The Last Run (24 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

IRAN—HORMOZGAN PROVINCE, ABADAN
13 DECEMBER 1658 HOURS (GMT +3.30)

TO: HEAD OF STATION, TEHRAN—BARNETT, L
.

FROM: DIRECTOR OPERATIONS—CROCKER, P
.

OPERATION: ICECROWN

MESSAGE BEGINS_

REQUIRE YOU DISPATCH STATION NUMBER TWO TO ABADAN. SECURITY DIVISION TO PROVIDE BACKUP DURING TRANSIT AND ON GROUND. STATION NUMBER TWO DIRECTED TO SECURE TRANSPORT DOWNRIVER ABADAN BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY. VITAL TO REACH RZ ALPHA WITH MINDER ONE AND PACKAGE: COUGAR AT 2245 LOCAL, NO LATER, THEN PROCEED RZ BRAVO ALL SPEED FOR EXFIL
.

STATION NUMBER TWO DIRECTED TO CLOSE BUSINESS OUTSTANDING PRIOR TO DEPARTURE
.

STATION NUMBER TWO AUTHORIZED TO DRAW ANY MATERIEL IN SUPPORT OF ACTION
.

STATION NUMBER TWO AND SECURITY ESCORT ORDERED TO DRAW ARMS
.

_MESSAGE ENDS

It wasn’t until
Barnett had handed him the Beretta compact from the gun safe in the office, along with a box of ammunition, that Caleb realized, whatever happened next, he was finished in Iran.

“Hope to God you don’t have to use it, Caleb,” Barnett said around his cigarette. “And hope even more that if you do, you kill whatever bastard is aiming at you.”

Caleb stared at the pistol in his hand, alien and ugly and entirely unfamiliar to him. He had performed dismally on his pistol drills at the School, had barely qualified, in fact. It seemed to him absurd that he should be trusted with such a thing, especially now, especially with what was at stake. He tucked the weapon into his backpack, along with the box of bullets, setting them beside his sat phone and GPS unit, then took the stack of rials Barnett was now offering him. He split them up amongst the backpack and his pockets.

“Medical supplies, you think?” Barnett asked him.

“MacIntyre’s already taking care of it,” Caleb said. “He’s bringing a full kit, think it’s even got a bottle of oxygen in it.”

“Wise. No telling the state she’ll be in when you get her.”

Caleb appreciated that Barnett hadn’t said “
if
you get her.”

“VEVAK’ll be on you the moment you step outside, you know that,” Barnett said. “They’ll be on the car to the airport, and they’ll have the flight plan before you’re in the air, and they’ll be waiting for you when you touch down. Even with the confusion on the ground, all this running about because of the
Hadi
, you’re still going to have a hell of a job losing them, and you’re damn well going to have to do it if you’re to pull this off.”

“I was trying not to think about that, actually.”

“That’s enough of that. You’re a better agent than you give yourself credit for being, Caleb. Doubt is good, it keeps us honest. But too much of it is a poison.” Barnett put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder for a moment, the paternal manner manifest once more. “You were a good Two, lad, and I’ll make certain that goes in the permanent file.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They shook hands.

“You’re a hell of a spy, Caleb,” Barnett said.

The
surveillance was blatant on the way from the embassy to the airport. Two cars, front and back, and only when they rolled out onto the field, to the airplane kept and piloted by the British mission in Iran, did the other vehicles back off, parking within twenty meters. Caleb lent MacIntyre a hand moving their few bags from the car onto the plane, and once everything was aboard, he looked back, saw that men had emerged from the cars. One of them, he was sure, was Zahabzeh, but at this distance it was impossible to read the man’s expression, what he was thinking.

Caleb couldn’t imagine his thoughts were kind ones, and for a moment he felt an absurd kinship with the man. He didn’t know him, in truth didn’t want to, but both of them, he recognized, were subordinates, both of them followers, now asked to lead, and he had to wonder if it sat as uncomfortably on Farzan Zahabzeh as it did on himself.

MacIntyre
, like Caleb, had brought a go-bag. Or so Caleb thought. Until they were in the air and the man opened it, withdrawing a rifle with a folding stock. Caleb turned his attention from the map he had spread open before him, watched as MacIntyre checked the weapon, breaking it down and then reassembling it before stowing the long gun away once more. Then MacIntyre pulled a pistol from the bag, a Browning, and repeated the procedure.

“You’re loaded?” MacIntyre asked.

“Not yet.”

The man looked over at him with brown sleepy eyes. “Think you’ll have a better time to do it, then?”

“I suppose not.” Caleb folded the map away, unzipped the flap on his backpack, took out the Beretta and the ammunition. He loaded the clip slowly, struggling to get the last bullet locked into place, aware that MacIntyre was observing him the entire time. When he finished, he dropped the pistol into his pocket and looked at MacIntyre, not certain if, or even what, he should say.

“Don’t think of it as killing,” MacIntyre told him. “Think of it as saying ‘Stop that’ in a very clear, very permanent voice.”

It
was warmer in Abadan than it had been in Tehran, in the low sixties Fahrenheit, clear and without humidity. Caleb went to pick up the car from the rental station within the decrepit terminal. He had the keys in his hand and was headed to the vehicle itself before he caught the first hint of local attention. It wasn’t at all surprising, but for an instant he felt near-panic, wondering what he might do or say if he was stopped with the gun in his pocket.

