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"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.

Artillery! Panic seized Desmarais. She ran from the shelter of the North Korean gate.

Then the next salvo of rockets rained down.

* * *

Terror descended on the Iranians. Roaring flames and shock waves tore apart the embassy and the grounds, the explosions coming too quickly to count or differentiate; the upper floor of the old French neo-roccoco mansion disintegrated; limousines in the curving drive disappeared in storms of light and spinning scrap metal; a group of running Guards melted in the blast; all this in the first strike of twenty-four rockets.

Twisted metal fell from the sky as sections of trucks and limousines crashed onto the pavement. Wood and plaster hammered the embassy and the grounds. Thousands of bits of unidentifiable debris rained down in the long second after the chain of explosions.

The mullahs in their blood-crimson robes stared at the anatomical displays sprayed on still-standing walls and trees, only detached arms and legs and intestines and raw pink meat remaining of those who had been closest to the explosions. Revolutionary Guards, in shock, attempted to rise from the floor to fulfill their responsibilities, only to discover their legs gone, or their skulls opened, or sections of lumber protruding from their chests.

A chemical odor overwhelmed the stink of blood and excrement and explosives. The yellow gas swirled through the ceiling and walls, drifted across the wreckage and corpses and wounded on the stately lawns.

The remains of limousines flamed. Chemical fire blazed. Points of white phosphorous glowed on corpses. Stunned wounded thrashed at the white fire burning their bodies. White phosphorous sparkled in the boughs of the trees like stars, burning through leaves and twigs to drop to other branches.