The Last Run

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was the first time that Caleb Lewis had ever received flash traffic from London, the communications cabinet suddenly bleating, loud and insistent, and it took him by such surprise that he actually jumped in his chair. For a moment he didn't know what the sound was, where it was coming from, and his mind flashed that perhaps it was an embassy alarm, that something was happening in the chancery, that perhaps he and Barnett and God only knew who else were about to be arrested and charged with espionage.

Then Barnett was up and out from behind his desk, unlocking the cabinet, and Caleb understood. By the time Barnett had the doors open and his key in the console, Caleb was standing over his shoulder, and together the two men watched the monitor and printer come alive together. They read the message as it decoded, character by character, on the screen, neither of them speaking, and when it had completed Barnett reached for the printout, tore it free from the feeder and handed it back to Lewis, then quickly typed the one-word response London had demanded.

Confirmed.

Barnett removed his key, closed and locked the cabinet, and only then did he look at Lewis.

"We're in the shit now, son," he said.

Caleb looked up from the signal in his hand, the one he'd already read through three times with mounting apprehension and comparable confusion.

"What does it mean?" he asked.

"It means, Caleb, that there's a Minder in our future." The signal was unequivocal. Tehran Station was directed to, with all dispatch, effect the following:

First, they were to establish surveillance of the block of apartment buildings on the southern side of Nilufar Street, between Bustas and Aras Avenues, in Karaj, some twenty kilometers west of Tehran. Once established, they were to locate and identify Falcon, and, if possible, initiate contact. All caution and care were to be taken to avoid detection.

Second, the Station was directed to, with all haste, secure a safehouse in the north of country, in Chalus or Noshahr. The safehouse was to be stocked for three-to-five occupants for a duration of seventy-two hours, including sleeping arrangements, food, beverages, toiletries, and clothing. Additionally, a vehicle was to be provided for the location, in good condition and with current tags and registration. Upon acquisition, the Station Number One was to assign one of the embassy's Security detail to the location to standby.

The necessary equipment to provide proof of identity to London was to be furnished at said location.

The signal concluded by saying that Tehran Station had twenty-four hours to accomplish these goals. "It's a lift?" Caleb asked. "They're lifting Falcon?"

"How it looks," Barnett said, spinning the combination on the office safe.

"But we don't know who Falcon is!"

"Presumably London does."

"Then why don't they bloody tell us that, instead of ordering us to make the identification? How are we supposed to identify him if we don't know who he bloody is?"

"That's the trick. Presumably, Falcon knows we'll come looking and hang a flag of some sort. You'll want to take a camera with you."

"Me?"

"Unless you'd rather be the one to drive up to Chalus and secure the house and car, Caleb, yes."

"Brilliant, so I'll just hop over to Karaj and drive around this block until I see someone who I think is Falcon?"

"Don't be daft."

"Thank you."

Barnett was into the safe now, pulling out stacks of cash, most of them Iranian rials, a few of Euros, and setting them on his desk. From the top shelf, he removed a Nikon digital camera and companion lens. He set the camera beside the money, grinned at Caleb around the cigarette in his mouth.

"No, you find a static position, someplace with a view of the whole block, if possible. Should be a cafe, something, someplace you can park your arse and take in the scenery. It can be in the open so long as you don't make a nuisance of yourself, I'd think. If I'm reading the signal right, Falcon is going to want you to spot him."

Caleb massaged his brow, feeling for an instant off balance and still horribly, horribly confused. He understood what the signal was telling them, understood that when Barnett had said a Minder was coming for a visit, there was a lift in the offing, and from the instructions for the safehouse, that it would be a defection rather than an abduction. He even understood that this was a direct result of the message from Mini's drop in the Park-e Shahr, that London had identified Falcon as a high-value asset, one that London was willing to pull out all the stops to secure.

So Falcon was important. Important enough that London was willing to risk a lift out of Iran, something that, to his knowledge, hadn't been attempted for years, even decades, now. But if London knew who Falcon was, why were they ordering Barnett and him to provide proof of identity at the safehouse, something that wouldn't be possible until after Falcon was in hand? It was arse-backwards, it didn't make sense.

Barnett shut the safe door, spun the combination, then stabbed out his Silk Cut in the crowded ashtray on his desk. He replaced the cigarette with a new one, leaving it to wait, unlit, while he held out one of the stacks of rials for Caleb.

