Daria called Mark after a few minutes. “You’re being followed again. One lead car, I can’t see it now, but it’s a gray Saipa. He was behind you when you pulled into the estate and he pulled in front of you on Valiasr just after you left.”
“I have him,” said Mark.
“There’s also a guy on a motorcycle, about fifty feet behind you. He showed up just after the Saipa.”
Mark glanced in the rearview mirror. “Got him too.”
“I’m two cars behind the motorcycle.”
Mark told the Bayat brothers the news. “If they’re your men, call them off.”
Amir and the ayatollah denied that either of them had ordered a tail.
From the worried look on both their faces, Mark was inclined to believe them. “Could they be VEVAK?” Mark asked, referring to the Iranian secret police. “Looking into what you’re plotting behind Khorasani’s back?”
Amir admitted the possibility.
“Then we’ll have to lose them.” To Daria, he said, “We’ll be able to ditch the lead car, at least momentarily. But we’ll need you to help us ditch the tail. I’m looking for a place — a mall, a park, whatever — where we can park out front and meet you on the back side before—”
“Hold up,” said Daria.
All traffic had come to a stop. “I’m held up,” said Mark.
“The motorcycle is approaching.”
Mark wasn’t sure whether it was the same sixth sense that had kept him alive all these years, or whether he’d just read too many reports of Iranian nuclear scientists being assassinated by bomb-wielding killers on motorcycles, but the news that the motorcycle was closing in was like a punch in the gut.
At the same time, he realized that the only reason traffic wasn’t moving was that the gray Saipa five cars in front of him had stopped in the middle of the road. People were starting to honk.
He looked behind him. The motorcyclist, wearing a yellow helmet with a black-tinted visor, was moving up fast between the concrete barrier in the middle of the road and the line of stalled cars. One hand was on the handlebars, the other inside his leather jacket.
“We’ve got a bomb.”
Mark spoke the warning a second before he actually saw the metal disk in the rider’s hand.
He popped open the door to the Peugeot, ran three steps, threw his shoulder into the approaching motorcyclist, and knocked him off his bike.
The metal disk left the rider’s hand and sailed high through the air. It landed on the trunk lid of the Peugeot. There was no bounce, just the loud thunk of a magnet attaching itself to metal.
Amir Bayat yanked open his door. In the backseat the ayatollah was trying to unlock the rear passenger door, but it was a manual lock and he couldn’t get his old fingers around the knob. The motorcyclist sprinted toward the gray Saipa that was blocking traffic. Mark ran after him.
The flash came, blinding white, and was followed by a deafening bang.
Mark’s first thought was that the actual blast wave hadn’t been that bad. Then he realized he was facedown in the road, several feet away from where he’d last been standing.
The motorcyclist was already climbing into the Saipa at the front of the traffic jam. Mark caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver. He looked Chinese.
Mark turned back to the Peugeot. The windows were shattered, the trunk lid had been blown off, the rear seats were burning — and half of the ayatollah’s head was missing.
All around Mark, people were screaming, leaving their cars in the street and running for safety. Mark stood, looking for Amir Bayat, then stumbled back toward the car. Amir Bayat lay facedown in the joob. Water and bits of garbage rushed over his head.
Daria ran up and started pulling Amir out of the water. Mark gave her a hand.
The Iranian’s right leg was in shreds. Mark saw bits of bone and cartilage.
“Help me get him to my car,” said Daria.
Bayat left a slug-like trail of blood in his wake, but halfway to Daria’s stolen Paykan, he began to cough. Daria yanked opened the rear door.
Mark heaved Bayat halfway into the car, stuffed his legs in the rest of the way, and jumped in next to him.
Daria threw the car into first and took off as fast as she could.
Mark ripped a manual-window handle off the side of the door, stripped off his shirt, tied it tightly around Bayat’s wounded leg, slipped the window handle under the shirt, and began to tighten the tourniquet.
Bayat moaned something about a hospital. He banged on the window of the car with his fist, but in a weak, dazed, halfhearted way. Mark wasn’t even sure Bayat knew what was going on with his leg.
After eight twists the bleeding slowed to a trickle. Mark used the knife strapped to his ankle to cut a long strip of fabric from the Paykan’s upholstery. He used that strip of fabric, along with another window handle, to fashion an even tighter tourniquet.
“He’ll live,” Mark said, when finished.
Daria had turned off Valiasr and was rocketing down an empty alley. “I’ll get us out of town.”
“I need a hospital.”
Bayat had passed out after noticing that half his leg was gone. Then Mark had taken a blanket that had been covering holes in the Paykan’s upholstery and placed it over Bayat’s legs. Bayat was now awake and more lucid than before.
“Who hit us?” asked Mark.
Bayat’s turban had washed away in the joob. His wet hair was dripping into his eyes.
“VEVAK would never do something like this.” Bayat’s breathing was labored. “Not to my brother. My brother, is he—”
“He’s dead.”
“I need a hospital.”
“If you don’t know who ordered that hit, how do you know you’ll be safe at the hospital?”
“I know a doctor—”
“What about your Chinese friends. Could they have turned on you?”
“No.”
“You’re going to take us to my colleague. Now, as we agreed. After that we can talk about a doctor.”
Bayat stared out the window for a while. “There is a house, in the mountains,” he whispered, laboring to speak. “Drive first to Karaj, then north toward Dizin. After an hour the road will split. Go west. Soon you will see a private road, down this road is the house. I need a doctor.”
“I heard you the first time.”
64
After his brief burst of lucidity, Bayat slipped back into a netherworld. His eyes were closed, his head hung limp on the back of the seat, and his face was contorted by pain. Every so often he’d let out a string of whimpers.
They hurtled through Karaj, and then sped north through a series of dumpy little towns with small houses clinging to steep hillsides, through green valleys filled with tall aspen trees, past little concrete roadside mosques where travelers could pray, and across the flanks of several barren hills. A half hour outside of Karaj, they passed a lifeless reservoir. After an hour, Mark smacked Amir on the cheek.
“Where does the road split?”
Amir moaned. “Keep going.”
“For how long?”
Amir didn’t answer. Mark wondered whether he was dying.
“How long?” Mark repeated.
“Soon.”
The Paykan began to struggle as the road became steeper. The air grew colder. Mark saw a little patch of snow tucked into a shady ravine. A few cars with ski racks — headed for Dizin, an aging resort that had been built during the reign of the Shah — sped by them.
They came upon the split in the road and bore off to the west. Five minutes later Amir said, “Here.”