Under Fire

9

What just happened, Jack?” asked Ysabel. She shrugged off her purse and let it drop to the floor, then tossed the binoculars and her keys onto the counter and walked to the sideboard, where she poured a glass of Scotch.

Jack clicked the door shut behind him, then leaned his back against it and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, then another. It felt good to be… home. It wasn’t quite the right word, but Ysabel’s apartment had become not only Jack’s base of operations, but his safe house as well. So far, no one knew of this place.

Ysabel said, “I saw his… His head just—”

“I know.”

“Who was shooting at us?”

“I don’t know.”

“What—”

“Ysabel, stop. Let me think.” He paused for a few moments to orient his thoughts. “Do you have a washing machine in here?”

“Yes.”

Jack headed for the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, “We should both shower and wash our clothes.”

“Why?”

“Blood particles get everywhere, Ysabel.” Jack had no idea whether the Tehran police were sophisticated or dedicated enough to look for such forensics, but he was taking no chances. The idea of ending up in an Iranian prison — which was the best-case scenario — held no appeal at all.

After they were both showered and their clothes were in the washer, they settled into the sunken living room, Ysabel with her second glass of Scotch, Jack his first.

He took the nine-millimeter from his jacket pocket, as well as the Faraday bag holding both his phones, and placed them on the table.

Ysabel sat in the chair opposite the couch, her legs curled beneath her and a glass pressed against her chest with both hands. Her eyes were vacant.

“Were we followed, do you think?” she murmured.

It was a good question. Jack had been careful to check for tails and they’d pulled into Ysabel’s apartment garage just as the police sirens began converging on Mellat Park. Though it seemed doubtful anyone had gotten the Range Rover’s license plates, Jack couldn’t be sure.

“Tomorrow morning you’re going to call the police and report the Range Rover missing,” he said.

Ysabel’s eyes went wide. “Jack, that’s crazy.”

“That’s what an innocent person would do. If someone reports it being near the scene of the shooting, you need to be disconnected from it.”

“They’ll ask a lot of questions.”

“All of which you’ll have answers to. We’ll talk it through. They won’t be able to make the connection between you, Seth, and the Pardis condo. You’ll be a victim of a crime, nothing more. Where’s the closest sketchy area?”

“Sketchy?”

“Run-down, away from things.”

“Uh… there’s a bunch of vacant lots beneath Velayat Bridge about three kilometers from here.” Ysabel stood up, collected her MacBook from the credenza, and then, after it was powered up, showed Jack Velayat Bridge on Google Maps.

Jack scrolled around on the map, then tapped the screen. “Take your Mercedes and meet me a block south of this bus stop in about twenty minutes.”

After popping the Rover’s ignition with a screwdriver and tearing out the wires, Jack parked it beside a pylon beneath Velayat Bridge, then doused the seats and dashboard with a bottle of Ysabel’s nail polish remover, set the interior ablaze, then ran the quarter-mile to where Ysabel was waiting for him. Forty minutes after leaving the apartment, they were back.

“What time would you normally go out in the morning?” Jack asked.

“I guess about eight, for breakfast.”

“Then follow that routine. Walk down to the garage, look for your car, then call the concierge and report the theft.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Making myself scarce.”

“Who was that, the one that died?”

“One of the men who kidnapped me,” Jack said. “I’d named him Balaclava. And don’t ask me who or what or why, Ysabel, because I don’t know. I need to sort it out.”

Ysabel took his admonishment in stride, simply nodding. She downed the rest of her Scotch — her third one — then gave him a sloppy half-grin. She was tipsy, bordering on drunk. “I’m glad they didn’t shoot you, Jack. That would have been a bad thing.”

Despite himself, Jack laughed. “Me, too.”

And why aren’t I dead? he thought. Jack replayed the events in his mind. The sniper had him dead to rights. The slightest adjustment to that red laser dot would have put Jack’s skull in the crosshairs. The two pops he’d heard before the red dot went wild had come from a handgun; of that Jack was certain. Someone else had been on that roof with the sniper. Who was Jack’s guardian angel and why had he interceded?

“You’re far away, Jack,” said Ysabel. “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering why I’m alive.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Jack opened Ysabel’s laptop, brought up the chat window, and entered Gavin Biery’s cell-phone number and typed: IT’S JACK. YOU THERE?

A few moments passed before Gavin replied: IF THIS IS JACK, HOW OLD IS MY CAT?

