Splinter Cell

16

After a good night’s sleep on a real futon mattress, I wake refreshed and spend more time going through the material in Rick Benton’s file. There really isn’t a lot there. He must have kept most of his records on a personal computer, which I understand was never recovered, or in his home, which was thoroughly scoured by NSA personnel. Nevertheless, there are a few items worth deciphering.

The first of these is a page of doodles. Benton had written several words on the page and had drawn arrows between the names, apparently attempting to connect them or show their relationships. The words are: Shop, Shadows, Tarighian, A. Mohammed, Zdrok, and Mertens. The first two labels I know, of course, and the third one has become a name I want to investigate. “A. Mohammed” I just learned about from Hamadan. The other two are mysteries to me. The Shop seems to be the dominant name on this makeshift chart. An arrow points from the Shop to the Shadows. Another arrow goes from the Shadows to A. Mohammed, but a dotted arrow points to Tarighian. There’s also a big, underlined question mark next to the name. Mertens also has a question mark beside it, and a two-way arrow connects it to the Shadows. The only free-floating word is Zdrok, and there’s a circle around it.

I have no clue what it all means, so I type a text message on the OPSAT, photograph the chart with the built-in camera, and transmit the files to Lambert. Maybe he and his team can make sense of it. Why didn’t Benton communicate all this stuff to Washington as soon as he got it? Lambert is right — Benton was reckless. Maybe he got too cocky for his own good, which sometimes happens in this business.

I also copy the photograph of Namik Basaran and send it to Washington with instructions to identify the other man in the picture.

Whatever Benton discovered about the Shop and the Shadows, it was enough to get him killed. I feel as if I’m stepping into a pool of murk that has remnants of his blood in it. I just hope I can solve the puzzle before the same forces that caught up with him happen to cross my path.

After nightfall I drive Reza’s two-door Pazhan, a jeep-like vehicle made in Iran, out of Tabriz toward the container company’s warehouse. It’s located just west of the city limits in a nonresidential, industrial zone. The Pazhan is a funky old thing, probably twelve years old. The Iran government doesn’t allow many foreign-made cars into the country. You’ll find Japanese brands but certainly no American ones. Iranian automobiles are notorious for being bad for the environment, but they have a substantial monopoly on the market.

The Tabriz Container Company’s warehouse is a large building that appears to be thirty or forty years old. There isn’t much in the way of lighting around the building at this time of night, probably because there isn’t a lot to steal.

I park the Pazhan a quarter of a mile away, off the main road. Wearing my uniform and headset, I walk to the building, traverse the empty parking lot, and stand for a moment with my back to the wall, near the employees’ entrance. There’s a lone bright bulb over the door. I load the SC-20K with a ring airfoil projectile and aim at the light. Got it — the front of the warehouse is plunged in darkness. I hope the sound of the bulb breaking doesn’t attract any security guards.

I stand in front of the door and peer through the square window in the center. There are a few lights on, but it’s difficult to discern the geography of the place from here. I use the lock picks to open the door and slip inside.

It’s an empty reception office. A door with keycard access leads to the rest of the warehouse. I drop the goggles over my eyes and activate the thermal-vision mode. I’m in luck — someone very recently went through the door. The keys most often punched show traces of residual heat as long as not much time has elapsed. The trick is to press them in the correct order. Logically the key that’s the faintest would be the first one and the brightest key would be the last. Distinguishing the differences of luminescence on the three keys in-between is the hard part.

On this particular pad only four keys show heat. That means there are only four numbers in the code or one of five numbers is used twice. I’ll need a little help with this one, so I aim my OPSAT screen at the keypad and snap a shot. I then use the controls on the OPSAT to play with the contrasts in the image. This gives me a digital readout of the amount of luminescence it’s picking up. The 2 key is the brightest, so it’s either pressed twice or it’s the last of four numbers. The 4 is the next brightest, followed by 8 and 3.

I try 3, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.

I try 2, 3, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.

I press 3, 2, 8, 4, and 2. Nothing happens.

I punch 3, 8, 2, 4, and 2. Green light. The door unlocks. I’m lucky the system doesn’t set off an alarm after three unsuccessful tries, which many do.

