His right hand was pressed to the base of his throat, his fingers holding down the spoon of a fragmentation grenade. The pin was gone.
One slip, one tremor of his fingers and he would blow them all to kingdom come. That much was clear. His motivation was not.
After a moment, his face cracked into a smile and he gestured with his free hand. “Have a seat. We need to talk.”
The phone on Isfahani’s desk vibrated for the second time in twenty minutes and he glanced briefly at the screen before answering it. He sighed and the sound seemed to fill the small, austere bedchamber of the Ayatollah.
Seldom had he seen things go more completely awry and his mind searched for answers to the chaos. Had Allah rejected him as an instrument of his will?
“Hello?”
It was Hossein’s number that had been displayed on-screen, but the voice that responded was not that of the major.
“Am I speaking with the Ayatollah Isfahani?” a voice asked in perfect Arabic. If Isfahani had not known better, he might have thought the man was a native speaker.
“You are,” he replied evenly, in the same language. “There is a certain irony in speaking with the man who killed my soldiers.”
“We all must make our deals with the devil,” came the ready retort. “I find myself in the same position.”
Isfahani was too surprised at his boldness to be angry. “Faustian bargains are not a part of my day-to-day life,” he replied. “But Goethe has been a favorite of mine ever since my days in Germany. I ask myself, have you not cast the wrong player in the role of Mephistopheles?”
Harry cleared his throat. “We’re wasting time with semantics, sir. Would you cut to the quick?”
“As you wish, of course. The biological agent is in the hands of a Hezbollah field commander named Fayood Hamza al-Farouk. I am prepared to give you their plan of attack, their strength, and most importantly, a way to stop them.”
“And you ask in return?”
“I beg pardon?”
Harry glanced over at Tex before turning his attention back to the phone on the table. It was on speaker, ensuring that all three men could hear the conversation.
“What’s the trade-off? What do you hope to gain?”
“I hope to gain the lives of the faithful, of the thousands of my fellow Muslims who will be butchered by this madman. The destruction of the Zionist state is not worth this folly.”
“I appreciate your sentiments. Hopefully with your help, that can be avoided.”
“And I would like safe passage to a country of my choosing, which I’m sure your government can arrange.”
Harry hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully. “I will have to discuss this with my principals.”
“My request is reasonable enough. What was your deal with my traitorous bodyguard? I doubt he would have sold his soul for a pittance.”
“Whether Achmed Asefi had a soul to sell is a topic best left to theologians such as yourself,” Harry replied caustically. “Our deal with him was a bargain between thieves and best forgotten.”
“I will await your call.”
Harry powered down the phone and handed it back to Hossein, his eyes meeting briefly with those of the former insurgent. The man who had killed his friend.
“Let’s roll. We’ve stayed here too long already,” he announced. The major rose, putting the loaded magazine of his semiautomatic in his pocket. He reached out for the pistol itself, but Harry’s voice stayed his hand.
“I’ll take that,” Harry said quietly, not a trace of a smile on his face. Hossein shrugged and let him remove the gun as the trio moved toward the door.
“Tex, you’ll drive. I have a call to make.”
“Thank you, Nichols. We’ll get back to you shortly.” Director Lay thumbed the END button to close the call and glanced up at the faces around the conference table.
“Gentlemen, your thoughts?”
Ron Carter cleared his throat, looking up from the screen of his laptop. Lay had seldom seen the analyst look more rumpled, but he seemed to still be on top of his game. “I’ve sent the recording Richards made of the call over to Intel for voiceprint analysis. Once we confirm that it
“How long might that take?”
“Anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour,” Carter replied, rubbing the back of his neck.
Kranemeyer shot him a pained look.“May I remind everyone that we’ve got a field team hanging out in the open? We need to either commit to this operation or exfil from the area ASAP.”
“There’s greater risk in moving too fast,” the analyst retorted. “Look what happened with Achmed Asefi.”
The DCS leaned forward, his eyes snapping like black coals of fire as he glared at Carter. “Running Asefi was a decision made by your old buddies at the Intelligence Directorate. My people did the best they could on the intel provided.”
“Intel they explicitly warned you was dated,” Carter shot back. “‘Proceed with caution’ was the directive, if I remember it correctly.”
“Gentlemen!” Lay brought his hands down on the table with a resounding thud. Having gotten their attention, he continued, “There was no way to predict that Asefi would choose an old-fashioned triple-cross as his best way out. That’s the human element of every op we’ve ever run. Put under fear and pressure, people react unpredictably. And can generally find a route of escape that you hadn’t even factored into the equation. Now, as Barney said, we’ve got a team in the field. Time to hold the ball, make the call. Let’s proceed under the assumption that we are dealing with the genuine item. Ron, give us the rundown. Pros and cons.”
Carter deflated, turning back to his laptop for a moment. “We need to remember above all that Yousef Mohaymen Isfahani is not a moderate by any stretch of the imagination. We didn’t try to assassinate him back in 2011 because we thought he was a fan of the West.”
“But compared to the current regime…” Deputy Director(I) Michael Shapiro interjected, adding his voice to the discussion for the first time.
“It’s the classic Overton window scenario,” Ron admitted with a shrug. “What was once radical now appears moderate. It’s a matter of perspective. With his past history, I question the wisdom of allowing him any measure of control over a field operation.”
“Control?” Kranemeyer asked skeptically. “I was in spec-ops back in the ‘90s and I can tell you first-hand that any perception of
“Even with this Major Hossein along?”
“Yes.”
“And if he’s deceiving
