Greg Rucka - The last run

The door was opening again, and she saw the same two men who had accompanied the one who'd hurt her, but this time only them, alone. Once more, they took her by the arms, brought her to her feet carefully, keeping hold of her, walking her out of the room. She shook her head, trying to clear it, felt the concrete beneath her feet turn to carpet, saw that this room, unlike the other, was not a cell, that she was in a house of some sort. The sunlight had changed, coming through windows opposite where it had before. There was a chair, and there were two more men, one of them young, like the others, but the other one middle-aged, balding, beard and mustache, glasses.

He was holding a pistol in his hand.

They put her in the chair, released her arms, and the man with the glasses spoke to her, speaking English. "Tara Chace, my name is Youness Shirazi. I am the Director of Counterintelligence for VEVAK."

Chace heard the hammer on the pistol lock back, felt the barrel against her temple, and that didn't make sense to her at all. If they needed her alive, why were they going to execute her in this chair, in this room?

Then the barrel swung away from her skull, and Chace flinched as the gun went off, two shots, two more, then three, and the men standing all around her fell, one after the other, their blood soaking quickly into the carpet. She watched as the man with the glasses, Youness Shirazi, stepped forward, moving from body to body, and at each one he fired again, another round, into the brain.

He turned to her, the pistol held at his side, speaking, and Chace stared at him dumbly, the gunshots still echoing in her head. She wondered if she was still hallucinating, hearing voices, seeing things, because she was certain she hadn't heard him correctly.

"What?" Chace asked. "What did you say?"

"I am the Director of Counterintelligence for VEVAK." The man tucked the gun away at his waist, and stepping forward, helped her to stand. He met her eyes, smiled weakly.

"I wish to defect," Youness Shirazi told her.

His head still hurt, and Caleb Lewis knew it wasn't from the knock he'd taken when they'd been ambushed. No, that had been seen to already, Barnett insisting that he and MacIntyre go to the hospital and get X-rayed as soon as Caleb had finished delivering his report the night before, as soon as he'd told his Number One that they had lost Chace.

"Go get checked out, the both of you," Barnett had said, already unlocking the coms cabinet. "I'll handle London."

"I'd rather stay here, sir," Caleb had said.

Barnett had just given him a look, paternal and stern and sad, then gone back to activating the deck, switching on the phone. Some three hours later, Caleb returned to the office alone, he and MacIntyre having parted company after each receiving their clean bills of health. The coms cabinet was locked and cold, all the office lights off but for the one by Barnett's desk. Barnett himself sat chain-smoking in the near-dark, listening to the State-run radio playing softly on the shelf behind him.

Caleb stood in the center of the tiny office, feeling overheated in his winter coat, at first confused, and then, ultimately, defeated.

"No orders?" he asked.

Barnett's answer was in two forms. The first was to lean out and take one of the mugs from the tea tray, and then to fill it with whiskey from the bottle Barnett kept in his desk. He offered it to Caleb, waited until he took it.

"From D-Ops, to Tehran Station," Barnett said. " 'Action as normal.' "

Caleb smelled the vapor rising from the mug, stared into the alcohol. "Have they announced it?"

"Not yet."

"I had her." He looked from the mug to Barnett. "I had her, I had my arms around her, she was in the car, next to me. And then there they were, and they just… I just let them take her."

Barnett crushed out his cigarette, then took a mug for himself, fixed a drink of his own. "You didn't let them do anything, lad."

"I didn't do anything at all."

"You weren't supposed to. They made it so you couldn't."

"I know. I know. I do. They'd have shot us, I recognize that."

"Then don't go beating yourself up over it."

Caleb shook his head, set down his drink long enough to get out of his coat. His arm caught in the sleeve, and he pulled at it, then again, until finally, furious with it, he yanked it free, swearing. He sat at his desk, took the mug in his hands.

Barnett lit another cigarette, blew smoke, watching him. The radio murmured notes, soft music, designed to soothe any rebellious tendencies. "You're angry."

"I am." Caleb said it quickly, glared at Barnett, challenging him to argue, to invalidate what he was feeling.

Barnett sipped at his mug, took another drag from his smoke. "I am, too."

"But I wasn't before."

"What were you, then?"

"I was scared. I was fucking terrified. The whole time I've been here, I've been terrified, just… always afraid."

Barnett started to respond, then stopped as a voice came over the radio, marking the hour, giving the news. They both listened. Hossein's death led, followed by word of the search for his killer-slash-killers. Then they heard about tomorrow's weather.

"That's normal, lad," Barnett said.

"Was it?" Caleb asked him. "Then what is it now? I sat, some doctor shining a light in my eyes, and all I could think was how angry I was. How I'd go out and shoot Shirazi now if I could do it. She was supposed to be safe, Lee, I told her she was safe."

Barnett drained his mug, set it down on the desk.

"I told her she was safe."

"No one is ever safe, Caleb," Lee Barnett said. "Especially not in Iran." He turned the radio on as soon as he returned to his apartment, kept it on while he showered and shaved, listening to it as he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and peeled the bandage from his forehead. The collision had thrown him against the side of the Benz, bounced his head against the window frame, and now uncovered, he could see the bruise, yellow and green, the skin angry, shining, where it had torn.

Before climbing into bed, Caleb made his checks of the apartment, doing everything they had taught him to do at the School, and more. VEVAK had identified him now, and it was certain he would be at the head of their surveillance list, that he had graduated to being a priority target. They would try to bug the apartment, monitor his movements, document everything he did, everywhere he went, everyone he talked to. He knew it, and that drove his search, and the fact that he found nothing out of place, nothing altered, no signs of tampering or invasion or search was infuriating, and only stoked the anger he was feeling.

He brought the anger with him to bed, still listening to the radio, and it kept him awake in the dark for over an hour longer, despite his enormous fatigue. He heard the news five more times, and not once was Tara Chace mentioned. No word of an arrest.

That would change come the morning, Caleb was sure.

On his way to the embassy the next morning, Caleb stopped for his usual cup of coffee at the cafe near the Tehran Bazaar, then stepped next door to pick up copies of the day's newspapers. It was nearly noon, and the streets were busy, despite a new, cold rain that had begun falling sometime after he'd finally managed to go to sleep. He bought copies of the Iran Daily, as well as the hard-line Kayhan International, and the government mouthpiece Tehran Times. Then, instead of turning north, towards the embassy, he continued heading west, to the Park-e Shahr.

There were no signals marked at the entrance, and Caleb continued on, walking steadily, the bundle of papers tucked under his arm. It was too cold and too wet for a lunchtime in the park, and there were very few people around. He made his circuit, trying new turns, and it was on his way out of the park again that it struck him as odd, very odd, that he had seen nothing at all to indicate he was being followed. While he didn't hold great faith in his own skills as an agent, he was certain that he wasn't that incompetent, that useless.