I’m in the warehouse. The only illumination is up here at the front. There’s a desk by the door, presumably used by a foreman or some such employee. A book lies open, facedown, on the desk. I know I’m not alone here because of the heat signatures on the keypad.

The rest of the place is full of, well, containers. Boxes, crates, barrels, cans, stacks of flat cardboard that will eventually be folded into boxes, and even plastic kitchen containers along the lines of Tupperware. Amazing.

I move in and start down an aisle of crates. They’re all marked with the same Tabriz Container Company stamp I saw in Arbil. I tap on one of the crates and hear a hollow echo — it’s empty. Just in case, though, I reach into the Osprey and pull out a metal detection wand. It’s like the thing they use at airports to wave around your armpits and between your legs if you happen to beep when you walk through the metal detector.

As I continue down the aisle, I wave the detector across every other crate. They’re all turning up empty until I cross an aisle to go to another section. This time, the wand buzzes over some crates, and a little too loudly for my comfort. I use my combat knife to pry off the top slat and peer inside. Engine parts — big deal.

“Salaam?”

I freeze. There’s my missing individual who leaves heat signatures on keypads. The voice comes from the other side of the warehouse. Shit. He must have heard the detector buzz.

“Salaam?”

It’s closer. He’s coming this way. I quickly move back the way I came, treading lightly, hoping he’s not sure exactly where the sound came from. I keep moving until I reach a darker aisle. I quickly negotiate the shelving here, climb on top of a crate, and pull myself to the top shelf. They’d need forklifts to place and remove objects from this height. I lie facedown and wait.

Sure enough, I see the lone elderly night watchman walk slowly into my aisle. He’s not sure what he heard or if he heard anything at all. Nevertheless the poor guy looks scared. This tells me there’s nothing in this warehouse that’s of any interest. If there were illegal arms here, the Shop wouldn’t guard them with a lone sixty-year-old grandfather.

He eventually gives up and returns to the desk at the front of the warehouse. I can see him clearly from where I’m lying. He sits, opens the book, and begins to read. Every now and then he looks up and scans the aisles in his view, then goes back to reading. Damn. How long am I going to have to stay here?

I really don’t want to do it, but I have no choice. I’m not going to spend the rest of the night in this goddamned warehouse. I slowly pull the SC-20K off my shoulder and reach for another ring airfoil projectile. I load the rifle and aim for the old guy’s head. At this range it shouldn’t do much damage. It’ll knock him out for a while and he’ll have a nasty headache when he wakes up, but that’ll be it.

I aim at the back of his head and squeeze the trigger. Perfect shot. The watchman slumps forward and looks as if he’s fallen asleep while reading.

I climb down from my lofty position and head toward the back of the warehouse. Everything looks innocent enough and I’m about to call it a night and leave when I notice the office. It’s in the back corner — an enclosed room with windows and a door. It’s unlocked, too.

Using the night-vision mode so I don’t have to turn on the office lights, I riffle through the papers on the desk. Most of it means nothing to me. However, I do come across a blank “shipping manifest” form that is written in both Farsi and English. Where there’s one, there must be more. I turn to the filing cabinets and pull them open one by one. I eventually find a drawer that’s full of shipping manifest forms — and these are filled out. I scan the dates and find the folder for last month’s shipments. Again, I don’t understand a lot of it, but I do recognize certain city and country names.

The Tabriz Container Company apparently ships its products all over the Middle East. I see that they have customers in Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and even Israel. There are clients in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

So those containers I saw in Arbil could have come from anywhere. This has turned out to be a false lead.

Then I see something that’s interesting. I find some Shipping Manifests to Akdabar Enterprises in Van, Turkey. This is the company that Reza told me about. The one owned by that humanitarian guy, Basaran. There are also manifests to his charity organization, Tirma. A coincidence?

I put everything back the way I found it and leave the office. When I get back to the front of the warehouse, I see that my friend the night watchman is still counting sheep. I approach him silently and determine that he’s breathing steadily. He’ll be all right. I go out the front door, walk back to the Pazhan, and drive into town.

At daybreak I’ll head towards Turkey. I think it’s time I meet this Namik Basaran fellow and see what he’s really all about. I’ll send a report to Lambert, say goodbye to Reza, and chalk up my visit to Iran as educational but ultimately a dead end.