The Disciple

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I should be dead, you know, like Ghasem,” I said to Larijani. “If you hadn’t showed up in the nick, I would be.”

Larijani didn’t say anything to that. His face showed no emotion.

We were sitting on folding chairs in the underground safe house. Davar was stretched out on a cot twenty feet away. Sheer exhaustion, plus physical and emotional trauma, had finally claimed her.

“How long have you been in country?” I asked Larijani, who sat there with his hands on his thighs, apparently thinking of nothing at all.

He had to tot up the time before he answered. “Ten years and seven months, this time,” he said finally. “I grew up here, left when I was twenty. Fought with the Israelis. They wanted me to come back, so I did.”

“How did you work your way into the inner circle?”

His eyes shifted to mine. “Take a guess,” he said.

“Well, you pulled my chestnuts out of the fire. Saved my life, and I thank you for it. Saved Davar’s, too. Hell, I know that Ghasem was also glad to see you.”

“I blew my cover. Blew ten and a half years of sheer bloody hell. Are you worth it?”

I blinked.

“I don’t think that twit over there was worth it,” he continued slowly, his voice low and hard. “She wasn’t worth a day of it, I can tell you that. You-I am still trying to decide how many days of that ten and a half years you are worth.”

I couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I didn’t try. Just sat there looking at him. He was an ugly son of a bitch, no two ways about it.

He opened his hands and stared at them. “I had to be the competent, ruthless spy-catcher. That’s what the Iranians wanted and needed to protect their nuclear program. My bosses in Israel wanted a man inside who could protect the agency’s inside technical boffins, the men who were telling them precisely what Iran was doing and how they were doing it. So I found spies for the MOIS and al-Rashid, framed innocent people and delivered them up as human sacrifices.”

His eyes swiveled again to mine. “I murdered them, as surely as if I had pulled the trigger. Delivered them up for torture and agonizing deaths to enhance my reputation, so that I would be trusted. Innocent men! You see that, don’t you?”

“What was the alternative?” I asked.

“Toward the end every one of them admitted whatever al-Rashid was accusing them of, just to end it.” He thought about that for a bit, then added, as if he couldn’t believe it were true, “And the bloody bitch believed them.”

His eyes left mine. After a moment he reached into a pocket and extracted a pack of foul little cigars. He pulled one out, then remembered me and offered me the pack. I refused.

“It’s a filthy fucking world,” he muttered.

When Larijani had his cigar going, he sat silently, savoring the smoke. His face was a mask that he had learned to live behind. I suspected that behind that mask he was weighing the sins of the world, and his own, on a scale with an exquisitely delicate balance.

Sometime later G. W. Hosein came in. He sat down beside me and whispered, “I talked to Grafton. He wants us to put the hard drives on the he licop ter, and Davar, if you can get her to go. But he wants us to stay. He’s going to need us on Jihad day, he said.”

Disappointment washed over me like a wave. I tried to keep control of my face, but it was difficult.

“That Grafton…” G. W. said.

I promised myself that if I lived long enough to see Grafton again, I was going to strangle him.

When Jake Grafton got home from Langley, he found Callie in the living room with two colleagues from Georgetown University. She introduced her husband to them. One, a woman named Anna Wolfe, taught Arabic. The other professor, Peligro Sanchez, was a theological historian.

“Peligro?” Jake asked. “Doesn’t that mean danger?”

Professor Sanchez smiled. “I was in the service for a while and could never shake the nickname.”

“Oh,” the admiral said.

“I was in explosive ordnance disposal.”

The admiral’s smile widened to a grin.

“Professor Wolfe has read Dr. Murad’s manuscript,” Callie said when they were all seated. “She translated twenty or so pages, and Professor Sanchez has read them.” She offered the pages to Jake, who took them and scanned the first page, then put it back on the pile.

“This manuscript,” Sanchez began, carefully weighing his words. “This manuscript is easily the most original work on man’s relationship with God and the cosmos since Martin Luther wrote his theses.”

Jake Grafton glanced at Callie, who nodded her concurrence.

