AS FAR as the world was concerned, Flynn was now Stephan Grauerholtz, a Swiss citizen. The alias was deep enough to stand up to all but the most intensive analysis, right down to Stephan’s boyhood years at the exclusive Le Rosey prep school in Rolle, Switzerland. He’d been a decent kid and now he was a decent arms dealer, unless that’s an oxymoron. Swiss arms dealers are among the most welcome of all travelers in countries like Iran. He had read that their visa on arrival system could be difficult to use, but he expected that Mr. Grauerholtz would sail through.
The identity was far deeper than most he’d used in the past. For example, social media was thoroughly covered and kept up to date by CIA specialists who managed such identities—without, of course, having any idea who was using them. At least in theory. Stephan’s Facebook page went back three years, chronicling his life of travels and his appreciation of beautiful women, cultural events, and fine dining. His Twitter feed, mostly sports (he was a Man United fan), went back a year and a half. A search further into his background would reveal the reason that a Swiss would be the fan of an English football team. His mother had been born and raised in Manchester, and was a lifelong follower of the team. His father, a professor of linguistics, was indifferent to sports.
Rather than go to Dulles, Flynn—or now, Grauerholtz—took the Delta shuttle from Reagan to LaGuardia, then grabbed a cab over to JFK. At Reagan, he’d bought only the ticket to LaGuardia, using cash.
Riding through Queens on his way from LaGuardia to JFK, he watched the surge of the city around him, glimpsed the lights of Manhattan and the vast Mount Zion graveyard, a huge gray shadow at their feet.
Should he really do this? Should he leave the White House behind? If Cissy was hurt, he’d never forgive himself—hurt, or worse, taken like Abby. It would be all but unbearable. More than that, though, he should be protecting the president.
And yet, wasn’t that what this was? Until he understood what was happening, the truth was that he couldn’t really protect anybody. All he could do was stand guard, and that was not going to be enough. He had to do this and get back as fast as possible. A quick, clean penetration, gather the needed information, return. Three days, four at the most.
What information, though? And how did he gather it? His only real plan was to bull his way into the foreign ministry on a pretext and take it from there.
Even buried in a new identity and with his plans known only to his own mind, he kept watch, but not in such a way that it would be obvious to the cabdriver that he was uneasy about being followed. When cabbies noticed such things, they remembered. He needed to be just another uninteresting, commonplace fare. He used the rearview and outside mirrors to watch for lights, and leaned against the window as if tired. From this position he could scan the sky for trouble from above. Over the long battle that was his career, there had been many times that menace had dropped down on him out of the sky. He was very good at spotting the star that should not be there, or was too bright, or moving strangely. This time, though he didn’t see anything, it didn’t mean that he was in the clear. At no time, under no circumstances, would anybody experienced in this particular conflict ever assume that Aeon wasn’t nearby. Drop your guard and die.
A flock of European flights took off between nine and eleven at night, so Terminal 7 was reassuringly busy. Flynn, buried in the crowd, moved with the assurance of a businessman who flew a lot. He crossed to the ticket counter, and got in the first-class line, behind an elderly couple speaking brisk, annoyed German. He was decent in the language but hadn’t spoken it in some time, so listening to them was useful.
He got a first-class ticket at the British Airways counter. Rather than pay cash, which would raise flags, he used one of the Grauerholtz credit cards. Should MISIRI become suspicious at some point, their investigation would begin with his route into the country. If it turned out that his tickets were cash purchases, they would probably arrest him first and investigate later. It wasn’t a place where you wanted to be arrested, Iran.
Through the large window overlooking the flight line, he watched operations, looking for anything that struck him as unusual, just letting his instincts work. Nothing stood out, though, nobody seemed out of place, and operations continued with fluid precision.
There were storms muttering to the north, and as he sat in the first-class lounge waiting for the flight to be called, he watched blue flickers of lightning reflected on runways where planes moved like ghostly sea creatures, coming and going in the dark.
