Brian Douglas had thought if there was time to contact only one of the people left from the old network, it would be Soheil. He was bright and passionately loved Iran. As a teenager, he had also been the babysitter and then big brother for the baby boy next door. The boy had been among those killed in the 1999 police raid on the Tehran dormitory. That incident had been Soheil’s epiphany. All the things that he had rationalized as a junior officer in the Foreign Ministry, all the prices that he had been willing to pay for an Iran that was truly free of foreign interference, then came crashing down on him. The promises of the revolution had been crushed, the people betrayed. A criminal cartel with imperial designs and religious trappings had stolen the government, the real government.
So, on the margins of the Islamic Conference meeting in Istanbul, Soheil Khodadad had walked by the old British Consulate at lunchtime and followed a British diplomat down the street. He had been a great source for the subsequent five years. Now he was a placement of the kind that SIS saw once in a decade. Brian Douglas had tapped a vein of gold. And as he sipped his tea, and Soheil’s revelations poured forth, Brian began to think how he could quickly get this story to Vauxhall Cross. He couldn’t. Going anywhere near someone from the British Embassy here would be folly. Worse. It would be death.
The fire went out near two o’clock. By then Soheil had finished his story and Brian had walked him back through it several times. How did he know this? Was it possible it was just big talk by people whom he had heard? How could the VEVAK know what the artesh, the army, was doing? Harder still, how could Soheil’s friends in VEVAK know what the Qods Force was planning? Why would they tell Soheil? Was it possible he was being fed disinformation? How sure was he that he was not under suspicion? How had he obtained copies of the documents? Wasn’t there a risk in scanning them into his computer? Who, besides his father, knew that he had these views?
“Andrew, enough,” Soheil said, rubbing his eyes. “Get some rest on the couch. Here is a blanket. You should leave with the early crowd around six. Those of us in the Foreign Ministry are in the late commute, after eight. And Andrew, if you can use this to stop them, loftan, you must stop them. Or this whole region will go up in flames, again.” He placed the USB flash drive in Brian’s palm, embraced him, and walked up the stairs.
Almost four hours later, Brian put the heavy overcoat and hat back on. He was once again glad that his blond beard barely showed after one day. Nonetheless, he felt it and smelled the residue of the night sweat on his shirt. He quietly stepped out into the corridor and felt the morning cold. Then he walked out onto the sidewalk and turned right to walk back toward the bus line. A few others were heading in the same direction. A black Mitsubishi Pajero was headed toward him. Two men were inside. Brian had a sharp stabbing feeling in his stomach and his muscles tightened. He kept walking. The Pajero passed.
Through the corner of his eye, he saw it turn left. Brian was at the corner. The bus line was to the left. He paused. Something. He turned right and right again, walking around the block toward Soheil’s. When he reached the corner, he saw the Pajero. It was parked in front of the house where he had met Khodadad. The Pajero was empty.
If VEVAK was arresting Soheil, they would not send just one car and two men, Douglas thought, his mind racing, his heart beating faster. If the two men were security and saw him walk by again, they might stop and question him. He had the flash drive dongle inside his right sock. By all rights, he should just walk away. Now.
He turned back, toward the bus line. “Crack! Crack!” They were muffled by the buildings, but they were gunshots. Douglas froze. Then, “Crack.” One more shot. He needed to clear the area, fast. But he thought about Baku and how his agents had been killed, how some had first been tortured.
Douglas ran down the sidewalk toward the house. His hat flew off. A woman across the street yelled. He was unarmed because there’d been no way to explain why he was carrying a gun if he was stopped. Somewhere in his head a voice yelled, What the hell do you think you’re going to do?
He pushed open the gate. The corridor was clear. He moved to the door and stood to its left side. There was no sound from within. Douglas turned the knob and threw open the door. He saw one body immediately, blood still pouring out of what was left of the head. Stepping inside and shutting the door behind him, he inhaled the gunsmoke and then smelled the blood. Soheil sat in his chair, with the books. His head hung down, dripping blood from his mouth and from the back of his skull. A pistol lay in his lap.
The second man was sprawled across the couch where Douglas had tried to sleep. His wound was near his heart and it was large. Douglas saw the hunting rifle on the floor. He checked the man on the couch. No pulse. No gun. The identification folder inside his jacket seemed to say something about security, something about the Foreign Ministry. It was quite evident that Soheil was dead. How had they fingered Soheil? In his mind, he saw Roddy Touraine’s face. And then Douglas was aware of a siren, very close.
He moved quickly across the room to the other man. Also dead, but he still had his gun in the holster. He recognized it, a German Heckler & Koch 2000. It was like the Browning Hi-Power, but modernized. He took it.
The siren had stopped. Out front. Was there a back door? Stepping over the body, he rushed through the door at the rear of the room. It opened into a kitchen. There was a pounding on the front door. He saw a stairway, leading down. The house was on a slope. There was a garage and the alley below, in the back. He jumped down the stairs, hardly touching them. He took the HK out of his belt and held it in his hand, inside the overcoat pocket. Quickly, he peered out the window in the rear door. Nothing. He opened the door slowly and moved into the alley.
In seconds, he was down the alley and back on the side street, headed toward the bus line. More sirens. He slowed his walk. There were more people now, moving along the sidewalk in the cold morning air toward the bus line.
A blue light flashed across the building to his right, and instantly a green-and-white police car turned the corner, blaring the up-down siren. He clenched the pistol grip in his coat pocket.
Without slowing, the car shot by. The end of the bus line was no longer a good place to head, Douglas thought. He was suddenly aware that his mouth was bone-dry. He slowed slightly, inhaled. He knew his reflexes were sharp now, the autonomic fight-or-flight juices flowing. He had to be careful, thoughtful, not just instinctive. What was in his head, what was in his sock, had to get out of Tehran today.
Across the street, a man was opening a black wrought-iron gate to his driveway. Douglas strode quickly across the street. “Hello, my friend,” Douglas called out to the man in Farsi. He entered the narrow driveway inside the stucco walls. “Can you give me a ride today? I am late… ” The man turned at the door of the car as Douglas moved quickly up to him.
“No. Who are you? Go away,” the man blurted out. The gun came out. Douglas smashed the shorter man’s head, at the temple, with the butt of the pistol. Once. Twice. Douglas caught the body as the man collapsed. He looked around. No one. With a struggle, Douglas got the body into the car and onto the floor of the backseat. He threw the car into reverse and backed it out onto the street. He realized it was an old Mercedes diesel.