She coughed suddenly, an almost alien sound striking his ears. Water spewed from her mouth and he laughed, an almost giddy feeling overcoming him as he leaned back, placing both hands on her chest and pressing down to force the water from her lungs. She was alive…
It was a lot of information. Almost too much information to be compiled on one man. Certainly not in the last fifteen hours. Harry closed the dossier and handed it back to the waiting Carter. “May I ask why the Agency has taken such an interest in Asefi in the past?”
“The past?” Carter asked, as though he had no idea what Harry was talking about.
“Don’t give me that, Ron,” Harry shot back, rising from his chair. “You didn’t pull all this together since my call this morning. Even the timestamps on these photos-they’re five years old. What’s the history?”
The analyst sighed. “Asefi was involved in an assassination attempt of ours, back in the fall of 2011. You’ve read the file on Isfahani-he’s not always been the sort of cooperative peacenik who would work with the Israelis. He wasn’t the Supreme Leader at the time, but his status as the principal disciple of Khamenei made him one of the most influential clerics behind Iran’s nuclear program. And we tried to take him out.”
Harry stood with his hand on the door, listening. “Tried as in failed?”
“That would be correct. We lost our most important assets running the mission and we
“So then you went after him?” Harry asked, gesturing at the dossier on the table. Carter nodded.
“That’s right. Trying to find something we could exploit-a chink in the armor. And we found it. As they say, follow the money. We found that he had paid out large sums from a credit card over the course of two years to an Eastern European escort service specializing in male hookers. That gave us something to work with, and we planned to use it against him, either trying to get him to take out Isfahani, or give us a window in which to do so.”
“And then President Shirazi came to power, reducing the power of the clerics?” Harry guessed, glancing shrewdly at Carter.
“Exactly. All of a sudden, Isfahani was an unwilling moderate by comparison and we had no reason to target him.”
“Until now.” Nothing in the story surprised Harry-it was the type of thing that went on constantly. Bribery, back-stabbing and blackmail, the way the game was played. It went with the territory. He checked his watch and smiled. “It’s getting late and I’ve had quite a day. When do you plan to run the op on Asefi?”
“You mean when are
“Really?” Harry grinned. “If you don’t mind, I’ll process that bit of intel tomorrow as well.”
“Good night.”
“Night.”
A car was waiting in the parking lot of a convenience store off the CIA access road. The man inside paused only long enough to run a check of the license plate on the back of Harry’s Chevy, then punched speed-dial. “He’s on the road, Vic. Heading home.”
“Someone might see the smoke.” Thomas looked up from the small fire he was tending into Estere’s eyes. Even as her lips uttered the protest, she shuddered uncontrollably and leaned closer to the flame, hugging her knees close to her body and drawing the blanket tightly around her.
“Don’t worry about that,” he replied, studying her closely, watching for signs of hypothermia. Their clothes lay in front of the fire, drying out-and absorbing the smoke. The blanket she was wearing, which he had stuffed in a water-tight pack along with the vials of blood, was the only thing dry that was left to them. He reached out and felt the material of his pants. Still too wet to wear, he realized distastefully. The awkwardness between them could be cut with a knife.
All the same, in the face of death, modesty didn’t rank too high on his list of priorities. His or hers.
Thomas dipped his finger into the metal cup of water he had been warming over the embers. “Drink this,” he instructed, raising the cup to her lips.
She drank deeply, a faint smile crossing her lips as she let him take the empty cup away. She was still weak. So terribly weak.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For saving my life. I should have died in those waters.”
He grinned. “Not while I’m around.” He looked into the cup and stood. “I’ll fill this in the stream.”
“Don’t leave me, Thomas.”
“I won’t,” he replied, bending down to kiss her cheek. Her skin was flushed with a dangerous, almost feverish warmth.
“Promise?”
He knelt beside her for a moment, seeing in that moment a side of her, a vulnerability he had never before witnessed. “I’m never gonna leave you,” he whispered, running his fingers through her damp, matted hair. “Never.”
He stood and walked from the small cave, self-conscious in the early dawn as he made his way to the stream. It was then that he heard it, the hair on the back of his neck rising at the sound. A helicopter. Headed their way.
It could only mean one thing. The Iranians were coming.
He turned and sprinted for shelter, bare feet scraping against the rock as he dove for cover, clambering into the cave just as a Mi-24 “Hind” attack helicopter came over the ridge to the north.
“Douse the fire!” he hissed, tearing the blanket from Estere’s back and throwing it over the struggling embers.
The blanket smoldered and then a faint tendril of smoke curled upward from the fabric as the flames died, robbed of oxygen. She reached for the blanket to cover herself and he gave it to her, rolling to the side of the cave where his rifle lay. It was the only weapon they had left after their immersion in the deluge.
A single thirty-round magazine. Little enough. He could only hope the helicopter had been going too fast to notice the clump of bushes where Bahoz was tied.
Hope. And wait…
It was his fifth cup of coffee for the night. Or his sixth. It was like the old joke about getting drunk, never sure which glass had done it.
“Give me the rundown on Nichols’ morning routine again,” Vic ordered, draining the cup. The pleasant buzz of caffeine flooded through his system and he put down the empty cup regretfully. He was right there, on the knife’s edge. Any more coffee and he would crash and burn.
The second man lowered his binoculars, turning his attention away from the house across the road. “Bill says his schedule is clear tomorrow morning. Typically, he goes running at 0500 for an hour, then comes back to the
