He found the former Turkmen minister in a small room overlooking the rear pool. The man was sprawled in a white leather recliner, a bag of potato chips in his lap, the remote aimed at the TV. Fisher backed through the arch, searched the remainder of the floor, then returned. On the TV screen, Gilligan and a chimp were playing catch with a coconut.
Fisher flipped off the lights, dropped his NV goggles into place, and stepped behind Marjani’s chair just as the man was sitting up. Fisher laid the Sykes across Marjani’s neck and said, “Not a sound. Your guards are dead. If you don’t want to the join them, you’ll do as I say.”
Grimsdottir’s brief had said Marjani had a fair grasp of English, and his rapid nodding confirmed it. “Who are you, what do you want?”
The two classic questions,Fisher thought. Over the years he’d found that noncombatants usually said, “Please don’t kill me,” when someone put a knife to their throat. With bad guys, it was always a variation of what Marjani had just asked, with a slight edge of indignation to their voice.
Fisher whispered in his ear, “To answer your first question, none of your business. To answer your second question, I want to kill you, but I’m going to give you a chance to talk me out of it.”
HEdragged Marjani down the hall, flipping off lights as he went, until they were in the master bedroom. He grabbed a pillow off the bed, then marched Marjani into the bathroom and shoved him into the whirlpool tub. He shut the door and sat down on the toilet next to the tub. Marjani was a fat man with slicked-back black hair and a lopsided mustache. He reminded Fisher of a stock villain in a Western.
Fisher hadn’t turned on the bathroom lights; it was pitch black. In the glow of his NV goggles, he could see Marnaji’s eyes darting around, his hands clamped on the edge of the rub. His face glistened with sweat. Fisher let him sit in the dark, letting it the silence stretch on until finally Marjani blurted, “Is anyone there? Hey, is—”
“I’m here.”
“What do you want?”
“We’ve been through that. I’m going to ask you some questions. If I don’t like the answers, you’re going to die in that tub. No more Gilligan’s Island,no more I Love Lucy,understand?”
“Do you know who I am? You can’t do this!”
Fisher drew the Sykes and lightly jabbed Marjani in the thigh. He yelped and curled up, trying to make himself small.
Fisher said, “How about that? Can I do that?”
“You’re crazy!”
“Sit up, straighten your legs, remove your shoes and socks, and rest your arms on the sides of the tub.”
“What?”
“You have three seconds.”
Marjani complied.
“Two weeks ago you had houseguests,” Fisher began. “A Chinese man with two bodyguards, and an Iranian with his own bodyguards. What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
That was true. Heng had said he’d met with the Iranian alone.
“How long were they here?”
“Two, maybe three hours.”
That was also true. Using what he already knew, Fisher was establishing a baseline, gauging Marjani’s tone, facial expressions, inflection.
“Who was in the room during this meeting?”
“Just the Chinese and the other one,” Marjani replied. He’d hesitated slightly at “other one.”
“Did they arrive separately or together?”
“Separately. Why are you—”
“Who is the Iranian?”
Fisher reached out and jabbed Marjani in the foot. Not so gently this time. Marjani screamed, reached for his foot. “Don’t move,” Fisher said, “or I’ll take you toe off.”
Reluctantly, Marjani leaned back. His lower lip was trembling.
Almost there,Fisher thought. The stress of being blind and not knowing when or where the next jab was coming was quickly breaking Marjani down.
Fisher hooked Marjani’s pinky toe with the tip of the Sykes and stretched it backward. Marjani flinched, drew back his lips until his teeth showed. “Don’t . . . please don’t. . . .”
“Give me the Iranian’s name.”
Marjani hesitated, squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know, please. . . .”
Fisher let the blade rest between his toes for five more seconds, then removed it. “Do you want to reconsider your answer?”
“I don’t know who he is, I swear. He showed up and—”
Fisher picked up the pillow and tossed it into Marjani’s lap. “What . . . what is this?”
“It’s a pillow,” Fisher said. “Put it over your face.”
“What? Why?”
“The gunshot is going to be loud in here.”
All the color drained from Marjani’s face. “Please, I can’t. . . .”
Fisher let him sob for a half a minute, then said, “Do you want to change your answer? Do you want to tell me who the Iranian is?”
Marjani nodded and started talking.
49
WHENMarjani finished talking, Fisher had some answers and a lot more questions.
He darted Marjani, bound his hands and feet with flexi-cuffs, then fireman-carried him down to the garage, where he found a gleaming-white H1 Alpha Hummer. He shoved Marjani in the back, bound his feet to one of the tie-down eyelets, then climbed into the front seat. The keys were in the ignition.
Thirty seconds later, he was rolling the down the driveway, the air conditioner blowing at full blast. He turned left at the arch and headed northwest, headlights off as he kept to the depressions and used the moonlight to guide him. He drove for fifteen minutes until the hills began to smooth out into the fringe of the Garagum Desert. He coasted to a stop and shut off the engine. He keyed his subdermal.
“Pike, this is Sickle, over.”
“Go ahead, Sickle,” Bird replied. After refueling at Kabul, Redding and the Osprey had followed an hour behind the Gulfstream, slipping across the Turkmenistan border and setting down sixty miles from Ashgabat in the desert.
“Request extraction, break; two passengers, break; map coordinates one-two-two-point-five by three-two-point-three; beacon is transmitting, over.”
“Roger, Sickle, en route.”
THEOsprey appeared twelve minutes later, skimming low over the ground, its rotor blades glinting in the moonlight.
“I have visual on you, Pike,” Fisher said. “Confirm same.” He flipped the Hummer’s fog lights on and off.
“Confirm, Sickle, we have you.”
The Osprey put down a hundred yards away atop a small hillock, and Redding came down the ramp to help Fisher with Marjani. “Friend of yours?” Redding asked.
“He doesn’t think so, but he’s going to come in handy.”
While Redding took care of their passenger, Fisher walked forward to the cockpit. “Bird, how’re we looking on radar?”
“Fine. Hell, Turkmenistan hasn’t got a military radar station for a thousand miles. We could sit here for days.” He glanced at Fisher. “We’re not going to sit here for days, are we?”
“No. Just keep an eye out.”
Fisher walked aft and sat down at the comm console. Lambert came on the monitor and said, “What’s your status?”
“Out and safe. Marjani was paid by Zhao through Heng, but he doesn’t know who was behind the money. He’s never heard of Zhao. I don’t know if I believe that, but there wasn’t time to press him further. He says Heng’s meeting was with an Iranian named Kavad Abelzada. He’s from a village called Sarani, right across the border. He was born and raised there.”
Before Lambert could ask her, Grimsdottir said, “I’m looking. . . .”
Lambert said, “I’ve got Tom Richards here. I’ve filled him in on the Zhao angle. I think he’s got the piece we’re missing.”
“Let’s hear it.”
The screen split and Richards’s face appeared. “You already know this, of course, but yes, we’re running an op against Zhao—us, the Brits, and the Russians.”