Deathrace

4

George Imhoff didn't believe his eyes or his ears. The four-hundred-pound man had demanded to know who he was. This Brooklyn blubber ball was an American.

Yasmeen moved into the void quickly. "Please let us in, and I'll explain everything. Come on, Tauksaun, it's an emergency."

The huge man waddled back from the door and made a narrow passage for them to enter. It was a single room, with a small kitchen on one side, a bed on the other, and two chairs in between. The bed was a mattress on the floor. George figured no bedsprings or frame could support all that weight.

The man she had called Tauksaun settled down on the bed and stared at George.

"He's a fucking American government man, FBI or the damned CIA or something. I don't want him in my place."

"Tauksaun, he just shot two, and maybe more, Secret Police. They have a dragnet out to find him. I figure he must be on our side."

"So he is CIA. I can spot you guys a mile away. What the fuck you looking for?"

"Where are you from, Tauksaun?" George asked. "Where in Brooklyn?"

"What do you mean, Brooklyn. I'm from Hempstead out on the Island."

"Sure you are. My guess would be Flatbush Avenue, down toward the Marine Park. Maybe Nostrand Avenue."

"Hey, man, you're way off. No fucking Flatbush Avenue. We had more class than that. Hey, you are CIA, right?"

"Why else would I be in this hellhole? What are you doing here?"

"Hiding from the damn IRS. Claim I owe them over a hundred thousand, with all of their penalties and interest. CIA, damn. What the hell you looking for?"

"Important shit. I don't know if Yasmeen thought you could help me, or just hide me for a couple of days."

"Hey, anything I can do to put a hot poker up the ass of the Secret Police, I'll do in a second."

Yasmeen looked at George. "Tauksaun knows a great many people in Tehran. He's lived here for five years. Most of the protest groups seek his advice."

"Is there a protest group against nuclear weapons?" George asked.

Tauksaun laughed and slapped his bare thigh. "Now we're getting down to where the rubber meets the road. Nuclear weapons, of course. What else would the CIA be interested in? I have contacts, but they are not easy to locate. I'm not good at running through the rat warren this town has become. They should starve half the people here, and start over."

"You know about the work the Iranian government is doing to make nuclear weapons?"

"Yes, we hear talk. We go to meetings. We have some sources of information, but sometimes they turn out to be spies for the Secret Police. Then that whole cell is wiped out. As in gravestones."

"We need a little information," George said. "Yasmeen said her father had done some heavy hauling deep into the southern section of Iran. We think it was building materials and supplies, and tools for work on a nuclear bomb."

"You want to pinpoint the location of the facility," Tauksaun said. "Yes, we, too have been working toward that end. We have little. Somewhere in the mountains of lower Iran. We also know that it is carefully camouflaged and can't be detected from the air by plane or satellite."

"That makes it tougher," George said. "It must have a road that leads into it."

"We've heard of a road, but it ends abruptly at the side of a mountain. There's a sheepherder's cabin there. The problem is there are thousands of sheepherders' cabins in those southern mountains and the high plateau. Finding the right one would be a wonder."

A door opened a few inches at the back of the room. Yasmeen watched it, then lifted from her chair and, without a word to the two men, went through the door and closed it.

"Tiny," Tauksaun said. "My woman and Yasmeen are good friends. Haven't seen each other in a month or two. We've been busy."

"Do the Iranian authorities know you're here?" George asked.

"Hell no. If they did they'd deport my ass in a minisecond."

"How do you survive?"

"Tiny works at a store. Slave wages, but it's enough for us. I'm not what you'd call easily employable."

"I've had a deadline kicked in my face," George said. "I have six more days to find the exact location of that nuke facility. I've been working on it two months, and thought we had it knocked. Then my rep here goes to meet this engineer we know works at the plant. Next thing I know I'm up to my asshole in Secret Police shooting at me."

"Your rep?"

"Either in jail or in the morgue."

"They don't have morgues here. If they killed him, he's probably on a trash heap somewhere. If the family finds him, they can bury him. Did he have any U.S. dollars with him?"

"Fifteen hundred."

"He's dead."

"I figured." They sat there for five minutes without a word. Then George broke the silence. "Tauksaun, can you help me?"

"You have a radio in that kit?"

"Yes."

"You have plenty of U.S. dollars?"

"YeS."

"Either one of those could get all of us in the place killed in a heartbeat. First we hide the radio, and all but twenty bucks of the cash. They won't burn us for a twenty. The fucking Secret Police keep all the dollars they find. Always have, always will."

"Hide them?"

"Yes. I'll know where they are. So will Tiny. A way to keep you alive. You have papers?"

George nodded and handed over his tourist visa and other papers, including a U.S. passport and a letter ascertaining that he was a professor of Middle Eastern history at New York University on leave to study some ancient manuscripts.

"Ever had to show them to anyone?"

"Just some hick cop to the north."

"Parachute in?"

"No, came across the border from Russia."

They were silent again.

The door opened, and Yasmeen came in followed by an extremely small woman. She was only a little over four feet tall, delicately proportioned, with long black hair to her waist, and flashing black eyes. Her skin was the color of toasted almonds.