His flight was called on time, and he filed on with the other first- and business-class passengers. He was now deep in the character of Grauerholtz, right down to the German accent and the courtly manners of an upper-class Swiss.
The plane was an older 747 with a recently refurbished interior. If Aeon knew he was on it, they would cause it to crash, but not before coming aboard and capturing him. His fellow passengers would find a great secret revealed to them … as they died.
They went after him when he was at his most vulnerable, on lonely roads sometimes, but more often in planes, where he was, essentially, trapped. They didn’t try for public places like airports and train stations or, usually, city streets. They knew from experience that he would elude them unless he had no place to go. And even then, he had escaped—so far.
Once the meal service was over, he turned out his light and flattened the bed, not to sleep but to think through events in microscopic detail. It was this method that had, in the past, enabled him to overcome impossible odds, and he was convinced that this situation was no different. A weapon was pointed at the White House, but who was going to pull the trigger? Above all, when that was done, what would happen?
He slept, then, an uneasy sleep, although never deep enough for dream. It took him into the glow of dawn over the Irish Sea. He woke up and drank coffee and worried. Had the thing—whatever it was—already happened?
The flight landed at eleven. His next plane left Gatwick at one forty-five, and he spent most of the time between airports getting through customs, finding a cab, and sitting out the London traffic.
Another seven-hour flight, this time on Emirates, then a five-hour layover in Dubai. Most of his work was done in the U.S., so he wasn’t all that familiar with places like this. The airport was a gleaming extravaganza, as luxurious as first class had been on the Emirates plane. On the flight, he’d had what amounted to a private room. He’d even been able to take a shower in a small bathroom reserved for first class.
A U.S. agent masquerading as an arms dealer might give himself away by flying coach. Arms dealers didn’t fly coach. In fact, the big ones used their own planes. By traveling commercial, Grauerholtz was saying that he was prosperous, but not yet a major player.
Not knowing how long it might be until his next meal, he ate again in the airport, at an Indian place called Gazebo. He ate everything—the meltingly tender paya yakhni shorba, lamb trotters simmered in curry; a fluffy saffroned biryani tikka bahar; vegetables grilled on a skewer with pineapple. He could have used a beer, but not in Dubai.
He noticed, on boarding the Tehran flight, that the general atmosphere of the airport was far less tense than what one found in the United States. And why not? It was doubtful that terrorists would target Arab airlines.
He watched the world from the window, first the bright blue of the Persian Gulf, then the brown emptiness of the Iranian hinterland.
He reviewed his approach to the foreign ministry. He would be seeking an end-user certificate for imports from the European Union. The goods he intended to offer would be of the most intense interest.
As they had never seen him before, they would be suspicious. He trusted that his curriculum vitae would be convincing. If it wasn’t, he was in trouble, because he couldn’t arrange to carry his weapons on international flights without drawing official attention to himself. The result was that he was unarmed. He wouldn’t try to buy a gun in Iran, and in any case, he’d never attempt to enter the foreign ministry heavy.
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Khomeini International Airport was a mixture of sparkling new and what appeared to be abandoned construction. Flynn immediately noticed the odor of the air, which was a mix of burning coal, engine exhaust, grease, and dust. Even inside the terminal, the air was dense.
The passport control line moved slowly. Very slowly. Ahead of him there was a woman dressed in a Chanel original worth easily five thousand dollars, her head covered by a scarf of sheer, floating silk. She was perhaps forty-five. Her face, with its large, questing eyes and tight-set lips, expressed a regal calm that reminded Flynn that you don’t approach customs looking uneasy, or, for that matter, too relaxed.
She spoke Farsi, so he was able to pick up only a few words, but it soon became clear that she expected to get an on-arrival visa. The customs officer appeared for a moment concerned, then indifferent. He picked up a telephone, spoke a few words, and put it down. A moment later, another man appeared, this one in the weary business suit of a police official, and began escorting the woman away. He stopped, then turned back. His face opened into a smile that lifted his broad mustache almost comically.
