After what seemed like an eternity, Nateq-Nouri took a deep breath, then returned to his desk and plunked down into the chair on wobbly legs. All that bravado was a charade, he knew—he was very afraid of dying, and terrified of dying at the hands of Hesarak all-Kan Buzhazi, lying at his feet in a pool of red blood and gray brain matter. He had worked too hard to leave this life that way. He …
“Trouble with the staff tonight, Mr. President?” a woman’s voice asked in Farsi. Nateq-Nouri turned, his heart skipping a few beats in shock. There, emerging from the curtains surrounding the bedchamber, were a man and a woman, both dressed like commandos in black skintight body suits, gloves, and boots. They were armed, but their weapons were at their sides, ready but not threatening.
When he regained his composure, the President of Iran gaily, casually waved at the strangers. “Please, come in, come in,” he said effusively in Farsi. “Everyone else seems to be making themselves welcome in my residence, so why not you two? You are Arab, I am sure.” Nateq-Nouri switched to almost accent-free Arabic. “Your African friend, a Libyan perhaps? Sudanese?”
“At least he’s bein’ sociable about this,” the man said in English.
“Ah! An American!” Nateq-Nouri said, his eyes dancing. In equally good English, he said, “Welcome to my home, young man.
Yes, the only luxury I have right now is to be sociable. Now, do you mind telling me why you are here? Are you here to assassinate me?”
“I should blow you away, motherfucker, for what you done to my homeboys!”
“Your American ghetto dialect is very difficult for me to understand, young man, but I assume you are associates of Colonel Paul White, and you are angry at me for the circumstances surrounding his capture and internment,” the President of Iran said. “I have been expecting you, although I expected to see a brilliant high-tech assault on the headquarters building, beginning with some of your wonderful cruise missiles dropped by your stealth bomber, followed by your, how do you call them, your ‘tilt-rotor’ aircraft, with lots of well-trained, steely-eyed, square-jawed, whisky-drinking commandos jumping and sliding down ropes with guns blazing to make the heroic rescue … or will I not be disappointed? Is that what is happening now?”
“Tell us where Colonel White is, Mr. President, and you won’t get hurt.”
“Hurt? My dear young man, I am as good as dead already,” Nateq-Nouri said with a lighthearted laugh. “I assume you heard General Buzhazi. As soon as he gets the codes for the nuclear weapons aboard the carrier Khomeini, I will be disposed of In his humbling sort of way, he will try to make it look like an accident, but everyone will know, of course.”
“Just tell us where Colonel White is, Mr. President.”
“Your Colonel Paul White is being held in an interrogation center at Pasdaran headquarters,” Nateq-Nouri replied, “but to tell you the truth, sir, I do not know if he is still alive.”
“We’ll find out ourselves—and if he’s not, we’ll take the news very poorly,” Briggs said coldly. “Can you be a little more specific about his location, Mr. President?”
“No, unfortunately not,” Nateq-Nouri admitted. “I understand the Pasdaran interrogates its prisoners by administering drugs at what they call a ‘medical care facility’ in the basement of their headquarters—awful, brutal place, filled with evil, brutal men!—but I do not know if White has been taken there.”
“Perhaps you could inquire, Mr. President?” Behrouzi suggested.
“I was never a favorite of the Pasdaran,” Nateq-Nouri said, “but I believe there are one or two officers at headquarters that may speak to me.” With that, Nateq-Nouri picked up a phone.
Briggs raised his Uzi. “Be careful what you ask for, Mr. President.”
“You, sir,” said the President of Iran with a cold smile, “are the least of my worries right now.” He dialed the phone, spoke briefly in Farsi to two different persons, then hung up. “Colonel White is indeed in the Pasdaran medical facility, headquarters building, first subfloor A, room A-193. He is alive and perhaps even conscious. My friends have arranged for the guards at the medical facility to be ‘preoccupied’ for the next half hour. I trust you can effect some sort of rescue in that time.”
Hal Briggs was almost too stunned for words. He shrugged, gave Riza a confused expression, then nodded. “Sure, Mr. President.
That will be great.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Will you be safe after General Buzhazi finds out about this, sir?”
“I do not know, young man.”
“Hal. Call me Hal, Mr. President,” Briggs interjected. Riza looked at him in absolute surprise—Intelligence Support Agency operatives were not supposed to use their real names—but, somehow, it fit in this very bizarre setting. Thirty seconds ago, Briggs was ready to shoot this man between the eyes—now he was introducing himself to him, using his real name!
“Just Hal is fine.”
“Yes. Hal it is then.” Nateq-Nouri regarded Riza for a moment, searched his memory; then, wagging a knowing finger at her and smiling, said, “Ah. Now I recall. OPEC Ministers’ Conference, last year, Quito, Ecuador, the reception at Energy Minister Nazur’s residence. It was hotter than Mogadishu in the summer and the humidity … forgive me, I do not remember your name, but I will never forget the black dress and that delicious diamond ankle bracelet you wore—very alluring, I must say. You accompanied Minister Yusuf of the United Arab Emirates to the reception, but I could not help but notice you two spent very little time together—he already had a young translator that he kept fondling, as I recall—so you must have been on some sort of secret assignment, perhaps for the Directorate of Intelligence for the United Arab Emirates, no?”
“Your memory is quite remarkable, Mr. President,” Behrouzi said, touched by the man’s charm in the face of almost certain disaster, “but it would be best if your memory of me was restricted to an ankle bracelet in Ecuador.”
“Of course,” Nateq-Nouri said. “Now, you must do something for me in return.”
“What’s that?”
Nateq-Nouri fixed both of them with a deadly serious stare.
“Destroy the aircraft carrier Khomeini, Hal,” the President of Iran said.
“Say what?”
“I cannot hold out against General Buzhazi for long, Hal,” Nateq-Nouri said resignedly. “He will either discover or bypass the code, or he will torture the code out of me, in a very short time—perhaps even tonight.”
“Code? What code?”
“The code to arm the nuclear warhead on the carrier Khomeini,” Nateq-Nouri said. “One of the anti-ship missiles on board that carrier has a very large nuclear warhead capable, I daresay, of sinking your Abraham Lincoln very efficiently.”
“Holy shit!”
“Please, mind your sacrilegious language, young man,” Nateq-Nouri scolded Briggs. His tone softened immediately, however, and he went on: “To continue: General Buzhazi has one set of codes, I have the other. I do not know how long I could hold out, but I know the general has very effective ways to get the information he desires. Then he will have both sets of codes he requires to arm the nuclear missiles. When he does, he will move the carrier and launch the P-700 missile—perhaps at Saudi Arabia, perhaps at Iraq, perhaps at your Lincoln carrier group. I do not know. I feel he will use that carrier, along with his other forces, to decimate the Gulf Cooperative Council military bases along the Gulf. You must stop him.”
Briggs looked at Behrouzi, then slapped a fist into his other hand in frustration. “I had that sucker in my sights once, Mr. President—I’d love to get another shot at it and send it to Davy Jones’s locker for real. You got a deal.”