onto Waterside Avenue.
“I’ll call for you tomorrow morning,” Harper said as the vehicle slowed to a halt next to the hotel. Ryan moved to climb out, but the other man stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You got what we needed, Ryan, and all three of you walked out. That’s the important thing. Go talk to Kharmai; North said she looked pretty down when he left her.”
“What happened today wasn’t her fault, John. It was mine. I told her she could trust me, and then that bastard got to her with a knife… She has a right to be upset.”
“Hey, she’s only alive because of what you did for her in Washington, okay? Keep that in mind. She should be grateful to have you around. Go get some sleep.”
Ryan gave a mock salute and Harper couldn’t help but smile as the Suburban pulled away from the curb. As he went through the process of checking in, Ryan began to realize how tired he actually was. It was hard to believe he had woken up with Katie just twelve hours earlier.
The elevator stopped on the third floor and he got out, looking down at the scrap of paper that Jonathan had pressed into his hand. Room 305. There. He looked down at the dirt on his ragged jeans from where he had hit the floor in the bar, and realized that he probably looked like hell. Oh well, he thought, at least I have a decent excuse.
Naomi Kharmai was curled into a tight ball on the bed, a white cotton bathrobe loose against her bare skin. The room was completely dark, but her eyes were wide open, staring fixedly into the empty space. After North had taken her back to the hotel, she had showered once, then again, and then a third time, the hot water beating down as it burned over the closed wound on her left thigh. Now, with nothing left to distract her, the scene played over and over in her mind. She was moving toward the bar, confidence in her stride, the Glock steady in her hand. She could see her own face from a distance, the fierce determination, the set of her jaw. Then she was facing Ryan, the sharp blade biting into her throat as Elgin whispered filth into her ear: I’m gonna cut you and fuck you, bitch.
Cut you and fuck you… She sobbed once, a loud, dry sob that vanished into the empty room. There was a knock at the door.
“Naomi, it’s Ryan.” She didn’t answer. “Naomi, just let me talk to you for a minute.”
The door handle jiggled, but she didn’t get up to let him in. After a minute or so, she heard a strange clicking sound. Ryan pushed his way into the room and turned on the light.
She sprang up, hurriedly wiping hot tears from her eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled angrily. “If I wanted you to come in I would have opened the fucking door!”
He raised his hands in surrender. She took in his dirty jeans, the black T-shirt tight over his chest and arms, and the most recent addition: a thin, looping scar that ran down the left side of his face. He must have come straight from the police station. She felt something that only heightened her anger and confusion.
“Look,” he said, “I just wanted to check on you. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“No thanks to you,” she sneered. “Nice job shooting me, by the way. No harm done… Maybe they’ll give you another medal.” Sarcasm usually came easy for her, but it didn’t feel right this time, and she felt a small tinge of regret as soon as the words left her mouth.
He stared at her in disbelief. The catlike green eyes were wide in anger, but he could see the glistening tracks down her cheeks and the red irritation at the corner of her eyes. For all of that, he couldn’t help himself. “What do you mean, another medal?” he asked slowly.
From the expression on his face, she knew that she was caught. He moved toward her slowly until he was standing only a few feet away. His face was as blank as it had been when he emerged from the stockroom at the bar.
“Listen to me,” he said in a low voice. Naomi took a step back involuntarily. “I’m sorry for what happened to you today, but stay the hell out of my personal life. You have no right to dig into my past. Keep it up, and I’m done looking out for you.”
Then he was gone, disappearing into the hallway. She didn’t move for a few moments as a number of emotions passed over her face. Finally, she went to shut the door after him.
CHAPTER 14
IRAN, NORFOLK
Southeastern Iran, on the Makran Coast overlooking the Arabian Sea.
Far to the north, the peaks of the Zagros can be seen towering over the arid landscape. Apart from the size, the mountains and the land below are almost indistinguishable.
He stood on the black tarmacadam that was sticky beneath his feet. Now easing into November and almost 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the air thick in his nose and mouth. His frustration was exacerbated by the people standing in the near distance, the air force colonel sent by Mazaheri, and the aides who smirked and stood with jutted chins and arrogant eyes as they basked on the fringe of his power. There were the two young members of the Komiteh as well, the ever-present AK-47s slung across their chests. Hassan Hamza stood with them, speaking in quiet tones to the colonel, his eyes moving with ill-concealed disdain over the young men who surrounded the senior officer. They had been talking for twenty minutes, and there appeared to be little progress.
The impatience was not visible in March’s face or the carriage of his lean frame. He stood quietly and stared out to sea as the argument carried on behind him.
They were in the port city of Bandar Beheshti, less than a 100 miles from the Pakistani border. The men stood in the shade of one of the open warehouses. It was not a large harbor, with only four berths and four jetties, each of which held two mobile cranes. There was an electric evacuator for the discharge of grain from a container ship, and the chain-wheel cranes, of which there were two, rolled well in from the edge of the macadam. A pair of ancient forklifts also occupied the broad expanse of black asphalt.
Besides the four open warehouses, there were two sheltered structures and the harbormaster’s office, which was little more than a shed of corrugated iron. Surrounding the port, nothing but razor-sharp strands of concertina wire and empty space.
He heard voices rising, and he turned toward the group of men. Hamza was stalking angrily in his direction, the colonel shouting at his back. The Egyptian wiped beads of sweat from his brow as he approached, his mouth curled into a snarl beneath the heavy mustache.
“Those bastards!” he hissed. “They understand nothing. In Tehran, everything is a phone call away. It is not that easy here.”
“What’s the problem?” March asked.
“There is no truck. There is no way to move the cargo, but we cannot leave it, not even in the closed warehouses. It is many miles to Arak, it is a mountain pass… We must have a truck.”
“Did you speak to the harbormaster?”
Hamza waved his arms in frustration. “I asked if there was a vehicle in the secure buildings. He would not say…”
Hamza stopped talking. The laughter of the colonel’s aides was shrill in his ears. The gleaming eyes had moved away from his face and were focused on the office that lay across the stinking heat of the asphalt.
Less than five minutes later, Jason March emerged from the dull metal structure. He was wearing a faint smile. A small silver object caught and reflected the sunlight as it dangled from the fingers of his right hand.
“A key. So there is a truck,” Hamza said as he joined March at the locked sliding door of the second warehouse.
“If there was not a truck, then that is what he would have said,” was the flat response.
Hamza stared at the harbormaster’s building and noticed that the colonel and his aides were doing the same. The laughter had stopped, and the aides silently sulked around the Iranian officer like scolded children. The heavy door was lifted to reveal the vehicle, an International 4900 4x2. March hopped into the cab and began to dismantle the plastic housing surrounding the steering column. The engine roared to life a few minutes later.
“Unfortunately, he only had the key to the warehouse,” March explained. “It will be an inconvenience, but only a minor one.”
Hamza did not reply, only turning once more to look at the office that was like a mirage in the heat of the