“The book is divided into twelve chapters,” Professor Wolfe said, “which expound upon and explain things like man’s relationship with God, man’s relationship with nature and his fellow man, and so on. The twenty pages are excerpts from four chapters and are, I think, extraordinary. Amazingly, the whole book is of this intellectual and literary quality. This book must be published.”

“What can you tell us about Israr Murad?” Sanchez asked Jake.

“He was a professor of comparative religion at a university in Iran.”

“Was?”

“He died under interrogation.”

Callie broke the silence that followed that remark. “Professor Wolfe would like to translate the whole work. Professor Sanchez wants to write a foreword. A former student of mine works for a literary agency in New York. Tomorrow morning I am taking the train to New York, and she and I will have lunch together. I hope that when she reads those pages, she’ll take Professor Murad’s book as a personal project and try to find a publisher.”

Her husband merely nodded.

“If I may ask, Admiral,” Professor Sanchez said, “how did you get possession of the manuscript?”

The admiral glanced at Sanchez, who got a good look at those cold gray eyes. “Legally,” Grafton said flatly.

“Uh-huh,” said Peligro Sanchez, who decided he had no more questions.

Jake saw the look on his wife’s face. His expression softened and he added, “A member of Murad’s family asked a friend of mine to send it to me.”

The thought occurred to Peligro Sanchez that he was tiptoeing into a minefield. “I see,” he said.

“I am sure the literary agent will require permission from the heirs to represent them,” Callie said to Jake.

“I’ll work that problem,” Jake told her, his face warming up as he met her gaze. “Have you asked these folks if they want a drink? I could use a beer.”

Peligro Sanchez decided a beer would be perfect, and both the ladies agreed they could drink a glass of white wine. Soon they were sipping their drinks and discussing the work of Israr Murad.

When the academics departed, Jake poured himself a glass of whiskey and sat down to read the twenty pages translated by Anna Wolfe.

In the light of the early morning, before the heat became stifling, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his aides stood in front of the still-smoking ruins of the main section of the Ministry of Defense as an IRGC colonel explained what had happened. While the howitzer was shelling the building, an American spy was at work in the Targeting Office in the west wing. He had been caught, of course, and was now being interrogated.

With the stench of the smoke in his nostrils, Ahmadinejad walked a few steps from his aides and stood looking. The Targeting Office. Well, the spy was captured, so the Americans knew nothing of what he found. Hazra alRashid had him and would squeeze everything he knew from him before he died-she could be relied upon to do that.

The effrontery of these infidels-to destroy the ministry!

He turned and looked up the boulevard at the low hill where the colonel said the howitzer had fired from. Almost a kilometer and a half away!

Across the street the police had a line set up to restrain the curious. Ahmadinejad looked at the crowd filling the sidewalk in both directions. Easily several thousand people were over there, looking at him and the ruined hulk of a building behind him.

He motioned to an aide. “A news release, I think,” he said. The aide removed a notebook and pencil from his pockets. “The savage effrontery of the infidels is here on display for the citizens of Iran, and the devout sons of Islam everywhere, to see and contemplate. This building was destroyed by agents of Zionism and the Great Satan.” He knew nothing about the participation of Mossad agents but decided to blame the Israelis anyway. A dearth of facts never slowed down a good politician.

“The strength and depravity of our enemies makes our cause glorious,” he continued, “worthy of our best efforts. The glory of the martyrs will shine like a sun in Paradise.” There was more, a lot more, because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really thought like this, and because he knew the newspapers, controlled by the state, would print every word. Perhaps he could stiffen the spines of those whose faith was less than his.

He was finished with his peroration when another aide, still holding a cell phone, came to him and said, “Al-Rashid took the spies to Evin Prison. She is there now, interrogating them, but she left strict orders she was not to be disturbed or interrupted.”

Ahmadinejad knew Hazra al-Rashid’s proclivities and methods, so he wasn’t surprised. He did, however, decide to go to Evin Prison to see these spies in person and find out what she had learned. Perhaps he could even offer a helpful hint or two to his interrogation expert. After all, he had some experience, and he, too, enjoyed the process.

So it was that he found himself in Ward 209 of Evin Prison, yet the door to the interrogation room and cells was firmly closed. Not wishing to embarrass Hazra, who he knew often liked to work naked, he used the closed circuit telephone to call in. When no one answered, Ahmadinejad looked from face to face. “Has anyone been in there since the spies were taken in?”

