The Last Run Read online

  “What is funny?” Shirazi asked.

  “We’re working so hard to save her life when we’re just going to kill her later.”

  Shirazi looked down at the woman on the floor of the van. The makeshift maqna’e had come loose, the blond hair it had concealed now spilling around her head. Shirazi saw that she was looking at him, and for a moment there was comprehension in her eyes, understanding, even pain. But there was no fear.

  “First we will take what we need,” Shirazi told Zahabzeh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  LONDON—VAUXHALL CROSS, OFFICE OF D-OPS

  11 DECEMBER 1756 HOURS (GMT)

  The red circuit had opportunity to ring only once before Paul Crocker had the phone to his ear. “D-Ops.”

  “Duty Ops Officer, sir, flash traffic from Tehran Station, Immediate and Urgent. Rescue attempt intercepted en route stop. Minder One taken by VEVAK forces and in custody stop. Number Two minor injuries stop. Require instruction as to how to proceed stop. Message ends.”

  “I’m …”

  “Sir?”

  Crocker coughed, feeling as if his head was beginning to spin, as if the room had suddenly lost its balance.

  “Sir?”

  He drew a breath, slowly, felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. “Send to Tehran Station, immediate and urgent, as follows: imperative you determine location where Minder One detained. Authorized to use all available means, including activation of network assets. Message ends. And Ron?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Tell MCO to get an open line to the Station, and bring in Minder Two, get him up to speed.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Crocker set the handset back in its cradle, stared at it for a moment, and was about to key his intercom when the door opened, Kate standing there.

  “She’s at the embassy?”

  “No.” Crocker got up, took his suit coat from the stand, began slipping into it. “VEVAK hit the car before they made it in. Is C still in the building?”

  “In her office,” Kate said quietly. “She was waiting on … she was waiting for the good news.”

  “Tell her I’m coming up,” Crocker said.

  For several seconds after Crocker was done speaking, C sat in silence, her face set in stone, impossible to read. Then it cracked, an overwhelming sadness settling on her, and she sighed.

  “It’s over, then,” she said. “Certainly, if they have her in custody, it’s over.”

  Crocker shook his head, refusing the analysis. “I’ve directed Tehran Station to try to determine where Chace is being held. Minder Two is on his way into the Ops Room, I can have him briefed and on his way to Iran tonight if I can get MOD transport.”

  “And what is he supposed to do when he gets there? Attempt a rescue? Attempt a second rescue?”

  “If feasible, yes. Poole is ex-SAS, as well as a Minder. We have time. D-Int confirmed that the Iranians released the news of Falcon’s death earlier today, but attributed it only to ‘foreign agents.’ They’ll try to fit her for it, and that certainly means a trial, most likely a very public one. We have some time.”

  She shook her head, her expression softening, almost affectionate. “I applaud your loyalty to your people, Paul, but the proposition is absurd. Even if Barnett were to locate Chace, it’s too late, the damage is done. It’s over.”

  “Poole—”

  “Poole will never leave England, Paul!” She got up from behind her desk, exasperated, frustrated. “Have you stopped to consider what you’re asking? Even if, by some grace of God, Tehran is actually able to verify where Chace is being detained, even if the location isn’t, for some absurd reason, a maximum-security site, it will never happen. The risk of a rescue attempt going wrong is simply too great. Bad enough they’ve got one of our agents alive, one that they’ll undoubtedly put on trial for murder, you would send them a second one?”

  “If we find the location, a rescue attempt becomes viable. If we go through MOD, with Poole as lead, if we can get an SAS brick in support, we can get her out of the country.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Paul. It’s not going to happen, the PM will never allow it.”

  “We owe her a rescue. We can’t just abandon her.”

  C’s voice turned cold. “We owed her the effort, and we made it as best we could.”

