Powell nodded. "You got it. What're you monitoring?"
"They're in Damascus. Don't know exactly where or doing what. Akbar's listening in. But it's all Ruskie talk."
"We'll pull off the tops as soon as..."
"Hey!" The hand-radios carried Gadgets's enthusiasm to them. "Akbar says they're talking Arabic. They're in the Iranian embassy. Undo those wing nuts! It's blast-off time!"
"The Wizard does it again," Lyons commented.
"What?" Blancanales asked.
"All those bolts and nuts?" Lyons looked at the roof of the nearest truck. "In this cold, we work with the hardware while the Wizard listens to his radios."
Then Lyons climbed onto the truck and twisted off the first fastener. All the other men joined him, working quickly in the cold before dawn.
The first light of dawn glowed in the east. In the office of Mohammed Ayat, Dastgerdi and Suvorov, the latter maintaining his role of French diplomat, examined the ten homing-impulse transmitters. On the polished walnut top of the desk, beside the intricate silver repousse of the lid of an ancient Persian dish, the black plastic units looked futuristic, alien. "So small!" Ayat mused. "Are you certain..."
"I am certain!" Dastgerdi stated. "I have no doubts. The design incorporates the most modern technology available. Every component has been tested and retested. Giraud's agents need only activate the transmitters and wait..."
"For death." The Iranian flicked the switch of a unit. The red light came on. He flicked the switch off. "How simple. They do not even know of their martyrdom. Very simple. Eliminates the necessity for the indoctrination required in our efforts. Very tiresome, the endless lectures and prayers that the village boys of Iran require before they embrace the concept of martyrdom. Your way is much more expedient."
"From the first," Dastgerdi explained, "I have known that we could not plan on volunteers expendables to carry the transmitters. Not volunteers who knew their purpose."
As he spoke, he returned the units to the cut foam, adjusting and readjusting them. After this meeting, the homing-impulse transmitters left his possession and became the responsibility of Suvorov, alias Giraud, who would transport and distribute them in Washington, District of Columbia.
"That is because, first, of the relations between your nation and the United States. And second, I could not depend on a volunteer. Volunteers can change their minds, lose their faith."
He touched an object between the foam and the plastic shell of the carrying case, and by touch discerned its form: a disk of metal, with the diameter of a coin but several times the thickness. He bent back the foam and glanced at the disk. One side had a smooth surface, the other coarse, like the covering of a...
Microphone.
"Yes," Ayat remembered. "We had that problem with the driver of a truck into the Marine barracks. He remained fervent in his desire for martyrdom until the time came for his drive to Paradise. In that case, we resorted to drugs. That is, I am told: of course, I know nothing of that. It was the action of the Islamic Jihad..."
For Dastgerdi, the Iranian's words receded, as if he had spoken from a great distance. The words, the project, the plot meant nothing now.
Without emotion, from a gray place of training and intellect, Dastgerdi contemplated his defeat.
Somewhere, somehow, the Americans or the KGB had infiltrated his project. But where? The checkpoint. There, nowhere else, could they have placed the microphone.
His mind turned, methodically analyzing this revelation. Touching the microphone, his hand covered by the foam padding, he considered his options. Immediate flight? No. Soviet or American, they would be near. Destroy the microphone?
But as he touched the microphone, he realized the plot had not yet failed. He had worked with all the spy devices available to Soviet agents. Soviet technology offered KGB agents nothing so small, so ingenious.
Americans had manufactured the device and placed it.
Americans now listened to Ayat brag of murdering hundreds of United States Marines.
Though the rockets would never rain down on the inauguration, agents of the CIA would be waiting when Palestinians and Nicaraguans transferred the rockets to an American ship crewed by American black nationalists. An army of FBI agents would wait for the couriers to pass the homing devices to the ten expendables with invitations to the inauguration.
The President would not die in a rain of doom.
But the people of the United States would receive a prime-time television briefing on the plot, with irrefutable evidence rockets, transmitters, agents..."
And tape recordings of this meeting in the Iranian embassy.
Dastgerdi left the microphone in the case.
"This will be another glory to the name of the Islamic Jihad," Dastgerdi told the Iranian.
"A glory for Iran and Syria," Ayat added.
"Oh, yes," Dastgerdi continued. He knew his words would soon emanate from millions of American television sets, in the Arabic he spoke and in simultaneous translation. He spoke for history. "Of course. The assassination of the President of the United States, the head of Satan's regime on earth, the slaughter of the filthy writhing snakes attending his evil ceremonial inauguration. Our nations shall share the harvest of this triumph of our faith."
"Insallah," Ayat added.
A harvest of war and destruction and Soviet dominion.
19
As the sky lightened with dawn, Anne Desmarais stamped her numb feet in the gateway of the embassy of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. The North Korean sentries stared at her from their guard positions, gloved-hands on Kalashnikov rifles. The Soviets had notified their Korean comrades of the surveillance of the Iranian embassy. The North Koreans cooperated by not shooting the Canadian woman loitering outside their gates.
Desmarais watched the Iranian gate, and intermittently scanned the long tree-shadowed avenue, noting the surveillance vehicles a panel truck at one end, Zhgenti's Zil limousine at the other and the cars passing infrequently on the distant boulevard. She went through the motions of her charade as a photojournalist, holding the camera, watching for subjects, maintaining her position in the shadows and her demeanor as the calm professional.
But the taste of Zhgenti's semen was still in her mouth and her mind raged with shame and hatred. The hours of degradation in the limousine as she fulfilled his crude demands now twisted her reason and filled her vision with scenes of bullets punching his squat body, of high explosives spilling out his guts, of fire charring his face...
With the help of the Americans, Zhgenti would die. She knew they would come. And when they did, she would point out the Soviet hit man waiting to kill them. They would reward her with forgiveness for her past work with the Soviets. Perhaps she would become an agent for the Americans.
Would the Americans capture Zhgenti? He knew many details of KGB operations throughout Europe and the Middle East. Would they torture him? Would they allow her to watch? Would they allow her to guide their tortures, to allow their tortures to become her revenge?
Zhgenti would pay for degrading her: first with high voltage through clamped-on electrodes, then with cuts from razor blades, then with chemicals rubbed into the slashes, then shocks, slashes, and again chemical burns...
Until only a bleeding, pus-flowing ruin would remain. The roar of an explosion shattered her thoughts. Then the dawn exploded in unending blasts of high explosive as flashes tore the street, threw walls into the air, shattered the mansions of the quarter. Fragments of steel sang past her, ricochetting off stone and the wrought-iron gates. Then debris stone, wood, flesh, glass showered the street. Screams came from the grounds of the Iranian embassy as the maimed and dying felt their wounds.