did not look around but went directly to his car and left. Before, he had not known where he was going. Now he did. She looked around, saw no one was watching, and ran to the shack. She entered, setting her fishing rod and tackle box on the floor beside the door.

The man on the floor was dead. A hole in his neck was burbling blood. The woman looked away and took a break.

There is no time for this
, she thought.
You must not be squeamish. You came in here for a reason.

The reason was to find the keys, take the motorbike that sat out back, and go after the car.

She squatted by the body, looked away, and breathed through her mouth. The man was wearing cologne. She didn’t want to inhale it, think of death every time she smelled something like it. She patted his pants pockets, found the keys, hooked them out with her index finger. She rose and turned—as the door opened outward.

A big man stood silhouetted against the blue sky and darker blue river. The figure took a moment to understand what he was seeing before taking a step back into the sunlight. He drew his firearm and turned it on the occupant of the shack.

“Get up!” he said in Arabic.

Rayhan raised her hands slowly, face high, and stood. “I did not do this—the man who just left is responsible. He drove away.”