  “There’s more we can do.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The Prime Minister will never authorize an incursion into Iran to save the life of one SIS agent, you know that, certainly not after the failure of Coldwitch. And certainly not in the face of Minder One being the lead story on the morning news. Chace is lost to us, Paul. Our priority now must be determining how we will respond to the Iranians when they put her in front of the cameras, how we can mitigate the damage.”

  Crocker stared at her, knowing that everything she was saying was true, knowing the logic, feeling it boiling, foul, inside of him. “We have to try.”

  “We have done,” C said. “To the best of our abilities, we have done.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  She considered him, and he realized what he was seeing from her was very close to pity.

  “I don’t know any other way to put this that you’ll understand,” C said. “So I’ll say it like this: if you send Poole to Iran, I shall recall him, and then fire you. If you order Tehran Station to do anything other than the most routine intelligence-gathering, I will countermand your directive, and I will fire you. If you do anything at all that could further exacerbate the situation as it stands right now, I will reverse its course, and fire you. Iran is now off-limits to the Ops Directorate until I say otherwise. The priority now is damage control, nothing else, and I cannot—I will not—permit you to make things worse.”

  Crocker said nothing. C pressed the button on her intercom, summoning her PA, and as soon as the door to her office cracked open, spoke to the unseen assistant, saying, “My car, please. And inform Downing Street that I’m coming over with an update on the Iran situation.”

  The door closed silently.

  “What am I permitted to do?” Crocker asked.

  She looked at him sadly. “Go home, Paul.”

  Poole was waiting when Crocker returned to his office, and from the look on Minder Two’s face, Crocker knew he had already heard the news.

  “Got tired of waiting in the Ops Room,” Poole said. “When do I leave?”

  “You don’t.” Crocker reached for the red phone, punching a key, and when Ron answered, said, “Inform Tehran Station to stand down, repeat, stand down. Require full report soonest, otherwise Station to resume normal operations.”

  He hung up before he heard Ron’s confirmation of the order, turned back to Poole, to see the man standing, hands clenched, glaring at him.

  “We’re not doing anything?”

  “There’s nothing we can do, Nicky.”

  “You can bloody send me to go and get her!”

  “Alone? Really?”

  “Lankford’s still in Mosul, he can meet me in Basra, we deploy from there—”

  “It’s not going to happen, Nicky.” Crocker dug a thumb against his temple, feeling his head throb. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. C has declared Iran off-limits. No operations, no action, nothing.”

  “God-dammit, Boss!” Poole’s voice exploded in the tiny office. “We owe her!”

  “I know.”

  “Then fuck C and fuck the rest of them and send me to Iran to get her!”

  “Knock it off.”

  “Go to the CIA, then!”

  “It’ll be the same response. They’ve already written off Coldwitch.”

  “She’s in some goddamn VEVAK interrogation room right now, they’re using rubber hoses on her or needles or whatever the hell’s the method of the month over there, and they’re going to get everything she knows, you realize that? Never mind that she’s my friend, and that maybe, maybe, you even think of her as yours. She’s a fucking intelligence gold mine for them!�
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  “You think I don’t know that?” Crocker asked. “You think C doesn’t know, the CIA doesn’t know? If there were even a chance of getting her out of there, you think I’d let C stop me? But there isn’t, Nicky. There just isn’t.”

  Poole stared at him for several seconds, struggling, warring with himself, until finally swearing, turning away. His fists tightened, then relaxed, and with it his posture slackened.

  “They’ll take good care of her.” The consolation sounded hollow and false, even to Crocker’s own ears. “Reasonably good care. A doctor for her, at least, the medical attention she needs. They’ll want her healthy for the cameras.”

  “Well, that makes it so much better, now, doesn’t it?”

  Crocker had no response.

  “So they’ll put her on trial, and then what? Prison for five years before we get her back?”

  “The assumption is that she’ll be tried for the murder of Hossein Khamenei,” Crocker said. “In which case they’ll execute her once she’s found guilty.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Not really.”

  They looked at each other, the antagonism gone.

