The Shield of Darius Read online

The Iranian was silent and Falen continued.

  “You see, this isn’t some kind of bargaining thing we’re starting here. I don’t have the time or patience for that. And don’t fall back on this ‘I’m an American’ bullshit. Don’t think of yourself as being in the United States. You’re in what I’d prefer to call ‘deep shit’, and that’s exactly where I’m going to leave you unless you help yourself out. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Javad laughed smugly. “What are you going to do? Beat me? Throw me in jail? Try to use me to negotiate for something?”

  Falen shook his head. “Nope. Nothing that primitive. You’re dealing with sophisticated people here.” He drew a slim plastic case from the pocket of his jacket and snapped it open in front of the Iranian, showing him an empty hypodermic and a small vial of clear liquid.

  “I’m not sure what this is, exactly. Some kind of biological thing. But the people I got it from tell me it’s nasty stuff. One dose and within two or three minutes, your whole body begins to burn like somebody poured hot lead into your veins. By morning, you’ll be covered with open, running sores, and then your skin’ll just rot away from you. You’ll

  go blind, your tongue will swell until it chokes you…unless you die of thirst first. After awhile, the guards won’t come in here to give you anything because you’ll stink like a pile of moldy shit. If you can’t find a way to kill yourself sooner – and believe me, you’ll try everything you can think of – you’ll be dead within three days.”

  This time Javad did not laugh.

  “You government guys can’t kill me. You don’t dare take that kind of risk.”

  “Government? Who said anything about government? I’m a businessman like you. And I guarantee you, if I have to kill you – which I won’t hesitate to do – I’ll make it as painful as I can.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Javad said darkly, eyeing the plastic case.

  “Let me help you start then,” Falen offered. “First of all, I might as well tell you Amy won’t be coming back. She got upset with your little marriage charade and decided she wasn’t going to be used like that anymore. She’s with us now. And we’ve already visited with Baktiar…. He was happier than hell to tell us everything we wanted to know. He’s a lot more committed to money than to country and we didn’t find it hard to make some deals.”

  As Falen talked, he watched Javad’s face and hands for the slightest twitch of response. There was none. The Iranian sat still and expressionless, looking coldly at his interrogator.

  “We’ve been following your shipments too, Mr. Esfarjahni. This last one from Majorca went through the Suez and up to Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Broom took his trip a few days early, by the way, and your Europe team almost missed him. But Baktiar did a good job of checking him out in a hurry, and you got to him just in time. I got to hand it to you. You’ve got a slick operation. Broom’s in Tehran with the rest of them.”

  The Iranian started to speak, then stopped. As Falen had hoped, questions were beginning to gnaw at his curious conspirator’s brain.

  “This sounds like a CIA fairy tale to me,” he said finally. “Someone’s been lying to you.”

  Falen laughed and took the clear vial from the case, holding it up against the afternoon sun from the bedroom window to inspect its lethal contents.

  “That’s a stupid answer, Javad. And it doesn’t help us get anywhere. We’ve been following your little group for months now, and know how you fly the merchandise from Bandar Abbas to Mehrabad Airport, then drive them in vans to the old Rubaiyat Hotel on Kushk Street. Broom’s about number twenty-nine by our count. And you were going to add Amy. But she’s out of the picture.”

  For the first time, the Iranian’s hands began to fidget along the edge of the cot. “If you think we’ve been taking so many people, why haven’t you stopped us?”

  “Why?” Falen said casually. “These people aren’t of any particular interest to me. Like I said, I’m a businessman, like your friend Baktiar. It’s the money I’m interested in.”

  “The money?” Javad raised his chin and looked skeptically down his nose at Falen.

  “Yup. I trade in weapons, people, information. If someone wants to buy, I find a way to sell. You have a nice little deal here and we’re taking it over.”

  The Iranian sniffed. “You’re CIA. You smell and look like CIA.”

  Falen snapped the plastic case shut and leaned again against the wall, folding his arms. “Think whatever you like. But if I’m CIA, why haven’t I stopped you by now? Why let you go on taking these people?”