“Major Larijani went in,” the senior guard told him. “He came out with the big American, who was carrying the woman over one shoulder. He told us not to interrupt al-Rashid.”

These fools! What was Larijani doing in there? Taking the big American out?

“Open the door,” Ahmadinejad ordered.

So that was how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the person who discovered the naked corpse of Hazra al-Rashid, with the hilt of a knife protruding from between her breasts.

He also discovered the corpse of Ghasem Murad. A glance at the young man on the gurney told him the story. Someone, either Murad or Larijani, had given him a merciful coup de grace. It certainly couldn’t have been Hazra, who would never have lifted a finger to ease a victim’s pain.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood silently looking at Hazra, with the brown eyes open and frozen.

Oh, too bad, too bad. His life would not be the same without her. She understood the role of pain in human life. Still, they would meet again in Paradise, wreathed in glory, with the blood of infidels on their hands, and walk hand in hand to meet the Prophet.

Larijani! Traitor or spy?

As he walked out, Ahmadinejad gave the orders for a manhunt. Find Larijani and that American spy, Carmellini. Bring them here, alive, and then call me.

When Davar regained consciousness, I made her drink some water; then I sat on her cot and held her hand. Some of the swelling in her face had gone down, but now the bruises were turning various colors, with yellow and purple joining the black and blue.

She listened to my recount of our rescue without a word. That Larijani was a Mossad agent didn’t rate a comment. Still, when I ran down, she whispered through swollen lips, “Is Ghasem dead?”

“Yes.”

“I had to listen as she butchered him. I didn’t think there were people like that on this planet.”

Apparently she had been unconscious when Ghasem shot himself, and I didn’t want to tell her how he died, so I changed the subject. “Who beat you up?”

“The guards who raped me. I didn’t resist, gave them no pleasure, and that infuriated them.”

I merely sat there holding her hand. After a while she asked, still whispering, “Where are we?”

“In a tunnel under the city.”

She didn’t say anything to that.

“We need to get you to a doctor,” I said. “There is a helicopter coming this afternoon. It will take you out of Iran, take you to a doctor.”

“Why a doctor?”

“You’ve had a concussion, and you were bleeding some. I don’t know if it’s stopped. A doctor might want to look you over and give you some antibiotics.”

“To save me? For what?”

“To prevent you from getting a raging infection.”

“I’m not going to die from this,” she said fiercely. “Persian women have been raped since the dawn of time. Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, the men all did it… a lot. We’re tough, we can take it.”

“I see,” I said. I didn’t tell her that while she was unconscious Larijani and I had injected her with a massive dose of antibiotics. I wondered if that dose was enough. I also didn’t tell her that if an artery let go in her brain, she was going to die immediately or be crippled for life.

“When I’m well,” she said, “if those guards are still alive, I’m going to hunt them down like the animals they are and kill them.”

“Everyone should have a reason to get out of bed in the morning,” I agreed.

“I’m going to look them square in the face and ensure they know who I am. Then I am going to kill them.”

“Right on.”

“Don’t be condescending, American spy.” She pulled her hand from mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Somehow that conversation had gotten away from me. I was going to tell her she would get well and someday this experience would be only an ugly memory, but even I didn’t believe that crock of Pelosi, and I certainly didn’t have the guts to say it aloud.

Maybe she was right. She should get a gun, find the bastards and drill them right between the eyes. After shooting off their dicks, of course, and watching them scream for a while.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Maybe if I was still alive a week from now, after Ahmadinejad’s Jihad Day, I’d help her do it. A man also needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

I pulled another cot alongside hers and put my backpack on it to use as a pillow. There was a blanket on the cot. I kicked off my shoes and lay down. I reached out and touched Davar’s hand.

“No,” she whispered, so softly I almost missed it. “Sleep beside me.”

So I moved over to her cot. There was just enough room if I lay on my side with her head on my arm. I managed to get the blanket over both of us, and then I surrendered to exhaustion.

Amazingly, I slept without dreams.

