Greg Rucka: The last run

"Yes, in the foothills."

"What's the flag?"

"There's a streetlight at the corner of Razm Ara and Estanbol, on the north side." Caleb searched his pockets, pulled out the piece of yellow chalk. "Two horizontal lines on the east side of the post."

"No school like the old school." Barnett took the chalk. "Right, I'll set the flag, you hit the books. I'd start with the ones in Farsi."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Good. Wish me luck."

"I should go," Caleb said uneasily. "Mini's my agent."

Barnett grinned, opening the door. "You're a good lad, Caleb." It was midafternoon before Barnett returned, saying the deed was done and that the rain had finally stopped, and that there'd been no sign of any VEVAK interest whatsoever. He noted the growing towers of books surrounding Caleb, fixed two more cups of tea, and turned his attention back to the reports he'd been preparing for delivery to D-Int earlier that morning. Each worked in silence.

As Barnett was preparing to leave for the day, Caleb found the book. A copy of Hakim Abu'l Qasim Ferdowsi's epic poem, Shahnameh. Even when he had it, he wasn't sure it was correct. The intervening hours had been filled with so many pieces of nonsense, of what appeared to be the correct match of page and word to meaning, only to fall apart at the last moment. An article where a noun was needed, or a number that went to a page or word that didn't exist. Twice already Caleb had managed to decode the whole message, only to realize the sentence was utter, utter nonsense.

Which was why, even after reading it through three times, he still wasn't certain he'd decoded it correctly.

"The grapes are in the water. Falcon."

Barnett, about to pull on his coat, stopped and stared at him. "What?"

"I'm not sure, sir. I think that's the message. 'The grapes are in the water. Falcon.' Sounds like a keyword code now, but it still doesn't match the lexicon. And we're not running anybody under the name Falcon, are we?"

"Not in this theatre. You're sure you've got it right?"

"No," Caleb said, with utter sincerity. "I'm not."

"Not really what I wanted to hear." Barnett had the communications cabinet open now, extended a long leg to hook a nearby chair, pulling it closer. He parked himself in front of the keyboard, began typing quickly. In addition to the signals deck, there was a headset, as well as a companion handset, for the secure audio link, but Caleb had yet to see them used. According to Barnett, he didn't want to see them used, either, because if one of them was on the headset here in Iran, the odds were it was Paul Crocker at the other end of it in London.

"Give it to me again," Barnett said. "And the substitution code at the end."

Caleb relayed the message once more, Barnett typing more slowly this time as he took it down. Task completed, Barnett turned the transmit key, then whacked the "send" button with his palm. The machine hummed for an instant, then went utterly silent. Barnett removed the key, scooted himself back in his chair, closed and locked the cabinet.

"London's problem now," he told Caleb Lewis.

Tara Chace rubbed the goose egg on the back of her head gently, still swollen from her fall on the obstacle course, and with her free hand took a sip of the traditionally god-awful coffee the Ops Room seemed to run on. Across from her at the briefing table, William Teagle, from Mission Planning, and Chris Lankford, her Minder Three, were talking about what a grand holiday Chris was about to have in Iraq. Despite the theatre of operations, Chace wasn't overly worried for Lankford's safety; the mission was remarkably mundane, barely worthy of a Minder, in her opinion. As a result she allowed her attention to wander around the room.

Chace adored the Ops Room, with its clean lines and clearly demarcated regions, even this renovated version that was a far cry from the one she'd first come to know nine years earlier. You always knew where you were in the Ops Room; you always knew the state of things. When the world was behaving, as it was apparently doing at the moment, there was a feeling of palpable, controlled efficiency, even self-confidence. Everyone to their duty, everything at its place.

All that would change at the drop of a hat, or, more literally and much more frequently, at the ring of a phone. The word would come, something had happened, was happening, was about to happen, and then the orders would ring out, and the whole of the Ops Room would transform, exploding into motion, and still, everyone to their duty, everything at its place.

Chace thought of the letter she was carrying in her pocket, resting against her heart, and had a moment of hesitation. The Ops Room was one of the few places in the world where she felt she truly belonged, and the thought of leaving it pained her. She hoped she wouldn't have to.

Architecturally, the space was nothing more than a giant cube, with all workstations oriented to have clear line-of-sight to the wall of linked plasma monitors at the far end that perpetually displayed a map of the world. In the left rear, where she sat with Lankford and Teagle, was the Briefing Table. Left front was the Mission Planning Desk, for the moment empty. Right front was the Main Communications Desk, staffed at the moment by Alexis Ferguson, who'd been in the Ops Room for as long as Chace could remember. Right rear, the Duty Operations Desk, with Ronald Hodgson seated at the raised platform, another old-timer, acting as the shift's Duty Operations Officer. At the moment that was the entire Ops Room complement-with the addition of two runners, who were ferrying paper between the various desks.

Chace noted that Lankford's mission had already gone up on the map. A cherry red dot now pulsed on Mosul, a golden halo around all of Iraq. The mission had been designated "Bagboy," with a callout stating that Minder Three had been allocated.

"MOD estimates some two hundred of the crew-served weapons have gone missing in the last three months," Teagle was telling Lankford, in answer to some question Chace had missed.

"They've done an audit of the base?" Lankford asked. "They've actually tipped the place on its side and looked for them?"

"So we're told. Can't be found anywhere."

"Wonder if they checked behind the sofa cushions," Lankford said to Chace.

"They think they're being sold?" Chace asked Teagle.

"That's the fear. The question is who's doing the buying. Bad headline if British troop is killed with British weapon wielded by Iraqi insurgent."

"And their own internal investigation turned up nothing?"

Teagle nodded, then added, "This is why they are asking for our assistance."

"What's the window?"

"Five days turnaround."

"You're going to have loads of fun on this one," Chace told Lankford, certain that he wouldn't. The investigation would be tedious, and already she suspected that MOD had requested SIS assistance merely to cover their own ass. Five days for Minder Three to uncover what, presumably, they had been working months to resolve. It was a token investigation, and it was already assumed by the MOD that Lankford would fail.

Lankford smiled across the table at her, confident. He wasn't yet thirty, with the kind of face that would hold all signs of aging at bay for at least another twenty years, and his sincerity made him seem all the younger and, consequently, made her feel all the older. "I'm going to solve it."

"You do, you'll get a nice Christmas bonus."

"I will, just you wait, Boss."

Chace grinned, then looked to the multiple clocks positioned on the plasma wall, each giving the time in various zones around the world, and she saw that it was now nearly a quarter past nine. Crocker would have just finished going through the Immediates on his desk, now moving on to the Moderates and then the Routines, the less pressing files and reports that demanded his attention. Unless he hit something that caused outrage or panic, he'd be at his desk for another fifteen minutes or so, before heading to his daily meeting with D-Int and the Deputy Chief.