Whiplash

47

As soon as they heard the siren, the men who had attacked Flash rallied from their injuries. Despite six broken bones between them, they managed to get into their vehicle and flee before the first police car arrived.

Two people had seen the youths and offered a good description of the vehicle. One of the policemen dutifully wrote down the details, though he knew nothing would come of it. The car described was well-known to him and the other officers who had responded; it belonged to a member of the Iranian parliament, though it was customarily driven by his youngest son. The son and his companions were the subject of several reports, mostly from tourists, who reported being beaten and robbed during late night strolls under circumstances remarkably similar to those Flash had found himself in. The only difference in this case was the outcome. The witnesses’ descriptions made it clear that the attackers had gotten the worse end of the deal, something that cheered the policeman, though of course he didn’t let on.

Tarid and the hotel owner stayed back with the rest of the crowd, watching more out of curiosity than purpose. The city had its share of thugs operating under the guise of religious police; a number were known to assault people for offenses, real and imagined, for a price. To Tarid, this looked like just such a case.

“I think I’ll go back to the hotel,” he said when it became obvious there would be no resolution that night.

“Yes,” said his host.

Together they walked back around the corner. Tarid could not stop himself from thinking about the man’s daughter. He considered asking if she had many suitors, or if a marriage was being arranged. But he didn’t want to make his lust too obvious.

She was the sort of beauty that would make even a man like him change his thinking about the entanglements of a family. Logically, he remained steadfast; he had no desire to give up the freedom and luxuries he currently enjoyed, which would be greatly diminished if he were to marry. And he knew his own temperament would stifle any sort of commitment or relationship. He could not be happy staying in one place, yet he could not imagine there was a woman on earth who would be glad to move around as he did. Women were creatures of the hearth, he believed, destined to tend to domestic needs. If he were to wed the hotel owner’s daughter, he would see her only two or three times a year, and even then inevitably grow bored.

Not that his desire implied marriage. But it couldn’t be talked about with the girl’s father, even obliquely, without implying that it did.

“A cup of tea?” asked the hotel owner as they reached the building’s threshold.

“No thank you,” said Tarid, calculating that it was unlikely the girl would be woken to prepare it. “I will see you in the morning.”

“Good night, then.”

Tarid’s satellite phone rang as he walked to the elevator. Taking it from his pocket, he saw that it was Bani Aberhadji, his boss and patron. With no one nearby, he clicked the button to let the call through.

“This is Tarid.”

“Why have you not checked in? You arrived in Tehran several hours ago,” said Aberhadji.

“I did not believe I was to call until I was ready for the meeting,” he said. “And, given the hour of my arrival—”

“I will meet you at one P.M. tomorrow, at the building in Karaj,” said Aberhadji.

“Yes, sir.”

The line went dead.

While the curtness was characteristic, Bani Aberhadji was normally a very even-tempered man, not one to casually display annoyance. The emotion in his voice filled Tarid not just with apprehension but dread, as if he had done something wrong and was about to be brought to justice for it.

He had, as a matter of fact, occasionally skimmed a few million rials off the payments forwarded to the groups he watched over in Africa. There were also some inflated fees for weapons, along with an occasional unreported kickback. Bani Aberhadji would not have approved, but compared to the men he usually dealt with, Tarid knew he was hardly avaricious. And, he thought, it would certainly be difficult for Aberhadji to prove that this had taken place without some direct complaint against him.

Most likely, he thought, Aberhadji’s displeasure had nothing to do with him. But it made him nervous anyway, and he knew, even as he stepped into the elevator, that he would get little sleep the rest of the night.

In a Western Hotel nearly a mile away, Nuri told the Voice to replay a snippet of video and audio he and the Whiplash team had just seen. It showed Tarid looking longingly at the room where the hotel owner had just disappeared, then walking slowly toward the elevator. Three steps from it his satellite phone rang. He took it out, looked at the caller ID, then turned around and made sure no one was nearby before answering.

The conversation was extremely brief. All they had was Tarid’s side, but his responses were so close together that Nuri knew whoever he was speaking with couldn’t have said more than a sentence or two himself.

“This is Tarid…I–I did not believe I was to call until I was ready for the meeting. And, given the hour of my arrival…Yes, sir.”

“So he has a meeting,” said Hera, watching the video. “That was already obvious.”

“He’s scared of whoever he’s talking to,” said Flash. “Look at his face. He’s worried he’s going to be shot or something.”

Danny Freah dropped down to one knee, studying the image.

“Flash is right. Remember how defiant he looked when we rescued him? Whoever he’s meeting is a hell of a lot scarier than bullets.”

“So how does it help us?” said Hera.

“Man, you are Ms. Contrary tonight,” said Flash. He laughed.

Hera reddened, and swore to herself that she wouldn’t say anything else.

Nuri replayed the conversation again. Aside from the fact that the meeting must be imminent, there was no other useful information in the words. Meanwhile, the signal from the biomarker was deteriorating rapidly. They had to get him first thing in the morning.

“We’re going to have to line up some vehicles,” he told Danny. “Two at least.”

“You think we’re going to be able to follow him in cars?”

“If he’s in a vehicle, we need to be in a vehicle. We need to rent them.”

The problem with renting a car was timing; the agencies wouldn’t open until nine-thirty, which in practice would mean close to ten. By then Tarid could be well on his way to the meeting, or perhaps even done with it.

“We won’t need to be that close as long as we tag him in the morning,” said Danny. “Let’s concentrate on doing that well so we don’t have to worry.”

“Yeah, but if we’re close, we may be able to bug the meeting place,” said Nuri. “We really want to be inside there. Look at how valuable this was, and it’s only a little snippet from the distance.”

Hera didn’t think it was all that valuable. But she remembered her resolve and said nothing.

“We may not be able to get that close,” said Danny. “I’d suspect we won’t.”

“Why don’t we just bug him?” asked Flash.

“How?” asked Danny.

“Paste something onto his shoe?”

The others laughed, but the suggestion gave Nuri an idea. He went over to the closet where he’d put his jacket. He took it out, then unscrewed the top button, revealing the bug hidden there.

“This would work,” he said.

“You going to make him wear your coat?” said Danny.

Nuri went back to the laptop they were using as a video screen and called up an image showing Tarid’s clothes. He wore a jacket that featured large buttons. Nuri zeroed in on one and magnified it.

“You see anything unusual about these buttons?” he asked Hera.

“No. They’re black. They have four holes.”

“Right. Do we have anything like them?”

Though the button was a simple, basic design, it didn’t match anything anyone was wearing.

Hera waited until no one else said anything.

“We can get one from the bazaar in the morning,” she suggested. “The stalls for women, the practical ones, will be open very early, right after morning prayers.”

“How do you get the bug into the button?” asked Danny.

“Look how thin this is,” said Nuri, showing it to him. “It sits on the other side, like a holder — you see? The computer figures out how to focus through the holes in the material and the plastic.”

“I think it could work,” said Hera. “But how do we get his jacket?”

“That’s easy,” said Nuri. “The problem is getting the button on real fast. How well do you sew?”

“Terribly.”

“I can sew,” said Danny. “What did you have in mind?”