But it wasn’t going to happen, and he knew that. To Zahabzeh, Caleb was secondary, a consolation prize at best; and for exactly the same reason that they hadn’t been stopped upon leaving the embassy, heading to the airport, they weren’t going to be stopped in Abadan. At least not yet. Zahabzeh had to let them run. They were his only possible leads to Chace, to Shirazi. They were his bird dogs.

Knowing that didn’t particularly make him feel much better.

The car was a Khodro, an old one, and Caleb brought it around, waited until MacIntyre had loaded the vehicle and hopped in before pulling out onto Route 37, heading south, then east, into the heart of Abadan. The sun was just beginning to set as they drove past the refinery fields. The massive storage containers loomed along both sides of the road for five, six kilometers before giving way to the city itself. On the outskirts, they passed old houses crowned with
badgirs
, the ingenious natural air conditioners that had been invented centuries earlier, which relied on convection to pull hot air out, to pull even the slightest breeze in and down.

Traffic was thicker near the heart of the city, end-of-the-day commuters, one shift returning from the refineries as another went out to continue feeding the petrobeast. Caleb kept his eyes open for a place to stop, somewhere he and MacIntyre could get a meal. He finally parked outside a café just south of downtown. They exited the car, and while Caleb went inside to buy them each a cup of chay, MacIntyre stayed behind and searched the Khodro.

When Caleb returned, MacIntyre was holding a small, black square in his hand. “What should I do with it?”

Caleb set his tea on the roof of the Khodro, took the tiny tracking device, then tossed it underhand into the road. Traffic had crushed it to bits before he’d had a chance to pick up his tea again.

“You hungry?” Caleb asked. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

They
found a downscale food stand another two kilometers south, closer to the forest of palm trees that grew all along the banks of the river. Water flowed past Abadan to the east and the west, river channels that had been artificially deepened and widened to accommodate the loading of pure light crude. The soil closest to the banks was lush and, even now, in winter, green. They ate outside, MacIntyre keeping one eye on their car, Caleb watching the people around him. For the first time since reaching Iran, for reasons he could not explain, he felt relaxed, and chatted cheerfully with the vendor who made their dinner.

Then MacIntyre said, “Mr. Lewis,” and Caleb turned to see a black van pulling up, double-parking beside their Khodro, two jeeps with soldiers accompanying it. The soldiers stayed put, but out of the van came Farzan Zahabzeh, followed by two others. Zahabzeh turned back to them, spoke something Caleb couldn’t hear, but its meaning was clear enough, and when he reached their picnic table, he was alone.

“Mr. Lewis,” Zahabzeh said, in English. “I wish to speak with you.”

“Have you eaten?” Caleb indicated the bench opposite him. “The
chelo mahi
is outstanding.”

Zahabzeh shook his head, dismissing the offer and the pleasantry together. He looked meaningfully at MacIntyre, then back to Caleb. “I should like to speak with you alone.”

Caleb shrugged, and MacIntyre got to his feet, went back to where the car was parked, leaning against it, watching them.

“We want Youness Shirazi,” Zahabzeh said, after a moment. “You want your agent back. Let’s make a deal.”

Caleb didn’t answer, looking at the man opposite him. While he’d seen him before, could remember him perfectly from the night in Noshahr when he’d tried to enter the safehouse, he didn’t look quite the same. Caleb suspected it was mutual, and not solely because of the bruise he was now sporting at the side of his head. But the weight of what had transpired in the last two days—God, was it only two days?—clearly sat much more heavily on the man opposite him.

“You are planning to rendezvous with her,” Zahabzeh said. “That is obvious; that is the only reason you can be here.”

“I’m here to monitor the cleanup of the
Hadi
,” Caleb said.

“We are past playing games. I am offering you a deal. We take our man, you take yours, and that will be the end of things. We will reset the board. We will forget everything. Even Hossein.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caleb said. “I’m here to report on the oil spill in the Gulf. That’s all.”

Zahabzeh made a noise, anger breaking free of its confines, and Caleb saw the man’s body tense before Zahabzeh was able to force himself to relax again. He got to his feet.

“Youness Shirazi is a traitor,” Zahabzeh told him. “He will be executed for what he has done. Anyone assisting him is either a traitor or an enemy of Iran. If the former, they will be shot. If the latter … we will do what we must to protect ourselves.”

He turned, returning to the van, not bothering to look at MacIntyre, not bothering to look back.

Caleb watched as Zahabzeh and his men loaded up once more, pulled away. One of the jeeps went with them, but the other one drove halfway down the block before stopping. The soldiers within remained seated, but he could see them watching him.

He thought about that for a bit, then decided he wanted to finish his dinner.

It
was full dark by the time he was finished, and when they headed to the car, he told MacIntyre it was time for him to drive. They settled into their seats. MacIntyre started up the Khodro, driving easily, heading northward again. The jeep that had remained parked, watching them, pulled out to follow.

“We’re going to have to get a boat,” Caleb said. “And we’re going to have to lose them before we do it.”

“How lost do we want them to be?”

“Whatever it takes,” Caleb said.

MacIntyre nodded slightly, downshifting. Caleb checked the mirrors, then the windows. He didn’t see the van, and he didn’t see the second jeep anywhere. It was possible that Zahabzeh had backed off, had even turned his attention elsewhere, but Caleb doubted that, particularly the latter. Yes, they were close to the border with Iraq, so close, in fact, that the river flowing past the western side of the city served to mark it, but Zahabzeh was still counting on them to lead him to Shirazi and Chace. If he’d backed off at all, it was only to make them think it was safe to run.