Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

“You’re a fucking ray of sunshine, Grafton.”

The admiral smiled. “What are real friends for?”

When I left the embassy I didn’t go to the hotel. I spent the next two hours ditching any tails I might have; then I stood in front of an Armenian church waiting for G. W. Hosein. He was driving a battered old pickup. He was only ten seconds late. He stopped just long enough for me to get in, then popped the clutch and had us rolling again.

“You clean?” he asked.

“I sure as hell hope so,” I said. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

“We will indeed,” he said, and pointed to a backpack lying at my feet. I pulled it into my lap and unzipped it. It held a nice Kimber 1911.45 caliber automatic with two magazines loaded with jacketed hollow-point bullets-man-stoppers. I checked the slide, trigger and safety, then shoved a magazine into the thing and chambered a shell. Then I lowered the hammer. A lot of people carry these things cocked and locked, but I didn’t have a holster, just my pocket, and besides, cocked and locked is a tad too trendy for me.

“Tell me about this safe house you have in mind,” I said.

“It’s under the city,” he said, “in an old metro tunnel that didn’t get built.”

“Really?” I said. This sounded wonderful to me. Nothing stops radiation like rock and dirt.

“The Tehran police chief got arrested a couple of years ago for frequenting a whorehouse in one of these tunnels, so that got me interested. I did some exploring.” He made a gesture of modesty.

“Did you find the women?”

“No, but I found a nice hideout. You’ll like it.”

“The police chief?”

“He was fired and prosecuted. These people are so uptight.”

The safe house was actually a modest hotel, run by a German, that catered to foreign businessmen. It was on the edge of the business district and had real guests coming and going, so G. W. and I blended right in.

The German, Helmut Kremer, was, of course, in the pay of the CIA. He was working the desk, as usual-it was a small hotel-and I introduced myself with a code name. He was in his fifties, balding, with a modest tummy, and looked tired. I wondered what in the world he was doing in Iran, and he probably wondered the same about me. Hell, I asked myself that question three times a day.

Kremer glanced around to ensure the lobby was empty, then handed me a key to a room, and G. W. and I went up the stairs to find it. It was that simple.

Maybe too simple. When we got into the room I motioned to G. W. to remain silent, and I began to inspect for bugs. It was actually a nice room, with two beds and a French door that led to a small balcony. Fortunately the sewer pipes were European-sized, so unlike many Iranian hotels, this one didn’t have a basket strategically placed beside the commode to receive used toilet paper. Some people savor the adventure of a third-world vacation, but it’s really an acquired taste.

I didn’t have my electronic antibug kit with me, so I worked the old eyeballs. I doubted that Kremer had sold out to the other side, yet after a session with Hazra al-Rashid, he might have. So I checked. Found nothing.

“Where do we meet the others?” I asked G. W.

“They’ll be in the tunnel. We go in from the basement of this place.”

“Okay.” I looked at my watch. Four hours until the meet.

George Washington Hosein lay down on the bed and put his pistol on his belly. “Relax, Tommy,” he said. “Try to get a nap.”

I was too keyed up to relax. In a few minutes I went over to the window and looked out at the Tehran that Ahmadinejad was willing to sacrifice. There were maybe twenty million people, more or less, in Tehran, and Ahmadinejad didn’t give a rat’s ass if they all went up in a mushroom cloud as long as he could do it to the Israelis and Americans first. Twenty million people… and Ghasem and Davar were two of them.

I flopped on the other bed and shut my eyes. I couldn’t get Davar out of my mind. She wasn’t soft and sexy with a figure that would stop traffic, and she wasn’t one of those dazzling personalities that I always found so charming. She knew what she believed in and was absolutely convinced she was right. Not that that was a unique quality, to be sure; half the young women I had ever met thought they had life figured out and didn’t want to hear any facts that might complicate their world. On the other hand, Davar’s courage made her unique. It is easy to be brave if the dangers are unknown; yet she knew the dangers, the evil. She had lived her life with it and saw it every day. Still, she was ready to fight, to confront it head-on. Smart, committed, tough as leather, Davar was a woman to face the storms of life with.

No wonder the guy from Oklahoma had fallen for her! If I had been him…

How would a guy win a heart like hers?

As if there were time and a future in which to try…

I felt as if I were on the bank of the River Styx, and Charon, the boatman, was poling over to ferry me across to hell. Through the fires and smoke and stench of burning flesh, I could see him… coming relentlessly, mercilessly on, closer and closer.

A hole in the basement wall just large enough to wriggle through formed the entrance to the underground world. As G. W. flashed a light around, then wormed his way through the hole, I said, “I feel like we’re crawling into an Indiana Jones movie.”

“Don’t forget your bullwhip,” he muttered and climbed through to the other side. I had no choice but to follow.

There was a ladder against the basement wall on the other side, so I went down it as G. W. held the flashlight. Once on solid rock, I used my light to look around. We were in a tunnel, all right, that certainly looked as if it had been carved out for a subway. It was cool down here, and I could just feel the barest hint of a breeze on my cheek.

“This way,” G. W. said. He led the way, into the breeze.

We walked for at least ten minutes-I estimated we had gone perhaps a half mile-making gentle turns and climbing and descending gentle grades, when we saw a light ahead. As we got closer, I saw that it was made by a Coleman-type lantern sitting in a huge cavity cut into the wall of the tunnel. This might be a future subway station.

Three men wearing Iranian army uniforms were gathered around the lantern, and they were armed to the teeth. All wore pistols in holsters and had submachine guns dangling from straps over their shoulders. One of them was Joe Mottaki, the Mossad agent, and the other two were American covert CIA officers, Haddad Nouri and Ahmad Qajar. Nouri had been in the country for three years and was burrowed in like a tick on a dog. He made an excellent living as a computer consultant during the day. Ahmad Qajar spent his days traveling around the country updating foreign guidebooks… and the CIA database on the country.

After we had shaken hands all around, we examined the pile of equipment they had laid out in the lantern light. It had come from a stash in one corner of the room, a large cavity that had been hollowed out of rotten rock with a pick. The boards that usually covered the hole lay beside it.

Qajar handed both G. W. and Nouri simple, stamped, Russian-made submachine guns with four loaded magazines taped to them and silencers on the barrels. He offered one to me, but I refused. If I needed a submachine gun, my mission was a bust and I was doomed. Just in case, Qajar handed two grenades to each of his colleagues and put two in his own pockets. Everyone got night vision goggles. I received a backpack containing C-4, fuses and primer cord.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “tonight’s target is the Ministry of Defense. Joe, your job is to provide me with a diversion big and bad enough that you pull the Revolutionary Guards and uniformed army people out of the hallways in the executive wing. I intend to go in through a window in that wing. G. W. and his guys will deliver me there and pick me up when I come back out.”