Sal Molina found Jake Grafton in a conference room in the Pentagon standing in front of a huge map of Iran. He was examining locations on the map and referring to a list he held in his hand as two senior NCOs plotted locations and drew lines.

When he saw Molina, Grafton motioned to him and showed him the sheet of paper in his hand. “Here are the locations for the nuclear armed missiles. The lines show their route of flight to their targets.”

After looking at the list, Molina handed it back and asked, “How reliable is this information?”

“Tommy Carmellini got it out of the Iranian Defense Ministry Targeting Office. He was caught and would have been tortured to death, but he was saved by an Israeli agent. He sent us this a few hours ago.”

“Do you believe this is genuine?”

Grafton paused and stared at the map. “Probably.”

“The Iranian Defense Ministry was attacked by someone with a cannon about twelve hours ago. The Iranian government is outraged. They are making big threats. Is this list what it was all about?”

Grafton turned to the presidential aide and looked him in the eyes. “Tommy needed a diversion.”

“Do they know we have this list?”

Jake Grafton led the way to two chairs in the back of the room. “Probably. Tommy was caught before he could get out of the building, and he left a bomb in the Targeting Office, so they know he was in there. They know he escaped from custody.”

“So if they know we have it…?”

“They have two choices,” Jake Grafton said. “They can move the missiles or reprogram them to new targets. Or try to do both. We have satellites and drones overhead and AWACS planes in the Gulf and over Iraq, so if they try to shuffle missiles around we’ll know it. As for changing targets, they’ve already picked the best dozen they could find.” He made a gesture of dismissal. “I don’t think it matters whether they believe we have this list or not.”

Sal Molina had known Grafton for years; he well knew that Grafton looked at problems from a different perspective than most of the military brass and all of the politicians, which was why he was so valuable. He could solve problems that appeared to be hopeless tangles, and had done so repeatedly for years. The rub was that his solutions were often tough medicine to swallow.

“What matters is what they do or don’t do to protect these launch sites,” Grafton said, glancing at Molina to see if the lawyer was with him. “They don’t know if we really have this list, or if we do, whether we think it’s genuine. If they rush troops out to these twelve sites, that will tend to confirm that these are indeed nuclear weapons launch sites.”

“They could scatter troops all over,” Molina suggested.

“Indeed, and that would tend to confirm that launch is imminent.”

“So what are they doing now?”

“Nothing. So far. That could change any minute.”

Sal Molina rubbed his face, then put his palms flat on his thighs. “Okay. What is your plan?”

“We can’t take out these sites before they roll out the missiles. The president wants us to react to Iranian aggression, not to be preemptive.”

Molina nodded, once.

“The problem is they have nine hundred missiles. Nine hundred! Some of them are going to be launched-that is inevitable. Our job is to minimize the damage from conventional warheads and try to prevent the launching of nuclear missiles or shoot them down.”

“Okay,” Molina said slowly.

“So here is how we’re going to do it.” Jake Grafton led Molina back to the map and launched into an explanation.

If I had been arranging a helicopter rendezvous with clandestine agents in Iran, I would have picked the most godforsaken place I could find, as far from the Iranian military and any civilians as possible, and I would have done it in the dead of night. I even suggested two such locations that I picked from a map when I talked via satellite phone to Jake Grafton.

“This afternoon at three twenty-five your time in a park,” he said, and named it.

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but I am the number one most wanted man in Iran. They are looking for me all over.”

“One suspects,” he said.

“How about a vacation? Maybe I just jump on the chopper and head for France. I know a woman there, and-”

“I have a job for you,” he said. “Here in a few days Ahmadinejad and his buddies are going into that executive bunker. Once they are in, I want you to ensure they don’t come out.”

“Sounds like a job for the air force.”

“Oh, they’ll do a permanent job. You and our people there must keep them inside until the concrete sets.”

Oh boy.

“What do you think you’ll need to do the job?” he asked.

“A tank.”

“You’ll have to get that locally.”

“And a couple of satchel charges and a couple of submachine guns and ammo.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can do that.”

So at the appointed time G. W. Hosein and I sat in a car on the edge of the park waiting for the chopper. We were both togged out as Iranian army colonels, complete with sidearms and fake beards.