"Five thousand," he said. "Try not to spend it all in one place." The traffic, always bad, was fuck-awful out of Tehran, with almost constant gridlock, horns, and a new smattering of chilling rain that had the benefit of holding back the heavy smog that so often blanketed the valley south of the mountains. Once, Karaj had been a refuge from the bustle of the capital, where the well-heeled had retreated to get away from the city. Some such signs remained, including the spiral-roofed palace built in 1966 by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for Shams Pahlavi, the Shah's sister, and the ancient Zoroastrian temple, Takht-e-Rostam.

That was then. Now Karaj was more a commuter extension of greater Tehran than a city all its own, though as a city it could boast a place as Iran's fourth or fifth largest, depending on which census Caleb wanted to believe. Current population was estimated between 1.5 and 2.5 million, and from the traffic alone, he was inclined to believe the larger number. The forty-odd-kilometer drive from the embassy just east of central Tehran to Karaj to the west took him nearly two hours, fighting rush-hour traffic all the way. The only benefit to the frustration and duration of the drive that Caleb could see was that by the time he wedged his Citroen into a space near the corner of Nastaran and Bustan, he was as positive as he could be that he hadn't been followed.

It wasn't until he was at the corner of Sonbol, perhaps two blocks from where he had been directed to establish his surveillance, that Caleb saw the police patrol, a group of four officers with their two parked cars. His first thought was that they were waiting for him, and the fear reared in his chest, growling, and for a half-second that seemed to stretch infinitely longer, he didn't know what to do. The immediate urge was to turn off, to turn away and head in a different direction. The pedestrian traffic was enough that he thought perhaps he might go unnoticed, but just as quickly he thought that would be a bad idea, the act of a man trying to hide himself, trying not to be seen, certain to draw more attention.

He continued forward, trying to master himself, and ten meters from the patrol one of the officers called out to him, waving him over.

"Papers," the officer said.

Caleb produced his wallet, his passport and visa card, handing them over. The officer used a small flashlight to look at them, peering at each document intently before shining the light into Caleb's face, checking him against his photograph.

"Why are you in Karaj?"

"Just sightseeing," Caleb said. "Went to see the palace."

The officer grunted, shining his light once again at the open passport in his hand. "British."

"Yes."

"You live on Mellat."

"Yes. Thought I'd wait until the traffic cleared up before heading home."

The light snapped off, the documents were returned. "You'll be waiting for a while. It never clears up."

"Lightens, then," Caleb said. "Do you know, is there anyplace nearby I could get dinner?"

"On Ladan, that way." The officer used the flashlight, still in his hand, to indicate the direction, then pointed the opposite way, to the east. "Or there, on Nilufar."

Caleb nodded, thanked the officer, and headed onto Nilufar, tucking his papers back into his jacket. It was marginally less busy than Bustan, still with a steady flow of Tehran commuters returning to their homes, their small apartments packed into the concrete, ugly buildings on both sides of the street. The ground floors of several were occupied by shops of one sort or another, and Caleb noted two restaurants and one coffeehouse. He stayed on the north side of the street, making his way to the coffeehouse, and inside ordered a cup of ghahveh, the traditional Iranian coffee, and a piece of date-filled biscuit, called colompe. With both in hand, he wedged himself into a table near the front, by the window, but the glare from within and the rain from without made visibility through the glass near-impossible. He looked around the crowded coffeehouse instead, watched as the postwork crowd of men and women pushed past, as urgent and aggressive as anything he'd ever seen in London, thinking about what he should do next.

Static surveillance from the street would be difficult, if not impossible, especially with the police patrol so close to hand. Never mind that there were at least a dozen apartment buildings crowded together on the south side of the street, opposite where Caleb now sat, and within those buildings God only knew how many apartments. One of them, according to London, held Falcon, but which one Caleb had no way to know. He considered trying to get a room on the north side of the street, but doing so would create a whole new set of problems, and it would limit his visibility of the buildings opposite him, to boot.

He sipped at his coffee, tasting the thick grounds as he reached the bottom of the cup. Barnett had suggested static surveillance, but now that he was here, Caleb simply couldn't see a way that was going to work, certainly not at night, certainly not with the police and the rain. Mobile surveillance wouldn't do, either; there was no way he could envision to both stay in motion and keep eyes on the whole block. It just wasn't possible. The only thing that Caleb could think to do, in fact, was to start working through the apartments one by one, knocking on each door in turn, and asking if, perhaps, anyone knew where he might find someone code-named Falcon.

The absurdity of the idea made him smile.

There was no way he could find Falcon, he concluded, certainly not without exposing the both of them.