Jack smiled. Gavin enjoyed what he called “all that spy nonsense.” Jack indulged him occasionally. He replied, PEEPERS DIED TWO WEEKS AGO.

GOOD ANSWER. WHAT’S UP?

I GOT MY HIJACKED PHONE BACK. CAN YOU DO ANYTHING WITH IT? REMOTELY, I MEAN.

DEPENDS ON WHAT THEY DID TO IT. WHERE IS IT?

POWERED OFF AND INSIDE MY HOMEMADE FARADAY BAG.

WHY BOTHER WITH IT?

I MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET THROUGH TO SETH — THE REAL ONE.

LET ME SEE WHAT I CAN DO. POWER IT UP. WATCH THE CLOCK. IF YOU DON’T SEE THE SCREEN FLASH TWICE IN THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS, POWER IT DOWN AGAIN AND PUT IT BACK IN THE FARADAY.

Jack removed the phone from the bag and turned it on. He watched the screen. Only ten seconds passed before the screen double-flashed.

Gavin typed: GOT IT. IT MIGHT TAKE SOME TIME. NO GUARANTEES. BACK TO YOU ASAP.

As Jack closed the chat window, Ysabel’s laptop let out a chime.

“New e-mail,” she said.

Jack called up the e-mail window. “It’s Ervaz,” Jack said.

“Really?” Ysabel climbed out of her chair and sat down beside him. “What’s he say?”

“Basically, ‘Who the hell is this?’” Jack typed in: FRIEND OF SETH’S.

SETH IS MISSING.

I KNOW. I’M TRYING TO FIND HIM.

GIVE ME PROOF THAT YOU ARE HIS FRIEND.

I CAN’T, Jack replied. I DON’T KNOW YOU, DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU AND SETH. HELP ME FIND HIM. HE’S IN TROUBLE.

The reply took sixty seconds to arrive: MAYBE. HAVE TO THINK. I WILL GET BACK TO YOU.

Jack closed the laptop. “Now we wait.”

“Now we sleep,” Ysabel replied with a yawn.

As planned, Ysabel left the apartment at eight a.m. Jack rode down in the elevator with her. When the doors parted on her parking level, she said, “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

“Right. Use the cloned phone number.”

He took the elevator down to the ground level, left the garage, and wandered into Mellat Park. It was another rainy day. Sheltered under one of Ysabel’s umbrellas, Jack strolled the path around the park’s north end, resisting the impulse to head south to where Balaclava had been gunned down the night before. The police might still be canvassing for witnesses, and that was a list Jack didn’t want to be on. Even so, he eventually needed to get into Seth’s condo, as well as onto its roof. Unlikely though it was, perhaps the sniper and his guardian angel had left behind something useful. It seemed unlikely Seth had been keeping anything of value in his condo, but it was still a stone Jack wanted to turn over.

He made his way to the shores of Mellat Lake, where he found a canvas-covered vendor stall. He bought a cup of coffee and a bag of bread crumbs, then picked his way through the trees to the waterline, where he crouched down. The rain pattered softly on the umbrella. A pair of ducks spotted him and paddled over, squawking and turning small circles until Jack tossed them some bread crumbs. Clearly they’d been through this routine hundreds of times.

For the second time in as many days Jack wondered what he’d gotten himself into. The murder of Balaclava had changed everything, and not just in terms of violence. Jack’s gut told him Balaclava had been taken out by one of his own, perhaps by his own partner, David Weaver, perhaps by a player Jack had yet to meet. If so, someone was deeply and dangerously invested in whatever Seth was doing here — so much so that Balaclava had been deemed better off dead than talking. Who had made that decision? Spellman and/or Wellesley were the obvious choices, but Jack was reluctant to buy into that answer. Spellman was American, like Jack, and Wellesley was from the UK, America’s closest ally. What would drive one or both of these men to order last night’s ambush? And who’d saved his life?

Jack found a nearby rock, set it between his feet, then drew his disposable cell phone from the Faraday bag and laid it on the ground. He took the rock and smashed the cell phone into several pieces, then shoved the debris into the water.

Jack’s clone phone trilled.

“Hello.”

“It’s done,” Ysabel said.

Jack dumped the rest of the bread crumbs into the water, watched for a moment as the ducks gobbled them up, then shoved the bag into his pocket and started walking.

“You were right,” Ysabel said a few minutes later. She was standing in the kitchen. She poured him a cup of coffee. “They asked a few questions, but seemed nonchalant about it. They said someone would get back to me.”

