had no time left for pleasantries. He held out a wad of rials.
The other man held up a hand. “Alas, my friend, you know better than that. Rials are worth less than the paper they are printed on in my line of work. Besides,” he said slyly, “my suppliers were so busy with their other endeavors that I had to pay extra to persuade them to complete your little task.”
Pahesh swallowed his impatience and his resentment. He had expected nothing more from al-Juzjani. He sometimes thought the man only breathed because the air around him was free. He arched an eyebrow. “How much more do your suppliers require?”
“Another one hundred American dollars.”
Pahesh considered that. Even with the clock running, it would be a mistake to simply accept the smuggler’s first price. Folding too easily would only tell the little man just how important those papers were to him.
He snorted and spread his hands wide. “Alas, Ibn, that is impossible. My funds are wholly tied up in this small enterprise of mine,” he lied.
“I see. What a pity.” The smuggler stroked his chin and then shrugged.
“Perhaps I can persuade them to accept ninety-five dollars.”
They haggled pleasantly for another few minutes before settling on a mutually acceptable, if extortionate, price. He was not worried about using American currency to settle his debt with the smuggler. Tehran’s black market used dollars exclusively and Iranian banks exchanged it freely though at a terrible rate. In truth, he had never expected al-Juzjani to accept Iranian rials.
Besides, the money was of no consequence. Pahesh would cheerfully have handed over his entire, hard- earned fortune to secure those papers. They were his passport to a better life.
His little convoy of five trucks headed out from Tehran shortly after noon, Flowing southward through the ever-thinning traffic on a paved, two-lane road to Robat Karim, a small town roughly one hundred kilometers from the capital. Except for a few large, expensive cars Mercedes sedans whose owners could either countermand or safely flout the regulations, most of the other vehicles on the highway belonged to the military.
Their forged documents got Pahesh and his companions past police checkpoints without much trouble. The papers were ostensibly issued by the Pasdaran. Even with General Amir Taleh in power, nobody with half a brain wanted to look too closely at the activities of the Revolutionary Guards.
At the town of Kasham, they turned off the highway onto a winding gravel road, heading west into a flat, dry landscape littered with stones. A few miles out of town, even the gravel surface ended, leaving only a dirt track barely wide enough for a single truck. Despite the poor road, Pahesh kept his speed as high as he dared, and then a little higher. The sun was now only a few fingers above the western horizon. He faced it as he drove, slitting his eyes against the glare as though he were staring down an adversary.
The odometer was his master. The clock was his enemy. It was vital that he reach the right spot before dark.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, Pahesh fumbled through his duffel bag and pulled out a small device the size of a handheld calculator. He switched it on and waited. First one, then two, three, and finally five small green lights glowed on the front of the little machine. Each light represented a GPS global positioning system satellite whose signal it was able to receive. With five satellites, the receiver could fix his position to within three meters.
At the moment, the receiver’s readout showed latitude and longitude values almost matching those given him by Granite.
He studied the landscape ahead. There. He saw the landmark he’d been looking for a long, low, east-west ridge that paralleled the road a few hundred meters to the north. The sun was just touching the horizon.
Once he was abreast of the hill, Pahesh pulled off the road and stopped. He clambered down out of the truck cab and stretched well aware that he still had much work to do. A gust of icy wind warned him of the cold night ahead.
The others dropped out of their trucks and came to join him. They seemed puzzled to find themselves so far from anywhere. They stared back and forth from the long, low ridge to the straight dirt road laid across the empty landscape like a pencil line on a piece of paper.
Mohammed, a big man with an unkempt beard, was the most suspicious.
“You are sure this is the right spot?”
Pahesh nodded calmly. “I’ve done this before,” he lied smoothly. He turned to the other three men. “Move your trucks off the road and wait for us. Mohammed and I have a little scouting to do.”
Without waiting to see if they obeyed him, he got back in his truck and headed west through the growing darkness. As he drove, he scanned the terrain closely. Granite’s orders ran through his memory: “Make sure the road is not blocked, and that the ground is flat for at least fifty meters to either side. Watch out for potholes or large boulders.”
A little over a kilometer to the west, the road curved slightly, disappearing around the ridge and into the distance.
Pahesh nodded to himself. It would suffice. The only thing in that direction was a small village another twenty kilometers further on. At night, in the winter, this should be an empty and abandoned area. Or so he hoped.
He parked at the curve and waited for Mohammed to join him. “Park your truck off the road as though it has broken down. Then build two fires, one here and one over there,” he said, pointing across the road. “Keep the fires small and keep watch, but do nothing unless I say otherwise. You understand?”
The big man nodded slowly, staring down the long stretch of road to the east. “So this shipment of yours comes by air, then?”
Pahesh frowned. Since he first met the man, Mohammed had been questioning him digging whenever possible to find out more about what they were up to. Without his friend Agdas’ recommendation, he would never have taken on a man who was so nosy. Agdas, though, had promised him that the big man could keep his mouth shut when it mattered.
“Yes,” he answered shortly. “The goods I am expecting are large very bulky.” That much, at least, was true though it was cloaked in a lie.
“Are you armed?”
Mohammed nodded, and lifted up his coat enough for Pahesh to see a dull black shape tucked in his waistband.
The Afghan nodded. He had expected no less. His countrymen usually felt naked without at least one weapon concealed somewhere. “I will send someone to relieve you in half an hour.”
Pahesh climbed back into his truck and drove off without looking back. To find the others, he followed the truck tracks with his headlights as they led him over the ridge.
The rest of his little band were gathered around a small fire of their own, and they were cooking a light supper. The circle of bearded faces, lit only by the leaping flames, reminded the Afghan strongly of the days long ago the days in his own country when the mujahideen ruled the hills and mountains and kept their Soviet foes in fear.
He lugged his duffel a short way from the fire and set up his SATCOM radio. He did not hide his actions from others, but he did not invite them closer either.
Somewhere off in far distant America, Granite was waiting by the radio for his signal. “Granite here.”
“This is Stone,” Pahesh reported. “We are in Kabul.” Translated, that meant they were at the proper coordinates and there were no obstructions blocking the road.
Even across the ten thousand miles, he could hear the relief in the American’s voice. “Understood, Stone. Expect your shipment tonight.” Pahesh paused and then said, “Wish them safe journey.”
After stashing the radio out of sight again, he rejoined his compatriots at the fire.
“These friends of yours will arrive soon?” Agdas asked quietly.
“Soon,” Pahesh agreed.
“Can you tell us yet what this cargo of yours is?” the other man pressed. “This is mysterious… even for you, Hamir.”
“Yes, it is.” The Afghan shrugged. “You will see soon enough.”
“So what now?” one of the other men asked. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
Pahesh smiled at him across the campfire. “We wait, my friend. We wait.”