  “So this is everything,” Poole said. “This is all we are going to do.”

  “For now, at least. Once the Iranians reveal they have her we’ll know more. They might not take it public.”

  “Go to the FCO you mean? The Ambassador?”

  “It’s possible. Depends what they want.”

  “Maybe we can work an exchange? Trade her for somebody?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound hopeful.”

  “We’re not holding anyone they would want, certainly no one of equal or greater value.” Crocker shook his head. “And I doubt the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister would think Chace’s life is worth any concessions the Iranians would ask for.”

  “Bastards,” Poole muttered, the one word an indictment, encompassing each and all of them: the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary; C and Seale and the CIA; VEVAK and Youness Shirazi; even Crocker and Poole, himself. They’d lost. Chace wasn’t dead, but she might as well have been, because she was never coming back. Chace was gone.

  Bastards, all of them.

  Crocker had to agree.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  IRAN—ISFAHAN PROVINCE, NATANZ

  12 DECEMBER 0221 HOURS (GMT +3.30)

  It had been past midnight when Shirazi and the others reached the house in Natanz, some twelve kilometers outside of town, and he went inside with Zahabzeh, Kamal, and Parviz to prepare it, while Javed stayed with their prize in the van. Chace wasn’t going anywhere; after stabilizing her, Shirazi had injected her with ketamine, just enough to put her down for the journey.

  The house was small, used by VEVAK for long-term interrogation of prisoners, normally politically sensitive ones. Zahabzeh questioned their using it, wondered why they weren’t taking Chace directly to one of the hospitals in Tehran, and then to prison.

  “Two reasons,” Shirazi said. “We don’t want her anywhere public, anywhere her people can find her. Second, too many ears, too many people listening who might report back to the Minister. Her confession must be the confession we want, Farzan, remember. Or have you forgotten it was Kamal’s bullet that killed Hossein?”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Zahabzeh said. “We should inform the Minister we have her, at least. Call off the search.”

  “Not yet. Not until we have the confession.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You don’t have to like it, Farzan. I am in charge, and this is what we are going to do. All of us together, remember?”

  Zahabzeh had said nothing for a moment, watching while Parviz checked the security camera for the cell, making certain it was working. “We’ll need the confession quickly.”

  “I am aware,” Shirazi said, drily. “Once we have her in place, I’ll go back to Tehran, make certain the office knows how to proceed.”

  “You’re going back?” Zahabzeh looked at him curiously. “Why not use the phone?”

  “I want to put in an appearance at the office, maintain a presence for the search.” Shirazi smiled at him. “You’re afraid I will go to the Minister, claim all the credit?”

  “He should be informed.”

  “No, not yet. I told you at the start, we would take the credit together. I gave you my word.”

  “Yes,” Zahabzeh said. “You did.”

  Kamal stepped out of the small room used as a cell. “We’re ready.”

  “Help Javed move her inside. Be gentle with her, I don’t want the wound reopening.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shirazi and Zahabzeh watched as Chace was moved into the house, followed as she was carried into the cell and laid on the cot. They had cut the blanket she had used as a makeshift manteau away during the drive, to better visualize her wounds, and now Kamal used a new blanket to cover her.

  “Her boots,” Zahabzeh said.

  Kamal nodded, used a knife to cut the laces on Chace’s shoes, tugged them free, then took her socks. Shirazi frowned, but didn’t say anything; taking her shoes was logical, a means of keeping control over the prisoner, and objecting to it would have only heightened Zahabzeh’s already acute suspicions.

  Zahabzeh took the boots, and the four men left the cell, Javed closing and locking the door after them. Parviz was seated at the table, watching the monitor, and Shirazi glanced at the screen, saw the woman lying precisely as they had left her.

  “Her things,” he asked. “Where are they?”

  “Here.”

