Greg Rucka: The last run

Chace closed her eyes. She saw again what had been so obvious, so clear to her, as she'd fallen. It wasn't simply that she'd missed the handhold. It was that her left arm hadn't been able to fully extend to reach it, locking suddenly with the memory of the pain a man in Uzbekistan had caused her almost three years before. Things had gone wrong in Uzbekistan, and she'd ended up in a basement room at the Ministry of the Interior, where she'd been stripped, beaten, tortured, and nearly raped.

Now the pain was gone, only exhaustion remaining, and that, too, was being replaced by something else, the sense of a burden being lifted; the flooding relaxation that follows when a struggle has reached its end.

Three times a year, Paul Crocker sent the Minders back to the School for a refresher course. Three times a year, the Minders would spend two days going over what they already knew, acquainting themselves with new techniques and equipment. Three times a year, they would recertify in weapons and hand-to-hand, in cars and explosives and all other manner of tradecraft. Three times a year, they would run the obstacle course, crawling beneath barbed wire through mud and climbing the wall.

She couldn't count the number of times she'd run the course as a recruit. As a Minder, this had been her twenty-ninth.

This was the first time she had ever fallen.

With a smile, Tara Chace resolved that it would never happen again.

If it went wrong, it would cost Youness Shirazi his life; and the ways in which it could go wrong were too numerous to count.

He was alone, for the first time all day, standing at the window and looking past his partial reflection down at Sepah Street, at the Foreign Aliens Office opposite his own. On this side of the city, at this hour, Tehran's traffic was thin, but still the Foreign Aliens Office was bustling, just as it had been ever since the unrest had begun so many months ago.

The plan, Shirazi reassured himself, was a good one, certainly the best that he could manage given the current climate, the present moment. Pressure had been building from on-high for months to deliver something, anything that could be presented as a decisive victory; anything that would hurt the enemies of the Revolution, and serve as a propaganda coup, besides. The Americans, the French, the Israelis, or the British-an embarrassment to any of them would do, and as the Americans had little-to-nothing by way of assets on the ground, as the French had been almost thoroughly neutralized in Iran, and as the Israelis were hiding deep in their holes, it only made sense that the British should be the target.

On the street below, he noted the arrival of the black SUV. Farzan Zahabzeh would be inside, along with their old prisoner. Not that old, Shirazi corrected himself, because if their guest, in his late-fifties, was to be called old, Shirazi himself would be closer to the designation than he cared to admit. He turned from the window, catching his reflection, stopped, gazing at himself. Forty-four, balding, beard and mustache neatly trimmed, his spectacles failing to hide the heavy bags beneath his eyes. He'd managed three hours of sleep last night, up from the hour he'd been averaging the week prior. Insomnia, he reflected, was part of the job.

But it wasn't insomnia that had been keeping him up these past nights, and he knew that.

Shirazi moved to his desk, carefully shifted the stack of old surveillance photos Farzan had compiled to the side, then settled himself at the computer. He typed in his password, Farsi flashing quickly onto the screen, then entered a second password before the system permitted him to bring up the foreign operatives database. As Head of Counterintelligence for VEVAK, Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the database was part of Shirazi's bread and butter, a listing of all suspected or known opposition agents around the world, of spies, real and, in many cases, imagined, who had or might one day work against Iran's interests. The list itself was by no means comprehensive-in intelligence, Shirazi reflected, such things never were-and much of its information was suspect. But there were gems to be found, hard intelligence that had been bought dearly.

It was one of these gems that Shirazi went to, within the British section, under the SIS subheading. He scanned quickly until he found the name he wanted, then opened the associated file. A photograph bloomed on the monitor, four years out-of-date according to the reference, but Shirazi doubted that the woman had changed very much. The picture had been taken at the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, from the Afghan side. The woman was wearing sunglasses, but the file claimed her eyes were blue, the same way it claimed that she was blond, and five feet eleven inches tall, both facts evident in the photograph. According to Shirazi's information, the woman had no less than twelve different documented work-names, but the only one that mattered to him was her real one: Chace, Tara; and her job, that of Head of Section for the Special Operations Division of SIS, under the supervision of SIS Director of Operations Crocker, Paul.

Shirazi studied the face of Tara Chace impassively, trying to discern the woman who wore it. He didn't know her, he had never met her, all he had was speculation. He knew something of the job in Uzbekistan, and before that the one in Iraq, and another in Georgia. But no details, only guesswork, what SIS had accomplished. What this woman had accomplished.

They would have to send her. The prize was too great, the target too high-value to risk sending anyone else, anyone less subordinate. Neither the British government nor the Americans-and there was no doubt the Americans would become involved-would settle for less. The CIA would demand the British send their best, though how Paul Crocker would get his tall, blond, female Special Operations Officer into Iran without everyone from the Quds Force to the Guardian Council knowing about it, Shirazi had no idea. Nonetheless, he had no doubt that Crocker would accomplish the task; as an adversary, Paul Crocker had long ago earned Shirazi's respect, if not admiration.

There was a knock at the door, and Shirazi quit the files on the monitor as his deputy entered.

"He's in the building," Farzan Zahabzeh said, shutting the door behind him. "I'm having him processed right now."

"How did he take it?"

"The pickup scared him, the way it always does, no matter who. Now he's decided to be indignant." Zahabzeh's grin flickered with malice. "He already asked me if I know who he is."

Shirazi laughed. "And you said nothing?"

"Only that we had questions for him."

"Good, very good."

There was a pause, and Shirazi saw the younger man's attitude change, the pride of power knocked akimbo by a long-ingrained sense of self-preservation. He understood it, and knew what Zahabzeh was thinking, and knew he would have to reassure him; Shirazi could entertain his own doubts, but it was vital that Zahabzeh have none, that he be as committed, in his way, to their course as Shirazi already was.

"There's still time."

Shirazi shook his head. "No. Once he entered the building, there was no going back."

"We could simply question him about anything, about the Greens, say, then let him go. That would do it, that would be all it takes."

"And how would that help defend the Revolution? We must see this through. Think about the result, think about what we will gain. For months we've been pressured to strike back against those who have struck us. This is how we do it. The result will more than justify the means."

Farzan Zahabzeh grimaced, scratched his chin beneath his beard. He was ten years Shirazi's junior, still carrying enough of his youth that the job hadn't begun to show on him. Full of energy and strength, not much taller than Shirazi, but larger, clearly stronger. But his junior nonetheless, and with a lot left to learn.