He said, “Oh, and Mr. Grauerholtz, too, right here. Come, also, please.” He gestured grandly, like a pretentious maître’ d.
As Flynn followed the woman’s sweeping silks, he thought that Iran’s foreign ministry must be very damned efficient to not only expect him, but to send somebody who knew him by sight. As he walked, another man fell in beside them, this one in an expensive Italian suit. Ahead of them, the woman was drawn into a hallway. The door closed and she disappeared.
The man said, in German, “I am Davood Ghorbani, vice minister of armaments in charge of acquisitions. We’ll pass the formalities and go directly to the ministry.”
“Yes, I think that’s best.” Flynn’s German had better be as serviceable as he imagined it to be.
Ghorbani’s suit was an excellent cut, which put him far up in the ministerial hierarchy. Flynn had signaled almost nothing about the purpose of his visit, but Grauerholtz’s manufactured reputation must have preceded him. His specialty was rocket parts, most specifically highly machined nozzles for rocket engines—in other words, one of the items highest on the Iranian wish list.
The engine was not just the power source of an intercontinental missile, it was the basis of its accuracy. Without an engine capable of producing a clean burn, no guidance system could achieve enough accuracy to hit a city at a distance of five thousand kilometers. In addition, the engine had to have far more lifting power than anything presently in Iran’s arsenal. The current state-of-Iranian-art missile was the Saji-3, which was capable of throwing a modest payload as far as four thousand miles. But to make a nuclear warhead small enough to be lifted by that system was going to take a major technological effort on Iran’s part. And so far, anybody who was working in that direction was almost certain to be assassinated by the Israelis and the West. No doubt that was what had happened to Dr. Josefi.
The car passed quickly through Tehran’s traffic in a protected official lane. Flynn noted that the traffic was extremely heavy—in fact, the heaviest and most chaotic he had seen in any city. He would not forget this.
As they moved into the governmental area, Ghorbani said, “We won’t be going to the ministry.”
“Oh?”
“To a home.”
So they assumed that their ministry was bugged and under observation by the West. And they were probably right.
Five minutes later, they were in a quiet, leafy neighborhood, with houses set back from the wide, empty streets. They passed the Canadian, then the French embassies. As they drove on, ascending into higher, even quieter precincts, Flynn drew a map in his head. In case he had to do a runner, he needed to know where these embassies were. Diplomatic refuge would likely be his only escape.
The car turned into a park rioting with flowers and centered by a large house, a Spanish colonial dressed with Persian touches.
“A Shah House,” Ghorbani commented. He chuckled. “But not recently.”
As they pulled up to the tall front door beaded with large studs, a man in a white soutane appeared. Silently, he opened Flynn’s door. Flynn noted a pistol on his left hip, and that there was a specially tailored slit in the soutane that would enable him to reach the gun quickly.
An older man, the left side of his face immobilized by a stroke, came out and hurried down the steps. He wore a western suit, Saville Row. “Welcome, Herr Grauerholtz.” His mustache and eyebrows were curly and white. His toupee, as black and slick as a polished shoe, hung low over his face. His left hand was clenched, his right extended.
Flynn got out of the car, noting that this man, also, was armed. He carried a very small pistol in a shoulder holster, no more than a .32. Flynn wished to hell he had a pistol of his own right now.
As he entered the house, he gauged the accessibility of each weapon. He could remove the larger pistol, the one under the arm of the man in the soutane, before either armed man could react. If the older one had a very fast draw, he might be able to get a shot off before Flynn killed him, although this was not likely.
So Flynn was safe from a direct assault. At the moment.
They entered a library that must have been constructed by a Westerner. Although the volumes in it were Persian, the design, with two tiers of bookcases around three walls, was something out of an English country house.
“This was the residence of the last president of Aramco,” the older man said. He sat heavily in a wing chair and motioned to Flynn to sit opposite. “A man of impeccable taste.”