Which meant that Falcon was going to have to find him. There was no message from Barnett the next morning, but when Caleb stopped by the embassy before heading back to Karaj, he noted that at least two of the Security detail he was used to seeing on-site were nowhere to be found, and he concluded that Barnett must have already secured the safehouse. As part of the SIS position within the FCO, the Firm trained and provided guards for each embassy, with additional security provided by subcontracting through local agencies. The irony of hiring Iranians to guard the British Embassy in Tehran wasn't lost on anyone on either side, and it was accepted as a given that any local thus employed was delivering daily reports to someone in the Republican Guards or VEVAK or both about all they had seen during their shift. High-security areas were, of course, restricted to U.K. personnel only, and all operations were overseen by SIS Security.

It was three minutes to nine when he reached Karaj, the Nikon slung over his shoulder and a guidebook in his hand. This time Caleb approached Nilufar from the south, starting at Sepah Square. The square really wasn't, instead a large, finely tended grass roundabout where Aras Avenue converged with the multilane east-west highway that ran all the way back to Tehran. At the center of the roundabout stood a monument to the Sepah, four fine-featured soldiers facing in every cardinal direction, holding flags or rifles, all of them leaping skyward, as if ascending to heaven.

Caleb stopped and took several pictures of the monument, mostly to get the feel for the camera. He was careful to only shoot facing north; southeast of where he stood, fenced, patrolled, and guarded, was the Basij-e Sepah base. It took four and a half minutes before the traffic cleared enough that he could sprint across the road, north, to the next median, and from there it was only a short walk and a relatively shorter delay before he was able to cross west onto Nilufar.

There was a slight rise here to the road, another grass-covered slope dotted with trees, with a small gazebo set upon it. Caleb took a seat on one of the benches inside, checked the camera, and now looking down Nilufar to the west, took several shots in succession of the street. Shops were opening, first customers beginning to trickle into the coffeehouse he had visited the night before, as well as to the bank just south of where he was now sitting.

He watched the street for the next several minutes, pretending to alternately check his guidebook and his camera. The night before, he had arrived believing he would have to watch the apartment buildings, but today he gave them only a cursory glance. If Falcon was flying a flag from one of the windows, Caleb couldn't see it, and he was now increasingly certain that was because it wasn't there. Each apartment had an identity, a corresponding tenant or owner, and anything that drew attention to the location would logically draw attention to its occupant. Better to set the flag someplace more anonymous, somewhere Falcon could be just one of many, in one of the restaurants or shops along the street.

So Caleb watched the street-the bank and the restaurants and the coffeehouse-and while he did that he tried to keep an eye out for the police, and he tried to determine if he, himself, was under surveillance, and when it all became too much he rose and walked down Nilufar to buy himself another cup of ghahveh. He drank it at a table, was rising to leave when he looked back and saw, seated alone near the back of the room, a man in his late middle-age, graying hair and a neatly trimmed beard, sitting by himself, a book closed on the table in front of him. Caleb couldn't make out the Farsi from the distance, but he could see the illustration, the different birds taking flight on the cover, and the aftertaste of the too-sweet coffee turned sour in his mouth.

If there was a falcon in the flock on the cover, he couldn't see it.

He took his empty cup back to the counter, using the opportunity to take another survey of the room. The man had been seated when Caleb had entered, he was sure of it, and he was just as sure that the book hadn't been out at that time.

"Agha," Caleb said. "Salam aleykum."

The man smiled up at him. "Salam aleykum. Your Farsi is very good for a tourist."

"Thank you. You're interested in birds?"

"Yes, all sorts." The man picked up the book, turning it in his hand. "Though we don't see many here during the winter."

"I'd think you'd see some around here."

"A few. I don't get out often to look. You like birds?"

"Some more than others. I'm partial to birds of prey. Falcons, hawks, birds like that."

"Those are all good birds. There are, of course, many others." The man seemed to consider, looking at the book in his hand, then offered it to Caleb. "I've read it several times. Perhaps you'll have more use for it than I."

"That's very generous of you," Caleb said, taking the book in hand. He freed the camera from his shoulder, turning to a nearby waiter. "Excuse me, could you take a picture for me? Of me and my friend here?"

"My pleasure."

"Just point and shoot. It's okay if you take a couple of them." Caleb moved beside the man, still seated at the table, held up the book with a grin. The waiter pointed the camera, and he heard the shutter click repeatedly before it was handed back. "Thank you."

The waiter moved off, smiling, perhaps amused, and Caleb turned again to the man at the table, who was now looking at him much more soberly.

"I hope you enjoy the book," the man said. "You should read it soon."