  The Iranian looked away out the window for a moment, then back at Falen. “Probably because you can’t stop us. You know if you tried, we’d tell everyone what we’ve done. And if the public learned there are thirty Americans being held in Iran, they’d have your heads.”

  “If the public knew about this, they’d probably scream till we blew your pathetic country off the map, with all the other shit you guys have been up to.”

  “Not with thirty Americans spread out at all the strategic points. To save them, the people here will sell this whole country and you with it.”

  Falen nodded, smiling. “A clever idea. But we could have stopped you anytime. We missed the first two or three, but we’ve been watching your whole operation since you took Gabler out of Denver. We know about the ones you got earlier from our man inside.”

  “If you know so much, why didn’t you take me earlier? I think you just learned about this and are trying to squeeze me for more than you already know.”

  “You oughta be able to tell from what I’ve said that we know just about everything. But we don’t touch anything that’s high risk. We wanted to watch your operation for awhile to make sure it was safe. You’ve gotten better at it over time, and the way you handled Sager, Ramirez and Broom convinced us that it was time to move in.”

  Javad laughed dryly. “Your man inside must not be very good. Otherwise you’d know that we’re through. Broom was our last.”

  “We lost our inside man two months ago,” Falen said. “What do you mean, through?”

  “If you’re telling me the truth about the Trossen woman, as soon as they find out she’s not coming, the others will be moved.”

  Falen shrugged. “We can ship to other locations. Just give us your price, tell us who you want, where and when you want them, and we’ll have them there. We’ve now got the contact in Passports that you lost, so we can get what you need.”

  “Thirty’s all we want,” the Iranian said, apparently deciding that Falen did know enough to be candid. “Five in six locations when we get them placed.”

  “Won’t your plan work better with a few more?”

  “Thirty’s probably more than we need. And we’ve got more than Americans. But you are the worst. One, fifty, a hundred…it doesn’t matter. We learned with the embassy takeover in ’79 and from watching your other messy wars that the great weakness of American is that it won’t willingly sacrifice a single civilian, even if the whole nation’s being held hostage by that one. You call twenty Afghan civilians killed by a rogue soldier ‘unfortunate collateral damage,’ but when one American life is at risk, you change your entire attack plan. How will they find thirty in six different places all over Iran? When they couldn’t get one out of the Hay Madi district of Beirut years ago, how will they rescue thirty from the heart of Islam? We learned from holding the Embassy that people get the most excited about hostages that come from their own cities or states, or from their own race. We’ve even got mothers.” Javad raised his manacled hand and held the small bronze shield up at eye level. “When we announce the Shield of Darius to the world, we will have this country in chains.”

  Falen’s mind sorted through the Iranian’s statements like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, examining their shapes and fitting them into place in the pattern. He was still a few pieces short.

  “As long as they’re held in secret, you’re vulnerable. As far as anyone in
this country’s concerned, these people just disappeared and are probably dead. Hostages aren’t worth much unless people know they’re being held.”

  Javad’s lip curled into a sardonic smile. “They’ll know,” he said. “If an American ship in the gulf attacks one Iranian gunboat – or if the Israelis hit a single reactor, they will know.” His voice began to rise with revolutionary fervor. “Every American will learn that to fire upon Iran is to kill an American. To kill a neighbor, or a mother, or a man with a family. They will know that these are people from their own neighborhoods. People of influence. They will see that the power of the Shield is not in the number of our swords, but in how sharply and painfully a single blow against us is delivered to your own heart.”

  Falen took a deep breath and released it in a sigh of resignation, pushing slowly away from the wall.

  “Well, I can see we’ve missed an opportunity here. It sounds like your business is pretty well taken care of without us. Unless, of course, we could sell you a replacement for the Trossen woman.”

