There was a pause. “Hold on.”
Eva could hear David asking the person sitting next to him if he had his cell phone with him.
“No,” they heard the man reply, “I left it at the motel.”
“Sir,” David said, “we may have a problem.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Zalinsky said.
“No, I’ve got Dr. Najjar Malik, all right. I’ve got his passport. I’ve got his father-in-law’s laptop. I’ve got Saddaji’s external hard drive. I’ve got Saddaji’s memos, his e-mails. I’ve even got his backup discs. It’s real, sir. It’s all that we’ve been looking for. But Dr. Malik left his cell phone at the motel. Iranian intelligence must have triangulated the signal and tracked it down. If they just stormed his motel room, then we have another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“They now hold his wife, his daughter, and his mother-in-law.”
Ayatollah Hosseini picked up the phone.
He found the Twelfth Imam on the other end of the line.
“Do you have Malik yet?” the Mahdi demanded to know.
“No, my Lord,” Hosseini said. “Not yet.”
“I thought you had him at a motel.”
“We thought we did, too, my Lord. His cell phone was there, but he was not. We think…” Hosseini hesitated.
“What?”
“I hesitate to say because we’re still-”
“It’s okay, Hamid,” the Mahdi said calmly. “Just tell me what you know.”
“My people think he has defected, my Lord.”
“What makes you say this?”
“General Jazini says Dr. Saddaji’s laptop is missing from his apartment. We know that Dr. Malik went to Dr. Saddaji’s office the other night, ostensibly to get his personal effects. But the general thinks Malik might really have gone there to gather evidence of the nuclear program. He may now have what he needs.”
“To do what?”
“We don’t know, my Lord. We would just be guessing at this point.”
“Then guess.”
“Worst-case scenario?” Hosseini asked. “He could be trying to sell it to the Americans or perhaps the Israelis. We may have to accelerate our attack plans before either can launch a preemptive strike. But for the moment, there is a more urgent matter. We must stop Dr. Malik from getting out of the country.”
“What do you recommend?”
“For starters, we need to close the airports, the bus stations, the train stations. We’ll also set up police checkpoints on all the major highways leading in and out of Tehran.”
“No, that’s a mistake,” the Mahdi said, catching Hosseini off guard. “All that would stop the flow of Iranian pilgrims heading to Mecca to see me revealed to the world. And it would create a negative news story right at the moment when I am receiving excellent worldwide coverage about my imminent arrival. No, you must keep all this quiet. Don’t let the media catch wind of the manhunt or report it in any way.”
Startled, Hosseini said nothing for a moment.
But then the Twelfth Imam said one more thing. “Make no mistake: I want you to find Najjar Malik. I want you to find him, and I want you to bring him to me that I may separate the head of this infidel from his neck and rip his heart out of his body.”
Najjar Malik was rattled.
“Mr. Tabrizi, those monsters have my family. We have to find them,” he insisted.
“We‘re doing everything we can,” David promised as he drove. “We’re putting our best people at the CIA on it right now.”
“I can’t leave without them. You understand that, right? I’m not leaving this country without my family.”
Najjar didn’t seem to be panicking, but there was no question in David’s mind that his new asset had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I understand,” David assured him, “but for the moment we need to focus. We need to get you someplace safe. You’re no good to your family if you get captured or killed. Do you understand me?”
Najjar nodded and grew quiet.
“You guys are on Azadi Road, heading west, correct?” Eva said.
David was startled to hear her voice. For a moment, he had forgotten that he still had Fischer and Zalinsky on the line and that they were following him via the GPS tracker in his phone.
“Affirmative,” David said. “We just passed the metro station and should be at Azadi Square in a few minutes.”
“How’s traffic?” Zalinsky asked.
“Not good, and getting worse,” David said. “We’re on an eight-lane boulevard. I’m doing ten to twenty kilometers an hour at the moment, but half a klick ahead it’s all brake lights.”
“We need a plan to get you guys out of there,” Eva said.
David already had one. “Once I clear through this mess, I’m heading for Safe House Six,” he said, referring to a basement apartment the CIA owned on the outskirts of the city of Karaj, about twenty kilometers west of Tehran, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains. “We should be there in about an hour.”
“That’s good,” Zalinsky said. “What then?”
“If the regime shuts down all the airports, we’ll hunker down at the safe house, upload all the contents of the laptop to you, and wait until things quiet down a bit. But let’s assume for a moment that they keep the airports open.”
“Why would they do that?” Eva asked.
“They might not want to stop all these Iranians from being able to get to Mecca to see the Twelfth Imam. That’s a huge deal for this regime.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Eva said.
“Maybe,” David conceded. “But if by some chance I’m not, I say we use this mass pilgrimage to our advantage.”
“How?” Zalinsky asked.
“Send a private plane to Karaj under the guise of a charter flight,” David said. “Report the flight as a group of wealthy pilgrims heading to Mecca to see Imam al-Mahdi. With any luck, we’ll get lost in the exodus. They can’t possibly keep tabs on everybody. State-run radio says they’re expecting another half-million Iranians to leave for Saudi Arabia in the next twenty-four hours.”
“I don’t have a private plane to send,” Zalinsky said. “I have a CIA special ops team on standby in Bahrain to extract you guys out of a site in the desert.”
“No, I don’t want to take Dr. Malik into the desert; it’s too risky,” David said. “We need to hire a plane out of Dubai and try to get it to Karaj by tonight before they think twice and really do shut down the airports. It’s our best shot, Jack. It may be our only shot.”
86
Suddenly David wondered if they’d even make it to Karaj.
As they inched toward Azadi Square in the stop-and-go traffic, they saw the flashing lights of police cars ahead of them. More seemed to be coming from every direction, and despite the roar of jumbo jets and cargo planes landing at Mehrabad International Airport, the two men could hear the sirens approaching.
“We’re only a few blocks from the motel,” Najjar said. “Look, over there, to the left-it’s just a few blocks.”
“That explains it,” David said.
“What do you mean?”
“All the police.”
“That’s just because of the traffic, all the people trying to go to Mecca, right?”
“No,” David said, “they’re setting up a roadblock.”
Najjar stiffened. “Then we need to get off this road.”
David agreed. They did need to get off the main thoroughfare and avoid the roadblock. The problem was that every side street from here to the square was clogged with hundreds of other drivers trying to find their way around the logjam as well.
“Is this your car?” David asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you own it? Is it registered in your name?”
“Yes, yes, it’s mine.”