As we waited, we watched Revolutionary Guards wearing slovenly uniforms and carrying AK-47s stroll along, eyeing everyone.

“They’re looking for us,” G. W. said as he watched four of them standing on a corner a hundred feet away.

I merely grunted. I was keeping an eye on them, too.

I looked at my watch. “Fifteen minutes,” I said.

As I watched, the knot of four accosted a group of four women wearing those long coverings and scarves. The boys wanted to talk and strut. They couldn’t have been much over twenty years of age, with scraggly little beards and pimples. For all I knew, they were four future ayatollahs.

The women looked properly respectful.

Between us and the IRGC boys, a sidewalk vendor was selling food to the local civilians, who were out with their children. All in all, it looked like another day in Tehran to me.

As we watched, a truckload of IRGC soldiers went past us.

“Let’s go,” I said and hoisted the backpack from its position between my feet.

The IRGC boys ignored us as we walked into the park. G. W. took a beacon from his pocket, triggered it, then put it back.

We walked toward a tree on the edge of a large grassy area and stopped beside it. We had been there about three minutes, watching the kids play, when I heard the chopper. After another minute I saw it, a Russian-built Hind with Iranian army markings. The Hind was the easiest helo in the world to recognize because it had two counterrotating rotor disks mounted on the same mast. It went right over our heads, then swung out in a wide turn. It circled the area as it bled off speed, then came slowly down toward the open area, its nose into the breeze. Kids and parents scattered to get out of the way.

When the machine landed, I walked briskly over. The only man in the chopper was the pilot, who was wearing an Iranian uniform.

“Carmellini?” he asked loudly, over the roar of the engine, which was still turning at 100 percent. This guy wasn’t taking any chances; all he had to do to take off was lift the collective.

“Yeah,” I said, and checked to see that the rotor wash hadn’t loosened my beard.

“I was told there might be a passenger.”

“She decided to stay.”

I tossed the backpack on the floor beside him as I looked around for IRCG soldiers. Two knots of them were watching, their AKs cradled in their arms.

“Those duffel bags in back are for you,” he shouted, pointing.

I reached for the nearest one, which weighed about thirty pounds, I guessed. When I had them both on the ground, I said loudly, “Have a nice flight.”

Hoisting my bags, I walked out from under the rotors back toward G. W., who was still under the tree. The rotor wash increased in intensity and played with my clothing. I felt a corner of my beard coming loose.

In seconds the chopper was off and climbing.

As I walked up, G. W. said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

“Amen to that.”

Ignoring the gawking IRGC soldiers, we walked back to the parked car, got in and drove away.

I’ll admit, you gotta have a lot of balls to order a stunt like that. That Jake Grafton…

In the Hind, U.S. Army Warrant Officer John Pepper skimmed the rooftops of Tehran. He brought the chopper around to a northwest heading and checked the portable GPS that he had mounted on top of the glareshield. His route from Iraq to the clandestine refueling depot inside Iran, and from there to Tehran, had been carefully chosen by the intelligence officers to avoid known military bases and antiaircraft missile sites. Mostly, Pepper had flown up and down canyons at low altitude, popped over ridges and skimmed across fields and forests with his skids almost in the trees. He was going to fly the reciprocal of that course to get out of Iran.

As he flew over the city, his helicopter was of course being swept by search radars. He glanced at the ALQ-199 display: this box had also been stuck on top of the panel. The box revealed every radar sweep, yet the green light stayed illuminated. The green light, according to the major who had briefed Pepper, meant the gadget was working and the Iranians couldn’t see him.

Still, sitting alone in a Russian-made Iraqi chopper skimming across Tehran, John Pepper fought back the urge to look over his shoulder for Iranian fighters. He also fought back a powerful urge to pee.

Oh, baby! Who knew, when he was a jug-headed kid and volunteered for army flight training, that this adventure was in his future?

John Pepper glanced down at the backpack on the floor and wondered what it contained. Something important, no doubt, something they would never tell him about.

He automatically ran his eyes over the gauges one more time, checked that he was indeed on course, then set the autopilot and removed a pack of cigarettes from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit and lit one as the rooftops of Tehran sped by beneath his machine.