  “You won’t have time. I’m supposed to deliver her to Paris a week from tomorrow. We don’t need her. We just want her out of the way. She’s a nobody and wouldn’t add much to our cause. When I don’t arrive with her, they’ll immediately send the hostages to their new locations.” He again grinned at Falen. “Since you have her, I imagine we could make some arrangement with you to dispose of her for us.”

  “Nope. Don’t think so. We’re not in the ‘cleaning up after somebody’s mess’ business. If this isn’t going to pay big for us, we don’t want to touch it. Sorry we couldn’t do business.” He started toward the door.

  “What are you going to do with me?” The Iranian’s question showed new alarm.

  Falen stopped and turned toward him, hands in his pockets. “Nothing. I’m through with you. I imagine my associates will kill you.”

  The defiance on Javad’s face turned to dismayed horror. “Why? I told you the operation was over. There’s nothing I can do to help you.”

  “Exactly,” Falen said casually.

  “Then why kill me? If you let me go, I’ll be leaving soon and won’t be in the way of anything you do. I might even be able to find something else for you that will pay well. We’re always starting something new.”

  “Not interested,” Falen said. “We’ve got to get rid of you.”

  “But we’re after the same thing! I won’t be any threat to you.” Javad was beginning to plead.

  “Then think about it this way,” Falen said. “To use your own words, ‘you’re a nobody and won’t contribute much to the cause.’ Plus, I don’t like you. Amy’s dead, and I did kind of like her. You screwed up an okay person there. Anyway, what about the Jihad; the Holy War? You’ll die as a soldier of Allah.”

  “I will die a fool!” Javad shouted. “You are CIA.”

  “Nope. I told you, I’m a businessman.” He walked across the room and extended the plastic case to the Iranian who hunched on the cot against the wall.

  “I was lying about this though. It’s no more than a very lethal drug. Give yourself about ten cc’s and you won’t feel a thing. I guarantee it’ll be better than waiting for your guards to come back. They’re not as nice as I am.” He tossed the case onto the cot and turned again for the door.

  “You’ll burn forever in hell for this,” Javad spit after him.

  Falen paused and turned. “That sounds like a very Christian concept. Burning forever in hell. But if there’s a hell, I suspect you’re right.”

  Javad lunged against the chains, snapping like a rabid dog. “You’re as much a worm as that woman Trossen. Did you kill her? Did she offer you that pathetic body and beg you to play with it? Did you use her too, then throw her away?”

  Falen’s right foot snapped up suddenly catching the Iranian squarely in the forehead with his heel and popping his head back. The man’s eyes blurred and he slumped backward against the wall. Falen lifted the plastic case from the bed, extracted the glass syringe and vial and slowly filled the cylinder. As Javad struggled to sit up, Falen grasped the man’s tangled hair firmly in his left hand and twisted his head back sharply.

  “I was right about this stuff the first time,” he murmured, pinning the struggling Iranian against the bed. “You’re going to slowly rot into a stinking pile of shit.” He held the syringe menacingly in front of Javad, squirting a few drops onto his face.

  As he raised the needle to sink it deep into the exposed vein of Javad’s straining neck, the man’s chain-shackled left fist crashed suddenly into Falen’s jaw, reeling him sideways onto the cot and jarring the syringe from his hand. Before he could recover, the other fist battered his right temple and he struggled to throw himself onto the floor out of reach of the manacles. But the Iranian had thrown his wrist chain around Falen’s neck and yanked it tight, tearing at the skin of his throat and choking his breath away. Suddenly the man’s legs were around him, pinning his arms against his sides and through eyes that felt they would burst from the squeezing noose, Falen saw Javad’s free hand rise high above his chest, flashing the dripping silver needle. The syringe started downward, accompanied by a room-shattering blast and the simultaneous splat of pulverizing flesh and bone. Falen gasped, certain the lethal injection had smashed into his chest, but the legs had gone slack and the chain around his neck released as Javad slumped against the wall.

