The Hypnotist

SEVENTEEN

Farid Taghinia had left work at six o’clock. The rest of the employees departed quickly after he did, so by six-fifteen the mission was empty, but Samimi had decided to wait a bit longer before venturing out of his office. Now that it was seven, it was certainly safe, but he was nervous nonetheless. He was always nervous lately. If his actions were discovered, he’d be sent back to Iran and killed. He had no doubt.

To make it look as if he’d gotten up without premeditation, Samimi left an unfinished document open on his computer, picked up a sheaf of papers, walked down the hall to his boss’s office and, using a key he wasn’t supposed to have, opened the door.

After laying the papers on Taghinia’s desk, Samimi pulled on gloves and then picked up the phone. He always held his breath during this part of the operation. If Taghinia had found the bug he’d be cagey enough to set a trap for whoever had placed it there.

The device was where Samimi had put it last week.

His hands shook as he removed it and slipped it into his pocket. No matter how many times he’d performed the ritual of putting the bug in and taking it out, his fear never lessened. And he’d been at it now for almost six months. Once every ten days, the night before the offices were swept for listening devices, Samimi retrieved his pet and took it home with him, only returning it to its nest the evening after the inspections. That meant that every fortnight he missed twenty-four hours’ worth of Taghinia’s phone calls. It bothered him, but what could he do? So far he’d been able to pick up where he’d left off in most of the conversations without too much confusion. But was he missing anything critical?

At his boss’s door, he listened before he walked out. Nothing but street noises and the whir of office equipment. About to leave, he remembered the papers, his excuse if he was caught. I just came in to leave these here, he’d say. And if Taghinia questioned him about the locked door? It wasn’t locked. He’d rehearsed it all in front of the mirror at home a dozen times. I didn’t know you locked your door at night, Farid. Why do you do that?

Back in his own office, Samimi extracted the day’s phone tape from the hiding place he’d constructed in his bookshelf and left the mission for the night.

An hour later he sat sipping Scotch and playing the tapes in the kitchen area of his small Queens studio, which was decorated with clean, modern furniture and not a single Persian rug. He was halfway through his drink and so far none of the calls were important or relevant to the Hypnos rescue.

Since Vartan Reza had discovered the forgery, plans had been speeding up. The statue had first been a symbol of power but now, with the possibility it was a legendary map to unleashing unconscious powers, it was valuable as much more than an artifact. If his country had been determined to reclaim it before, now they were desperate. Something like this could not belong to anyone else. Could not be discovered by anyone else. Hypnos had to come home and be examined.

That was why Samimi was being so careful now and why he’d bought himself such an expensive insurance policy last Friday.

Following Taghinia’s instructions, Samimi had driven a gray Mercedes up to the garage in Lake Placid. But not the same Mercedes that had been used in the murder of Vartan Reza. Samimi had put that car into a storage space he’d rented in the Bronx and had driven a replacement he’d bought up to the garage. It had cost him almost half his savings, but how could he put a price on having evidence against Taghinia for vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crime?

What to do with that evidence weighed on his mind, though. He was afraid to send it to anyone, but he’d written a letter explaining what he’d done, which he kept folded up behind his credit cards in his wallet. If anything happened to him, someone would find it.

“My boys loved the last set of American movies you sent, Farid. Thank you,” Nassir was saying on the most recent tape. “That young actor-what was his name? Jon Heder. Very funny.”

This was it. The minister who was the mastermind of the plan to bring Hypnos home, was employing the code. Ready with a pencil and pad of paper, Samimi wrote down every word the two men said for the next four minutes. When the call ended, he worked on the translation for half an hour. By the time he had it all deciphered and read it through, he needed a second drink.

In code, Nassir told Taghinia he was arranging for a delivery of five pounds of Semtex, the Czech-made plastic explosive. Specifying pre-1991 Semtex, which had no commercial tracing chemicals in it, so it was virtually undetectable. It would arrive via the diplomatic pouch and be delivered to the warehouse the mission owned on the west side of Manhattan. More than enough explosives, Nassir said, to blow up a stone building six stories high.

Hypnos was in the Met. The Met was built of stone…Samimi considered its size. Were they talking about the museum? What was going on? He drained the second drink in less time than it had taken him to pour it.