Target Omega

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Mansur had one more thing to do before he fell off the face of the earth.

The flight from Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku, Azerbaijan, to Vancouver would take several hours with multiple connections. Once there, he would take care of business and then disappear forever. He had planned for this for years. The arrangements were made. Provided he remained disciplined over the next few hours, Iranian intelligence would never find him.

Nonetheless, Mansur was a bit troubled. Rarely did he miss clues about a person’s intentions. It was one of the things that had kept him alive and out of prison for the last several decades. Yet he had completely misread Park. Granted, he hadn’t had much time to evaluate the North Korean, having just been introduced to him by Chernin. But he had sensed nothing amiss. Only after the crafty Chernin had expressed his suspicions when they’d smoked Puros on the balcony had Mansur given any thought to whether Park’s motives were sincere.

Chernin should’ve been a spy, Mansur thought. He knew the Russian was smart, calculating. Yet he had underestimated him.

Chernin had a contingency plan in place. That much was clear. What it was, Mansur could only speculate. A place on the water in a warm climate, somewhere the SVR would never think to look. Somewhere, as Chernin had often said, he could read and drink vodka.

Shortly after Mansur had received the warning call from Chernin, the two met a block south of Mansur’s apartment and drove Mansur’s car to a small dock on the Caspian Sea just outside Chalus, where Mansur’s cousin Jafar was waiting for them in his fishing boat.

Now Mansur and Chernin were sailing to a makeshift dock just south of Baku in relative silence, Jafar carefully avoiding the lanes policed by Iranian gunboats. For Mansur, this was the most nerve-wracking part of his journey. Once he made it to Baku, the odds that he would never be detected and apprehended by Iranian intelligence improved to nearly a hundred percent.

Whatever Chernin’s plans were to disappear, Mansur believed his were at least as good. He was traveling under a false passport and had left behind no clues as to his destination. He had accumulated enough money to live the remainder of his days in what most outside the West would consider luxury. Before leaving Baku for his own destination, Chernin would make arrangements to transfer one hundred thousand US dollars to one of Mansur’s accounts, an added cushion.

Although Mansur hated the Iranian regime, he loved his country and would miss it. The familiar sights, sounds, and smells were now irretrievably in the past. The few friends he had he would never see again. He had known of this eventuality for years and had reconciled himself to it. But adjusting to life as an exile wouldn’t be easy. The reward, however, was freedom. And his life.