  Zahabzeh set the boots on the edge of the table, removed the items they had taken from the spy from the pockets of his jacket. There was a satellite phone, a GPS unit, a folding knife, and several wads of rials. Shirazi looked through them all in the light, noting that both the satellite phone and the GPS unit were switched off. He turned each on, checking their respective memories. The phone’s battery was nearly dead, its call log holding only one outgoing and one received in memory, each from different numbers within the U.K. Nothing else was stored. He showed the contents of the log to Zahabzeh.

  “Calls to headquarters,” Shirazi said. “That would explain how Mr. Lewis knew where to find her.”

  “Useless now.”

  “Most likely. I suppose we could call and find out.” Shirazi gave Zahabzeh a thin smile, received one in turn, then switched the phone off and set it down again, picking up the GPS unit. There were over a half-dozen points logged in memory on the device, but without a map, there was no way to determine where they were, or their purpose. Most of them, Shirazi suspected, were false entries, inputted simply to make things look proper. Which of them would have been the rendezvous point, again, he couldn’t know without a map. It was just as likely that the coordinates hadn’t been set in the unit at all, that Chace had held them in her memory. He hoped it was the latter.

  “Bag these up,” Shirazi told Zahabzeh. “We’ll need them for the trial.”

  He left the house at ten minutes past four in the morning, and despite the late hour and the lack of sleep, felt better than he had in months. The nervousness, the tension, both were still with him, but for the first time since taking Hossein, he allowed for a slight optimism. Things had gone wrong, yes, but now, finally, they were proceeding as he had planned all along. There were complications, of course—Chace’s injury foremost amongst them—but Shirazi was confident they could be managed. The hard work was done.

  He had his prize.

  He had Chace.

  By ten in the morning, he had completed his work, issuing new directives and narrowing the search corridor for the spy to the area around Tabriz. He returned to his office, closed the door, and after some searching, found the number for Captain Bardsiri.

  “Captain? This is Director Shirazi. We spoke yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir.” The captain’s nervousness radiated out of the phone.

  “Regarding the incident at the che
ckpoint, you have filed your report?”

  “No, not yet, sir. I was preparing it for submission—”

  “Good. When you have completed it, I require it sent directly to my office, to me personally, along with any notes or other information about the incident. Do you understand?”

  “That’s … that’s quite irregular, sir.”

  “I am aware of that, as I am also aware that my office took steps last night to capture the spy regardless of her diplomatic cover. I am trying to protect you, Captain, do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll … I’ll have everything sent to you this afternoon.”

  “Sooner would be better, Captain,” Shirazi said, hanging up. He booted up his computer, found his files on Chace, and proceeded to securely delete each one in turn. Then he checked his desk, looking for anything he might have missed or forgotten, but found nothing. The files on Hossein had already been disposed of, as per the Minister’s direction, and no hard-copy information existed about Chace that Shirazi was aware of.

  It wasn’t yet eleven in the morning when he departed, climbing back into his car to make the return trip to Natanz. He was in no hurry and stopped to do some shopping before leaving Tehran, picking out a new manteau for Chace, and a maqna’e that matched.

  At eleven minutes past one in the afternoon, Shirazi walked back into the house in Natanz, and the first thing he noted was that Zahabzeh was nowhere to be seen. Javed was seated at the table, watching the monitor, and on the screen he could see Chace, lying on her back, the blanket no longer covering her. Parviz and Kamal had each taken a portion of floor as a bed, dozing with their coats bundled beneath their heads.

  “Where’s Farzan?” Shirazi asked.

  Javed turned slightly, still keeping one eye on the monitor. “He went back to Tehran, sir, as you ordered.”

  The sense of triumph that Shirazi had allowed to rise within him since that morning vanished entirely. “Tell me what happened.”

  On the floor, Parviz stirred, lifting his head. Javed glanced away from the screen, to Shirazi, puzzled. “She awoke around six this morning. Deputy Director Zahabzeh indicated he wished to question her, he took Parviz and Kamal in with him.”