  As Falen’s eyes focused, they found one of Fisher’s guards standing in the doorway in a half crouch, his gun extended at arm’s length and braced tightly in both hands. The man didn’t say a word, but untangled Falen from the quivering body of the Iranian. Falen stood, then sat back on the cot as his legs buckled beneath him. The warm stickiness of Javad’s splattered head seeped down the back of Falen’s neck and he felt a sudden nausea grip his gut. Fisher, thank God, monitored everything.

  SEVENTEEN

  The shock of seeing the embassy rising above the yellow brick wall across Takht-E-Jamshid had momentarily stunned Ben into paralyzing confusion and he slumped backward against the building behind him, wrapping the chador tightly about him like a black cocoon. The adrenaline rush of finding his way out of the bazaar was suddenly gone, drained by the discovery that he had mentally prepared for one maze and now found himself in another. He backed into the narrow alley from which he had emerged onto Takht-E-Jamshid and spent the rest of the night huddled in a corner, dozing fitfully and wandering the new maze in his mind. There were only dead ends.

  When morning glowed pale pink in the East, the avenue began to move again with early traffic. First, tall red double-decker buses, then fleets of taxis – Fiats, battered English Fords and Mercedes, followed finally by a procession of private cars, a blessing granted to those who most faithfully supported the regime. Pedestrians hurried by, even the heavily-draped women seeming to glide along the paved walks at twice normal pace.

  Ben needed a place to think and retreated back into the alley until he found a recessed alcove in one of the walls, the covered entrance to a back gate that appeared no longer in use. He slipped into the recession and crouched in a corner, pulling a cucumber from his food bundle and gnawing at one end while he mentally worked his way through the city. The sprawling home of over eight-million people spread from squalid poverty at its south end to opulent wealth in the northern suburbs along the foothills. South of the city center, abandoned brick ovens housed thousands of the very poor who eked out an existence by begging or scrounging through the garbage of the city’s more affluent districts. These people would be his salvation, so numerous that a lonely, ragged woman tottering along the street would go unnoticed.

  The former embassy building and Takht-E-Jamshid were on the north edge of the city’s old downtown area, with the major hotels, businesses and government buildings south along Ferdowsi, Shah Reza and Sepah. As he recalled the street names, he knew that most must have changed since the Revolution. Surely streets like Shah Reza and Roosevelt had not survived the Ayatollahs.

  Between
the city center and the suburbs that climbed the lower slopes of the Elburz Mountains to the north, two wide avenues once carried the bulk of Tehran’s commuting traffic. The boulevard to the west, originally called Pahlavi, was lined with poplar and chinar trees and would also have been renamed. Pahlavi had been the family name of the deposed Shah. Shemiran Boulevard, to the east, ran up through the Davoudieh and Darrous districts where the old American Officers’ Club had once been. Ben was surprised that he remembered the city so well and realized that the sights, smells and sounds around him had opened dusty closets in his subconscious and pulled out a scrapbook of memories.

  He struggled to recall the location of other embassies, but found these memories too deeply filed to retrieve. It seemed the British Embassy was also north along Shemiran Road. But they had probably closed their diplomatic mission. In fact, with the most recent aggressive posturing by Iran, most would be gone – except possibly the French who had re-established theirs a few years earlier after renewed oil negotiations. The Swedes and Swiss might still be around. And Japan and China, of course, with their dependence on Persian oil. But finding a friendly haven would be just a matter of dumb luck, and if he did, would they grant him asylum? Any one of them might turn him over to the authorities just to keep the peace. His only safe bet was to try to get out of the country.

  Ben stretched his legs straight to relieve the cramping caused by his badji squat and reviewed his choices. All that lay south was 1000 miles of desert, and eventually the heavily guarded Persian Gulf. Unless things had changed dramatically in the past three months, tensions were higher there than they had been in years.

  Three hundred miles west was the volatile Iraqi border where patrols were heavy on both sides to prevent incursions from one into the other. Turkey? When Ross Perot got his men out during the Revolution, they had gone through Turkey. Possible, but not good. The trek would mean long stretches of barren, uninhabited land where an old woman walking alone would attract attention.