Yasmeen took her to George, who hurriedly stood. Tiny stepped back. Yasmeen told her in Farsi that in America a man standing when a woman entered a room was a mark of politeness and respect. Tiny frowned but nodded.

"George, I want you to meet Tiny. She takes care of Tauksaun. Tiny, this is George." Tiny bowed briefly, her eyes downcast. At last she glanced up at him, smiled, and hurried back through the door they came in.

Tauksaun smiled. "Usually Tiny doesn't meet my friends. She's shy."

Yasmeen went back to her seat.

"Can you help us?" she asked, looking at the huge man.

He waved, moved a pillow on the couch, and took out a cordless phone with an antenna. He dialed a number, and waited. He spoke rapidly in Farsi. The conversation lasted no more than thirty seconds. He smiled and hung up.

Tauksaun's bloated face was serious for a moment, then he smiled thinly. "There is a chance. We may have someone who knows something. He grinds lenses for glasses. A year ago he was pulled off his job, and sent to Chah Bahar. He went into the hills, and did much the same work, only not on glass, on some kind of metal that he had never seen before. He's still not sure what he did or where he was. Still he might help us."

"Lens grinding?" Yasmeen asked.

"Some of the metal in a nuclear bomb is similar to stainless steel," George said. "It takes careful machining, but any skilled craftsman, like a lens grinder, can do the job."

"Exactly," Tauksaun said. "This little man can be contacted tonight. He's extremely cautious. He'll talk only to Tiny. If he's convinced he'll be safe, she'll bring him here. Then he'll talk only to me."

"Sounds promising. Your phone. I thought they were few and far between in this town."

"True, but I can't get out, so I call out. Easier that way. Fact is I have two lines, three extensions."

George smiled. "Good plan. Hey, I need to check in with the office. Is there a balcony or a roof where I can use my little SATCOM without being seen?"

"Let's see it," Tauksaun said.

George took out the latest development in the satellite communications field. The dish traveled folded like a fan that extended into a circle six inches in diameter. It had a small tripod three inches high. The send/receive set was minimal, with only voice/data capability. It had sensors to angle the antenna at the orbiting Milstar satellite at 23,300 miles over the equator in a geo-synchroness orbit.

The small keyboard had a built-in crypto unit that automatically scrambled the message. He would type it out, approve it, then hit a button to scramble the message. A few seconds later it was shot out of the small antenna in a data burst of no longer than a tenth of a second. It was almost impossible to triangulate the signal, even if one listening post picked it up.

"That one's a lot more advanced than the old ones I used to use," Tauksaun said. "Don't be surprised, these are off the shelf now. Not calibrated to the mil frequency, but good for the satellite."

"The roof?" George asked.

Tauksaun nodded, and Yasmeen led the way through the closed door into a second bedroom, and up a steep flight of open stairs to a pull-back door on the roof. There were no taller houses close by. He found a good spot behind the structure that topped the stairs, and settled down.

Yasmeen sat beside him. He set up the small antenna aiming it generally southward. He turned on two switches and checked the glowing lights. He plugged the lead from the four-inch-square transceiver unit into the antenna, turned on the set, and began to type in his message.

"George. One contact might be productive. Name Tauksaun. American. Suspect location still southernmost area. Shahpur KIA. Any intel for me?"

He read over the message on the small screen, nodded, and punched the crypto button. A moment later an indicator light glowed, telling him the transmission had been completed.

"That's all there is to it?" Yasmeen asked.

"That's it. Shoots it directly to a satellite which relays it to a receiver in the States."

"Can they talk to you?"

"On a schedule. Midnight and noon local time. I set up the antenna, turn the set on to receive, and wait for ten minutes. If nothing comes through, they aren't sending." He folded up the antenna and put the unit back in the heavy plastic carrying case. He stuffed it in the shoulder bag that held everything he owned in Iran. His clothes and some other items were by now in the Iranian Secret Police hands.

"What now?" she asked.

"We wait and see if Tiny can talk this lens grinder into coming to see Tauksaun. We don't have enough. We could wander around those desert roads down there east of Chah Bahar for months, and never find the right sheepherder's shack."

"For my father's trucks, the road would have to be wide, and well made, not the narrow little trails that the shepherds use. The road should stand out from a light plane flying over."

George agreed. Also it would show up well on a satellite photo. He'd send that on his next transmission. Have them move the satellite enough to cover the Iranian southern area on an every hour basis. The road had to be there. You couldn't camouflage a heavy truck road through the mountains and across some desert plateau. They had to find it.

They went downstairs, and into the front room, where Tauksaun now lay on the bed snoring softly.

Tiny looked up and put her finger over her lips. She motioned them back into the other room and showed them to chairs.

"Coffee?" she asked in English. They said fine, and watched her work on a small hot plate to boil water. "I practice English," she said.

"You're doing very well," George said.

"You wait here. Tauksaun say. Maybe tonight the lens grinder comes. Now, we wait. You want sugar?"