Flynn took the seat, noting that the guard in the soutane was now standing behind him. Ghorbani was behind the minister. They had formed a defensive box, and Flynn was no longer safe from assault. If they were going to try to subdue somebody very fast and very dangerous, this was the sort of positioning they might choose. Flynn hadn’t seen a weapon on Ghorbani, but he must be carrying one.
“And now, my dear Mr. Flynn Carroll,” Ghorbani said, smiling, “why do you imagine that we have brought you here?”
Flynn froze any and all reactions.
“Calculating the odds, are you, my dear superman? You will find that they are against you.”
He heard the faint sound of movement behind him as the guard readied himself.
Flynn’s heart rarely raced, but it did so now. The boyish unease had left Ghorbani’s smile. In fact, he wasn’t smiling at all, and probably never had been. He was showing teeth. To the “minister,” he said, “You may go now, Habib.” The old man dutifully got up and left the room—fast. He knew very well what might be about to happen here. For some time, Ghorbani regarded Flynn. “Your cover was, I am sorry to say, puerile,” he finally said.
Flynn estimated that he could get to the Canadian Embassy in six minutes running flat out.
“Ah, my friend, you are still calculating.” He stood up and came around the desk, put his hands on Flynn’s shoulders, and looked up at him. “A human war machine,” he said. “How magnificent you are.” He stepped back. “I feel that I know you better than I do my own son. Oh, I must show you—” He took out his smartphone and put his arm around Flynn’s shoulder. At the same time, Flynn felt the barrel of a pistol touch, ever so gently, the small of his back. If it was fired, it would sever his spine but not kill him. He’d be left helpless, but still available for interrogation.
“Now look.” On the phone’s screen was a photo of Flynn with Diana. They were in their office at CIA headquarters. “We have eyes on you.” Ghorbani’s face was now blankly reptilian. He snapped a command in Farsi, then extended a hand to Flynn. “Come, my treasure. I think you’ll find what I’m about to show you quite interesting.”
The pistol barrel in Flynn’s back pressed a little harder.
Ghorbani opened a door at the far end of the room. It led into an office, windowless, lit by blue neon. There was a digital map on one wall that revealed every detail of Flynn’s journey, right down to his meal in Dubai.
Lying on a steel desk were dossiers on him, Diana, and a number of other individuals in Detail 242. Dozens of stills of them were tacked up on corkboards in one area of the crowded room. There were also pictures of Abby taken from the newspapers, pictures of Mac, of Cissy, of the president and the First Lady, of Mac’s ranch in West Texas and Flynn’s own house in Menard.
Flynn scanned them, noting that only the pictures of Abby dated from prior to Bill Greene’s inauguration. So Iran’s interest had been sparked by the arrival of the Greenes in the White House.
He filed that information away.
“My Flynn Carroll Room. Modeled after your Abby Room. Not as tragic an outcome, though. Must be very hard for you, not knowing.” His voice all but sang. This was a very happy man. Flynn could have killed him with a blow, but even he was not fast enough to escape the bullet that would immediately follow.
“I’ve learned so much about you, Flynn, I feel as if we are, in quite a profound sense, brothers.” The man’s liquid face was now projecting menace of startling intensity. “Of course,” he added, “you must have had the same knowledge of Dr. Josefi.”
“Who?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You were very foolish to try spycraft, soldier. You lie like a stammering child. Now come, there’s somebody waiting to meet you.” He gave him a wink. “She’s very eager.”
He stepped through to another, more austere room. Flynn followed.
In the center of this room, made dim by what appeared to be blackout curtains, there sat a woman of perhaps forty in a black head scarf and a gown. Beside her were a solemn preadolescent boy and a little girl. The three regarded him with buzzing, hate-tight eyes.
“Now, Mrs. Josefi, I promised you that I would bring you the man who killed Ibrahim. This is Flynn Carroll of America. This is the man who planned your husband’s murder, and whose life you may either spare or take.”
Slowly, she looked from one of her children to the other. Each gave a slight nod. She said, “Execute him.”