“Good. If they’d already found your Range Rover and connected it to the shooting, you’d be in an interview room talking to a detective right now.”

“They will find it eventually, though.”

“Probably today or tomorrow. Unless they’re incompetent, they’ll see the bullet holes, make the connection, then process the car for prints—”

“But yours are all over it.”

“I’m not in their system,” Jack replied. Not in any systems, unless you’ve got a lot of horsepower, he thought. Working at Hendley had more than its fair share of perks, as did being the First Son. Then again, if he was arrested and they had prints on file, none of that would help him.

“After they’re done with the Range Rover,” he went on, “they’ll come back to you and ask more questions. Just stick to your story. You probably won’t get your car back for a while, as long as the murder’s unsolved. Call your insurance company and report the theft.”

“How do you know all this stuff, Jack?”

He shrugged, took a sip of coffee. “How do you feel about getting into some more trouble?”

“What kind? Man getting killed in front of me, or something else?”

“Tonight I want you to go see your boss, Dr. Abbasi. We need to know who he’s feeding your think tank’s info to. What do you think?”

“That’s no trouble. If I approach the subject in the right way, he’ll give me the name. And what kind of trouble will you be getting yourself into?”

“That depends on whether Yazdani and Son’s office has an alarm system.”

Having decided Ysabel’s Mercedes was safe to use, Jack told her to take it for her visit to Abbasi.

Jack utilized Tehran’s surprisingly uncomplicated subway and bus systems to make his way to the city’s eastern outskirts, where he got off and walked the remaining distance to the warehouse complex where Yazdani’s office was located. After completing a surveillance circuit of the surrounding blocks and finding the area deserted and quiet and so far devoid of patrolling police cars, Jack made his way around the back of the warehouse to the weed-entangled hurricane fence enclosing Yazdani’s rear lot. Through the fence he could see the van Balaclava and Weaver had used to kidnap him.

Jack stood still, watching and listening for ten minutes. Nothing moved. He picked up a handful of pebbles and spent another few minutes lightly pelting the building’s aluminum wall and the side pedestrian door until satisfied no one was about.

From under his arm he took a blanket Ysabel had given him, tossed it onto the fence’s barbed-wire topper to form a drape, then scaled the fence, wriggled himself over the blanket, then hopped down. He tugged the blanket free, then walked to the side door. Lacking any lock-picking tools, Jack had already decided on the blunt approach.

He clicked on his penlight and scanned the enclosure until he found what he needed, a rusted leaf spring from what he assumed was one of Yazdani’s vans. He draped the blanket over the doorknob and slammed the leaf spring into the knob. He stopped, listened for thirty seconds, then repeated the process. On the fourth strike, the knob tore free and hit the ground with a metallic thud. Jack scooted the knob out of the way, then stuck his finger into the hole and swung open the door.

Inside, the garage’s walls were lined with steel shelving holding plastic bins and pegboard tool racks. To his right, up a set of short steps, was a glass-enclosed office. Through the windows Jack could see the milky glow of a computer monitor against the back wall.

Hurrying now, Jack scanned the interior for an alarm panel, first beside the pedestrian door, then beside the front door, then finally in the office. He found nothing.

Yazdani’s computer system was ancient, with an IBM tower, a mouse the size of a double deck of cards, and a clunky fourteen-inch monitor. The upper right corner of the screen was taped to the housing with a strip of grimy duct tape. To the side the dial-up modem blinked green and amber.

“Time to upgrade, Mr. Yazdani,” Jack muttered, and sat down. He pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and went to work. It didn’t take long. Neither the computer nor any of its files were password-protected. On the downside, most of the files were written in Farsi.

He called up the computer’s accounting program and took photos of the bank records, expense reports, and balance sheets for the last three months. Next he photographed the Web browser’s history, then its cached files, before turning his attention to the e-mail window. He scrolled down until he reached the day of Ysabel’s visit, but found nothing but what appeared to be routine e-mails, some personal, some to suppliers and contractors around the city.

“Damn,” he muttered, then immediately thought, Trash. Too many people thought sending a file to the trash was the same as deleting it. He hoped Yazdani was one of those people.

He clicked on the trash icon and again scrolled down to the correct date. There were eighteen messages. Jack checked each in turn until an address caught his eye. This one was in English: info@hamrahengineeringarch.com. He scanned the messages: SOME WOMAN… HIT HER CAR… WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH THE VAN… And so on. Jack photographed the entire exchange.

At the bottom of each message from Hamrah were a name and an address:

“Gotcha,” Jack murmured.